Best Ever Albums

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Sun, 6 Apr 2014 15:08:45 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/06/2014 19:08

04/04
-------

8:00 PM Friday

Another list.

Unknown Pleasures (Joy Division) - As much as I appreciate the brilliance of this album, I gotta say that it’s a real downer. It kind of regresses me to 9th grade when I was an angsty teen in the pits of depression and cynicism. I don’t see myself being in the mood to listen to it very often now.

The Undertones (The Undertones) - Solid British punk rock, but it doesn’t really resonate with me after two listens.

We Are Family (Sister Sledge) - Second listen, still enjoy it. Likely in my top 10 for the year.

GI (The Germs) - Now this is cool. It’s the first hardcore punk album to appear on my lists and definitely one of my favorite listens from 1979. My general impression of how BEA views hardcore punk: “It’s cool what the hardcore scene did for indie music and the DIY ethic, but why the fuck would I want to listen to it?”

I can understand why hardcore punk would seem alien to a lot of indie kids, especially considering just how fucking angry and frustrated it is. I had a friend in grad school who introduced me to hardcore punk by taking me to CBGB to see Leftöver Crack (2005, I think). I distinctly remember standing in the pit and not knowing how to respond to it -- I mean, I couldn’t tap my foot to it and the melody was either non-existent or indistinguishable. Eventually the kids around me just started banging into each other, so I joined in.

More than a lot of other types of music, hardcore punk is an experience. It’s tough to convey on a record and even tougher to notate on paper. To me, a hardcore punk concert is a raw and visceral demonstration of the suffocating nature of mainstream Western civilization, a venting of demons more alike to primitive exorcism rituals than we may want to admit. Some might say that middle class white kids don’t know the first thing about real frustration, but if they don’t, they do an awfully good impression.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Sun, 6 Apr 2014 14:08:14 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/06/2014 18:08

BrandonMiaow wrote:

This is incredible Sp4cetiger! I Think you ought to get this in depth on the forums anytime you listen to music, your perspective is fascinating. I'm very sorry about your close family friend, and that your son is sick.

Haha, I wish I had time to write this much on a regular basis, but sadly is not so. There will be a bit of this in the next music history thread, though (more soon).

We haven't actually heard officially about the family friend (they still don't have the biopsy results), but the doctor says it looks bad. As for my son, he seems to have recovered and is now napping happily upstairs.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Sun, 6 Apr 2014 14:00:24 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/06/2014 18:00

This is incredible Sp4cetiger! I Think you ought to get this in depth on the forums anytime you listen to music, your perspective is fascinating. I'm very sorry about your close family friend, and that your son is sick.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Sun, 6 Apr 2014 13:47:54 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/06/2014 17:47

8:00 PM Thursday

The evening started innocently enough, me streaming a YouTube rendition of Highway to Hell (AC/DC) on my headphones. I was about two-thirds through it when my wife comes into the bedroom and tells me that one of our close family friends has pancreatic cancer. There really are very few albums I could have been listening to at that moment that would have felt less appropriate than Highway to Hell, so I cut it short and go with silence for a while. Unfortunately, at that moment my son, who was now sick with a fever of 101 F (33 C), started screaming after only an hour of sleep. My wife is desperately tired, so I go in and rock with him for a while.

He likes music well enough -- I think I’ve conditioned him so that he can listen to just about anything. He listens to the usual music that toddlers listen to, but I also expose him to the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and even some punk rock. At one point, I had the Ramones playing in the background and he comes up to me and says, “Daddy. Music off.” This kinda cracked me up, but I shut off the tunes and let him go with quiet for a while. About a half hour later, I tried playing the same record (I think it was playing “Ramona” from Rocket to Russia) and he was hoppin and boppin like it was his birthday. Kids adjust quickly.

Anyway, I go in to rock with him for a while and turn on Saxophone Colossus (Sonny Rollins), one of my favorite bop records from the ‘50s. As I’m rocking him, I mull over the possible absurdity of a toddler relaxing to improvisational music. They have no concept of what’s conventional… even everyday things carve out new pathways in their brains, like a living dream. Adults, by contrast, get so used to their surroundings that I imagine we sometimes crave the unpredictability of jazz solos. It doesn’t seem to bother him, though, so I put it out of my mind.

