Friday, July 9, 2010

The Hot Summer's Effect On Music

Hey, that last posting was absolutely painless. It was easier than doing the writing directly in Blogger. I like this MacJournal program already!

Here in Michigan, a lot of summers are basically two months long--from mid-June to mid-August. But this has been a long, hot summer already, with hot weather arriving in May. There is music I tend to play during the hot months of July and August, but this year I was playing it in May because it had already been hot awhile.

My hot weather music tends to be shoegazer, that lazy, floating music with fuzzed out guitars and ethereal vocals. I got started with this back in 1991, with music by Curve, Lush, My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. (Not all of that is shoegazer, technically, but I tend to listen to them with each other.) Another band I discovered that summer and still associate with summer is Throwing Muses.

Last decade, my main summer music consisted of Broomtree, Miss Angie, Morella’s Forest, Royal, and Viva Voce. Of those artists, only Viva Voce are still around. So as much I loved those bands, I can’t buy any new music by them, and I’ve played them to death. Also, lately I’ve been having trouble finding new artists (a topic for a future entry).

So what I’ve decided to go back and buy some of that old music from the early 1990s. This week I bought a My Bloody Valentine album I never got back when it was popular. I got the EP Tremolo in 1991, which has one song from the album Loveless, but never the full album, so at last I now have the whole beautiful album. I also bought a Curve album I haven’t had, their 1998 Come Clean.

But there is one recent one that I’ve bought, which is of a similar style of music. It’s the third album by Asobi Seksu, the 2009 release Hush. Their second album, Citrus, was my #2 album of 2006, and still mesmerizes me, but it will be nice to have another set of songs to listen to by them.

I’ve been very poor this year. Normally I purchase CDs regularly throughout the year, but this year, this is my first CD purchase, and that was done by getting money from selling something on eBay. I guess I’ll need to find more things to sell. I can’t believe I didn’t get my first new music of the year until July!

Coming Back

Coming Back

I see I haven’t posted on this blog for almost a year. I now have a new blogging software program (MacJournal), so I’m thinking I will get into the groove on this blog. This entry is mostly a test entry to see how MacJournal will work with Blogger. I know virtually nothing about either MacJournal or Blogger, so if it doesn’t work, I’m sure it’s my ignorance more than anything else. Okay, here goes...let’s see if this posts.