5_moves_of_doom

And three more as I type up an essay.

How is that?

Hrm... they've got plenty of Varese at my local TOWER in the Classical section. Strange. Varese is top-notch badassosity, but while it is definitely good, he most definitely the "interesting" of Zappa's classical influences, whereas Stravinsky would be the "emotionally moving and undisputed genius." I guess that is kind of a given, but eh. John Cage is a genius, on every level. The most recent modern classical music I have heard was Glenn Branca's "Symphony No. 13 for 100 Guitars." Err... at least I consider it "modern classical"...

III and Houses of the Holy are clearly the best, in my mind. Though an argument could be made for each of their albums, outside of the last two (not that those lack awesome tracks.) What I've always found interesting is that when the band reunited for a bit in 1990ish they had a few rehearsals where they were writing actual new material. Plant described it as "Talking Heads meets Husker Du." Always wondered what exactly Zeppelin playing TH and HD songs would sound like, though they did[/u] have some kind of weird-sounding moments towards the end of their career, some of which were blatantly "New Wave."

I finally bought Lodger yesterday, and I have just started listening to it... so far, it seems to be Roxy Music meets Kraftwerk meets Talking Heads (Remain In the Light period, majorly) with Bowie singing. I like it a lot, but it doesn't have the untouchable mysticism and utter religious-experience qualities of either Low or "Heroes". I think I will stand by my assertion that Station to Station sounds like it belongs in the Berlin Trilogy more than Lodger does. Also, no instrumental second-side? WTF? I like Bowie's more compact songs, but not one song on the album hits the five-minute mark. That's not really a bad thing, per se, but it does make it harder to really get into each song since they end so quickly.

Danny coming back wouldn't be as good as it once was simply because there aren't nearly as many woman in the fed for him to kick the shit out of anymore. Danny's matches vs. Annie and Sydney were two of my favorites ever.

All of my favorites have been mentioned already, but I would like to mention that the Akira soundtrack is really, really good.

Laughing Stock is better than The Shape of Punk to Come.

What exactly happened there?

My happiest moment would have to be winning the Clusterfuck, probably. It was basically my only real goal in the SWF... hell, once I got the title I was basically no longer inspired until the feud with Danny that ended my career. My two biggest downers would probably have to be: a.) Working my ass off to write a good 10,000-12,000 words of the 37,000 words that ended up being WarGames (the match was 27,000, due to the 10,000 word intro) only to read the finished product. Frost and I pretty much wrote the entire match, up until the crappy ending, which in my mind kind of just ruined the rest of the match. I mean, Wilson had sort of described this "Ring of Fire" thing to me, but to actually read that happening in a match was just ridiculous, and it really cheapened what I thought was my best writing performance at that point in my career. b.) My final match in the JL that Zed and I co-wrote. I warned him off of AIM because he wasn't concentrating well enough (hey, he told me to!) and he became furious, to the point where I had to finish the match on my own. Since I was like 13 or 14 while in the JL, I can't take my emotions during that time period very seriously anymore, but at the time I was pretty devastated, as I'm not too good with people being angry with me. Luckily, we made up and Zed actually ended up being one of the two or three people in the SWF that I would consider a full-fledged friend. So yeah. Woo.

The new Man Man album is almost as great as the first.

I just got this today. The one on Sign O The Times was nifty as hell, and while I might prefer Prince to David Bowie, I am very much more interested in the production of Low, since it basically started post-punk in general (well, not the first post-punk album, but one of the landmark ones that developed the genre.) I really don't see how the hate for the ambient side got started. The tracks are not hard to get through. In fact, they're awesome. And while my two favorite tracks can be found on the first side, I would say that side two is just as solid as side one, and is completely necessary for the listener to cool down from the scorching intensity of the album's first half. SIDE 2: - "Warsazawa" is bleak, chilling, sparse, and downright haunting. Probably my favorite of the four closing tracks overall. Sounds like one of the more dramatic pieces off of the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, which is definitely a good thing. The wordless vocals at the end are awesome, too. - "Art Decade" has some nice muted horn, and is a bit more playful than the previous track. Semi-playful melody that lightens the mood a bit after the previous track. Uplifting all the way through, which disproves the theory that the entire second half of Low is "a downer." Great song. - "Weeping Wall" has got some mean vibraphone/xylaphone in it that sounds like Tortoise twenty years before the fact. Some mean sounding guitar in the background as well, along with some menacing synth that keeps the "Berlin" feel intact. This sums up the second half of Low very well in my opinion, in that it is ambient music that is so damn good and complex/multi-layered that it loses its ambiency in the process. - "Subterranean" -- doubtlessly -- is the track that makes most think of the word "anti-climatic" when they think of Low. But in my mind, the three tracks before this were anything but anti-climatic, and this -- the one truly low-key and unobtrusively ambient track -- is simply anti-climatic in how beautifully understated it is, not in the fact that it's a throw-away. Some beautiful sax and synth-strings abound, and I must say that if I were Bowie, I would have no regrets about ending my best album with a song like this rather than something poppier a la the closer on "Heroes". I didn't really intend to write a track-by-track review... but... there you are. Can someone please be more detailed about why exactly they don't like the second side? I think it's as good as either side on Hunky Dory. Not necessarily better, but definitely as good.

