Knowing an Album

[Ghost Wind]

In today’s world, you can pretty much discover and listen to any band you want. You see many favorite lists and many weekly lists and lots and lots of albums. But, how often do you really know an album? Such as knowing all the lyrics or head banging moments or beats, etc? Yeah, I’ve heard plenty of excellent stuff over the last several years, like everyone else, but can’t say I really know the majority of it. Just curious, how it is for you all?
Also, we all may have top five all time albums, but how long has it been since those changed for you? For example, Zero Hour The Towers Of Avarice is probably the last album released (2001) that would be in my top five all time. 23 years ago, and I had that, like the day it was released. Do you guys find that to be the same for you, or have you found albums in “modern times” that you’d have in an all time list? Does the whole nostalgia thing tie you to the old ones? Just moments of time, memories, or was the music just that good! I remember the very first time hearing Fates Warning No Exit way back when. Had never heard their previous stuff. Just sitting on the living room floor in front of a jukebox holding the cassette booklet and pushing play. Was so blown away by what I had heard. After all these years, I still love that album. But is it that No Exit was just that good or that specific memory of an earlier time? How is it for you all?

[introclaus]

In today’s world, you can pretty much discover and listen to any band you want. You see many favorite lists and many weekly lists and lots and lots of albums. But, how often do you really know an album? Such as knowing all the lyrics or head banging moments or beats, etc? Yeah, I’ve heard plenty of excellent stuff over the last several years, like everyone else, but can’t say I really know the majority of it. Just curious, how it is for you all?

Obviously I can only speak for myself, but my method is this:

1) first I check out one song on Amazon Music, and decide then if it's something worth my time
* note: this is only for albums I do NOT receive as promos from all the record labels I've worked with in the past and who are still being super nice and sending me stuff, as they go straight to #2 on the list

2) if I think the album has enough quality for me to spend time with it, I listen to it fully once or twice, and at that point in time decide if it's worth picking up. If I don't like it enough to spend my hard earned money on it, then I stop listening to it

3) I then listen to the album enough times to be able to form a proper opinion. Since I write those long end-of-year reviews, most albums will get 5-10 spins, so I write a proper review

4) anything in my top 50 I've listened to way more ... and my top 5 are albums I probably listened to 50+ times within that year, so yes, I do know these albums very well

I am so fortunate that I work primarily from home, and I do a lot of reports throughout the week, at which point I can listen to music while doing that. Also in-between meetings I listen to music (I on average have ~8-10 meetings daily, so ...), and then I spend a lot of time running or walking the dog or driving, and I always listen to music when doing so. And at evenings I like to sit in my music room reading a book and listening to music ... so yeah, I probably listen to music 10 hours a day or more ...

Also, we all may have top five all time albums, but how long has it been since those changed for you? For example, Zero Hour The Towers Of Avarice is probably the last album released (2001) that would be in my top five all time. 23 years ago, and I had that, like the day it was released. Do you guys find that to be the same for you, or have you found albums in “modern times” that you’d have in an all time list? Does the whole nostalgia thing tie you to the old ones? Just moments of time, memories, or was the music just that good! I remember the very first time hearing Fates Warning No Exit way back when. Had never heard their previous stuff. Just sitting on the living room floor in front of a jukebox holding the cassette booklet and pushing play. Was so blown away by what I had heard. After all these years, I still love that album. But is it that No Exit was just that good or that specific memory of an earlier time? How is it for you all?

I don't necessarily think it's "nostalgia", as much as it is about "defining moments" in our past, that determines which albums we rank as all time top albums. Nostalgia implies that you look at things in a pretty-colored light that obscurest the real truth - that's not how I feel about my favorites. The albums that are top of my list are albums that truly just clicked with me at that specific time, and made me listen to music the way I do today; examples of those for me would be Thin Lizzy's "Johnny the Fox", Andrew Lloy Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar", Yes' "Tales from Topographic Oceans", Voivod's "Nothingface", Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes" and Orphaned Land's "Mabool". Yeah, obviously those are all 20+ years old, but those all changed the way I listen to music. I think it's unlikely (not impossible though) that I'll ever have another defining moment again where I complete change how I listen to music. Not because music of today is any less quality than what came out 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago, but just because I'm by now pretty set in my ways of listening to music ... I'm like Larry D here (an old fart who just ain't going to change my listening habits much).

