The big winners for 2009 were Phoenix and oddly enough, Aimee Mann.  It’s pretty uncharacteristic, but since Thanksgiving I’ve been listening to Mann’s @#%& Smilers (2008) basically exclusively save for a few excursions into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (It’s Blitz) and my 2009 mainstay, Phoenix (Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix).  I was pretty disappointed with Zero 7′s latest release (Yeah Ghost) and didn’t find anything I couldn’t live without on Royksopp’s Junior but I did discover a new love for Regina Spektor (Far) and Bibio (Ambivalence Avenue).   The Bird and the Bee (Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future) and Imogen Heap (Ellipse) both put out decent follow up albums and U2 (No Line on the Horizon) lost whatever remaining charm they had (not much).  Cut Copy’s 2008 album In Ghost Colours and their most excellent mixtape So Cosmic remained my gym-time music favorites. First up in 2010: Laura Veirs’ new album July Flame, which might just have enough indie folk musicality to break me out of my rut.

Music statistics courtesy of last.fm which has been faithfully scrobbling my every tune since early 2005 – 43,250 scrobbles and counting.

What happens when you take the best minute and twenty seconds of music ever created and remix it? Probably the best 4 minutes ever. Even better when it’s loud and you’re hearing it live with your best 3000 or so friends. The crowd went bananas for this little remixed tidbit last night. It wasn’t quite the sweat-fest that Girl Talk was, but it lived up to my own hype.

I’ve been gone for a while. Back with more soon.

New solution… the “after top 100″ playlist.

Basically it’s the same structure as the Top 100 (playcount > 0 and selected by most often played), but you add the exclusion of the Top 100 playlist.  I increased the item number to 250 to give it more variety.  Over time, listening to this list will eventually shift the songs up into the Top 100, bringing some of those songs down.  Alternating the two lists should keep the groups near each other play count-wise.  Might need a third tier playlist also, with exclusions of the two previous playlists eventually.

It got me thinking about what life would be like if you had to avoid music – or at least choose to live without it.  What if  music couldn’t be part of your life?  I’m sure there are plenty of people for whom this wouldn’t be a challenge.  They are either disinterested or passive consumers of music.   For me it would be devastating.  Would something else replace that near euphoric high of that perfect combination of sounds?  What else could really feel so good?  Sometimes I wonder if that’s the feeling people who are athletes or runners talk about.  The release of endorphins or serotonin or dopamine or whatever feel-good neurotransmitter it happens to be that causes that high.  And does every person have that something?  I know I’ve felt it in plenty of different situations – music just happens to be the one that’s easiest to control and replicate.  I can’t make someone fall in love with me, I can’t count on excelling at any specific task.  Music, however, is always there.

In This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin discusses how music stimulates the entire brain diffusely, while most processing tasks are focused in one specific region of the brain.  I’m still working my way through the book, but this concept makes sense to me.  Music really does, more than anything else, seem to work it’s way through the entire mind; I’ve used the phrase “bathing every neuron” before.  Even better, sometimes it works its way down to your heart.  It’s a reliable high.

Today’s high courtesy of Coldplay’s “Strawberry Swing.”

Club 8 – In The Morning

I could listen to this track all day… at least for a few days. The rest of the album is quite good, as well. Simple, sweet, wistful Scandinavian pop.

Sufjan Stevens – The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us

The evening began with thirty minutes of delightful audiovisual stimulation about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. There were hoola hoops and sparkling lights, mirrored images and best of all, beautiful music. A true modern symphony of sorts. And then after it was over, Sufjan was telling us stories about toilet paper dolls, cheering on marathon runners, and singing “the hits.” And the hits, they certainly were. Those songs of elegant detail, with such elaborate names, characters, and composition. The gut-wrenching, heart-breaking emotion of every word was palpable. His contemporary genius has no comparison.

p.s. Sia was amazing, as always.

I’ve been all about the happy music recently. Things are going to be changing in this corner of the blogosphere soon. Stay tuned…