Instead, I start trying to picture the music in my head. Mid-50s bop makes me think of a smokey cafe cluttered with wealthy white urbanites, each massaging their brains with the saxophonist’s trendy velvet. In one moment it strikes me as a new form of enslavement -- the white people have compartmentalized and catalogued an otherwise liberating African American tradition. They judge it positively or negatively based on their stodgy classical music training and only accept the black man on the stage because he interests them. He is an object of display, like a painting. In the next moment, the picture shifts and I see a talented black man using his god-given gift to communicate ideas that are both new and exciting to a crowd of curious white people. He holds them in his sway like a military commander, breaking through cultural boundaries and centuries of institutional racism. The white people may not completely understand him, but they’re a step closer. Which picture is the truth? Neither. Both. I think we need both.

When it’s over, he still hasn’t gone to sleep. Maybe something simpler will help, so I put on Lubbock (On Everything) (Terry Allen). It’s a first listen, but I immediately fall in love with Allen’s simple medodies and twisted sense of humor. I leave you with a snippet from “Beautiful Waitress”:

Quote:

[She] always liked horses, I said “I did too”
But they're hard to draw, she said, ‘Yes, that was very true”
Said she could do the body okay, but never get the head, tail or legs,
I told her she was drawing sausages, not horses
She said no, they were horses

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Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Sat, 5 Apr 2014 16:15:47 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/05/2014 20:15

9:30 AM Thursday

I wake up this morning to discover that my wife has scrobbled three and a half hours worth of Lady Gaga and show tunes from my Spotify account. We share the account, so she didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s annoying that it gets mixed in with my stats. I guess I could tell her to turn scrobbling off...

Anyway, she’s exhausted, so I’m charged with watching my son before I go to work. I always try to avoid really noisy or angry stuff when in mixed company, but there’s an awful lot of punk on my list, so I decide that Armed Forces (Elvis Costello) is a good compromise. The first few tracks are great, but I don’t even get halfway through before life and toddler care interrupt. I make it back in time to hear about peace, love, and understanding, concepts that seem really abstract in the din of domestic life.

2:30 PM

My son wants to play outside, and I decide to play music from my smartphone to blunt the monotony. I’m at the perfect time in history for this kind of listening, cause nothing plays better on tinny portable speakers than punk rock. I put on The Clash (The Clash).

I remember having an argument with a friend in grad school -- an audiophile who dumped ridiculous amounts of money into fancy audio equipment for listening to his Led Zeppelin and Ladytron. One day he caught me in my office jamming out to Nirvana on cheap Wal-Mart headphones, so he brought in his fancy noise-cancelling headphones and told me to compare. I had to tell him that, in all honesty, I preferred the sound on the cheaper headphones. He didn’t believe me, so we brought in another student to come in and do the same comparison. Cheapo headphones again.

Thing is, dirty music is dirty music and sometimes the important thing isn’t capturing the details so much as capturing the spirit. Punk or grunge rockers didn’t make their music for rich bastards and intellectuals, they made it for the half-sober night stocker at the local grocery store. They don’t value flawless musicianship and they sure as hell don’t care if you can hear them gasping for breath between verses. So yeah, tinny punk rock kicks ass.

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Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Sat, 5 Apr 2014 14:58:06 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/05/2014 18:58

8:30 PM Wednesday

Laundry list time:

Drums and Wires (XTC) - The rising new wave pop bands are exciting, but also disturbing because I know what’s coming. No complaints about XTC, though, they’re plenty fun. First listen, though, so not much more to say yet.

Concierto (Jim Hall) - I’ve been making my way through the Penguin Guide to Jazz core collection of albums (chronologically, of course). The pickings are pretty slim in the ‘70s, but this was a real gem from 1975. It’s an old school cool jazz jam, great for active or passive listening, as need dictates.

The Ramones (The Ramones) - I was first introduced to punk rock back in the ‘90s when a friend leant me the Ramones’ It’s Alive. I remember my reaction vividly -- this is terrible… but I like it for some reason. I’m not sure my feelings about the Ramones have changed all that much over the years, except now I love it. It’s amazing that a record by the Ramones has so much repeat listen value, it really is.

Risque (Chic) - First listen and my second Chic record. My reaction is pretty much the same as to the first: I like it, but it doesn’t jump out at me. Right now I prefer Sister Sledge, but I need to give the Chic records some more time.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Fri, 4 Apr 2014 00:48:43 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/04/2014 04:48

4:00 PM Wednesday

I don't get much music in on Wednesday. There's a lot to do and other things just keep coming up. When I get home from work, I'm feeling very apathetic in general, so I figure that's as good a time as any to put on The Wall (Pink Floyd). It's a no-brainer for the 1979 list, even though I've heard it several times before and never liked it. Maybe this time will be different, who knows.

