Best Ever Albums

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Fri, 3 Jan 2020 22:31:34 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 01/04/2020 03:31

RoundTheBend wrote:

AfterHours wrote:

Thanks 😁

May be hard to imagine some of the following selections now but if we went back in time and I did a Best of the Year for, say, 2001, it wouldve looked something like:

1) Astral Weeks - Van Morrison (1968)
2) Forever Changes - Love (1967)
3) Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys (1966)
4) Revolver - The Beatles (1966)
5) Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan (1965)
6) Exile On Main Street - The Rolling Stones (1972)
7) Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles (1967)
8 ) Abbey Road - The Beatles (1969)
9) What's Going On - Marvin Gaye (1971)
10) Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan (1966)
11) Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones (1969)
12) Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix (1967)
13) The Beatles - The Beatles (1968)
14) Rubber Soul - The Beatles (1965)
15) Beggar's Banquet - The Rolling Stones (1968)
16) A Hard Days Night - The Beatles (1964)

....and so on...

Yeah - I remembered again your throwing copper thing you mentioned and the such. An interesting journey/cool you have something that kind of goes back to the 90s and documented (I think I saw 1998?)

Anyway, it's comforting to know that even after 20 years of being deliberate with this effort to assess/find "truth" really, it still is a truly difficult thing to "finalize".

Speaking of which - I was a bit shocked to see Rock Bottom hit the top/overcome the Sistine Chapel, unless I misunderstood. But then I thought of my own reassessment of things and that happens with all of us. It's very difficult atop the house of cards to really see the difference between such high rated items.

Yes - quite a journey it is and always will be!

If we went back to 1991 it would probably be Paula Abdul's album Spellbound topping the year!! 🤣

Thank god Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Seattle scene (then yes, Live's Throwing Copper for 1995) started me on a different road, before Classical (1996) and films (like C Kane, Kubrick's 2001) really unlocked all doors, set the foundation so to speak...

Rock Bottom topping Sistine Chapel is just for this year, just like the weekly "Top 10+" lists are just for that week (or series of weeks in some cases).

Sistine Chapel remains at the very top overall as a 10/10 and probably the only full 10/10 that exists in all of Art by my estimation. Rock Bottom is a 9.5 but for all Art still sits just below Tristan & Isolde, Mahler's 9th, Beethoven's 9th and Sistine Chapel. Recently it did finally surpass Trout Mask Replica as top Rock album for the first time since, I think, 2006/2007ish. For Jazz, both Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and A Love Supreme had surpassed TMR at various times before but each was temporary - ALS I think a couple times for months (maybe a year or 2 collectively) and Black Saint held out on top for maybe 5 years? Only time will tell if Rock Bottom remains #1? No matter what its a close call that Id been going back and forth on for the last 2 years at least before finally going through with the change.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

RoundTheBend — Fri, 3 Jan 2020 22:12:05 GMT

Author: RoundTheBend

Posted: 01/04/2020 03:12

AfterHours wrote:

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Fri, 3 Jan 2020 01:45:18 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 01/03/2020 06:45

RoundTheBend wrote:

Wow. Impressive work as always.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

RoundTheBend — Thu, 2 Jan 2020 21:28:04 GMT

Author: RoundTheBend

Posted: 01/03/2020 02:28

Wow. Impressive work as always.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Thu, 2 Jan 2020 19:31:40 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 01/03/2020 00:31

The following have all been added to the top of the first post, first page.

Top 50 Works of the Year (2019) including a list of "Past Winners" (1995-2018)

...and

Top 50 Works of the Decade (2010-2019)

Note that very few works recorded/released this decade actually made it on either list. They are simply overall lists of my favorite works for that time span not works released during those times. The "decade" one took quite a while to figure out being the nerd that I am in thinking/looking back over those years and actually taking the time in trying to make sure it was accurate or as close as could reasonably be expected.

Fwiw 🤣 Some may find the results interesting or...? The exercise (including Top 10+ of the Week) does prove useful for me in organizing my thoughts, ratings and rankings...

