Nick Vermeil
Footballguy
I’m finding that a lot of my picks after a certain release date came to me in a time and directly relate to whoever I was sleeping with at the time. I’m nothing if not adaptable.
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Consensus Top 350 Albums of All-Time: 38. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles (159 Viewers)
- Thread starter Dr. Octopus
- Start date
BLOCKED_PUNT
Footballguy
What if Dan and I are the ones with good taste and you and the old people don't?
Fear of the Dark is such a great song, not sure how anyone could dislike it.
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
Maybe I need to start an official Nu Metal appreciation thread
rockaction
Footballguy
Unreal. Beautiful choice.
Okay, sister. You got it. I loved this album and their second one. I've seen them live and it was as cool as you'd think. Total jam band vibe, but think city-kid nerds who like jam bands that teeter on the edge of punk aesthetics. Include part-vibe from your high school Chemistry Lab class where everybody has aprons on (or whatever those things are) and then the jokes and other things start flying and firing around—and is that flame ascending and turning a pure blue?!! Good times with beakers and newfound friends.
Probably the illest combination we'll see all countdown. You picked the two from each band that I didn't and they'll miss the countdown because of it (I had Phrenology and RTJ II)
This was part of the soundtrack to my 2001. It's dedicated to Paul Thomas Anderson. @KarmaPolice Look in the liner notes and you'll see a box with "PTA" in it. I was on bad no-good drugs I've never done again and found that dedication somehow meaningful and personal at the time, which was just so ****ing silly—it brought some weird clarity then—and is so ****ing embarrassing to remember now. The cop and the drugged-out molested girl in Magnolia is PTA's depiction of he and her in real life and her album is partly or fully about him.
I swear I'd actually be a decent anti-drug and anti-intoxication speaker. The kind that goes around and talks to younger men and women about the dangers of that stuff. It's not that I was wild; it's that it was so, as the kids once said, cringe. If things take about twenty years for their adoption within mainstream culture from the outside, then I think I might have re-started the popularity of that word with **** like that. Just . . . oof.
A great album I just didn't have room for and still wouldn't but that doesn't mean it's not a great album. You also have this album from Malkmus, whom I really like. I have a lot of respect for him.
This is an exceptional album that grows on me each passing year, which is something I say ad nauseam about X. @timschochet, they're playing their last shows in Southern California this year with Los Lobos. You should go see them if you can (I know you've been to see the English Beat in the past few years, so you do go to shows). If I still drank then I'd take the day, get wasted, and see them in Los Angeles. But I can't do that anymore. They play Riverside the 14th and San Diego the 13th. @Eephus , they're playing Oakland the 8th, but you've already got the direct line and they'll probably play San Fran also. Link to the show dates posted below:
SHOWS — X the band
www.xtheband.com
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rockaction
Footballguy
Frostillicus
Footballguy
Yourself or Someone Like You only got 1 vote? That surprises me given the average age of this board and when it was released.
krista4
Footballguy
Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
krista4
Footballguy
Aw crap, totally forgot to put their stuff on my list.
krista4
Footballguy
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
This isn't a song draft, gb.
I posted somewhere that a bit ago I wanted to go through all the Maiden albums and make a playlist. I just couldn't with the 90s output, I think it's pretty bad. I added a live version of Fear of the Dark (which I agree is a great song), and instead added a couple tunes from the Bruce solo albums. I pretend the 90s Maiden output doesn't exist.
I bristle a bit at the idea of good and bad taste. We often have differences in tastes, but there is no right or wrong. I do find people's differences interesting though. Are you a Maiden fan in general, was FotD one of the first ones you heard and it really stuck with you?
New Binky the Doormat
Footballguy
I’ll do a writeup later. I know they were trying to appeal to the Nu Metal crowd and it put a strain on the band but there’s some good stuffBetween this revelation and seeing BP vote for Fear of the Dark, I am starting to question the sanity of you youngsters.
In the words of big brother @Pip's Invitation - put the bong down, boys!
more boy band drivel?
