Music Music Music

[akiva]

[poorpete]

130. Outkast - Aquemini

I'm not a fan of gangsta rap. I wrote that sentence to write a qualifier afterwards, but I may have to erase it completely. I'd like to say that I'm against the glorification of violence, but that's certainly not the case with the films, tv shows, and Johnny Cash songs I listen to. I don't like the influence, maybe? But I do like its gritty realism, and the storytelling. I don't like how I can't play it for my kids or my parents, maybe?

Anyways, I was going to build up to this: I really like Outkast's "Return of the G", which I assume, with no evidence, was the inspiration for the John Wick films. Or maybe inspired by the Godfather III quote "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Either way, up there with MIA's Paper Planes as the only two songs I like with gun shots.

[Phoebe]

58. Aquemini - it was too tempting! I liked it too. Really liked Skew it on the Bar-B. I have another song for you that features a gunshot at one point, but is really, really good:



I was pretty happy with Outkast so I went right on to 59. Stankonia, and learned a few more tracks from that album worth adding to regular life rotations (along with the five other favorites there): Spaghetti Junction, Explosion, and Humble Mumble. The last few songs on the album were total crap for some reason. They could have ended after, you know, a long string of several genius tracks. Or I just don't get whatever that was at the end, bleagh.

[Phoebe]

Okay, that brings us to 60. Fear of a Black Planet, and a little mini tour through three songs (listed below in order of Greatness) that make us all remember with a fond sigh a time when Flavor Flav was not embarrassing the universe by doing whatever it is he started doing later. And I say that as someone who absolutely loved the original Flavor of Love show, which is a cultural treasure people might not even fully appreciate until hundreds of years hence.

[honestly I can't even count the number of lines here that I've been walking around repeating for twenty+ years now - I couldn't begin to pick a favorite - every bit of it is perfect]

[poorpete]

I haven't put Stankonia on my list, because I ttttthink I've listened to it before. Or at least tried to. I'm a big fan of Speakerboxxx/Love Below if you're going to move onto that. Will check out some Public Enemy though!

I held my nose (imagery pun?) and jumped into listening to some Babs, and the first song off of "The Broadway Album" left my in awe.

[Phoebe]

I haven't listened much to Barbara Streisand beyond Memory / The Way We Were / Hello, Dolly! But I did make Speakerboxxx / The Love Below number 61 on the list, so lots of progress is being made recently. Speakerboxxx is a really ambitious, interesting album compared to the others IMO, but I really like a lot of the songs on Stankonia. So either way, good listening.

[Phoebe]

I tried to listen to some Barbra Streisand, just to be sporting, but honestly I cannot bear it. It's not her voice, . It's the combination of bad songs, bad arrangements... I don't know what all. On the other hand, I'm struck by the similarities to Celine Dion. You can . Given that in any objective sense, Streisand's version is far better sung, I have no idea why I prefer Celine Dion as a singer on other songs - i.e. I would listen to a Celine album but cannot make it through a Barbra album. I can't stand all the little burbles Celine pops in where a perfectly decent melody already existed, as if she's getting ready to birth out a whole team of Christina Aguileras, and on this one she's even out of tune on several notes. Celine has an irrepressably goofball personality that pleases me, but that shouldn't affect the assessment of the singing. I don't know. Maybe it's her accent? Anyway, congrats Barbra, your version of Memory is imo.

Perhaps it boils down to some sort of "kindred spirit" thing with Celine. I get her somehow, I don't know why. People often make fun of her and imply she's very fake and over the top but I think that's just who she is. She's having fun, but then, the woman has suffered her share too. I prefer to think she would like Gladys Taber too: “Well, any love makes us vulnerable. Whatever we love will give the gift of pain somewhere along the road. But who would live sealed in spiritual cellophane just to keep from ever being hurt? There are a few people like that. I'm sorry for them. I think they are as good as dead.” Gladys Taber, Harvest at Stillmeadow

I have to go casting about through Pete's list for inspiration now... not sure what to add, but might as well listen to an album or two or three while doing my projects today. Many good projects today, the best projects!

[poorpete]

[Phoebe]

Wow, awesome spreadsheet!

62. Cabaret Voltaire, Micro-Phonies. I'm embarking on a study of Cabaret Voltaire since I now have so much more access to their music than I ever had before, back when it was people handing me tapes copied from tapes copied from tapes. I'm starting in the middle with this one, so to speak, but that's because I knew I liked some of the songs already. This is like a more-interesting version of pop music from the same era and doesn't have as much of the novelty and experimental quality of other albums of theirs. I would think most Depeche Mode fans, for instance, would take right to this. Parts are very upbeat and straightforward pop-sounding. So then I went backwards to

63. Cabaret Voltaire, The Mix-Up.
Here you get some really interesting sounds and vocals; not clear most of your Depeche Mode fans will find it listenable, in comparison. It's still a lot more cheerful - or rather, there's an interesting mixture of sounds and feelings included - compared to other music they get lumped with genre-wise, which is something I like about them. But this goes back to like 1980 or something and it's fascinating to hear the diversity of sounds and noises and rhythms in this. A lot of later techno/electronic type music, whatever we are calling this, follows more of a pattern. You can hear some of that pattern being laid down here. But they're also going in about a hundred other directions, introducing ideas that never really get picked up and mainstreamed, as far as I know. Same is true for the next album:
64. CV, Voice of America

