Music Collecting Addiction/MADNESS!

The first three paragraphs were written in June 2015, and I'm leaving them as is.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a collector of things. The main thing I've collected over the past 25 years has been music. It started out purely as cassettes, since we didn't have a CD player yet. After I finally got a CD player, I collected both cassettes and CDs since we still had cassette players in our cars. When I finally got a CD player in my car, I eventually gave up on cassettes and just bought CDs. In the past ten years, I've been collecting CDs, lossy digital files, vinyl, and even an occasional cassette. I'm not really fond of digital files. The only time I really listen to them is on my iPod and an old iPhone 4S while I'm at work. I can listen to them in my car through a jack, but it just feels weird. I don't even think it's due to their lossy nature so much as that they should probably be played through a headphone amp. There's also a hum, making for an annoyingly loud noise floor. Thus, I stick to CDs in my car. Living in a small space, I can see the appeal of doing digital only, mainly that it takes up less room in your living space than physical copies do, but I don't trust hard drives to keep them around forever. You're probably better off backing them up on an SD card or flash drive.

When some people see my CD collection, they're like, "Wow, you have a lot of CDs!" Some people probably think I have too many, but I don't see how some people can claim to like music and have 50 CDs or fewer. I think a lot of those people tend to be radio listeners. If people took a closer look, they would see that my collection is made up of multiple albums from certain bands and artists, sometimes even a band's entire catalog, or at least every studio album. This would be okay if I were content to have only these, but as soon as I complete one band's catalog, I find another band to obsess over. It usually starts by buying some band's compilation. I end up falling in love with the compilation, and then I want more, so I seek out every album from that band that I can find. This tends to happen most with New Wave or synth-pop bands from the 1980s who have mostly faded into obscurity in the U.S.. I feel like I'm the only Heaven 17 fan in the Louisville area sometimes, but I know I'm not the only person in the Louisville area to have heard them since I found a previously owned copy of "Higher and Higher: The Best of Heaven 17" at Book & Music Exchange. The only other Heaven 17 albums I own are "Before After", which I found at an FYE during the store's closing out sale, and "Live at Metropolis Studios", which I heard about through Heaven 17's Facebook page, and pre-ordered on Amazon. I have not found any other Heaven 17 CDs in stores around Louisville, so it seems like I'll have to go the online route.

To make matters worse, I'm also something of a junior audiophile. I'm guilty of buying multiple versions of the same album purely for sound comparison purposes, but I'm pretty restrained compared to some people. They will buy a copy of every unique mastering of an album from all over the world to find what they consider to be the best sounding version out there. Reading multiple people coming to multiple conclusions is maddening. As far as my comparisons have gone, there are some where one version sounds significantly better than another, and it's not always the most dynamic version sounding better than a heavily compressed version. Then there are times where the differences in sound are significant, but I can't really decide which one is better. For instance, I've had the Steve Hoffman DCC gold disc version of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" for fifteen years now, and it's considered by many to be the best CD version. I recently bought the Blackened Recordings version (same mastering as the Elektra-E/M Ventures versions) of it for comparison purposes, and because it was only $5. They're both very different, and they both have their pros and cons, and I have not determined a clear winner. I'm tempted to buy an original Elektra to do further comparisons. I also want to see if it sounds any more like the old MoP cassette that my brother had than the later masterings did, including the remastered cassette I bought in 1995. Anyway, back to Heaven 17, the easiest to find versions of their albums are remasters. Judging from the Dynamic Range Database, they don't seem to be horribly compressed, but I can't see them sounding as good as my "Higher and Higher" compilation, which is one of my favorite sounding CDs in my collection (Thanks Greg Calbi!). Besides that, I've also read about mastering errors that have nothing to do with overall sound quality, but these errors may possibly have been fixed.

