Terça-feira 10 Nov 2009, 14h:11

My overall tracks chart has continued to be dominated by what I listened to the first year after I created this profile as this profile comes up for its third anniversary. You can get a vague idea how my tastes have changed by comparing the overall chart to my rolling six month or annual charts, but thanks to http://troublewithdreams.com/scrobbler/ I can see all three 'years' (give or take a few days) as separate charts! The trends really fascinate me as I can recall partly my reasoning for the orientations I had at the time. It turns out I was more influenced than my environment than I may have realised at the time. For example, toward the Summer of 2008 I was listening to a lot more thrash than at any other time - largely as a result of having shared a flat for a year with a group of peers who laughed mockingly at my prior power metal tastes.

For 'posterity', here's some excerpts of the annual snapshots:

Chart for grantrs's top tracks between 19/11/2006 and 04/11/2007

1. Rush - One Little Victory 41
2. Marty Friedman - Viper 37
3. Firewind - Tyranny 36
4. Racer X - Hammer Away 36
5. Racer X - Scarified 32
6. Helloween - Power 31
7. Judas Priest - Electric Eye 28
8. Firewind - Kill to Live 27
9. Coheed and Cambria - A Favor House Atlantic 26
10. Racer X - 17th Moon 25
11. Thin Lizzy - Waiting for an Alibi 25
12. Racer X - Into the Night 25
13. Freak Kitchen - Black Spider Flag 25
14. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble - Couldn't Stand The Weather 24
15. Firewind - Falling To Pieces 24
16. Coheed and Cambria - Welcome Home 24
17. Iron Maiden - Revelations 24
18. Racer X - Let the Spirit Fly 23
19. Dream Theater - Take the Time 23
20. Edguy - Fallen Angels 23
21. Coheed and Cambria - The Suffering 23
22. Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 23
23. Racer X - Dead Man's Shoes 23
24.Firewind - Ready To Strike 23
25. Racer X - Street Lethal 22
26. Firewind - The Fire and the Fury 22
27. Firewind - Allegiance 22
28. Iron Maiden - Die With Your Boots On 22
29. Iron Maiden - The Prisoner 22
30. Paul Gilbert - I'm Not Afraid of the Police 22

Chart for grantrs's top tracks between 04/11/2007 and 26/10/2008

1. Freak Kitchen - Blind 27
2. Devil's Slingshot - Nederland 26
3. Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet 26
4. Porcupine Tree - Anesthetize 24
5. Devil's Slingshot - Flamed 23
6. Coheed and Cambria - No World For Tomorrow 23
7. Anthrax - Room for One More 23
8. Overkill - Blood Money 23
9. Bruce Dickinson - Back from the Edge 23
10. Devil's Slingshot - Def Bitch Blues 23
11. Overkill - Infectious 22
12. Overkill - Coma 22
13. Overkill - Elimination 22
14. Soundgarden - Jesus Christ Pose 21
15. Faith No More - From Out of Nowhere 21
16. Paul Gilbert - Hurry Up 21
17. Freak Kitchen - Raw 20
18. Thin Lizzy - Massacre 20
19. Overkill - Thanx for Nothing 20
20. Anthrax - In My World 20
21. Overkill - Time to Kill 20
22. The Offspring - You're Gonna Go Far, Kid 19
23. Faith No More - Surprise! You're Dead! 19
24. Faith No More - Epic 19
25. Racer X - Into the Night 18
26. Overkill - Playing With Spiders/Skullkrusher 18
27. Overkill - Frankenstein 18
28. Paul Gilbert - Straight Through the Telephone Pole 18
29. Marty Friedman - 世界に一つだけの花 18
30. Anthrax - I Am the Law 18