It starts out pretty well… Pink Floyd’s members know their craft and it runs seamlessly, with catchy bits here and there. After a while, though, it’s just too much. The politics, the pageantry, the sneering, the role-playing… a wave of self-satisfaction runs over me, accompanied by adjectives like “pretentious” and “overbearing”. My pretend superiority gives me something to enjoy while an otherwise unpleasant experience blares in the background. There’s no anger, though.

The relationship between negativity and art appreciation hangs on my mind a lot lately. When we express distaste for music, are we subconsciously lashing out at everyone and everything that associates with it? Are we all, deep down, just frothing narcissists who secretly crave to assert our every whim and fancy on the world? I don’t think so. It’s true that I make both positive and negative judgements about all of the music I listen to and it's true that the act of making those judgements has a lot to do with ego... but really, I have doubts about every judgement I make. I could try to steamroll anyone who disagrees with me, but I don't want to leave myself alone on an island of self-satisfaction.

We are social creatures. I express distaste for something not because I want to assert my ego (there are no shortage of other ways to do that), but because I crave mutual understanding. My distaste helps define me, and when someone else comes forward and says, “That’s like me,” it makes me feel good. It's sometimes irrational, but wholly primal. As children, we learn to feel anger before we learn to feel empathy, so it’s tempting to say that we just bury our true self for the sake of others. We are not a layered cake, though. The final product, the adult, is a complex combination of desires, some social and some selfish. When I tell you I dislike The Wall, I don’t do it to build myself up against the fans, I do it to connect with the non-fans.

Bah, music gets me all philosophical sometimes. I’ll stop now. I don't like The Wall, no offense intended to anyone.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Thu, 3 Apr 2014 23:40:30 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/04/2014 03:40

04/02
-------

12:30 AM Wednesday

Try to sleep. Fail. I don’t mind being awake at odd hours, it’s just hard to schedule a life with a body that won’t cooperate. Eventually I put on Talking Heads: 77, their debut album. I have a lot to say about the Talking Heads, but most of it isn’t words. I like this one, maybe better than their later stuff. The second half is better than the first.

Next I give a first listen to Squeezing Out Sparks (Graham Parker and The Rumour). It’s rock music… how quaint. My first impression is that he’s a poor man’s Elvis Costello, but by the end, I’m kind of digging it. Maybe I’ll go back to it later.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Wed, 2 Apr 2014 23:54:51 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/03/2014 03:54

5:00 PM Tuesday

As I’m driving to pick up my son from daycare, I flip on the XM Radio ‘70s station. Whenever I’m listening to albums from a particular time period, I try to immerse myself in the popular music as well. Truth be told, I’ve found the ‘70s popular music to be mostly a drag. I hear Elton John, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac… I mean, it’s not terrible, but soft rock really doesn’t excite me or soothe me… or much of anything, really. I perk up at two songs: “Play That Funky Music” by Wild Cherry and “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)” by the Four Seasons. I mean, I’ve heard them both a million times before, but in my imaginary ‘70s zeitgeist, they feel more fresh. In fact, two genres stand out in the popular music of the decade: funk and disco. Punk would be in there too, but it wasn’t particularly popular and I almost never hear it on ‘70s radio.

Anyway, I get home and my wife is away giving a piano lesson, so it’s my job to put my son to bed. Problem is, when I do his routine (reading, singing, etc.), he doesn’t want to go. In fact, he gets so upset when I leave the room, that for the first time in his life he actually climbs out of the crib (with a loud “thud!”) and starts banging on the door. Jesus. I don’t know whether to be scared, annoyed, or proud of him. I hold him for what must be an hour, but he still doesn’t want to let go of me when I try to put him down. Finally, my wife comes back from the piano lesson and takes over. When she goes into his room, he’s still asking for me, but within five minutes, she has him down and out like a light. Dammit.

Sorry for that completely non-musical digression, but it seemed important to explain why I put on my headphones and started listening to Overkill (Mötorhead). These guys kinda make Black Sabbath sound like pussies and listening to it seems like the next best thing to burying my frustration. It kinda cracks me up, though, that the lead singer got his start in Hawkwind, of all things.

