Discovering the Joy of the "Relisten"

In this age of internet streaming of various forms of media it's become commonplace for people to binge watch not only new shows but also to fall back on old favorites. A cottage industry of podcasting about rewatching shows has cropped up, with the popular Post Show Recaps network famously doing a podcast discussing every episode of Seinfeld and also doing a complete series rewatch of Game of Thrones prior to the final season. (Note: I recommend both and Rob Cesternino is an outstanding — and funny — host.)

Just over a year ago, I discovered a pair of podcasts that had started doing full Star Trek rewatches a few years ago. Mission Log is a podcast that began with the original series featuring Captain James T. Kirk and his crew, while The Greatest Generation began its rewatch with Captain Jean-Luc Picard's version of the Enterprise.

I started my own rewatch of the entire Star Trek franchise at the start of June 2018 and I'm midway through the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, after having rewatched the original series, the animated series, all of the original cast movies and the first season of TNG. I listen to both podcasts during my work commute for their disparate takes on the shows, with Mission Log taking a more serious look at the messages and meanings of the Trek universe and The Greatest Generation based more in (often sophomoric, but also fun) humor. I'm something like four years behind the Mission Log guys and three behind The Greatest Generation, but I believe one day I'll catch up to both.

I'm also ensconced in a rewatch of HBO's Deadwood, trying to get back up to speed with all of the characters and stories as the network has recently dropped the Deadwood movie. I can't wait to watch it, but I kind of have to, because I've forgotten much about the series over the years.

In short, I'm all too aware of the rewatch phenomenon. But this week I learned to love the "relisten" just as much.

I don't know if relisten is an actual word that people use, but it seems to work well. What is it? It's going back through the catalog of a band I like and "binge listening" to all the albums in order.

I love listening to music but it's easy to get caught up in making playlists of my favorites, sticking to the newer releases that have come out, or just hitting the shuffle function because I can't really decide what I want to hear. (The latter has long been an issue for me. I once wrote a program for my Atari 1200XL computer back in high school to randomly select a cassette for me to play next because I just couldn't make a decision.)

Like the stats nerd I am, I track all my music listening on a service called Last.fm, which logs every song I play on Spotify, my phone, or the iTunes application on my laptop. I look through my stats every now and then and I'm often surprised how long it's been since I last listened to a particular band or song.

Going through a full relisten can be a great way to rediscover a band that I've been neglecting or one with some good old albums I haven't heard in a while.

I started this week off with the Polish progressive rock band Riverside, going through every release in order. I'm sure I hadn't heard some of those deeper album cuts in at least seven years. Although I've been enjoying some of their more recent albums, I hadn't gone back to the early ones in quite some time and I'd forgotten how great those first three releases were. 

A couple of days ago I went through a full Triumph relisten, which actually included some of the band's later albums that I'd never heard before. Triumph's sweet spot landed (for me) with the Allied Forces album, through Never Surrender, and finished with Thunder Seven. All the earlier and later albums had some worthy songs on them, but those three are consistently good throughout and strikes me as the band's finest run of form. It was fun going back through those.

My most recent relisten was a trip through Toto's catalog, which I'm still working on, actually. The band has some truly underrated work among the non-hits in the catalog, and I finally got a chance to give an attentive listen to their music on the Dune soundtrack.

The relisten does have its drawbacks. Most bands have at least one excruciatingly dire album or at least a few skippable songs. Suffer through them with an open mind. Sometimes I'm surprised at how OK something sounds today versus a decade ago when I hated it. Please note that this doesn't always happen and in fact the inverse truth is that sometimes a song I've liked in the past hasn't held up well and the memory is much better than the reality.

I actually liked this song? What was I thinking?

I encourage everyone to try the relisten method. Pick a band you haven't heard in a long time and just take a stroll through their albums chronologically. You can either choose to include or skip live albums or compilations. I tend to skip them and go for the pure studio album experience but a future live album relisten may also be in the cards. 

Are you a relistener? Would you try it? Let me know what you think of the relisten as a way to revisit your musical loves.