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
When I was in college this was played at an off campus apartment where my fraternity brothers lived constantly despite being a few years old already.69 (tie). Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes (328 points)
@Rand al Thor #3
@Juxtatarot #17
@Psycopav #24
@Nick Vermiel #25
@landrys hat #27
@Dr. Octopus #52
@Dreaded Marco #52
@Idiot Boxer #59
@Mt. Man #60
@BrutalPenguin #63
Violent Femmes is the debut album by Violent Femmes. Mostly recorded in July 1982, the album was released by Slash Records on vinyl and on cassette in April 1983, and on CD in 1987, with two extra tracks, "Ugly" and "Gimme the Car".
In 2002, Rhino Records remastered the album, filled out the disc's length with demos and added another disc of live tracks and a radio interview for a 20th anniversary special edition, with liner notes by Michael Azerrad.
It’s so much fun and makes me happy - I play it relatively often which is why it makes my list.
krista4
Footballguy
If we're talking "music based on whom we were sleeping with," I'll mention that my freshman RA, Gretchen, absolutely loved the Violent Femmes, and she was a lesbian I had a crush on but never acted on any of that. I didn't consider any Femmes for my list but still have a soft spot in my heart for them. So, music based on whom we weren't sleeping with, I guess.
rockaction
Footballguy
I'd heard she was a great writer and had read a political essay and some free snippets, but hadn't ever looked hard enough to find a free, public reprint of it. The Saturday Evening Post has one and I found an Internet Archive of the whole book plus some, so I don't want to even close out my browser. I figure it's like going to the library, right? "Slouching . . .," which is the title of her book and the essay below, has a lot of California in it, especially this one about Haight-Ashbury in '67, a non-sensational look at the dark side of the hippie movement before anyone else was chronicling it.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/
The essay is devastating, as is the one about Joan Baez where Didion reprints Joan's writing verbatim—almost definitely knowing and cringing at how bad Baez' writing was—which was a ruthless thing to do, in a way (but Wolfe and Thompson and all the New Journalists were also ruthless in that way). There's a part where Baez talks about a "crystal teardrop," and later in the book Didion describes a Haight-Ashbury girl/woman as having "a very young girl's poems, each written out in a neat hand and finished off with a curlicue . . . [d]awns are roseate, skies silver-tinted, [w]hen she writes the word 'crystal' in her books she does not mean Meth." The reader knows that Didion's gig with Baez is over, and the two Joans aren't going to lunch any time soon.
"My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging around in slow motion. If I were to look into the teardrop for the next million years, I might never find out who the people are, and what they are doing." - Joan Baez
The first two paragraphs of "Slouching . . ." are so excellently crafted that one sort of stiffens and the hair stands up a bit on one's arms from a bit of foreboding. Good writing.
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KarmaPolice
Footballguy
I'd welcome it, I am sure there is some stuff that I missed that I would dig. I don't know/care what technically qualifies as nu metal, but I do like a bit of Korn and other stuff I have heard. Some stuff I find downright grating, and it always comes down to the vocals. I don't know quite to verbalize it, but I code it in my head as sounding "whiny" and that is not what I want when I listen to metal. I also have found that I don't enjoy music if I feel I am being yelled and swore AT. Again, pretty nebulous description, but more I know it when I hear it. I often feel that when I hear music from this '98-'03 stretch of music, from Limp Bizkit to Eminem.
I understand it probably doesn't make much sense, and I realize I have some gnarly vocals on my playlists from King Diamond to Between the Buried and Me, but that is the best I got.
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BLOCKED_PUNT
Footballguy
sure......
