What are you willing to do to expand your cd collection? Are you ready to go through hell and high waters searching for a missing album, are you ready to engage yourself in activities which could be considered as stalking and, last but not least, are you ready to pay top dollar when it ultimately comes your way? I tick in the first two boxes. To become a successful collector you need a combination of basic social skills and a typical monomaniac disposition. I will come back to the psychology of collecting (the motivating factors for persons who have devoted great amounts of time, money, and energy making and maintaining collections) in a forthcoming blog entry. You need time, space and money to collect cds. A legitimate question arises: do you collect music or objects? For me, the music always comes first. But a cd is an integrated part of the music. Second, the condition of the cd should be as good as possible (at least VG+), but most important of all is the completeness. I'm very reluctant to pay top dollar for a cd (especially when you consider the absurd asymmetric shipping cost of $15 from US to Sweden – read more here - opens in a new window). However, I recently paid $75 for “Songs from a Ghost Town” by Trampled by Turtles. The album isn't their best album and TBT isn't really my favorite band. Actually, not even gothic country music, but perhaps bluegrass. But now I have all their full-length albums. It wasn’t an easy decision to pay $75. This is, by far, the most expensive cd I ever bought. In my defence, their long out-of-print debut album has eluded me for several years. The album is for sale, but ridiculously expensive. I have found it for sale twice at Amazon for $18.99, but “domestic shipping” excluded me from buying it. It took just a couple of minutes before they were sold to some lucky domestic bastard. For a long time I seemed to accept that my TBT collection was going to be incomplete. Or did I? Maybe I just suppressed it. The price level made it easy to suppress. The prices for this particular cd album are, by any standards, quite sick. The lowest price at Discogs is currently $200, at Amazon $196.18 and at Amazon UK £308.37. Who, in their right mind, presses the "buy button" with these prices? The thing that made me pay $75 was the fact that I realized how many albums I have bought dirt-cheap. Many of them are rarities and hard-to-find. In fact, I bought the second album “Blue Sky and the Devil” by Trampled by Turtles for $10.99. It was last sold at Discogs in December 2015 for $100. Eureka, a new rule of conduct for collecting cds: bargains subsidizes over priced items. With this weird logic there's no limit for the expansion of your cd collection. But what did I do when the rare cd finally arrived. Did I gently take it out and hold it in my delicate hands and cherished it? No, I simly put the cd in my record shelves and continued my search for completeness. Maybe cd is just an object after all.

Spotify is that rare combination of up to something and good for nothing. Read my merciless diatribe of this despicaple streaming service here (opens in a new window). I almost exhausted myself and was pretty convinced there was nothing more to say. But no, reluctantly I have to return to this loathsome subject again. The thing that triggered me this time was an "article" in the morning paper (see excerpt to the left). Swedish journalists fall to their knees and their journalistic instincts dissipate into thin air when they come near swedish Spotify. In my opinion, the "article" is similar to paid content. I have to restrain myself not to ridicule Spotify and its employees. The overly "creative" workplace (do you really have any use for a Bobby Car in an office space), the arty-farty paintings on the walls, the dressed-like-Teletubbies employees. In the above-mentioned article a emloyee make a comparison between making Spotify playlists and creating mix tapes in the old days. This clearly shows what he knows. The Teletubbie guy doesn't know anything about the difficult process of making a mix tape (Nick Hornby's book "High Fidelity" contains a good description of its hardships). However, my main criticism is the statement in the article that the Spotify-robots know more about your music taste than you do. Spotify uses 50 000 secret users, robot reading of 30 000 sites and 2 000 000 000 playlists to make music recommendations for you. Don't blame me. I didn't ask for them. Spotify claim that their algorithms can handle anomalies in your listening for example binge listening to One Direction if your kid uses your account. Spotify also claim that machines understand music, which is a contradiction in terms since music is human by its definition (some exceptions exists). The secret users, also called "artificial hipsters", don't know they're being used in the process of making recommendations. The reason behind this is that Spotify suspect that the hipsters might change their already hypersensitive behaviour and will try to be even more hip if they know they are being used in the process. At the moment the artificial hipsters are blissfully unaware of themselves. The process of producing music recommendations is supported by advanced data analysis. The songs are cut up in thousands of little pieces and then tortured by computers back and forth. The result is astonishing. With an accuracy of 90 percent the data analysis can distinguish pop from techno. However, I can safely say that my accuracy rate is 100 percent. Back to the drawing board, Tinky, Winky and Dipsy. Man is too complex to fit in a algorithm. To be honest, it's not how recommendations are created that upsets me, it's recommendations as such. Music recommendations are not always a positive thing. In my opinion, a music recommendation that you haven't asked for is unwelcome in the same way as unwelcome sexual advances. The rule of conduct in a record shop is that the customer asks the staff for music recommendations. I got an unwelcome music recommendation once in a renowned record store in Stockholm. I felt cheap and violated.

