joecial-distancing

[joecial-distancing]

Albums of the new year

MGMT Oracular Spectacular (2007): There’s a review of Spring Breakers that I really like, where the reviewer points out that it’s a movie that makes more sense now, in hindsight, because instead of getting Harmony Korine’s hot takes on America’s youth, you get a dead-on time capsule of a very specific time & place--a zeitgest, over now, that at the time didn’t seem aware of its own mortality.

I was thinking a lot about that when listening to Oracular Spectacular; I was actually pretty shocked to see it’s as old as 2007, because the era I vividly remember it from was 2011-2013 aka my college years aka a time when the hits from this were ubiquitous instead of showing their age. It’s another one of those where exactly half the songs on here got way too much exposure, while the other half you’ve never heard in your fucking life. Most of the unknowns were actually pretty fun, with the exception of “Youth” which was so awful it single-handedly knocks the whole thing down a rung of my esteem. Fun trip down memory lane!

UB40 Signing Off (1980): I’m slowly triangulating my reggae taste, for the most part this was pretty good, didn’t stand out very much, but a couple of the songs (”Signing Off”, “Reefer Madness”) are long instrumental pieces that I thought were really cool and engaging

John Lee Hooker The Healer (1989): I’ve learned through this project and after seeing Kingfish Ingram live that I really like blues, and this is tremendous stuff

Talking Heads Talking Heads 77 (1977): This was an interesting one for me; I consider myself a huge Talking Heads fan, but also their big deal albums for me all come from their middle/later years, like Remain in Light onward. So even having grown up with their stuff around, I never really checked out their earliest offerings.

All of which is to say I’m having a tough time with this one, I think I don’t like it as much as what came later, but I still like it a lot, but I struggle to get into the headspace of what I might think if I were coming to this completely cold

Madonna Ray of Light (1998): Outstanding side A existing in tension with kind of a dull side B. I dunno, this one really excited me at the start, but I didn’t end it with the same enthusiasm

Giving it another listen, am I crazy, of am I hearing shades of Moon Safari in this?

Oasis Definitely Maybe (1994): Knowing them only from “Wonderwall”, this was pretty good. At its best made me think about underwater cities, which is a winner for me.

iirc there’s like a fan feud between them and Blur? going off this, I think I’m probably Team Blur

Coldplay Parachutes (2000): Dire stuff, I was correct to give them a miss back in the day

Julian Cope Peggy Suicide (1991): I have no idea about who this guy is or his deal in general, but this was really interesting. Album length kind of uncalled for, but on the other hand a normal length wouldn’t have been enough to get lost in, which was very fun with this

Screaming Trees Dust (1996): Grungy, forgettable

The Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream (1993): Kind of mixed for me, fundamentally compelling, vocals have a weird quality that I’m kind of on board with, but also often the thing got boring

Nancy Griffith The Last Of The True Believers (1986): Spotify reactivated autoplay without permission, and it took me a solid hour to notice the album was done with.

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Safe As Milk (1967): Had to dig up a mono release because the stereo mixing was way too aggressive for headphones, but overall pretty fun weird folky mishmash thing

Soft Cell Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981): “Tainted Love” is the thing they’re known for, but the actual highlight of this was “Sex Dwarf”. Otherwise forgettable Brit Synth Pop.

Pink Floyd The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967): First time listening to a non-Dark Side Of The Moon or -greatest hits Pink Floyd album; since the last time either of them came up on the list, I head something about how Pink Floyd in general was kind of a predecessor to Radiohead; like even though the tone is different, both groups’ appeal lies in the sound mixing, and there’s audience overlap of people drawn to that.

Janelle Monáe The ArchAndroid (2010): This was fantastic! I feel like concept albums haven’t been in vogue for a good long while, so I really really appreciated how big she went with it here.

a-ha Hunting High And Low (1985): “Take On Me” is correctly the well-known song from them, but there were a few other gems in this

Pet Shop Boys Very (1993): Pet Shop Boys grates on me in general, and this one was done no favors by coming right on the heels of a-ha like that. I feel like by 1993 it was long past time to evolve past this kind of sound

Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti (1975): Album went a bit too long. The number of songs was correct, lots to get lost in, and they go a lot of different places, but the songs mostly overstayed their welcome.

c. 2012 I was using Pandora a lot, and for some reason it was absolutely obsessed with serving me up instrumental covers of “Kashmir”. Which I guess was fine, just confusing.

Johnny Cash At San Quentin (1969): Johnny Cash is great and I like how much this benefits from being a live album, really shows off how charismatic of a performer he was

Devo Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo (1978): Foundational album of a low-key influential band, but not one of my preferred releases from them

Echo And The Bunnymen Ocean Rain (1984): More of a stereotypical ‘80s sound compared to Crocodiles, by which I mean less along the lines of synth pop, and more grandiose, lots of orchestral stings, etc. A Bigger sound that I think benefits them

Muse Black Holes and Revelations (2006): I expected to have a bunch of thoughts on Muse and whether their stuff has aged very well since my high school days when I was super into them, maybe some ideas on the distinctly Nolan-movie-style bombast, evaluating whether I still like it etc. What I thought about instead is how I never really listened very much to this as a full album, usually I just skipped between the singles. The big fuckoff Cosmic Arena Rock pieces show their age, but actually still land alright, but in between them are a whole lot of bad filler pieces that really drag the whole thing down

Orbital Snivilisation (1994): The type of techno that Strong Bad was making fun of

Arcade Fire Neon Bible (2007): Band continues to be mids

Dolly Parton Coat Of Many Colors (1971): I’m a tough sell on most post-50s/60s country music, and I liked this quite a bit

Tom Waits Heartattack And Vine (1980): Think I liked Rain Dogs better, he was sleazier for that

Tortoise Millions Now living Will Never Die (1996): I got excited when I realized it was going to be all instrumental, but it never really rose above passing the time alright

Arrested Development 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of... (1992): This is the most dated-90s shit I’ve heard in my life

#1001 Albums

[joecial-distancing]

2022 review

Last year’s Resolutions

Jobsearch: Ended up not getting the job I thought I had in the bag at the beginning of the year, which indeed ended up being pretty demoralizing. BUT, I did finally land a new job in September, which has me working in the right field at a significant pay increase! Downside being I’m not as able to slack off during the day, and turns out being engaged at work has a bunch of knock-on effects for my attention span etc off-hours. Something to recalibrate for next year!

Jobsearch had been on my res list for so many years in a row, it’s super gratifying to finally check it off!

Personal Projects: Did a bad job on this one, and even let other hobbies slump in the meantime

Exercise: I’ve made really good progress on running, but didn’t follow through on doing non-running stuff. Shelby and I were doing dance classes for about half the year, which was really fun

Sleep & Reading: Fell off with reading in the last quarter of the year, but I’ve been very good with my sleep schedule. Even started getting up an hour earlier to secure some extra daylight hours this winter

Social Initiative: Didn’t succeed at this one

Medialog

Books:

The Dawn of Everything: Super interesting and wonderful read, a lens on history that allows back in lot of hope for the possibilities the future holds

How To Be Normal: The new Phil Christman, all-in on thoughtfulness on oneself in The Discourse

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: I have a paperback of this doorstopper, a loan from a friend, that I’m eager to get off my shelf to make room for other stuff. Still-ongoing read as of right now, I’ve been finding it hard to make time for it

Anti-Oedipus: Read this as part of a book club. Supremely difficult read, probably intentionally-so, but full of really interesting ideas that are still knocking around my head. Sneaks in a vocabulary for parsing a whole bunch of other stuff.

