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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Amph What Album Did You Just Hear?

Discussion in 'Community' started by Rogue1-and-a-half, Oct 7, 2014.

  1. Jedi Daniel

    Jedi Daniel Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2000
    Sol Invictus - Faith No More
     
  2. Yoda's_Roomate

    Yoda's_Roomate Chosen One star 5

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    Feb 8, 2000
  3. Jedi Daniel

    Jedi Daniel Chosen One star 5

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    Apr 7, 2000
    New Crown - Wolfmother. Fantastic stuff!
     
  4. AndyLGR

    AndyLGR Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    May 1, 2014
    Whitesnake - The Purple Album
     
  5. vin

    vin Chosen One star 6

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    Dec 16, 1999
    Nirvana - In Utero(Anniversary Edition)
     
  6. darkspine10

    darkspine10 Chosen One star 8

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    Dec 7, 2014
    The War of the Worlds - ULLAdubULLA remix album by Jeff Wayne.



    I could listen to this all day.
     
    Jedi Daniel likes this.
  7. A Chorus of Disapproval

    A Chorus of Disapproval Head Admin & TV Screaming Service star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2003
  8. Jedi Daniel

    Jedi Daniel Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 7, 2000
    Warp Riders - The Sword
     
  9. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    The Best of Bond . . . James Bond (2012) – Various Artists

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    This is a deluxe 50th Anniversary James Bond CD. The first CD features all of the Bond theme songs up through Quantum of Solace’s Another Way to Die. These songs are variable certainly, but when they’re great, they’re really great. When they’re bad . . . well, they’re pretty bad, but it’s still a fun experience to hear them all in a sequence, part of one very long song suite. But CD 2 is where the real gold is. It features 27 tracks of score selections and odd songs that weren’t themes. So, you get a jazzy version of Live & Let Die from the middle of the film; and k.d. lang’s Surrender, which was originally planned as the theme to Tomorrow Never Dies; and the two songs The Pretenders did for The Living Daylights; and Moby’s remix of the Bond theme; and Shirley Bassey’s recording of Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which was the original theme for Thunderball. Plus a lot of wonderful orchestral stuff. It’s structured in chronological order and there’s an extra song or a bit of score from every film. They range from intense action sequences to lilting, lovely pieces (the inclusion of David Arnold’s Vesper at the very end of the record is the pitch perfect way to start bringing things down for the conclusion). There are some lame songs, as we all know, and a few of the score selections aren’t as good as others (I’m sorry, but the score to Moonraker just doesn’t sit well next to Marvin Hamlisch’s brilliant Pyramids theme from Spy Who Loved Me). But, on the whole, I had an absolute blast with this CD. Oh, yes, the sound quality is lovely, from thumping bass to sweeping strings to soaring vocals. Be sure to get the 2012 edition with two discs; this has been rereleased under the same title countless times; there’s even an alternate version in 2012 that doesn’t include the second disc and you definitely want that second disc. Recommended. 3 ½ stars.

    tl;dr – album rounds up all the Bond themes along with a second disc of oddities, rarities and score selections; far from consistent, but entertaining – much like the franchise itself. 3 ½ stars.

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  10. Jedi Daniel

    Jedi Daniel Chosen One star 5

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    Apr 7, 2000
    Super 8 - OST
     
  11. Leoluca Randisi

    Leoluca Randisi Jedi Grand Master star 6

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    Jun 24, 2014
  12. A Chorus of Disapproval

    A Chorus of Disapproval Head Admin & TV Screaming Service star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Aug 19, 2003
  13. Master_Lok

    Master_Lok Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 18, 2012
    Bolt Thrower's Warmaster has been constant over the last couple of days.

