...anyone else.

A take off of Swish's post-- do you think there are any albums that you've listened to more times than anyone else? Not just albums that you've played a lot but albums that others are unlikely to have done the same with... XTC's Skylarking may be a great record but it probably wouldn't meet this criteria because lots of folks agree and someone somewhere has probably listened to it even more than Swish has.

I think I have a couple of contenders-- one is Joan of Arc's Guitar Duets. This was a one-off novelty-- a record comprised of all instrumental duets between each of the 10 guitarists that have been in the band at various points throughout its history. It's anomalous within the band's catalog, it isn't very indicative of their usual sound, and it wasn't released on their usual label, so I'm guessing even some of their most hardcore fans didn't buy it or bought it and then dutifully shelved it to collect dust. I, on the other hand, have listened to it hundreds of times, mostly on road trips. Something about the general vibe of it dovetails nicely with a decent book and the open highway. I'd be frankly surprised if even the band has given it as many spins as I have since it came out in 2005.

Another might be Rapider Than Horsepower's Stage Fright Stage Fright, which I had recorded onto a cassette with Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender on the other side and listened to literally multiple times every day for a couple of years. The Newsom isn't a likely candidate for this distinction since she's gone on to some notoriety and garnered plenty of fanatic followers, but Rapider Than Horsepower was a relatively obscure Bloomington, IN band probably best known as the side project of Racebannon vocalist Michael Anderson, themselves a relatively minor star in the early 2000s screamo constellation. It's not an immediately catchy record, it sounds obviously recorded live to tape (so who knows if the band even listened to it that many times when they were releasing it), and the group is long broken up now-- all conditions that make it possible that I've heard it more times through than anyone else.

What about you guys?

~Rae