____twoism

I've been listening to BoC since Geogaddi came out. That's twenty years. And during those twenty years, I've listened to them a lot. Like, about as much as any other music. All the LPs, EPs, remixes, Old Tunes, ect. All of it. My thing is I'm really terrible at remembering track names. Sure, there's easy ones like "1969" and "Aquarius", but a lot of their tracks that I've listened to hundreds of times, if I don't see the track name on a display or I'm not following along the tracklisting, I usually have to guess what the actual track name is. And often I draw a blank. I can always tell what LP or EP it's from, but the actual name of the track? I'm pretty bad at that.

I could argue that it's because they don't write basic verse/chorus/verse tunes with big memorable hooks, but am I letting myself off too easily? Am I alone on this? Am I terrible fan who should be shunned and shamed?

I'll hang up and listen. Thank you.

In my case it happens only with the Old Tunes and R35TT.

Yes. By the power vested in me by the spirit of Aquarius, I sentence thee to 20 years in the Hexagon Brig peeling oranges! Maybe then you'll remember the titles properly!

Spoiler: show

Just kidding lmao, I think you'll be alright. If you hear a song playing in your own library that you don't recognize but quite enjoy you could always look at the title again and/or add it to a playlist or something.

Magic Orange wrote:In my case it happens only with the Old Tunes and R35TT.

Same here. B04 and A06 are the only ones I can recognize by their "empty names".

I wonder if growing up in the MP3 player age of music lessened the chances of that happening, since you could see the title every time it played, as opposed to fixating on the track number (CD players and vinyl records) or time durations (like with cassettes). Ironically, the Spotify/shuffle habits of today may bring it full circle.

I'm terrible with track names outside of the bangers. Doesn't help the only copy of MHTRTC I had for ages had two tracks missing.

I'm terrible with track names too. The obvious ones are easy but I tend to mix up others or often not recall the title at all. Same with other bands tbh.

Did you participate in the Snippet Contest (2017)?

You had to identify 30 snippets in one 3min45sec mp3. The mp3 file and solution are still available.

BoC aren't a band I play all that much, they do have a constant presence in my music world through this forum and the wider community, but I can't say they are my first choice when someone asks for my favourite artist.

That being said, when I do listen to them, I'm oddly ignorant of the tracklisting, my muscle memory tends to tell me what song is coming next. And it helps that there is a fantastic flow to all four main studio albums.

Josh wrote: I could argue that it's because they don't write basic verse/chorus/verse tunes with big memorable hooks, but am I letting myself off too easily?

That would make sense, when I first listened to BOC, they were so alien, away from the norm of normal structure. It utterly fascinated me.

Negamuse wrote:I'm terrible with track names outside of the bangers. Doesn't help the only copy of MHTRTC I had for ages had two tracks missing.

Funny story: when I first listened to Geogaddi, I imported the files into my mp3 player wrong and all the tracks were out of order. I spent a good several months listening to it that way, not even realizing that Opening the Mouth is supposed to come after The Beach at Redpoint

Dawn Chorus was track 1 (likely because it was the reason I listened to Geogaddi at all and put it in first) and Music Is Math was the closing track is what I remember.

When I first downloaded random 35 I gave all the tracks different names. Just take matters into your own hands.

There is no such thing as a bad BoC fan.

You like BoC or you don't.

You're a casual tho, git gud LOL!

Navaru wrote:When I first downloaded random 35 I gave all the tracks different names. Just take matters into your own hands.

This is an awesome idea. Especially because I remember them more based on their moods than their numbers

I also have trouble remembering the Geogaddi track order and I've heard it more than most albums in my collection. Geogaddi is a fully cohesive masterpiece.

Echelon wrote:

Navaru wrote:When I first downloaded random 35 I gave all the tracks different names. Just take matters into your own hands.

This is an awesome idea. Especially because I remember them more based on their moods than their numbers

I did that when I first downloaded them. I shared them with the forum and everyone got mad at me. I think they thought I was file sharing them with fake names or something . I've forgotten a good portion of the names by now though, and the ones I do were lame anyway. I prefer them nameless now.

rodox_head wrote:

Echelon wrote:

Navaru wrote:When I first downloaded random 35 I gave all the tracks different names. Just take matters into your own hands.

