Some suggest that listening to music while you work is a distraction and prevents you from working at your full potential. For one reason or another, I'm different here. Tunes help me stay in a good mood, as well as helping to block out the variety of distracting background sounds. Coughing (is this a workplace, or a hospital?), socialising (do some people ever work?), lunchtime (perhaps someone should put a door on the lunch room), and the like.

After picking up a Cd that I really liked from the local used Cd shop, I think I recognized that I'm getting a bit bored with my collection. I have a very picky taste though, it's tough finding new music that's enjoyable. So I've mostly been in the mode of just buying new albums from artists I already know of.

This new Cd stirred something though. So, what to do. I wandered over to the forums of the 77's (just an all around excellent band which most people haven't heard of). I did some poking around, and ran across some threads on what folks listen to what it isn't the 77's. Perfect, as these guys are certain to have good taste :-)

I was not dissapointed. And so I just spent a *lot* of money on new Cd's :-) I think I have 30 or so on their way.

Some highlights -- I believe one of the most incredible sounds, unlike anything I've heard, has to be from Monarch - The Grandeur That Was Rome (sound clips / (review). Actually, I think this is the one I will listen to first.

The long lost musician award goes to Pedro the Lion. I heard them in concert that I helped out at some 7-8 years ago. They were pretty cool. Shortly following that, someone had given me their one and only album -- an EP -- for my birthday. It was great, but after keeping an eye out for new stuff, I never saw anything else from them. Well, someone on the 77's forum mentioned having all their albums, which threw me for a loop. All 1? Well, I looked a bit harder (Google helps with that), and discovered they're being sold off their website. Since that one release, they've come out with 7 additional albums. Yikes! There are some song clips here. All 7 of those are on their way.

Another artist I had never heard of is Cush. Some song clips from their main album are here. Those are really cool, this will probably be the second album I listen to. They have 3 other albums -- two EP's, and a live Cd. The EP's are a bit odd. However, there was a deal for all 4 Cd's for $25, so why not :-)

Some of the folks from the 77's forum pointed out that they felt the one band they listen to over the 77's was Over the Rhine. I'm not sure I'm willing to give them that title yet, but I ordered some Cd's from them -- it is good stuff. They have a ton of albums out already, so I only got a few. They have a bunch of mp3's on their site.

I also picked up albums from The Violet Burning, Smalltown Poets, Michael Knott, Michael Pritzl, and one or two others. In hoping to still buy food and pay the mortgage, I didn't buy all the ones I ran across. So there's still a lot of albums that I hope to be able to pick up over the next few months / years, but I'm thrilled to have run into some good music :-)

Ya know, I didn't this time -- but that's largely because 2-3 months ago, I picked up their 3 CD set, which was a re-release of most of their earlier albums. It's interesting (and unusual) stuff. So, there's only one album of theirs I don't have -- "The Beautiful Letdown" -- which is currently on my wishlist :-)

(Which, in itself, is quite interesting. You'd think, after buying 30 albums, that I'd be almost set as far as what I could possibly still want.... but no, that's just about half of what I had recently run across :-) Though, for the most part, the better part of that half, so I'm not in as much a rush for the other stuff).

So are you a Switchfoot fan?