Week 9.5: Moving

This weekend I was moving. So, y'know, naturally my life is in a state of disarray. I'll not be putting up a post today, but later this week I'll make up for lost time...

Week 9: S Bar X

Total plays as of December 14:
Total plays for the week of December 7-14: 385.

This week was pretty much just a Sebadoh lovefest, especially after I re-heard their cover of Nick Drake's "Pink Moon". Heck, I'm even thinking that my band should cover the same track (but in the vein of Sebadoh). So much Sebadoh listening that they managed to break into the leader board, while beforehand they didn't even break into the Top Artists list. While Sebadoh pushed out Bear McCreary to grab the 18th place position, Dinosaur Jr. were able to capitalize further on their previous gains, grabbing themselves a solid 13th place finish:


Looking further down the Top Artists list, we notice that this week marks the debut of J Dilla, who came in at 32nd place, while ...Trail of Dead and Oxbow both lost out. I wouldn't yet count-out Oxbow though, they're a consistent band who wont willingly be forced into the background, as opposed to ...Trail of Dead, whose best material is behind them, and for whom every listen is a reminder of how far they've managed to fall in the past decade.

Other than that, we have our top-songs list, which still remains unchanged, and continues to be dominated by Jefferson Airplane, and Silkworm.

Week 8: ...and as winter descends upon the town...

Total plays as of December 1:
Total plays this week: 448


Last week, continuing on from the week before, was dominated by Dinosaur Jr., and Farm particularly. But the renewed interest in Dinosaur Jr. ended up leading to a renewed interest in Sebadoh, who I'd only ever really appreciated before, and not listened to that much. (even though, thinking back, I've always had a copy of the Gimme Indie Rock! 7") I mean, I knew the choice cuts, like Cry Sis, or Gimme Indie Rock!, or The Freed Pig, but hadn't really begun to acquaint myself with much of the rest of their ouevre.
Doing so has given them the #1 spot this week, followed extremely closely by Dinosaur Jr.

So how does this resurgent interest in J and Lou affect the leader board? Well, as you can see, Dinosaur Jr. makes their first appearance after years of wandering the wilderness (read: that is, mostly haveing been listened to while I was in high-school before the advent of scrobbling). They are, unfortunately, not likely to hold on to this position for too long, as they're mired in the muck of the low-end of the top-artists, that most competitive of positions, since the leaders are fairly indisputable, save from themselves.

Which throws Dinosaur Jr up to the 14th place on the leader board. Other than that, the other new name to make an appearance this week is Bear McCreary, who has the benefit of an ouevre that lends itself to being listened to from beginning to end, and is just the bitchin'est soundtrack for anything you happen to be doing, whether it be playing videogames, or air-travel (as the case is with me).


Other assorted observations: Melvins overtook Madlib this week, but not so substantially that it couldn't easily be reversed. Bob Marley & the Wailers, Patton Oswalt, Shellac and Bear McCreary all fell one place this week in order to accommodate Dinosaur Jr.

Week 7: On The Farm

Well, I'm back from my trip. Do I have any interesting listening habits to show for it? meh. But regardless, I picked up the new Dinosaur Jr. last week, and I'm thinking that we're gonna see a pretty substantial bump from them sometime soon. Not to mention that I managed to catch Sonic Youth @ Terminal 5, and the new songs sounded pretty rockin'. I'm probably gonna end up picking that up before too long as well.

So over the last two weeks, I'm managed to accrue aboutand minus all previous plays, that's a total of 1033 over the past two weeks.

So what was I listening to over those two weeks? Well, let's take a look:
Now, I know this is only the last 7 days, and I missed last weeks entry, but this is the best I can do, dammit! We cans ee David Cross got a lot of plays, as I realized that it's especially comforting to listen to comedy while undergoing air-travel. It's like traveling with a hilarious friend, and getting to laugh at little jokes all to yrself. "Pissing in God's face for five hours..." indeed. But otherwise, it's Dinosaur Jr.'s week. I managed to catch 'em live at Terminal 5 in NYC, and gotta say, they were far from a disappointment. Since I hadn't bought their new album (I believe in brand-loyalty, and simply haven't had the time to hit-up my favorite record shop, so I never bought it, 'cause I could never bring myself to buy it anywhere else--except: ) so I bought it at the show, and got the sweet deal of the double-LP, w/ free trucker hat & digital download, for a cool $20. Point is: I'm giving the new album the ol' college try, since it's been awhile since I bought something new, I'm not gonna let my monies go to waste. But either way, it's easy enough on the ears that I'm not really fightin' it, and will probably go back and listen to their late-80's, early-90's material afterwards, to put it all in context.

