99,000 Songs on the Wall (of Data)

As promised, though belated, herewith are some points derived from data pursuant to the tranche of the most recent 1,000 songs which brought my total of iTunes tracks listened to up to the 99,000 mark. In the contemporary thought space, one calls such points and the thoughts about them ‘insights’, which pleads a special power for these details. One can do so much with modern computing power.

Purview

These details concern merely the 1,000 tracks played by iTunes (or its related phone app) from the 10th of December, 2016 to the 28th of March, 2017 — which tracks comprise numbers 98,001 – 99,000 in my ‘Already Played’ Smart Playlist. This playlist has the following very simple rule: # of Plays is greater than zero; the rule is applied to All Media.

This very basic rule means that movies or TV shows watched through the Apple media apparatus are counted as a ‘played track’, as we shall see in the 1k tranche of tracks. It also has as a concomitant consequence the fact that I shall never achieve 100% ‘completion’ in playing my entire collection, this due to the fact that PDF files included as ‘Digital Booklets’ with Apple Music purchases are not — cannot be, in fact — ‘played’ according to the logic provided for by the database.

Two other factors mar the mapping of the iTunes data with the ‘true’ reality which it (implies/reflects/purports to reveal/?) mirrors: First, any songs which have been deleted* from my collection lose any associated data as well, so their Plays and other datapoints are removed from the present universe (though I suppose one could trawl through backups to resurrect such). And second, iTunes provides a means by which the Plays may be ‘reset’ back to zero, so there may have been songs which have been listened to but which have since had that fact masked/obliterated/effaced from history.

Side note: This functionality seems to have changed in recent months, in that formerly whilst the Plays were reset to zero, the ‘Last Played’ timestamp remained. Now the latter is removed as well. Thus I have several (13) tracks which have no plays but do have a Last Played date. Oddly also, there are quite a few (131) songs which have been ‘Played’ but which have no associated ‘Last Played’ datum.

*Missing songs still have their associated data, though I’ve tried to replace such files (where possible) or remove the reference (where not). I still have a handful I haven’t been able to rectify, victims of my first iTunes data disaster, the loss of 20 GB of songs due to a hard drive failure oh-so-many years ago.

There is also the problem of duplicate music. I do not in this case mean duplicate occurrences of the same song on the same album — the underlying files are kept cleaner than that. But it is not unusual for popular songs to appear in my collection both on the original album release as well as on (sometimes multiple) compilation albums. There are also cases where iTunes itself has duplicated tracks, with an old ‘Protected’ track being joined by a ‘Purchased’ version. I have also some regular .mp3 versions of old purchased music, and have kept both out of spite, insecurity, and laziness.

In the data which follows, I have made some manual changes/edits, to wit: 1) I have simplified/changed Genres to make aggregation more possible or rational (thus ‘Calypso’ has been changed to ‘Folk’, for example), 2) I have had to edit data at times due to improper handling of exported iTunes information (the song title “Somebody’s Wrong” (with an unfortunate so-called smart quote) was changed to “Somebody’s Wrong” somewhere along the path into Excel, for instance), and 3) some names may have been changed to protect the innocent, if any such there be.

Overview

Due to changes in my material life (please see my LinkedIn page), my listening habits/opportunities/choices are also materially changed. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the primary fact presented by these 1,000 songs: Almost 1/2 (49%) of all tracks played are Radio Shows.

Almost 1/2 (49%) of all tracks played are Radio Shows

As previously mentioned, these tracks were played between December 10, 2016 and March 28, 2017, making a total of 108 days to play these 1,000 songs. Thus an average of 9-and-1/4 songs were played per day.

9.26 Songs played per Day

Assuming that each track was played only once during the thousand song run — not an entirely valid assumption, but a fair hypothesis for this analysis — the total amount of time taken to play these 1k songs was 12 days, 1 hour, 36 minutes, and 49 seconds.

Total Time of Tracks: 12 Days, 1 Hour, 36 Minutes, and 49 Seconds

Since these songs were played over a stretch of 108 days, and given the total length of time of all played tracks above, this means that over 11% of the 108-day period was spent listening to iTunes in one way or another.

11.17% of Each Day spent listening to iTunes

or

2 hours and 41 minutes per day Listening to Stuff

Most of these tracks have only been played once, which is both my preference and delight. Specifically, 833 songs (7/8) were played for the first time during this most recent thousand tracks. The remaining 167 songs with multiple plays together have been played a grand total of 529 times.

833 tracks had never been played before

Details

Genres

The data shows the prevalence of Radio Shows in my recent listening. Here is a chart, broken down by genre, showing what was included in these one thousand tracks:

Played By Genre

And here is a table showing those genres which each provided over 1% of the total number of tracks played:

Songs Played by Genre

Radio Show 491
Rock 226
Pop 43
Spoken Word 29
Alternative 25
Electronica/Dance 24
Folk 14
R&B 14
World 13
Classical 12
Holiday 12
Punk 12
Country 11

All the rest of tracks played make up 7.4% of the total.

But the prevalence of Radio Shows is even greater than shown by this first view, due to the fact that (natürlich) the average radio show is longer than most popular songs. If we inspect the tracks played with respect to their duration we discover that the Radio Show genre actually makes up over 80% of the total.

Over 80% of time spent listening to Radio Shows

And of course there’s a chart:
Genre Played by Time

Aaaand a table…

Tracks Played by Genre by Time

Radio Show 81.2%
Rock 6.4%
Spoken Word 3.3%
Pop 1.7%
Electronica/Dance 3.3%
Holiday 1.1%

(The remainder of tracks make up just over 5% of total time.)

Due — primarily, but not exclusively, as we shall see — to the preponderance of old radio shows among the one thousand tracks under consideration, the average length of the played tracks was seventeen minutes and twenty-two seconds.

