The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: Limmo on December 25, 2003, 04:56:45 am
-
Let's have some lists. Singles, albums, whatever. I'm working on mine, and it will probably be even shorter than my Best Movie list.
-
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief
Belle & Sebastian: Dear Catastrophe Waitress
White Stripes: Elephant
Seal: IV
Were any other albums released?
-
Best album I bought in 2003 that really came out in 2002: Queens of the Stone Age, Songs For the Deaf
Best album I bought in 2003 that really came out in 2001: The Detroit Cobras, Life Love and Leaving
The only album of "new" music I got in 2003: The White Stripes, Elephant.
Best album of 2003 recorded in 1972: Led Zeppelin, How the West Was Won.
Best musical product of 2003, hands down: the Led Zeppelin DVD, which is absolute godhead.
Reason I'm not buying many CDs these days: http://www.live365.com, the radio station I've always dreamed about.
-
Best album I bought in 2003 that really came out in 2002: Queens of the Stone Age, Songs For the Deaf
If only I hadn't bought it in 2002!
Best release for me :
Tie between Desert Sessions 9&10 and Here Comes That Weird Chill by Mark Lanegan.
-
I can never remember what I listened to or what I liked when I write these things. I'll concur with Limmo LZ DVD and Live album. Hell Yeah it's awesome. I have an unusual choice for best of, the Dixie Chicks Home is really awesome. It gets syrupy in a few spots but mostly it's great old school country and bluegrass from Austin Texas. The kind of music Nashville has forgotten how to make. It's like the sex funeral (http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=12262001) of country. Hail to the Theif is the only other one I can think of right now worth even mentioning, much less putting in a best of list.
Let's see, perusing the others list. I see Elephant made Jough's list. That's the only other one I have heard. It's not bad, but if that's the best of the year, it was a pretty slow year.
Belle and Sebastian made your list as well Jough. I really need to check these guys out. I heard their music in that Todd Solondz movie and I liked it, but never followed up on it.
~Paul
Edit: The Blood Brothers, Burn Piano Island Burn. It's the antidote to Good Charlotte.
Edit 2: Johnny Cash, American IV: the Man Comes Around
-
My list contained three albums that never would have been on a best of list in years past. It's just that I honestly don't listen to enough new music to really know what's good and new.
The Strokes' second album was a huge disappointment.
It's just that I tend to like, well, musicians and bands and stuff, and they're not really playing music by musicians on the radio anymore.
-
I really really really hate the White Stripes. A lot.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way... I thought Dear Catastrophe Waitress was kind of a letdown... only one or two songs I really liked.
Good albums this year, free-association style. Apologies if some of these turn out to be late-2002.
Want One, by Rufus Wainwright, was ok, but not that great. I jut have a soft spot for the little fella cause his last two albums were so good.
One plucked from 'neath the tree this morning was A Promise, by grotesquely angst-ridden, sorta Ian-Curtis-sounding indie kids Xiu Xiu, but that is probably not to most people's tastes...
The idea of a Mountain Goats studio album is upsetting to me, but Tallahassee is a good album...
Cat Power's You Are Free sucked, with the exception of I Don't Blame You, which I am addicted to.
That's all I gots.
[/indiedork]
-
Best Album of the Year:
Speakerboxx/The Love Below, by Outkast, featuring the fantastic and omni-present "Hey Ya."
[/sarcasm]
-
Cat Power's You Are Free sucked
I'm all for indie, but that album sounded like it was made by an amateur. I bought it because David Campbell did some string arrangements for it. They were the highlight of the album, but even they were pretty weak.
~Paul
-
I really really really hate the White Stripes. A lot.
Testify, sister. Though, in thinking about it, I don't hate them so much as I hate everyone who thinks they're the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The level of talent on display does not come anywhere's near justifying the hype. In their defense, I liked their last album once the guy from Redd Kross added bass tracks. It wasn't half bad after that.
Elephant isn't a bad album, but it definitely gets my vote for Most Overrated Album by the Most Overrated Rock Band Ever ( And Yes, That Includes The Doors).
-
Testify, sister. Though, in thinking about it, I don't hate them so much as I hate everyone who thinks they're the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Amen to that.
In their defense, I liked their last album once the guy from Redd Kross added bass tracks. It wasn't half bad after that.
There is a version with bass? That's the f'n ELEPHANT standing in the room. I'll never be able to like a band that doesn't have bass.
Elephant isn't a bad album, but it definitely gets my vote for Most Overrated Album by the Most Overrated Rock Band Ever ( And Yes, That Includes The Doors).