Without any illusions or high expectations I went through the monthly trawl of new music (in the sense new to me). For the most part there’s nothing in the trawl worth listening to. In my darkest moments I think that the best years have come and gone (which is probably very true). But then it happened. I discovered Devout Sinners from Normal, Illinois and suddenly there’s hope for humanity again. If I had discovered them earlier they would almost certain have been included on my list of "10 essential "bluegrass" albums", read more here (opens in a new window). Devout Sinners was formed in 2011 and looks like a bunch of heavily tattooed bikers disguised as bluegrass musicians, but they're probably very nice. I also managed to get a hard copy of their debut album “Rise & Roar” released in 2012. However, the running time is only 28:35 minutes. The fast pace makes it feel even shorter. Devout Sinners play "Bluegrass" in the same vein as .357 String Band, Highlonesome, Carrie Nation & the Speakeasy and similar bands. However, these "bluegrass" bands don’t deal with “condescendant corporate whore” (Rise & Roar), sexual assault (Preacher Man) or sample stereotypical female intercourse moaning to underline the message that no one will love Luci like the protagonist do (Sweet Luci). Furthermore, they sample James. G. Gerard's speech in 1917 "I know it is hard for Americans" and John F. Kennedy's speech in 1962 during the Cuba Crisis (Patriots). Obviously, someone has to be the frontwalker. Their lyrics deals with social awareness and social criticism with a distinct bite. Devout Sinners consists of Andy Blick (lead vocals, bass), Zack Blick (vocals, banjo), Ron Huffman (vocals, guitar) and Karl Borling (mandolin cello and kazoo). Trivia: the bass is built from an old gas tank almost given away for free when the scrap yard owner found out that the tank was going to be a experimental music instrument. I read on their Facebook page that they put the band on hiatus or something close to that, which is bad news. The statistical return rate from hiatus is not encouraging in the genre. But as always, let's hope for the best and plan for the worst. Whatever happens, they gave us Rise & Roar.

Nothing beats scientific evidence. In a study “The Paradox of Music-Evoked Sadness: An Online Survey” Liila Taruffi and Stefan Koelsch, who study music and the brain at the Free University of Berlin presents new and interesting research findings. You can read the full article here (opens in a new window). One important conclusion from the study is that there are differences between the emotional experiences resulting from listening to sad versus happy music. Big surprise. You don’t need to be a scientist to realize this. It’s obvious. But now let us walk through the not-so-obvious findings. The starting point for the study is the assumption that sadness is undesirable and is therefore usually avoided in everyday life. Yet, the question remains: Why do people seek and appreciate sadness in music? I count myself to the appreciators. Well, I’m maybe not an appreciator of dedicated sad music, but definitely dark music. I’m proud to say that I almost never listen happy music. In my world, happy music is reserved for stupid people. The study investigates the rewarding aspects of the music, as well as the relative contribution of listener characteristics and situational factors. The study also examines the different principles through which sadness is evoked by music, and their interaction with personality traits. Results show four different types of rewards: reward of imagination, emotion regulation, empathy, and no “real-life” implications. The appreciation of sad music is greater among individuals with high empathy and low emotional stability. Nostalgia is the most frequent emotion evoked by sad music and memory was rated as the most important principle through which sadness is evoked. The trait empathy contributes to the evocation of sadness through contagion, appraisal, and by engaging social functions. The findings indicate that emotional responses to sad music are very complex, are modulated by empathy, and are linked with a multidimensional experience of pleasure. This study reveals that listening to sad music can lead to beneficial emotional effects such as regulation of negative emotion and mood as well as consolation. These effects constitute the prime motivations for engaging with sad music in everyday life. At last, now I know why sad music makes me happy.  