Not a great year for books, went really slow through the first part of the year, then by August burned out really hard (thanks D&G). A complication I think is in September I started a new job that leaves me with less free time during the day, and which is much more difficult to listen to podcasts while I’m working, meaning podcasts are now competing directly with books for the same hours in my day. Wanna try getting that balanced out better in 2023

Podcasts:

Just King Things: I forget how I heard about this one, but I’d definitely seen Michael’s account around on twitter every now and then. Chronological review of Stephen King’s bibliography, which, I’ve read a few King books, it’s a fun time! He’s got extremely blatant strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and it’s fun to listen to that get analyzed across the stages of his career

Homestuck Made This World: The other Ranged Touch production I listened to, and very personally exciting to me; my connection with homestuck is very similar to where Michael comes from--introduced to andrew hussie’s stuff a little bit before HS launched, via Ryan North’s recommendation, and get hooked in bc the comic’s doing really interesting things with the medium & audience. It’s a really fascinating slice of internet history that without this kind of podcast is very difficult to get an accurate rundown from reliable sources, and this is maybe the first thing I’ve come across where their rundown of the comic & fan activity actually lines up with my own memory

Maintenance Phase: Hitting the books on myths re: dieting, exercise, weight loss industry, unpacking cultural assumptions & obsessions therein. The episode on the presidential fitness challenge was one of my personal all-time greatest things encountered this year.

Discord & Rhyme: Music podcast by a bunch of Gen-Xers, but! it’s a bunch of Gen-Xers who like prog rock, jam bands, other music tastes that I enjoy but have a hard time finding people online speaking positively about. They go into a fair amount of production history on the stuff they cover, which I always enjoy.

Also the way I found them was basically the internet being a fun, positive thing like it used to feel like: one of the hosts ran a review site I used to look at back in high school when I was first listening to prog stuff; I looked the site back up for an album that came up on the 1001 generator, followed a new link to his twitter account, then learned he was doing a podcast now

Friends at the Table: I had fallen off back in 2020 (tbf I fell off with most podcasts around that time), then people posting about them got me to pick back up. Looking to get caught back up with the backlog so I can have more reading time freed up

Sangfielle: The arc they had just started releasing when I stopped listening. I liked the setting & system they were using for this, so it was interesting to listen to the post-mortem where they mostly seemed pretty negative on how they interacted with the game rules.

Twilight Mirage: This is the arc I had been stuck on, and it was still tough for a while to push through. Got better when they did their holiday special & switched game systems. In general I noticed I start zoning out when the hosts get really into the weeds describing like floorplans and setting details/flavor, and that happens a lot in their sci-fi games

Music!

The generator was the big exciting thing for this year, so some quick business at the top:

Concerts & Live Shows:

David Byrne’s American Utopia: Ended up seeing this twice, because a couple different groups of friends knew me to be a Talking Heads fan. I liked the album fine, but the show included a lot of songs from the Talking Heads catalogue, which was a really nice surprise. I liked the choreography’s whole setup, wherein every musician was rigged up such that they could move around the stage freely, no wires on any of their mics (meaning also the percussion section was pretty big, since the typical drumset components needed to be split between a few people, in addition to all the other instruments brought out). I like Byrne a lot, glad this show seems to be successful for him

Spoon: Never really paid much attention to Spoon before, but a friend invited me to a show, and their recent album at least was very much the kind of music I like. The big revelation from the show, though, was one of the openers, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. Learned afterward he’s already very established, grammy-winner etc (the show was a benefit concert for a radio station, so all the acts turned out to be pretty big names, tbh), but he’s an outstanding blues guitarist, and I’m excited to keep following what he’s up to

King Gizzard releases:

Omnium Gatherum--Always good when they do experimental stuff, lots of variety on this one, most of which is pretty fun.

Ice, Death, Planets Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava--Easily my favorite thing from them in a while; bunch of 7-15min jams, each song in a different greek scale mode.

Laminated Denim--Everything with their Timeland project gets really hyped by the fanbase, and always falls kind of flat for me.

Sidenote re: fanbases, I'm very sensitive about people’s reflex whenever phish is mentioned to always immediately make the conversation about how annoying the fans are. I'm sensitive about this because it happens every fucking time and I literally have never once encountered one of those fans in my life, to the point I struggle to trust that they’re actually out there apparently invading everybody’s life. The king gizzard subreddit these days gives me pause, though. The people there are extremely dumb & annoying, and I do not want any association with them.

Changes--Decent, but jazzy’s not my favorite face of theirs

1001 albums I must listen to before I die: A Generator

The albums generator has been a really fun project so far (thank you Cody for bringing it to my attention)! I was really weary of how every year I’d have nothing to talk about when it came to music, and while the generator hasn’t been the best tool for getting exposure to current acts & releases, it’s filling in a huge void of history and context that I’d never bothered to check out and would’ve been overwhelmed trying to parse through from scratch. There’s some downsides in that there’s a lot of very forgettable synth pop and dad rock filler on the list (very obviously assembled by a British guy), but overall it’s been worth it for the introduction to artists and entire genres I otherwise wouldn’t have checked out.

Highlights & Revelations:

I so far haven’t enjoyed a lot of aughts indie rock darlings that I’d ignored at the time (arcade fire, flaming lips, etc)

I completely understand people’s love for Bruce Springsteen now

Led Zeppelin is laser-targeted My Taste, and it’s crazy I’d never tried to get into them before

I never realized Blur was the same guy behind Gorillaz

I’ve given country music such an honest shot at this point, and it’s really not for me

Singer w/ sparse instrumentation: sometimes works and sometimes really doesn’t. I much prefer piano-based ones over guitar-centric.

I’ve come to enjoy the Beatles from Revolver era onward, but I still generally don’t care for groups that sound like the Beatles. I haven’t gotten to the Kinks album that everyone says is their best, but I really really disliked Something Else

David Bowie always has a couple incredible songs per album, but I haven’t yet listened to a full album from him that I 100% like

It’s nice to have finally listened to enough hiphop to start forming clear preferences within the genre

Finally listened to a Radiohead I solidly liked: Hail to the Thief was really good

5-Star Club:

Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You

Sisters of Mercy: Floodland

Public Enemy: Apocalypse 91 The Enemy Strikes Black; Fear of a Black Planet

Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin III

Kraftwerk: Trans Europe Express

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run

LCD Soundsystem: Sound of SIlver

Isaac Hayes: Hot Buttered Soul

Dr. John: Gris Gris

Santana: Abraxas

Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours

Deep Purple: Deep Purple In Rock

R.E.M.: Document

Duran Duran: Rio

Can: Tago Mago

Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

The Stranglers: Rattus Norvegicus

Beck: Odelay

Air: Moon Safari

Michael Jackson: Bad

Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

The Doors: The Doors

Roxy Music: Roxy Music

Harry Nilsson: Nilsson Schmilsson

Little Richard: Here’s Little Richard

after some deliberation, MGMT: Oracular Spectacular

Games:

Tunic: brilliant game with a lot of internal tension in that as it started introducing (very fun & cool!) puzzle and secret-hunting elements, the combat stopped being fun and started being really annoying. Still, the puzzles & secrets were super cool

Disco Elysium (Revisited for the final cut): They nerfed Cuno’s voice, but otherwise really good updates. Took a different build, and was a bit disappointed to learn I more or less could hit the same beats & info by the end of the thing

Into The Breach Expansion: Moth enemies are overtuned, and the new pilots w/ boost mechanic are probably too strong, but the new squads are very very fun to play as

Return of the Obra Dinn: I’d missed this one when it first came out! Phenomenally clever game concept, I genuinely hope we get to see that system used on more stories in the future

Pentiment: Ow, my feelings on history and legacy. This was a lot of fun to watch people react to, seems like the art direction was stupidly well-researched

Tactics Ogre Reborn: Playthrough interrupted for other stuff, but so far pretty fun! took longer than I’d like to find where they stashed the info on what the status effects do.

Chained Echoes: Came in hot at the last minute, very very fun game, scratched a long-running itch to get obsessed with a jrpg for a while, really live in the space. I definitely got some nitpicks, but for how small-scale I understand the production effort to have been, very impressive work, they really nailed the combat & how that combat’s integrated into the game.

