So, a year ago, I decided to start keeping track of every full album I listened to. I did this in part as justification for my still-insatiable desire to acquire new music decades after my first purchase, and in part to simply help me to see if my actual listening was as broad as my self-image indicates.

The results were interesting. Over the course of an entire year, I listened to 732 full albums. That equates to 61 a month, or almost exactly two per day. That last figure is a bit misleading, as I would often go a day or two without listening to anything all the way through, while other days spent chained to the computer at work would find me spinning five or six.

I set ground rules: These needed to be albums, not EPs or singles. I needed to listen to them in whole. And once something was heard, it couldn’t be listed again, no matter how many repeat plays. So, while I listened to well over 8,000 songs in this exercise, the total is likely double that or more, as hours and hours spent with the iPod on shuffle, repeat listens of favorite discs and partial spins all were omitted from the total.

The most interesting thing I found is that I changed my listening habits because of this exercise. I’m often chided for not listening to things all the way through, often surprised when listening to old discs while distracted by other things to find an uncredited bonus track at the end or some other unknown treasure toward the end of the tracklist. Because I couldn’t record the album on the list unless I heard the whole thing, I forced myself to hear every last note.

I also listened to a lot more new music than I might have otherwise. There were few albums in the past year that earned a rave review anywhere (and that sounded like they would remotely fall in my musical wheelhouse) that I didn’t track down some way and hear. That expanded my palette, as I found myself embracing much more electronic music than ever before, but also led me to confirm the long-held belief that while an awful lot of of well-reviewed music might offer immediate visceral pleasure, they are lacking in the long run and rarely demand a repeat spin.

I set a goal at the beginning of this calendar year to listen to more classical music, hoping to move from completely ignorant to marginally knowledgeable of the genre’s best works. I did better given that concerted effort than I have in the past, but with only 18 classical collections having been played (though, in my defense, some were multi-disc sets), I have a long way to go.

A look at what I listened to the most meshes pretty well with a list of my favorite artists. Push comes to shove, a list of what I would have expected to listen to the most created at the beginning of this exercise would look a lot like the actual result… with a couple of exceptions. First the list:

That’s the top 10. I keep a blog about Robert Pollard’s music, and that coupled with the fact that he puts out 5 or 6 albums a year means he’ll probably always top this list. I’m a huge fan of Crowded House, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub and Big Star, so those make sense. I got on a serious Steve Wynn kick last year that continues unabated. The Beatles boxed set accounts for their presence here, while reading the 33 1/3 series book on the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime helps explain their spot. Devo and Richard Thompson were both driven by live shows. However, I hadn’t listened to Devo in years before pulling them out in July, so their strong showing is pretty remarkable. I’m always listening to Thompson, so that’s no surprise.

My year came to a close on July 31. When Aug. 1 rolled around, I listened to a CD and then headed to the computer to record it. A funny thing happened, however; I decided to let it go. I have been listening to things at pretty much the same pace I did before, but in just a few days, I find I’m already more willing to listen to a handful of songs and then swap something out if it’s not working for me. If I can maintain the adventurousness and patience afforded by the exercise while injecting some much-needed flexibility, my listening experience is sure to improve.

If you popped into the concert from Loudon Wainwright and Richard Thompson for just a moment Tuesday night at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City, you could be forgiven for thinking these were two very depressed, dour old men. Or, alternately, that they were playful, wickedly funny guys whose energy betrays their age. The true view, of course, is that they are both and more, qualities that made the concert as satisfying as anyone familiar with their bodies of work would expect.

Wainwright led off this “Loud & Rich” show (itself a funny and sad name, for neither man is loud and, sadly neither is rich) with one of a handful of songs from his recent album, High, Wide and Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project. It’s a melancholy tune that led well into his relatively new original, “Dead Man,” in which Wainwright sings (and not for the last time this evening) of the impact of his father’s death.

Sensing the dour turn the set was taking from the outset, he moved to a “happy-go-lucky song about the afterlife,” that cataloged the fun to be had in heaven. That levity quickly gave way to more depression, in this case literally, as he sang a couple of songs from his latest project, 10 Songs for the New Depression. “I intend to cash in on these hard times,” he quipped.