Average length of played tracks: 17:22.6

Radio shows were not the longest tracks, on average, due to the fact that TV shows are included in the 1,000 files under consideration. We watched a couple of episodes of Shetland during this period, which averaged fifty-eight minutes (and one second) in length. The average length of radio shows was second, however, coming in at twenty-eight minutes and 43.5 seconds. Indeed, there were quite a few genres which had very long average lengths — again, due to changed material conditions of the listener. Five other genres had average times of over ten minutes. Even if we limit our attention to only those genres contributing at least 1% of the total number of tracks we see that the average length of songs played seems inordinately long, far greater than Pete Townshend’s two minutes and thirty-seven seconds at which he claimed all rock songs aimed before the advent of The Who. Here’s another table:

Average Length of Tracks by Genre
(with more than 10 tracks played)

Radio Show* (491 tracks) 28:43.5
Spoken Word* (29 tracks) 19:49.7
Holiday* (12 tracks) 16:00.6
Electronica/Dance* (24 tracks)   9:34.8
Pop* (43 tracks)   6:50.4
Classical (12 tracks)   5:07.1
World (13 tracks)   4:58.5
Rock* (226 tracks)   4:53.8
Novelty (10 tracks)   4:10.9
Alternative (25 tracks)   4:08.2
Latin (10 tracks)   3:53.3
R&B (14 tracks)   3:43.3
Folk (14 tracks)   3:41.4
Blues (10 tracks)   3:13.2
Punk (12 tracks)   2:44.3
Country (11 tracks)   2:39

(*These categories also contributed over 1% of the total time played.)

The shortest time per track was the minuscule 17 seconds averaged across the three tracks in the Radio Ad category, far smaller than the next shortest average of 1:53 for the Avant-Garde genre (which latter is so small due to the 31 seconds Marie Osmond took to perform Hugo Ball’s Dada poem “Karawane” in an mp3 provided by Greil Marcus to accompany his fantastic book Lipstick Traces).

Albums

With the prevalence of radio among these 1,000 tracks, it may seem strange to speak of ‘songs’ or ‘albums’, but I have organized those tracks just as if they were long albums with lots and lots of long ‘songs’. Some are stored as compilations — such as the Lux Radio Theater which had different stars each week — and some are associated with a single artist — such as Jack Webb’s Dragnet radio series. There are also those shows which had different stars over the length of their radio run, such as The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, which had seen its best days with Gerald Mohr as the iconic detective by the time Van Heflin took over the eponymous role.

433 tracks came from just 14 albums

Ignoring multiple artists/actors, just fourteen ‘albums’ as I define them account for over 40% of the songs played in the selection under review. Each of these contributed ten or more tracks to the total 1,000. These albums are as follows:

The 1966 Live Recordings                 (36 CD set) Bob Dylan 117 tracks
Dragnet Jack Webb 78
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar Bob Bailey et al. 31
Boston Blackie Richard Kollmar et al. 30
Box 13 Alan Ladd 29
The Adventures of Philip Marlowe Gerald Mohr et al. 29
Let George Do It Bob Bailey 28
The Adventures Of Frank Race Tom Collins & Ivan Dubov 18
Richard Diamond, Private Detective Dick Powell 15
Nick Carter, Master Detective Lon Clark 13
The Adventures Of Sam Spade Howard Duff (& Steve Dunne) 12
The Casebook Of Gregory Hood Gale Gordon & Elliot Lewis 12
The Shadow Orson Welles et al. 11
Under The Red Sky Bob Dylan 10

Artists

Besides the artists mentioned above, only four other artists appear more than ten times in the 1k list. These are Steely Dan (16 tracks), Charles Russell (the 1st Johnny Dollar, also with 16 tracks), Anson Weeks (14 tracks), and Special Ed (a nom de radio for a WFMU DJ whose Christmas specials were in rotation last winter, with 11 tracks).

The perennial favorite (with me) Bob Dylan sang out most frequently, with 145 songs out of The 1000. 264 artists only appeared one time during this set of songs.

Most played artist: Bob Dylan (145 tracks)

Songs

As I said earlier, the vast majority — 833 — of the played songs have only been heard once (by me). Of the 167 songs whose total plays make up the 529 plays mentioned above, the most frequently heard was the delightful duet by William Shatner and Henry Rollins, “I Can’t Get Behind That”, from Shatner’s incredible album Has Been, which I’ve listened to (according to iTunes data) a total of twenty-one times.

Most played song (21 times): “I Can’t Get Behind That” by William Shatner

The most frequently played songs in this set of 1,000 are as follows:

Songs With Most Plays
(played at least 10 times)

“I Can’t Get Behind That” William Shatner 21 plays
“Without God” The Word 19
“Brothers In Arms” Dire Straits 15
“Black Betty” Ram Jam 14
“Go” Dusminguet 14
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” Nirvana 14
“Dock of the Bay” Otis Redding 10
“I Won’t Back Down” Johnny Cash 10

There was a lot of variance in track length from the average of 17 minutes and 23 seconds referenced above. The shortest track was only 4 seconds long, an audio clip from the Dragnet radio show where Jack Webb speaks of “Crime, the ally of treason”. The longest track clocked in at one hour, twenty-seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds; this was the “The Kranesburg Matter”, originally aired over five days in 1956 (August 24th to 30th) as part of the radio show Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, starring (in this particular incarnation) Bob Bailey as the insurance investigator with the gold-plated expense account. The song closest to the average length (the median) was a recording of the intermission from Bob Dylan’s Australia concert in Sydney on April 13, 1966, which clocks in at seventeen minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

Tracks Played By Length

Shortest “Crime, the ally of treason” Jack Webb 0:04
Longest “The Kranesburg Matter” Bob Bailey 1:27:29
Median intermission (Bob Dylan) 17:28

Review

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
— Socrates

So we have learned … What, exactly? I listened to a lot of old radio. One out of every nine minutes I was playing iTunes. That’s about it, maybe. Perhaps a better analyst would make more of this data.

