February is Music Writer Exercise Month #MWE • Page 30

Forgot to attach the album cover, but what are you gonna do?

 

Yeah that’s another half baked one haha

 

Next up today was supposed to be Leader of the Pack from 1965 by The Shangri Las, but for whatever reason their discography on Wiki doesn't match at all with what's on Apple Music. So I just picked what I think was a compilation called The Dum Dum Ditty , which contained most of their singles.

It's quite fun, very Ronettes esque pop music with the Wall of Sound style production, but without quite the magic wonderful Spector touch to it. Possibly just the compilation I picked, but the production is a little muddy and compressed, which is a bit of a shame. The songs are full of very teenage-y doomed romance stories, which are fun in their melodrama, and they have little spoken word bits in them, or acting out little scenes which is pretty cool, and gives their songs and narratives a bit of character.

I feel perhaps they're not quite as talented as the Ronettes as singers, and their songwriters weren't quite as good as the Ronette's songwriters, but it's still a very enjoyable 30 minutes. I'd be interested in checking out more of them to see if the production was just a bit of a dud compilation that I picked, or if that's just how they sounded.

 

One of my friends told me to check out "Joy as an Act of Resistance." because we were talking about IDLES and how I'd never listened to them before. Joke's on me though, because I DEFINITELY have listened to this band and LOVED their Tiny Desk performance back in 2019. I think I just had a weird moment where I just completely forgot that I've listened to a band's music when I was putting together my list this year. Either way, album's good, band is great, everything is well in the world again.

 

Listening to Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On and it's no surprise that the album is fucking goooooood. I've listened to all his albums from What's Going On through the end, and have really enjoyed it all, even the more out there stuff (Here, My Dear). He really, really, really defined what a true musical genius is.

 

Was trying to decide which record to listen to tomorrow, but now I'll listen to What's Going On.

 

Going in, I was only familiar with “I Love You Always Forever” so falling in love with this was a nice surprise!

 

It very much deserves its reputation as one of the sexiest albums of all time. Just fantastic

 

Pink Moon, flawless.

 

Anytime I try and talk about Nick Drake I just keep saying “his albums are perfect” over and over again

 

I always feel like fans of Nick Drake should check out Sandy Denny. Tragic English singer-songwriter geniuses who weren’t here long enough.

 

Said this when I listed earlier this month, but that album just sounds amazing, like you're in the room with him.

 

It is perfectly simple in production and execution.

 

Reaches a transcendent level that maybe only Astral Weeks does

 

Candidate for one of the best closing tracks of all time, imo.

Not sure how to make that embed on mobile.

 

How can we make this thread extend past February? Maybe in some other iteration, but I really like the just... disussions of music pre-2000ish that doesn't happen around here. When I think of older music, I really only think of @Craig Manning and @cshadows2887 being the main conversationalists on Chorus and even back on AP. And I totally get it, it's hard to get enough discussion of older music when there is so much new music coming out, but this thread has been a cool place just to... talk about older music, ya know?

 

Maybe if we set more modest goals? An album a week or something. I would LOVE more discussion of stuff that didn’t come out this year.

 

I know I plan on going through everyone else’s lists and was just going to tag people and write about the albums here. MWE has been really good for me mentally and made me realize that i have to prioritize hearing one album I haven’t heard everyday. Gave me something low key that I could look forward to and it helped me stay inspired and motivated. I saved some other lists from Twitter that I’m gonna dig into, I could post about those here as well

 

once i don’t have a puppy keeping my hands full i’ll be able to participate more regularly. once a week definitely sounds good as an ongoing thing.

 

Would be into a hybrid music/puppy pics thread TBH

 

I’ve definitely been planning on continuing down the path of more older music once this is done. I’ve gotten too caught up in only listening to new releases in recent years and I think I want to have a better balance. Been toying with doing some sort of “album of the day” kind of thing on Twitter, where I do an MWE kind of post and discuss a specific album I’ve been digging that day. Would probably be some mix of new stuff, old stuff I’m discovering for the first time, and albums I already love, but could still be fun.

 

I feel the same. This exercise has been great in getting me to listen to a lot of classics and I love it. Was thinking to continue after Feb in grabbing a new album each day.

Today I am on to Back in Black AC/DC

 

you haven’t heard back in black? do you have a radio? basically every song on the album has been a single since it was released haha