Cumartesi 29 Tem 2006, 14:29

So I've decided to do a bit of retro music mining recently - not music that's particularly old or anything, but music that I haven't listened to particularly for ten/fifteen years. My process has been simple - I have a playlist of songs that I've rated four or five songs and two other playlists (songs I don't want to listen to any more and songs I do want to listen to a bit more) and I'm sort of sorting them into one or the other bucket.

My discoveries. Songs I still like even if they're now super uncool, even if they weren't cool at the time. Strange Glue by Catatonia is still pretty good. I'm getting off on Hunter by Bjork. My old favourite band from when I was super awesome young, The Bangles still make me smile, even some of their later songs like Stealing Rosemary and Tear off your own head. Kraftwerk and Computer World still get me bouncing, as do Young Americans era David Bowie tracks. And obviously there are the albums that have stuck with me through thick and thin - everything by Pixies, Belly, The Breeders, Jeff Buckleyand Nirvana for example. And Paul Simon's Graceland - which was, I think, the first album I bought for myself back in 1986.

The big shock is Alison Moyet who couldn't really have been less cool. I bought her Hoodoo album when I was about seventeen and thought it was surprisingly good. The critics did not agree. She had a horrible time with it, and it's been mostly expunged from her stable of schlocky torch song cover versions. Thing was - she'd written all the songs and they were totally not bad. Or at least I thought so then, and I think so now. Songs like Back where I belong, Rise and Footsteps were actually quite well-written and intelligent, snappy numbers. I find myself actually quite cross that they didn't do better. Ah well.