Dick Curless, the “Baron of Country Music,” is a newly-discovered favorite singer of mine. I think he would be bummed that the track names on his release Welcome to My World are mixed up on all the digital music services.
Prompted by yet another Reddit hole of favorite album threads, I realized I need to catalog the albums that mean the most to me, or were a huge influence on me at some point in my life. Here they are in no particular order (with affiliate Apple Music/iTunes or Bandcamp links when possible).
As you may already know, I have been scrobbling all of my music plays to Last.fm for the past 10 years. This year, Last.fm has a new report called Last.year that does all my homework for me! I have still recorded the usual stats below for future proofing.
Released October 2, 2015, Psychic Warfare was available in iTunes, Amazon and other digital music stores, but conspicuously absent from the streaming music channels like Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora. Streamers, your wait is now over.
Interesting stuff this week. Lots of blasts from the past resurfacing. Prog rock seems to be a theme.
A few years ago, I was inspired to publish some of my older music on the newer music channels. First I rereleased Moving, a 7 song EP I wrote, recorded, and released one day in May, 2000. Today my EP Stupid World is available on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and wherever fine digital music is sold.
From the early 1990s through the turn of the millennium, I worked for a music distributor. During this time, Tuesdays were the day all of the new releases came out, and the Fridays prior were when we received our shipments of these new albums. Because most music is sold digitally now (and likely to help curb file sharing), the industry recently changed Street Date to Fridays.
The consensus is that the Apple Music unveiling bombed yesterday, and so will the service itself. The incoherence of it all was disappointing coming from Apple, but is pretty on par for the recorded music industry.