Quarter Life Crisis

Music Questionnaire¶

1153 words on Music

Coming from over at Dave’s, another superfluous questionnaire. But it’s about music…

1. Of all the bands/artists in your cd/record collection, which one do you own the most albums by? Led Zeppelin. My first vinyl was Led Zeppelin I and I took it from there…
2. What was the last song you listened to?
3. What’s in your record/cd player right now? Record Player: Saturday Looks Good to Me’s All Our Summer Songs, CD Player: Babyshambles’ Down in Albion, Kitchen CD player: The Greenhornes’ Sewed Soles iTunes: The Strokes’ Juicebox, iPod: Meanwhile Back in Communist Russia’s Morning After Pill in the insane global shuffling mode.
4. What song would you say sums you up? My first bet would by Where is my mind? Otherwise I’d refer you to the ★★★★ playlist.
5. What’s your favorite local band? I don’t have any. In fact I hardly know any.
6. What was the last show you attended? Mardi Gras BB in Göttingen.
7. What was the greatest show you’ve ever been to? Seeing Arcade Fire this summer is a strong candidate. But was only a short gig at a festival, so it might not count and I could let this honour go to the Moldy Peaches when I saw them in 2002 (one of the wierdest shows I’ve seen), or to The White Stripes in 2002 (up close and personal just a metre of so from them) or to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in 2002 (the most exhausting gig I’ve been to) – all of which played in the Logo club in Hamburg.
8. What’s the worst band you’ve ever seen in concert? My long-term memory could be blissfully forgetful on this, so I’ll settle for the support band Räuberhöhle which I saw last winter and which was atrociously bad.
9. What band do you love musically but hate the members of? Puh! I’ve never really given too much thought on that. How could I hate band members? I don’t even know them.
10. What show are you looking forward to? The only one that’s on my calendar right now: Seeing Wir sind Helden in Hannover on Monday. But I’m sceptical about that. I’m not a huge fan of their new record and it’ll take place in a huge venue. But I’ll go there anyway with a surprisingly large number of friends.
11. What is your favorite band shirt? My old Moldy Peaches shirt. It’s a pale-ish yellow with a red drawing on it and stating that a great European tour deserves another…
12. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day? Uh, tough one. Depends on the reason for hanging out, I’d say. You could hang out with, hm, Wir Sind Helden’s Judith or with Emiliana Torrini because they’re hot and clever. Or with people like Patrick Wolf or Adam Green because they’re cool and be interesting to meet. Or with the smaller cool bands from Das Pop to The Thermals because they seem to be cool. I guess the main problem is that actually meeting them may reveal that they’re just not as cool or interesting as I would have thought – just as I tend to find that band interviews make them look worse than I imagined them. So I might just settle for the very first option.
13. What musician would you like to be in love with for a day? I’ll just settle for the very first option from above…
14. Metal question – Jeans and Leather vs. Cracker Jack clothes? I’m not into metal and I don’t even know what that ‘Cracker Jack’ style refers to…
15. Sabbath or solo Ozzy? Sabbath.
16. Commodores or solo Lionel Ritchie? Don’t know any of their music. Commodores then, for the cooler name.
17. Punk rock, hip hop or heavy metal? Punk rock.
18. Doesn’t Primus suck? Probably. Don’t know them.
19. Name 4 flawless albums: The Strokes’ Is this it – probably the pop album I’ve heard the most times front to back of all the albums I have. After that it starts being difficult. In terms of what flawless means. Just without flaws or brilliant throughout? And in terms of priorities. Perhaps Max Richter’s Blue Notebooks have less flaws than The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells. But the latter do so at a higher level, which one should I choose? Or what about Tocotronic’s Digital ist Besser? Flawed? For sure… but that’s part of the brilliance. Handily I have listed four albums now. And I’m not doing justice to the many other worthy candidates from Led Zeppelin to The Libertines, from Janis Joplin to Franz Ferdinand, from Glenn Gould to The Postal Service, from Pulp to Sigur Rós.
20. Did you know that filling out this survey makes you a music geek? Tell me something I didn’t know.
21. What was the greatest decade for music? Tricky one! To begin with let me suggest that decades can start at any year. Then I’ll probably go for 1965-1975 or so. But it’s tempting to also suggest 1993-2003.
22. How many music-related videos/dvds do you own? A few. A Mogwai promo DVD, Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555, A Richter DVD, the DVD in Tocotronic’s anniversary collection, a Radiohead video, and various recordings from TV, including a variety of Glenn Gould shows, some Pixies documentary and the great Rockpalast coverage of this year’s Haldern festival (thanks Martin!)
23. Do you like Journey? Don’t know them? it?
24. Don’t try to pretend you don’t! Yes, sir!
25. What is your favorite movie soundtrack? In a way I feel indebted to Tarantino here. Pulp Fiction’s soundtrack was the first one I consciously wanted to hear again. And it remains a good record. As does the Jackie Brown soundtrack. But the Kill Bill one probably is my favourite one. Other people than Tarantino do worthwhile sountracks as well but I’m not sure those last as well. I liked the A Life Less Ordinary one back in the days and the Garden State one this year, but I fear it may age noticably.
26. What was your last musical “phase” before you wisened up? Huh?
27. What’s the crappiest CD/record/etc. you’ve ever bought? Down in the outright atrocious aisle I have a 5-CD set of rock and pop songs played by classical orchestras. It was cheap and I thought it was a cool thing to do at the time. But apart from ten seconds or so it’s horrible.
28. Do you prefer vinyl or CDs? Vinyl. Except when I’m moving. And, yup, it doesn’t make sense. But I do like the nice big cover art, touching the records, and the cheaper price. If luck has it, I might be able to afford the record player one day. That said, I don’t mind buying CDs either and due to their digital nature, my iPod, and the fact that my CD player is quite a good one, it makes a lot of sense.

If you feel like it, knock yourself out and answer those questions as well.

December 4, 2005, 0:01

Tagged as music.