Having spent four essays detailing how difficult it is to rank one’s favorite music with both objectivity and methodological rigor (here, here, here, here), then using one such method to rank my 100 favorite tracks and albums, I conclude this series with an examination of my favorite artists and some final thoughts. As with every … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 7 (My 100 Favorite Artists and Conclusion)
Category: Stan Ridgway
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 6 (My 100 Favorite Albums)
In five previous essays (here, here, here, here, here), I detail how I used appearances on 434 mixes (August 1981 to November 2023) and total plays to calculate a score for 9,560 tracks. Using these Track Scores (“TS”), I ranked my favorites from a tie for #7,529 (2,032 tracks with one play and no mix … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 6 (My 100 Favorite Albums)
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 5 (My 100 Favorite Tracks)
In the first four essays in this series (here, here, here, here), I detail the evolution of the 434 music “mixes” I have created since August 1981. These mixes migrated from cassette to CD to 150-GB flywheel iPod, with a handful of videocassettes added along the way. As of April 2024, I have put 3,625 … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 5 (My 100 Favorite Tracks)
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 3
In June and September of 2021, I wrote the first two essays in a series on the evolution of the methods I use to rank my favorite tracks (a term I prefer to “songs”). These essays presented the history of the 309 individual “mix” cassettes, videocassettes and CDs I constructed between August 1981 and August … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 3
Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 2
In late June, I wrote the first in a series of essays outlining the evolution of the methods I use to rank my favorite tracks (a term I prefer to “songs”), beginning with my first-ever mix cassette tape in August 1981. In the interim, however, moving to a new apartment, the ongoing search for a … Continue reading Measuring the Unmeasurable: Ranking One’s Favorite Music, Part 2
A Surrealist Epic Post-Thanksgiving Poem
Since we first started hosting Thanksgiving dinner in, I believe, 2012, I have been responsible for the epic cleanup. As with all good rituals, it started as a one-off: I put Nell and the girls to bed and said good night to the last of our guests to leave with the understanding I would finish … Continue reading A Surrealist Epic Post-Thanksgiving Poem
And for my 100th post…100 random facts (about me)
This is post #100; thank you for continuing to “just bear with me.” December 19 is also the two-year anniversary of this site’s launch (so I should gift myself either cotton or china, and it should be red). To honor this symmetry, and to lighten the mood from my previous three posts (dealing—however obliquely—with the … Continue reading And for my 100th post…100 random facts (about me)
A Musical Mosaic
When I enrolled at Yale in the fall of 1984, I was undecided between majoring in political science or mathematics. A less-than-stellar experience in Math 230—required for freshman mathematics major—quickly decided me: political science, it would be. Luckily, two courses I took sophomore year taught by Professor Edward Tufte—Data Analysis for Politics and Policy and … Continue reading A Musical Mosaic
Just Bear With Me... 