Breakdown of an absurd estimate
Today I realized I had little idea of the difference between Kid Koala and Kid 606 but that I was familiar with both of the names. This set off a set of mental excercises and estimates. Here I write about them, just to put them down somewhere.
I estimate I am familiar with about 9700 bands/ groups/artists by name.
The breakdown of the estimate is as follows:
- 1500 bands that I like or have liked in the past
- 200 bands that have opened for bands that I like but that I otherwise have no opinion/ memory of
- 500 bands that I like the songs that I’ve heard on the radio but am unfamiliar with any of their other songs
- 1500 other bands that I like what I’ve heard, but haven’t investigated further
- 1000 bands that I haven’t liked what I heard, but have heard very little of
- 1000 bands that I have a distinct opionion that I don’t like
- 2500 bands that I’ve heard or read about in passing and have some idea of their genre, but haven’t heard them at all
- 1500 bands that I know I’ve heard of but wouldn’t actually have an idea of what they sound like
- 20 bands that friends have been involved in and band that they’ve been connected to
- 6 bands that I’ve been involved in or pretended to be involved in
In approximate decending order, the number of bands I’ve heard of come from the following genres: indie rock/ pop, oldies/ classic rock, radio rock/pop, old-timey/ bluegrass/ country, irish/ celtic music, jazz, hip hop, comedy/ novelty, classical musicians, (south) african, other world, indian music, electronica, metal. I’m probably forgetting a few here.
March 27th, 2006 at 8:39 am
how did you arrive at these estimates?
March 27th, 2006 at 10:38 am
I went through and thought about them. I’m not going to explain all of the estimates, but, for instance, I have about 500 CDs, so that’s about 500 artists I like or have liked (- for doubles, + for compilations and other multi-artist CDs). Maybe there are 2x the number of artists that I like than I have CDs of. Another example: I’ve probably been to about 100-150 concerts in the last six years with 1-2 bands per concert that I hadn’t heard of previously and didn’t investigate further.
March 28th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
What are the 6 bands that you’ve been involved in or pretended to be involved in?
March 28th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Where’s Luke? (andy, dave, me)
Greetings from Johannesburg (dave, me)
brand new canada (me)
What the Hell are you Looking at? (niko, me)
the Grievance Committee (me)
the flobots (played some trumpet on their album)
March 29th, 2006 at 11:29 am
6 was just an estimate, really…
There was that improvised, lo fi, acoustic, instrumental post rock band that Andy and I were in. Did we every have a name for that, Andy? I should dig up that one song we recorded on microcasette tape…The bouzouki wasn’t even in tune, I don’t think.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
what’s the difference between brand new canadia and the grievance committee? (wow committee has a lot of double letters) also, what of this nameless thing? how long did that last? etc?
March 29th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
brand new canada is my solo stuff. the griecance committee is a post rock band. it has no recorded output.
the nameless thing lasted about 2 hours.
etc.