The Musical Baton Continues
Published 18 May 05 by Justin French
My particular baton was passed to me by Matthew Magain via Opinios, and I must say, his reasoning gave me a bit of a laugh:
Justin French – Textdrive’s man in Melbourne. Singled out because I need to know what music one listens to when having the balls to sign up for employment by a (albeit well-respected) startup company on the other side of the world run by people you’ve never met
Well, yes, uhhhm, it did take some courage, but if you knew the guys like I do, knew where they’re headed, and had been given the same opportunity, you’d take it on as well. We all have to invest in something we can believe in.
So, moving on to the task at hand…
Total volume of music files on my computer?
23.21GB (That’s 4185 songs, 402 albums, 186 artists and over 12 days of music in total, according to iTunes).
If you want to count my ProTools sessions for my new band, previous bands, sampler and sample library, it’s probably closer to 200GB.
The last CD I bought was?
The New Normal by an amazing Australian band from Bondi called Cog.
Song playing right now?
Girl by yet another talented Australian band .hinge.
Five songs I listen to a lot/mean a lot to me?
Man, that’s tough! My most played list in iTunes is way off because I have a habit of leaving iTunes playing on shuffle for hours on end, with the speakers muted, so I’m going to make an attempt at a “High Fidelity”-style all time top five songs.
In no particular order…
Angel by Massive Attack (from Mezzanine)
Kate (my better half) and I were listening to my Massive Attack playlist the other day, and decided that it was going to be the soundtrack for our wedding.
I Know by Helmet (from Betty)
It’s tough to pick just one Helmet song, but the rhythmic, layered guitars, complex grooves and spot on drumming heavily influenced me as a drummer and songwriter.
Pollen by Pre_ShrunK (from Sub Chakra)
Again, it’s tough to pick one song, but I walked into The Espy back in about 1997 and heard this song created by just two bass players and a drummer.
I saw well over 100 gigs in the following few years, made great friends with the band, toured with them a little and designed a few of their CD covers & posters.
Most importantly, I met most of my closest friends at Pre_ShrunK shows, and yes, I even met Kate through a mutual friend (who was also a fan). To say Pre_ShrunK changed my life would be pretty accurate. Sadly they’re taking a break for a while.
Forty Six & 2 by Tool (from Ænima)
Yet again, really tough to pick one song, but Forty Six & 2 has all the best elements of Ænima, including a drum solo!
Gorecki by Lamb (from Lamb)
If you know the song, you know exactly what I mean. No more needs to be said here.
Sidenote – That was incredibly hard to nail it down to just 5… I could go all day. I don’t really listen to any of these songs all that often, but they’re a really important part of who I am.
I’m passing on the baton to…
I think I’ll try and keep it in the Rails family (which as it turns out, is also a bit of a TextDrive family):
Hopefully this will inspire Marten to put his site back together, and help me say “G’day” to people I’ve never “met” like Dan and But She’s a Girl.
And the replies…
- Marten managed to get his blog back in working order and pass it on
- Dan’s chimed in with Regarding the (so-called) musical baton
- But She’s a Girl mentioned a whole bunch of music and people I’ve never heard of, which is always good