A Blast of Guitars

When I'm in the mood to really get an aggressive blast of music in my face, my go-to is most always Nine Inch Nails. I've got some Rage Against the Machine (pretty much everything they did back in the day, now that I think of it), and sometimes I'll listen to that. But it's always NIN when I'm feeling that need for in-my-face music.

It's interesting to me that this need for a loud sort of music comes when I'm feeling certain ways emotionally. For that reason, just any blast of metal won't do - I need a particular emotional tenor to the lyrics, and Trent always delivers what I need. A friend of mine says he can't listen to a lot of NIN at a stretch because his lyrics are so depressed in a way that doesn't allow for optimism. That probably encapsulates what I listen to that music for - a kind of anger tinged or even drenched in desperation. It's probably a direct manifestation of the depression I've dealt with for much of my life, and interestingly I find that now I'm looking for something more in this mood - a kind of desperation, yes, but with a heavy dose of hope. A sense that this too will pass when I work through it. It reminds me how much music is linked to my emotions, and how what I choose reflects that.

So I look for certain songs, and something like In This Twilight which is actually a song in the voice of someone living in the aftermath of a nuclear devastation of the earth before they die actually gives me a feeling of optimism. It's probably the way the lyrics are tender in a way - not your standard Trent emotion, you know? Sort of like the guy you dated who isn't really an emotional sort saying "let me get that for you, honey" - not incredibly romantic, but given his usual buttoned up nature, it's like Shakespeare's sonnets.

No, Trent doesn't bring me flowers ever, either. Damned boyfriend.

Happy New Year...the encoding continues.

I'm up to the G portion of my library. Dave Gahan, Peter Gabriel and Gabin (the pile is upside down, so that's why it's backwards). I realized I don't have a copy of So (unlike every other person on the face of the planet who listened to music in the late 80's/early 90's) but I have the soundtrack music for Passion of the Christ and Birdy.

Apple TV works pretty well when I sync it up to my studio server, but playing things that way means they're not scrobbled by LastFm. An alternate method is using Air Tunes to stream the music from my server to the Apple TV, but it can be glitchy on a random basis and I can't control the computer from another room.

My collection has weird gaps where I know I've had things at one point, but they didn't survive to be a part of the collection of CDs I have now. That's part of the fun of this - finding what I have that I forgot about (both of the Gabin albums have tracks that I'll add to my performance laptop collection) and other things I need to add to the library.

So much music. So little time.