Lastly, I will likely be opening up a new thread for 2020+ because this one is often loading pretty slowly on most of my devices. Not sure if thats happening to others or just me 🤔

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 22:47:52 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 12/29/2019 03:47

DelBocaVista wrote:

I THINK it's one of those cases of simultaneous release in two versions, CD with and vinyl and cassette without (but, possibly it was included as part of an overall industry plan to incentivize people to switch to CDs in the late 80s?, meaning more "bonusy")

Goodness... 🤔

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

DelBocaVista — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 22:18:12 GMT

Author: DelBocaVista

Posted: 12/29/2019 03:18

I THINK it's one of those cases of simultaneous release in two versions, CD with and vinyl and cassette without (but, possibly it was included as part of an overall industry plan to incentivize people to switch to CDs in the late 80s?, meaning more "bonusy")

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 21:59:34 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 12/29/2019 02:59

DelBocaVista wrote:

Do you include "Master=Dik" on Sister?

Not for the current 7.7 rating, though -- if there is info that shows these tracks were intended as "official revisions" to the albums by the band -- then I may be tempted to count their bonus tracks for Bad Moon Rising (which would probably bump it to 8.2 or perhaps higher), Sister (which might be enough for 7.8/10).

I actually used to rate Bad Moon Rising above 8.3 without realizing I had been listening to it and rating it as the version with the additional bonus tracks...

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

DelBocaVista — Sat, 28 Dec 2019 18:34:53 GMT

Author: DelBocaVista

Posted: 12/28/2019 23:34

Do you include "Master=Dik" on Sister?

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 02:01:20 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 10/11/2019 06:01

Facetious wrote:

AfterHours wrote:

I am 99.9% immune to comic book movie hype (on purely my own interest & determinism, not counting going with some friends or as a date) ... but your recommendation might get me to it! It does look more interesting than most and I liked Nolan's.

Overall, Tarantino's latest would be my top choice to see in theaters right now.

I can get that, but Joker stands out because it's barely connected to that universe. It's mostly a fresh new take on the character, with clearly far more effort put into the cinematography, score, and acting than most mainstream comic book adaptations, not to mention the bleakness and graphic violence. Not quite Natural Born Killers, but still good. It's more of a Scorsese tribute (Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy) than a comic book film really.

Thank you - it does sound promising. Scorsese is an excellent touchstone and pulling from him would make a nice twist for a comic book film.

Batman Returns pulls from Nosferatu, Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari and other German Expressionist films ... along with Welles, Gilliam, Hitchcock and Kubrick, (all smoothly & essentially integrated under superb direction and rather masterful composure by Burton) ... which is a huge part of its success and what makes it stand out so much relative to others.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

Facetious — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 15:23:31 GMT

Author: Facetious

Posted: 10/10/2019 19:23

AfterHours wrote:

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 12:38:58 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 10/10/2019 16:38

Facetious wrote:

Planning on catching Joker in theaters? It's good, a pretty bleak and intense origin story unlike anything else in mainstream comic book adaptations. It's the sort of gritty adaptation that's the logical follow-up to what Nolan was going for in his Dark Knight trilogy. Joaquin Phoenix clearly gave it his all, the cinematography is gorgeous, the atmosphere unrelentingly tense. I predict a 7/10 on your scale.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

Facetious — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 02:23:51 GMT

Author: Facetious

Posted: 10/10/2019 06:23

Planning on catching Joker in theaters? It's good, a pretty bleak and intense origin story unlike anything else in mainstream comic book adaptations. It's the sort of gritty adaptation that's the logical follow-up to what Nolan was going for in his Dark Knight trilogy. Joaquin Phoenix clearly gave it his all, the cinematography is gorgeous, the atmosphere unrelentingly tense. I predict a 7/10 on your scale.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 17:03:22 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 09/29/2019 21:03

Facetious wrote:

What do you think of Apocalypse Now's original cut vs the redux version?

Redux is still a superb film but I don't recall much of the extras being truly necessary. Original cut is superior as it already has everything that's needed to develop/express its themes while still leaving the proceedings quite eliptical/ambiguous/suspenseful/haunting.

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

Facetious — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 16:21:29 GMT

Author: Facetious

Posted: 09/29/2019 20:21

What do you think of Apocalypse Now's original cut vs the redux version?

