Denim Blunders, Reflections and General Nonsense.

[Double 0 Soul]

2 hours ago, Dr_Heech said:

No trauma for me Neal, simply thinning out the herd of a few pairs of too- small, hardly worn jeans was a blessing. Plus l get to see them being worn and they are getting some much needed love again.

The raw lvc 1937s put by for his birthday? - l've owned and worn an identical pair back around 2007-2009 and they faded great but l'm not a great fan of the arcs. 

I have enough jeans for now 🙂

 

From my perspective Charlie, he just wouldn't appreciate them, he wants his jeans to be baggy af and look hella' fly.. beyond that he doesn't really care for the details.. he cares even less for Levi's or their associated history so to give him a pair of jeans which carefully reproduce this history is lost on him.. 

The equivalent would be a philatelist giving me a collectable stamp.. Ooh! look at this one from the postal union congress.. the perforations are simply exquisite!

Pfft! I don't give a shit.. lick it and slap it on a letter for all i care.

Edited May 17 by Double 0 Soul

[Dr_Heech]

On 5/17/2025 at 8:13 AM, Double 0 Soul said:

 

From my perspective Charlie, he just wouldn't appreciate them, he wants his jeans to be baggy af and look hella' fly.. beyond that he doesn't really care for the details.. he cares even less for Levi's or their associated history so to give him a pair of jeans which carefully reproduce this history is lost on him.. 

The equivalent would be a philatelist giving me a collectable stamp.. Ooh! look at this one from the postal union congress.. the perforations are simply exquisite!

Pfft! I don't give a shit.. lick it and slap it on a letter for all i care.

I totally understand mate, my son is of a similar ilk. He was telling me and the Mrs the other day about his 'two styles' - baggy streetwear or dad vintage 😂 but would like to extend this to several more 'styles' (whatever they may be) but due to a lack of funds is happy to accept any and all of my old clobber. I've given him an array of t-shirts and tops, mostly old TKmaxx finds from 15-20 years ago. I gave him a levis sherpa and a 70s CWU 45P flight jacket. More recently, after a sudden interest in outdoor wild camping, he inherited the tent before also getting a vintage Berghaus Shadow 60+ rucksack plus all the necessary equipment and a pair of almost brand new but 15+ years old Vibram-soled walking boots so he's doing alright by me. Forgot to mention, also dug out an old, but still great Karrimor hiking waterproof jacket.

Despite a long conversation about old clothes, quality decline  Mills shutting down and the rise of the reproduction scene some 30 or so years ago, my son can appreciate the quality decline as he's a bit of a thrifter although brings back some dubious items, but otherwise it is information that is outdated and useless as far as he's concerned. The other day he came home with some used baggy bleach wash no name (imo) jeans with some fucking cherubs stitched on the back pocket 🙃 but hey ho.

Edited May 22 by Dr_Heech
To add stuff and make sense for a change

[mondo]

6 minutes ago, Dr_Heech said:

The other day he came home withe some user baggy bleach wash no name (imo) jeans with some fucking cherubs stitched on the back pocket 🙃

Pfft.. philistine! That's prime Fiorucci you're knocking..

[Double 0 Soul]

My next door neighbour (who was born in Hackney) gave my son some 80s / 90s era vintage footy shirts a few months ago.. he's not really into football but he does like the attention.. he was walking through the park wearing a purple Tottenham Hotspur shirt from the 90s with a pair of baggy Levi's and some Jordans.. a runner ran past and shouted "Up the Spurs" to him.

 

I'll tell ya' what, Spotify / apple et al.. have completely ruined the 'album' as an artform, my kid has had a pair of fancy headphones perma stuck to his head for the last year or so.. before that it was airpods.. he's never not listening to music.. evn when we're playing tennis, he's wearing headphones

I hear a tune he's playing by whoever and say.. "Have you listened to any of their albums" "No, just this song and maybe one other" "I've got all their albums on CD.. check out such n' such album.. it's incredible" "Are all the songs as good as this one" "Well no, that's probably the standout track of the album, but it's a body of work by that artist, evn the track listing will have been carefully considered" .. "So it's 10 tracks and 9 of them are not as good as this one" "Yes that's correct, a couple of them could even be shite but that's not the point" .. "So then Dad.. with all the incredible music in the world, you want me to spend time listening to music which isn't as good as the music i'm listening to now, just because it's on an album?"  

