Know

Even that's not enough. You haveto buy several different stereo setups to see the sonic differences revealed, as well as sitting in a different spot for each listen. Then buy a load of instruments and try and recreate every note on the album, and if possible, make a visit to the studio where it was recorded, armed with questions for the engineer and producer. If lyrics are more your focus, go to the songwriters home town and interview friends, check out places of interest etc, to find out possible sources of inspiration. Also, find out who the artists influences are and buy all of their albums too, so you can discern exactly which bits came from where and deduce why the artist decided to reconfigure them the way they did. After 'dipping your toes in the water' like that, then you can REALLY get into the music! Have fun.

depends on the function of your collection. if it's just for home- listening, or sharing with friends, then a general knowledge of your collection might suffice. in that case, sometimes it's even best not to play a particular album you like to death -- if you have a large collection, you can move on to something else, and come back to a record you love months or years later and rediscover it ..

if you're a DJ, different story. You have to know your dance albums very well .. genres, subgenres, BPMs, introductions, mood, track length, remixes, alternate takes .. what is currently popular, or what is appropriately obscure vs. irremediably retro ..

or, if you're like me, and you're in the process of masterminding various conceptual mix-CDs, yet you don't have a mixer to fade tracks into each other, you'd need a level of knowledge somewhere in- between, in order to decide how to sequence and contrast.

chris.

Is it just me or is this question, and even more, the answers it has elicited, very... odd?

It's less about knowing the album inside and out technically, and more about who i am while listening to it, and who i was when i last listened to it.

and whether you're incited to just kill yourself, or a large quantity of neighbours.

Kids in Satan's Service,

no, that's more by the toss of the coin.

No, Nick, it's not just you. The question and the answers are indeed odd. I get to know albums well by listening to them a bunch of times, because they're "good", which I define by the enjoyment they give me. Some albums hold up better over time and are therefore more good, to me, and I end up listening to them more and getting to know them better. Everything else follows.

but what makes them 'odd' -- that they're different than your approach?

Yes. They're "odd" in that they're different from my approach.

I listen to music more or less exclusively for pleasure, so my approach can be a whole lot simpler that of someone who's got other things going on. If I were a dj, critic, music educator, producer, pop sociologist, god knows what, I'd probably see things differently.

I should have said "odd to me".

I just look at the album cover.

i prefer the ones with cartoon covers, and especially ones with booklets that i can read along with as well. I hate it when i get confused on what's going on. Poor old Peter Cottontail.