TV:

Ted Lasso: I didn’t watch this year, but forgot to put it on last year’s list. Nice people being nice, modern-day Andy Griffith show stuff. Title character played by Olivia Wilde’s ex, who this year had her served divorce papers in the middle of a panel she was sitting on, which was hilarious

Hawkeye tv show: Jeremy Renner is wildly uncharismatic, but Florence Pugh shows up for a couple episodes, so hey

Fringe: Fringe is a totally fun sci-fi procedural, but man it really should have been a warning for people to not trust the storytelling chops of JJ Abrams

Starstruck: I like Rose Matafeo and the show’s fundamentally cute, but it wore down watching the characters have exactly the same fight every single episode

Succession: Finally got HBO, and people were really talking positively about this one. Hard to find something original to say about it; it’s good! Extremely funny while not losing sight of the fundamental tragedy of these awful people

Bridgerton: half-compelling, fully-goofy in the way one might expect from a romance novel netflix adaptation. I was told beforehand that it gets really porny with the sex scenes, but the cowards don’t even show dong at any point

Outlander: Another romance novel adaptation, aired back during the days of cable. Tapped out very early. This one was kind of interesting in that its incessant threatening of sexual assault (as a way of, like, cementing the lead’s desirability) & the absolutely bizarre (comedic?) tone of a particular “spanking-yr-protesting-wife as an old-fashioned marital duty” scene kind of brought me around to thinking that mayyyyybe 50 Shades of Gray was actually a good thing to happen to american culture. Like it just seems healthier for people to feel comfortable directly admitting that they’re into BDSM instead of needing to channel those feelings into whatever the fuck this show was up to.

Queer Eye: A new season apparently came out, and I’d never watched this show before. Circled back to some S1 episodes, but Shelby had already seen them before so we moved on to other stuff. Often heartwarming, as advertised, but... I feel like it’s not to my credit that I want to write it off as “normie”, but I think the root of that feeling is, like, there’s a narrow band of taste on display when it comes to the personal fashion & home design segments, and there’s a fundamental limitation to how well this kind of makeover show can depict the therapy stuff they’re trying to do. I also get the feeling that a lot of the intended audience for this is people who don’t really know very many queer people in their personal lives

The Boys: Antony Starr and Karl Urban absolutely tearing it up. The later seasons are really, really sharp about celebrity/hollywood/influencer culture’s adaptations to the demands of MeToo etc, in that the machine’s willing to make surface changes in response to activism while doing everything in its power to keep the evil enterprise trucking along. There’s also a bunch of goony gross-out stuff that shows up where it’s like “ah yeah, this was definitely adapted from a dumb comic book”

Taskmaster: New seasons, show remains fun! It’s lost a bit of charm by this point, the show’s gone on long enough that most of the contestants have actually seen previous seasons, and kind of show up with an awareness of how things are going to work

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I know a lot of people that like this show, and thought it’d be an interesting time capsule into how Whedon was allowed to get up & running in the first place

But man... This show is bad. I really don’t understand how this got so beloved other than the showrunners must have been good at fanbase maintenance, however that worked in the 90s. The show’s wikipedia articles certainly seem to indicate that.

Like the hell of it is, a lot of the jokes totally land, but just as often the writers’ sense of humor’s really stupid; most of the acting isn’t very good, the series villains are very annoying, the romance writing is beyond awful, the list goes on. I finished xfiles with a lot of bad will toward that show, but I have an easier time understanding people’s attachment to its main run than I do for buffy.

A League of Their Own: Amazon’s reimagining of the movie (which I watched this year and liked quite a bit!). Moved away from straightforward sports story, and focused on queer relationships & racial dynamics of the period

Andor: Enjoying myself quite a bit with this, but honestly having made it to the prison stuff, so far I’m not really blown away by the show’s politics the way The Discourse was trying to sell me on it. “I can’t believe disney released this!” I fucking can, it was more shocking to me in The Boys that there was a brief scene of Jimmy Fallon playing himself/his show in-universe, unambiguously framed as a means of existing to provide PR cover for absolute monsters

Movies:

Kinda how my reading this year suffered because it conflicted with podcasts I wanted to catch up with, moviewatching this year suffered at TV’s hands. On the one hand, it’s a lot easier to make time for 45 minutes in a night, rather than 90 minutes-2 hours, but even then I wish I had watched a wider variety of stuff.

Phantom Thread: Not my favorite PTA, but had some good scenes

Commando: I know this one’s an iconic Arnold vehicle, but even just on the scale of his filmography it’s honestly kind of mediocre

Caught up to current day with marvelstuff: It became way more of a chore as we hit the last 5 years or so with the rewatches, not much reassessing to be done at that point, and the bad movies aren’t a history lesson anymore. There is something kind of interesting going on where big names on the level of like Christian Bale, Russel Crowe, Angelina Jolie, etc are showing up for these now, but are all getting cast in C-list roles. Like Bale was acting his pants off, but in service of such a Nothing character in a movie that definitely didn’t need him to do that, nor really benefited from it.

Julia Roberts chronological (Thru Ocean’s Eleven): Shelby has a family history of attachment to Roberts’ movies (she was literally named after the Steel Magnolias character), so we started in on tracking her career from Mystic Pizza onward. This comprised the bulk of what we were watching this year. I don’t want to blurb each of them (I really underestimated how prolific she was in the 90s and 00s), but got some thoughts here & there:

Broadly: She’s talented and never does a bad job with the roles she’s given, but a lot of the time the roles have nothing for her to work with, and she’s not able to single-handedly carry a bad movie.

Charisma: There’s a lot of rom-coms on the list, and some of them make for a fun comparison with each other. I Love Trouble and Runaway Bride are both pretty bad movies, but Trouble is basically unwatchable because Nick Nolte is horribly miscast, whereas Runaway Bride still works because she & Richard Gere actually have fucking chemistry with each other

Directors: A couple directors make repeat appearances; Joel Schumacher has a terrible hit rate (Flatliners was kind of fun), while Steven Soderbergh’s 2 for 2 so far

Standouts: Steel Magnolias has an unfairly great cast, and is a very effective tearjerker; I’d never seen Pretty Woman before, and it’s indeed very charming; Ocean’s Eleven actually seems like an important turning point for Roberts’ career in that she finally gets to play a character that nobody would talk down to or address as “young lady”

The Road Warrior: I still need to check out Thunderdome, but having not watched any Mad Maxes before Fury Road, it’s interesting to see how much the older ones have been driven less by action & stunts, and more by suspense. I liked this! 

Dune: I didn’t really care for the visual design, but I’ll happily show up for any more they make. They really nailed the scene where Paul kills a guy for the first time, and that was a scene they really needed to nail

A League of Their Own: Sports movie good! The epilogue scene really got to me, where the characters, now in their old age, visit a museum about their team and reminisce about their lived past. The Tom Hanks role was really funny in that the writing is never really interested in redeeming him as not a drunken lout

Jurassic World (Dominion): For going in with rock-bottom expectations and having not seen any of the other reboot movies, this was actually pretty alright? They had the original cast back kinda playing the hits, and while chris pratt is an unwelcome presence, he was thankfully willing to play second fiddle to everyone else here

Hocus Pocus 2: Did not need to exist, but honestly the gags & hijinks were fun, had a good hit rate. I did not care for the attempts to #girlboss the witches’ origin story, nor for the implication the lead teen can do counter-magic because she’s got enough hereditary witch juice in her blood.

House: Very goofy japanese horror movie, though the production history is really interesting. I really can’t rag on the weirdness of the special effects too much, because I've definitely been on record praising similar things when it’s David Lynch doing it

Twilight saga: Exclusively for stoned viewing. These are interesting time capsules. Like I remember back when this franchise was running at full steam, I was very annoyed by it, despite not having read or watched any of it; and now that I’m willingly approaching them, it’s weird to think that the mere idea of these used to make me so angry when really, they’re just goofy. But then on the other hand, peers used to be going around insisting that this series was good & should be taken seriously! It would immediately drive me crazy to be put back into that zeitgeist.

Anyway yeah the movies are really silly and maybe... half the time it seems like the people making them are in on the joke. Like there’s a whole sequence in the first one where she’s chasing a convoluted research thread to eventually end up researching about vampires, as if vampires aren’t a concept in popular imagination that a person would immediately reach for with the info she had. That was funny! And I’m pretty sure it was funny on purpose!

