How Does Your Garden Grow?

I was sharing musical genre preferences with Melissa and gave the heavy hitters on my IPod (i.e., the bands that make up my small but high quality playlist). Though I could remember most of the big track lists, I realized I've got a lot of one-off tracks, that one kick ass song by that one artist/band that I'm pleasantly surprised by when it shuffles to the play position. So for today, here's my playlist, though only in terms of band and number of tracks as I can't find a way to export a playlist to text!

Breaking Benjamin: 8 tracks
Ben Folds Five: 7 tracks
Better Than Ezra: 5 tracks
30 Seconds to Mars: 5 tracks
Cake: 4 tracks
Coldplay: 3 tracks
Incubus: 3 tracks
Outkast: 2 tracks
U2: 2 tracks
Johny Cash: 2 tracks
James Taylor: 2 tracks
Hoobastank: 2 tracks
Dave Matthews Band: 2 tracks
Amy Winehouse: 1 track
Audioslave: 1 track
Evans Blue: 1 track
Fall Out Boy: 1 track
Foo Fighters: 1 track
Jay-Z: 1 track
Kayne West: 1 track
The Killers: 1 track
Maroon 5: 1 track
Matchbox Twenty: 1 track
My Chemical Romance: 1 track
Nine Inch Nails: 1 track
Queen: 1 track
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: 1 track
Seether & Amy Lee: 1 track
Silverchair: 1 track
Snoop Dogg & Pharrell Williams: 1 track
Staind: 1 track
Stone Temple Pilots: 1 track
System of a Down: 1 track
Trapt: 1 track
The Who: 1 track
3 Doors Down: 1 track
311: 1 track

I've put most of my albums into iTunes, with each disc normally throwing a song or two onto the above list (many of the above are single tracks I own, I don't necessarily own the whole album). In the process I've tried to pick, of all my complete albums, my favorite. As I write this, I get more and more uncomfortable at the proposition, because it a difficult chore. In some moods, some albums are good, and in others, well, only other albums will do.

I've always thoughts bands should try new things with their sound; sometimes it leads to improvement (Audioslave) and sometimes disappointment (Matchbox Twenty). The album that I'll name my favorite is a Better Than Ezra (BTE) offering named How Does Your Garden Grow? Much to my dismay, BTE was, over their first couple of albums, called the Pearl Jam of New Orleans. I think Pearl Jam is on the verge of the title "a band that's famous just because they're famous", so I've always bristled at that comparison. With the Garden CD, BTE definitely produced an experimental sound, and in the process, made an amazing album. The songs flow together, but not in a cheesy Linkin' Park kind of way; their mood, their sound, their length, it all just seems mapped out. There's some classic songs in the true alt rock vein of being lyrical non-sense that none-the-less rock (Track - New Kind of Low, "All the way from South Dakota, like a green leprechaun"). There are some serious songs with haunting tales that are sung in such a way as to make you think they might be more autobiographical than made-up-tales (Track - Beautiful Mistake, "Now I guess you're going, your fingers through the door, your taillights fading, like twenty years before"). The first track, Je Ne M'En Souviens Pas, is a make or break track for your enjoyment of the album. It's an experimental track that serves to set the mood for the album more so than anything else. Certainly not a song you'd like put in a playlist, but one that serves an important role on the album.

I haven't purchased a BTE album since Garden. I hear they've moved away from their experimental sound back to the sound that made them relevant on the alt rock scene for a short time (you would no doubt recognize the songs Good and In the Blood if you heard them). Though they still produce the occasional album, they seem to have largely stopped wide-scale tours, instead preferring to just play their hometown JazzFest and at the House of Blues. I regret that I've never seen them play live, though maybe one day they'll go back out on the road, and I'll see if parts of the greatest album I own sound as good in person as they sound coming out of my computer speakers right now.