I, too, have never heard Lodger. For some reason I always imagined Station to Station fitting in with the Berlin trilogy better than Lodger, which is a theory that is mostly unfounded, aside from looking at the song lengths. I also have never heard Scary Monsters, though. What is it like?

After listening to Low for the first time in a while last night, I have concluded that the following are my top five Bowie albums: 1.) Low 2.) Hunky Dory 3.) Heroes 4.) Ziggy Stardust 5.) Station to Station EDIT: I never really did like Aladdin Sane too much, for reasons that I can't really explain.

OK, I've never really quite trusted Pitchfork, as I find them all too predictable (props to Incandenza, by the way, for calling the Band of Horses album's rating a month in advance,) but I picked up the new Prince album today, and there is no way that this deserves a 6.0. I would agree that some of the album is slightly tarnished with the "samey" feel that has found its way into most of his albums over the past fifteen years or so, but when I buy a new Prince album these days, I do not expect a Purple Rain, which I consider to be one of the greatest albums of all time. The album is just downright solid (and delectably sleazy!,) lightyears ahead of Musicology. I would say that of the album's twelve tracks, there are only maybe three duds, and quite a few stellar efforts. Also, it is absolutely badass that the record is basically a concept album about how fucking awesome Prince's house is, and I like the "Purple Ticket" Willy Wonka concept as well. If the album isn't great, it is most definitely very good, and I cannot see in any way how the album sounds "dated." Electric drumbeats were not an exclusive feature of a single decade. Hell, these electric drums sound downright modern and futuristic at times, and I would say that many of the programmed beats are more Aphexian than FlockOfSeagullsian (which we will pretend is a word, for the sake of my argument.) Anyway, I've only listened to the record once so far, so I don't have song-by-song commentary or anything, but I just wanted to note that this is one badass album in no way deserving of a "6.0," and set up a post towards which all comments on Prince's newest work can be directed. Your thoughts, gents? EDIT: By the way, "his best album in a decade," I've decided, is an understatement. It could very well be one of his top three albums of the past two decades.

I've listened to the album once more and I still don't get the criticisms. The first half of the album (and I would agree that "3121" and "Lolita" are both in the album's top three tracks) is awesome, then there's a bit of so-so commercial R&B shit with one or two solid tracks ("The Word" is great)... and after that, the album closes at a high point, as well. If Prince is slacking off in anything these days, though, it's surely his lyrics. He's still clever as hell from time to time, but many of the tracks in the middle have pretty Prince-lite seduction lyrics. Oh well. What exactly did happen to Prince after '87? The singles stayed great, and there is sure as hell a lot of stuff that I would consider "interesting," but only three or four albums that I have been able to listen to from start to finish more than once or twice. I do maintain that Batman is fun to listen to, though.

It should be noted that these are all the exact same song (hey, I'm a big fan, but it's true!) I would put War over The Joshua Tree, and probably put Achtung Baby over War, for that matter. I have no clue what I would rank as my best album side, but I would put money on it probably being something by Prince, or the second side of The Velvet Underground & Nico.

What is that?

Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, and Future Days are generally considered to be the peak of Can's discography -- their Damo Suzuki trilogy. I myself am a huge fan of the band throughout every phase of their existance, so those aren't necessarily my favorites, but for a relatively casual Can fan (I'm talking to you, Czech) Ege Bamyasi is perfect. It's widely considered to be lightyears ahead of Monster Movie and Soon Over Babaluma, although I myself rank all three of those albums pretty damn closely. But yes. You should, like, go buy it, and stuff.

Wow, I never realized that Zed was so good at breathing into microphones before. But yes, couldn't have someone told him? No Raynor? wtf!

YEAH! It's too bad Tom won the title from me about a week later. But yeah, that Mak VS Danny match was stellar. In fact all Ironman matches (I'll admit that this and the EXCELLENT match with Sydney Sky are the only two that I actually know of) involving Danny are sweet.

Axis and Suicide King were a great commentating combo in the JL back in like 2002ish... Axis is an excellent face straight-man. However, my vote goes out to Annie, I think. EDIT: Michael Craven would be a solid idea at the start, but he might get disgustingly redundant after a few weeks. Unless he constantly plugs the fact that he beat Tom for the SJL World Title. That would keep him fresh.

This one better mark for TNT too. Congrats!, either way. But especially if he does. Send Sydney my best wishes.

That March 12th show will be amusing, to say the least.