"Yes exactly"

 

[Dr_Heech]

15 minutes ago, mondo said:

Pfft.. philistine! That's prime Fiorucci you're knocking..

That's the one!

[ATWM]

That good song is so good partially because it’s in the context of all the other not so good ones. That’s a lesson he’ll learn in time, hopefully.
 

Ironically most of the generated playlists on streaming services are low pay commissioned filler crap by burnt out musicians who don’t even like what they’re recording for it, and every once in awhile is a tune by the artist(s) you’re there for. 

[Double 0 Soul]

I've never used a streaming service so i don't actually know how it all works.. i still download lots and i'm a massive fan of the 'mixtape' format for music playing around the house but for actual 'sit down an listen'.. i'm still using CD format and i'll play an album.

The offspring grew up with this music environment.. he always used to ask "who's this? i'll add it to my Spotify" so i would say.. if you like that.. you'll like this.. and i'd email him mp3 playlist from my itunes library which he'd play and add to his Spotify playlist if he liked it.. i've also got a few old 30G ipods (the batteries are dead but they still work plugged in) which he picks through so his Spotify was built around strong foundations rather than generic playlists.

Nowadays.. i hear stuff coming through his headphones.. yesterday it was an Mc Solaar track which i hadn't heard so it's me saying "who's this you're listening to? " ..  it cuts both ways i suppose. . Solaar wasn't one of mine so Spotify suggestions can't be all bad.. but as i say, i don't know how it works so correct me if i'm wrong.. he just has zero interest in searching out albums or back catalogues..

[ATWM]

Spotify recs can be great, but they tend to prioritize their “curated” playlists (quotes because the term is generous) and many of those are filled with artists that they commission music from at really low licensing fees, esp the ones that focus on electronic, ambient and other instrumental sorts of tunes. As with most things tech, Spotify was better in their early days when they were just trying to grow and started to suck more once aggressive monetization started. 

The point is to keep users on the app with the tunes but minimize the licensing payments which are already paltry to established artists. 

You can make your own playlists on Spotify and not really encounter this but most users who are on the app long enough tend to get lazy at some point and let Spotify feed them and that’s where this tends to start. 

It’s not all bad of course, I pretty much only get music from streaming and old school radio these days. Gave away my entire CD collection years ago during a move and haven’t much regretted it. I still have an old downloaded collection and would like to download some more from bandcamp etc but organizing a new digital music library is not on the horizon for me. 

Edited May 17 by ATWM

[Double 0 Soul]

Will artists even bother to put out 'albums' in the future or will it just be a list of singles and collaborations..

[ATWM]

2 minutes ago, Double 0 Soul said:

Will artists even bother to put out 'albums' in the future or will it just be a list of singles and collaborations..

All of the above. In my home city the rap scene was a pioneer of the mixtape - something less formal than an album. Singles and collaborations are huge obv, lots of producers make their name on just that and don’t even put out an album for years.

I think an album is now sort of looked at as a bigger and more conceptual creative achievement, and people still put out vinyl and CDs and cassettes but now they are all options as opposed to the official way to release music. 

[julian-wolf]

7 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

I hear a tune he's playing by whoever and say.. "Have you listened to any of their albums" "No, just this song and maybe one other" "I've got all their albums on CD.. check out such n' such album.. it's incredible" "Are all the songs as good as this one" "Well no, that's probably the standout track of the album, but it's a body of work by that artist, evn the track listing will have been carefully considered" .. "So it's 10 tracks and 9 of them are not as good as this one" "Yes that's correct, a couple of them could even be shite but that's not the point" .. "So then Dad.. with all the incredible music in the world, you want me to spend time listening to music which isn't as good as the music i'm listening to now, just because it's on an album?"

