jducoeur | Winner and still champion

Current Music: Stan Rogers - Delivery Delayed

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Winner and still champion

One of the best things about getting the huge new iPod for my birthday is that it gives me carte blanche to rip our whole huge CD collection. But me being me, I'm going through it all, listening to each disc as I go and rating all the tracks. I don't actually tend to listen to albums much on the iPod: instead, I have three main playlists titled "Good", "Better" and "Creme de la Creme", based on how each track is rated. I leave the thing on shuffle, and pick which playlist I want depending on whether I'd prefer more variety or higher quality.

My musical tastes have gradually shifted over the years -- I do a lot more electronica and metal than I once did, following my fondness for kicky and loud music. But having inventoried something like 500 discs so far, I find that the head-and-shoulders Best Album of All Time in my book is still Between the Breaks... Live! by Stan Rogers. I mean, I am *very* strict about the Creme de la Creme list, but this one album has four tracks for it (Barrett's Privateers, The Mary Ellen Carter, The White Collar Holler and Rolling Down to Old Maui). The best album by one of the greatest musicians ever, still more powerful and beautiful than just about anything else out there.

(Just to drive home how eclectic my musical tastes are, my number-two album is Aqualung -- not nearly as pretty, but perhaps the best channeling of raw anger I've ever heard in music.)

So turning this into a good Friday conversation: do you have a favorite? I mean, the One Best Album Ever?

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I did the same run about two years ago, burning everything to an external hard drive bought for the purpose. Sadly, it then sputtered and died shortly after the warranty. I recommend backing up to DVDs.

Best Album Ever: Songs from the Wood (Jethro Tull)
You'd think after listening to nothing but that album for 3 weeks straight while flat on my back, suffering through chicken pox, when I was supposed to be taking midterms, that I'd have bad associations. I must have gone through the other side of repetition, so it's still one I can always play.

Albums that have taken turns as the best album ever:
* Flood (TMBG)
* Presto (Rush)
* A Night at the Opera (Queen)
* Orb (Boiled in Lead)

Still, I always come back to the first.

I really have to ask you for a personality mix sometime.

I recommend backing up to DVDs.

CD-Rs in my case -- limitation of the particular laptop I'm using. But it's an automatic part of the process, because I'm doing the ripping on my work laptop, but the iPod is synch'ed to the desktop. So there's a CD backup of the MP3s in the middle, as the transfer mechanism. (I'm coming up on 30 CDs of MP3s already, and the stack is rising dangerously fast.)

Good collection of albums, BTW. I prefer Aqualung to Songs from the Wood, but

msmemory is fonder of the latter, and I do think they're both brilliant. SftW is better musically, but the raw emotion of Aqualung still wins me over. And both Flood and Night at the Opera are *way* up on my list. Presto is very good, although I probably like Hemispheres more. And I don't know Orb; I'll have to look it up, since Antler Dance is certainly one of my favorites.

"Personality mix"?

Ah, I can hook you up with Orb, if you like. Antler Dance, coincidentally, the only album of theirs I haven't heard.

Personality mix -
I came up with the idea of a personality mix back in college. The first one was by accident.

It was the last day of my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon and I thought it fairly unlikely that I'd be coming back. I really didn't want to go home (read "my parents' new place in Connecticut") where I'd have to set up my room and didn't feel like home. I hung out with Zarf, who was also staying late, and we played the music game of "ooh, have you heard this?" and "you MUST know this one..."

That CD reminds me of Zarf, of KGB, my introduction to Filk, and comedy music even better than Doctor Demento had to offer.

Later, at U.Conn, I asked my friend Heather for a mix tape. She asked me what I'd like on it. I said to "make me a mix that's you". She made me a mix called "Read the Words, Dammit!"

Since then, I've asked many friends, near and absent, for personality mixes. For some, the songs describe who they were at the time they made the mix. For others, it's music they can't live without. Some chose to make a history of their lives.

Interested?

Ah, I can hook you up with Orb, if you like.

Thanks, but I'll first see if I can acquire a copy online.

Antler Dance, coincidentally, the only album of theirs I haven't heard.

Oh, I recommend it strongly. Some of it's rather goofy (eg, "Hooked on Cow"), but "Drowning" is my personal favorite track of theirs ever -- a very simple electric-dulcimer piece with a very effective earworm. And it's got a lot of great pieces, including "Rasputin".

Interested?

Possible, although I'd have to give it some real thought. It's an interesting challenge...

Some day we should drag you to psinging, if you ever have a Friday night free. Low-impact sing-a-longs with an informal group sitting in someone's living room -- and MEC and Barrett's Privateers are both frequently-requested songs.

