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Category: Workout Album

Workout Playlist of the Week: Alligator the Right Way

Workout Playlist of the Week: Alligator the Right Way

So the one problem with the title of this post is that I hardly work out any more. A daily exercise regime was one casualty of the pandemic for me. At best, I go for walks outside, but I don’t have walking outside music because I don’t think it’s safe to have music playing through earbuds/headphones when out and about outdoors, since that means you might not be aware of what is happening in your surrounding environment. But once upon a time, I did work out to the playlist that is mentioned in this post’s title, and that playlist comes with a little story.

Back in the early 2000s, I used what was that era’s version of a streaming music service: everyone and their cousin downloading and sharing music. One of my coworkers had a huge collection on his work laptop, and just put it all on a share drive on the company’s intranet and I copied it all to my work laptop and had new music to listen to for the next few years. We were all pretty brazen about it. You may have similar memories from the same time period.

Another friend who lived in a different state would burn me mp3 discs and mail them to me. It was like we had peer to peer file sharing with a snail mail extension. He liked to introduce me to new bands, and one time I got a disc that included the album Alligator by The National. I liked it! It was rock and roll with intelligent and subversive lyrics, each song a tight little package rich with meaning. The pacing and style of the tracks varied from hard driving rock to gentle, jangly dirges, which made it perfect for a workout album – you can use the fast bits to push yourself, and the slow bits to pause for a breather.

I copied the album to my mp3 player (remember, this was in the long ago) and it entered my workout music rotation. I liked how it started off right away with a really heavy, hard hitting track. The album really got my blood flowing; it was a good choice for a sort of power workout. If you recall any of my earlier workout album posts, you will note that I tend to favor EDM (electronic music) over rock, so this album was kind of a stand out.

As the years went by and the mp3s just died, I switched to using my smartphone for listening to music. When I queued up Alligator, I was shocked to discover that the tracks were in the wrong order! The album didn’t start like I was used it to starting, with an instant dive into a fast, hard riff. It was a bit disappointing.

As it turned out, the mp3 burn that I had been listening to previously had the tracks in a different order than they appear on the album. This was because they were sorted by track number, starting with track #10. I had been listening to the songs in the wrong order the whole time!

But it was the order I was used to, and I liked it, so I made a Spotify playlist which reordered the tracks accordingly. Here it is, and you can check it out and see if you agree with me that it’s the best way to listen to the album.

Today’s Workout Music: Wii Fit Music

Today’s Workout Music: Wii Fit Music

It’s been a couple of years since I published a Workout Album post. In the meantime, I swear, I was going to the fitness center in my apartment complex on a semi-regular, albeit infrequent basis. I was listening to my standby electronic music while I exercised – maybe some Shpongle Remixed, or some Hanna Haïs. But that’s all in the past. You see, they won’t let me into the fitness center any more!

So after a month or so of pandemic lockdown I was noticing the ill effects. A whole day of literally no physical activity except for briefly moving from one room of the house to another. It made me realize how much extra activity I was doing before just from commuting to work and walking about at the office. Now I was homebound, and it was often too cold, windy or rainy for a walk, seeing as this is the year of perpetual winter, among other disruptions. My body was getting stiff from inactivity, and my lower back was aching, which is my red flag that I am being too sedentary.

What to do? Luckily, my best friend and partner, in whose home I am quarantining, had a solution. She dragged an old device out from under a bed (I presume) and we got to working out again. That’s right, I’m talking about the Wii Fit. Everyone had one back around 2008, remember? And yours is probably still under a bed somewhere.

My BFF’s son expertly crafted our Miis, we did our body tests (my current Wii Fit Age is 46, BTW), and got to it. And what fun it was! It was a bit of nostalgia trip, re-experiencing the balance board and the different activities. It might not be the perfect exercise system, but it’s solved the problem of complete lack of activity.

I find that Wii Fit’s method of rewarding with credits and encouraging improvement with scores and rankings motivates me. And some of the activities are a lot of fun. I generally favor the balance games, especially the slalom, and the yoga. My favorite aerobics is the boxing, which is a really good workout. We have been fairly disciplined in working out regularly, and it’s having the desired effect. I may not get to the level of buffness of that guy from Hobart, but I am confident that my health is going to improve.