Update, July 9, 2016: It has occurred to me that since vinyl and cassettes were the dominant formats in the 1980s, that it's easier to find used copies of obscure 1980s albums on those formats than on CD, whereas it's easier to find albums from the late 1980s and 1990s on CD and cassette. I've been looking for Genesis's 1983 self-titled album on CD, but have so far only found the vinyl and cassette. I've bought a couple of Heaven 17 albums on vinyl, but I'm still itching to get those remastered CDs. I also managed to get an old Elektra CD of Metallica's "Master of Puppets", and I've found it superior to the '95 Marino remaster and the DCC Hoffman re-remaster. (As it turns out, Steve Hoffman was given the '95 Marino remasters to work with. I don't know if that was due to his reputation, which I won't go into here, or because whoever sent him the remasters thought they were adequate.) As you probably know by now, Metallica has just released brand new remasters of their first two albums. I'll probably comment on those in another entry, but I am looking forward to having a new version of "Master of Puppets" to compare, along with a new "...And Justice For All".

It is a really frustrating time to be a collector of physical formats, at least if you're the type that likes to go hunting locally. Doubly so if you're something of an audiophile, since you might only be able to find a remaster when you want an original, or an original when you want a remaster. The music selection at the department/chain stores is shrinking. The CD selection at Target is pathetic. Walmart's selection is also barely there, plus they have edited albums. The Best Buy CD section is a shell of its former self, and while it still has a better selection than Walmart or Target, it's horribly disorganized. FYE still has an okay selection, but they're concentrating more on pop culture stuff than music. I'm lucky to live in a town with multiple record stores, at least three of which I love, but I still miss Ear X-tacy and the days of the mega record store.

Speaking of frustrating, vinyl is way too damn expensive these days! It seems like you're lucky if you find a new album on vinyl for twice as much as the CD. Even if the vinyl legitimately sounds better than the CD, I'd almost rather just settle for the CD. And while there has been some progress in the Loudness War, there are still enough badly mastered albums out there to make me want to quit buying new music altogether.

I won't be surprised if the vinyl record market implodes, and I'm afraid that when it does, CDs will be too dead to make the kind of comeback that vinyl has. And since CDs are dying, I feel compelled to not only get CDs that I'm actively looking for, but CDs that I didn't know I wanted! (I would put an LOL here, but I don't think abbreviations like that belong in blogs.) I've never been a huge Green Day fan, but bought "Dookie" recently since it's cheap, and somewhat of a landmark, at least in the sense that it seemed to be the first Punk Rock that most kids who were into mainstream Rock had heard. I like some of Dire Strait's songs, but never had any interest in owning their albums, outside of maybe a compilation. I ended up buying a used copy of the original mastering of "Brothers In Arms" just because I had heard that it sounded better than the remasters. I'm also not a huge fan of late Eighties/Nineties R&B, but have been tempted to buy New Edition's "Gold". It not only has New Edition's hits, but a lot of the solo/Bell Biv DeVoe hits as well. The only songs I feel are really missing from it are "Candy Girl", "Popcorn Love", and BBD's "Do Me!", but I guess I'll just have to get the "Candy Girl" and BBD "Poison" albums for those songs. I'm pretty sure that the former two tracks weren't included on "Gold" because the "Candy Girl" album was on a different label, and getting the rights to them probably wasn't worth the trouble. Anyway, another factor in why I'd want to get New Edition's "Gold" is because all of the Motown/Universal R&B compilations I've heard so far have sounded pretty good and they're cheap.

But wait! I probably shouldn't mourn the death of CDs just yet. It appears that digital downloads, at least of albums, are declining even more rapidly than CDs. Or maybe those rumors are false, and downloads aren't declining as fast as some sites say they are. But either way, as far as digital goes, streaming is now where it's at. Call me an old fogey, but I don't really get streaming as a source for music that I would actually want to own.

