At the end of my week of 24/7 music listening last May, I stated that it was a positive experience, only minimally trying or disruptive, and was something I would consider doing again. I still stand by those comments, but in the months since then, I haven't felt the slightest urge to do that again. I have no aversion toward it, it's more of a "been there, done that" stance and next time I pull a music-related stunt, I want to test different waters.
The M-series worked well as individual singles, but once you throw nine indentical baselines onto a CD-compilation it becomes something of an endurance contest to get through it all in one sitting. The tracks on Rhythm and Sound's "See Mi Yah" have far less variation between them compared to the Maurizio tracks, but strung together they work far better as an album becuase every four minutes a new singer shows up and breathes new life into it. The rhythm never changes but the revolving door of vocalists keeps the album flowing from peak to peak to peak. Not to mention that the rhythm track is a coldhearted killer groove that I could listen to all day -- it's certainly the best thing they've done as Rhythm and Sound, and perhaps their best Berlin-Jamaica collaboration, period ("Acting Crazy" with Tikiman is the reason for the "perhaps" qualifier).
So, I'm going to take my statement literally. Not today, not tomorrow, but hopefully sometime this month, I am going to listen to "See Mi Yah" for an entire day. For 24 hours straight. And unlike the music 24/7 experiment, this time there will be no sleeping. I will be awake and functional for 24 hours, listening to "See Mi Yah" -- one rhythm, one bassline -- approximately 32 consecutive times.
Having an Audioscrobbler account has clued me into some of my personal listening statistics. When you're really into an album and are seemingly listening to it all of the time, it's probably not as often as you think. I feel as though I've heard the Go! Team album a million times over the last few months, but according to Audioscrobbler it's been maybe a dozen times (yes, I know that the plugin doesn't register once in a while, and Audioscrobbler's flaky statscounter might miss some plays, but even if I'm off by a factor of two -- which I'm not -- then it's still only 20-25 plays and my conclusions don't change). So, thirty plays of a single album are a lot of plays. I know that I didn't hear most of my Top Ten of 2004 more than thirty times before making that list, and with new release schedules always being weighted toward the last few months of any calendar year, I'm sure most critics and fans don't hear their favourite albums thirty times either before doing their year-in-review ballots/blurbs/essays.
Thus, I'll be charting some undiscovered (to me) and potentially dangerous waters. Will I go insane? Will I overdose on R&S and end up hating one of my most adored albums of recent months? That would be a shame. Will alcohol provide a help or a hinderance to the task at hand? Will I continue humming along for hours after the music stops and end up twitching on the floor and frothing at the mouth, Malcolm Mooney style?
To be continued ... someday.
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