What I listened to this year Tuesday, Dec 29 2009 

At one point in my life, I probably thought I was pretty crash-hot when it came to music. I thought that I knew a lot about music, that I was passionate about music, that my extensive (and let’s face it, pretty wasteful) music collection was some kind of sign that I Knew What I Was Talking About. Somewhere between then and now two things occurred to me; the first, that I should probably stop taking myself so seriously, and two, that perhaps my recurring gravitation towards pop of the trashy kind was a sign that maybe my music taste wasn’t as awesome as I thought it was.

That said, I still do love music a lot. The only thing that’s changed is that now I don’t play bizarre justification games with myself to explain why I might kind of enjoy Britney Spears’ 3 sometimes.

This is all really just a leadup to a list of my favourite songs of the past year. I was going to write artsy fartsy, Pitchfork-esque summaries but halfway through the second one I realised that it contradicted the whole anti-pretentious theme of my intro. Also I really can’t be bothered.

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Concerning excessive spending Saturday, Oct 31 2009 

I have a problem.

It’s no secret that, contrary to what many in my age bracket would do, I purchase music CDs. That in itself, however, is not the problem.

The problem is that I think I have become addicted to buying CDs, obsessive-compulsively buying albums just because they are on sale, or on my “to-buy” list, or because I am collecting all of a certain artist, or because JB Hi-Fi’s slapped a sticker reading “Buy Me Now!” on the front, and really, who can resist a fluorescent pink sticker? This problem is further compounded by the fact that I am completely financially dependent on my family, and use much of their money to fund my addiction, savings be damned.

I think the worst part is that it is getting to the point where I have too much music, so much music that I am finding it hard to keep up with myself. Out of every five CDs, maybe two or three will really manage to strike a chord with me, and even then I only really have a week or two to let it sink in before something new comes out and my attention is diverted and I have more dead space in my room.

Admittedly, the situation is not as bad as when I was in high school and would buy CDs for no reason at all other than to buy and consequently ended up with a collection that was half stuff too crap even for my admittedly lax standards. Nevertheless, something must be done.

And that something is this.

I have three CDs in the mail that haven’t got here yet. Plus I was planning to buy something with a gift card sometime in late-November. These are factors that either cannot be changed, or do not adversely affect the status of my bank account.

Thus, I declare here, at 2.35am on October 31st, 2009, that I, Timothy Sun, will endevour to restrict my CD buying as of December 2009. I will buy only two (2) discs worth of music every month, whether that be an album or a compilation or one of those fancy little EPs they only ever seem to market in South Korea. This is a promise to myself, and one that I am forcing myself to keep.

Hopefully by doing this I can save money, and also improve the quality of my purchases, since I’ll have to carefully plan out what to buy and make sure that what I’m buying is actually good. And if I break this pact, I’ll find some way to punish myself. Probably make myself take my CD collection to the second-hand shop and sell off half of it again. Or something.

And finally, in case I have not repeated it enough times on this blog; I really need a job. Like whoa.

Tired Tuesday, Oct 20 2009 

Just to provide closure to the whole Vampire Weekend saga; the whole story is too long and uninteresting for me to be bothered typing it all out to an invisible audience so I’ll just sum it up by saying that their PR team or whoever is booking their gigs have no idea how to do their job and that fan clubs should not be allowed for any musical single-sex group that do not sing, dance, wear co-ordinated costumes and appeal to a core fan base of twelve year old girls, or Asians. That is all.

Also I have an assignment due in three days I haven’t started, or properly researched. Nor do I have any idea on how I will approach said assignment. Like usual, it will probably come to me while I sit on the toilet sometime in the future. This is neither surprising, nor particularly new.

Also in recent times my last.fm has been reading as if I’ve been taking music recommendations from Stuff White People Like. On one hand I am secretly pleased that I have somehow managed to build up “indie cred” or something like that, no matter how tenuous (read; bullshit) such a term might be. On the other hand, I have spent an awful lot of money building up the 1/4 of my CD collection that is made up of trashy pop music (both English and otherwise) and I don’t really want it to go to waste. I feel conflicted.

Tickets Saturday, Oct 10 2009 

I’m already going to see Kate Miller-Heidke the day before, and it’s not like I even have the money, but Vampire Weekend are playing in Sydney next month and I am pumped like crazy to go see them. I don’t care that they’re hipster bait in argyle jumpers singing about grammar, or that sometimes they are so hipster that even hipsters hate them; they’re fun and catchy and probably one of my favourite new (newish?) bands floating around at the moment.

Except now I’m kind of worrying that I won’t get tickets. That’d really suck, you know, espescially since I have two other people relying on me to buy tickets and if I fail, well that’d be three pretty disappointed kids.

Anyway, Vampire Weekend’s new album in January! Yay! EXCITING.

Excitement Saturday, Jun 13 2009 

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Okay, this is late by like three days, but I thought what the hell, I have the picture lying around and I feel like retelling the same anecdote I’ve told people over and over again to a bunch of other people.

Went to go see Lily Allen at the Hordern Pavillion on Wednesday. It was really fun; I didn’t really think it would as exciting as it was, but when the first notes of Everyone’s At It played while Lily danced behind a giant curtain a mere five metres away from me, it was pretty hard not to get carried away by the hype.

I thought I’d probably be the only guy there because hey, it’s Lily Allen; half her songs are about guys who are assholes, but I was surprised to see the guy / girl ratio was about one to three.

There were bogans too. They left during the break and came back with alcohol, trying to push to the front.

A smelly and large lady stood in front of me trying to film the whole thing on her digital camera.

After Not Fair, Lily told all the ladies to tell their boyfriends, to which I responded with “duly noted”. It was drowned out by the crowds, but fat lady heard. She sent me a dirty.

So all in all, it was a pretty good experience. Personally, I’m just surprised I was able to stand up for that long.

Extravagance Sunday, Mar 29 2009 

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Because I was bored today, I pulled out all my Asian CDs and took a picture.

There’s eighty-seven CDs there.

Oh dear. All of a sudden I feel like the wasted money is staring me in the face.

I wonder how much the total would be including English ones?