I also know that it took me quite some time to fulfill my promise to provide this data analysis. As mentioned above, the Thousandth track in this set was listened to all the way back at the end of March, on Day 68 of the New Era. Much of this is due to procrastination; who in their right mind truly enjoys scrubbing data errors in Excel? But a large part of the delay may be laid at the feet of my changed material conditions. Less time than previously was available to me, and an exhaustion was felt beyond thud weight of imperious data.

In any event, it is good to finish this analysis, for two reasons. First, avoiding the despair of analysis interminable is always good; endings are better than the crushing wait for messiahs who never arrive. Secondly, the time since the 99,000th track was heard have not been soundless. More tunes/tracks/songs/stuff have passed through iTunes in the interim, and we are fast approaching yet another (base-10) milestone. Indeed, I am only 55 tracks away from my 100,000th iTunes track played, and I am glad to have finished with the last 1000 after only 945 more tracks were heard. More to come.

In my One Hundred Books review, I provided a list of the entire dataset under consideration. With one thousand audio files, however, perhaps this might seem overkill. To avoid boring you too much more, i will heap up only 1/10th of the complete dataset. Here it is:

One-Tenth of One Thousand Tracks

# Artist Name Album Year Time Genre
10 Bob Dylan “Tom Turkey” (1) Pecos Blues: Pat Garret & Billy The Kid Outtakes 1973 3:55 Rock
20 Zeki Müren “Sûznâk Aksak Şarkı” 1955-63 Kayıtlaı/Recordings 3:38 World
30 Jack Webb “The Big Ham” (06/28/53) Dragnet Radio Series 1953 29:21 Radio Show
40 Lulu “Feelin’ Alright” What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves: 1967-1977 1970 3:02 R&B
50 Jack Webb “The Big Child” (04/26/55) Dragnet Radio Series 1955 25:22 Radio Show
60 Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass “The Big Cowboys And Indians Fight At Casino Royale; Casino Royale Theme” Casino Royale [Australian Mono] 1967 4:49 Pop
70 Yo La Tengo “Big Day Coming” Painful 1993 7:05 Alternative
80 Jack Webb “The Big Fake” (06/01/50) Dragnet Radio Series 1950 29:30 Radio Show
90 Bruce Springsteen “Downbound Train” Born In The U.S.A. 1984 3:37 Rock
100 Bob Bailey “The First Client” (05/14/46) Let George Do It 1946 29:19 Radio Show
110 James Kibbie “Duetto III” BWV804 Bach Organ Works – Clavierübung III 2:48 Classical
120 Muddy Waters “Double Trouble (Alternate)” Chess Blues 1954-1960 1992 3:31 Blues
130 Johnny Cash “Ballad Of Ira Hayes” Classic Cash 1988 2:53 Country
140 Blue Cheer “The Hunter” Vincebus Eruptum / Outsideinside 4:31 Rock
150 Jethro Tull “A Small Cigar” Nightcap: Unreleased & Rare Tracks 1993 3:39 Rock
160 Marie Osmond “Karawane” Lipstick Traces 1984 0:31 Avant-Garde
170 Heiko Laux “Organism” Liquidism 1998 6:26 Electronica/Dance
180 Alicia Keys “Girlfriend” Songs In A Minor 2001 3:34 R&B
190 Anson Weeks “1. Hallelujah 2. It Was So Beautiful 3. The Lady I Love 4. I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan” Anson Weeks Broadcast 13:05 Pop
200 Bob Dylan “Desolation Row” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-02-05 – Westchester County Center, White Plains, NY [AUD] 1966 10:50 Rock
210 Bob Dylan “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” [incomplete] The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-02-06 – Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh, PA [AUD] 1966 3:53 Rock
220 artist Track 01 album 1:36 Spoken Word
230 Bob Dylan “Tell Me, Momma” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-02-26 – Island Garden, Hempstead, NY [AUD] 1966 3:42 Rock
240 Anson Weeks “Compilation of Selections 1” Anson Weeks Broadcast 18:35 Pop
250 Bob Dylan “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-04-13 – Sydney Stadium, Sydney, Australia, New South Wales [SBD Australian TV] 1966 5:51 Rock
260 Jack Webb “Benny Trounsel – Narcotics” (08/04/49) Dragnet Radio Series 1949 29:41 Radio Show
270 Lon Clark “The Echo of Death” (07/06/43) Nick Carter, Master Detective 1943 29:31 Radio Show
280 Bob Dylan “Cat’s In The Well” Under The Red Sky 1990 3:21 Rock
290 Bob Dylan “Desolation Row” 1966-04-13 – Sydney, Australia, Sydney Stadium, New South Wales 1966 11:08 Rock
300 Penguin Cafe Orchestra “The Sound Of Someone Who You Love…” Angels In The Architecture 1982 11:41 Alternative
310 Mira Calix “Khala” Ilanga Khala 7″ 10:10 Electronica/Dance
320 artist Track 02 album 1996b 1996 11:23 Spoken Word
330 Tom Collins “The Violent Virtuoso” (09/04/49) The Adventures Of Frank Race 1949 29:14 Radio Show
340 Gerald Mohr “The Persian Slippers” (10/03/48) The Adventures of Philip Marlowe 1948 29:36 Radio Show
350 Bob Dylan “Desolation Row” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-04-19 – Festival Hall, Melbourne, Australia [AUD] 1966 9:27 Rock
360 Bob Bailey “Have Some Excitement” (06/07/48) Let George Do It 1948 30:04 Radio Show
370 Bob Dylan “Desolation Row” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-04-20 – Melbourne 1966 12:10 Rock
380 Julian Rose “Hebrew vaudeville: parody on In the shade of the old apple tree” Edison Gold Moulded Record 1906 2:13 Novelty
390 Richard Kollmar “The Wentworth Diamonds” (04/25/45) Boston Blackie 1945 27:02 Radio Show
400 Dick Powell “The Ralph Chase Case” (05/15/49) Richard Diamond, Private Detective 1949 29:32 Radio Show
410 Bob Dylan “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-04-29 – Stockholm Concert Hall, Stockholm, Sweden [AUD] 1966 3:19 Rock
