Living in Greenland: Blindfold Test #9

Hot trends: (1) Songs that turn into dub versions in the middle and get better when the do; (2) Latin rhythms from non-Latin people; (3) Instrumentals that might have been better with words attached.; (4) Songs by vocal groups where I only noticed one vocalist. Also, in a couple previous blindfold tests, the oldest song…

Guilty of Noise Pollution: Blindfold Test #8

Did things a little bit differently this time — Instead of typing out notes while random-shuffling a 5000-song playlist at home, I handwrote out notes while listening to a 5000-song playlist in the car. (No I wasn’t driving at the time. I was waiting to pick my teenage daughter up from EMS Scouts.) In fact,…

Lovin’ Wreck: Blindfold Test #7

The most exciting part of these columns, immediately after I listen to all 25 songs (okay usually I’ll make it 26 just in case I mess up and one of my writeups is completely flat and incoherent), is going back and checking the app queue to find out what music I was just taking notes…

Where the Penguins Fly: Blindfold Test #6

Notable developments: (1) For the third blindfold test out of six, the song I like most is the one that’s been on earth the longest. That doesn’t necessarily mean I think older music is necessarily better, but….it might. (2) For the third Skyhooks song listened to out of three, I assumed a woman was singing…

A Comicattle World: Blindfold Test #5

Thanks to the playlist that this fifth blindfold test just like its four predecessors is culled from, which playlist I have taken to playing in the background through the day, and which playlist as of this writing totals 4150 tracks adding up to 260 hours and 34 minutes, I now feel the need to confess…

Walkman Ist Kaputt: Blindfold Test #4

Astute observers and/or regular readers will note that, just like on my previous blindfold test, my favorite song on this one is also the oldest song here. You could blame that on my own impending dotage, I suppose, except that this installment’s song in question was recorded in 1935, 25 years before I was born,…

Bible of Being Average: Blindfold Test #3

Quite a relief to learn the person singing my favorite song below, which embarrassingly turns out to be not only by far the oldest (that’s not the embarrassing part) but the one with by far the most problematic lyrics (that is), is of not the ethnicity I feared but rather the ethnicity he refers to…

I Like Cows: Blindfold Test #2

In the initial installment of this sonic experiment and/or semi-educated guessing game, I blindly played myself 25 songs out of a random shuffled playlist of 1699 I was curious about, and people kept joking that 1699 is an awful long time ago to pick 25 songs from har har. But more importantly, four different bands…

Hopeless on Juice: Blindfold Test #1

Here are 25 songs culled randomly on shuffle from a 1699-song, 104-hour and 24-minute Napster playlist of generally pretty obscure or at least slipped-through-the-cracks mostly ’70s and ’80s songs/albums/compilations I was vaguely curious about which I’ve been playing in the background while living my life these past couple weeks. Music nobody talks about, and that…