by Protagonist X » Wed Jul 31, 2002 3:04 am
Wow. Some really intriguing picks here.
I once heard that the quickest litmus test of the personality is to look through a guy's wallet (or a woman's purse), but I've always held that it's only true if you can't take a gander round their living space to scan the titles on the bookshelf and (even more telling in our era) what's in the CD rack.
A friend I knew had this case of forty CDs -- 38 rap albums (mostly gangsta, natch), and two Rage Against the Machine (one of which was a live bootleg I'd never seen before). I'd never thought of Joe as a shallow guy before in so many words, but after seeing the CD collection, I could never look at him the way I did before.
Anyway, the five I'd pick if you asked me right this minute, subject to immediate change in nanoseconds:
1.) Portishead -- PNYC: roseland nyc live
My big question on this slot would be which Portishead album to choose. This one has many of their best off both studio albums, but the clincher is the balls-to-the-walls hardass version of Sour Times -- my jaw hit the floor when I heard it the first time. I couldn't believe it was the same band. I only wish it came in an industrial strength 11-minute version with the third verse of the original. Or more, maybe. An unusually strong live album from a band composed mainly of studio rats happiest in front of a mixing console.
2.) J.S. Bach -- Bach's Greatest Hits, volume one
Not that highbrow of a choice, Baroque purists and snobs are free to sneer. They can fuck themselves, this one's brilliant.
Orchestrations of some of the least obscure Bach songs (the ones we all can hum along to even if we weren't so great in that G.E. Musicology course), mostly recorded by the Philadelphia orchestra in the mid 60s. I've heard some of these pieces played the way they were originally intended, on an organ by a single harried organist, and I would posr that this way is so much better. You can hear each individual intricate soaring voice of the 8+ part harmony swelling and cascading; trying the same thing with one poor keyboardist is like asking a single actor to simultaneously play all the roles in Hamlet.
I will freely admit that this choice is purely sentimental as well: one of my earliest memories is being three years old at the new house and listening to this album, but on vinyl. And, as Neal Stephenson noted in Cryptonomicon and other works, geeks tend to have a thing for Bach, similar to the fascination with M.C. Escher or Da Vinci sketches.
3.) Wojciech Kilar -- Soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula
I saw the movie nearly ten years ago -- it would have been Friday the 13th of November, 1992. It's the movie that tuned me into a film major.
I'll just pause here while everyone finishes laughing. Yes, oither student filmmakers discovered their love of the cinema watching Cinema Paradisio, Midnight Cowboy, or Lawrence of Arabia. Me, I happened to hit the epiphany watching a movie with the Keanu Factor. I'll defend this visually aggressive work some other time: the soundtrack is without flaw and nearly without peer.
All original music. Shamelessly ripped off for the trailers of other movies more often than Orff's Carmina Burana. It hits quiet moments, swells of rage, compelling vortexes of obsession... whatever mood you're in, your piece is here. The weakest cut on this baby is the Annie Lennox song on the last track. Which I never listen to; it's so incongruous after the sonic bliss of the actual Soundtrack.
4.) P J Harvey -- To Bring You My Love
I will scare the shit out of every monkey/toucan/lizard/whatever on the island as I crank "Meet Ze Monsta" up to Eleven and rock out all alone, shouting my anguish and defiance over the empty waves and sand dunes. Oh yeah.
5.) The Beatles -- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Again a sentimental choice: my little sister gave me this for Christmas, 1993, and that Christmas was the only time I've ever gotten out of the U.S. -- big trip by the extended family to England. I played it on a discman so nonstop I thought the scanning laser would bore scorch marks into the CD surface. I remember all the places I was when various tracks played; put on "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and I can close my eyes and imagine the greens and greys of the road to Stonehenge, the precise shade of the top hat the doorman wore at the hotel on De Vere Gardens, these weird Victorian-Era brass pumping things off the beaten path by the north end of the Serpentine in Kensington Park, the interior of a taxi going from Holborn to the British Museum. These are just the first ones that spring to mind as I listen to track four, understand.
It's a great album, it can stand on its own merits. But if I was imprisioned -- desert island, aseptic mental asylum, Hell, whatever -- if I could have something like this to trigger strong, strong memories, I don't think that They could ever have me all-the-way confined.
I'll spare you the near misses and instant regrets over the ones I didn't choose. The reason for putting such strict rules on it is because most of the things I mentioned above are ways I've tried to weasel out of the limitations in the past. I am a WEAK, WEAK MAN.
Real quickly, the missing spaces I notice the most, looking back on this: Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition;" The Cure's "Staring at the Sea;" Pearl Jam's "Ten," "Vs.," and "Vitalogy;" the soundtracks to Trainspotting, Brazil, The Prisoner (the cult TV show from the 60s) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (I hate anime soundtracks as a rule; Evangelion breaks more rules than this), and certain spoken word albums: Bill Hicks, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman.
Further thought: looking at my list and around my room I'm amazed at all the "best-of" collections and soundtracks, the compilations like Cupid's Revenge (Punk love songs. It's great, really). They're all good, but I feel immensely shallow in comparison to the actual albums that others chose. Sad, sad, sad.
Wow. Some really intriguing picks here.