KarmaPolice
Footballguy
With all the talk about that era of metal, there is an album from 2000 that I am surprised hasn't shown up and I am going to be angry is off the countdown if we have stuff like Staind and Limp Bizkit getting mentions around here but not that. I might demand a recount.
krista4
Footballguy
I'd heard she was a great writer and had read a political essay and some free snippets, but hadn't ever looked hard enough to find a free, public reprint of it. The Saturday Evening Post has one and I found an Internet Archive of the whole book plus some, so I don't want to even close out my browser. I figure it's like going to the library, right? "Slouching . . ." which is the title of her book and the essay below, has a lot of California in it, especially this one about Haight-Ashbury in '67, a non-sensational look at the dark side of the hippie movement before anyone else was chronicling it.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/
But the essay is devastating, as is the one about Joan Baez where Didion reprints Joan's writing verbatim—almost definitely knowing and cringing at how bad Baez' writing was—which is sort of savage in a way (but so were Wolfe and Thompson and all the New Journalists, really). But the part where Baez talks about a "crystal teardrop" and later in the book Didion describes a Haight-Ashbury girl/woman as having "a very young girl's poems, each written out in a neat hand and finished off with a curlicue . . . [d]awns are roseate, skies silver-tinted, [w]hen she writes the word 'crystal' in her books she does not mean Meth." you know the gig is up with Baez and the two Joans aren't going to lunch any time soon.
"My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging around in slow motion. If I were to look into the teardrop for the next million years, I might never find out who the people are, and what they are doing." - Joan Baez
The first two paragraphs of "Slouching . . ." are so excellently crafted that one sort of stiffens and the hair stands up a bit on one's arms from a bit of foreboding. Good writing.
Oh man, we might need to take this to the non-fiction book countdown thread. Wait, where is that, @kupcho1 ?
I came to Joan Didion very late, and in an embarrassingly trite way - through The Year of Magical Thinking. I was so blown away by it that I then searched out her other works. Slouching Towards Bethlehem was the first I went to. I think "savage" is a good descriptor of not only her essay that involved Baez, but maybe her writing in general. She's quietly savage, including being savage toward herself. There is probably 1/3-1/2 of her works I still haven't read, and this is a good reminder that I should go do so.
BLOCKED_PUNT
Footballguy
I consider myself a maiden fan and I have the Eddie shirt to prove it! It was my junior year of HS when me and my best "discovered" Iron Maiden (and Helloween) Fear of the Dark is my fav song of theirs but I like other songs like Aces High and Run to the Hills. Also love their cover of Doctor Doctor is a banger. My inclusion of Fear of the Dark is mostly about it being the only full album I listened to/remember listening to so maybe I'm not a HARDCORE fan but I think they are pretty great.
The version of No Quarter from The Song Remains The Same movie soundtrack has my favorite Jimmy Page guitar riff. Just incredible.
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
77. Funeral – Arcade Fire (305 points)
@Barry2 #2
@Juxtatatrot #6
@Dreaded Marco #17
@shuke #28
@Ilov80s #33
@krista4 #49
@Pip's Invitation #58
@Ghost Rider #70
Funeral is the debut studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on September 14, 2004 by Merge Records. Preliminary recordings for Funeral were made during the course of a week in August 2003 at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec, and the recording was completed later that year all in an analogue recording format. Its lyrics draw upon themes of death, change, and the loss of childhood innocence, inspired by the recent passing of several bandmates' family members during its production. The first half of the album, dubbed the 'Neighborhood' suite, centres around a town struggling with a power outage in the middle of winter, based on personal experience during the North American ice storm of 1998.
Another incredible debut. Used to play this a lot when the kids were young, they were big fans of Rebellion and we'd all scream the lyrics to Wake Up, which probably make that my favorite, but I really love the Neighborhood suite, especially #3 (Power Out).
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
Hmmmm there’s one from 99With all the talk about that era of metal, there is an album from 2000 that I am surprised hasn't shown up and I am going to be angry is off the countdown if we have stuff like Staind and Limp Bizkit getting mentions around here but not that. I might demand a recount.
Tau837
Footballguy
Dan Lambskin
Footballguy
If it’s Linkin park or deftones I don’t have it
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
76. American Beauty – Grateful Dead (306 points)
Jeb #2
@Nick Vermeil #4
@Dr. Octopus #10
@simey #12
@zamboni #39
@shuke #56
@rockaction #68
American Beauty is the fifth studio album (and sixth overall) by American rock band the Grateful Dead. Released in November 1970, by Warner Bros. Records, the album continued the folk rock and country music style of their previous album Workingman's Dead, released earlier in the year.