[giedrius]

In today’s world, you can pretty much discover and listen to any band you want. You see many favorite lists and many weekly lists and lots and lots of albums. But, how often do you really know an album? Such as knowing all the lyrics or head banging moments or beats, etc? Yeah, I’ve heard plenty of excellent stuff over the last several years, like everyone else, but can’t say I really know the majority of it. Just curious, how it is for you all?
Also, we all may have top five all time albums, but how long has it been since those changed for you? For example, Zero Hour The Towers Of Avarice is probably the last album released (2001) that would be in my top five all time. 23 years ago, and I had that, like the day it was released. Do you guys find that to be the same for you, or have you found albums in “modern times” that you’d have in an all time list? Does the whole nostalgia thing tie you to the old ones? Just moments of time, memories, or was the music just that good! I remember the very first time hearing Fates Warning No Exit way back when. Had never heard their previous stuff. Just sitting on the living room floor in front of a jukebox holding the cassette booklet and pushing play. Was so blown away by what I had heard. After all these years, I still love that album. But is it that No Exit was just that good or that specific memory of an earlier time? How is it for you all?

This is a good topic and I sometimes think about it too I probably spend less time on average per album compared to the late 80s and 90s. One reason is that back then I didn't have that many options what to listen to, I needed to have a CD or a tape copy. Today I constantly feel being behind in the race to listen to all new stuff I might like + I also want to balance my listening time to include older albums. I would say I listened to my top albums of 2022 or 2023 for around 20 times, while in the past it could have been 50 or 100 times for my top albums.

Earlier I was easier impacted by music and it probably has to do with those "defining moments" as Claus says. It was the right time and I was in the right frame of mind when I listened to all Iron Maiden from 1982 to 1988, Dream Theater (Images and Words/Awake/Scenes from a Memory), Fates Warning (No Exit/Perfect Symmetry/Parallels), Psychotic Waltz (Social Grace/Into the Everflow), Savatage "Gutter Ballet", Sanctuary "Into the Mirror Black", Metal Church "Blessing in Disguise", Spiral Architect, and they all are among my all time favorites. I found more favorite bands in 2000s, like Mars Volta, Mastodon, Opeth ("Watershed" and "Ghost Reveries" in particular), Seventh Wonder (Mercy Falls/The Great Escape), Tesseract, Leprous, Gojira, rediscovered tech thrash and death (Coroner, Atheist, Cynic), but if I would have to do my all time Top 20, I expect 80% of it to be albums that are more than 20 years old.

[LarryD]

Great topic - and one that I could write a book about but won't ......my problem, and one that everyone should have, right ? Is that I have too many different media choices TO listen to the music .... I've got albums, discs, dvd / blurays, Amazon Music, you tube, prog streaming, bandcamp to name most .......

So let's say for argument sake - that the Opeth / Damnation vinyl just got re-released and I bought it. That may be the only media I have of that music, and I tend not to reach for vinyl every time I want to listen to music, so that album won't get as much play as say - the latest disc from so and so that I can have Alexa play at any moment..... even if I buy the CD, which I do mostly, it is so much easier to stream something on the fly than it is to go get it ....... laziness in motion ? I don't think so, it's called The Digital Age - and that has spoiled us. There is way too much out there to focus on that tight.......

Back as early as 10-15 years ago, I'd buy a CD - burn a copy for my car, and play the hell out of it inside and out ...... and learn to love it or hate it that way ......now, it's grab what you can, when you can, and enjoy it as little as possible. I may claim that there isn't a disc out there recently that warrants going back to it day in and day out like we use to do - (Superior, House of Spirits come to mind) when all we would do is play those to death until the next BIG thing came out .... it seems with the Digital Age, we don't have that anymore, unless we train ourselves to do so - which at this point, I don't think is possible......

So, here is how it goes now for the most part .....

Claus, or someone else says " you gotta check this band out " ....... I go to the medium, You Tube, Amazon Music, Bandcamp for the most part, and stream it from there.
I then order the CD from The Lasers Edge, Amazon, or Bandcamp straight from the band if it floors me.......after that, it goes into the pile of the abyss waiting for me to come back to it and analyze it.... IF it is that good to do so ...... it may sound good when I first heard it, and then I get the disc and it doesn't blow me away like I thought..... back into the abyss .......

As far as nostalgia - it could be. But what I think it this .... back to what I said at the top. We reach for things that are timeless for the most part......let's face it, grab your favorite Fates Warning or Queensryche disc and play it and say " holy shit that thing still slays me " ...... then grab for argument sake, the latest Eldritch.....chances are you say, " I like the old Eldritch back in the day " and you reach for El Nino, or you reach for that Superior disc, or you reach for Ayreon / The Final Experiment....timeless is timeless, and I truly believe that A) we don't have time to make discs timeless anymore, or B) there isn't enough music being created these days that IS timeless in quality .......

(Waits for Claus to come along and totally bash and disagree with what I just said) .......

