The Great CD Project of 2012

I'm about to leave for work so this is a really quick post that I will expand on later. I've decided for 2012 to listen to each and every CD I own before the end of the year. Most of this will take place in my car, because that's really the only CD player I still use often. And I'm always getting bored with the radio in the car.

I will blog about the music, to help me remember why I got the album in the first place, or just to review an artist that we have maybe forgotten about over the years.

This first week of the New Year I started out with the following:

Otis Redding - Greatest Hits
VHS or Beta - Bring on the Comets
Bishop Allen - February
The Shins - Oh Inverted World

Will come back later and write more details about these albums. Yippee for new projects and a new year!

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Ok, very quickly, because now it's past my bedtime, a few notes about this week's music:

1. Otis Redding - Greatest Hits
What's not to love about Otis? He's a classic. There isn't a lovelier, more bittersweet tune than "These Arms of Mine," and "Try a Little Tenderness" is one of my all-time favorite feel-good songs.








2. VHS or Beta - Bring on the Comets
This album reminds me of when I first began writing music articles for the Jackson Free Press . BOTC was one of the first albums I was given to review. I had not heard of the group before, but I was pleasantly surprised. The music still holds up pretty well and is fun for driving.







3. Bishop Allen - February
I can actually say that I got into Bishop Allen before anybody else really knew about them. In the very early 2000s, when I still lived in Memphis, I somehow began corresponding with Christian Rudder, who is one of the founding members of the band. I think it had something to do with his website (now defunct) thespark.com and the fact that he was originally from Arkansas. Anyway, he used to let me know when the group was traveling south, and then they got all fancypants and had their music featured in films like Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and that "Chuck" show on NBC, and that was the end of that. I still really love their music and I don't think they are capable of writing a song that isn't catchy. "February" is an EP from 2006, when they made an EP for each month of the year. I meant to get all of them, but only have January - March, I think.

Also, Bishop Allen got their name from a street in Cambridge. Christian and Justin Rice, the other founding member of the band, met at Harvard and lived on this street. Furthering the coincidence between myself and the band, my cousin who has lived in Boston for the last several years used to live around the corner from Bishop Allen drive. Here's a picture from my visit there for her wedding back in 2007:













4. The Shins - Oh Inverted World
I didn't realize this album came out in 2001. I don't think I got into the Shins until 2004 or 2005, which makes sense because that's about the time when Garden State came out and introduced the masses to The Shins and a whole lot of other "indie" music. I had not given this album a spin in a long time because I got kind of burnt out on that whole scene, but I have left it in the CD player for a couple of days now because it really does hold up remarkably well. Even if it is (gulp) eleven years later.

Looking forward to what this week will bring!