As I mentioned earlier, physical product takes up way too much space. I sometimes wish I didn't like it so much, and were open to just giving it away so I could just pack up a suitcase and go wherever I want to go. But one of my few real pleasures is listening to well recorded and mastered music on decent equipment. Have you ever listened to "In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins on vinyl or CD (excluding the recent remasters)? If you've only heard it on the radio, then you're missing out. The difference is that when you listen to it on CD or vinyl, the part where the drums kick in really knocks you on your ass. I also remember listening to Yes's "Roundabout" from an original CD version of "Fragile" on my cousin's system, and being floored by how the acoustic guitar kind of jumps out of the speakers. I also remember being floored the first time I heard "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" on "The Essential Bruce Springsteen". That part where the music stops and starts back up again just doesn't sound as impressive on the radio.

The Return of Overwhelmedness

I sometimes think about splitting this blog into two blogs, one for music/entertainment type stuff, and one for personal stuff. But it's not unusual for the two to intersect, so I guess I'll keep it as it is, and call it "Gonzo blogging". I apologize ahead of time if you come here to read stuff about the Loudness War, and find someone who is on the verge of a breakdown.

When I started this blog five years ago, I came up with the word "overwhelmedness", which is basically being so overwhelmed that escape seems impossible. I've essentially been going through a quarter-life crisis since my late teens. Now that I'm almost 40 years old, I guess I've graduated to midlife crisis status. I was actually okay with the idea of turning 40 up until a couple of weeks ago.

Most of my frustration stems from my roommate not bringing in any income. My thinking when we moved in here was that I could handle the rent and bills for the first month, and hoped that my being there would motivate my roommate to get up and hopefully get a job by the end of October or mid-November. It's June, and she's still not working. The best I can say is that she's at least making an effort now to not be a total zombie, so hopefully she'll be working by the end of June. (I know, good luck with that.) But with her not bringing in any income, I've given up on organizing this place, since I haven't had the money for a bookcase for my room, or for a sturdy stand for my turntable and cassette deck.

On the other hand, I can't blame her for not trying harder to get a job, considering how much I bitch about my job. That place just keeps getting worse and worse. The only things that have kept me there are that I kind of like my department, and having unpaid personal time to go along with paid personal and vacation time, even though the amount of paid personal time we get is a joke. I've been getting outsourced to other departments anywhere from one to three days out of the work week, mostly to do order picking. One of the reasons I left Picking was because I'm slow, and I knew I wouldn't last long with the way "Steel Johnson" ran things. (To recap, Steel Johnson is my current employer and the owner of the company that I've worked at off and on since 2004, who I refer to as "Main ex-Employer". Main ex-Employer handed operation of their warehouses over to Steel Johnson in 2012.) The worst part of working at Steel Johnson is that they'll give you a verbal coaching or written warning for being less than 100% productive, even if you're working in a department other than your own. So, they expect you to be a master of all trades, and you can get fired for underachieving in another department. I was just told today that I was on my second written warning, and needed to be retrained. The guy who retrained me said I pick just like he does, so I'm not really even doing anything wrong. My only real problems are being out of shape, having bad eyesight, and the company being too strict. I'm afraid that I'll end up getting fired for this bullshit, but I'm not gonna kill myself for them.

One thing I hate about working is that it gives me eight to ten hours to think about every stupid thing I've ever done. As bad as that is, remembering better times can sometimes be worse. For example, one day while at work, I'm 99.9% sure it was one of my days in Picking, I got to thinking about the Gnarls Barkley song, "Crazy", which was a big hit ten years ago, and one of my favorite songs from that time. That led me to thinking that it was around this time ten years ago when I started working in the Photo department at Main ex-Employer. During those few months where I got to work from 10:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., that was like the greatest job ever. My life all around at the time wasn't all fun and games, but it sucks to think about how much better my life was at that time compared to now. My mind was spiraling downward that day, but then I heard a Slipknot song coming out of the "Inbound" department, which got me to thinking about something a friend on Facebook posted that very day about Slipknot, as to whether they were actually "heavy" or not. Distraction is nice sometimes.

