2010 census: favorite music

After reflecting on how much I love Ozma's Pasadena album, I realized that they have made it into the upper echelon of my favorite bands. Which got me thinking, what are my current favorite bands?

I started making a list and this is what it looked like (alphabetized, not a ranking order):

311
Alkaline Trio
Brand New
Dashboard Confessional
The Hold Steady
Motion City Soundtrack
Ozma
Panic at the Disco
Weezer

That seemed about right. And then I counted and saw that the list was 9. Which lead to me think, I'm only one away from having a top ten. So after a mild internal debate, I picked Sublime.

The next ten would look something like:

Vampire Weekend
The Get Up Kids
The Strokes
The Stereo
The Impossibles
The Anniversary
Forever the Sickest Kids
The Juliana Theory
Jimmy Eat World
Flickerstick or Cartel

(I haven't heard Vampire Weekend's new album yet and couldn't put them in the top ten based on just one cd. But almost did.)

Because I'm terribly, terribly nerdy, the next thing I thought of was to map where these bands were from, to see if there was any thing interesting.

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Her are my current top ten:


And here's what happens when you expand the map to include the top 20:



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A couple thoughts. So of the top 20, 4 in the New York area, and three are in the LA area. The band that Ozma is always compared to is Weezer, so it's interesting to see they are from the same place.

The Hold Steady while "from Brooklyn" have connections/lyrics about Minneapolis, where MCS and The Stereo are from. Also The Stereo has connections to Tempe, Arizona, the area of JimmyEatWorld.

Odd that the Kansas City/Lawrence area has produced more bands that I like than Chicago. Also, who actually lives in Las Vegas? That's pretty odd.

(Get it?)

Also, not pictured, but there are other Florida bands that I listen to besides DC. New Found Glory. But no one else will ever be from Omaha. Also, Juliana Theory from outside Pittsburgh? I would have guessed New England based on their lyrics, but steel country?

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When it came time to title this post, I thought this would be a nice "state of the union" - time capsule sort of post. Something I could look back on later and know exactly what I was feeling at the time. So I've tagged it as the 2010 census and there might be more of these posts to come this year.