That's a wrap, friends. 166 entries covering 170 albums (4 of the entries cover multiple records) in 330 days, with a total of 117,238 words (including this postscript)--enough for a 350-page book.
What did I learn? Honestly, my biggest takeaway was proving to myself that I could actually follow through on something like this. I've never undertaken a writing project with such frequent & regular deadlines before. I basically devoted an entire year to this, publishing a writeup every other day, without fail. I never missed a day or took 1 off, even when I got married! There is 1, & only 1, album I did not have time to listen to & so I wrote about it from memory. Luckily I had given that album a full, mindful listen within the last 2 years. No, I'm not going to tell you what album it was. See if you can guess!
The original idea was to listen to the CDs with as few distractions as possible. The idea was that I wanted to cultivate the kind of attention span I had when I first listened to them. I pretty quickly recognized that a lot of that was nostalgia goggles; I really didn't spend that much time back in the day listening with my eyes closed in unbroken attention. Same as today, I listened to a lot of music while driving, playing video games, etc. So over the course of this project, I became a bit looser with that rule. While I still forbade myself from reading anything except the album's liner notes (not looking at my phone was a constant challenge) I found myself gravitating toward simple video games undemanding on the intellect. I have always found that that sort of thing actually helps me to listen more deeply.
This project served as a reminder of how very few female artists I listened to in my youth. Of the 166 CDs I wrote about in this series, only 5 are by solo female performers (MC Lyte, Gwen Stefani (x2), Queen Latifah, & Erykah Badu). This is a pretty rotten ratio & if an adolescent today told me that his music was 97% by men, I would tell him that he had a pretty major blind spot & he should diversify his listening. I have certainly done so since then, but that will never change the fact that the music that was foundational for me, & the artists (& writers, & filmmakers) whom I developed those important early parasocial relationships with, were overwhelmingly male. Research has shown that a media diet with diverse voices--even fictional characters--can have the same effect on empathy & tolerance as a diverse group of friends. Please remember this with respect to the children in your life.
Now for the stats:
Most frequent artist: Bob Dylan (17) & KRS-One (13)
Oldest album: John Fahey - The Legend of Blind Joe Death (partly from 1959)
Newest album: Ice Cube - Raw Footage (August 2008)
Longest entry: Kris Kristofferson - The Essential Kris Kristofferson (1343 words)
Shortest entry: Heavy D. & the Boyz - Big Tyme (366 words)
Now for the Optical Files Awards!
Best CD overall: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life
Most welcome rediscovery: Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun
CD I'll probably never play again: Definitive Jux Presents: The Juk(i)ebox
Best packaging: Radiohead - Kid A
Best live album: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Live at the Fillmore East
Best compilation: Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
Most unnecessary compilation: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits
Why the fuck did I spend money on this: Haystak - Crackavelli
Thanks for coming with me on this journey & I'll see you the next time I decide to do something dumb like this.
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