Loudness War thoughts, 2016 edition

It's been almost five years since I posted my first entry about the Loudness Wars. It's still one of my most popular posts. I've gained a lot of knowledge since then, and wanted to address some things from that first post, as well as add some new thoughts.

• One thing about my early Loudness War-related posts that probably makes people groan is my use of wave forms. I try not to over-rely on them these days, using my ears to ultimately decide which recording or mastering I like better. In my defense, most of the wave forms I posted early on actually demonstrated where I thought one mastering was overwhelmingly superior to another, except maybe in the case of Fear Factory's "Zero Signal", which I'll talk more about later.
• I'm not even sure if I buy into the notion that old analog compressors sound better than digital compressors/limiters. I think a lot of old compressed records sound plenty crappy. My ears are honestly not well enough trained to notice if older compression sounds "warmer" or whatever than newer compression.
• I've debated for a while if "clipping" should officially be considered a part of the Loudness War, since it complicates things for people who are trying to learn about it, sort of like how Super 35 made explaining film aspect ratios to the uninitiated more complicated. In this case, by "clipping" I mean pushing the music over the 0 dBFS threshold, or if you're looking at Dynamic Range Database results, it peaks over. What complicates matters is that you can have good dynamic range music that clips, and severely brickwalled music that doesn't. While clipping isn't always a factor in dynamic range, I have decided that it does have its place in the Loudness War.
• I finally bought Oasis's "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?", namely the original mastering. What's funny to me about that CD is that while it is horribly compressed and definitely the worst mastering of its time, it's not technically loud, since the highest peak is -2.16. It turns out that this only applies to the U.S. version of the CD, it's maxed out in the rest of the world. You can read about the recording and mastering of "Definitely Maybe" and "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" here, and there's a little info about the mastering and remastering here. Thpse Oasis albums are a prime example of how the Loudness War is as much about overuse of compression in the recording or mixing stages as it is in the mastering stage. Although the remasters are still loud, they're supposed to sound better than the original CDs.
• I had mentioned that Fear Factory's "Demanufacture" album was really brickwalled for a 1995 release. Not only is it brickwalled, it also clips. However, it's nowhere near as badly compressed as the Oasis albums mentioned above, nor as bad as Red Hot Chili Peppers' "One Hot Minute". As for the comparisons between the "Demanufacture" and "Mortal Kombat" versions of "Zero Signal", I do like the sound of the "Demanufacture" version better. I don't know what the source of the "Mortal Kombat" version was, so I don't know if it was compressed from a far more dynamic version, or if it was sourced from the George Marino "Demanufacture" mastering and maybe compressed further. The "Mortal Kombat" soundtrack overall has a decent amount of dynamic range. I have to give "Mortal Kombat" mastering engineer Kevin Hodge credit for trying to balance out Metal songs with EDM songs, and not pushing it to 0 dBFS.

From "The Loudness War, continued":

• One reason for remastering is that analog-to-digital convertors have come a long way since the 1980s. I bought the remaster for Nine Inch Nails' "Pretty Hate Machine", and it's so smashed that I don't think any benefits from a new A/D conversion are audible. I got it because I figured it would be better for car listening than the original CD, but I don't think it is. The only thing that makes the remaster worth keeping is that "Sanctified" and "Something I Can Never Have" are more in line volume-wise with the rest of the album, which I think actually was Trent's intention, instead of having them significantly quieter due to the peaks. The downside is that now that those peaks have been chopped off, the effects on those songs aren't as cool.
• I bought the "Mastered for iTunes" remastering of Metallica's "Death Magnetic. While it's still more compressed than I'd like to see, it sounds significantly better than the original CD! In fact, it seems that quite a few iTunes and high res download versions of albums are better mastered than the CDs. Some have much better dynamic range. Earache Records even has Full Dynamic Range remasters of their classic albums on Bandcamp.com. Others, like Fitz and the Tantrums' "More Than Just A Dream", only have marginally better dynamic range. I still love physical product, but the occasionally better mastering combined with a finite living space does make downloading a more appetizing option.
• I was happy to discover an audiophile site for metalheads, Metal-Fi. Check it out!

