Face the music

I get all my great ideas in the shower. There's the soothing warm water, a nice layer of white noise and no distractions. It's a great place for thinking.

Today I had another of my great shower ideas. I've been lugging around my iPod (we'll call him Declan) for a few months now. I love having 90% of the music I own at my fingertips at all times, but, honestly, I keep listening to the same few playlists and albums. It's time to delve back into forgotten territory.

So here's the plan. For the foreseeable future I'm going to listen to all the albums on Declan. I'll face the good, the bad and the ugly of all the musical choices I've made for the last 15 years and I'll document it all here. Want to know how many terrible albums I own? Watch this space.

I've settled on a few basic ground rules for this experiment:
1. I'm listening to albums in alphabetical order by album title. I briefly considered going by artist but that would make for long stretches of Elvis Costello and R.E.M. and I'm not sure even I could stand that.
2. Partial albums are totally optional. If you buy one song by an artist on iTunes, it lists the album the song is from on your iPod. I'll probably listen to the song but I won't always comment on it. That's too much work.
3. I'm going to attempt to listen to one album a day. Like Josh, I reserve to right to be lazy once in awhile but I really want to keep up a certain pace. The time and place where I listen each day will constantly change but that's what makes it fun.

So let's get started, shall we? By virtue of beginning with a parentheses, the first album on my iPod list is (What's The Story) Morning Glory? by Oasis. A perfect start for a girl with a deep love of Britpop!

According to Mr. Amazon, Morning Glory was released October 3, 1995 and I can tell you I remember hopping on my bike my freshman year in college and buying this album the day it came out. (I also remember rushing back to my dorm to catch the O.J. Simpson verdict because that also happened on October 3, 1995.) I had just started college and this album was pretty much the soundtrack to that first year.

Of course everyone remembers "Wonderwall." It got radio overkill all winter so now I can hardly stand to listen to it. (At least the Oasis version. The Ryan Adams cover is another story.) I really loved "Some Might Say" and "Champagne Supernova" and the latter still reminds me of those Friday nights in the dorms when it seemed everyone was doing something awesome except me.

Relistening to Morning Glory has been a real treat and an interesting trip down memory lane. It really holds up for me, but Oasis is one of those camps where you're either totally in or totally out. I'm in.