Chart for grantrs's top tracks between 26/10/2008 and 25/10/2009

1. Derek Sherinian - Day of the Dead 24
2. Frameshift - I Killed You 23
3. Andy Timmons - Deliver Us 20
4. Planet X - The Thinking Stone 18
5. Marty Friedman - ポリリズム 18
6. Greg Howe - Morning View 18
7. StoneWall noise orchestra - Skyscraper Moment 17
8. Extreme - King Of The Ladies 17
9. Edguy - Speedhoven 17
10. Angel Witch - Angel Witch 17
11. Guthrie Govan - Fives 16
12. Sieges Even - Sequence II: The Lonely Views of Condors 16
13. King's X - Complain 16
14. Planet X - Desert Girl 16
15. Jaguar - Axe Crazy 16
16. Derek Sherinian - God of War 16
17. Extreme - Star 16
18. Greg Howe - Reunion 16
19. The Answer - Come Follow Me 16
20. Ark - Just a Little 16
21. Edguy - Dead or Rock 15
22. Gillan - Message in a Bottle 15
23. Edguy - The Pride Of Creation 15
24. Guthrie Govan - Waves 15
25. Guthrie Govan - Wonderful Slippery Thing 15
26. Planet X - Matrix Gate 15
27. Sieges Even - Sequence V: Blue Wide Open 15
28. Angra - Holy Land 15
29. Angra - Carolina IV 15
30. Greg Howe - Child's Play 15

No doubt if there's anyone at all reading this, they'll have noticed the decrease in playcount necessary to get in my annual top 30s almost immediately. I'm pretty sure the amount of music I've listened to has satyed more or less constant, so this is an interesting reflection of the expansion of my playlist and library.

The main things you can observe from the first group are that I had a higher tolerance for repeated listening at the end of 06 and throughout most of 07. You can also observe a small variety in artists as most artists that do appear do so around 5 times in a chart only thirty tracks long. …I remember being in the habit for a week or two of putting one of those top 5 or so on as soon as I arrived home. How I didn't get bored sooner, I don't know, but I was definitely in the habit of getting in, turning the PC on and immediately playing One Little Victory. It made me feel better about myself, somehow. Also I love the drumming in the intro section, and I suppose when this chart started counting I had only stopped taking drum lessons two months previously.

Perhaps it's more apparent if you use an end of December cut off for the years, but the second chart definitely has a much higher than usual thrash metal concentration, mostly Overkill (making a mighty 8 appearances), though Anthrax also featured (particularly in the December version of the chart). My favourite Soundgarden track makes a prominent appearance in this chart, possibly influenced by the fact it is a really tough sounding song that I felt confident I wouldn't be called wimpy for listening to and possibly also helped by the fact one of the other guys in the flat was a big grunge fan. Porcupine Tree make some appearances in that chart too, this partly because the chart's cut off point matches approximately with when I bought Fear of a Blank Planet as well as the fact I did see them live that December and, again, one of my flatmates was a fellow PT fan. Also a few instrumentals in there, probably again influenced by the desire to avoid having my flatmates overhear any power metal, haha. Freak Kitchen topped that chart largely because I finished collecting their discography by adding their debut to my collection around about the time of that cut off point.

Finally the third chart! By November last year I had been listening to music in a once again peer pressure free environment for a couple of months, so the incentive to listen to very heavy very angry music a little more often had waned somewhat… However, we have a rather different chart to the 06-07 one. There's a lot of instrumentals here, particularly Greg Howe and Guthrie Govan, two guitarists who have some noticable jazz fusion leanings. None of the bands with vocals appear more than twice. Extreme and Edguy both had albums out in 2007 that I bought in November, which explains partially their appearances. Angel Witch and Jaguar both sneak in a song each representing my newfound NWOBHM interest, but otherwise the trend, if there is one at all among the vocal groups seems to be toward softer music, if only be a slight degree. Sieges Even, King's X, The Answer, Extreme, Ark and Angra (particularly considering which two Angra songs and which Ark song appear) while not exactly the softest music ever are a lot less macho and posturing than Overkill who dominated the previous year's track chart. I still love Overkill, and I'm not trying to take anything away from them, but their music is a lot more aggressive than those who featured in the third chart here, and it's notable also that Anthrax didn't appear either. Having said that, Derek Sherinian's Day of the Dead has a Wylde-ly heavy selection of riffs in its metal sections. I do predict an even softer year next year though. (What you can't see because for some reason I'm cutting these off at thirty is that the next ten or fifteen on the third chart are dominated by Sieges Even with some The New Tony Williams Lifetime and a track each from IQ and Jethro Tull.)