QUARTERLY-ISH REPORT 1Q 2011

He's human, I'm human, you human.

So usually I try to limit my quarterly reports to albums and tracks that technically came out in the previous three months. But I always post these things waaay late. And release dates matter less than ever. So please consider this a provisional "best of 2011 list"-- with huge omissions, I'm sure-- dated as of... now?

I'M STANDING ALIVE AND I WAS SINGIN'

They're just photos, after all. 

Earlier this month Nick Southall, who wrote for sadly defunct webzine Stylus, unveiled The Music Diary Project. The project's worthy goal is "to document, over the course of one week, how we listen to music: when we listen, where we listen, who we’re with when we listen, and how we choose what we listen to." This week a whole bunch of smart people I follow on Tumblr have been participating, dutifully posting listening logs and sharing their experiences. It's a great idea, and while I'm far too neurotic to take part, it's been a lot of fun seeing not only what people are listening to, but how they listen.

On Day Two of the project, Australian writer Jonathan Bradley posted some observations I found myself copying and pasting into my own media-consumption diary of sorts-- this weird little blog. Most of Bradley's music listening is solitary, he says. He writes that "I just don't give a fuck if I can't share music with other people, because usually I don't. I listen to a ton of stuff, and most of it I know of no other person who shares my liking for the music, just because I have my taste and other people have theirs and the two don’t need to meet for us to be friends... The music I listen to is for me, and it doesn’t worry me if I’m not sharing it."

These comments started me thinking. How much of my listening is solitary in the same way? How much is driven by this mad urge to share, share, share?

SOMETHING LIKE A NEO-RAP ZACK ATTACK

A hustler is a female version of a hustler.

Last night at a sold-out Yacht Club in Iowa City, Das Racist hype man Ashok Kondabolu, aka Dap, surfed the crowd with his face just inches beneath a sweaty ceiling you could reach with your hand. When the audience coordinated an "encore!" chant, San Francisco native Victor Vazquez, aka Kool A.D., hopped back up on stage. Did Queens-born Himanshu Suri, aka Heems, join him to do "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell," the hilariously on-point Yum Brands farce that first had mp3-downloaders chuckling their pescado breath, shaking their pizza butts ("No, that's where I'm at-- where you at?")? Heck no. Somebody put on M.I.A.'s New Year's Eve mixtape, Vicki Leekx, and one last dance party broke out, with Vazquez in the middle. There was a huge cheer. I went to a place called Pizza on Dubuque and bought more slices than I could eat.