"Best Album?" Not really, no. I have listened to certain albums way too many times over and over, mostly in the decade-ago-or-more time frame, and yet still like the songs on them: Eagles Greatest Hits; Tracy Chapman's self-titled; likewise Indigo Girls; The Pretender; Listen Without Prejudice (with a few tracks skipped); Chicago's Greatest Hits (1982-)... Assuming greatest hits 'albums' count. ;)

Some albums are perfect in a particular setting. Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" on a clear, cool country road just as the sun sets is perfect. Billy Joel's "Cold Spring Harbor", likewise, for a quiet morning sitting in a lake house -- and is added fun as I can play the entire album on the piano, with only a few slips on the fastest song. I have the sheet music for Hornsby, too, but don't fool myself that I can keep up with him. (Sheesh!)

And Sgt. Pepper is still the "king of all albums", I just don't listen to it all that much specifically, partly because if I do, it's a 45 minute investment (or the subsequent tracks will get stuck in my head...)

Oddly, Led Zeppelin IV, which has so many classic songs on it, doesn't seem very "album"ish to me.

Some day we should drag you to psinging, if you ever have a Friday night free.

Hmm. This semester is probably the best chance for that --

msmemory is busy with Eastern Star commitments on a bunch of Fridays, so our weekly date is getting shoved around to other evenings several times. It does sound like fun, and a great relaxer from work.

Assuming greatest hits 'albums' count.

Kinda cheating, but I'll take it -- heaven knows that several of my faves are greatest-hits collections. Indeed, a bunch of mid-level groups have truly excellent greatest-hits albums...

You sort of opened the door to greatest hits by citing a live album in your post. :) Between the Break, Live, was a live album, and included songs that were scattered across more of his studio albums.

True -- but in this case I think the live recordings are consistently better than the studio ones. So I categorize those the same way I do covers: that is, pretty much separate from the original...

Following up -- as it happens, it looks like I'm free both this coming Friday and next, due to

msmemory's OES commitments. So if you happen to be going to one of these, I'd be interested...

I sent you email, to that username at gmail.

My favorite is a video game soundtrack: Halo 2, Volume 1. And I don't even play the game. (First-person shooters make me motion sick.)

Huh -- I'll have to check it out. Modern videogames have produced some very good music. (And others have used it: one reason why Frequency is my favorite game ever is the amount of great music it introduced me to.)

While I like Between the Breaks a lot, there's a few on Between the Breaks that I simply do not like - although I think Witch of the Westmoreland rates.

If using ability to listen to all or almost the songs is the criteria, then it's:

Dixie Chicks - Long Way Home (speaking of anger in music)
Marc Cohn - Marc Cohn (some I like more than others, but not a bad song on the album)
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run (the non-title songs are my favorite)

Trinity Revisted by the Cowboy Junkies may end up on that list.

there's a few on Between the Breaks that I simply do not like

I don't think there are any I really don't like. That said, "First Christmas" is one of the most heartbreaking songs I know, and I sometimes can't cope with it.

Dixie Chicks - Long Way Home (speaking of anger in music)

Interesting. I'm not sure I've actually listened to it, and probably should -- I might well like it...

I have two main playlists on my ipod- fighty and dancey. I used to have a singy, but it haven't recreated it since my amount of music exceeded my ipod's capacity (4 gig) and I had to restructure how I organized things.

I am fond of movie scores, and I am very happy right now with Trnasformers, Iron Man, and Dark Knight. I've been feeling rather violent lately, and it helps.

I can kind of understand that organization. Indeed, there's a playlist I'm thinking of creating that is pretty "fighty" (Big Loud Kicky Medievaloid Music, essentially).

I don't usually do albums, although the various mixes made for me are pretty cool. I do songs, or artists. I do absolutely adore Billy Joel, though.

I wonder if it's generational? My generation grew up with the album as the "natural" unit of music -- it was the way most music was sold, and many albums were created to be thought of at that level. With the shift in technology, your generation is probably more focused on mixes and individual tracks. (Mix tapes have been around for a long time, but they used to be a lot more work to create than they are now.)

And I'm quite fond of Billy Joel, although I like certain albums and songs a *lot* more than others...

Billy Joel always ended his albums with a couple of weak songs, up until somewhere well into the '80's.

Best album ever: U2 -- Joshua Tree.
Second-best album ever: Electric Light Orchestra -- Time.

'Nuff said! (:

I get different results if I look at albums as works in their own right, versus collections of songs.

Since it came out, I've considered Laurie Anderson's Strange Angels to be The One True Record Album. Occasionally, a new album will capture enough of my attention to make me wonder if it might be the new TOTRA. Probably the closest any came to supplanting Strange Angels was Cowboy Junkies' Lay It Down.

If I look at my iTunes library, though, and count how many songs on an album have star ratings, I got some different, and surprising, results.

I should mention that after I rip an album, I delete the songs I don't care for after a few listens. Just being in my iTunes collection means I think the song is worth listening to. My ratings range from three to five stars, and are applied to those that are well above that base threshold. I have some greatest hits albums that place in here, but I'm not counting them, since they skew the results a bit.