Upon release, American Beauty entered the Billboard 200 chart, ultimately peaking at number 30 during a nineteen-week stay in January 1971. On July 11, 1974, the album was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and it later achieved Platinum and double Platinum certification in 1986 and 2001, respectively. In 2003, the album was ranked number 258 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", 261 in a 2012 revised list, and 215 in a 2020 revised list.
I ranked 6 Dead albums (4 studio, 2 official live releases), and this was 6th based on personal preference, but I understand it's probably their "greatest" based on accessibility and pure beauty. Hard to pick a favorite, but I agree with Simey that Box of Rain just seems extra special right now.
Dr. Octopus
Footballguy
I actually left off Funeral - Arcade Fire as well.
Rand al Thor
Footballguy
#3, I don't remember ranking it that high, but I chose my "favorite" albums, not the "best" and I'm OK with the #3 ranking. I wouldn't even realistically be able to guess how many times I've listened to this album, and whoever said sophomore year of high school, you nailed it for me. Spring Break '85 me and my buddies probably listened to this album at least 30 times that week alone (we only took a break to listen to Generation X every once and a while). As far as song choice for the playlist, "Ugly" and "Gimme the Car" are right out; they weren't on my vinyl album or cassette so they're not part of the magic. I think I'm going to add "Promise" to the playlist, but this is only a guess.When I was in college this was played at an off campus apartment where my fraternity brothers lived constantly despite being a few years old already.69 (tie). Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes (328 points)
@Rand al Thor #3
@Juxtatarot #17
@Psycopav #24
@Nick Vermiel #25
@landrys hat #27
@Dr. Octopus #52
@Dreaded Marco #52
@Idiot Boxer #59
@Mt. Man #60
@BrutalPenguin #63
Violent Femmes is the debut album by Violent Femmes. Mostly recorded in July 1982, the album was released by Slash Records on vinyl and on cassette in April 1983, and on CD in 1987, with two extra tracks, "Ugly" and "Gimme the Car".
In 2002, Rhino Records remastered the album, filled out the disc's length with demos and added another disc of live tracks and a radio interview for a 20th anniversary special edition, with liner notes by Michael Azerrad.
It’s so much fun and makes me happy - I play it relatively often which is why it makes my list.
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
72 (tie). Marquee Moon – Television (323 points)
@zamboni #4
@landrys hat #5
@Dreaded Marco #7
@rockaction #14
@Pip's Invitation #33
@kupcho1 #39
Marquee Moon is the debut studio album by American rock band Television, released on February 8, 1977, by Elektra Records. In the years leading up to the album, Television had become a prominent act in the New York music scene and generated interest from a number of record labels, eventually signing a record deal with Elektra. The group rehearsed extensively in preparation for Marquee Moon before recording it at A & R Recording in September 1976. It was produced by the band's frontman Tom Verlaine and sound engineer Andy Johns.
The title track is so good, that I almost included this although I haven't listened to the entire album that much.
Long Ball Larry
Footballguy
Great call. Didn’t even think of it because I haven’t listened to the album all that much, but it is really good. I loved the songs used in Bottle Rocket but not sure I even figured out who they were until many years later. Great albumI expected @krista4 to vote with me!77. Forever Changes – Love (303 points)
@Pip's Invitation #4
@zamboni #5
@Mookie Gizzy #7
@landrys hat #9
@Mister CIA #27
Forever Changes is the third studio album by the American rock band Love, released in November 1967 by Elektra Records. The album saw the group embrace a subtler folk-influenced sound based around acoustic guitars and orchestral arrangements, while primary songwriter Arthur Lee explored darker themes alluding to mortality and his growing disillusionment with the era's counterculture. It was the final album recorded by the original band lineup; after its completion, guitarist Bryan MacLean left the group acrimoniously, and Lee subsequently dismissed the other members.
Those of you who followed the MAD 5 countdown know how much I love this album. It accounted for 9 songs in my Arthur Lee and Love top 31, including 4 of the top 6 and 7 of the top 14.
