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.

Pavarotti can't sing worth a damn

Why is this guy so famous? He's the Tom Waits of Opera. If Tom Waits is weird music for normal people, Pavarotti is opera for Tom Waits. Caruso, Callas and Bjorlings cough up and wipe little, mucus-bleeding asymmetrical Pavarotti's onto stagehands in between set changes.

Why do people like him so much? He's Tom Waits, in that he's so popular. If Tom Waits is weird music for normal people, Pavarotti is opera for for those with Kenny G CDs. Your Carusos, Callases and Rosa Pensalles have shat out little asymmetrical turds that could sing opera better than Luciano. Or should I say, Loser-iano.

Why is this guy so famous? He's like Tom Waits--universally lauded in the mainstream, when the people doing the real stuff stay on the margins. Tom Waits is a marginal talent; people send him their CDRs of shit and he just copies what these weirdos do. Maybe that makes him a genius in the Andy Warhol vein. But compared to Luciano Pavarotti, he's a nobody. And that's what Tom Waits would like you to think; I'm Tom Waits and I'm just a nobody singing my weirdo faux-hobo boho oboe. Yes you can polish a turd, and that turd's name is "Nobody" Waits. But his name is also Luciano Pavarotti. Rotting sewage. But perhaps I'm being a little harsh. But in the glare of the mind-bleeding talents--your Carusos, your Callases, your Melchiors--it's just impossible to consider Pavarottie as anything but pure garbage. Shellac for the soul.

I bet Tom Waits listens to Pavarotti to learn how to sing. That I believe. But I don't know why anyone else would listen to either of them. I understand that they both have pipes. For a fake-weird man, Tom Waits gots pipes. And for a man who fills opera houses, maybe Pavarotti's got the greatest pipes of all. But they are both so awful--it seems to me that only true weirdos would listen to either of them. Not weird people, but people with weird souls. Pavarotti and Tom Waits are music for normal people with weird souls. And your real talents, your Carusos, your Callases, your Beniamino Giglis, your Giovanni Martinellis, your what have you's, that's for people with normal souls. Not normal souls, but...well for the real people. You know, what Keats talked about when he talked about the only real things being clouds and lines of Shakespeare. The real things are the things that deranged weirdos (asymmetrical beings with symmetrical souls) who send things to Tom Waits (who turns the asymmetrical artifacts symmetrical); and then Tom Waits re-interprets the things he hears on the CDRs that weirdos have sent him the same way Pat Boone reinterpreted Little Richard, or Keith Richards reinterpreted the blues. But I believe Keith Richard and Pat Boone. I think they believe in what they do. They can't help it. They have symmetrical souls. I don't believe in the idea of the soul. But I believe they have pure, symmetrical souls. Tom Waits is an actor--and a very, very good one--that's his soul's symmetry--he's an actor; Pavarotti too--he's a fantastic actor. Neither men are musicians, they are actors. So they are winning actors. Losing singers.

The question remains--why are they so beloved? Unquestionably loved. Showered in the respective currencies of their respective homelands. The love for them is a veritable typhoon of overpowering esteem that I find baffling, asymmetrical. For one, Pavarotti can't sing worth a damn. I don't make this statement lightly; I realize how esteemed he is. And second, I find Tom Waits uninteresting, symmetrical. What am I missing? I listen to a lot of music, but I'm no encyclopedia. And what is taste? My own taste differs from those others whom taste I admire--how can I account for this, and even value my own taste in music? I used to like Tom Waits. I used to think Pavarotti was an amazing singer. But I (think I) know a lot more about so-called 'weird' music and opera. I can posit idea of 'taste' and the notion that certain types of music 'speak' to my so-called 'soul,' and certain types don't. Kenny G and Pat Boone are objectively awful--yet they are professionals. They make handsome livings from the things they do and the things they do are music-related. Their music fulfills some sort of function in society. In Italy they have music piping in the restaurants and cafes (or what passes for cafes--coffee joints or stops, I would call them) and they have awful pop music infecting the air and the same is in the country I reside in now: by and large there is nothing but really the most awful music peeing into our ear canals constantly. People celebrate this urine-for-music by singing it in karaoke-style booths. If you throw alcohol into the mix, I can see the appeal (and have experienced it first hand. I like to sing Lou Reed's Perfect Day.) It's just silly fun. But the music is awful. Lou Reed can't sing, but nobody can't sing like him. It's all about soul. No. It's all about being true. And not having a weird soul. Having a weird soul is not the same as being weird. I don't think Tom Waits has a weird soul. I think everybody has a soul that is a little weird; this is the wonder, the splendor of human diversity of opinion, appearance, phenotype and genotype. And those with truly weird souls (people who try to be weird but are normal, or people who try to be normal, but are weird) are not weird. But the true weirdos, those who radiate weird from the core can't but help being weird, the weirdos who send their homemade sound collages and freak songs that they make to scream away the boredom and what have you to Tom Waits. This is the reality; these loser weirdos are the reality. When Pavarotti screams away he is screaming away nothingness. He is acting as if he is screaming away from some center that has no core--he's hollow, that's why he's so resonant! But the real tenors sing as if they have swallowed something and it can never be dislodged, but nonetheless they sing because it feels better when they are singing because the thing that is lodged within them--this asymmetry--gets shaken around and doesn't cause them so much pain in the meantime. Of course, they have to stop otherwise their lungs would explode. And it's a release. The mind rewards the body for cathartic release, with endorphins, or what have you. The singers get trained, and the climate they are trained in and brought up in no doubt have something to do with it all--be them weirdos or straights. Regardless, your Carusos, your Callases, your Montserrat Caballés--they aren't singing from nothingness, they are singing something at the nothingness. The somebodies who have something are singing to the nobodies whom have nothing so we can have it too.