Top 10/Bottom 3: May 2011

May 14 2011 Published by under Film/TV, Hauntology, Humor, Internet/Media, Literature, Music, Personal, Politics, Technology, Top 10/Bottom 3

Jedward

A little late this month.  Oh well.  On we go…

Top 10

  1. Parks & Recreation–Amazingly, the coolest show on TV go 100 times cooler this month when Aubrey Plaza’s character April came out as a huge Neutral Milk Hotel (and Jeff Magnum) fan in the season finale.  Nice one, show!
  2. Pye Corner Audio, Black Mill Tapes Vo. 2
  3. Vermona DRM1 mkIII–my new best friend
  4. Barak Obama (see?  First three are pretty awesome to put Barak at #4 after taking out Bin Laden)
  5. Moon Wiring Club, Somewhere a Fox is Getting Married
  6. Mark McGuire, A Young Person’s Guide to Mark McGuire
  7. George R.R. Martin’s Songs of Ice and Fire series–am on book 3
  8. Doctor Who
  9. Meeblip
  10. Stewart Brand’s The Clock of the Long Now

Bottom 3

  1. Fox News
  2. Republicans
  3. Eurovision voters (seriously, Azerbaijan?)

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Top 10 Albums of the 1990s

Nov 17 2010 Published by under Feature, Internet/Media, Music, Personal

In the Aeroplane over the Sea album cover

It’s been over ten years, so I think enough time has lapsed to look at the music of the 90s objectively.  But that’s not really what this list is about.  I culled this list from my own listening habits over the past decade-plus.  The criteria is simple: to make the list, the work had to have been released in the 9os (duh), has to be in my iTunes directory today (before I conceived of this list), and it has to be something I continue to listen to on a regular basis.  So that’s why there’s no Nirvana or Nine Inch Nails here.  Sorry, dudes, your music is great, but it’s not in my catalog right now.  Oh, and I wanted to include The Conet Project’s Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations, and while it is on my computer, I honestly don’t listen to it on a regular basis (though its importance is even more obvious now).

So it’s a biased and a (somewhat) arbitrary list of great music from the 90s.  But isn’t every list biased and arbitrary?  At least I own up to it.

One final thought: most of the music here was released in 1997 and 1998, two of the best years for music in decades.  No one talks about this fact, but those years are right up there with 1968, 1977, and 1984 for sheer volume of amazing music.

  1. Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
  2. Boards of Canada, Music Has the Right to Children
  3. Tricky, Maxinquaye
  4. Massive Attack, Mezzanine
  5. Pan Sonic, A
  6. Radiohead, Ok Computer
  7. Belle & Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister
  8. Portishead, Portishead
  9. Chris Watson, Outside the Circle of Fire
  10. The Caretaker, Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom

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Billy Bob and Music from 1980-Present

Jun 27 2009 Published by under Film/TV, Music, Random

Last night on the annoying show Real Time with Bill Maher, Billy Bob Thornton said something that bugged me immediately and then forced me to think about for a whole day before responding.  He was relaying a discussion about music that he had with a PA on one of his movies.  He challenged her to come up with a list of musicians from 1980 to the present who would be remembered 100 years from now.  He gave her two names: REM and U2.  And, he said, that was about it–compared to the hundred plus names he could come up with for the music from 1955 to 1979.  Now, Thornton is right that there are tons of great artists from that earlier period who have already stood the test of time.  He’s an idiot, however, because he assumes that any music created after his time sucks.  Here’s just a sprinkling of artists who emerged after 1980 who could compete with the people on his list (and I’m even going to leave out the punk and post-punk artists like The Clash and Joy Division who created their music on the cusp of this era):

  • Radiohead
  • Nirvana
  • The Minutemen
  • Meat Puppets
  • My Bloody Valentine
  • Neutral Milk Hotel
  • Robyn Hitchcock
  • Sigur Ros
  • The White Stripes
  • Massive Attack
  • Tricky
  • Portishead
  • Tim Hecker
  • Chris Watson
  • Public Enemy
  • Beastie Boys
  • Run DMC
  • De La Soul
  • NWA
  • Dr. Dre
  • Eminem
  • Pan Sonic
  • Fennesz
  • Random Inc.
  • Taylor Deupree
  • Autechre
  • Boards of Canada
  • Depeche Mode
  • Aphex Twin
  • Nine Inch Nails
  • Kode9
  • William Basinski
  • The Caretaker
  • Stars of the Lid
  • Primal Scream

And that’s based solely on my iTunes collection right now.  If I spent more time thinking about this, I can easily come up with 200 or 300 names whose music rivals anything created in 1965.  The problem with people like Thornton is that they assume that, because everyone listened to the same music when they were growing up, that music today is inferior because there’s more of it and (hence) people’s listening tastes are way more eclectic than they used to be.  He’s assuming that uniformity equals quality, in other words.  Or perhaps he just thinks that his taste in music is the be all and end all of music, period.  Either way, he’s way off.  But at least he got me thinking.

So, please, tell me: what names have I forgotten here?

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Ten Things I Learned in 2008

Jun 16 2009 Published by under Film/TV, Humor, Literature, Music, Politics, Sports

  1. That I can support a winning candidate for President. With one exception, before this year, the person I supported and voted for in the primary either wasn’t nominated or lost in the general election [the one exception? 1996 when Clinton was the only choice.] I decided to support Obama back in 2007, and I stuck with him all the way, and somehow he won. It was a great year, but it was an election grounded in my support of sports teams that always go to the brink before crashing and burning (Angels, Seahawks). Hence, I never took anything for granted–up to 7:59 (my time) on election night, just before the results of California and Washington put Obama over the top. The elation that I felt at that moment, when the victory was confirmed, equaled anything that has ever happened in my life. Right now, it can’t be January 20th fast enough. Continue Reading »

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In Praise of Aeroplane (In Search of Lost Sound Part III)

Jun 16 2009 Published by under Music

I bought Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea years ago and have enjoyed it for most of those years (took a few listens to get it, but I got it fairly quickly).  Still, I never really LISTENED to it until about two months ago.

By LISTEN, I mean actually sitting down, not doing anything else, just LISTENING to it listening, the kind of listening I reserve only for the absolutely greatest music I’ve ever heard in my entire life.  Now, I love music and have for a very long time, but albums I will drop everything to LISTEN to are rare.  There was Bob Dylan’s Biograph, a few Stones albums (definitely Exile, possibly Beggar’s Banquet), the first Tricky album, Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights, Arvo Part’s Tabula Rasa, most everything by Boards of Canada and Sigur Ros and William Basinski, The Conet Project, and Joanna Newsom’s Ys.  And now Aeroplane. Continue Reading »

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