And it sounds like nothing else Arthur Lee ever did. Love was an eclectic folk-rock band for 2 albums and then Lee heard sounds in his head that he didn’t think his bandmates — many of whom were hooked on heroin — were capable of playing. So he dreamed up horn and string parts and hummed them to arranger David Angel, who made them reality.
The record has been called “the American Sgt Pepper,” but its sound and content is much more complicated than that. Some tracks sound blissed out but this is not a hippie-dippie record in the slightest. The arrangements are gorgeous but have a vibe of eerieness and foreboding. The lyrics sometimes don’t make sense on the surface but do if you know that Lee a) was very upset over his friends being sent to die in Vietnam b) was very ambivalent about the carefree attitude of the hippie scene c) was uncomfortable with his place as a Black man in a white-dominated country and music scene, to the extent that he didn’t tour outside of California until 1970 because he was convinced racists would assassinate him and d) was convinced he had a terminal illness and was dying; the final track “You Set the Scene” is essentially his goodbye message.
I have owned this album since high school and it always sounds fresh to me. I am adding to the playlist the #1 song from my countdown, “A House Is Not a Motel.”
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Had these both ranked pretty high (20 and 35, respectively).
Son Volt seems to be the forgotten part of the post-Uncle Tupelo pair, but if you like Wilco I highly recommend this ablum.
I may have already mentioned this, but if you liked Sun Kil Moon's Ghosts of the Great Highway that was listed earlier but felt it was a little repetitive, give Old Ramon a spin.
Long Ball Larry
Footballguy
I had read a few of her essays randomly and then picked this up last year and was a big fan. I didn’t know I was embarrassingly trite*, so now I’m glad I do…
I'd heard she was a great writer and had read a political essay and some free snippets, but hadn't ever looked hard enough to find a free, public reprint of it. The Saturday Evening Post has one and I found an Internet Archive of the whole book plus some, so I don't want to even close out my browser. I figure it's like going to the library, right? "Slouching . . ." which is the title of her book and the essay below, has a lot of California in it, especially this one about Haight-Ashbury in '67, a non-sensational look at the dark side of the hippie movement before anyone else was chronicling it.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/
But the essay is devastating, as is the one about Joan Baez where Didion reprints Joan's writing verbatim—almost definitely knowing and cringing at how bad Baez' writing was—which is sort of savage in a way (but so were Wolfe and Thompson and all the New Journalists, really). But the part where Baez talks about a "crystal teardrop" and later in the book Didion describes a Haight-Ashbury girl/woman as having "a very young girl's poems, each written out in a neat hand and finished off with a curlicue . . . [d]awns are roseate, skies silver-tinted, [w]hen she writes the word 'crystal' in her books she does not mean Meth." you know the gig is up with Baez and the two Joans aren't going to lunch any time soon.
"My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging around in slow motion. If I were to look into the teardrop for the next million years, I might never find out who the people are, and what they are doing." - Joan Baez
The first two paragraphs of "Slouching . . ." are so excellently crafted that one sort of stiffens and the hair stands up a bit on one's arms from a bit of foreboding. Good writing.
Oh man, we might need to take this to the non-fiction book countdown thread. Wait, where is that, @kupcho1 ?
I came to Joan Didion very late, and in an embarrassingly trite way - through The Year of Magical Thinking.
Ok yes I did
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Sorry buddy. As you insinuate, I don't usually think about it much when thinking of certain songs. Yes it's still good, but for me it got lost in all of the bootlegs I had.
rockaction
Footballguy
I just want to say that you don't need to feel embarrassed if you don't want to be (I also know it's just a turn of phrase at times to convey something else). Most of the time, there is no trite way to appreciate excellence, and not only that, I think the book you mention is an introspective memoir of her life wherein she examines herself the year after her husband—and sometimes writing partner—John Dunne suddenly passed. Its remarkable insights re-established her in the literary world as having a corpus that was absolutely worthy of reading, so you don't even have to hide when it comes to stuck-up readers (for lack of a better word). But I also think you know this and are just using a phrase.