Are all the verses of the song equally good? Why wait 'til the track breaks to shuffle? No reason to hear the whole song when it's just the chorus and the third verse that really put in the work.

[Double 0 Soul]

Indeed.. my first Walkman had a ffwd button, but no rewind for this very reason

[youngofthesoonest]

4 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

Will artists even bother to put out 'albums' in the future or will it just be a list of singles and collaborations..

I guess it depends on the artist's approach on how they want to go about promoting themselves and what's working for them but the album format is still very relevant on the music industry side if you're trying to get a record deal, write ups, articles, reviews, schedule a tour, etc because companies and people working in the music industry still put a lot of value on you having an album to promote which then they can release songs steadily ahead of the release. This may all change as things continue to evolve and younger people who grew up in this new era of music but from conversations I've had when I was talking to labels and companies about releasing music I've worked on and also hearing some friends now who are in process of negotiating their own deals, the album is still very relevant. 

[Double 0 Soul]

Oh it def still is for our generation and gen y having rediscovered vinyl.. i just worry about the album format for gen z who've only known streaming.. my kid has a massive music library but owns zero tangiable media and the album format is almost alien to him.. this might change, his approach to film is the opposite, if he watches a film he likes, he'll note the director and seek out others.. but film is yet to be distributed in 10min shorts

[smoothsailor]

My boy buys records, he is building a small collection.

when we visit city’s, he always seeks out record stores, most of the time we end up in nice neighborhoods that way.

in Paris he became all budy budy with the shop owner.

i guess he was happy to see a young kid diving in the crates

[Double 0 Soul]

What’s he digging for Paul?

I ‘sneaked’ us into Phonetics (only because I know the folks running it) last month to see Homeboy Sandman and Scratch Perverts which the boy loved.. 

.. still no interest in listening to the albums tho 

 

[Maynard Friedman]

I’ve recently bought my son (and his mate) tickets to see Bladee. It sounds like terrible dirge to me 🙉

[CSL]

I'm still an avid collector of records. I don't know how many thousands I have at this point. Everything from 1950s Rockabilly 45s to blues and jazz 78rpms from the 1920s-1940s, and tons of LPs (10inch and 12inch) covering various 'vintage genres'. I've never been much of an organizer so finding anything specific can be a challenge. The only segment of the collection I'm still intimately familiar with is a section of about 600 LPs that I shipped from England when I decided that the US would be my permanent home. I suppose the fact that those 600 LPs were so intensely and voraciously devoured during my formative years means that they're permanently seared upon my consciousness.

But frankly at this pint in my life this huge collection feels like a bit of an albatross. Sometimes I'm tempted to get rid of the lot. Then I start imagining myself ten years from now, spending more time at home and getting back into actually listening to, rather than just accumulating records. Then I wonder if I'm trying to recapture something from my youth that in reality has gone never to return? I remember being so fascinated by my parents' record player, one of those wood console type things that always seemed to be on the fritz, and the handful of cool looking albums that my dad would play (Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads comes to mind). One Christmas they got me a small player of my own. Best present ever...The sheer magic of intently absorbing those particular musical sounds that fascinated me. I truly had the bug. I started accumulating and never stopped.

Now I'm left wondering if I've lost the capacity to sit through a side of an LP and enjoy it. So many available distractions... Lift the needle off while I listen to 30 seconds of something else on youtube...Maybe it's not just kids whose attention spans are being 'evolved' by technology?

 

 

 

[smoothsailor]

3 hours ago, Double 0 Soul said:

What’s he digging for Paul?

I ‘sneaked’ us into Phonetics (only because I know the folks running it) last month to see Homeboy Sandman and Scratch Perverts which the boy loved.. 

.. still no interest in listening to the albums tho 

 

mostly hip hop I've got him Nas and Wu tang. he now buys MF doom Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the creator.

