Our Story
Musical Chairs
Top Five Picks
Five Rules
Quarantunes: Our Story
In the beginning, each day brought a new band to discover – or rediscover.
It all started with self-quarantine. The three of us (Tonya, Brad, and John) were spending a lot more time at home, and everything had become an at-home-only activity. Sports were gone. Restaurants were closed. Work and kids’ school were upstairs instead of uptown.
So, naturally, we all fell back on our number one passion. Music.
We decided to reprise a project we had previously cast aside for lack of time. We would give our full attention to the entire discography of a particular artist, from humble beginnings to latest releases, one at a time. Each day, one of us would choose the artist for the day. Rotating turns, we started with some of our favorites and branched outward toward the fringes. After we gave some legitimate and engaged listening, we began to rank our top five favorite tracks. Work-from-home dissipated and took the endless free time with it. But by then we were in it.
Bear in mind that these are our personal favorites. These aren’t what we consider to be the most quintessential, though some absolutely are. There are tracks steeped in nostalgia, sitting at the top because of some cherished memory over a decade ago. Others have been chosen that would possibly have never been discovered were it not for this project.
Here’s hoping this thing continues for a long, long time.
WTF Is This?
Why Musical Chairs? Because we take turns picking the band. That’s about it.
Something we enjoy together is taking turns picking the music, one song at a time. That’s what we do here. Tonya started with Pink Floyd, Brad followed with Tool, John chose Nirvana after that, and we’ve kept it going on and on, during and out of the national quarantine of Spring 2020. It started with our top favorite bands, but as it has spiraled out it has become more mood-based.
What makes our five picks so special?
After a comprehensive and engaged listen of an artist’s entire discography, we choose our top five favorites.
The first version of this project actually started in 2017 after discovering Top Ten Tuesday on r/indieheads. We wanted one of our own with just us three doing just the bands we chose. But we didn’t have the time to coordinate, and some of the details on how it would work weren’t really fleshed out. We kind of threw it together and it wasn’t as much of a collaboration.
Then, the shit of 2020 happened, and all of a sudden we had a lot more time at home. We threw around the idea of giving it another try, and found that the previous shared Google Sheet had gone missing. We had to start over, and good thing we did.
This time, we got it right. To do our due diligence for ranking the five best songs from a particular artist, and out of respect for each artist and our own individual musical knowledge, we would give every artist choice a comprehensive and engaged listen – the entire discography, chronologically – in order to be sure of our top five picks and to understand the sound progression that each artist underwent in their career.
Rules? Yeah, all right.
We have a few goals and guidelines now that we try to follow, even if they weren’t as clearly fleshed out when we started.
1. If its your day, its your pick.
Pick anyone you want, no matter who it is. Don’t think about what the other two will think or say. We each have a mutual interest to give each artist an honest listen, for purposes of sharing music, but also because we want an honest listen in return on some of our wackier artist choices. The project benefits from this line of thinking more than making “safe” picks.
2. Five picks, not six with slash marks or ties.
It can be hard to eliminate down to five. Sometimes you have to exclude an album that’s a better sum of its parts, and that hurts. Other times you’re stuck on two songs you equally enjoy. But its a difficulty we all experience, on some bands more than others. If you’re stuck on more than five, take another day and take a break from it. Less than five is allowed, because you may just really not like a band at all, and that’s okay, but do your best to come up with five out of respect for the person who likes the band enough to pick them.
3. Leave your preconceived notions at the door.
No matter if its about the genre, the band, the group of people that tend to listen to them, the commercial that song was on, or that thing the lead singer did that pissed you off back in the day, put that all aside. The reason we’re here is to wipe the slate clean the best we can and listen as lovers of music. Don’t necessarily try to listen as a first time listener, because prior experience matters, but don’t let old biases affect you this time around.
4. Listen to the complete discography, chronologically.
The top five picks are the visible result, but this is really what it’s all about. It’s about sharing music with each other, and learning to appreciate music we don’t know or previously cast aside for whatever reason. We aren’t big sticklers on live albums or compilation albums, but cover all EPs and LPs. We said this from the beginning, but as we’ve progressed we really have learned that this has been an incredibly valuable and rewarding rule to stick to. We learn a lot about the progression of sound that bands go through and the myriad of ways in which to do so.
5. Talk about it.
Be open to conversation during the listening process. Share old and new stories and perspectives. While this project seems to amazingly improve your opinion of basically any band, there will be times when one of us is just not going to like or appreciate the music an artist makes, no matter how much we give it a chance. Gotta be cool with that.
More later? It’s still early.
We’re absolutely welcoming to others joining us. If you’re interested, email us. We also wouldn’t turn down a celebrity guest, so if anyone has a hook up with Maynard James Keenan let us know.