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 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)