A few yrs ago it was the clash and sorts under the influence off netflix series

[redragon]

9 hours ago, CSL said:

Now I'm left wondering if I've lost the capacity to sit through a side of an LP and enjoy it. So many available distractions... Lift the needle off while I listen to 30 seconds of something else on youtube...Maybe it's not just kids whose attention spans are being 'evolved' by technology?

Since re-discovering vinyl, I had actually appreciate album as an art form more than just series of songs put together. Too expensive to buy "single" vinyl with two songs on them so I had to be more particular when adding 1 to my collections.

It's been a great platform for discovering other forms of music also (Jazz, city pop, local Indonesian music, etc)

[CSL]

16 hours ago, redragon said:

Since re-discovering vinyl, I had actually appreciate album as an art form more than just series of songs put together. Too expensive to buy "single" vinyl with two songs on them so I had to be more particular when adding 1 to my collections.

It's been a great platform for discovering other forms of music also (Jazz, city pop, local Indonesian music, etc)

The 'Album Experience' was a little different for me as almost all of mine were compilations of 'singles'. That being said, I did enjoy, once I'd got to know a particular LP, the cadence of how one song followed another. 

[chicote]

The biggest thing kids are missing from LPs are the skits!!

[Cold Summer]

I got a crummy turntable for Christmas in 2019 and the first few months of 2020, I bought some vinyl records and enjoyed shopping for them. But my interested kind of fizzled out after that. I still have my records and turntable, but don't use them much. I figure at some point I'll really get into it and throw some cash at a good turntable/speaker setup. I love the idea of intentionally sitting down and listening to music but at this stage of life with a couple of tiny children running around, it's not exactly ideal circumstances for that kind of thing.

I'm much less into music, in general, than I used to be. Although recently, I found a couple of new artists in the dream pop/indie rock genre that's dominated my listening for over a decade new - Darksoft, Sea Lemon, and Yumi Zouma being a few new discoveries I've been listening to frequently these days. Perfect tunes for wistful cruising around in my 40 year-old car with the windows rolled down.

[fabes]

On 5/17/2025 at 2:25 PM, CSL said:

I'm still an avid collector of records. I don't know how many thousands I have at this point. 

But frankly at this pint in my life this huge collection feels like a bit of an albatross. Sometimes I'm tempted to get rid of the lot. Then I start imagining myself ten years from now, spending more time at home and getting back into actually listening to, rather than just accumulating records… I started accumulating and never stopped.

Now I'm left wondering if I've lost the capacity to sit through a side of an LP and enjoy it. 

I resonate with this strongly. In the last 5 yrs or so I’ve been getting really picky about what records I buy. I don’t really want to buy an album if I only like one song. So it better be really good, or I’ll seek out a compilation or better yet 45 single since they take up less space. Bonus is the 45s (styrene excepted) generally sound better than the same song from an LP. 

On 5/18/2025 at 12:20 AM, redragon said:

Since re-discovering vinyl, I had actually appreciate album as an art form more than just series of songs put together. Too expensive to buy "single" vinyl with two songs on them so I had to be more particular when adding 1 to my collections.

It's been a great platform for discovering other forms of music also (Jazz, city pop, local Indonesian music, etc)

Yeah, albums give that different listening experience that can be nice. I’ve ended up with a significant collection of singles as Soul is my favorite genre. Too many cuts that were only ever available as a single. 

Lately, I’ve been enjoying sticking to what I can find locally or when traveling rather than buying records online. Kind of a fun limitation that rewards patience with serendipity. 

I’ll counter @Double 0 Soul by saying that most albums suck. Or to word differently, it’s a small percentage of albums that deliver a great front to back listening experience. I think albums are worth listening to front to back at least once, but I’m not going to force myself to listen to 7 or 8 filler tracks when I just want to hear the best 2 or 3 off the album. The beauty of truly great albums is the nuance that is revealed with multiple listens over multiple years. “De la Soul is Dead” is one of those albums for me. 