Still need to get around to the last two movies, but so far:

the only way to make bella make sense would be to lean into her being evil & wanting to become a soulless bloodsucker out of a desire for power, not attachment. But the story’s too busy doing mormon purity fantasy shit about vampirism as a metaphor for sex (“it’s a-ok if you’re married first, but gosh don’t we girls know it’s tempting to jump the gun!”) to bother going anywhere interesting or coherent

The soundtracks for these are weirdly good

I like Pattinson as an actor, but I do think he’s kind of doing a bad job (like, independent of the writing’s shortcomings) until like the third movie

I was expecting from osmosis to be mildly team jacob, but when he finally joins the plot all he does is do this really annoying “hey babe is this guy bothering you” shtick to a girl who at no point indicates that she’s actually interested in him. How was this a fandom fight! He’s clearly going to lose! And he’s not actually much of an improvement over Eddie in terms of being controlling etc!

As much as I’ve ragged on the way Buffy creators wrote their romance scenes, it’s remarkable how much of a backslide Twilight feels like in terms of audience standards

And honestly both of those properties share a fundamental problem in that they both do a terrible job of setting up why the leads are so drawn to these guys before launching face-first into “oh I’m so in love with you, but our lives, so complicated” as plot points. There’s a part of me worried that my ire’s just from not being the intended audience for the fantasy, but like I keep thinking back to Heathers as a contrast. Christian Slater’s definitely not alluring to me as an audience member, but by the time he shows up they’ve convincingly established Winona Ryder’s character as somebody who actually would be interested in his whole deal.

Let it Snow: We were looking around for holiday spirit things to watch, and ended up here. Pretty good as far as teen movies go! The Sally Draper actress shows up in this, and it’s ridiculous how good she is, like the rest of the cast are all giving totally fine performances, and she still upstages them all

Glass Onion: Arriving on streaming late in the year! this was totally fun, and I am supremely uninterested in catching up on the discourse around it. What I’ve gleaned from osmosis is that a lot of people online are in need of other lenses for moviewatching beyond utility-as-propaganda

EMERGENCY P.S., WATCHED BREAKING DAWNs STONED ON NYE: part I was a complete insane fever dream, the result of a property that has built up to its sex scene as a very important moment, but then also needs to linger on it for too long because these absolutely didn’t need to be two movies, but also then doesn’t really have anything to do, because it’s aimed for PG13. Total soap opera, tremendous work

#year in review!

[joecial-distancing]

Albums cont.

Dr Dre The Chronic (1992):

Immaculate production, excellent sound, boosted Snoop into the mainstream, which puts more tension than usual on finding the themes kinda dumb & gross.

idk this was an interesting one to read people’s response to; at least going off the generator’s peanut gallery, seems like this album was a huge deal when it dropped, but its success ended up killing off the previous generation of stuff (which imo was up to more interesting things) and created the new thing to do, for better or worse

Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells A Story (1971): The bones on this are fine as far as folky rock goes, but the songs go on way too long for how simple + repetitive they are, and not much variety between them.

Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly (2015): I like his voice, and I really like the variety of stuff he’s doing in this. Seems like this is the only album from him on the list, which surprises me! I’m gonna look up more of his stuff

My Bloody Valentine m b v (2013): “Shoegaze”, eh? The second half starts doing some interesting stuff, but the first few tracks don’t have enough stuff going on with the synth loops to hold my attention

Minutemen Double Nickels On The Dime (1984): Punk that passes the time just fine

New Order Technique (1989): At first it reminded me a lot of sega genesis music (compliment), but then the vocals started kicking in and ruined that effect

Massive Attack Blue Lines (1991): The only Massive Attack I’d heard before was “Teardrop” (yeah, yeah, because it was the House MD theme, yes), so I was very surprised to put this album on and get british hip hop (or I guess “trip hop”, apparently? not familiar with that one). Way more fun than I expected!

Kraftwerk Die Mensch-Maschine (1978): Not as iconic or joyful as Trans Europa Express but still a lovely time. Always bears repeating that it is ridiculously impressive how far ahead of their time Kraftwerk were

Billy Bragg Talking With the Taxman About Poetry (1986): Started at “fine” then dragged into “really dull” as it went on

Sonic Youth Daydream Nation (1988): I liked this less than the other Sonic Youth that came across the list

John Lennon Imagine (1971):

Title song’s irredeemably scuffed up by The Celebs, but for the most part I was actually pretty into this. I imagine it was probably pretty difficult for people to have normal reactions to beatle solo work back when it was first coming out

The Rolling Stones Beggars Banquet (1968): Rolling Stones have a pretty good hit rate for me, but it’s rare that I’ve been blown away by what they’ve got. On this one, “Sympathy for the Devil” was good but overstayed its welcome. Out of their stuff that’s come across the generator so far, I liked Let it Bleed more

Little Richard Here’s Little Richard (1957): I don’t think there’s ever been a better album opener than “Tutti Frutti”. Somebody on the generator comments pointed out how the older music on the list suffers because of how radically album construction as its own craft changed during the 60s, which feels true to me--This one was absolutely fantastic start-to-finish, but most of the rest of the pre-60s things I’ve heard on the list ended up wearing me down after a full album’s run

Miles Davis Birth Of The Cool (1957): Solid! Made for very good working & cooking music

Dinosaur Jr. You’re Living All Over Me (1987): There’s some interesting sounds and ideas that pop up at times during this, but the baseline sound didn’t really work for me

Radiohead In Rainbows (2007): I’m generally pretty positive on this one, “Nude” kind of brings the thing to a screeching halt

Public Enemy Fear Of A Black Planet (1990): God damn I really like Chuck D’s voice

Steely Dan Can’t Buy A Thrill (1972): Steely Dan’s come up a few times on the list now, and I have the same issue as always. It’s really close to the kind of thing I like, but it feels empty

Lauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998): Real good R&B which isn’t really a genre I like very much

Ramones Ramones (1976): Clearly very influential! This was really cool, but I think I’m zeroing in on liking 80s-era punk more than 70s and 90s. Violent Femmes and Dead Kennedys were more interesting to me

System Of A Down System Of A Down (1998): lol I have a soft spot for SOAD, they feel like they should be grating, but instead I’m just having a good time

#1001 Albums

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Captain’s (album) logs

Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs (1959): Alright, this is country-adjacent music I like: Really pleasant voice singing about old west & cowboy things

Adam & The Ants Kings Of The Wild Frontier (1980): I’m an easy mark for new wave, even if on paper this particular one's mediocre. There’s interesting drumming on some of the songs, and a couple tracks on here feel like a direct antecedent to something like Vampire Weekend

Jimi Hendrix Axis: Bold As Love (1967): It’s Jimi Hendrix, you know his stuff! I liked this less than “Are You Experienced”, but still a great time

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers (ft. Eric Clapton) Bluesbreakers (1966): Blues w/ Jazz organ doesn’t impress me the same way it might’ve before I started this albums project, found this kind of grating after a full album of it

Leonard Cohen Songs of Love and Hate (1971): I think I really like how distinctive Cohen’s voice is, but that alone didn’t really sell me on this. Honestly has me reconsidering the reasons I like Tom Waits so much, like it’s clearly not just about being won over by interesting vocals, the music backing Cohen’s voice was just kind of boring to me

ABBA Arrival (1976): I’ve grown to appreciate ABBA over the years, even if they’re often not my taste. Arrival has some classics on it, but overall I kinda found it less interesting than The Visitors had been

Emmylou Harris Pieces Of The Sky (1975): Definitely not my preferred kind of country/folk music

Janis Joplin Pearl (1971): Not really my thing

Joy Division Unknown Pleasures (1979): I’ve liked all the Joy Division that’s come across my radar for this project, but haven’t been able to access, like, true enthusiasm for them yet. They are a definite, definite influence point for a lot of great acts that came after!