When she describes that she won't put her deceased husband's shoes away because if he comes back he'll need them (or maybe that she just can't bear to part with them) is breathtaking in an almost literal sense. No shame in coming to her essays that way. A memoir is just a long version of a personal essay, anyway, so it's in keeping with the form and content for which she is most known.
This link below was a tough read. It's a book review that becomes a hermeneutic examination of her work, artfully discussing her anxiety, her past, her husband, and her adopted child. I haven't read most of her work, but I always like to know the emotional and biographical background of the author I'm currently reading because I don't believe in just text and text alone, nor am I a postmodernist or hyper-modernist who thinks that the reader is the one that gives the work its meaning. The author is in the work and the work is part of her. Great writing doesn't just appear from a blank slate and I am not reading text that is wholly detached from the author. I don't think that. Not in my experience. No way.
Th review's perspective was interesting because there are a lot of essays about Joan Didion, and a lot of opinions about her, but this one begins by painting a picture of her that seems critical, and it maintains a healthy dose of skepticism and remove. But then the ostensible reviewer moves from criticism to an unsentimental and fair portraiture of her life, and the reader senses he harbors a slight pity for her in a biographical sketch that eventually ends with eulogistic admiration. (And yeah, I'm looking for the perfect words here or I will be the one who is embarrassed.
)
Thomas Powers · Fire or Earthquake: Joan Didion’s Gaze
Joan Didion understood the impression she made and knew how to use it. ‘My only advantage as a reporter,’ she wrote...
www.lrb.co.uk
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
I think I know which one you mean. I had it on my initial long list but of course as the project went on my list had to change.With all the talk about that era of metal, there is an album from 2000 that I am surprised hasn't shown up and I am going to be angry is off the countdown if we have stuff like Staind and Limp Bizkit getting mentions around here but not that. I might demand a recount.
rockaction
Footballguy
I think I know which one you mean. I had it on my initial long list but of course as the project went on my list had to change.With all the talk about that era of metal, there is an album from 2000 that I am surprised hasn't shown up and I am going to be angry is off the countdown if we have stuff like Staind and Limp Bizkit getting mentions around here but not that. I might demand a recount.
My biggest oversight and I think I know which one also. I'll trade it for Slayer in a heartbeat (I have enough metal with Sabbath and Crue and one other not mentioned). But one thing I have to ask (although I might regret calling attention to it). KP, how can you talk about relative taste and then say that relative to Staind, this would be more worthy of a mention (or that it's just as worthy)? If you can't judge, how do you rank order? Or is all music good music? When I adhered to and helped come up with the Thumper Rule, it wasn't to enforce relativism—it was to prevent fighting.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
She's a great writer, I need to tackle some more of her work. I think I've only read Play It As it Lays and Run, River which oddly enough are both her fiction work. I really want to read The White Album next.I had read a few of her essays randomly and then picked this up last year and was a big fan. I didn’t know I was embarrassingly trite*, so now I’m glad I do…
I'd heard she was a great writer and had read a political essay and some free snippets, but hadn't ever looked hard enough to find a free, public reprint of it. The Saturday Evening Post has one and I found an Internet Archive of the whole book plus some, so I don't want to even close out my browser. I figure it's like going to the library, right? "Slouching . . ." which is the title of her book and the essay below, has a lot of California in it, especially this one about Haight-Ashbury in '67, a non-sensational look at the dark side of the hippie movement before anyone else was chronicling it.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/
But the essay is devastating, as is the one about Joan Baez where Didion reprints Joan's writing verbatim—almost definitely knowing and cringing at how bad Baez' writing was—which is sort of savage in a way (but so were Wolfe and Thompson and all the New Journalists, really). But the part where Baez talks about a "crystal teardrop" and later in the book Didion describes a Haight-Ashbury girl/woman as having "a very young girl's poems, each written out in a neat hand and finished off with a curlicue . . . [d]awns are roseate, skies silver-tinted, [w]hen she writes the word 'crystal' in her books she does not mean Meth." you know the gig is up with Baez and the two Joans aren't going to lunch any time soon.
