Briks' social listening thing
Gee, listening to albums is a hard thing. First, you'll have to find the album on your preferred medium, in my case Spotify. Then you'll have to brace yourself for sitting still doing nothing but listen for up to about an hour. Then you'll need to get comfortable, maybe get a glass of water and a snack. If the lyrics are important in the type of music in question, you may want to find a lyric sheet to pay attention to, especially if you're not an experienced English listener (as is the case with me). Then you'll have to do the actual listening. JEEZ, I hate music.
In case you didn't understand just by reading it, I'll just clear up that the previous paragraph was sarcastic. Of course I don't hate music, I'm a member at Musicbanter. Anyhow, I think that concentrating on nothing but music for an extended period of time can get a bit tiring. Therefore, I need some motivation. Social listening, like album clubs, is great motivation. I'm part of two and a half album clubs, and I love it. The first one is the emo club, the second is a club I started with some IRL friends, and the third, the half one, is a project I started with one other friend. Take notice of the two last ones I mentioned, because chances are they will affect my future journal entries greatly. In the second one we listen to an album every week, and if it catches my interest, I'll write about it. Then there's the last one:
We wanted to focus on metal, as it is a genre we're both slowly getting into; my friend is stuck in power metal, and I haven't heard much except for the classic, essential albums. Therefore we started a kind of “pack” system. In each pack there will be seven albums, one from each of these subgenres: black, death, fusion (prog, groove, goth, nu etc.), glam, heavy, power and thrash metal. After we're both done listening to all of the seven albums, we will choose new ones, making a new pack. At the end of the year we'll see how many packs we have listened to.
Pack one:
Venom –
Black Metal
Death –
Scream Bloody Gore
Pantera –
Far Beyond Driven
Mötley Crüe –
Too Fast for Love
Van Halen –
S/T
Helloween –
Time of the Oath
Metallica –
Ride the Lightning
As you can see, we're pushing the definitions a bit, but hey, we're not trying to box ourselves in either. I probably won't review all of these albums, but expect... many.