[Phoebe]

65. Cabaret Voltaire, Code - this one goes back to gritty dance-pop territory. Way more interesting than other dance-pop territories, but also way more accessible than earlier stuff like
66. CV, Red Mecca - it's full of weird sounds and I love it - songs like Sly Doubt, Landslide, Red Mask, Black Mask! The problem with this album is that one of the longest songs (a Thousand Ways) is a real slogfest that gives me a headache. But you know, skip that one, problem solved.
67. CV, Groovy, Laidback, and Nasty - At some point I guess CV decided to make an actual dance/house/electronic pop album and this is it. It's way better than most things of that kind, so I like it, but it's very little in common with their earlier work. The evolution is amazing, from the conglomerations of disparate noise on their 70s stuff to the more organized but still very experimental and mysterious tracks of those early 80's albums, and then a more dancey/beats centered transition period, ending with pop/dance music. Interesting pop/dance music, but nevertheless. So basically if you don't like weird experimental noise, maybe start here! Or if you want to hear something interesting, go straight and only for the earlier stuff. I'm all Cabaret Voltaired out now.

[Phoebe]

Wow, I found something AMAZING. I listened to it on youtube after . I have no idea what the dude is saying or why it says #sex - doesn't sound much if anything like sex to me. But whatever, who knows what people get up to. Sounds more like "probed by a terrifying alien" to me. Annnyway, the point is from here I searched for more and found an entire album, which is AMAZING and wonderful (and incidentally, is closer to sounding like sex, though still not really). I am trying to figure out how to buy it - there is a vinyl album? You can get it from one of the musical outfits that apparently was part of it, called Posh isolation, but still not clear on whether they mean LP vinyl album, which I don't really want. In the meantime, ahhh:



Oh and this is #68 on the List.

[poorpete]

136. Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Give a progressive art rock band a double album, you're gonna get a lot of everything. As a story, and musical statement, it's pretty silly, not any less or more silly than something like Tommy or Quadrophenia.

The greatest thing about this album is Phil Collins. His drumming is wonderful. His background vocals, just behind Peter Gabriel's, accentuates and amplifies Gabriel's voice and lyrics. I was a Collins fan as a child, found him uncool just around the time he wrote Tarzan. But my goodness, he's good here. Goes without saying that Gabriel is great too, right?

Best song was the slow burn Carpet Crawlers, with its majestic chorus that upstages everything else on the record.

[akiva]

I think I've posted this before, but it's worth listening to. It took me a while to get used to the dissonance of the first track, but it's a great recording.

[poorpete]

Next on my instrumental jazz list is Ornette Coleman. I'm ready to love it or hate it, or say I respect it when I actually hate it. ETA June 10th for my opinion on that.

(140) The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness

First half is all, "poppin pills, fucking bitches, living life so trill", but the second half is when he does away with the braggadocio and just wants to tell stories and dance. "Can't Feel My Face" is the best thing on here. Hands down. But, it was so catchy (I turned it way up on first-listen), and when I looked it up, soo popular, that I figure I've heard it before (on the radio, on tv, a kid's party, or a Rock n Bowl or something). So as much as it's great, I will settle for the #2 to add to my 365 songs list, "In The Night", an obvious ode/homage/ripoff/theft of the legacy of Michael Jackson, but, it's, worthy. It'd be a great Michael Jackson song, and therefore it is a tremendous Weeknd song.

[poorpete]

I'll tread lightly here, as I'm ignorant to the facts here and refuse to do a Google search on the word involved. I've gotten okay hearing n****a a lot in songs. Two divergent questions:

1. Is it okay that I replace it with "pizza" when I sing a long?

2. I feel with some hip hop artists, especially those who adhere to a "me vs the world" mentality, tend to often use the word in a negative light, often as a synonym for "my enemy". Is this a troubling usage of what was intended as a term of endearment? Or just equal to "he" and no longer explicitly a positive term?

[Phoebe]

69. Dvorak's New World Symphony as represented by Paavo Järvi and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. I'm a fan of this version; usually that's something one can tell after the first few minutes, and it proved true here. Some versions are too slow, or the emphases seem wrong, so it's nice to find one you really like.

[poorpete]

I was worried I wouldn't like Ornette Coleman and free jazz, and upon my first listen, I'm like Kenneth the Page who thought he never tried alcohol...

[akiva]

[akiva]

In speeches
That are big dance thumps
If we heard mortar shells
We'd cuss more in our songs
We'd cut down on the guitar solos

[guitar solo]

[poorpete]

Had a hard time listening to music so far today, thinking of those in Manchester. Attack on little girls, attack on music, attack on celebration, attack on parents. I know there are other sad parts to this too, but those have hit me hard.