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 00:43:22 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 09/26/2019 04:43

Facetious wrote:

Not sure where it was, but I think I remember you mentioning The Waste Land once as an extraordinary piece of literature. What did you find extraordinary about it and what other works of literature do you find amazing?

I do not consider myself reliable on rating/ranking literature simply because I dont have the time to go through its essential works as I have for much of Classical, Rock, Jazz, Film, Paintings, so any assessment for it would be an educated guess based as much on intuition as actual evaluation.

This in mind, I would say that Eliot's Wasteland, the major works of Shakespeare, Dante's Divine Comedy, Ulysses, Dostoyevsky, Kafka's Trial, are some of the more obvious candidates I would delve into and eval more if I were to start putting together an "8.8+" list of literary masterpieces.

Wasteland seems a masterpiece of multi-faceted illusion/modernist structure (freedom of form, multi-layered metaphors) combining many styles & languages into a very personalized vision/idiom, perhaps anthropological (more likely in terms of influence/inspiration than "hereditary"). It seems an apocalyptic vision from a very profound, isolated and personal perspective (perhaps terrified at being the only one cognizant of what he sees).

"Let me go straight to the heart of the matter, fling my poor little hand on the table, and say what I think The Waste Land is about. It is about the fertilizing waters that arrived too late. It is a poem of horror. The earth is barren, the sea salt, the fertilizing thunderstorm broke too late. And the horror is so intense that the poet has an inhibition and is unable to state it openly.

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish ? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images."

He cannot say 'Avaunt!' to the horror, or he would crumble into dust. Consequently, there are outworks and blind alleys all over the poem—obstacles which are due to the nature of the central emotion, and are not to be charged to the reader. The Waste Land is Mr. Eliot's greatest achievement. It intensifies the drawing-room premonitions of the earlier poems, and it is the key to what is puzzling in the prose. But, if I have its hang, it has nothing to do with the English tradition in literature, or law or order, nor, except incidentally, has the rest of his work anything to do with them either. It is just a personal comment on the universe, as individual and as isolated as Shelley's Prometheus."

--EM Forster

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

Facetious — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 21:55:15 GMT

Author: Facetious

Posted: 09/26/2019 01:55

Not sure where it was, but I think I remember you mentioning The Waste Land once as an extraordinary piece of literature. What did you find extraordinary about it and what other works of literature do you find amazing?

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 17:48:44 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 09/19/2019 21:48

Facetious wrote:

What do you think of Pather Panchali?

Sorry -- totally absorbed in Classical and can't get back out right now. 😁 I'm trapped in the lightning bolts of awe!

I will get back you on Pulp Fiction -- it will just be a little longer than I thought...

Pather Panchali seems to me a precursor to Mahid Majidi's cinema (Willow Tree, Color of Paradise). A cinema of faith and humility, but mostly lucid and simple. Both naive and profound simultaneously (profound in the way that a child views the world with wonder and epiphany, not the depth or complications of a wisened philosopher). It should be on my 7.3+ list unless I erroneously removed it?

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

Facetious — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 18:10:26 GMT

Author: Facetious

Posted: 09/14/2019 22:10

What do you think of Pather Panchali?

Re: Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2019)

AfterHours — Sun, 8 Sep 2019 23:33:20 GMT

Author: AfterHours

Posted: 09/09/2019 03:33

Facetious wrote:

Can you please post a detailed analysis of Pulp Fiction?

I dont know if Ill have the time for a "detailed" one but I do plan on revisiting it again very soon to further verify its merits/my thoughts & observations about it. When I do (probably within days or no more than a week) Ill get back to you with at least the key bullet points.

Im really immersed in a slew of Classical works that Ive been revisiting over the last 1-2 weeks, and when Im this focused on a number of works all in one art form, it can be tough to jump right into serious analysis/detailed thoughts about another, such as film/Pulp Fiction. But yeah - for sure - Ill get back to you on it soon...

(Its definitely a more profound film than it might appear to be and it has been through a pretty wide discrepancy of ratings for me, in part due to this "elusiveness" and the difficulty in pinning down its merit: from 7.9 to as high as 8.8 and currently 8.3 and probably every rating in between those over the last 10 years or so)