Metallica S&M (1999): On paper, live metallica + full backing orchestra is a hilarious idea, but also symphonic metal is absolutely a guilty pleasure of mine, so I was excited to hit play on this. Even though the runtime on this one’s over 2 hours, it’s pretty fun overall. I stand by my original complaint with metallica, though--every individual song slightly overstays its welcome

Roxy Music Roxy Music (1972): This one kicks ass! Some research reveals Brian Eno was involved in making this, which makes a ton of sense in hindsight.

Band/album name & especially album cover had me nervous this was going to bore me, but instead it kind of re-sold me on the 1k1 albums project after what had kind of felt like some doldrums

GZA Liquid Swords (1995): This was a lot of fun, though after two albums from their members on here, I’m suspecting the generator’s not a good way to get oriented with Wu-Tang stuff.

Aerosmith Pump (1989): Hard Rock Cafe

New York Dolls New York Dolls (1973): Really interesting kinda pre-punk thing, lots of the reception to this seems to indicate it was very influential to genres I’m not otherwise super checked into

Solange A Seat at the Table (2016): Bit too slow for my taste, most of the songs felt dull to me

Missy Elliott Under Construction (2002): Never spent much time with Missy Elliott before, turns out her stuff’s incredibly fun!

Baaba Maal, Mansour Seck Djam Leelii (1989): The kind of music I could pretty easily spend all day with, but on the scale of things, I kind of wish it had more texture to it

Kool Keith Dr. Octagon Dr. Octagonecologyst (1996): The arrangements were often interesting. Extremely stupid concept.

B.B. King Live At The Regal (1965): Extremely pleasant blues

Harry Nilsson Nilsson Schmilsson (1971): I spent about half this album wondering why I recognized his name until I got to the lime & coconunt song (simply called “Coconut”, apparently!), which was like somebody slapped me. What’s crazy is the rest of the thing sounds nothing like that! Most of the rest of the album sounds like the halfway point between Beatles and Elton John, it’s great!

Seriously, I wish I could explain better what it is about this that’s like, similar to Beatles and other late-60s brit acts like Kinks, Monkees etc, but different in a way that I liked way more. Like it incorporates blues a lot more, maybe?

#1001 albums

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More albumlog

Right, shit, now that I got the big post out of the way I need to actually get back to logging stuff as I go in drafts. The goal is retention!

Kiss Destroyer (1976): This was fun! 70s hard-rock/metal continues winning!

Kiss is such good dad rock, people were pearl-clutching about this eXtreme rock & roll from these guys, and nowadays the band members are super old, as naturally happens to people. History tells us that indeed Kiss was far from the worst influence on the teens of the time

Pretenders Pretenders (1980): Super listenable rock, mostly not all that memorable

Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced (1967): Undeniable talent, each of these songs is great, though the entire album did start to wear on me after a while. Still though, you make Purple Haze, you can do whatever you want.

Michael Jackson Bad (1987): Buncha all-time great songs on here; a sound that shows its age, basically because it defined the age

The Stranglers Rattus Norvegicus (1977): Really interesting sound that’s extremely of the time but also very distinct to them. I really like that jazz organ sound they keep using

The Monkees Headquarters (1967): Forgettable british 60s-rock

Beck Odelay (1996): I like Beck a lot, and I have a really hard time pinning down what exactly it is that he’s doing here, because it’s bouncing around and settling between a bunch of different stuff. Definitely putting a pin in this one to come back to and connect influences up to, I would’ve figured it to have come out a solid 8 years after it did. After some time thinking about it, this came out only something like a year before Lonesome Crowded West, and the two albums are definitely sitting near each other in my mind

Jean-michel Jarre Oxygene (1976): Nice & ambient; pleasant listening!

John Martyn One World (1977): Very compelling voice, the first track tricked me into thinking I’d like the album more than I did

Sebadoh Bubble And Scrape (1993): what’s this one fall under, grunge? post-punk? Grating.

The Who The Who Sell Out (1967): Very weirdly beach boys sound out of them on this. deliberate joke? Not gonna research it.

Ronnie Size New Forms (1997): drum & bass, drum drum & bass, drum drum bass, drum & bass, I am very bored

Dire Straights Brothers in Arms (1985): The Money For Nothing riff is the main attraction here, and while it is a very very good riff (all-time Great, even), the song’s still scuffed up by how badly the slurs aged. The rest of the album’s pretty mellow, contextually good listening

Air Moon Safari (1998): This turned out to not be great running music, but I went back to it at work, and it is seriously beautiful and calming, I was blown away

Sepultura Arise (1991): This is very CHUGGA WUGGA metal, and at the end of the day I prefer when my metal’s more uuWAAAAAAAAAGH *orchestral interlude* *bagpipes*

Radiohead Amnesiac  (2001): Ughhhhhhhh I’ve been dreading Radiohead coming up on this, and I know there’s a few of their albums on here. I’ve never, like, plunged into their archives for a comprehensive study, but I’ve given them an honest shot many times, and aside from parts of In Rainbows, I really dislike what they do. And this is frustrating to me, since I know a lot of people who really like them; like with country music I can just write it off as alien tastes, but these are people whose tastes I otherwise align with! I just walk away from the music feeling sad or annoyed, what am I missing?!

Anyway, I liked a couple songs on Amnesiac here, but I found the stereo mixing choices really irritating through the whole thing, specifically the way the percussion was landing on my ear drums

Motörhead Ace of Spades (1980): I played some guitar hero, but not that much; I imagine some Motörhead stuff had to have made it into that game, right? seems like the right genre. Any case, guitars fun, songs are sleazy in such a tryhard way it’s alternately charming and off-putting.

Also not relevant/bad taste or whatever, but Motörhead fans I’ve seen around on the internet are some of the most obnoxious fucking dweebs on the planet

Dexys Midnight Runners Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (1980): Oh it’s the Come on Eileen guys! This wasn’t the album with that song though. Generally enjoyable and I like the vocals in particular, but definitely falls under “forgettable brit pop” for me

Kacey Musgraves Golden Hour (2018): Country pop’s not really my genre, but this was decent! She’s got a nice voice

Ray Price Night Life (1963): A more old-timey country/honkytonk, made for ok coding music

The Verve A Northern Soul (1995): I only knew these guys from Bittersweet Symphony, and turns out this one doesn’t sound much like that at all. Mellow, drifting sometimes into droning.

Ozomatli Street Signs (2004): lat-90s/early-aughts latin fusion is such a specific, yet recognizable sound!

Radiohead Hail to the Thief (2003): Alright, I liked this one! There was still a little bit of audio channel stuff that hit my ears wrong toward the beginning, and “We Suck Young Blood” brought the whole album to a screeching halt right in the middle, but I generally liked the rest of the songs

Elvis Presley Elvis Is Back (1960): There’s a lot of Elvis songs that I like a lot, but none of the ones I knew beforehand were on this album. He’s definitely one of those where it’s nicer for me to put his music on in the background, or work him into a mixed playlist rather than sitting & focusing on a whole album of him

Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973): album opens incredibly strong! Started to blend together as it went, but since I like what it’s up to, everything’s good!

The Pogues Rum Sodomy & The Lash (1985): Always nice when The Pogues come up on rotation

The Doors The Doors (1967): Dang, this was like Fleetwood Mac levels of not realizing how much I recognized the songs on here! Also The Doors are surprising me with how much psych/prog they have going on, I had always thought of them as just kind of a rock band

Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes (2008): Folky Indy like this tends to leave me cold. Not all the time, but this one did in any case. I think the make/break quality for me is I prefer duets and/or solo woman singer over solo man singer

#1001 Albums

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Assorted 1k1 albums update

Too many since last time I was writing these to be worth listing every single one, plus I took a short hiatus during Spring, but I’m noticing my retention has been a lot worse since I stopped blurbing.

Broadly, I’m noticing it was very clearly a british person curating this list, the most forgettable entries on here tend to be 80s-era brit/synth pop.

Santana Abraxas (1970): Santana Extremely Good!