     
  14. Isotope217

    Isotope217 Jedi Master star 2

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    Nov 24, 2002
  15. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 2, 2000
    J’ai ete Au Bal (I Went to the Dance), Vol. 1 (1992) – Various Artists

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    This is the soundtrack to a documentary about Cajun music & Zydeco music. I’ve never seen the movie, but I wanted to explore Cajun music a bit, and I heard this soundtrack was a good overview. My experience, and I think the experience of most, when it comes to this genre is Hank William’s Jambalaya & Paul Simon’s That Was Your Mother. This certainly seems like a wide ranging look. It isn’t arranged in any kind of chronological order, but it has the very oldest Cajun recording, a song from 1925 and some live recordings from the early nineties by modern Cajun bands and a lot in between. Unfortunately, I just didn’t take to this at all. A good portion of this CD, which is well over an hour, seems like music created on a dare, where, let’s say, an accordion and a fiddle play different songs in different keys while some raspy voiced guy hollers tunelessly in French over the top of it. I like to think I have wide ranging and eclectic tastes, but I found most of this album to be completely unlistenable. When it was listenable, it was never better than just kind of mediocre. I’m going to give volume 2 a try since I have it here (they came from the library together), but based on this, my hope is not exactly high. Oh and there are these solo vocal tracks; apparently a big deal back in the old days was female singers singing unaccompanied. God, those are like the worst ******* things I’ve ever ******* heard. Absolutely forbidden. 0 stars.

    tl;dr – compilation of Cajun music gives a broad historic overview, but the music itself is sloppy, weird and cacophonous in ways that add up to totally unlistenable. 0 stars.

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  16. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 13, 2008
    The Further Adventures... - Jaldaboath (2014).



    This is about to be the weirdest complaint one could make about a metal album, but... this metal album is too metal. And I don't mean in the sense that it's so face-melting in its shredding that my synapses couldn't handle it, I mean in the sense that Jaldaboath's previous effort, The Rise of the Heraldic Beasts, had a much bouncier, decidedly more Medieval feeling to the music. While the blend of Chaucer inspired comedy and nonsensical anachronistic flare is still out in full force for the lyrics (the lead-off number is about a man with particularly powerful farts), the compositions on this album are seriously lacking in the distinct personality and flavor that keeps me going back to the first album, and there were at least three moments where I forgot what band I was even listening to. Those songs that do deviate from the generic "metal" instrumentation are weak parodies of more mainstream pop sounds, and even these succumb to indistinct riffs during the bridges. To say it's incredibly disappointing for such a unique sound to be reforged into something this generic would be an understatement.
     
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  17. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    J’ai ete Au Bal (I Went to the Dance), Vol. 2 (1992) – Various Artists

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    Okay, so I’m actually kind of glad that I gave vol. 2 a chance because it was better than vol. 1. Now, Cajun music is still not going to be anything I just seek out because I really love listening to it. But there were tracks on this album that I genuinely enjoyed. Maybe this is because this CD included a few songs from Clifton Chenier, widely considered to be the king of Zydeco (he gets namechecked in Paul Simon’s Zydeco pastiche That Was Your Mother) and his tracks are pretty great, just basically hopped up party music with a prominent, but not at all annoying, accordion. Again, there’s enough here that is pretty awful that I’m not going to come anywhere near recommending this, but this is different from the first CD in that it kind of shows how Cajun music has been influenced by other genres. Another Lonely Night, for instance, has a very fifties doo-wop feel to the melody and Do You Love Me has a nice, shuffling rockabilly feel to it; it’s just that both of these songs feature traditional Cajun instrumentation. This stuff, I can enjoy. And, anyway, how bad could a song named Johnnie Ain’t No Goat really be? Though the best on the record shares an equally ridiculous name (and chorus), My Toot Toot, but it’s a six minute live recording of a really peppy dance number. Anyway, on the whole, this CD is still pretty awful, but at least I can kind of begin to enjoy a track here and there. Strongly recommended against. 1 ½ stars.

    tl;dr – vol. 2 bests vol. 1 by bringing in more influences from outside Cajun music, but it’s still an inconsistent failure when taken as a whole. 1 ½ stars.

