We talked about doing this as a podcast, and several other ideas were floated, but in the end we decided just to post this discussion between some of us about the best albums of the year. Tell us about your own nominees or vote on the ones we mention. Read the full discussion (with some small edits for clarity and content by an authoritative editor) after the jump. Also relevant to this discussion are previous 2008 music posts located here, here and especially here: (more…)
Loading ...Yes, this is good news. But I somehow doubt that it will provide sufficient incentive for the ignorant masses to STFU.
I gave you earlier the bad of 2008. Now here’s the good.
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OK, everyone is doing their “best of” recollections. And I hear through the grapevine that a music edition is coming here one of these days to education those of us (me) who haven’t been keeping up on music. But this one is your general catch-all for the kudos and pet peeves of the year. What rocked your boat and what pissed you off. Entertainment-wise that is.
To start with I give you the bad. A followup post will give you the good.
Loading ...When they get radio play? When they sign a major record deal? When they start appearing on video channels? or… (more…)
It’s rare to have two highly-anticipated albums come out on the same day, especially two albums by bands that have so much in common, and which actually turn out to be good. Which is why this past week’s confluence of releases by Fall Out Boy and The All-American Rejects is so great: it showcases two pop/rock acts at the top of their game.
It also shows a couple of bands with a sense of humor: (more…)
I can’t believe it’s less than a week until Christmas and there hasn’t been a single Christmas post yet. Wow.
So here’s my humble attempt at one. Great Christmas albums. I don’t mean the greatest of all time. We did great Christmas songs a couple of years ago. We even did bad Christmas music (and here) around the same time. We did best Christmas animation, Christmas films, and so forth. But this is just some good Christmas albums you may have missed that are worth listening to.
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Or songs that build to big crescendos. My favorite kind of songs. Let’s see how many we can come up with.
The Frames are really great with wedge songs. I’m calling them “wedge songs” because the term the Frames use for them. When they record them in the studio and see the digitial representation of the song, you know those squiggly lines in the audio tracks? They form a wedge.
The Frames – “Keepsake”
(The crescendo starts three minutes in)
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I will attempt to embed them here. I’ll save discussion of the revelations that are contained therein until after the whole fracking lot of them have been revealed. So, do your homework, check back regularly at scifi.com, and once it’s all over, I’ll have a post where we can discuss what it all means.
UPDATE: Frack it. I can’t get the youtube embedding to work at all. I apparently have no mad internet skillz. Just go to http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/webisodes/ and the videos will load up immediately. Trust me.
It’s the same old, familiar story: Guy meets girl. Guy stalks girl. Guy writes a song about stalking girl, sells millions of copies. Here are my thoughts on the most memorable stalker pop songs.
In order of your preference, please. This has nothing to do with any of the songs they wrote, sang, or whatever while in the Beatles – I’m mainly interested in what people think of the solo stuff.
I’ll go first:
1. Paul – He gets a bad reputation because he tended towards treacly, over-sentimental stuff both in and out of the Beatles, but he’s hands-down the most interesting of the four. Pretty decent arguments could be made about his first 2 albums (literally homemade, playing 99% of the instruments himself, with weird, half-finished experiments sitting alongside pop gems like Maybe I’m Amazed) being a large influence on the lo-fi indie-pop thing that happened in the 80s and 90s. The highly-underrated Wild Life and the classic Band on the Run are also very worthy of your attention. And while it’s true that he’s been not very good in the last few decades, he does surprise you every once in awhile with something like 1999′s Run Devil Run, where he covers some of his favorite 50s rock songs. The whole thing isn’t great, but the 1/3 to 1/2 that is good is almost punk-rock in its approach and execution (see the title track, She Said Yeah, I Got Stung, and Honey Hush if you need proof).
2. George – All Things Must Pass is far and away my favorite solo Beatle project, but I’ve ranked George at #2 because it’s the only one of his albums that I really like. Granted, my collection is missing Gone Troppo, but I’m fairly confident that it wouldn’t move him past Paul.
3. John – A good portion of my favorite Beatles material is John’s, but remember, we’re talking solo. His first solo album, Plastic Ono Band, is a classic. About half of his second album, Imagine, is good, but the slide into mediocrity has already begun. Beyond that, you’re looking at a few good singles (#9 Dream, Mind Games, Jealous Guy) swimming in a sea of over-produced light rock. His oldies album, Rock & Roll, is totally smoked by Paul’s Run Devil Run.
4. Ringo – I’m actually putting him here by default since I’m pretty unfamiliar with his solo stuff other than a song or two.
Remember the movie game? Well, this is the same, but for song lyrics.
Rules: I’ll start with a lyric. Whomever guesses the correct song (and artist if you know it) gets to put up the next lyric. Repeat. Let’s just make sure that we’re offering lyrics which others actually have a possibility of guessing (Susan, I’m looking at you). And no Google cheating.
I’ll start:
I can make the run or stumble,
I can make the final block;
And I can make every tackle, at the sound of the whistle,
I can make all the stadiums rock.
So are you or a loved one a multimedia luddite? When someone puts on a 5.1 surround sound stereo does is sound pretty much the same as the speaker coming out of your TV? Do you not really care how big the screen is so long as you can see it? Do you think the difference between HD signals and SD is overblown? (Or worse do you not even know what we’re talking about?)
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This topic arose as Greg Call accused me of being a fan of Dave Matthews Band — WHICH I AM NOT! No, in 1995-1996 I was listening to Matthew Sweet, Ben Folds Five and Oasis. Oh, and Alanis Morrisette, like everyone else. Here’s what the Wiki has to say about that year. What were you listening to then?
OK no director is perfect. And even directors with films that were popular upon release don’t necessarily end up with films that age well. And most directors (like musicians) have maybe a few good films under their belt and that’s about it.
But who are the most consistently good filmmakers and who are the most uneven ones? Brian, over in the DTRT thread suggested Spike Lee was as consistent as Spielberg, Lucas, Scorcese, and Lynch. What do you think?
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