Sing the Body Eclectic

I use last.fm a lot and my new years resolution from 2004 was to be less full of shit, and my new years resolution from 2005 was to try to be nicer to be people--so with that preface, I'm pretty much showing how much of a hypocritical asshole I am. I think my new years resolution this year is to not be so hard on myself, but also not be full of shit and also be nicer to other people. This is all very difficult. But I've just befriended someone and I've cut and pasted their "about me" write-up here:

My Music Library (will be updated periodically): 01-26-2009

I created that HTML page using foobar 2000. It is the greatest media player of all time hands down.

My library consists of 41793 songs as of February 13th 2009. Only 0.6% of my music library is lossy. The remainder is composed of lossless formats, predominantly FLAC, but also wav, monkey's audio, and wavpack.

I take great pride in my tagging as I try my best to use official names for artists and albums. With english, I follow strict rules of capitalization with titles. Languages such as French use different title formats so i'm doing that as best as i can too.

I'm constantly fighting with last.fm's tagging. Artists like "Smashing Pumpkins", "Tommy Dorsey & Frank Sinatra", "Queenadreena" etc. last.fm has "Smashing Pumpkins" as "The Smashing Pumpkins" and "Tommy Dorsey & Frank Sinatra" as "Frank Sinatra & Tommy Dorsey" to name two examples. Forget about this new auto-correct thing. It's ridiculous. If they are going to auto-correct they need to figure out official names and stick to that.

We have some elitists, people who strategically scrobble and or a combination of both on last.fm. I am neither of those. I stay true to my musical taste. You might ask yourself why I have more than one profile. The answer to that is simply because I go through different musical moods every now and then so I like to scrobble artists that are new to me so I can have an accurate picture of what my mood is that week or month. I also do it for the recommendations.

As I'm sure you have noticed by looking at any one of my profiles, my musical taste is very eclectic to say the least. I like to think that I know a lot about any given genre or period of music, so don't be afraid to ask me questions if you have any. It annoys me when someone thinks they have eclectic taste or that they "listen to everything" when it really seems that they listen to different sub-genres of the same genre and maybe a classical music artist here and there.

Anyhow, I sent him a shout asking him what was the most eclectic thing he's ever listened to. That, of course, was a jerky thing to do. But at least I've recognized it as being a jerky thing. But reveling in the jerkiness of it goes against my 2005 new year's resolution of trying to be nicer to people. But, surely, one elitist is allowed to be jerky to another elitist about being elistist, are we not?

People always say that they have pretty eclectic taste in music, and, post 90s I think that is we live in the age of eclecticism. Napster and Limewire started making music exploring a lot easier. Actually, it was necessary. I remember looking for Waylon Jennings tracks and finding all sorts of stuff that I still don't know what it is. Most of it sucked. I remember searching for 'drone' and 'noise' and 'drum samples' and found some mic in stuff and other intriguing crap. Some of it was weird. I keep it all because I am a digital packrat. And now via piratebay.org you can download the AC/DC discography and everything Jack Johnson ever did; you buy Bitches's Brew and maybe Jack Johnson mentions Ali Farke Toure and now all of the sudden you have an eclectic selection of tunes in your iTunes library. Oh, and you listen to some Mozart (as my new fellow eclectic last.fm friend writes about), so you are a bonafide eclectic. Or you can just own everything Tom Waits did; and that's basically being eclectic right there because his style of music is basically like every style ever done. (That's the voice of the asshole that I'm supposed to be working on reducing pursuant the 2005 resolution.)

With last.fm you can get some idea of how eclectic your tastes are. Objectively. I've found an eclectic test and now there's even a SUPER eclectic meter. How do you measure eclecticism? From what I've gathered is that they measure how related (via the tags) the different artists you listen to most. If you have a big spread, your more eclectic. Firstly, I think you should have eclectic taste. Diversity is the seasoning of existence. Secondly, I think that the greater variety that your taste exhibits, the more likely you have a better idea of what is good and what isn't good. But I download a lot of stuff, and a lot of it is crap, and last.fm keeps track of it all. (You can erase your tracks, so to speak. And I sometimes erase my meltmaster leavings because I listen to it more often than I quite like to let others know. But who gives a damn? The digital life is strange.) Anyhow, the eclectic taste score can be taken here.