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  18. A Chorus of Disapproval

    A Chorus of Disapproval Head Admin & TV Screaming Service star 10 Staff Member Administrator

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    Aug 19, 2003
  19. Jedi Daniel

    Jedi Daniel Chosen One star 5

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    Apr 7, 2000
    Monster by KISS
     
  20. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    Bob Dylan (1962) – Bob Dylan

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    So, I got The Original Mono Recordings, a box set that contains Dylan’s first eight albums in mono rather than stereo; I’m kind of not even going to really talk about the mono vs. stereo debate, but I did want to talk about these albums. I’ll probably make some comments about the set as a whole at the end, but I feel these albums are really worth talking about individually. If you know me very well, you probably know that I don’t really have a favorite musical artist; it’s a fool’s errand and impossible really to pick one because there are so many great ones and so much diversity. But if I did have one, it would be Bob Dylan, if that makes any sense. But there are some of his smaller albums I still haven’t heard (news on a new Dylan project to come soon); and his debut would be one of them. It’s generally been considered one of his weakest efforts, but there’s been some attempt to rehabilitate it as an overlooked gem of late. Well, that’s stupid because it really is a pretty awful album. It contains eleven covers of folk/blues standards and only two originals, Talkin’ New York Blues, which no one really tries to defend, and the well-regarded Song for Woody, which is a tribute to Woody Guthrie. One could really say Talkin’ New York Blues is as well, really, but frankly I find Song for Woody itself to be pretty weak. So much for the originals.

    On to the covers, I find that they pretty well all misfire. I think Dylan, as a shockingly young twenty-year-old, is trying to prove something on this record; he’s hitting every song here about as hard as he can hit them. His voice, which I typically love, is really quite obnoxious on this record; he hasn’t found his groove yet, in short. He’s often just shouting these songs rather than singing them and he takes several of them, like Highway 51, Gospel Plow & Pretty Peggy-O, at insanely fast speeds which do poor service to the songs. I like the more laid back songs here, like Baby, Let Me Follow You Down and, best of all the songs on the record in my opinion, a lilting, sorrowful House of the Rising Sun.

    But for all the failures, there’s some interest here for those interested in Dylan’s career and his chameleon like nature. It’s the one album in what I’d call his Desperate Period, where he’s trying to prove that he deserves to be a folk artist. It’s interesting to see that Dylan’s interest in Christianity is really in place from the very beginning, for all the stuff about his “Christian period” later; he mentions Jesus in three songs & discusses Heaven on a fourth, making almost a fourth of his debut album songs that deal with Christianity in some way or other. And it is interesting to hear Dylan cover some of the standards, though he does do surprisingly inferior versions of a lot of them. Still, it’s just kind of fun to hear him do Man of Constant Sorrow, later popularized by the Coen Brothers, and In My Time of Dyin’, a song done in a much different and much better version by Led Zep and, in a great instrumental version, by John Fahey, under the title Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed. Most interesting of all is Dylan’s early fascination with death; many people call Time Out of Mind his “Death Album,” though I don’t, but there are three songs here, nearly a quarter of the record, that are specifically about death, and others mention it.

    Anyway, Jesus, four ****** paragraphs and this is easily the worst album in the set. I will say that there are others that are less interesting, though they are better; I’ll probably have less to say about Another Side of Bob Dylan and John Wesley Harding even though they’re better, simply because there’s just less to really say about them. But anyway, this album kind of has, in retrospect, the Seinfeld problem; based on that first season, would you really have had any idea it would turn out to be a contender for best television comedy of all time and would you even have given it the chance of a second season? Based on this record, I wouldn’t have really given Dylan a second one if I’d been calling the shots – and if you’d told me he would be the most significant musical figure of the twentieth century, I’d have laughed until I cried. It’s an album for only the most die-hard fans; he’s kind of my favorite musical artist and I’m never going to listen to it again, frankly. It’s just terrible. Warned against. 1 star.

    tl;dr – annoyingly desperate album sees a young Dylan trying, and mostly failing, to prove his talent; based on this debut, even Dylan fans will wonder how he got a second album. 1 star.

