My fourth concert of 2019 was also the first one in which I had someone else go with me as Danielle went to her first concert of 2019. It was fun to have someone to share the experience with, especially her. Anberlin was the first band I introduced her to that she also came to like. Many of their albums were bonding moments for us from dating through our married life.

This year I bought LOTS of albums. I don’t know if it’s the most albums I’ve purchased in one year since writing these blog posts or even since keeping track of Scrobbles. I do know that while I listened to my music randomly, in general, I did also listen to entire albums whenever I purchased one. Sometimes I’d listen to the album a few times and other times I’d take the album purchase as an opportunity to review the artist’s previous work. I know that was the case with Five Iron Frenzy (although that was also concert prep as I mentioned a few days ago), Relient K, I Fight Dragons, and Fall Out Boy. It was a very fun year for me, musically. Kacey Musgraves, for example, was a reminder that country music doesn’t have to suck. Disclosure made me realize that I could still like loop-heavy electronic music. I hope that I can continue to explore new sounds in 2014.

This quarter I mostly listened to my music on pure random with a few variations which’ll be accounted for below. This finally allowed The Beatles to place in 2013. In the last few weeks I just listened to music that I added in this quarter to make sure I had a chance to get to know some of the newer songs.

[caption id=“attachment_7569” align=“aligncenter” width=“500”] FIF Concert (Nov 2013)[/caption]

For the second quarter in a row The Beatles have NOT made the list! But that’s easily explained: I have been listening to a lot of new music and a lot of playlists that don’t include The Beatles. But as you’ll see, they kinda snuck in sideways. This quarter I spent a lot of time listening to Jonathan Coulton and I Fight Dragons because of their Kickstarters, which I backed. I Fight Dragons released two albums as Kickstarter bonuses - a live recording of their most recent concert and a remix album of sorts in which the band members sung different arrangements of the songs. There was also the new Fall Out Boy album, Save Rock and Roll. I really enjoyed the album but it was overtaken in my mind by the previously mentioned IFD and JoCo music and I quickly forgot they had a new album out. Again, that’s a shame since I did enjoy it and while I was in Florida last week I quickly tired of “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark”. Incidentally, I was reminded of why I stopped listening to live radio - it’s far too repetitive. I think the true problem is that it’s too formulaic in its repetition. I didn’t mind hearing “The Princess Who Saved Herself” every day for a week because the songs surrounding it were always different. On a separate note, I got some music for Father’s Day and I’ll mention that below.

For this quarter I’ve gone back and forth between picking albums to listen to and having dynamic playlists determine what I listen to.  For most of March I was listening to a bunch of free South by Southwest samplers with some pretty GREAT music.  Not a lot of repeat among the artists there so none of them appear on this list.  Some of those songs could potentially end up in the most listened song list at the end of the year.

Throughout the month of October I alternated between listening to newly acquired music (of which I had quite a bit) and a dynamic playlist that was weighted so that most of the music had auto-ratings above 90, less music above 75, and even less above 50. Any song that I listened to only once would fit in the third category. After that, if I skipped it just once it would fall out of the group. So it gave me a nice mix of music including forgotten favorites. Now that I’ve listened to a good chunk of my library since the last time the Amarok database was corrupted I may modify the playlist to include the caveat that it couldn’t have been played in the last x days. I’m not sure if I want to make the date large enough that I only hear songs once per quarter or my standard two week waiting period. Given how little time I have to listen to music nowadays I might go for the 90 days. I also spent some chunks of time listening to my music on random on Google Music. That’s completely random so I end up hearing some songs I didn’t even remember ever acquiring. A lot of my new music came from Jamendo when I got an email with the month’s most popular songs and I decided to do a search for ska. Although I really enjoy ska, I got into it rather late so I don’t have very much ska music. (Mostly just Five Iron Frenzy, Save Ferris, No Doubt, and the Orange County Supertones - who are an OK ska band - I mostly like their least ska songs)

Back to Philly and a concert for this Top 200 Photo

photo #86 is:

Taking photos during a concert is always hard. First of all, let me say that I think people should be allowed to shoot photos during concerts as long as they aren’t using flash. The point of going to a concert is to spend extra money on a band you really like in order to hear them live. You should be allowed a memento of the night. Anyway, a photo is not representative of a concert, so it’s not like I’m going to see a photo of a concert and decide not to go.

To Philly for today’s Top 200 Photo.

photo #113 is:

This was during a trip Danielle and I took to Philidelphia to see an Anberlin concert. We decided to also go ahead and see the sights. We saw the Liberty Bell in its new home, tried a real Philly Cheese Steak, and just enjoyed being somewhere else.

This photo is just a reminder that people won’t always say ‘no’ when you ask to take their photo. In his case, it’s because I really liked his uniform.

I just got Anberlin’s latest album, “New Surrender”.  I was pretty lukewarm about “Cities” and Danielle just about hated it.  We both loved “Blueprints for the Black Market” and “Never Take Friendship Personal”.  This album is a return to the sounds and lyrics of those first two albums.  I loved it upon first listen.  Danielle summed it up best, “It’s like their first two albums, but more mature.”  I’ve only started listening to it for the second time, so I’m still picking up the lyrics.  What I’ve heard so far continues their tradition of poetic lyrics that take a few listens to fully appreciate.  If you’ve been on the fence about this album after hearing “Cities”, definitely get “New Surrender”.  If you liked “Cities” and hated the first two albums, you probably won’t like “New Surrender”.

There’s a very hackneyed saying, “don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today.” For a while now I had been putting off talking about the new Anberlin album and now Andrew beat me to it. I had been listening to “Ready Fuels” for almost six months before I got around to buying the first album, Blueprints for the Black Market. I almost immediately fell in love with the band’s music. I put it on my workout playlist and it was what I listened to for about a month and one half while working out. My fiancee said it was the first time she had heard an album where she liked every single song. When I found out they had come out with a new record in February, I set out to buy it.