Looking at albums with the most star ratings gives:

The Phantom of the Opera (London Musical cast) soundtrack: 8
Great Big Sea's Something Beautiful: 5
Great Big Sea's The Hard and the Easy: 5
Eddie From Ohio's This Is Me: 5
Stan Roger's Fogarty's Cove: 4
Peter Gabriel's Shaking The Tree: 4
Indigo Girls' 4.5: 4

I don't have a second best, but the far-and-away first place goes to Donald Fagen's Nightfly. It's been my desert island album'* for years. Of the only eight songs, six are perfect, one is good, and the worst is just OK (and that's the only one of the songs Fagen didn't write). I haven't explored the 25th anniversary edition or something called 'The Nightfly Triology', but the original is as close to perfect as an album gets.

* - You're shipwrecked on a desert island. What's the one album you have with you?

Intriguing. I don't know the musician or album at all -- I'll have to explore this. Thanks!

Sure you do. Donald Fagan is the vocalist half of Steely Dan.

I'll bring you a copy of the album.

"Sgt. Pepper" is the canonical pick. Personally, I'd go with "Kind of Blue".

The eponymous debut albums by Rickie Lee Jones and Dire Straits are way up there too, at least for me.

[D]o you have a favorite? I mean, the One Best Album Ever?

Well. With the proviso that "my favorite music" is possibly the only thing in the universe that violates the Planck Interval, I have to mention a couple of albums that frequently show up in that slot.

* Crest of a Knave by Jethro Tull (Yes, really, one of those that everyone else ignores: Budapest is maybe the best thing they've ever done).

* After Bathing at Baxter's by Jefferson Airplane (My definition of "seminal". I remember hearing this for the first time and realizing that this was something totally unlike anything I'd ever heard before).

* Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd (Do I even have to explain?)

* Anything Led Zeppelin ever did. All of it. Any of it. But especially "Achilles' Last Stand".

* Liege and Lief, by Fairport Convention

* Tonight's the Night (Live), by Steeleye Span

* And a few Celtic albums by bands no one has ever heard of: "The Wizard and the Elven King" by Crwydryn (whom

auntie_elspeth managed back in the day), "Murphy's Law" featuring Pol Mulvaney (s/k/a Dungael of Galway) and Mance Grady, and "How to Change a Flat Tire" a CT band from the 80's (?) that just kicked ass...and yes, that was their name.

Crest of a Knave by Jethro Tull

Interesting -- while I think Crest of a Knave is a reasonably good Tull album, it's something like the fourth or fifth down for me. (That said, I am *very* fond of Tull, and have nearly their whole ouvre.)

After Bathing at Baxter's by Jefferson Airplane

Don't know if I've listened to this one, at least in album form. (I would guess that I know at least some of the songs.) One to look up.

Liege and Lief, by Fairport Convention

Not one I have -- I'll have to check this out. My first experience with Fairport wasn't a positive one (it was the wretched Fairport/Steeleye/Renaissance triple-bill 20 years ago), but they've been growing on me lately.

And a few Celtic albums by bands no one has ever heard of: "The Wizard and the Elven King" by Crwydryn

I've not only heard of this, we've got it around here somewhere. Unfortunately, only on cassette, so I haven't listened to it in years -- really need to transfer it over to digital.

I love a good story song, and Budapest is one. There are a lot of "oh, the burden of being a pampered rock star on the road" songs, but there are a few really good ones, and this is one of the best. Also, musically, this is really interesting and varied, and orchestral. I just love listening to it. I also like "Said She Was a Dancer", which, I admit, is very similar, but stands on its own nonetheless. And there are several other tunes here that kick ass as well.

"Baxter's" maybe doesn't seem that earth-shattering to, um, those of a younger generation %^), but you have to take these things in context. We were used to Runaround Sue and that ilk. The Beatles had started to shake things up, to be sure, but even they largely plowed the Fields We Know. Then came the San Francisco Sound, and specifically Jefferson Airplane. Surrealistic Pillow gave us an inkling of what was in the offing, but "Baxter's" just kicked over all the tables. Listen to a couple hours of popular music from the early to mid sixties, and then listen to "Baxter's".

Liege and Lief was the beginning of "British Folk-Rock". As Ashley Hutchings says on the video history of FC (which I have to loan you), their concert in which they first played this was a rare thing: the clear and indisputable beginning of a genre. Steeleye and all the rest: it started here. And it's marvelous stuff. I was at that horrible triple-bill too, and I agree. But give 'em another chance. They've waxed amazingly good and cringingly bad over the years, and you have to follow the personnel changes carefully, but the good is worth seeking out.

I have a thing for world music, so...

Cruel Crazy Beautiful World by Johnny Clegg and the Savuka.

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Winner and still champion

Yes, but it changes.

Re: Yes, but it changes.

Re: Yes, but it changes.

Re: Yes, but it changes.

Funny, I was just thinking about Desert Island Discs

Re: Funny, I was just thinking about Desert Island Discs

Re: Funny, I was just thinking about Desert Island Discs

Re: Funny, I was just thinking about Desert Island Discs

Re: Funny, I was just thinking about Desert Island Discs

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