This is an awesome idea. Especially because I remember them more based on their moods than their numbers

I did that when I first downloaded them. I shared them with the forum and everyone got mad at me. I think they thought I was file sharing them with fake names or something . I've forgotten a good portion of the names by now though, and the ones I do were lame anyway. I prefer them nameless now.

I think as a writer it's a fun idea. Especially since BOC are so legendary with their titling. Making BOC soundalike titles sounds like a creative writing prompt.

If I'm to admit something, I'm not only hyped about hearing new BOC music but hearing what they title their stuff too. That's half the fun!

Echelon wrote:If I'm to admit something, I'm not only hyped about hearing new BOC music but hearing what they title their stuff too. That's half the fun!

It's true lmao, BoC have some of the best titles in the music game. If they were to just flat-out drop the titles of the unknown R35TT tracks one day that would be almost as good as a new release in my book, but knowing how they love a good mystery chances are that's not gonna happen

Same here. I'm good at this with certain artists, but sadly BoC isn't one of them.

I could confidently assign every track to its respective release (from the title alone) and tell you roughly where it sits in the tracklist, but I struggle to correlate certain track titles with the music. For example, if someone were to ask me what Oscar See Through Red Eye sounds like, I'd have no idea despite hearing it a countless number of times over the years.

Echelon wrote:I think as a writer it's a fun idea. Especially since BOC are so legendary with their titling. Making BOC soundalike titles sounds like a creative writing prompt.

If I'm to admit something, I'm not only hyped about hearing new BOC music but hearing what they title their stuff too. That's half the fun!

Okay, maybe "Parallelodrone" was kind of a cool sounding name. I'll let you guess which one that was.

Jango9 wrote:

Echelon wrote:If I'm to admit something, I'm not only hyped about hearing new BOC music but hearing what they title their stuff too. That's half the fun!

It's true lmao, BoC have some of the best titles in the music game. If they were to just flat-out drop the titles of the unknown R35TT tracks one day that would be almost as good as a new release in my book, but knowing how they love a good mystery chances are that's not gonna happen

I'd pay good cash for that, or the song titles on the new album to leak. The fact that there is actually a new album with crazy awesome song titles is so exciting to fathom!

rodox_head wrote:

Echelon wrote:I think as a writer it's a fun idea. Especially since BOC are so legendary with their titling. Making BOC soundalike titles sounds like a creative writing prompt.

If I'm to admit something, I'm not only hyped about hearing new BOC music but hearing what they title their stuff too. That's half the fun!

Okay, maybe "Parallelodrone" was kind of a cool sounding name. I'll let you guess which one that was.

That is a very rad song title. Sort of like if you crossed MHTRTC era BOC with Catalog 3 era BOC. A crossbreeding I'd greatly approve of!

I feel better knowing I'm not the only one who isn't able to play "name that tune" with BoC tracks. I agree (somewhat) with those who say it's a product of the digital age, and that if it isn't obvious what the song is, it's likely to be lost to memory due to the over abundance of music blasted at us through algorithms and shuffled playlists.

The thing is, there's a lot of instrumental music -- jazz and classical for example -- that I can name in a few bars. I'll just chalk it up to my declining mental faculties, not a lack of interest in BoC (definitely not) and take some solace in knowing that it's not just me. It makes me more impressed with those who can not only identify tracks by only hearing small snippets, but with those who chase down samples and run down the sources. That's always amazing to me.

Been listening since MHTRTC came out on cassette, vinyl, CD, Minidisc - you name it. I'm exactly the same - apart from the obvious ones I don't know the track titles. When I see a thread about An Eagle in Your Mind or The Smallest Weird Number, I think - 'I wonder which one that is', and even sometimes open up iTunes to check, but immediately forget. It doesn't affect my enjoyment of the music at all.

Man, now I kinda feel like the weird one here. Although I think all you guys listen to waaaay more artists than I do. I simply cannot comprehend too many different artists at once, so I sperg out on ones at a time.