The rest of his set was a nice balance of humor and misery. A tale about winning a Grammy for the Poole album led to the old chuckle-inducing “Grammy Song,” while one of the most poignant songs of the night was “White Winos,” which deals with his mother’s dependence on the grape.

Some of the funniest moments came during his between-song banter. Hearing a cell phone in the audience, he made up one side of the conversation (offering himself glowing praise), and in one of many pitches for audience members to buy his merchandise after the show, he pulled a Sharpie marker from his shirt pocket and said, “Yes, I have my Sharpie. Yes, we can talk, briefly. Yes, you can take a picture of me with your cellphone.”

Thompson joined Wainwright for two songs toward the close of his set, the Poole song “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” and Wainwright’s own “Flypaper.” He closed with two newer songs, including the very funny “Durango,” about the airline worker who wouldn’t own up to breaking the singer’s Martin guitar.

The Wainwright set would have been entertainment enough for the night, but hearing Thompson’s fiery guitar leads during his two songs on stage whet the appetite for more of RT’s music.

He opened his half of the show with “When the Spell is Broken” and “Turning of the Tide,” two older songs that found him needing no time to warm up. That was followed by “Cold Kisses” from the oft-overlooked album you? me? us? That set the format for the rest of the set, with beloved classics mingling with newer and lesser-known tracks. That meant a couple of new songs slated for a forthcoming live band album — “extraordinary work,” Thompson deadpanned. “Not extraordinarily good, just extraordinary” — including “Money Shuffle,” a scathing tune about Wall Street greed.

Highlights included the always chill-inducing “Vincent Black Lightning 1952″ and “Crawl Back (Under My Stone),” a rave-up during which Thompson coaxed an initially hesitant crowd to offer backing vocals. It was also nice to hear “Persuasion,” a song Thompson wrote with Split Enz’s Tim Finn, and “Sunset Song,” a gorgeous track from Thompson’s last album, Sweet Warrior.

Like Wainwright, Thompson was nearly as entertaining between songs as in performance, his witty asides keeping the audience perpetually grinning. He thanked the audience for its indulgence in allowing him to play new songs, equating it to audiences from the ’60s, who also were indulgent. “But that was drugs,” he said. “You could play anything… for hours… and we did.” He also told an amusing tale about the lyrics printed on the sleeve for “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” which misspelled “nights” in the line “a couple of drunken nights rolling on the floor” as “knights,” thus significantly changing the meaning. “My career was over,” he said, adding that this allows him to play modest places like Iowa City while his contemporaries fly over it.

He returned for an encore with Wainwright in tow. Though it was still Thompson’s set, Wainwright seemed to take the lead. They performed Thompson’s “Down Where the Drunkards Roll,” then launched into a gorgeous reading of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” (modeled on the Byrds’ jangly version). Wainwright sang lead while Thompson chimed in on the chorus, adding typically tasteful guitar fills throughout. They closed with the Leiber-Stoller classic “Smokey Joe’s Cafe,” a strange but no-less captivating choice.

Before his set, Thompson said that the two long-time friends were having a lot of fun performing together, and that was evident in their brief time together on stage. “The fun we have backstage, you couldn’t believe,” he joked. “It took me an hour to find my trousers.” If the thought of these 60-something grandfathers playing such pranks is a bit beyond belief, the idea that they enjoy one another’s company and music — and the competitive drive derived from both — certainly is not. The result was a fantastic two-and-a-half hours that blended darkness and light, comedy and tragedy, all with some amazing guitar.

Loudon Wainwright
Moving Day
Dead Man Heaven
Times Is Hard On to Victory, Mr. Roosevelt
The Grammy Song
Didn’t He Ramble
The Letter That Never Came
Between
Surviving Twin
New song about being a grandpa
Drinking Song
White Winos
Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down (w/Thompson)
Flypaper (w/Thompson)
I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
Durango

Richard Thompson
When the Spell is Broken
Turning of the Tide
Cold Kisses
Money Shuffle
Sidney Wells
Uninhabited Man
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Devonside
Vincent Black Lightning 1952
Sunset Song
Crawl Back (Under My Stone)
Persuasion
Down Where the Drunkards Roll (w/Wainwright)
You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (w/Wainwright)
Smokey Joe’s Cafe (w/Wainwright)