Sufjan Stevens Illinois (2005): I think I like the idea of his states project more than I really care for the music itself

Serge Gainsbourg Histoire De Melody Nelson (1971): Miserable headphones listen, his voice is so loud in the mix I can’t enjoy the music. Admittedly I might feel different if I understood French and could tell what he was saying lol

Queens of the Stone Age Queens of the Stone Age (1998): Most dad rock is cute/enjoyable every once in a while, this was boring as hell though

Megadeth Rust in Peace (1990): I have a soft spot for certain types/eras of metal, this is not one of my preferred ones though

Def Leppard Pyromania (1983): Now *this* is perfectly good dad rock!

David Bowie Station To Station (1976): Bowie’s one of the figures I’m most interested in getting my head around through this project. So far, this is my favorite thing from him I’ve heard, the title track is excellent!

REM Automatic for the People (1992): Another thing I’m trying to keep tabs on as I go through this is stringing together influence points toward things I knew before going in. For some reason as I listen to REM, I keep thinking of They Might Be Giants, which is weird because the music isn’t exactly similar. Something in the attitude? I dunno.

The Who Who’s Next (1971): There’s a couple albums like this on here where my brain lights up when it hears the recognizable stuff, and then doesn’t retain the rest of the music. Baba O’Riley is indeed really good, but I’m struggling to take an honest accounting of “ok is it genuinely so much better than the rest of the album or are you just really familiar with this”

like “do you think these songs are good or bad based on radio exposure, or did the ones you liked get radio exposure because they were the good shit?” I don’t trust the second one as an explanation even if it feels true.

Pink Floyd The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973): Really good bathtub listening. Definitely dragged/went slow more than I like. I’ve heard this one describes as like an album constructed for audiophiles/people who care a lot about precise mixing, which feels true.

Kanye West The College Dropout (2004): I liked this a lot! Kanye really has a gravity about him, where I feel like I interpret a lot of the generator’s other rap/hip-hop selections in context of what they mean in context of things before/after KW

Earth Wind & Fire That’s The Way Of The World (1975)

Burning Spear Marcus Garvey (1975): One thing I’m learning through this project is I should probably be putting more reggae into my rotation. It tends to be slower than I usually go for, but otherwise checks a lot of my boxes

2pac Me Against The World (1995): 2pac’s another Huge name who’s a blind spot for me. I really need to revisit this one; I mentioned in the public enemy blurb that I basically can’t retain lyrics unless I’m literally reading them along to the music, and I wasn’t able to do that when I was playing this.

Sonic Youth Dirty (1992)

Notorious BIG Ready To Die (1994): Didn’t like this as much as 2pac & public enemy, in terms of 90s rap

Tori Amos Little Earthquakes (1992): This one really grew on me! Very pleasant first listen, and then I found myself coming back to it a lot afterward.

Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill (1995): Haha god damn I like Alanis. So many choices she makes on here that should be obnoxious on paper, but just end up being extremely charming *“HOWWwOWWowwW apprOAHpriaTe”* absolutely delightful

Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies (1973): I have some experience with Alice Cooper here & there. This album was fine, but my favorite thing from him was his Muppet Show appearance

The Chemical Brothers Dig Your Own Hole (1997)

Belle & Sebastian If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996) I think people I know like B&S? I don’t think I did.

Randy Newman Good Old Boys (1974): I don’t think he’s country, but he’s something adjacent. I liked this, found it pleasant

The Rolling Stones Let it Bleed (1969): Hell yeah I love The Departed

Fleetwood Mac Rumours (1977): What the fuck every single song on this is super well-known. Major touchpoint filled in that I had no idea I was even missing

Os Mutantes Os Mutantes (1968): Wish I liked this more, the thing they’re up to seems interesting

Deep Purple Deep Purple In Rock (1970): Oh my god I loved this. I knew by reputation that Deep Purple’s one of the bands that built the bridge from hard rock to heavy metal, and something about that boundary creates stuff I like way more than straight metal.

Yes The Yes Album (1971): Yes’s good songs are some of my favorite stuff out there, but the individual albums have a lot of songs that just don’t work for me.

Steely Dan Countdown To Ecstasy (1973): I find Steely Dan to be technically boring, but perfectly serviceable cooking & doing the dishes music

REM Document (1987): Moreso than Automatic For The People, this really cemented for me that I love REM. Lotta earworms

Nirvana Nevermind (1991): The first songs on this are tremendous, some of the strongest things to open an album. Didn’t really retain the rest (see: the who, earlier)

Lana Del Rey Chemtrails Over the Country Club (2021)

Black Sabbath Vol 4 (1971): Similar to Deep Purple, lots of fun! The arrangements are fast, energetic, interesting. Noticing I’m tending to like a lot of 70s metal, then something happens 80s-00s that loses me really hard.

ABBA The Visitors (1981): Influence Alert: Marina and the Diamonds totally bites a whole bunch of influence from ABBA, it’s so obvious after sitting with an ABBA album all the way through (having previously basically only known them from the mama mia soundtrack *killed by brick through the window*). I liked a few songs off this one, looking forward to hearing more from the generator

The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin (1999): Lol I had people in the 00s recommend flaming lips to me. This was so boring!

Bob Marley & The Wailers Exodus (1977): See previous re: reggae. often a lot for me when it’s an entire album, but I like it in general!

David Bowie Heroes (1977): With a couple Bowies under my belt by this point, he’s kind of a mixed bag for me; there’s usually a couple songs per album I’ll like a lot, and the rest leaves me really cold. That said, I still haven’t heard anything from ziggy stardust era, so there might be missing context or something still.

Paul Simon Paul Simon (1972): Bleh

Björk Medúlla (2004): Felt really bad that I did not like this. might revisit, could just be it wasn’t good music for taking a bath.

Throbbing Gristle D.O.A. the Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (1978): Same complaint as Björk, this seemed like something I should like a lot, and instead it annoyed me.

Hole Celebrity Skin (1998): Damn I went in kind of expecting not to like it, and it turned out to be really good! *Trampled to death by approx. 1,000,000 foaming Gen X men*

Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP (2000): Way more misses than hits, but still a fun time capsule of what the fuck everyone I knew in middle school was blithering about at the time

David Bowie Blackstar (2016): I feel like I need to read some production history to get the hang of this one

George Michael Faith (1987): haha oh my god he’s so fucking sleazy on this, I love it

Beatles White Album (1968): Overall pretty good! Hard to set aside the charles manson mystique around it

The White Stripes Elephant (2003): Big nostalgia album! Seven Nation Army owns bones, the rest of this is pretty good still

Scott Walker Scott 2 (1968): He has such a good voice! I don’t even like genre he’s doing and I was swept away!

Rush Moving Pictures (1981): I’ve given Rush an honest try before, they just never clicked for me. Decent, but...something’s missing

Steely Dan Aja (1977):

Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde (1966): Bob Dylan might be another case of I Gotta Sit Down With The Lyrics, bc on first listen I just found him kind of grating.

Duran Duran Rio (1982): Lmao I love this album. Title song’s whatever, but Hungry Like the Wolf makes me smile so fucking much

Fred Neil Fred Neil (1966): Rare example of pure country music I found pretty engaging the whole album

The Killers Hot Fuss (2004): Unlike with The Who and Nirvana, I am very sure the popular songs off this one are the actual good ones lol. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me are A-OK, the rest may be safely left in the past

Can Tago Mago (1971): One of my all-time favorite albums. Halleluhwah alone could carry it really far

Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980): This one really knocked me on my ass, clearly a big influence point for a whole bunch of bands I like a ton.

Metallica Master of Puppets (1986): This is the fucking thing with 80s metal, man! If each of these songs were like 50% shorter, this would’ve been really solid, but as is they’re not interesting enough to justify how long they make you spend with them.

Aretha Franklin Lady Soul (1968): I like Never Loved A Man more than this one, but Aretha Franklin all-time excellent

Gary Numan The Pleasure Principle (1979): Really stripped-down, deliberately no-personality. Pretty interesting experience!

Flamin’ Groovies Teenage Head (1971): Ohhhhh shit these are the Louie Louie guys! Fun mix of rock, blues, etc. Seems kind of Of The Time in terms of baseline late-60s/early-70s bands.

Shuggie Otis Inspiration Information (1974): Nice soul/jazzy, which usually starts to bore me after a whole album, but was kind of nice to have on while I was writing the rest of these entries.