Even more than U2?
~Paul
-
There's a version of White Blood Cells that Steve McDonald added bass tracks to and retitled Redd Blood Cells. You can find the tracks on any file-trading network. The funniest cut is "Little Room": the original is just vocal and drums; Steve McD overdubbed a furious fuzz-bass solo.
Bands that don't have bass players aren't real bands. Apologies to Sleater-Kinney and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, but they just aren't. And while we're on the subject, I made a comp CD of the Doors songs I can stand. Lo and behold: almost all of them have a studio bass player sitting in.
I like U2. But I also like seeing them fall flat on their faces ( Rattle and Hum, Pop ). They tend to put out better albums after they have a little egg on their faces.
-
What about bands like Morphine that have nothing but Bass, Sax, and Drums?
Does no guitar make a "not a real band" statement to you?
-
I read Pitchfork Media's top 50 of the year, and I own TWO of them. TWO!! My days of being up to speed on good music are long past me. In recent years, I've scanned the year-end best-of lists, and thus found a good half-dozen albums that I apparently need to check out.
So right now, as far as things that actually came out this year, I'd have to pick:
New Pornographers, Electric Version
My Morning Jacket, It Still Moves
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Take Them On, On Your Own
Iron and Wine, The Sea and the Rhythm
Grandaddy, Sumday
-
What about bands like Morphine that have nothing but Bass, Sax, and Drums?
Does no guitar make a "not a real band" statement to you?
Morphine had a bass player. So they were a real band. A good one too.
I guess a better way to put it would be I'm a fan of rhythm sections. Of two human beings laying down a pulse for the rest of the musicians to create music that breathes. When I hear a band that has two guitarists and no bass player, I find myself thinking there's something missing here.
But now it occurs to me that the Shaggs didn't have a bass player, so there's another theory shot to shit. I'm also leaving rap music out of the discussion entirely.
I don't have a problem with bands not having a guitar player. I don't think either Jerry Lee Lewis (during his Sun period) or Little Richard (on Specialty) had guitar players, and I don't miss 'em a bit. But they both had bass players.
I guess I've just got the fever, and the cure is more bass.
-
Does no guitar make a "not a real band" statement to you?
No. There are plenty of instruments capable of carrying the lead. The bass however is sacred.
~Paul
-
I really really really hate the White Stripes. A lot.
And yet again proving why I proposed to you that drunken eve.
Also, to be added to my list of releases of the year:
The Mars Volta - De-loused in the Comatorium.
Thee Michelle Gun Elephant - Sabrina heaven - which just fuck*ng rules! (And is named as the bassists shocking mispronunciation engrish wise of... I'll let Jough name the album as my piece of christmas trivial pursuit).
-
Like some others in this thread, I haven't actually bought much music that came out in 2003 (just three albums and an EP), and while I like most of it, I don't think anyone would call Venus Hum or The Lucksmiths the best (although the Lucksmiths "A Little Distraction" EP is quite good, I think).
But, I haven't been totally out of touch, hearing songs here and there that I've enjoyed almost enough to purchase the respective albums. (For what it's worth, I meant to get some of these last time I went shopping, but came away with selections from 1963-2001 instead). Thus, I present my list of ten releases that would probably have been my favorites it I'd gotten around to hearing them in their entirety:
Gotan Project - "La Revancha Del Tango"
Mojave 3 - "Spoon And Rafter"
Sun Kil Moon - "Ghosts Of The Great Highway"
Ugly Duckling - "Taste The Secret"
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - "Take Them On, On Your Own"
New Pornographers - "Electric Version"
Basement Jaxx - "Kish Kash"
The Shins - "Chutes Too Narrow"
Dear John Letters - "Stories Of Our Lives"
Yo La Tengo - "Summer Sun"
Also a plug for my favorite radio station, KEXP (http://www.kexp.org), which is where I head all of this music. They stream live, if you're interested...
-
Best album-
King Geedorah; Take Me To Your Leader
-
Gotan Project - "La Revancha Del Tango"
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeexcellent.
I forgot that was 2003. And so it too is on my list.
-
I just remembered today that, yes, I did in fact buy music released in 2003 and thus could have a favorite.
... Okay, so I bought two albums, but they were both pretty good: Steve Burns's "Songs for Dustmites" and Smash Mouth's "Get The Picture?" The Smash Mouth is definitely a guilty pleasure but is really catchy stuff, and "Dustmites" is just good. Good good.