Unpopular Music from the Boston Public Library LP Collection

 

About a year ago, I stumbled across a link for the Boston Public Library Vinyl LP Collection hosted on the Internet Archive, and have spent several chunks of time listening and downloading many of the thousands of titles found there. I spent much of my misspent early-twenties perusing these bins, both in the main library in Copley Square (pictured, although the records were in the ugly addition built alongside it in the 1970's) and the branch library in Brighton.

This is another of the dormant playlists I'm finally getting around to finishing. It consists mostly of 's 50's and 60's jazz and third-stream, with a side trip into a not terribly broad sampling of 20^th century American classical music. Needless to say, with all of this music coming off much handled library records, be forewarned that this program contains a lot of surface noise.

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Playlist and program notes after the break...

Unpopular Music - Contemplation Compilation

One of my New Year's resolutions is to post to Mixcloud more regularly. There are a few half-finished playlists lying around waiting to be molded into their final form. I've been working at home for the past two years, and too often doing the work to put up a mix also seems enough like working at home make me want to do something else. 

This one has been sitting around since Thanksgiving waiting for its finishing touches. My idle listening is on shuffle a lot of the time these days and I will sometime put songs aside for early morning listening on days when I don't need to get up or can't sleep or what have you, and thus the Contemplation Compilation was born. 

 

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Just because I find something “contemplative” doesn't necessarily mean its “quiet”, or “consonant”, or “doesn't have a drum solo”, but merely that it leaves space to get lost in for a while. Your results may vary. There is quite a bit of sacred choral in the program for non-evangelical reasons. Do with it what you wish. The playlist and a few bits of commentary on the music (but not full program notes this time), appear after the break...