For the past three months or so I’ve been using the iTunes shopping cart feature. This means, when a song or artist or album came to mind that I just had to buy, I put it in my iTunes shopping cart. Then, when I have enough money I buy it. It’s called fiscal discipline and I try to have it.
Well, Christmas was recently and with it came enough money to buy my entire iTunes shopping cart. $164.81 of music that I can’t live without. 15 hours of music. 17 albums, 3 a la carte songs. 240 tracks. 68.3 cents per song. 18.3 cents per minute of music. Heckuva deal!
Let’s just say I bought a lot of music.
What I bought can be split up into a few categories:
Jazz
Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson: Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson
I’ve taken to listening to Jazz 88 and I heard them play a song I know well by an artist I know well, but the pairing of the two had never crossed my mind. It was Louis Armstrong singing I Get a Kick Out of You, which the more I think about it the less that song fits her persona (it’s much more believable when Sinatra sings it). Well, I just loves me some Satchmo, so I figured I’d get the whole damn thing. So I did.
Wynton Marsalis: Magic Hour
I took a relatively safe bet buying this album. I’ve liked everything I’ve heard from Wynton Marsalis over the past few years, but for some reason I would never commit to actually buying one of his albums. I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve gotten into it a bit more.
Zoot Sims Quartet: That Old Feeling
The Zoot Sims are featured on the Rushmore soundtrack and that song convinced me to buy the only album of theirs on iTunes. Additional encouragement came when I found out the first track on the album is 9:20 Special, which is off another all-time favorite album of mine.
Lady Singers
Feist: The Reminder
I’d been meaning to buy this album since my 23rd birthday. It was in my iTunes shopping cart in 2007 when I was trying to decide what music to buy then and didn’t quite make the cut for some reason. When I saw Feist on Steven Colbert’s Christmas special I instantly developed a HUGE crush on her (like, huge) and I decided this year I wouldn’t let her music pass me by for a second year.
Fiona Apple: Extraordinary Machine
I’ve been an on again/off again Fiona Apple fan for probably six years. The past year I’ve been very much on. I heard the title track off this album about a month ago and didn’t realize it was Fiona Apple at first. I then knew I must buy this album.
Alt Pop? Is That a Term? or: Artists I Heard on the Current
Gogol Bordello: Super Taranta!
Gogol Bordello has probably been one of my top five bands in the past 15 months. I heard Immigrant Punk on The Current in the summer of 2007 and asked specifically for Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike for my birthday that year. This year I got another one by them and I’m already in love with it.
Cloud Cult: Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
This is the new Cloud Cult album. I don’t have any of their other albums but I needed to start somewhere. I’ve heard them all year long on the Current, especially selections from this album, and for a while I’ve known that right when I get the money this would be at the top of my list. I nearly cheated and got it without dedicated funding a few times, but I decided not to. I am fiscally disciplined!
Art Brut: It’s a Bit Complicated
Ok, how can I not buy an album by an artist with this name? I’ve heard Art Brut on The Current a fair amount and I am really happy each time I do. Also, this album contains my favorite new song discovery so far (in this batch): Pump Up the Volume. Let’s just say I completely relate to the lyrics, except instead of “a pop song” it’s “this hilarious movie.” I’m a terrible man, I know.
Devotchka: A Mad and Faithful Telling
This is the album I’m least confident about. I like their song Clockwise Witness, but I’ve listened to a bunch of the other tracks on the album and they all seem to run together. Nothing stands out. I’m just not sure about this one. We’ll see.
Oppenheimer: Take the Whole Midrange and Boost It
Ok, so I didn’t actually hear Oppenheimer on The Current. I saw them open for They Might Be Giants twice. The first time they were fantastic but I didn’t buy their album (lack of cash). The second time I saw them they were even better and I did buy their album (the last ten dollars out of my pocket). It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might have additional albums past the one they were selling at the show and I was very pleased to see that they did.
Artists I Appreciate Now that My Tastes Have Matured
The Pixies: Surfer Rosa
When I was in high school, everyone in my lit class but me loved the Pixies. I had just never heard them really, and their fawning obsession (or what seemed like it to me at the time) sort of annoyed me. I’ve gone back to a compilation disc made for our class by a classmate and discovered that indeed the Pixies are pretty good. I decided on this particular album purely based on the fact that it contains a track entitled “Oh My Golly!” And it’s actually a pretty good song.
Wilco and Billy Bragg: Mermaid Avenue
I never used to like bands with depth. Or country overtones. I do now. I think it is past time I got this album. I’m really looking forward to it.
Tom Waits: Mule Variations
I have a pretty extensive hodgepodge of illegally downloaded Tom Waits songs. Now that I download legally, I figured it’s time to have actual full albums. I am really excited to have full Tom Waits albums. I will play them on repeat, I’m sure.
Tom Waits: Rain Dogs
Hell yes I bought two Tom Waits albums at once. I couldn’t decided between these two, so I didn’t. I love the polka and the voice. Can’t go wrong.
And the Rest
Adam Green: Sixes and Sevens
Adam Green is so fucking weird and another in that list of my current top five. I got the song Novotel from the album Jacket Full Of Danger in 2006 when it came with a free iTunes student sampler. I made it my business to march right down to the store and buy the CD and I’ve had it in my car’s CD changer (only 6 slots!) for a year and a half. I heard a review of this album on MPR (news and information) last summer and had to force myself not to drive right to the Best Buy to pick it up. It was one of the first albums into my shopping cart when I began this process three months ago.
David Bowie: Space Oddity
When I went to Britain last spring, I decided to bring a bunch of British media (books, music, movies) with me to appreciate while I was over there. One of the CDs I bought for the trip was Best of Bowie. I was immediately ready to buy full Bowie albums, and I swore the first Bowie album I got would be Space Oddity. And so it is.
Soundtrack: Rocky Horror Picture Show
I bought this on sort of a whim. The plan was to go to the Otter as a group and have everyone sing up to sing through the entire soundtrack. I realized I didn’t know any of the songs well enough, so I bought it to study up. That plan ended up falling through, so now I have this soundtrack. Forever.
Three tracks from They Might Be Giants tribute cover album Hello Radio
I got the tracks They’ll Need a Crane by the Wrens, Letterbox by Ok Go, and The End of the Tour by Hotel Lights. The best part about all these songs is how they emphasize the lyrics to these songs in ways the originals don’t. Which is to say they emphasize the lyrics at all, and furthermore to a more appropriate pace, I’d say. Especially They’ll Need a Crane: that’s actually a bittersweet lovesong that an up-tempo tune robs of sincerity, I think. I mean, yeah, it’s still very much TMBG in that very particularly weird way, but it’s still better, I think, when done by the Wrens.
Whew.
This is by far the most music I’ve bought in one sitting ever. Yes.
