First off, I have a pretty long commute every work day. I used to be paralyzed by indecision trying to pick a CD to listen to everyday. Then I started listening to my CDs in alphabetical order. I made it through my 1000+ CD collection multiple times. Nowadays, CDs are quaint, so I've invested in a streaming music service. Sure, most people are using Spotify, but I'm on Google Music [then later YouTube Music, much to my chagrin]. For $8 a month (apparently for the rest of my life) I can stream anything from my library and just about all mainstream music that exists, with new releases being added as they come out. I've always been a bit of a completist and now when I hear a song I like I can then add the artist's entire catalog to my library. It's a lot of music - and not of all of it is good. Still - I'd rather hear something I have a vague connection to, like through a song I like, than just streaming random stuff on something like Pandora. Why listen to what some logarithm suggests when I've got so much music building up in my library and I haven't even heard a fraction of it yet? Thus the All My Music Chronologically project was born. Here are some of the guidelines in case you want to try this madness yourself.
1. Arrange music library alphabetically by artist. "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" goes under B, not S. Perhaps a better example is, all Tom Petty stuff goes under T. It's not like authors' names; the name of a band is more like a title. We wouldn't want Tom Petty's solo albums to appear in a different place than his stuff with the Heartbreakers. Just skip "A," "An," and "The."
2. For every artist appearing in the music library add every album, EP, and singles that don't appear on albums. In order to maintain a strict chronology sometimes the placement is based on when the album was recorded, not released. The best example might be listening to Let it Be before Abbey Road. Listen to Tom Wait's The Early Years first, even though it came out after he'd already put out a dozen or so albums.
3, Live albums count, but Greatest Hits collections do not. Again, listen to the live album chronologically in the context of when it was recorded, not released. There is no need for redundancy of the same version of any single song; however, if a collection album contains unique tracks that did not appear on a previous album then listen to those songs placed chronologically between the albums. Remixes are a bit of a grey area; decide case by case.
That's it! Some of this is in response to the culture of singles-only and shuffle-based listening. Some of it is to try to resurrect the very concept of the album. Most of all, it puts every track in context - in relation to all the tracks by that same artist that came before and after it.
Also: occasionally the American Civil War, for some reason.
Be sure to check out my sister blog that does the Civil War in order:
https://theamericancivilwar-chronologically.blogspot.com/
Happy listening...
Happy listening...
Feel free to drop me a comment or contact me by email to complain, correct, or compliment: markpbc@gmail.com
