{ This is part of my ongoing tooling around with ClaudeCode. This is something I always wanted to do, but the number of steps and the automation involved were always too complicated to make it worthwhile. }
A new flavor of Listen/Here: instead of a deep dive on a single album, this is a snapshot of what I actually listened to in January, 2026. Source data is my MediaMonkey library; links go to Bandcamp where the album is in my collection, otherwise to song.link, which is kind of a fun tool.
By the Numbers
1,636 plays across 1,413 unique tracks by 961 distinct artists — about 19% above a typical month over the past year. About 137 hours of music (8202 minutes). Busiest day was January 25th with 116 plays.
Deep Dives
This section will focus on whatever artists or albums clearly dominated the month.
Art Tatum
42 plays across 30 tracks — about 13.3× a typical month
23 plays · 15 tr
15 plays · 11 tr
2 plays · 2 tr
1 plays · 1 tr
1 plays · 1 tr
This month, it’s Art Tatum. For all the jazz I’ve listened to, I never really dove into Tatum. My favorite trumpet player convinced me this was a massive black hole, and wow, was he correct. Tatum is remarkable: lyrical and expressive and creative and, evidently, a heckuva nice guy. There is a consistent sound here, too: Tatum is recognizable as Tatum for me now, and I like that.
Musically he helps to answer one of my more puzzling questions in jazz piano: where did Thelonious Monk even come from? That doesn’t do Tatum justice, though: he’s his own thing, and hearing him this consistently through the month was a pleasure.
Top artists
- Art Tatum · 42 plays across 30 tracks
- Mogwai · 18 plays across 16 tracks
- Iron & Wine · 16 plays across 14 tracks
- Dave Matthews Band · 13 plays across 10 tracks
- Cecile McLorin Salvant · 12 plays across 6 tracks
- clipping. · 11 plays across 8 tracks
- Brad Mehldau · 9 plays across 8 tracks
- Habib Koite · 9 plays across 6 tracks
- Fergus McCreadie · 8 plays across 6 tracks
- Miles Davis · 8 plays across 6 tracks
Top albums
Jewels In the Treasure Box
23 plays · 15 tracks
Blue Skies
15 plays · 11 tracks
Dead Channel Sky
12 plays · 8 tracks
Oh Snap
12p · 6tr
Cavejaz
10p · 6tr
Cabin In The Sky
8p · 6tr
Forward
7p · 4tr
Good Music to Lift Los Angeles
6p · 5tr
The Lost Day
6p · 5tr
Rebuilding
6p · 5tr
Top tracks
- Matt Slocum — We See (Lion Dance) · 4 plays
- Art Tatum — Over The Rainbow (Version 1) (Blue Skies) · 4 plays
- + 20 more tracks at 3 plays
First encounters
Artists whose first-ever play in the library happened this month.
- Annahstasia · 3 plays across 2 tracks · from Tether
- Brandon Woody · 3 plays across 2 tracks · from For The Love Of It All
- clipping. & Aesop Rock · 3 plays across 1 track · from Dead Channel Sky
- NNAMDÏ · 3 plays across 1 track · from FADER & Friends: Volume 1
- Amanar · 2 plays across 1 track · from Ishilan n-Tenere
Anywhere, Anytime
24 of my 5★ tracks surfaced this month. Five whose most recent play was way back in January, 2023.
- Ye Yo — Erykah Badu (Live)
- 54-46 (That’s My Number) — Toots & The Maytals (Reggae Greats)
- Softly As in a Morning Sunrise — The Modern Jazz Quartet
- Champagne Supernova — Oasis ((What’s The Story) Morning Glory?)
- My Feet Can’t Fail Me Now — The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (This Is The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Collection)
From the Vault
Tracks I hadn’t heard in a very, very long time. These all were last played in 2014. A simpler time.
- radio segment 3 — Michael Franti & Spearhead (Stay Human)
- It Is Accomplished — Peter Gabriel (Passion)
- El Bebe Ambiente — Nguzunguzu (Nguzunguzu)
- Adounia Ti Chidjret — Tinariwen (Emmaar)
- Line — King Shi (Beyond Porter)
- Give Up — Low Roar (Hávallagata 30)
- Tsavo — Children & Lions (Children & Lions)
- One Trick Pony — deadmau5 (4×4=12)
- Pool & Dive — The Replacements (Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was?: The Best Of The Replacements)
- I Didn’t Know What Time it Was — Cecile McLorin Salvant (Woman Child)
Coda
Unsure what I’ll do with this, honestly. I will over the next few weeks catch up on the rest of 2026, trying to improve the presentation as we go. For now, it’s more proof of concept of the automation (using SQL against MediaMonkey’s database, converting that to structured HTML, searching to integrate album and song links, finding album art, then pushing the whole thing to WordPress for me to review, edit, and write the rest of the text).