It does mean, however, that my workout music for the forseeable future is going to be the Wii Fit theme music. I don’t think there is anyway to change it. I guess I’ll get back to the Shpongle later.

That’s Mii in the middle.

Today’s Workout Album – Bright: The Album

Today’s Workout Album – Bright: The Album

I find that the soundtrack to the Netflix original film Bright makes an excellent workout album, with its driving beats and heavy hip-hop influence. I also makes me feel firmly planted in the zeitgeist, since it is not even a year old, and is replete with Millennial themes of building community and repairing the broken.

The film itself didn’t impress critics, instead sort of representing everything that Netflix, or streaming in general, is doing to ruin the film industry. Maybe it is just too weird to mash up the fantasy and buddy cop genres – A Game of Thrones meets End of Watch. It is undoubtedly a formulaic action movie, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was certainly better than The Cloverfield Paradox.

Here is one song from the album (Millennial whoop at 1:36).

Today’s Workout Album – Born This Way

Today’s Workout Album – Born This Way

Thanksgiving week has come and gone and now it’s time to work off some of those calories. I’ve been listening to a lot of electronica in my workouts lately, but for today it was Born This Way by Lady Gaga, which I suppose is only straying from electronic music and not abandoning the genre altogether. Discogs calls the album synth-pop, but if sounds like rock and roll to me, especially my favorite track, You and I, which could have stepped out of a smoke-filled bar in 1979.

Lady Gaga is famous for her extravagant and absurd performance art, which you can get a taste of in the music video linked above, a postmodern train wreck of bizarre costumes and choreography that only barely connects to the meaning of the song. But if you close your eyes and just listen, you will hear a tightly composed, absolutely blistering rock anthem. I just think she is a very talented songwriter and singer.

Finally, here is some evidence that I am actually working out when I listen to these albums, and not making “fake posts” 🙂 Took the picture in the car so as not to violate fitness center etiquette.

Today’s Workout Album – Puppy

Today’s Workout Album – Puppy

For today’s workout, more electronic music, from a relatively obscure 90s band, Fluke. This older stuff is a staple for a Gen-Xer like me. Their 2003 album Puppy has a lot of driving, churning beats to keep me spinning that cycle. And it’s nice and long, too; I almost listened to it in its entirety during my routine.

If you listen to the album, you might recognize one track. That’s because you heard it before here:

Today’s Workout Album – Robot O Chan

Today’s Workout Album – Robot O Chan

An old-timey “mp3 player” from the pre-smartphone era.

My usual choice of music for a cardio workout is some EDM, or Electronic Dance Music – what we old-schoolers call Electronica. It’s kind of monotonous and repetitive, to match the very nature of cardio, but with gradual changes to keep you interested. The tempo changes from fast to slow and back so you can have bursts of intense activity followed by cooling down periods. I have my entire collection on a small device, which I can bring to the fitness center and keep tucked in a pocket while I work out.

Today’s choice for an album was Robot O Chan by Prometheus, which, if you follow the link, you will see is an alias for a solo artist. So, a general rule is that an EDM recording act is just a guy from England, or maybe two guys from England, or sometimes a guy from Finland. The music is all synthesized, so you don’t need a band or anything, though some EDM artists will record guest musicians playing a normal instrument and mix it in.

This is my favorite track from the album, one of my favorite EDM tracks of all time:

 

Today’s Workout Album: Audio Elastique

Today’s Workout Album: Audio Elastique

So you go to the fitness center to work out but you don’t want to listen to the music they play there. What to do? Well, easy, in this day and age. You bring your smartphone, some ear buds, and pull up your streaming music app.

This morning’s album was Audio Elastique by De-Phazz. At 53 minutes it’s the perfect length for one of my workouts, which generally is 15 minutes of strength training, half an hour of cardio, and some cooling down time. It has enough tempo changes to accompany the cardio well, and it has the most important quality for a workout album: I like the tracks enough to keep wanting to hear the next one, which gets me over the hump when I start the cardio and it quickly wears me down.

I’m no hotshot, just a middle-aged guy trying to keep his body from falling apart. But like Baby, I need my musical inspiration to stay on task.