I’ve said it before: I love seeing lists about music and films – even when I am largely unfamiliar with the person writing it or the stuff they’re writing about. The strong temptation, however, is to look for the things that are familiar to me, especially the things I know I like already. I suppose it’s natural – to look for those common bonds. I can say: hey, I like that too, we can be friends!
In recent times, I have started to try to look for things that mark the lists as different to what my own might look like – the things I don’t know or even the things that I don’t like. Noting the things that I don’t like is interesting, because sometimes it can act as a spur to re-evaluate my own feelings – perhaps I have mis-judged it, perhaps I ought to revisit it and give it a second chance, or look to engage with it in a different way.
But it’s the things I don’t know that are often most illuminating. If I see a list that I more or less agree with – or at least see the value in – and there’s a few things that I don’t know, I try to home in on them. There’s a decent chance that there’ll be some gold there, something that, even if I don’t love it, will help me to understand the territory a little bit better.
It’s a faulty metaphor, and probably not a new one, but I sometimes think of music like a largely undiscovered continent. All the features of it link up, but sometimes not obviously; sometimes the links are close, sometimes distant; sometimes the links are contemporary, sometimes they skip a generation. My knowledge of contemporary music is better than average – some know far more – but I enjoy filling in the gaps, adding little details, checking out bands that I’d missed; ditto genres, sub-genres, micro-genres, scenes, anything. I don’t love everything, but I have come to realise that everything has something to offer – at the very least, the map gains a little more detail.
I am coming to the end of my big, stupid list of songs that I love. It’s a flawed project but I have enjoyed it a great deal. It began with almost 4,000 songs, but as I write I’ve just hit the top 100, and am working on getting it down to 50 – and then that will be it. I plan to put the list on the blog, maybe also on social media, I don’t know (I’m still thinking). I know that very few people will look at it, and even fewer will look closely, especially beyond the top 50. While I can’t blame them, the truth is, I wish they would.
I think I have decent taste in music, but I don’t think for a second that everyone is bound to like what I like or that my taste claims any sort of authority. People are different… But I know that tucked away on my list are a few tracks that deserve to be checked out. I’ve said before: most tracks there are fairly well known, certainly not obscure. However, there are tracks, outliers and weirdos, hidden away; mostly unknown, mostly unsung, utterly warranting attention. People may not like them as much as I do – maybe not much at all – but I believe if they listen their musical universe will be enriched – maybe only a tiny bit but a bit nonetheless. I hope, optimistically, that some of these lesser known tracks and artists register and prompt new unexpected trails of exploration for people.
I am toying with writing a few posts just highlighting a few of these lesser-known tracks. I have not decided how I’ll do this. I am very concerned about ensuring that I keep the balance between my work and other projects (like this) about right. My PhD is at a critical period and I need to keep momentum up. But I’d like to give a few of these tracks a lift – to elevate them from being just another name on a stupidly long list to an object of attention.
James Writes Stuff 