But despite all those plays, they've managed to have little to no effect upon the leader board, or even the top 35 artists.

Week 5: Capture the Flag/Fag/My Attention/Whatever...

Late update today, and all of this in spite of the fact that I started working on it yesterday. Still though, certainly a better week than last, what with my iPod functioning normally. With that, let us turn our eyes to the future: I will not be in town next week, and therefore unlikely capable of scrobbling any plays. Now, I could do a week 5.5 update before I leave, then do a massive week 7, but I'm lazy, so I'll probably just do it all when I get back. But if I'm going to do that, I'd better know how many plays I already have, and as of this week the total is: and minus the 32768 plays from last week, that's a total of about 509 plays. So let's see who garned those plays, shall we?




Really, a lot of it is about what is able to hold my attention over a specific span of time, others it's more about, say, what I'm doing while listening to music (note: I am at work a lot). This week, or weekend I should say, I played videogames, and that's why the Sun City Girls decided they'd show off their chops. They're a band that really just slays all others, and the only reason they're as low on the scale as they presently are (which is really not that low, is because I only started scrobbling circa September 2008. They're a band that rules their domain, and though I love visiting, I just haven't had the time lately. When I do find myself in the domain of the Sun City Girls, however, I find I often simply don't want to leave, and that's what happened this weekend.

...and actually, the very same phenomena explains the exceptional lead held by Sublime Frequencies above all others as well.


Looking at the artists list, we can see just who Bob Dylan pushed off the leader board this week:


And otherwise, as per the you-zh-uh, the top-songs remains relatively stable this week:

Week 4: ARGH

While this was supposed to have been an exciting week here at Listening as a Spectator Sport, unfortunately as I plugged in my iPod to scrobble this morning, for some reason it crashed, and so I lost all the plays that had accumulated since my last sync (sometime in the middle of last week), including everything we listened to out at the lake this weekend. So with that in mind, let's take a look at our total plays for the week: giving us a total of 371 plays since last week.
Otherwise, I'm just feeling so low and dejected about the lost plays from this weekend that I'm not going to give too much analysis today. So let's see which artists got the most plays this week: As we can see, generally speaking, it's been a pretty harsh week, with Jesus Lizard and Unsane topping the list, with some support from Swans and Melvins, who had fewer plays this week than I expected. This is likely the result of the influence of the Jesus Lizard, whose discography I began acquainting myself with this week.
If we move on to the top-songs list, we can see that it's remained relatively stable from last week:
So let's see what the leader-board looks like after all this: Looking, we can notice that Melvins, despite having fewer plays than I would've predicted, still had enough to overtake Xiu Xiu on the leader-board, while further down the list we can see Bob Marley & the Wailers overtook Shellac.
In terms of what's ahead for the coming week? I'm not making any predictions, things could go anywhere...

Week 3: Sweet Willy Rollbar

Still playing relatively exhausted. It's been a trying few weeks, but even during the worst of times there is always music. This week was very much a continuation of last week, as well as a sort-of elaboration, but that will likely become more evident in week 4.

Our total plays for this week come to: and minus last weeks totals, that gives us 669 plays for the week. I figure I should, without cheating, be able to average about a thousand plays a week when I'm on my 'A' game.

The story this week is gonna be best illustrated by looking at the top-artists of the past 7 days: As you can see, the big winner this week was the Kinks, whose 60's and early 70's output I figured I needed to acquaint myself with. If you want the early impressions, I like their first album, You Really Got Me, but the next couple are weaker. However, by the time the 60's become psychedelic the Kinks had picked up again. So far, my votes go to The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation society.
Besides the Kinks, as I anticipated, Melvins had another strong showing this week, pushing up their totals, and securing them a solid 8th place, biting ever-so-closely at the boot-heels of one of this lists more powerful artists: Xiu Xiu. But if you want my predictions, Melvins wont get as many plays this coming week, though they'll still end-up one of the most played artists.

In terms of Top Songs, no changes this week. These competitors are so entrenched that it'll be hard to dislodge any of them, especially considering my own aversion to listening to songs or albums on repeat. I usually like to give them a little time to sink in. Otherwise, two tracks that you may end up seeing climb this list are "Sweet Willy Rollbar" by Melvins, and "Home Is Where the Hatred Is" by Gil Scott-Heron, the latter of which has the distinction of being a song I actually can listen to repeatedly. Otherwise, here's this weeks Top Songs:

Otherwise, other changes amongst the Top Artists: Sonic Youth climbed ahead of Pavement this week, but still trails Madlib by 13 plays. Patton Oswalt jumped from 24th place to become tied for 18th with Hossein Alizadeh and Madjid Khaladj. Otherwise we can see that as a result of my recent Kinks binge, they've broken into the Top Artists list for the first time, at 32. All the while No Age remains the border-guard of the Top Artists list at 35th place with 167 plays as the benchmark to beat in order to break in. (We can also see, however, from last weeks list that No Age still shares this position with Neil Young & Crazy Horse)

Week 2: Denim Storm

All told, this week I listened to less music than most. Which is what led me to this new idea;

Total Plays:

Which will allow me to more easily compare listening habits from week to week. I didn't think of it last week, so we can start now. So with that in mind, let's take a peak at this weeks leader-board:



So the big story this week is Melvins. I've been listening to a lot of Melvins, and I'd wager that's not too likely to stop any time soon. I have a few selections from Houdini and Nude with Boots that I downloaded, as well the full copies of Gluey Porch Treatments, Ozma and Stoner Witch. So if any of you know Melvins, you know I have pretty much the lions share of their output from the last 20 years yet to listen to. Plus, this shit is just so damned thick that regardless of the songs themselves, you wanna listen to 'em just to hear that guitar crunch.

Other than that, Silkworm and Xiu Xiu both gained some plays this week, and we can see Shellac overtake Bob Marley & the Wailers, who are likely to fall further down the list as the winter sets in, and it's less conducive to sitting outside, gettin' right, and listening to reggae. There's just something that seems so inappropriate about sitting indoors, curling up in front of a fire with a nice mug of cocoa and listening to Natty Dread, or Babylon by Bus (the two albums I've been most into this past year).

If we look at the top artists from the last seven days, we can see just how far and ahead Melvins truly are, as well as getting a glimpse of another up-and-comer whose new album I bought this week, Flight of the Conchords.


Now for the full top-artists list:



Regarding the top-songs list, as you can see here, Odd Nosdam shoots even further into the lead. As I mentioned last week, this is the result of all the tracks on his album being untitled, and since I listened to the album this week, it shoots it up even further. I think I will likely re-title the songs, if only so I can start to learn the album a lil better, and to cut down on Odd Nosdams cheeky #1 title.

Week 1: Taking Stock

So we look here at our little "league" (of artists and songs that I've voluntarily listened to) to take stock of where everyone stands after 1) A year or so of scrobbling on last.fm, and 2)eight or nine months since I bought my iPod, effectively allowing me to scrobble on the go.
I'm going to try to update this blog once a week or so, count each week as a "game" (so to speak) and adding up all the points. There's no prize, besides bragging rights.
So let's take a look and see where everyone stands. Let's start off with the leader-board:

As we can see, Sublime Frequencies tops out the list, and by a wide margin. This stems from the fact that there are many Sublime Frequencies releases, and I own most of them. Sublime Frequencies are audio-collages, usually, from varied places across the globe, and more often than not, do not contain listings for specific artists. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by the fact that I re-labeled most of the individual artists from those few compilations that had them, because I wanted to know how much Sublime Frequencies I had been listening to. Sublime Frequencies will likely retain the top-spot for the foreseeable future, as their catalog is something I always fall back on, and look to for inspirado.

If we look at the expanded leader board, we can see who the up-and-coming contenders are, as well as some of those more flash-in-the-pan type artists who have been great for some listens, but are likely unable to maintain their relative position, especially in light of the ever increasing points being gathered by our big-hitters, and current-artists (who generally have a leg-up on the competition, as their ouevre is not complete.

This graphic also helps to illustrate just how far some artists need to come in order to have a crack at the infamous "top 8".

Whats left, then, is where some artists will get their comeuppance, namely, the Top Songs list. Some artists who maybe don't have enough clout to put themselves into the top-artists list might still have strength in their individual songs, and this is where they will appear.

As we can see here, Odd Nosdam comes up in first place with "Untitled". This is largely a scrobbling error, as all of the tracks on "No Wig For Ohio" are untitled, and so regardless of which song plays, they all scrobble as the same track. One goal is to try and push Odd Nosdam down the list through repeated listenings to other songs, but to do so would be unnatural, and wouldn't play. Otherwise, we can see that the top-songs list is dominated by a small handful of artists that are also fairly high in the artist-listings. Jefferson Airplane and Silkworm are both artists who have some really killer individual tracks, and this has compensated for the fact that I don't own many of their albums (none, in the case of Silkworm, their standing is dependent upon only a few songs that I just can't help but listen to about as much as you can tell from the list)

Post No. 1: The Pre-Season

So here I am again. Ha ha! This time it's a fun around. Since hooking up with last.fm I thought it would be fun to treat my listening history as if it were a sports league, with the different artists representing different teams, all competing for the glory of being the most listened to artist or song. So we'll see how well this works as I develop it.