The lost art of deep listening: Choose an album. Lose the phone. Close your eyes.

[babylonsister]

Music
The lost art of deep listening: Choose an album. Lose the phone. Close your eyes.
By Randall RobertsStaff Writer
March 17, 2020 6:23 PM PT


What’s your favorite album? When was the last time you listened — actually listened — to it from start to finish? With intention, like you were watching a movie or reading a novel.

Clear your schedule for the next three hours. Choose three full albums, whether from your collection or your streaming service of choice. Put them in an ordered queue as though you were programming a triple feature.

Because, listen:

Musicians spend years making their albums. They struggle over syllables, melodies, bridges and rhythms with the same intensity with which you compare notes on the “Forensic Files” reboot, loot corpses in “Fortnite” or pound Cabernet during pandemics.

But most of us are half-assed when it comes to listening to albums. We put on artists’ work while we’re scrolling through Twitter, disinfecting doorknobs, obsessively washing our hands or romancing lovers permitted within our COVID-free zones. We rip our favorite tracks from their natural long-player habitat, drop them into playlists and forget the other songs, despite their being sequenced to be heard in order.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There was a time when listeners treated the mere existence of recorded sound as a miracle. A wonder, a kind of time travel. Priests warned of early wax cylinders being tools of the devil. Vintage images from the space age show couples seated around their high-fidelity systems as if being warmed by a fireplace.

more...

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-03-17/coronavirus-deep-listening-music-albums

[lastlib]

1. Three albums I really get into:

Dark Side of the Moon -- Pink Floyd
Hemispheres -- Rush
Autobahn -- Kraftwerk

I can make an evening listening to any one of them! - - - - - - - - -

[Dem2]

19. The last 2 work for me

Today I was listening to The Cure - Pictures of You and reminiscing about the alternative club scene in the late 80's and 90's and how music takes me places that can't be explained by words.

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Steely Dan - Aja I usually listen to it all, but it has been years.

[electric_blue68]

3. I remember when my sis and I listened to the...

premier of Quadrophrenia on one of WNYC's Rock stations. We just sat there, and took it all in! 🎵🎶👍

[maxrandb]

9. My favorite album of all time

and one of the few albums that MUST be listened to beginning to end.

Saw the Quadrophenia and more tour in Columbus in 2013. Here's Love Reign O're Me from that show.

https://m.

[electric_blue68]

13. Why... thanks for that!

By the time The Who got to MSG in 74 they're had so much trouble w the Quad backing tapes they dropped a lot of it... including LROM.

So it was their farewell tour of '81... my sis, I, and friends were sitting in the stadium, and somewhat faintly at first the opening piano notes start up. I grab my sister's hand and she's like 'what, What?' And I'm trying to say in my stunned (joyous) shock - that's it 'Love Reign... ".
Then she recognizes it, grabs onto my hands. And crowd goes crazy. 😄 🥰

Great times!

[maxrandb]

27. That's Ringos son and Keith's Godson Zach on the drums

About the closest they've come to filling Moon's spot.

[electric_blue68]

31. I know! It's very cool.

[Myrddin]

23. Quadrophenia was the first serious album I bought

when I was 11yo, circa 1974

Closely followed by Brain Salad Surgery - ELP

I could lose myself in both those albums!

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. I do this daily!

A Winged Victory for the Sullen - The Undivided Five
Max Richter - Voices
Hammock - Silencia

did it just today!

We have music going on nearly 24-7 in our house, via Alexa Echo in 4 different rooms.

[Capn Sunshine]

5. If you remember ragers in 1968

Babylonsister!
These dudes toured relentlessly
Eventually they morphed into Foghat
But they were at the peak of their powers here

[maxrandb]

6. I do this quite often

My top 3

Quadrophenia, The Who - An album that should be issued to everyone in the world when they turn 14.

Tales from the Topographic Ocean, Yes - A musical masterpiece

Welcome to the Club, Ian Hunter Band with Mick Ronson Live - Saw this tour and it was one of the best live shows I've ever seen

Off Topic, but if you are a music fan, you should check out "Out of the Box" with Paul Shagrue on NPR. It's a nightly show of nothing but new releases. You can find the Podcasts online.

[electric_blue68]

14. I'll try and look it up 👍 Thx!

[davekriss]

8. I do that all the time

Music, followed by film, art, and poetry, are like oxygen to me.

[Initech]

10. There's lots of great new albums being released.

I only listen to the whole albums. I just am not a fan of picking and choosing playlists.

[Corgigal]

11. If I do it right,

the song Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd, I can fly. Doesn’t happen every time, but it can.