"My life is a crystal teardrop. There are snowflakes falling in the teardrop and little figures trudging around in slow motion. If I were to look into the teardrop for the next million years, I might never find out who the people are, and what they are doing." - Joan Baez
The first two paragraphs of "Slouching . . ." are so excellently crafted that one sort of stiffens and the hair stands up a bit on one's arms from a bit of foreboding. Good writing.
Oh man, we might need to take this to the non-fiction book countdown thread. Wait, where is that, @kupcho1 ?
I came to Joan Didion very late, and in an embarrassingly trite way - through The Year of Magical Thinking.
Ok yes I did
rockaction
Footballguy
For those that don't click, Dan says, "Maybe I need to start an official Nu Metal appreciation thread." We've got one, Dan.
BLOCKED_PUNT
Footballguy
Why do we have a rule named after a rabbit?
rockaction
Footballguy
"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" - Thumper from Bambi
Wow, I didn't know it was that twee. Oh well. The Moms (mine) says it.
- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
youtu.be
krista4
Footballguy
I actually held my breath and then exhaled deeply just when reading this sentence, remembering how I'd felt, so it was breathtaking in a literal way for me.
The Dreaded Marco
Footballguy
Funeral blew me away when I first heard it in August, 2004. I saw Arcade Fire play it for the first time in April, 2005 at their first Coachella performance. They were given an early time slot---noon on the Saturday. My friend and I were huge fans of the album so we were there early at the outdoor stage---2nd row. By the time the show started the crowd extended back into the middle of the polo field venue, hundreds of rows. The organizers had underestimated the response to this album.77. Funeral – Arcade Fire (305 points)
@Barry2 #2
@Juxtatatrot #6
@Dreaded Marco #17
@shuke #28
@Ilov80s #33
@krista4 #49
@Pip's Invitation #58
@Ghost Rider #70
Funeral is the debut studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on September 14, 2004 by Merge Records. Preliminary recordings for Funeral were made during the course of a week in August 2003 at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec, and the recording was completed later that year all in an analogue recording format. Its lyrics draw upon themes of death, change, and the loss of childhood innocence, inspired by the recent passing of several bandmates' family members during its production. The first half of the album, dubbed the 'Neighborhood' suite, centres around a town struggling with a power outage in the middle of winter, based on personal experience during the North American ice storm of 1998.
And the band did not disappoint. It was one of the most electric shows I've seen ever. They opened with "Wake Up", which was the perfect start. All 8-10 bandmembers were roaming around the stage. Richard Perry, who I don't think is in the band any longer, was climbing the scaffolding. They played most of the album. I think they were very surprised by their huge crowd that day and fed off of it.
I still listen to this album fairly often.
krista4
Footballguy
Funeral blew me away when I first heard it in August, 2004. I saw Arcade Fire play it for the first time in April, 2005 at their first Coachella performance. They were given an early time slot---noon on the Saturday. My friend and I were huge fans of the album so we were there early at the outdoor stage---2nd row. By the time the show started the crowd extended back into the middle of the polo field venue, hundreds of rows. The organizers had underestimated the response to this album.77. Funeral – Arcade Fire (305 points)
@Barry2 #2
@Juxtatatrot #6
@Dreaded Marco #17
@shuke #28
@Ilov80s #33
@krista4 #49
@Pip's Invitation #58
@Ghost Rider #70
Funeral is the debut studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on September 14, 2004 by Merge Records. Preliminary recordings for Funeral were made during the course of a week in August 2003 at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec, and the recording was completed later that year all in an analogue recording format. Its lyrics draw upon themes of death, change, and the loss of childhood innocence, inspired by the recent passing of several bandmates' family members during its production. The first half of the album, dubbed the 'Neighborhood' suite, centres around a town struggling with a power outage in the middle of winter, based on personal experience during the North American ice storm of 1998.
And the band did not disappoint. It was one of the most electric shows I've seen ever. They opened with "Wake Up", which was the perfect start. All 8-10 bandmembers were roaming around the stage. Richard Perry, who I don't think is in the band any longer, was climbing the scaffolding. They played most of the album. I think they were very surprised by their huge crowd that day and fed off of it.