Take your top 20 artists. For each of these artists, collect the top 5 similar artists. The resulting number of unique artists is your [b]eclectic score[/b]. If the score is small (extreme = 5) your musical preferences are very limited, and if it is large (larger than 80, extreme = 100), then you have an eclectic musical preference. You can compute your own score at http://anthony.liekens.net/pub/scripts/last.fm/eclectic.php

My eclectic score is currently 83/100

And then here's the SECOND level of eclecticism. I'll dive right into it to see, quantitatively, objectively, just how SUPER-ECLECTIC I am. Here we go. Pray for my hipster soul:

meltmaster's super-eclectic score is

743/1000

As this number is larger, you have a more eclectic musical preference. People with scores over 700 have bragging rights. People whose score is below 400 should consider more musical styles!

The following are the artists with the most occurences in your list

* Magazine (8)
* Wire (8)
* Public Image Ltd. (7)
* The Sound (6)
* Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band (6)
* The Fall (6)
* Pere Ubu (5)
* Echo & the Bunnymen (5)
* Gang of Four (5)
* Mission of Burma (5)
* Silver Apples (5)
* Television (5)
* Amon Düül II (4)
* Harmonia (4)
* Neu! (4)
* Faust (4)
* Lou Reed (4)
* Can (4)
* Boredoms (4)
* Cluster (4)

UPDATE: Okay. I've got a response from my new last.fm friend. I feel like an ever greater asshole now. He responded to my jerky question with sincerity.

thats an interesting question. the thing about my listening habits is that im all over the place. my library and what i listen to is probably more eclectic than ur above average listener with eclectic taste. i dont listen to one genre more than the other and i listen to many different genres. so a question like "what is the most eclectic thing" couldn't really be answered as i listen to everything and anything equally. in my case u can call the most popular artist "eclectic" because i listen to that just as much as i listen to lesser known and or artists that are considered obscure by popular standards.

And thus the quantification and qualification of eclecticism becomes ever the more elusive! (And I'm still full of shit.)

Feel free to post in comments the most eclectic thing you've ever listened to.

Mike Jones

I was watching the BET tonight and caught end of Mike Jones' movie The American Dream. It starred Mike Jones and it had Mike Jones music--Mike Jones is a rapper/producer from Texas and constantly reminds you he is Mike Jones. The movie didn't make sense, but I only saw the last 45 minutes. I couldn't ruin it if I tried. But Mike Jones gets a contract for his music and drinks Champagne with his lawyer and the Mike Jones crew. Mike Jones' grandmother died, and his girlfriend got beat up by Mike Jones' nemesis, other rapper guy with funny teeth. Then Mike Jones appears to get revenge by killing them. But you only see them shooting--you don't see if the nemesis and his buddy got shot--even though Mike Jones and his crew were firing at point-blank. Then it cuts to Mike Jones talking to Mike Jones' Lawyer. Then you see a woman in another scene killing Mike Jones' nemesis. She had stopped by the side of the road (there appears to be only one road in Houston) and she flirtatiously beckons them to help her with her car that is ostensibly broken down. Then when kneel over to look at the inner workings of her vehicle she shoots them both in the back with a gun. So Mike Jones' nemesis got killed twice. Don't mess with Mike Jones. So Mike Jones ends up with all his money and his platinum jewelry and a hummer bursting with gleaming rims so don't tell Mike Jones that there's no such thing as dreams turning into reality. Can't blame him. If my name was Mike Jones, I'd say it all the time, and be famous too. There's something totally solid and providential about that name, Mike Jones. Even in the hip-hop world, usually you could get away with saying your name once a song, if not once an album. But, somehow, the name Mike Jones is asking to be spoken over and over. It is such a mundane name; in the sense that Shakespeare wrote in a mundane language. Mike Jones. Mike Jones. Mike Jones. Most of his songs begin with him introducing himself, utilizing both his Christian and given Surname; In addition, in many a Mike Jones track the chorus is simply a mantric "Mike Jones, Mike Jones, Mike Jones." He also likes to give out his cellphone number. I'll have to call it sometime. I want to call it and have him answer "Mike Jones." Then I'd hang it up. The next day, I'd call it again just to hear him say it, "Mike Jones," again. And then maybe I'd say, is this Mike Jones? Yeah, he'd say, this is Mike Jones. Really? The Mike Jones. That's right. Mike Jones, he'd say. Oh! I have been made aware that there is another Mike Jones movie. I am sure that it is also about Mike Jones' life. Mike Jones.