April 18 - The Diamond Sea

It is interesting how my musical taste has evolved over time - but I am also fascinated by how what music I am listening to is so very dependent on what my personal circumstances and moods are - and for how long those periods sometimes are in effect. Sonic Youth is a great example of that. After an initial period of being completely enamored by them to the point where I both bought and bought into everything they released, I have had a harder time picking up their music again after taking a little break from them. I am not thinking it's not because a lot of it is challenging, but rather that the flaws really start to show up with a little distance. Don't get me wrong, their best work is absolutely stellar, but it's a great example for me for a band that really was important at one point in my life, but that might have waned a little bit in terms of importance for me since then.

This constant change also shows me why I have as large of a music collection I have - and why I keep adding to it. I have to admit that I have probably not listened to every song in my collection. Most of them, most definitely, but there are albums I couldn't bear listening to from beginning to end even though I loved some of their songs. However, I also know that there are albums that I listened to once, then put them away not liking them, only to pick them up later and actually enjoying everything. Sometimes it takes a long time - a great example of that is Frank Zappa's Jazz From Hell, which I purchased when I was 19, but probably didn't fully appreciate until this past year - almost 25 years later. So when I say that Sonic Youth represented a period in time for me, I am very aware that it might be the case that I won't appreciate them the same way ever again, but I still have the ability to pull out their records and listen to them again - whenever I want to and wherever I am provided I have an internet connection thanks to Amazon Cloud Player.

Now, Sonic Youth's 1995 album Washing Machine was never one of my favorite SY albums, but the closing track really gets to me. I am hoping that you all will let yourself be washed away by the crushing waves of The Diamond Sea.