The metal-driven vent is going great, but it’s around this time that I discover that Brandon has supposedly disappeared from our lives. Yeah, that stuff matters to the real me, too. I figure there’s a good chance Jack is right that he’ll be back soon [it turned out to be one day], but on the off chance that he won’t be, I decided to put on Just Another Diamond Day (Vashti Bunyan) as a tribute. It’s like a third or fourth listen for me. Previously, I found it a bit too saccharine for my taste and at the outset, this listen isn’t so different. But then I try a simple experiment: I try to listen to it the way Brandon would listen to it. Don’t ask me how I could have any idea how to do that, but for some reason, it works. Perhaps learning to enjoy new music is like a study in character. Maybe I'm discovering a new part of myself or maybe I'm imitating my perception of others… or maybe those two things are even different. But it works. How the fuck do I chart this now?

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Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Wed, 2 Apr 2014 01:36:18 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/02/2014 05:36

If you enjoyed Moroder you should definitely check out Cerrone. Anyway, thoroughly enjoying this.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

drakonium — Wed, 2 Apr 2014 01:10:00 GMT

Author: drakonium

Posted: 04/02/2014 05:10

Haha, I listened to that Giorgio album just yesterday, it's definitely really fun. I like it a lot.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Wed, 2 Apr 2014 00:23:55 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/02/2014 04:23

1:30 PM Tuesday

Do some work from home… clean up some of the shit left over from my sick day… my mother-in-law tells me she’s going out for a while, so I decide it’s a perfect time to put some raucous post-punk on the stereo. My noise of choice is Entertainment! (Gang of Four), first listen. I had started listening to it for like 30 seconds the previous day when I was sick and quickly realized it wasn’t gonna work, but now I’m feeling antsy. It’s hard-hitting and energizing at first. Most of the album continues at a similar tempo, borrowing from funk and dub, but I find myself feeling dissatisfied with the lyrics… partly cause I can’t understand most of them and partly cause the bits I’m catching sound… off. I look up the album on the internet and discover that it’s all politics. Based on the written lyrics and the text on the front cover, it seems like generic leftist rhetoric that stopped being interesting in college… eh, I dunno, maybe I’ll try the album again later when I’m in a different mood.

Next is Lodger (David Bowie), one of Bowie’s supposedly underrated gems. It was alright the first time through… I was sort of buying his faux excotica thing on the first half, but this time it just feels all wrong. I don’t know if it’s the album or my mood, but at that moment, I don’t want to hear anymore synthesizers or throbbing rhythms.

I decide that what I need is some dadrock. Flipping through some of my favorites from earlier in the ‘70s, I hit on the perfect choice, Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones). Weirdly enough, I didn’t really start getting into the Stones until I was deep into this music history project. My dad always loved them, but I instinctively rejected their simplistic melodies and chord progressions. No more, this shit is great and the haters are really missing out. Just like London Calling, it hits me like a burst of energy. Exile, though, is not a continuous high, but rather a journey through Americana which, through some freak of nature, is conveyed expertly by a gang of filthy Englishmen. Maybe we can thank Gram Parsons for that, but regardless, it’s definitely becoming my favorite Stones album and might even make my overall chart when I reopen it.

Finally, after two LPs worth of blues rock, I’m ready for synthesizers again. And I’m not shitting around either, I’m going all out Giorgio Moroder, From Here to Eternity. For the next 30 minutes, this throbbing wankjob sounds to me like the perfect parody of the digital age. The lyrics are ridiculous, but I eat it up like candy. More please.

Shit, I have to pick up my son from daycare...

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RANDOM STUFF: One of the song titles on From Here to Eternity is “Faster Than the Speed of Love”, which is also the title of Brian’s failed book in the TV series, Family Guy. When he first tells Lois about it, she says it’s the “worst title she’s ever heard.” The same could be said for about half the song titles on the album.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Tue, 1 Apr 2014 18:56:02 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/01/2014 22:56

Singles Going Steady was my first full album in any vein of punk rock, and I thank God every day that I started there.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Norman Bates — Tue, 1 Apr 2014 16:49:36 GMT

Author: Norman Bates

Posted: 04/01/2014 20:49

"He's the Greatest Dancer" is such a killer!

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Tue, 1 Apr 2014 16:12:06 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/01/2014 20:12

04/01
-------

6:00 AM Tuesday

Woke up for good after a very long night of sleeping, waking up, sleeping, waking up… but at least I’m not sick anymore. Anyway, I wanted to start with something light, so I put on Singles Going Steady (The Buzzcocks). I know, it’s a compilation, but it compiles over a short time period (<3 years) and the songs are all more or less in the same vein, so it works for me. Besides, it seems kind of appropriate that pioneers of pop punk should be represented by a collection of singles. It’s fun.

