[Interlude]
How do you waste your time?!?
The Osees are a band I spend a lot of time listening to. With almost thirty studio albums and more than a half dozen live records there is much to shift through.
Besides the amount of releases, they pivot to different styles. Garage rock, kraut rock, psychedelia, folk music, punk freak folk, heavy metal, progressive rock, synth pop, etc.
I wanted to make some playlists of their stuff but wasn’t excited by any of the ideas I had on how to group them. After some false starts and head scratching I came up with a system.
I went to a website with user generated information about where bands play live shows and what songs they played at them. A band’s life of touring turned into searchable data. The site is not completely reliable, but it was a place to start.
I went to the first year there was data for and sorted by most played songs. I took that list and shortened the playlist until it was around 44 minutes. This is the usual length of a vinyl LP, one side to a 90 minutes mixtape, and what I think is a good length of a playlist.
I moved onto the next year and repeated the process ignoring any songs already used. A few years didn’t yield enough new songs or almost all the new songs were from one record so I combined some years.
Here are the results
If you don’t use Spotify get a hold of me. When I get back to the States I’ll make you a cassette box set. Complete with track listings and liner notes.