Now for some newer thoughts.

• Daft Punk won the Loudness War with their "Random Access Memories" album. It proved that you can have a hit album, hit song, and win awards, without having to smash every track to oblivion. One thing that's generally not mentioned is that it also shows that dynamic records actually make it more possible to make songs that are really, REALLY loud (see "Contact"). However, like the Lord of the Rings-inspired meme says, "One does not simply end the Loudness War." While there seems to be more reasonably dynamic albums coming out, there are still too many artists putting out super-squashed music.
• And while there are still entirely too many super-Squashed Metal albums coming out, Metal seems to be taking baby steps towards more dynamic sound. The latest albums from Lamb of God, Slayer, and Anthrax all come in at DR6, with only one song from the Slayer album coming in at DR5. There's a band I saw last year called Night Demon whose 2015 album, "Curse of the Damned", comes in at DR7. Their eponymous titled debut EP rates a DR10! I recommend Night Demon if you like old New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Diamond Head or Saxon. And the new Iron Maiden album rates at DR8. For further reading, check out the Angry Metal-Fi's (crosspost of Metal-Fi and Angry Metal Guy) Best and Worst Sounding Records of 2015.

SHOUT!

(Update, April 28, 2016: This entry was the result of having a lot that I wanted to write about when I got out of bed, and then losing inspiration due to my roommate talking to me for about an hour until she finally went to bed, so I basically did a punk rock version of what I wanted to say.)

I hate when my dad is right.

I tried being positive, thinking I could make things work. But again, I was wrong.

I hate when trying to do the right thing becomes just another in a long line of "poor life choices".

I get the impression sometimes from pro-life idiots and/or "bootstraps" types that they secretly wish that some of us had been aborted.

I hate that god damned term, "poor life choices". Fuck that shit, "Trickle down" economics must die.

I've been thinking of either getting a weekend job, or going to school, again. I'm not sure what the hell I'd do for a second job, but preferably something that's introvert friendly and doesn't involve driving. (Uh, yeah, good luck with that.)

And as if I didn't have enough on my plate, I found out that someone used my identity to file their taxes. I may get my refund, but it will be sooner rather than later.

If I were a religious person, I'd be praying for an extinction level event to wipe us all out.

A Tale of Two Cities, Part 1: Rock Radio History

Or, Radio Tales, Part 2.

I'm finally continuing a series I had tried to start five years ago, basically me bitching about radio, which for some reason is one of my favorite past times. This one is about how different the two places I've lived, Austin, TX, and the area surrounding Louisville, KY are, and about how a good number of people view Alternative Rock. I'd recommend you read this old blog entry before going any further with this one. And keep in mind, my family didn't have full time access to MTV for all of the 1980s and most of the 1990s.