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  21. burrisjedimaster1

    burrisjedimaster1 Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Jul 31, 2002
  22. Master_Lok

    Master_Lok Force Ghost star 6

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    Dec 18, 2012
    Good work music:

     
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  23. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963) – Bob Dylan

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    It’s kind of interesting; I feel like I may have less to say about this album than I did about Dylan’s debut, even though this one is far, far better than its predecessor, but we’ll see. I guess one of the most compelling things about this album to me is the way it starts; if you, as I did, cue it up to start playing right after the last song on Bob Dylan, you’ll be genuinely taken aback. As I said before, you can smell the desperation and the sweat on Dylan’s debut; he has something to prove and he’s singing very loudly and striking his guitar in a very percussive way. He’s going at it hammer & tongs. Then comes this album and it opens with the quiet, lilting Blowin’ in the Wind and then Girl from the North Country, and you can just feel the absolute confidence of a man with nothing to prove anymore. Which, of course, he did still have something to prove; his debut album is pretty bad and he almost didn’t get a second shot. But I think it’s actually less significant that this album contains mostly original material as opposed to the standards heavy debut; the most significant thing is Dylan’s sense of calm here. He’s leaning back into the music and letting the strength of the words and melodies come to the forefront and he’s beginning to really work on his phrasing (one of his greatest strengths over the years) as opposed to just bellowing at the top of his lungs.

    But this is certainly a massive leap forward from his debut in every way; the production is clearer, his playing is softer and more evocative, the songs are better (for the most part) and his singing is less strident. I suppose one could talk about the songs, but I’ll not spend a lot of time here. I’ll just say that the first three songs on the album are Blowin’ in the Wind, Girl from the North Country and Masters of War. That would be enough, but then in the exact middle of the album (they were originally broken up on the vinyl record) you have, back to back, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall & Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright. The rest of the album doesn’t stand up to those songs, really, and Dylan has released albums where there’s not a less than great song on the album. But it’s hard to hold weaker songs like Oxford Town or Bob Dylan’s Blues against an album when it has no less than five of the greatest songs ever written on it. Some of the other songs are actually pretty good; Dylan’s absurdist stream of consciousness numbers here are Talkin’ World War III Blues and I Shall Be Free, and if they both (particularly I Shall Be Free, which was a recording that was entirely adlibbed) have some clunkers in the lyrics, they both also have some really hilarious lines. And Corrina, Corrina is worth a mention; it’s one of the last times Dylan would cover a traditional folk song for several years and the first time he’s heard on one of his albums with a backing band. But anyway, this is Dylan’s first really good album; only a couple of the songs are actively pretty bad, like Bob Dylan’s Dream, and most of them are quite good to genuine masterpieces. From a one star debut, Dylan takes quite a leap: Recommended. 3 ½ stars.

    tl;dr – sophomore album finds Dylan relaxing into himself, provides at least five genuine masterpieces and only a couple of duds; Dylan’s a minor, slightly talented folksinger when it starts and an icon for all time when it’s over. 3 ½ stars.

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  24. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Jul 13, 2008
    "Bob Dylan's Dream" is pretty bleh, but it's a direct descendent of my favorite track on Bringing It All Back Home so it's alright in my book.
     
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  25. Rogue1-and-a-half

    Rogue1-and-a-half Manager Emeritus who is writing his masterpiece star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Nov 2, 2000
    Well, I'm going through this entire Mono Recordings set, so please give your thoughts on all of the ones you've heard as we go. And, yes, that is a really good one on BIABH, but then that's an album almost entirely composed of four star songs (a couple of lesser ones, but mostly just home-run after home-run).