The Listening Project–Week 4

Well another week has passed by and I was able to get through a few CDs in my listening project.  I was travelling on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (Wednesday’s travel notes are worthy of a separate blog) so I only was able to listen to 14 CDs the week which puts me behind my 20 per week schedule.

You can reference this blog entry for details about this project.  Here are the CDs I knocked off of my list this week.

#	Artist	Album	Date	Again?
65	Twila Paris	Beyond A Dream	8/15/2011	No
66	Steve Bell	Beyond A Shadow	8/15/2011	Yes
67	Petra	Beyond Belief	8/15/2011	Yes
68	Jeremy Camp	Beyond Measure	8/15/2011	*Yes
69	Phil Keaggy	Beyond Nature	8/18/2011	Yes
70	Riki Michele	Big Big Town	8/18/2011	Yes
71	Bebo Norman	Big Blue Sky	8/18/2011	No
72	Michael W. Smith	The Big Picture	8/18/2011	Yes
73	The Elms	Big Surprise	8/18/2011	Yes
74	Big Tent Revival	Big Tent Revival	8/18/2011	Yes
75	Mylon LeFevre & Broken Heart	Big World	8/19/2011	Yes
76	Bleach	Bleach	8/19/2011	Yes
77	Blindside	Blindside	8/19/2011	Yes
78	Audio Adrenaline	Bloom	8/19/2011	Yes

Here are my thoughts on a few of these CDs that I have listened to over the past week…

• Twila Paris “Beyond A Dream”: I am not sure why I buy Twila Paris CDs.  I have 3 or 4 I think.  Maybe I just think that I want to be a fan.  This one garners a NO in the last column.  Not a great way to start the week.
• Steve Bell “Beyond A Shadow”: Awesome acoustic guitar driven praise album.  It that is your style I recommend that you buy some Steve Bell CDs.
• Jeremy Camp “Beyond Measure”: My mp3 rip of this CD was all messed up after song 6 or so so the YES has an * by it.  I am not sure what went wrong but the CD might have been scratched up when I ripped it.
• Riki Michell “Big Big Town”: Riki Michelle is (was) the wife of Gene Eugene (the lead singer for Adam Again).  She sings (sang) backup on the Adam Again albums that I have (mostly NOT on CD).  Anyway, I knew that Gene Eugene would be involved with the producing of the CD and Adam Again is one of my favorite bands of all time.
• Michael W. Smith “The Big Picture”: The first MWS album that I really liked.
• The Elms “Big Surprise”: A great $1 find and a CD that has no misses.  We used the first song to play over the opening credits of the short movie the kids and I made last summer.
• Blindside “Blindside”: I paid $10 total for the re-issue of Blindside’s first 2 CDs (bought directly from the band’s website.  Their later stuff calmed down a bit from the sound of this album but there are enough highlights to get this into the YES category.

My anal retentive side crept up on me this week as I considered keeping track of the most popular first word in the album titles of my CD collection.  I started out on Monday with 5 straight CDs whose title started with “Beyond” but followed up with 6 more that started with “Big” and that got me thinking about keeping track of this.  This is not a record as the “All” CDs totaled 7.  I might revisit later if I feel like writing an Excel formula to track this (omitting the “The” and “A” starting words).  I also am considering keeping track of all words in the album titles.  We will see.  Hopefully I can get back on track and get ahead of schedule in time for the 3 days I am taking off in September for a getaway with the wife.

Jon