#1001 Albums

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hey followers. have you ever wanted to know how it feels to be inside a bag of cornflakes

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oh wait duh

I got to see David Byrne’s American Utopia twice (great show! lots of fun! probably the closest I’ma be allowed to get to seeing talking heads live in my lifetime!) and also I stumbled across a Toynbee Tile near St James theater

[joecial-distancing]

March Roundup

Burned out on doing blurbs for the album generator, but still keeping up. Santana came on the other day, that was fun.

More importantly, maybe, got the go-ahead at work to start training up on javascript and web app development during company time; so that’ll be nice to have both for changing up my place within the company in the short/mid term, and for shoring up weak points with myself as a job candidate etc in the long term. It’s already started paying off, I got to use the training time recently to make space to actually develop some scripting tools to bypass a bunch of very annoying parts of the daily tasks. So last couple weeks, I’ve had 8 hours/day that piss me off a lot less, ~2 hours of which I get to spend building some hope and movement back into my workin’ life.

uhhh, been playing tunic recently, but it’s april now, most of that game playing happened during april, maybe I save that for an aprilpost, I don’t fuckin know,

[joecial-distancing]

Albums for the week

Peter Frampton Frampton Comes Alive (1976): Interesting that they threw a live album on there. If that was on the table, why come they didn’t put Stop Making Sense on there though (according to the wiki)?? Anyway this was decent, fun guitar noodling.

Isaac Hayes Hot Buttered Soul (1969): Not the first soul album to come up, but this was one that, like a couple others that have come up, that actually make the genre click for me properly. Loved this one from the start.

Rage Against The Machine Rage Against The Machine (1992): Never listened to these guys back when they were a going concern, so this one’s a fun time capsule and also cipher key for understanding like 50 different memes. Killing In The Name alone resolved so many fucking previously-incomprehensible jokes for me.

The Cramps Songs The Lord Taught Us (1980): Any one of these would be a fine contribution to a playlist, good lord they all sound the fucking same back-to-back on an album.

The Temptations All Directions (1972): Incredibly solid funk, some really famous tracks on here that I didn’t realize was them!

Faces A Nod Is As Good As A Wink To A Blind Horse (1971): Forgettable and also that album name is way too fucking long, took forever to type while keeping the case formatting right.

Gris Gris Dr. John (1968): Voodoo-flavored psychedelia, very fun and weird. From never having heard of this guy, to liking this album a lot, to looking up more about him, learning I knew a bunch of stuff from him and also learning that he was the visual inspiration for Dr. Teeth from the muppets’ the electric mayhem.

also geez 1968! 

#1001 Albums

[joecial-distancing]

more alba

Creedence Clearwater Revival Green River (1969): Quite good. I can’t access the hype for them yet, but I got there with springsteen and I know these guys come up again on the list, so got high hopes.

Grizzly Bear Veckatimest (2009): Two Weeks is extremely fucking overplayed to the point it scuffs up the entire rest of an otherwise decent album.

Louis Prima The Wildest! (1956): More jazz. I remembered to play it on actual speakers instead of headphones this time, which helped a lot; music intended for a very different listening experience than how I normally do it.

LCD Soundsystem Sound of Silver (2007): Very nostalgic album, definitely in my personal pantheon. Second half drags a bit, but first half more than earns it.

Mercury Rev Deserter’s Songs (1998): Fairly mellow, unmemorable

Milton Nascimento Clube Da Esquina (1972): Latin rock. Double album really long, but the songs are quick and varied, so doesn’t get boring.

Booker T. & The MG’s Green Onions (1962): what if good jazzy background music, but played on a baseball organ. Nice for an afternoon.

#1001 Albums

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Echo and the Bunnymen Crocodile (1980) British post-punk, don’t have much new to say there

Violent Femmes Violent Femmes (1983) Oh wow, I had no idea this album was as old as this. So, clearly an inspiration point for a lot of the stuff being done in the late 80s/early 90s, just to pull from stuff I’ve covered from the generator, I’m hearing Pixies and Green Day in this. But Violent Femmes doing it a lot better imo.

Bruce Springsteen Born In The USA (1984) OK I wasn’t too taken in by Darkness on the Edge of Town, but I liked this one quite a bit. He’s doing more shouting and growling than moaning here, and even when he does do moaning-voice I can deal with it better because it’s not nearly as pronounced in the audio mix.

Bruce Springsteen Born to Run (1975) Back to back Springsteens!!! About being born!!! What the heck that’s crazy odds to draw those like that. Anyway still gotta listen to it now. Alright, this album’s great, and its the one that finally made springsteen click for me. I went back to give USA and Darkness a relisten, and they make more sense now.

The Young Gods L’Eau Rouge (1989) Swiss Industrial metal! Good stuff but also put me in a very sour mood during and afterward. Real negative ambience.

The Mamas & The Papas If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears (1966) Ohhh it’s the california dreamin people! Lovely harmonizing, aggressive stereo mixing that forced me to switch off of headphones and listen out loud

Willie Nelson Stardust (1978) My grandpa spinning in his grave that I think this is really really boring

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More from the 9 base-2 albums

Amy Winehouse Frank (2003) First I ever heard of Amy Winehouse was literally news about her dying, so coming late to the party here, as usual. Undeniably excellent voice, though at the end of the day if I’m going for lounge music I’d still probably go for Tom Waits first, just the kind of person I am. GF tells me Back to Black is apparently where her best stuff is, though, so looking forward to that one coming up in the rotation.

Chic C’est Chic (1978) First song is literally them just yelling “Chic! Chic” over and over, then the next song is the unavoidable “Le Freak”. It’s a testament to how much I like disco sensibilities, funky basslines etc that I like this album a lot, since on paper I shouldn’t have patience for it.

The Triffids Calenture (1987) “Vagabond Holes” is an alright song and an excellent song name. Otherwise album forgettable + way too goddamn long 

John Prine John Prine (1971) Knew I was in trouble the second I saw the guitar and hay bales on the album cover. Prine’s a fun lyricist, but I still can’t really deal with country music

Brian Eno Here Come The Warm Jets (1973) First one this week that I unambiguously liked. Very busy, all over the place, lots of fun!

Jamiroquai Emergency On Planet Earth (1993) I generally like funk; this is not the best that’s out there. I like the didgeridoo though. Also the album cover is 100% a homestuck troll. I know that’s not jamiroquai’s fault, but jesus fuck that’s striking.

Curtis Mayfield There’s No Place Like America Today (1975) Even when it got slow, was still very pleasant listening. Soul music, indeed.

#1001 albums

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February Roundup

Made it to 30 years, which I kind of expected to feel like a bigger deal.

Jobsearch frustrating, got to final final round with the one I was excited for, then the group has been awol for the last 3 weeks. Got recruiters reaching out to me, some other interviews going though, which feels nice, but whatever fuckin whatever, this topic’s gotten so boring to think about, let alone write.

Picnic merch arrived right in time for my birthday, so that was nice! Read through the lazenby book. Lot of people seemingly were introduced to stanley picnic through the lazenby blog, and the experience of reading that without knowledge of his podcast persona is just something that’s going to be locked off for me. It’s interesting to think about how I would have taken it if I’d stumbled across the blog back when it was active.

Got the new Phil Christman book coming in tomorrow, which I’m excited to read. Been glad to have some shorter stuff to read after chaining doorstopper after doorstopper last year.

GF, having grown up with (and even having been named after a character in a) Julia Roberts movies, was maybe correctly horrified that I hadn’t seen basically any of the classics, so we’re doing a chronological dive, with Mystic Pizza as start point. Kind of wild swings in quality, Pizza good, Blood Red awful, Steel Magnolias an absolutely successful tear jerker well done folks you got me, Pretty Woman was a lot of fun, uhhhh Flatliners silly but fun, Sleeping With The Enemy and Dying Young terrible. Joel Schumacher directed some of those, and he’s got a bad hit rate so far. Worth noting that even in the bad movies, Roberts is indeed an incredibly strong performer—She can’t always save the movies, but she’s never come away looking bad in them. Can’t wait to put that to the test when we finally make our way to Ocean’s 12 (God damn that’s so many movies away, turns out she was also incredibly prolific during the 90s!)