420 Bob Dylan “Ballad Of A Thin Man” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-05-01 – K.B. Hallen, Copenhagen, Denmark [SBD] 1966 7:54 Rock
430 Jack Webb “Claude Jimmerson, Child Killer” (02/02/50) Dragnet Radio Series 1950 29:20 Radio Show
440 “March of Time” News 1937 1937 30:04 History
450 Bob Dylan “Baby, Let Me Follow You Down” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-05-05 – Adelphi Cinema, Dublin, Ireland [SBD] 1966 3:36 Rock
460 artist Track 01 album 2016b 2016 16:46 Spoken Word
470 Charles Russell “Out of the Fire into the Frying Pan (The Prize Hog Bodyguard)” (8/21/1949) Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1949 29:45 Radio Show
480 Bob Dylan “Desolation Row” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-05-06 – ABC Theatre, Belfast, Northern Ireland [SBD] 1966 10:16 Rock
490 Bob Dylan “Like A Rolling Stone” The 1966 Live Recordings 1966-05-06 – ABC Theatre, Belfast, Northern Ireland [SBD] 1966 8:03 Rock
500 National Safety Council “Right Dress – Part 1” Right Dress 10:23 Spoken Word
510 Elliot Lewis “The White Masters” (11/25/1946) The Casebook Of Gregory Hood 1946 25:30 Radio Show
520 Harold Huber “Murder Is a Private Affair” (11/30/1945) Agatha Christie’s Poirot 26:25 Radio Show
530 Gerald Mohr “Friend from Detroit” (03/05/49) The Adventures of Philip Marlowe 1949 29:38 Radio Show
540 Orson Welles “The Society of the Living Dead” (01/23/38) The Shadow 1938 28:01 Radio Show
550 Gerald Mohr “Cloak of Kamehameha” (04/23/49) The Adventures of Philip Marlowe 1949 29:45 Radio Show
560 Gerald Mohr “Lady in Mink” (04/30/49) The Adventures of Philip Marlowe 1949 29:45 Radio Show
570 “Murder Across The Board” (07/12/41) The Green Hornet 1941 28:25 Radio Show
580 Orson Welles “The Phantom Voice” (1938-02-06) The Shadow 1938 26:33 Radio Show
590 Dick Powell “Murder My Sweet” (6/8/1946) Hollywood Star Time 1946 30:12 Radio Show
600 Steely Dan “Your Gold Teeth” Countdown To Ecstasy 1998 6:59 Rock
610 J. Scott Smart “A Window For Murder” (10/03/47) The Fat Man 1947 26:57 Radio Show
620 Bob Dylan “Horace Silver and Steely Dan” Theme Time Radio Hour Season 1 – 07 – Father 0:58 Spoken Word
630 New Christs “Gotta Keep Movin'” Tivoli, Sydney Australia 7-83 4:05 Punk
640 William Gargan “Microfilm in the Fishtank” (10/24/51) Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator 1951 29:29 Radio Show
650 artist Track 03 album 43:29 Spoken Word
660 Bob Bailey “A Deadman Who Was a Murderer” (07/19/48) Let George Do It 1948 29:36 Radio Show
670 Alan Ladd “Speed To Burn (06-26-1949)” Box 13 1949 26:47 Radio Show
680 Tom Conway “The Clue Of The Hungry Cat” (10/26/46) The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1946 24:24 Radio Show
690 Muhammad Ali & the Ali Gang “Ali fights Tooth Decay – side 1” The Adventures Of Ali And His Gang Vs. Mr. Tooth Decay 1976 18:12 Novelty
700 Bob Bailey “The Smugglers” (04/05/48) Let George Do It 1948 29:42 Radio Show
710 Morah Blanka (Mrs. Blanka Rosenfeld) “Hillel’s Love for Torah” Stories Under the Mitzvah Tree 1973 10:21 Spoken Word
720 Suicide Commandos “Mosquito Crucifixion” Make A Record 2:13 Punk
730 Inner Sanctum “The Man from Yesterday” (12/21/41) Inner Sanctum 1941 29:26 Radio Show
740 Jack Webb “The Big Youngster” (08/17/50) Dragnet Radio Series 1950 29:19 Radio Show
750 “Votes For Sale” (10/9/40) The Green Hornet 1940 27:48 Radio Show
760 “Murder Trips A Rat” (9/19/42) The Green Hornet 1942 27:24 Radio Show
770 Bob Bailey “The Father Who Had Nothing to Say” (09/13/48) Let George Do It 1948 29:30 Radio Show
780 Bob Bailey “Murder It’s A Gift” (11/08/48) Let George Do It 1948 29:36 Radio Show
790 Larry Thor “The Roberto Segura Murder Case” (01/31/50) Broadway Is My Beat 1950 29:32 Radio Show
800 Larry Thor “The Sgt Gordon Ellis Murder Case” (11/12/49) Broadway Is My Beat 1949 29:23 Radio Show
810 Dr. Feelgood “Back in the Night” Stupidity 1976 3:09 R&B
820 Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen “Big Mamou” We’ve Got a Live One Here! 1976 3:31 Pop
830 Smashing Pumpkins “Take Me Down” Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness – Dawn To Dusk 1995 2:52 Alternative
840 D.J. Menard “La Porte d’en Arrière” River of Song: a Musical Journey Down the Mississippi 3:49 Folk
850 Bob Bailey “The Ideal Vacation Matter” [AFRTS] (9/22/57) Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1957 20:12 Radio Show
860 Spike Jones Guest – Jan August (10/31/47) Spotlight Revue 1947 29:41 Radio Show
870 Spike Jones Guest – Jack Owens (11/07/47) Spotlight Revue 1947 28:52 Radio Show
880 Richard Kollmar “Atkins, Jewel Thief” (12/06/45) Boston Blackie 1945 27:56 Radio Show
890 Inner Sanctum “Black Sea Gull” (03/07/43) Inner Sanctum 1943 28:41 Radio Show
900 Joel McCrea “Jailbird” (05/25/52) Tales of the Texas Rangers 1952 29:55 Radio Show
910 “The Corpse That Wasn’t There” (3/7/43) The Green Hornet 1943 33:20 Radio Show
920 John Emery “The Case of the Cellini Cup” (4/29/43) Philo Vance 1943 29:38 Radio Show
930 Bob Bailey “The Night in Paris Matter” (8/16/59) Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar 1959 19:04 Radio Show
940 Brian Donlevy “Missing Japanese Weapons” (02/06/50) Dangerous Assignment 1950 29:16 Radio Show
950 Wilco encore break 2011-09-23 – Central Park, New York 2011 2:49 Rock
960 Jacques Brel “Le Colonel” Au Printemps 1958 3:13 World
970 Charles Brown “Get Yourself Another Fool” Driftin’ Blues – The Best Of Charles Brown 3:03 Blues
980 The Mysterious Traveler “I Won’t Die Alone” (5/11/48) The Mysterious Traveler 1948 29:27 Radio Show
990 Cheb I Sabbah “Sadats (Saints of Marrakesh)” La Kahena 2005 6:02 World
1000 Forty Foot Echo “Brand New Day” Freaky Friday 2003 3:36 Alternative