[Mr.Bill]

12. I remember when I was in my 20s in the early 70s,

There was a small group of four or five friends and when someone got a new much anticipated album, like Led Zeppelin we would gather at one of our houses (most of us had very good stereos) and smoke some weed and play both sides of the album. No one talked after the needle dropped. I still enjoy those albums today and I have about 300 vinyl albums that I still listen to at times, but there was nothing like listening to them for the first time.

Today I have lost touch with those friends, so I do it alone with a headset. Just a few I can think of as favorites:
Meddle
Electric Ladyland
Abbey Road
Frampton Comes Alive (I was there when one side of it was recorded)

All great memories that I can kind of relive.

[maxsolomon]

15. The author is talking to the kids I think.

I enjoy shuffling songs when I'm in the car, but at home, I'm trying to work through my entire collection and purge the unworthy.

Now listening to Nina Simone's Baltimore.

[orleans]

16. i like what you posted--went to read more... PAYWALL. nt

[OxQQme]

18. I'm 80 and there are hundreds of whole albums that caused earworms.

And to go way back -->

[tavernier]

28. I'm 74. We would get along very well.

I would add Captain Fantastic ands the Brown Dirt Cowboy to those, and anything by Beatles or Queen.

[perfessor]

17. Layla, by Derek and the Dominoes.

I used to devour the vinyl disks in college. Years later I was listening with headphones, and I heard something I'd never heard before.

At the very start of "It's Too Late", just before the first notes of the guitar intro, a voice says "Ok, hit it." I assume it was the drummer but who knows.

It's still the pinnacle of classic blues rock, IMO.

[Elwood P Dowd]

20. Too many to choose from.

At one time years ago I had over a thousand albums & CDs. Now the collection is probably half that, so I picked out a few including.....


Harry Belafonte “Live At Carnegie Hall”

Allman Brothers “Idlewild South”

Allman Brothers “Live Fillmore East”

Hank Mobley “Soul Station”

America 1st LP “America”

Pink Floyd “The Wall”

Diana Krall “Live In Paris”

Gordon Lightfoot “Sundown”

Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto “Getz Gilberto”

Dave Brubeck “Time Out/Take Five”

The Weavers “Reunion At Carnegie Hall - 1963”

Steely Dan “Aja”

Steely Dan “Gaucho”

Peter, Paul, and Mary “In Concert”

Eric Clapton & Friends “The Breeze -An Appreciation of JJ Cale”

Donald Fagan “The Nightly”

Phoebe Snow 1st LP “Phoebe Snow”

Stevie Ray Vaughan “In Step”

Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young “4 Way Street”

Moody Blues “Threshold Of A Dream”

Van Morrison “Moondance”

Tsuytoshi Yamamoto Trio “Blues To East”

Ry Cooder “Jazz”

Fleetwood Mac “Fleetwood Mac”

Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On”

Traveling Wilburys “Traveling Wilburys Vol One”

Etta James "At Last"

Dire Straits "Brothers In Arms"

Simply Red "Picture Book"

[PlanetBev]

21. Got some good ones there, Elwood

I own many of those albums. Ah, Moondance....

As for me, a trip back to 1968 and John Mayall’s “Blues from Laurel Canyon.”

[Elwood P Dowd]

22. Yea, I probably still have too many.

Some of those listed are the originals I purchased in the 1960s and 1970s. I learned as a teenager how to properly care for my records and not scratch them or smear them with finger prints. Buying a VPI record cleaning machine almost 40 years ago also helped with the vinyl.

Haven't heard Mayall in years. The only one I have of him is a 2-album CD "Room To Move". Guess I need give it a spin.

[Dem2theMax]

24. Albums, I have. Turntable and speakers, nope.

Any suggestions, without breaking the bank?

[Straw Man]

25. Here's a gem from left field ...

Give it a try. Its vision of the world isn't always pretty, but it's always beautiful.

[Lucinda]

26. ❤️✿❧🌿❧✿❤️

[JimGinPA]

29. I Do That Regularly...

Matter of fact just yesterday I got the new Foo Fighters album & listened to the entire album.

[Trailrider1951]

30. Anything by Ian Anderson

Lately, it's the old: Songs from the Wood, Jethro Tull

and the (relatively) new: The Secret Language of Birds, Ian Anderson

[Tommymac]

32. I choose to listen to Groups/Solo Artists as a theme for the evening.

Pink Floyd
Iron Maiden
Tom Petty
Dire Straights
David Bowie
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Aretha Franklin
Otis Redding
Liz Phair
Elton John
Bob Marley
Eminem

These are my top dozen - though my tastes are all over the spectrum.

I'll often queue up entire albums, but usually I'll make a playlist featuring several dozen tunes that fit my mood of the day from just 2 or 3 of the above.

I'll use YouTube or other audio streaming site, and listen while I browse the internets and enjoy some fine weed.