I've Never Heard That- March
Well, well, well. Looks like I’ve defied expectations and wrote another post. No one is more surprised than me. As it turns out, writing a book is hard and apparently the hard work doesn’t end just because the book does. There’s the writing, the editing, the more editing, the more editing, the one more edit just for good measure, and then, if you’re a sucker like me, you decide to do your own index. A sucker! A rube! A chump! Also, because you still need to keep the lights on, there’s still non-book work to do. Working is the real sucker’s bet.
Anyway. I’m taking a break from all of that to catalog March’s listens. For the most part, I’ve been keeping up with this little project of mine, and still having a good time with it. I did get a little behind, but who cares. I’m not doing this for work, I’m doing this for love of music, so I get to work on my own time.
March was, by all accounts, a pretty good month for music. It was also Women’s History Month, so I mostly picked women, which was very easy. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s hard to find women in any genre. They are lying to you. Although my choices weren’t 100% women, I think being conscious of not just fulfilling the brief, but of how I was doing that, made me pick more interesting choices than I would have otherwise. The way we choose everything, even the art we enjoy, is rooted in something. So without taking all of the fun out of it, I’m learning to expand my choices a bit more, and it’s not that hard. Sometimes it meant listening to stuff I didn’t enjoy, but that would have happened anyway. That’s the deal.
March Picks
Pop 2017 Lust for Life, Lana Del Ray
Soul/R&B 1998 Self titled, N'Dea Davenport
Your Choice 1997 Más Alejandro Sanz, The Velvet Rope Janet Jackson (Note: I couldn’t decide between these two, so I listened to them both. How had I never heard Velvet Rope?!? Also adding “Your Choice” to the list was a good choice)
Top 20 2000 Self titled, Lucy Pearl, When the Pawn…Fiona Apple (Again, I couldn’t decide and I’m glad I couldn’t because both of these were great)
Blues 1964 No More In Life, Mildred Anderson (The longer this goes on, the more I’m realizing that I don’t like all kinds of music. I already knew that, but now I know it deeply. Whenever blues comes up, I groan. The earlier the date, the less the groan, but it’s not really my favorite. Mildred, however, is a QUEEN)
Easy Listening 1975 Horizon, The Carpenters
Reggae 1964 More Millie, Millie
Rock 2019 Jamie, Brittany Howard
Free Jazz 1961 This Is Our Music, The Ornette Coleman Quartet
Hip-Hop 2010 Leftback LP, Little Brother
Hard Rock/Heavy Metal 2018 Darker Ages, Lovelorn Dolls (Did not finish. Good luck to them on all of their future endeavors)
Soul/R&B 1968 One Life, Alice McClarity (if anyone tries to tell you that we don’t need physical media anymore because “simply every-thing is on spotify,” call them a liar.)
Country 2016 Hero, Maren Morris
Electronic 1971 Short Circuits, Ruth White
Classical 1959 A Hymn to God the Father, Elizabeth Maconchy
Your Choice 1973 Pressure Cookin', Labelle
Folk 1980 Forgotten Dreams, Priscilla Herdman (From my notes: “Oh no.” “Track 2: oh. no.” “Most of it: Oh? No!” But “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You” was pretty good, and I have listened to it several time since.)
Soul/R&B 1993 Plantation Lullabies, Me'Shell NdegéOcello (I love how 90s this album is! But wow didn’t she come a long way!)
March 19-21: We rested.
Gospel 1998 Self-titled, Trin-i-tee 5:7 (They love God, but they also love fucking. The tension is very clear, which makes this not that fun to listen to? Unless you were deeply repressed in 1998, you just want to put on a regular, secular R&B album instead. All fucking, no preaching. Plus R. Kelly wrote one of the songs. Yuck.)
Hard Rock/Heavy Metal 1996 Gato Negro, 7 Year Bitch
Soul/R&B 1959 Party Time, Julia Lee (a whole album full of 50s-style filth!)
Big Band 1992 Am I Not Your Girl?, Sinead O’Connor
Your choice 2024 Polaroid Lovers, Sarah Jarosz
Honorable Mention Feeling the Space, Yoko Ono (There are so many albums to pick from, that we’ve kept a list of the ones we almost picked. This is the Honorable Mention list. They have gotten so full, that we added it as a category)
Easy Listening 1965 The Astrud Gilberto Album, Astrud Gilberto
Free Jazz 1996 Irene Schweizer & Andrew Cyrille (Note: No)
Your Choice 2011 What Were You Hoping For?, Van Hunt
Hard Rock/Heavy Metal 1973 Electric Jewels, April Wine (I listened to this, and I swear I couldn’t tell you a thing about it)
Pick of the Month: Hmm. This one is tough. This was a pretty good month, but I guess Jamie by Brittany Howard
Biggest Surprise: “Am I Not Your Girl” Sinead O’Connor and “Space” Maren Morris. Not a particular song, but listening to Julia Lee surprised me in the sense that people were just as dirty-minded then as now. They were just a bit more clever about it, see: “I Didn’t Like it the First Time” by Ms. Lee for a good example. It’s about spinach. Wink, wink.