Ninety-nine Thousand (99,000)

Just listened to my 99,000th unique iTunes track, a bland piece of nothing from the Freaky Friday soundtrack, “Brand New Day” by Forty Foot Echo. I would have preferred the milestone to have fallen to the preceding song, Steve Earle’s “Down The Road” from Guitar Town.

99,000 unique tracks comprises 653.99 GB of data, with a total duration of 280 days, 12 hours, 19 minutes, and 17 seconds (without allowance for multiple plays). My iTunes collection still has 81,351 items left unplayed — a ~5k increase in the number or tracks, due mostly to downloading old radio shows from Archive.org after becoming enamored with the Dragnet programs mentioned in my last note on music. The unplayed tracks take up 561.56 GB of data (↑ 79GB) with a playing time of 306 days, 15 hours, 16 minutes, and 42 seconds (↑ 84 days, due to the aforementioned radio shows, most of which are 30 minutes long).

I’m preparing a more detailed analysis, similar to that in my 100 Books note, and will let you know when that’s done.

100 Books

(or, The Pointlessness of Data)

As promised earlier, I return to announce that I have now read 100 books — according to the database I keep of my books. When previously i made such announcement, I had to express three caveats, to wit:

  1. The ‘books’ referred to previously included graphic novels and comics, which perhaps cannot lay claim to full ‘book’ status.
  2. The earliest dates of books read are an approximation only (more on this below).
  3. I wrote: “whilst the unexamined life is deemed to be unworthy of living, the micromanaged and databased life may only be a debasing of the actual substance of life itself.”

This note is primarily a discursion upon the last point.

How long did it take me to read 100 books? Well, this is where the second caveat becomes noteworthy. As stated above, the dates given for completing each book are only approximations for the first few books in the list. Thus the beginning of the period can only be given by a date ante quem rather than an exact start date. However, given the fact that I didn’t note down in each instance (or any, for that matter) just when I began to read a volume, this was always going to be the case. With that repeated dead horse caveat given, I can state that the 100 books read by me were read between June 17, 2015 (approx.) and October 11, 2016. This is a period of 483 days (I include the ending day), giving an average speed of 1 book per 4.83 days.

1 Book per 4.83 Days

Over the past year or so, I’ve engaged in ‘comfort food’ reading, which perhaps explains the dominance of genre fiction among The One Hundred Books. I might have assumed more of an even split between fiction and non-fiction, given my penchant for history reading. (Though perhaps this is merely delusional aspirations towards intellectual pretensions which I will never, could never, achieve.) In fact, fiction overall outnumbered ‘non-‘ by a factor of about 3-to-1. Specifically, 73 fiction books were read while 27 of the ‘other’ category fell beneath my gaze. Of those 73, the preponderance were mysteries, followed by Science Fiction & Fantasy and (some) literature. To be specific:

Books Read by Genre

Mystery 32
SF & Fantasy 24
Literature 17
Nonfiction 27

Or, for those who prefer charts…

readbygenre

 

Of course, ‘Nonfiction’ as a category categorizes nothing. Especially given the fact that much so-called ‘nonfiction’ actually peddles outright lies and misstates the truth with an almost religious fervor. Fortunately, we can dig deeper due to the diligence of the book database. Here’s how the ‘Nonfiction’ read over the past 100 books breaks down:

Nonfiction Read

Arts & Photography 3
Children’s Books 1
Foreign Language 2
History 3
Humor 5
Indians of North America 1
Mythology & Folklore 3
Philosophy 1
Poetry 1
Politics & Social Sciences 1
Psychology 2
Religion & Spirituality 3
Science & Math 1

Apparently I like funny books, even when I exempt comics from my lists…

Wow, isn’t this analysis fun? What else can we do with the data? Well, we can look at just how each (broad) category was read (since obviously the broken-down ‘Nonfiction’ genre presents too many subcategories and too few data points to be statistically significant). After playing with those bits a bit, normalizing the data (some of which was done earlier without mentioning it before), and then playing and massaging the spreadsheets, we see the following:

booksread

 

From this it appears that I’ve been reading nonfiction (called ‘Other’ in this chart, which is as good a name as any) at a fairly steady rate over this period, while my perusal of mysteries and science fiction increased pretty recently. Also, so-called ‘literature’ has not been part of my reading diet since the summer. Aren’t we flabbergasted with this insight into my reading history?

