Record Reconstructor

  Dashboard! Way back in January, in about my third week of this grand folly, I went to visit my friend Matt and asked him to play me some albums I might not have heard, which you can find me detailing here for your edification.  Amongst the bands he played for me that afternoon as we bravely soldiered on to completing a game of Malifaux at a world record pace of one turn every 97 minutes was Jacksonville, Florida's own flipturn*, a band I knew nothing about, where I wrote this . So it seems unusual that I might have waited until November to cover flipturn's second album, Burnout Days , given how excited I was about them back in January. Well, if you are keeping a running list of all my various neuroses I have shared on the pages of this blog, here's another minor one for the file.  I went through a period of about four or five years in the pre-COVID times of discovering a band and getting very into their music, then a few weeks in I check to see if they are touring only ...

   Dashboard!  To my mind, there are very few more relationship-defining questions than "Why don't you pick an album to put on?". The variables are so wild on both sides of that request that it's hard even for me to write a coherent introduction for this post.   Is the question-asker saying "I don't care what we listen to, dealers choice, go nuts"?  Or are they being polite - perhaps they are visiting someone, or they have a guest who they don't feel confident they could pick out something appropriate on their own?  Is the question an "OK, lets see how well you think you know me." test - I've certainly had relationships where that has been the case, on both sides.  Or is the question "I'm always looking for new music recommendations, and I trust and respect your music taste/am open to anything, play me something you think I should know but I don't."? This ambiguity is why I know people who freeze up when they are asked...