I still listen to this album fairly often.
I had the same reaction to seeing them live, and it was part of the reason this was so high on my list even though I don't listen to it much anymore. My experience was seeing them at Lollapalooza, I think the same timeframe. i was a huge fan of the album, but they exceeded my expectations. I just remember it was literally 100+ degrees, and all eleventy squillion of them came out in what was nearly formal-wear - full suits, long dresses, etc. - and blew our faces off.
The Dreaded Marco
Footballguy
Man, I don't think "silly" would ever come to mind for me to describe this album.75. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel (306 points)
@Scoresman #4
@kupcho1 #6
@Dreaded Marco #8
@Don Quixote #14
@Juxtatarot #16
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the second and final studio album by the American band Neutral Milk Hotel, released on February 10, 1998, by Merge Records. The album is predominantly indie rock and psychedelic folk and is characterized by extensive use of audio distortion and other lo-fi musical elements. Traditional indie rock instruments like the guitar and drums are paired with less conventional instruments like the singing saw and uilleann pipes. The lyrics are surrealistic and opaque, exploring themes that range from nostalgia to love. An important influence for the album was The Diary of a Young Girl, a book of writings from the diary of Anne Frank.
I always thought this album was made up by Pitchfork for hipster cred since I had never actually seen a physical copy of it anywhere, but always seems to feature prominently in best album countdowns
figured it was going to show up at some point
My tastes have changed over the years so maybe I’ll get baked and give it another shot but IIRC I didn’t care for the vocals so probably will tap out
The album is a bit silly, but it's a lot of fun and it's surely very different. It seems people that it clicks with, love it. I like it and listen once in a while but nowhere near a Top 70 for me.
I can see having issues with the vocals but they don't bother me.
I agree that it's extremely polarizing, though. I also agree that it's an album to listen to from start to finish. Difficult to pick out one song to highlight. I was very happy to finally see them perform this album in it's entirety.
I drafted this album in the 2nd round of the original Desert Island Draft on this forum back in the early aughts---I took a bit of crap for that---not VBD
Eephus
Footballguy
Man, catching up with this thread is like keeping track of the MLB trade deadline.
Which Joan Didion album got picked? I guess not the one named after the Beatles' double album.
If you rotate the Amorica album cover 180 degrees and stare at it really hard, the image of Steven Van Zandt's face will magically appear.
Don't forget to tip your waitress.
Which Joan Didion album got picked? I guess not the one named after the Beatles' double album.
If you rotate the Amorica album cover 180 degrees and stare at it really hard, the image of Steven Van Zandt's face will magically appear.
Don't forget to tip your waitress.
Pip's Invitation
Footballguy
This unleashed the mystique of The Doors and Jim Morrison on the world, and remains the best document of their strengths: passion, willingness to push boundaries and a distinctive organ-driven sound that proved remarkably influential. This is another record with no weak spots, and I am fine with any of its tracks for the playlist.69 (tie). The Doors – The Doors (328 points)
@Snoopy #5
@Dreaded Marco #10
@jwb #16
@zamboni #16
@Dennis Castro #41
@Pip #42
@Dan Lambskin #46
@BroncoFreak_2K3 #54
The Doors is the debut studio album by the American rock band the Doors, released on January 4, 1967, by Elektra Records. It was recorded in August 1966 at Sunset Sound Recorders, in Hollywood, California, with Paul A. Rothchild serving as producer. The album features the full length version of the band's breakthrough single "Light My Fire" and the lengthy closer "The End" with its Oedipal spoken word section. Various publications, including BBC and Rolling Stone, have named The Doors one of the greatest debut albums of all time.
The Dreaded Marco
Footballguy
Spot on.
This album actually was released in my sophomore year of high school. Still love it.....and my 16 year old self would vote for Add It Up on the playlist
Nick Vermeil
Footballguy
My choice as well.Spot on.
This album actually was released in my sophomore year of high school. Still love it.....and my 16 year old self would vote for Add It Up on the playlist
Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
You sure say that a lot.