Keeping with that theme, I decide it’s time for some disco before I go to sleep again. We Are Family (Sister Sledge) is a first listen and only the fourth or fifth complete disco album I’ve heard from the ‘70s. On the surface, it has a very generic sound and seems to put more emphasis on the orchestra than the electronic/disco elements. Even so, the arrangements are actually really cool, especially for the two tracks Joni sings on (“Lost in Music”, “Easier to Love”). I like it, for what it is.

But what is it? If I close my eyes, I see something very similar to what’s on the album’s cover (see below) -- an exotic locale where worldly concerns are limited to love. There is nothing real about it (I would never use the word “exotic” to describe anything real), it’s just escapism. Perhaps that’s what differentiates pop from “serious” music. More to ponder as I drift off to sleep again…

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Tue, 1 Apr 2014 13:23:52 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/01/2014 17:23

I’ve been laid up in bed for the past few days, so there isn’t much to talk about other than the music itself. Moodwise, the only thing I’ll mention is that I avoided anything too harsh, just cause the queasiness never completely went away and I wasn’t in the mood for an emotional rollercoaster. I’ll just present this entry in the form of a list, with comments for each album.

03/31
-------

12:30 PM: Broken English (Marianne Faithful) - One of my favorite discoveries from 1979. A year ago, I probably would have dismissed this as cheesy ‘80s-style pop. Now, though, I love how her drug-torn vocal cords give this music a level of anguish that a pristine voice just couldn’t. It got me thinking about music where the experience was enhanced by what we would normally consider vocal defects. There are more than you might think, whether it’s due to drug use (this one, Slowhand), age (Lady in Satin, September of My Years), fatigue (“Twist and Shout”, “I’ll Be Your Mirror”), or, uh... other (Oar, Third/Sister Lovers). Imperfection can be just as beautiful as perfection.

1:00 PM: This Year’s Model (Elvis Costello) - Elvis Costello always struck me as an artist that I really should like. You know, singer/songwriter from the Liverpool area, highly acclaimed, has a punk edge… but the best I can say so far is that he’s okay. This album is the best that I’ve heard from him. The opening and closing numbers are my favorites, but after three listens, I still don’t feel like I’m getting swept away. I guess we’ll see how I feel about Armed Forces.

8:00 PM: The Roches - I slid this onto my 1979 list because folk has been very poorly represented on my recent lists. My first impression is that they sound a bit like the Mamas and the Papas, except their songs are much more... quaint. The humor reminds me of early American folk revival acts, like The Kingston Trio and The Limeliters. Aside from one track, “Hammond Song”, it’s not a pleasant experience.

It really disturbs me how much I dislike this album, actually. I don’t think I have any favorite albums that include humor that isn’t dark or sarcastic. Anything lighter just plays to my ears like novelty music. Is this my fault? Do I take music too seriously? Eventually I realize that my inner monologue is beginning to resemble one of outlaw’s posts, so I decide to go to sleep.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Tue, 1 Apr 2014 06:09:08 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/01/2014 10:09

Whew, got tons of sleep yesterday and feel much better now.

Quote:

Love the entries so far. Just wondering, as someone who wasn't around for the original History of Recorded Music thread, when do the years advance? Do you skip and hop from year to year on some regular basis, or did you start at a certain year and continue from there, progressing once every few months or in real time years, or...?

I just make lists of what I decide are "must-listen" albums from each year and make my way through them at whatever pace feels right (proceeding chronologically). The first recordings I listened to were around ~1900, but needless to say, the pickings were slim until the mid-to-late '50s. Here's the full thread:

History Thread v1

More soon...

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 20:27:01 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 04/01/2014 00:27

Love the entries so far. Just wondering, as someone who wasn't around for the original History of Recorded Music thread, when do the years advance? Do you skip and hop from year to year on some regular basis, or did you start at a certain year and continue from there, progressing once every few months or in real time years, or...?

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Norman Bates — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:06:50 GMT

Author: Norman Bates

Posted: 03/31/2014 22:06

Man, as a fellow young father, I feel you so much.

Except the insomnia bit which I have no problem with and changes quite a lot of things I'll admit.

Anyway, great log. I feel the pressure so much now, I promise I'll do my best after you three first bitches.

Re: BEA ULL #3: sp4cetiger

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 16:45:58 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 03/31/2014 20:45

Whose idea was this? This is fucking awesome!