Truth be told, I’m slightly less than flummoxed by these data insights. I knew already, for instance, that I’d been on what I referred to as a ‘mystery kick’ in my recent reading, so these Moneyball details are somewhat wasted on me. Also, I am troubled by the collapsing of each book’s experience into a point exactly like that of every other book. Nor do I believe that the reductionism objected to here would be relieved by giving some sort of weighting mechanism to account for such metrics as number of pages, average reading level, importance as judged by reviews in major literary critiques, etc. I have actually given a rating for each — which I won’t provide here — but reducing the subjective experience of reading a book to a single (or even multiple!) points on a 5-point or 10-point or 100-point scale seems not only losing proposition, but simply silly.

The problem is similar to that of value in economics, I believe. The question was sidestepped by John von Neumann in his analysis of games in economics by instead using the concept of ‘utility’ — but even this can lead to some treacherous places. In analysis of such mathematical games as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, for example, if the prison sentence is not a term of years but a possible death penalty, how is one to assess a utility for actually dying? (Putting aside the usual pragmatic difficulties related to assessing application vs. theory, which in this case would necessitate evaluating the likelihood of actual execution as well as the time spent in appeals, etc., etc.) The concept of utility has other intractable difficulties as well, as was noted by Walter Otto in the opening remarks of his commentary on Dionysus, wherein he pointed out that taking a utilitarian perspective of religion was akin to reducing the artistic impulse to a question of “Do I need tapestries to make this room more cozy?”

In the case of my reading, I am at a loss to make an assessment of the utility or even the value of this versus that book. Does reading a mystery about a modern Navaho policeman have a measurable ‘value’ which can be compared to that of reading Dante’s Divine Comedy? How does the ‘value’ of such a modern mystery compare to that of an ancient Chinese mystery? Does reading a 1000-year-old Icelandic saga confer more benefit than re-reading The Hobbit? Perhaps such questions are meaningless, or can only be answered by reading the works themselves.

To which end, I present the list of The One Hundred Books. I’ve included the comic books for merely historical interest (ha!), though of course these do not contribute to the running total, the count being given in the first column of each listing. Herewith, The Books:

The One Hundred Books

# Read Author Title Genre
1 6/17/15 Martin Gardner The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener Philosophy
2 6/17/15 Amir D. Aczel Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem Science & Math
3 6/17/15 Fritz Leiber Swords Against Death SF/Fantasy
4 6/17/15 Fritz Leiber Swords and Deviltry SF/Fantasy
7/21/15 Weird Love #1
7/21/15 Popeye #34
7/21/15 Popeye #13
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Sergio Aragonés Funnies #1
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Groo Friends and Foes #6
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Groo Friends and Foes #5
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Groo Friends and Foes #4
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Groo Friends and Foes #3
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Groo Friends and Foes #2
7/21/15 Sergio Aragonés Groo Friends and Foes #1
7/23/15 Haunted Horror #5
7/23/15 Haunted Horror #9
7/24/15 Sergio Aragones Groo vs. Conan
7/24/15 Haunted Horror #14
7/25/15 Dave Sim Cerebus, Volume 1
5 8/6/15 Roger Price, intro The MAD Reader Humor
6 8/8/15 William M. Gaines The Brothers MAD Humor
7 8/14/15 Harvey Kurtzman William M. Gaine’s Inside Mad Humor
8 8/24/15 Philip Jose Farmer To Your Scattered Bodies Go SF/Fantasy
9 9/5/15 John Cohen, ed. The Essential Lenny Bruce Humor
10 9/11/15 Alice Miller The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Revised Edition Psychology
11 9/14/15 David King The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia Arts & Photography
12 9/23/15 Alice Miller Thou Shalt Not Be Aware Psychology
13 9/27/15 Douglas Adams Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency SF/Fantasy
14 9/29/15 Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder Arts & Photography
10/2/15 The Usual Gang Of Idiots The MAD Archives Vol. 1
15 10/2/15 Lynd Ward Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts (Dover Fine Art, History of Art) Arts & Photography
16 10/6/15 G. K. Chesterton The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown Mystery
17 10/6/15 G. K. Chesterton Four Faultless Felons Mystery
18 10/18/15 Eustace M. Tillyard The Elizabethan World Picture Literature
19 10/19/15 Robert Carter The Tao and Mother Goose (Quest Book) Religion
20 10/22/15 Colin Wilson Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs History
21 10/27/15 Joscelyn Godwin Real Rule of Four: The Unauthorized Guide to the New York Times #1 Bestseller Literature
22 10/30/15 John Carey Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books Literature
23 11/9/15 Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings Literature
24 11/16/15 Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy:Inferno (Galaxy Books) Literature
25 11/27/15 Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio (Galaxy Books) Literature
26 12/10/15 Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy: Paradiso (Galaxy Books) Literature
27 12/22/15 P. A. Brunt Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic History
28 1/18/16 O. Henry Great Short Stories Literature
29 1/22/16 Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason The Rule of Four Literature
30 1/22/16 Moliere The Misanthrope and Tartuffe Literature
31 1/22/16 Philip K. Dick The Man in the High Castle SF/Fantasy
32 1/23/16 George Orwell Animal Farm Literature
33 2/14/16 William Morris Volsunga Saga Myth/Folklore
34 2/18/16 Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Palsson, trans. Njal’s Saga Myth/Folklore
35 2/21/16 W. P. Ker Epic and Romance: Essays on Medieval Literature Literature
36 3/3/16 Michael Alexander A History of Old English Literature (Broadview Literary Texts) Literature
37 3/6/16 Norman Spinrad Bug Jack Barron SF/Fantasy
38 3/10/16 C.M. Kornbluth A Mile Beyond the Moon SF/Fantasy
39 3/13/16 Philip K. Dick Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said SF/Fantasy
40 3/14/16 Camille Paglia Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World’s Best Poems Literature
41 3/20/16 Jules Verne De la Terre à la Lune Foreign Language
42 3/22/16 J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit SF/Fantasy
43 3/28/16 The pulps: Fifty years of American pop culture Literature
44 3/30/16 Charles Baudelaire Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook) Poetry
45 3/31/16 Victor Koman The Jehovah Contract SF/Fantasy
46 4/15/16 Tony Hillerman The Blessing Way Mystery
47 4/17/16 The Best American Noir of the Century Mystery
48 4/20/16 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case of the Curious Bride Mystery
49 4/21/16 Smedley D. Butler War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier Politics
50 4/21/16 Isaac Asimov Before the Golden Age Book 3 SF/Fantasy
51 4/24/16 Mark Riebling Church of Spies History
52 4/25/16 Michael Moorcock Elric of Melnibone SF/Fantasy
53 4/27/16 Michael Moorcock A Sailor on the Seas of Fate SF/Fantasy
54 4/28/16 Harry Harrison Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers SF/Fantasy
55 4/29/16 Michael Moorcock The Weird of the White Wolf SF/Fantasy
56 4/30/16 Michael Moorcock The Vanishing Tower SF/Fantasy
57 5/3/16 Michael Moorcock The Bane of the Black Sword SF/Fantasy
58 5/5/16 Tony Hillerman Talking God Mystery
5/8/26 Harischandra: The Story of the Mythological King Whose Name is Synonymous With Truth
5/9/26 Uncle Scrooge (Walt Disney best comics series)
59 5/9/16 James Hadley Chase I’ll Bury My Dead Mystery
60 5/10/16 Isaac Asimov Before the Golden Age Book 1 SF/Fantasy
61 5/12/16 Michael Moorcock Stormbringer SF/Fantasy
62 5/16/16 Ben Bova, ed. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IIA SF/Fantasy
63 5/18/16 John Sladek Black Aura Mystery
64 5/19/16 Robert van Gulik, trans. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee (Dee Goong An) Mystery
65 5/20/16 John Meade Falkner The Lost Stradivarius Literature
66 5/23/16 Robert van Gulik The Haunted Monastery and the Chinese Maze Murders Mystery
67 5/25/16 Carl Fallberg Walt Disney’s Donald Duck The Fabulous Diamond Fountain Children’s
68 5/25/16 Robert van Gulik The Monkey and the Tiger: Two Chinese Detective Stories Mystery
5/27/16 Disney Studios Staff Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and the Golden Helmet
5/30/16 William Messner-Loebs & Sam Kieth Epicurus the Sage, Volume I
5/30/16 William Messner-Loebs & Sam Kieth Epicurus the Sage: The Many Loves of Zeus
5/30/16 Gardner Fox The Golden Age Sandman – Archives, Volume 1 (DC Archive Editions)
69 5/31/16 Philip K. Dick Now Wait for Last Year SF/Fantasy
70 6/14/16 Edmund Crispin Love Lies Bleeding Mystery
71 6/18/16 William Shakespeare As You Like it Literature
6/19/16 Howard the Duck #1
6/19/16 Al Moore 1963 – Book Five: Horus God of Light
6/19/16 R. Crumb Despair
6/20/16 Howard the Duck #2
6/20/16 Howard the Duck #33
6/20/16 Howard the Duck Annual #1
6/21/16 Steve Gerber Destroyer Duck #1
72 6/21/16 John Mortimer Rumpole of the Bailey Mystery
73 6/23/16 Poul Anderson Ensign Flandry SF/Fantasy
74 6/25/16 Poul Anderson A Circus of Hells SF/Fantasy
75 6/26/16 Robert van Gulik Judge Dee at Work Mystery
76 6/29/16 Bartholomew Gill McGarr on the Cliffs of Moher Mystery
7/3/26 Al Moore 1963 – Book One: Mystery Incorporated
7/4/26 Al Moore 1963 – Book Two: The Fury
77 7/5/16 Rex Stout Three Doors to Death Mystery
7/6/26 Al Moore 1963 – Book Three: Tales of the Uncanny
78 7/6/16 Raymond Chandler Pickup on Noon Street Mystery
7/6/26 Al Moore 1963 – Book Four: Tales From Beyond
79 7/8/16 Michael Gilbert The Killing of Katie Steelstock Mystery
80 7/11/16 Robert J. Ray Murdock for Hire Mystery
81 7/16/16 Benjamin Hoff The Tao of Pooh Religion
82 7/21/16 Georges Simenon L’Ami De’Enfance De Maigret Foreign Language
83 7/30/16 Isaac Asimov, ed. Before The Golden Age SF/Fantasy
84 8/2/16 Sabine Baring-Gould Curious Myths of the Middle Ages: The Sangreal, Pope Joan, The Wandering Jew, and Others Myth/Folklore
85 8/7/16 R. Austin Freeman The Best Dr. Thorndyke Stories Mystery
86 8/11/16 Jim Thompson The Golden Gizmo Mystery
87 8/13/16 Tobias Wells Murder Most Fouled Up Mystery
88 8/16/16 Alan Watts Tao: The Watercourse Way Religion
89 9/9/16 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories (2 Vol. Set) Mystery
90 9/12/16 Arthur William Upfield The Will of the Tribe Mystery
91 9/15/16 Anne Hillerman Rock with Wings Mystery
92 9/19/16 Tony Hillerman Dance Hall of the Dead Mystery
93 9/21/16 W.C. Sellar & R. J. Yeatman 1066 and All That Humor
94 9/22/16 Tony Hillerman Listening Woman Mystery
95 9/23/16 Tony Hillerman People of Darkness Mystery
96 9/26/16 Tony Hillerman The Dark Wind Mystery
97 9/27/16 Tony Hillerman The Ghostway Mystery
98 9/29/16 Tony Hillerman Skinwalkers Mystery
99 10/8/16 Frank Waters Masked Gods: Navaho and Pueblo Ceremonialism Indians of North America
100 10/11/16 Tony Hillerman A Thief of Time Mystery