Kept up with the 1001 albums generator, which has been a really fun project for one such as myself, raised under a rock. At worst it’s been very educational, and in the meantime it’s been giving me new options to put into my usual rotations. Been doing the individual albums in their own posts, but highlights:

Aretha Franklin all-time Great

I know there’s more Elvis Costello coming, which is good, because I’ve read some stuff that suggests there’s more going on in that album than I was able to pick up on without more context for him

Sisters of Mercy: Floodland  was a real dark horse contender for whatever [expectations-and-knowledge-going-in :: enjoyment] ratio I have running in my brain. I’ve been coming back to this one a lot

Public Enemy is excellent

I should’ve dove into Led Zeppelin a lot sooner, they’re exactly my shit

I don’t understand what people get out of Springsteen

OK fine The Beatles good, Revolver’s a great album

Highlights: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/74qU2OGYXeYZatO9v383Hi?si=trrAHoXqRfOCQqUwTmD1TA&nd=1

[joecial-distancing]

More 1001 Albums

The Style Council Cafe Bleu (1984) I dunno what I was supposed to be taking away from this. The literature on this one calls it “sophisti-pop” which I guess just means “80s jazz + they rap at some point”. For the range of stuff touched on, there’s nothing in here that I can’t find better-done elsewhere.

Eagles Eagles (1972)

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Blur Parklife (1994) I knew of Blur, but somehow made it this far without realizing this was a Damon Albarn project. Also they’re a solid coupla decades more recent than I’d assumed for some fuckin reason. Any case, I had fun with this one, probably one of the better entries out of the kind of stuff rock bands were putting out during the 90s.

John Grant Queen Of Denmark (2010) This one grew on me as it went on, but I still think I’m more interested about the album’s thematics and John Grant’s history than I am in the experience of actually listening to it.

Aerosmith Rocks (1976) Aerosmith’s cute every once in a while, but kind of wear on me during the course of an entire album

The Beatles Revolver (1966) I’ve always found The Beatles to be pretty alright, but I’ve never been able to check into the degree of hype and mystique around them (the most interested I’ve ever been in them is a documentary that came across PBS once that was getting into all the studio techniques they’d used to produce the Sgt Pepper album, like the craft end of things was just more compelling to me than the album’s actual music). All that said, I really like Revolver, kind of marks the beginning of the Beatles era that I find more interesting (lol drugs).

Hugh Masekela Home Is Where The Music Is (1972) Beginning to think jazz, salsa, etc are just kind of a bad fit for how I’ve been listening to the albums each day, because with every one of these my experience has been enjoying the first few songs, but then getting completely sick of it by the end of the album. Like I think this just probably isn’t music to be listened to in silence, by myself, on headphones! but it’s not like I own a fuckin bar or a club, so,

highlights playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/74qU2OGYXeYZatO9v383Hi?si=trrAHoXqRfOCQqUwTmD1TA

#1001 albums

[joecial-distancing]

1001 Albums, round 4

Rolled high this week!

Electric Light Orchestra Out Of The Blue (1977) Incredibly solid album, right up my alley. There’s something I’m trying to put my finger on with this. A lot of the albums I’ve liked during this project will have a few songs that I really groove with, but will also bore me a lot at some other point. Vs ELO here, who held my attention and gave me a really good time the whole way through an entire double album-length of stuff… but at least on first listen, there wasn’t any particular song that grabbed my lapels and yanked me in. A slower burn. Any case, liked it a lot.

Madonna Like a Prayer (1989) It’s Madonna! Album opened incredibly strong, but tapered off hard for me as it went on.

Kraftwerk Trans-Europe Express (1977) I think this is the first album of this project that I’d actually listened to all the way through before. This is an excellent album, hugely influential, ahead of its time/invented the time. For how stripped-down it sounds compared to later electronic music, it still manages to be really sentimental. 

David Bowie Low (1977) The third 1977 album I’ve been served this week! And turns out to have been a hell of a fitting followup to Kraftwerk, given some of the production history stuff, influences, etc. Bowie’s another of my major blind spots, and I suspect this might not have been the best jumping-in point if I’m going to be lazy and only learn about him at the pace of the 1001 albums generator. Then again seems like they got a lot of him on their list, so I’ll probably get another shot soon.

Joan Baez Joan Baez (1960) A lady with a very nice voice sings buncha folk songs backed by one (1) or two (2) guitars. I think maybe because of that sparseness, my enjoyment of what was going on varied really wildly depending on the song (I liked the minor key ones a lot I guess?) idk, overall wasn’t really to my taste, but it’s not at all confusing or disagreeable to me that people do like this, I definitely get the appeal! I’m admittedly too much of a fuckin prog rock enjoyer and it would certainly have defeated the entire point of what she’s doing, but yeah I would’ve preferred there be literally any backing instrumentation beyond just a guitar or two.

Tom Waits Rain Dogs (1985) A man with a very gravely voice sings buncha sleazy songs. God damn I love Tom Waits so much. Most of the songs on here are extremely good and even the ones I was bored with are still compelling because it’s him singing.

Daft Punk Homework (1997) Had to skip “Around the World” because I value not having that one stuck in my head for the rest of the week, but yeah, Daft Punk Good. Sitting down with an album from them was a weird experience because that’s really not the context where I’m usually hearing them, but as always with EDM/adjacent it’s pretty much ideal focusing music for me.

Highlights playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/74qU2OGYXeYZatO9v383Hi?si=j1kd0uzvRayTe43Ie7Wuww

#1001 albums

[joecial-distancing]

1001 Albums week 3

Basement Jaxx Remedy (1999) EDM pre-dating 2010/2011-ish, which was when I first became aware of any of that (Roommate freshman year did some DJ-ing as a hobby/side job). This one made for, like, decent focusing music for me, but wasn’t particularly memorable

Arcade Fire Funeral (2005) I liked this a lot more than Suburbs, and the release year was pretty interesting (if I’d had to guess, I would’ve placed this sound around 2008 at the earliest). This wasn’t *quite* to my taste, but it was frustratingly close, and I’m still trying to figure out what’s making the difference.

ABC The Lexicon of Love (1982) I’m not very difficult to please with 80s synth pop, and yet this bored me a lot.

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin III (1970) I like a couple zeppelin songs, but I never took the time to sit down with any of their albums all the way through. There’s a specific blend of acoustic instruments with later rock sensibilities that works extremely well for me (e.g. Jethro Tull is a band I love *way* more than they deserve by any objective measure. Or like King Gizzard’s use of harmonica hits my brain really nicely). I don’t quite know the exact alchemy there, because there’s a lot of folk rock that I can’t fucking stand, but Zep III is like right in the sweet spot. Loved it.

Dwight Yoakum Buenas Noches From A Lonely Room (1988) I, alright. I’ve given country music an honest shot a bunch of times in my life, it’s never clicked for me, this one was no different. Though that said the music didn’t really annoy me as such, and I was never bored or pissed off with it the way I was with the Sinatra and The Kinks albums last week, so hey. Wasn’t wild about the Dixie song extolling “rebel spirit”, but comes with the fuckin territory I guess.

Willie Colón y Rubén Blades Siembra (1978) I was excited to wake up and find out I’d drawn a salsa album for today, but turns out a full album-length wore me down by the end. It didn’t make for very good workday music, but it’d be great for dancing or cooking. A lot of the song openings decide to get really funky and interesting, and I wish that was more of what the full songs were.

Bruce Springsteen Darkness On the Edge of Town (1978) From a position of basically zero prior experience with Springsteen: His two modes on this are either Moaning or Growling. The majority of it is moaning, and I much, much, much prefer the parts where he’s growling.

Also I’ve been keeping a playlist of my personal highlights from this project, if that’s of interest: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/74qU2OGYXeYZatO9v383Hi?si=o23AFTtZSem1_NftCZ49Og

#1001 albums