Exactly two years ago I launched this website. The first blog entry I posted had the laconic title "So it begins...". A year ago I posted a one-year anniversary blog entry with the title "So it continues..." where I discussed the past, present and future for the site. Now is time for some heavy handed following up. 

Assessment

I have finalized the construction of the website and slowly but surely continued to fill it with new content and updated existing material. I still believe in organic growth, but the growth rate is decreasing rapidly. It’s expected when the number of articles increases and the most important artists and bands are covered. I think I with a good conscience can tick in the box on the to-do list. However, I have nothing to show when it comes to the "unrevealed project". In fact, this project has exactly the same status as last year, still pending and no further information available. What can I say to my defence? Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet ”Thus conscience does make cowards of us all / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought / And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry / And lose the name of action.” The ”pale cast of thought” and ”lose the name of action” hits pretty hard. I’m still hiding behind “at the appropriate juncture, in due course, in the fullness of time”. I will probably be back next year again with a poor excuse. 

Visitor statistics

On November 20, 2014 the visitor counter passed 10 000. On July 5, 2015 the visitor counter passed 20 000. Today, the visitor counter shows 29 801 visitors. This is far more than I could ever hope for. 

Flaws

I take some pride in that the site is up and running twenty-four seven. If nothing else, this allows visits from all time zones. However, on 23-24 December 2015 the site was down for almost 24 hours before my friend Mikael managed to restart it again. Some plug-in files were infected and started to cause problems. Now, I think the problem is finally solved by the help of Mikael and my web hosting company. Technical troubleshooting isn't one of my strenghts. Like everyone else with a website I’m battling spam referrals (ghost traffic in order to inflate and magnify the senders website). I block them through a spam crawler filter. However, this is both boring and time-consuming. It's a matter of principle. I will therefore keep on doing my daily blocking. 

Menu status

There are 58 articles published under the menu "Articles". The "Artists" department is a simple table overview. At the moment there 121 of them. There are links to the "Albums" department and, where applicable, a link to ”Articles”. The "Albums" department consists of plug-in product (Music Collection). The "Lists" department (artists, albums, songs and miscellaneous) contains 17 lists. The Miscellaneous department only have 8 links, but on the other hand a beautiful ivy stem. At the moment there are 73 blog entries. My aim is to write at least one blog entry per week, which seems to be a too ambitious aim. The "Contact" form works very well. Thank you!

Reflections

I’m obviously a very late adopter. I started this website in 2014 when most people already had switched over to faster and more fragmented communication (liking, sharing, tweeting, instagramming et cetera). We have seen the rise of clickocracy. Don’t get me wrong. It gives me great pleasure everytime someone thinks the stuff on the website is worth noticing and let other people know about it. But the lack of interest for the written word and the total absence of reasoning and reflection in a written text is disturbing and, even worse, stupefying. Maybe I’m a reactionist belonging to a dying breed, but I think the need for overviews, summaries and analysis works to my favour in the long run. But as economist John Maynard Keynes elegantly put it: ”In the long run we are all dead”. How true.

Future

The future is unknown, but I will go on untiringly within the limits of family, work and other duties. After spending considerable time triangulating the genre, I think it safe to say that there are no bands of the caliber of 16 Horsepower that have been overlooked. They are already on the article list. However, there still going to be bands and artists worth noticing. They will show up sooner or later. But, I think it’s important not to focus on the valence electrons of the genre in the pursuit of more bands and artists, but instead focus on the core of the genre. The regrowth in the gothic country genre isn’t really stunning either. Therefore, I’ve decided to give priority to depth at the expense of width in the future.