 

 

[Double 0 Soul]

 

Im looking at an album as a body of work by that artist, of course not every track will be a banger but it’s a capsule from that era, a piece of tangible art, it looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful, the lingo, the expression the lyrics the musicianship all reflect thoughts and feelings which will inevitably change over time, to not appreciate it as a body of work is like going to a Picasso exhibition to see Guernica, and walking past the rest of the filler hanging on the walls..

 

But yes, most albums do suck but a lot of them only suck in comparison, when you have very few records, very few of your records suck, when you have 1000s most of them suck.. like you say, “7 or 8 of those tracks are filler” but you only consider them to be ‘filler’ when you have 1000s of better tracks at your disposal.

 

I'd grown up in an era of the £16 CD, this was when i was earning less than £100/wk so my CD collection had to be very carefully considered, i only bought music from artists who i aligned myself with and even then.. i'd have to save up to buy their album .. the period following / when i had a larger disposable income coincided with the era of 2x CDs for £5 from Fopp so every Saturday i would rummage around Fopp for bargain CDs.. I'd come away with something like a random Lee Perry album and The Northern Soul of Philadelphia for instance.. was this because I aligned myself with these artists? No of course not.. they were 2x for a fiver

 

I've since reduced my CD collection down from around 2000 to around 350, it was 300 but i've bought more to fill gaps..

 

8 hours ago, fabes said:

 

 but I’m not going to force myself to listen to 7 or 8 filler tracks when I just want to hear the best 2 or 3 off the album. The beauty of truly great albums is the nuance that is revealed with multiple listens over multiple years. “De la Soul is Dead” is one of those albums for me. 
 

..but surely the beauty still exists in the lesser? .. like the aural pain of Black Angel's Death Song .. or to quote De la Soul.. "Sometimes the body needs to feel stressed to appreciate the joy" 

 

[nick682]

On 4/30/2025 at 10:00 AM, julian-wolf said:

No, I wouldn't be surprised either. What subforums / IRC channels were you active on?

I still download from HDBits and Redacted, but that's about it at this point. A lot of the regulars from What do seem to have made the transition over to Redacted, but I haven't been active on the forums there since around the first year. Every now and then I think about trying to jump back in, but at this point there's a decade's worth of inside jokes and lore that I'd need to catch up on, and it just seems like such a hassle ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I totally missed your reply. I mostly just lurked on IRC and I was probably most active in the general and power user forums.

I'm on redacted, but I haven't downloaded any music since what died. I still use PTP, BTN, and HDB quite a bit.  I recently built an unraid server that current has 58TB of storage... I went a little overboard lol, but the 4k videos take up a lot of space.

[Duke Mantee]

On 5/19/2025 at 12:11 AM, CSL said:

The 'Album Experience' was a little different for me as almost all of mine were compilations of 'singles'. That being said, I did enjoy, once I'd got to know a particular LP, the cadence of how one song followed another. 

 

[CSL]

Oh yes! Pure gold there, Duke.

But seriously as I'm sure you know, I was referring to  compilations from 78rpms from the days when there was no such thing as an album. That being said though, at some point 'Albums' of 78rpms did come into the picture. These were in a gatefold book form containing 2 or more 78s. I'm not sure what year such a thing came into existence. I suspect classical albums were available in the early 30s, often utilizing the 12 inch 78rpm format.

[Well27]

A while back Double 0 was ranting about not currently having brand or style he found interesting for his age group (please correct me if I remember incorrectly)

but I was in a similar rod before I found SuFu/denim but also style-wise.

now that I’ve come across Tender (learned about here), some nice Kapital pieces in the WAYWT threads and Hansen Garments (finally having enough money to by a piece once in a while), the brands have have really gotten my interest with that kind of aesthetic - lose but tailored, a focus on the fabric and a slightly “bohemian”-vibe

So my question is, what kind brands are there with the same kind of style?

maybe enginered garments and kapital, but are there others I’m missing?

[Double 0 Soul]

Ranting moi?