I guess I should start with a brief history of Rock radio in Louisville from 1988 to 1998. In August of 1988, I started 6th grade, and my transformation into a music nerd was just beginning. By the end of 1988, there were two Rock stations in Louisville that I knew of, 96 WQMF, and LRS "The New Rock 102". WQMF had an emphasis on Classic Rock, while WLRS seemed to have more of an emphasis on what would be known later as "Hair Bands". At first, I split my time in between the two, but later I developed more of an interest in Classic Rock, and grew tired of the saturation of Hair Bands on LRS, so by 1990 I leaned heavily towards QMF. LRS supposedly played cool bands like Jane's Addiction or Concrete Blond, but I was so sick of the current crop of "I gotta stick my thang in you" music that I couldn't listen to it long enough to hear the good stuff. At the very beginning of 1991, 102.3 changed from LRS into an Adult Contemporary station, "Mix 102.3", leaving QMF as the last Rock station standing. In October 1992, QMF made the bone headed move to do a "Classic Rocktober" gimmick where all they played was Classic Rock. By this point, I had gotten burned out on Classic Rock. The only upside to this gimmick was that they mixed in some Talking Heads, Squeeze, and The Clash along with all the usual tired crap. Instead of going back to a mixed AOR format in November, they made the even more bone headed move of officially becoming a Classic Rock station. So basically, if you wanted to hear any new Rock in the Louisville area and didn't have access to MTV, you had to listen to 99.7 WDJX, the CHR (Contemporary Hits Radio) station. QMF slowly started integrating some new Rock in April or May of 1993. That June, a new Rock station popped up, 100.5 The Fox. To my disappointment, it was more AOR than Alternative. To put it one way, I think it was The Courier Journal's Jeffery Lee Puckett who expressed his disappointment with, "They played Pat Travers within the first fifteen minutes." But The Fox gave QMF the kick in the pants it needed to get with the times. QMF was the first station I heard play Stone Temple Pilots, so to me, they automatically won the war. They were also the first station I heard play Porno For Pyros and Smashing Pumpkins*. Later in the Summer, The Fox started up a couple of hour long niche shows, The Metal Pit and Detour. Detour was an Alternative show, while The Metal Pit was, obviously, a Metal show. QMF had had an Alternative show at some point that year, but I wasn't real impressed with it.

In September 1993, I heard a promo on QMF telling us to check out 105.9, which I did, but not until I finished listening to David Bowie's "Suffragette City" on QMF. I then flipped it over to 105.9, and I think the first song I heard was a Boston song. Not long after that though, I heard something that totally made me lose my shit... "Head Like A Hole" by Nine Inch Nails! Better yet, I later heard "Sex On Wheels" by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. This new station was known as Q-Too. It started out with some Alternative, some Metal (old hair bands, but also heavier Metal that I dug like Anthrax, Sepultura, and Fight), and Classic Rock. It took a while, but they eventually phased out all the Classic Rock and a lot of the Metal, and you were mostly left with new and classic Alternative. Around the end of 1995/beginning of 1996, they changed the name to WXNU. New name, same format.

Later on in 1996, the Telecoms Act happened. The owner of QMF and XNU sold the stations. I can't remember who bought 105.9, but in September it switched to something that was like a prototype of what is now known as "Hot AC". It was like a mix of the more MOR (middle of the road) side of what Q-TOO/WXNU had been playing, along with newer stuff from John Mellencamp and Eric Clapton, and some occasional Soft Rock. I still had QMF, which made things somewhat less harsh for the remainder of 1996. But Clear Channel bought QMF, and at the beginning of 1997 it was Classic Rock. So if you wanted new Rock, you were stuck with the Butt Rock of The Fox, and if you wanted to hear Alternative, you had to listen to their Detour show.

On Memorial Day week of 1997, 102.3 changed its call letters back to WLRS, and became something of an Alternative station. Unlike 105.9 though, which started out kind of iffy but improved over time, this new LRS started out good, then got worse over time. At first, you could hear some occasional female voices, and some occasional electronic oriented stuff like Sneaker Pimps or new Depeche Mode. I noticed later that the oldest song they played was "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction, and the station had devolved to mostly White Guy Guitar Rock. As of 1997/1998, this could've meant a mix of Matchbox 20, Dave Matthews Band, Alice In Chains, and "Cryptic Writings"-era Megadeth, which was sadly more diverse than what LRS would become years later. But either way, this didn't bode well for Alt Rock in Louisville. It's a good thing that my family got DirectTV in the summer of 1998, where I got to discover new music via MTV2, making that summer suck slightly less hard than it could have.

I should mention before I go any further that I tried listening to 91.9 WFPK a few times, but it seemed like every time I turned it over to them, they were playing some acoustic folksy singer-songwriter/Americana stuff that was not to my liking. I realized in the post-Austin era that if I stuck around, I'd hear plenty of stuff to like. I did end up listening a lot to an R&B Oldies station on 94.7.