I once heard that the quickest litmus test of the personality is to look through a guy's wallet (or a woman's purse), but I've always held that it's only true if you can't take a gander round their living space to scan the titles on the bookshelf and (even more telling in our era) what's in the CD rack.
A friend I knew had this case of forty CDs -- 38 rap albums (mostly gangsta, natch), and two Rage Against the Machine (one of which was a live bootleg I'd never seen before). I'd never thought of Joe as a shallow guy before in so many words, but after seeing the CD collection, I could never look at him the way I did before.
Anyway, the five I'd pick if you asked me right this minute, subject to immediate change in nanoseconds:
[b]1.) Portishead -- PNYC: roseland nyc live[/b]
My big question on this slot would be [i]which[/i] Portishead album to choose. This one has many of their best off both studio albums, but the clincher is the balls-to-the-walls hardass version of Sour Times -- my jaw hit the floor when I heard it the first time. I couldn't believe it was the same band. I only wish it came in an industrial strength 11-minute version with the third verse of the original. Or more, maybe. An unusually strong live album from a band composed mainly of studio rats happiest in front of a mixing console.
[b]2.) J.S. Bach -- Bach's Greatest Hits, volume one[/b]
Not that highbrow of a choice, Baroque purists and snobs are free to sneer. They can fuck themselves, this one's brilliant.
Orchestrations of some of the least obscure Bach songs (the ones we all can hum along to even if we weren't so great in that G.E. Musicology course), mostly recorded by the Philadelphia orchestra in the mid 60s. I've heard some of these pieces played the way they were originally intended, on an organ by a single harried organist, and I would posr that this way is so much better. You can hear each individual intricate soaring voice of the 8+ part harmony swelling and cascading; trying the same thing with one poor keyboardist is like asking a single actor to simultaneously play all the roles in Hamlet.
I will freely admit that this choice is purely sentimental as well: one of my earliest memories is being three years old at the new house and listening to this album, but on vinyl. And, as Neal Stephenson noted in Cryptonomicon and other works, geeks tend to have a thing for Bach, similar to the fascination with M.C. Escher or Da Vinci sketches.
[b]3.) Wojciech Kilar -- Soundtrack to Bram Stoker's Dracula[/b]
I saw the movie nearly ten years ago -- it would have been Friday the 13th of November, 1992. It's the movie that tuned me into a film major.
I'll just pause here while everyone finishes laughing. Yes, oither student filmmakers discovered their love of the cinema watching Cinema Paradisio, Midnight Cowboy, or Lawrence of Arabia. Me, I happened to hit the epiphany watching a movie with the Keanu Factor. I'll defend this visually aggressive work some other time: the soundtrack is without flaw and nearly without peer.
All original music. Shamelessly ripped off for the trailers of other movies more often than Orff's [i]Carmina Burana[/i]. It hits quiet moments, swells of rage, compelling vortexes of obsession... whatever mood you're in, your piece is here. The weakest cut on this baby is the Annie Lennox song on the last track. Which I never listen to; it's so incongruous after the sonic bliss of the actual Soundtrack.
[b]4.) P J Harvey -- To Bring You My Love[/b]
I will scare the shit out of every monkey/toucan/lizard/whatever on the island as I crank "Meet Ze Monsta" up to Eleven and rock out all alone, shouting my anguish and defiance over the empty waves and sand dunes. Oh yeah.
[b]5.) The Beatles -- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band[/b]
Again a sentimental choice: my little sister gave me this for Christmas, 1993, and that Christmas was the only time I've ever gotten out of the U.S. -- big trip by the extended family to England. I played it on a discman so nonstop I thought the scanning laser would bore scorch marks into the CD surface. I remember all the places I was when various tracks played; put on "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and I can close my eyes and imagine the greens and greys of the road to Stonehenge, the precise shade of the top hat the doorman wore at the hotel on De Vere Gardens, these weird Victorian-Era brass pumping things off the beaten path by the north end of the Serpentine in Kensington Park, the interior of a taxi going from Holborn to the British Museum. These are just the first ones that spring to mind as I listen to track four, understand.
It's a great album, it can stand on its own merits. But if I was imprisioned -- desert island, aseptic mental asylum, Hell, whatever -- if I could have something like this to trigger strong, strong memories, I don't think that They could ever have me all-the-way confined.
I'll spare you the near misses and instant regrets over the ones I didn't choose. The reason for putting such strict rules on it is because most of the things I mentioned above are ways I've tried to weasel out of the limitations in the past. I am a WEAK, WEAK MAN.
Real quickly, the missing spaces I notice the most, looking back on this: Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition;" The Cure's "Staring at the Sea;" Pearl Jam's "Ten," "Vs.," and "Vitalogy;" the soundtracks to Trainspotting, Brazil, The Prisoner (the cult TV show from the 60s) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (I hate anime soundtracks as a rule; Evangelion breaks more rules than this), and certain spoken word albums: Bill Hicks, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman.
Further thought: looking at my list and around my room I'm amazed at all the "best-of" collections and soundtracks, the compilations like Cupid's Revenge (Punk love songs. It's great, really). They're all good, but I feel immensely shallow in comparison to the actual [u]albums[/u] that others chose. Sad, sad, sad.