Ninety-Eight Thousand (98,000)

Just listened to my 98,000th unique iTunes track, The vaguely holiday-related track “Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas” by Smiley Bates.

This represents 635.64 GB of data, constituting 267 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes, and 44 seconds of playing time. Leaving 76,550 items (once again – again – more “music” added in the interval) remaining unheard, totaling 482.53 GB of data (only ~30 MB less than last report) lasting 222 days, 8 hours, 18 minutes, and 11 seconds (an increase of several days, due to several hundred broadcasts of the old Dragnet radio show from the early 50s.

Ninety-Seven Thousand (97,000)

Just listened to my 97,000th unique iTunes track, an instrumental riff from a 1974 Los Angeles concert by Steely Dan at The Record Factory, from a bootleg provided me years ago by my friend Gary. The track was a bridge between “Pretzel Logic” and their hit “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”.

This represents 632.17 GB of data, constituting 264 days, 48 minutes, and 58 seconds of playing time. Which leaves 77,170 items (once again more music added in the interval) remaining unheard, totaling 482.56 GB of data lasting 218 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes, and 49 seconds.

The slick rockers of the 70’s were followed by the smoke-filled strains of Johnny Clarke’s “Collie Dread”, from the Trojan Ganja Reggae Box Set.

Ninety-Six Thousand (96,000)

Just listened to my 96,000th unique iTunes track, a classic version of “Harlem Nocturne”, by the incomparable Johnny Otis, from a collection of different Harlem Nocturnes. This compelling instrumental — in almost any version — is one of the all-time best songs ever.

This represents 626.67 GB of data, constituting 261 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes, and 44 seconds of playing time. Which leaves 77,924 items (and yes, a few more CDs in the mix) remaining unheard, totaling 486.53 GB of data lasting 220 days, 8 hours, 126 minutes, and 35 seconds.

100 Books (Not Really)

On Tuesday, June 21st, I apparently finished my hundredth book since I began recording the same just over a year ago. Of course, this is only a seeming fact, for multiple reasons. Imprimus, this “100 books” total includes comics and graphic novels, which cannot really have the same literary ‘weight’ (not to say ‘mass’) as other texts. Secondus, the earliest books read — according to my database of same — only have rough estimates of when they were completed, and I suspect they were finished perhaps as much as a month earlier than the approximate 6/17/2015 date given. Tertius, and perhaps most telling, whilst the unexamined life is deemed to be unworthy of living, the micromanaged and databased life may only be a debasing of the actual substance of life itself.

Perhaps more to come, perhaps after I can lay claim to one hundred actual books not bound with staples.

*Forgot to mention the particular book which ticked over the counter; ’twas Rumpole of the Bailey, the well-known mystery book by John Mortimer. The stories are somber, if not actually despondent.

Ninety-Five Thousand (95,000)

Just listened to my 95,000th unique iTunes track, the sexy reggae — or is it mento? — 1972 single, “Night Food Reggae”, by the mysterious Nora Dean, found on the Trojan Records collection Tighten Up Volume 7. The alleged singer later moved from Jamaica to New York, became born again, and turned from reggae to singing gospel. We say ‘alleged’ because Ms. Dean denied in 2005 that she ever sang this track, which is a slightly sticky tale of oral sex and frustration.

This represents 618.61 GB of data, constituting 258 days, 22 hours, 32 minutes, and 28 seconds of playing time. Which leaves 78,749 items (I’ve been ripping quite a few CDs since last we met) remaining unheard, totaling 491.53 GB of data lasting 222 days, 16 hours, 11 minutes, and 20 seconds.

The 94,999th track, in case you care, was the lovely song “Проходит Всё” sung by Екатерина Юровская (Ekaterina Yurovskaya) from the album Золотые Россыпи Романса (something like “Golden Hits of Romance”). The song title means “It Takes All” — according to my rudimentary Google Translate skills — though it appears to be a different number than the same title with music by Rachmaninoff (again, according to my untutored ear). Reversing the two words gives ‘Всё Проходит’, changing the meaning to ‘everything passes’ — thus this last Russian phrase is also the translated title of George Harrison’s classic solo album All Things Must Pass.

Completing the somber bookends to that ninety-fifth thousandth tune from the dancehall, the 95,001st* song from my iTunes was the beautiful and melancholy “Dark Eyes” by Bob Dylan, from Empire Burlesque. At the time of its release (1985), it seemed only a lugubrious coda to yet another breakout album by my favorite artist. But one can now hear in its slow sad strains the gloomy tenor which pervades his albums since 1997’s Time Out Of Mind.

*Technically this was not the 95,001st song, as I’ve already listened to “Dark Eyes” three or four times before. No, technically, the 95,001st song was B.B. King’s “Beautician Blues” from The Jungle, a much more upbeat melody. Unfortunately, this particular version is one I ripped from my own LP, which has suffered over the years (I think it never had a record sleeve until I turned it into mp3s), and one can hear the damage of time.