[Sir Exar Kun]

As far as nostalgia - it could be. But what I think it this .... back to what I said at the top. We reach for things that are timeless for the most part......let's face it, grab your favorite Fates Warning or Queensryche disc and play it and say " holy shit that thing still slays me " ...... then grab for argument sake, the latest Eldritch.....chances are you say, " I like the old Eldritch back in the day " and you reach for El Nino, or you reach for that Superior disc, or you reach for Ayreon / The Final Experiment....timeless is timeless, and I truly believe that A) we don't have time to make discs timeless anymore, or B) there isn't enough music being created these days that IS timeless in quality .......

I am not a doctor, I don't play one on TV, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I feel like so many of us share a similar opinion here on "new" music versus the timeless "classics" as we're all of relatively similar age, and have listened to (similarly) THOUSANDS of albums tens of thousands of times over during our formative years. I can't bring myself to believe that "there isn't enough music being created these days that IS timeless in quality" Is true. I simply believe our brains have been filled up with so much of it at this point, that subconsciously we just don't have the capacity anymore to recognize something "new" as "timeless".

Take any number of the albums we consider musical perfection, and if you had never heard it before, but still HAD heard the overwhelming amount of music that you have heard in your lifetime..... Would you still think it "timeless" after hearing it for the first (many) times now?

I know this isn't really clear. It's almost like we have a "capacity" for it, and we're all filled up. Doesn't mean we don't appreciate and enjoy new stuff.... But that special place for true DESERT ISLAND QUALITY albums is just pure full now. I, for one, will be very pleasantly surprised if I ever hear a new album SO AMAZING that it eventually ends up on that top tier or a list again. That's not a criticism of the current music; if I had to bet, younger people who enjoy this music may well (20 years from now) have some of these albums on THEIR desert island lists!

I know for me, I am FAR FAR FAR more limited in scope to what I listen to; I am very much stuck in my "safe place", and really only venture out into new bands that fall safely inside that sonic theater. As a result, a number of more modern prog metal bands like Caligula's Horse get left by the wayside. That's a "me" thing; only so much time and money. Any new release from the stalwarts of yesteryear remain a blind buy (Vanden Plas, DT, Devin, etc etc etc)

[introclaus]

(Waits for Claus to come along and totally bash and disagree with what I just said) .......

I don't need to ... we obviously listen to music in very different ways.

[Random Axe]

The difference is how much of our musical appreciation capacity are we currently using.

When my two fav albums ever, DT Images and Words and FW- APSOG, were released I'd only really started dabbling into the prog world and didn't have much to compare or contrast. My mind, heart and soul wasn't filled with a lot of useless junk I'd heard online. I think that's why a lot of this resonates with us still. We didn't have as much in our brains competing for time and space. That's why I can pretty much know, note for note and beat for beat, every solo and drum fill. I had the opportunity to do that.

Today, with 25 plus years of internet downloads, samples, wav files, mp3s, torrents, youtube, amazon, napster, spotify, CD baby, Impulse music, lasers edge and every other online outlet we use, there's no way anything will stick with us the way it did previously. Its just not going to happen. I don't look for it or expect it anymore, I'm simply wanting something I can like and place temporary value upon. There will be certain songs that capture us, but entire albums is a concept long past what I can comprehend anymore.

As we get older we need to place priorities on what we love, cherish and fully remember. That internal real estate is at a premium, and quite honestly, I don't think any artist is capable of capturing us fully again.

[LarryD]

The difference is how much of our musical appreciation capacity are we currently using.

When my two fav albums ever, DT Images and Words and FW- APSOG, were released I'd only really started dabbling into the prog world and didn't have much to compare or contrast. My mind, heart and soul wasn't filled with a lot of useless junk I'd heard online. I think that's why a lot of this resonates with us still. We didn't have as much in our brains competing for time and space. That's why I can pretty much know, note for note and beat for beat, every solo and drum fill. I had the opportunity to do that.

Today, with 25 plus years of internet downloads, samples, wav files, mp3s, torrents, youtube, amazon, napster, spotify, CD baby, Impulse music, lasers edge and every other online outlet we use, there's no way anything will stick with us the way it did previously. Its just not going to happen. I don't look for it or expect it anymore, I'm simply wanting something I can like and place temporary value upon. There will be certain songs that capture us, but entire albums is a concept long past what I can comprehend anymore.

As we get older we need to place priorities on what we love, cherish and fully remember. That internal real estate is at a premium, and quite honestly, I don't think any artist is capable of capturing us fully again.

^^^^^THIS is what I was trying to say but not as eloquently as Scott did. My feelings exactly !!!!!!!!!