Untitled Part 3

The Untitled Series is probably going to continue for sometime now. And its mostly going to be picking up the old memories, de-fragmenting them, restacking them and then finally putting a sticker on them that says these are taken care of. So just in case you are in search of fresh ideas that may be more meaningful to you, please take my advice and dont read this series anymore. Wait for the next individually named entry. It might just be a deceptive ploy, a trick played by me to hide more soliloquies under the name of somethine new, but then you dont have a choice do you. So take the choice that is being offered now...

For those who stayed back ...The Untitled Series is also going to be in a way the medium by which I would answer questions that I had put forward myself earlier about my musical philosophy... simply put.. which bands and which songs I like.

Before I actually go into the depths of that discussion (or should I say, before I try to go into the depths of that discussion, start something, forget it, get completely deviated, write paras and paras of unrelated stuff, in passing mentioning some songs and bands and then suddenly realising the blog is too big and thus end), I should say that this list or opinions are made during January 2009. They do not reflect the opinion of the author at any point of time after the aforementioned date. It is generally presumed that the author (in this case me) does not change his opinions about a certain band or song that he already likes, but it may be possible that he might like a song that he earlier hated, or in his search of newer territories in the musical universe, he might come across something more fascinating than his current favorites and thus might have an effect on his overall opinion.

OK. Enough of trying to give myself importance by talking about myself in the third person. Lets get back to business.

In one of my earlier Untitled posts, I mentioned 5 artists who influenced me the most when it came to forming an opinion about lyrics, music and overall impact. I would not try to put them in any order because I believe ranking is an unfair custom. Say we give percentages to each song or artist that we like , the same way we give or get marks/points in our exams. Someone who gets an 85 maybe as smart as the 86 or 84. Similarly the person who got 86 maybe as smart as 87 or 85 and so on. I dont believe these are distinct lines. More so, when it comes to estimating music. Such scales are mostly a blur. You cannot really tell any from the other and thus I would not rank my favorite artists. I would probably only classify them as the ones that influenced me the most, then those which did only a little, then those that I just like to hear because they are good music or good lyrics, then some which suddenly strike as good but that would mostly be individual songs. I will not comment on how much I like an artist if all I have heard from them is one song. In such a scenario , when I really really like a song by a specific artist, I try to hear more of that artist with an anticipation that I might like him/her/them. If I do then he/she does enter my group of artists that I like. But if I dont, the original song simply remains as one of my best songs but thats it.

To some of you this might feel strange. Here am I trying to portray a picture of how methodical I am when it comes to choosing and listening music, whereas in most of my earlier posts I have tried to glorify the spontaneity of liking or listening music. Let me try to explain my last paragraph. I did not actually try to sound methodical and neither am I in reality. All of this really happens in my mind and maybe some of you may support me on this. It does happen that you suddenly just like a song when you are in a certain mood and you may not like it so much at others. But then this song would always be loved/liked by you when you are in that mood. Similarly you may have heard a song being played on the radio while you are travelling on a bus when you suddenly realised that the girl sitting in front of you is really cute, and from then onwards everytime you hear that song you would be reminded of that girl. It might also happen that you might have really liked a song because it was related to a bunch of good memories, even though the song's lyrical or musical genre is not really the one you normally listen to. Similarly it may have happened that you may have liked this one song by a specific artist but you hate it when you hear the original by some other artist and would only want to hear the cover version that you love. It might happen that you may like a certain song by an artist because you like the artist and you have grown to like that song and not that you liked the song instantly when you heard it. It might be that a song was high up on your liking index because you associated it with someone and now somehow that someone does not exist anymore, you might be feeling a strange kind of confusion whether to like the song anymore or not.

And you would have probably gone through all this. But it would only make sense to you in entirety. You would never consider yourself methodical. You would be spontaneous while taking any or all of these decisions but on a bigger picture what you were really doing was classifying and reclassifying each musical stimulation by how you react to it under different situations and depending on how early you were subjected to the stimulation and whether the first and subsequent experiences were associated with good memories, each of these stimulations would itself form a small database. You would think you are making all these decisions spontaneously. Sure. You dont like the song that is being played on the mp3 player right now. You change it. You dont like the next one. You change it again. This happens for quite some time. So you decide your mp3 player has way too many songs that you dont like and so you sit down one day choose all the songs that you do like .. or have happened to like before and put them all in your player so that everysong that it would ever play are the ones you have been really excited about at some point or the other and still sometimes your finger would reach for the Next or Skip Button. Its a spontaneous action but its not random. Its because your mood is not set with the song. You may not really want to hear Riders on the Storm (The Doors) after Song 2 (Blur) when you are in a happy mood and would rather listen to Smashmouth singing I Get Knocked Down or Red Hot Chilli Peppers singing Snow. But on a day when you are too sad to care all these songs would just make you keep listening a constant something that plays in your ears. You wouldnt mind because you like them both and your fingers like your mind are too numb to care .. So surely you are spontaneous but you are also methodical. So dont think its strange for me to spend such a long time trying to justify why I grade what I like. I dont. I still open up Pandora and write down the names and artists of every new song that I like and try to hear from these artists. I still try to discover new sounds and lyrics and I think I havent heard a lot of good music that is out there. But I do know what I REALLLLLY like and I know what I like more than others :)

Coming back ... :) ...... (phew) ... there are 5 more artists that I would probably keep in an almost similar level as the earlier 5. When I say almost I do mean that not the same level. So while Floyd, Oasis, Coldplay, Lucky Ali and Nachiketa have been the first sounds that I ever realised I loved, The Doors, The Cranberries, Mohiner Ghoraguli, Indian Ocean and Enigma contributed almost equally.

I will continue this further but let me make a statement that I had thought I would make right at the beginning and as usual had forgotten in the flow. I would probably keep a separate list for non-lyrical artists such as Enigma, Karunesh, Mrigya, Prem Joshua and a hundred of others. In which case I would probably like to include Iron Maiden in place of Enigma.

The next post would probably be more about what I really like about these artists and maybe an idea about which songs I like.

Oh .. I also realise that this is my first post for the New Year and I hope all of you have a fantastic New Year... that reminds me .. please remind me if I dont write it on my own, I should write a rhetorical blog on The New Year !!

If its possible maybe some of you can actually share what are your favorite artists or songs in the meantime. Please please please do not be scared by my absolute nerdish comments about music and its likeability. It is one of the few things I would want to keep talking or writing about. So please keep the comments coming.