Greatest Season Finales Ever
That's What She Said
So JJ Abrams has been talking up the finale of Lost's second season as one of the greatest season finales of all-time. Well, newspaper The Phoenix (whatever that is) has made an awesome list of what its up against to truly deserve that kind of acclaim. Of course, I post it mainly because it has 24 and Twin Peaks in the top 3 and hence I agree with it entirely :p
Oh an I really need to see Dallas I think; what's so good in that famous J.R. episode that it beats the finale of Twin Peaks, the single greatest show of all-time? Seriously???
1. Dallas: "A House Divided" (1980)
2. Twin Peaks: "Episode 29" (1991)
3. 24: "11:00 P.M. to 12:00 A.M." (2002)
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The Gift" (2001)
5. The Simpsons: "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (1995)
6. Seinfeld: "The Pilot" (1993)
7. Cheers: "I do, and adieu" (1987)
8. Friends: "The One with Ross's Wedding" (1998)
9. Newhart: "The Last Newhart" (1990)
10. Survivor: "The end of the first Survivor"(2000)
http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid11602.aspx
Your Music Collection Sucks: Part I
The Problem
It's incredible how popular bad music is. I'm not just talking about hip hop, some of which is actually good...ish...at a push, but stuff like Nickelback. And James Blunt. I've targeted Blunt before, and you can hold back on the tagboard responses because I read them last time, but his latest single deserves more sledging; just when I think he can't possibly excrete something worse than You're Beautiful as a follow up to the perfectly decent Wiseman, he goes out of his way to do it with Goodbye My Lover and succeeds in style. Nickelback is self-explanatory. If you need help, either Rolling Stone ("All the Right Reasons is so depressing, you're almost glad Kurt's not around to hear it") or The New York Times ("for hard-rock ridiculousness, Nickelback is tough to beat") are good places to start. The problem is: you own these records. And if you don't, have a cookie. I have cookie-dough being fed intraveneously into me at all times, that's how good my CD collection is. But you do own the aforementioned shit. And you own a trash can. And you haven't yet made the connection.
The Solution, And Its Free
Sell these records. Trade Me is good for such things. Then use the proceeds for something decent. The strange thing is, new records cost $20-$30 in stores, and yet a few meters away there's always quality stuff that costs less simply because you aren't buying it within a few months of release. And last time I checked, music quality wasn't advancing with time at such a rate that what happens to be popular today must be better than anything in the past, so why limit your shopping list to the Top 20 rack, paying more essentially for less? I say "less" in all likelihood, its not an absolute and its not to say that the occassional new release isnt incredible and I'm not some elitist coot who refuses to listen to new music - I catch the top 40 show on C4 every Friday - but add up the same proportion of incredible records you find this year and apply it to last 40+ years and you might just happen to find a few more great CDs in the alphabetical stands. And by might, I mean will. Yes, this entry is driven by my wishing more people to delve into older music because I did and - holy fuck. It seems dumb even having to explain how much better some of this stuff is. Do yourself a favour if you haven't already. And I'm not writing this because I think everyone only listens to new music either, but I just can't get my head around the idea of a Nickelback CD selling 2 million-plus copies when alternatives exist and guns were not pointed at customer heads. The mind boggles. So yeah. There ARE SOME people who buy a lot of music because its new and "in fashion" so to speak. And maybe its taste but maybe even THAT is because they simply aren't exposed to older stuff for the very reason that "new" gets all the airplay as part of the music industry being a commercial venture like the film industry. But these people might be interested to instead seek out alternatives when they've heard something like:
The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle - Bruce Springsteen (1973)
Unlike a lot of padded-out CDs which either limp to the obligatory ten-track mark or go on longer by repeating the same melodies (Nickelback) to make it look like you get more stuff when you check the tracklisiting on the back of the case, Springsteen's second album stops after track seven, and if you listen to it it becomes clear why. When New York City Serenade comes to a close after just under ten minutes of piano, jazz and rock n' roll you aren't left feeling like you need more. The number of tracks doesn't make an album complete. The quality of the tracks that are already there do. The Wild... feels cohesive without Springsteen doing what a lot of popular modern artists do to achieve the same effect ie. choosing a style and then making a bunch of songs that all sound the same within that style and bunging them on a CD in whatever order works best (the style comment aside, even Radiohead committed this sin with Hail To The Thief - a record of great songs that doesn't feel satisfying because, unlike the band's previous efforts, its all over the place). The album is cohesive because of a sense of setting, the music captures the feel of the "scenes" around which the songs revolve, and if anything its the variation that makes it all the more cohesive because Springsteen is very much a storyteller and listening to something like this is like taking a journey through Asbury Park and along 57th Street witnessing the stories of his songs.
Track Picks: Everything that isn't Wild Billy's Circus Story, the album's one weak point being that (otherwise good) song's plodding intro. The last three tracks are mindblowing. A- or 4.5 out of 5. Not just minus 0.5 points for track four's opening, but because The Boss's 1975 follow-up Born To Run shows there's an even higher echelon of Springsteen album possible, and that must get the A.
So JJ Abrams has been talking up the finale of Lost's second season as one of the greatest season finales of all-time. Well, newspaper The Phoenix (whatever that is) has made an awesome list of what its up against to truly deserve that kind of acclaim. Of course, I post it mainly because it has 24 and Twin Peaks in the top 3 and hence I agree with it entirely :p
Oh an I really need to see Dallas I think; what's so good in that famous J.R. episode that it beats the finale of Twin Peaks, the single greatest show of all-time? Seriously???
1. Dallas: "A House Divided" (1980)
2. Twin Peaks: "Episode 29" (1991)
3. 24: "11:00 P.M. to 12:00 A.M." (2002)
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The Gift" (2001)
5. The Simpsons: "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (1995)
6. Seinfeld: "The Pilot" (1993)
7. Cheers: "I do, and adieu" (1987)
8. Friends: "The One with Ross's Wedding" (1998)
9. Newhart: "The Last Newhart" (1990)
10. Survivor: "The end of the first Survivor"(2000)
http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid11602.aspx
Your Music Collection Sucks: Part I
The Problem
It's incredible how popular bad music is. I'm not just talking about hip hop, some of which is actually good...ish...at a push, but stuff like Nickelback. And James Blunt. I've targeted Blunt before, and you can hold back on the tagboard responses because I read them last time, but his latest single deserves more sledging; just when I think he can't possibly excrete something worse than You're Beautiful as a follow up to the perfectly decent Wiseman, he goes out of his way to do it with Goodbye My Lover and succeeds in style. Nickelback is self-explanatory. If you need help, either Rolling Stone ("All the Right Reasons is so depressing, you're almost glad Kurt's not around to hear it") or The New York Times ("for hard-rock ridiculousness, Nickelback is tough to beat") are good places to start. The problem is: you own these records. And if you don't, have a cookie. I have cookie-dough being fed intraveneously into me at all times, that's how good my CD collection is. But you do own the aforementioned shit. And you own a trash can. And you haven't yet made the connection.
The Solution, And Its Free
Sell these records. Trade Me is good for such things. Then use the proceeds for something decent. The strange thing is, new records cost $20-$30 in stores, and yet a few meters away there's always quality stuff that costs less simply because you aren't buying it within a few months of release. And last time I checked, music quality wasn't advancing with time at such a rate that what happens to be popular today must be better than anything in the past, so why limit your shopping list to the Top 20 rack, paying more essentially for less? I say "less" in all likelihood, its not an absolute and its not to say that the occassional new release isnt incredible and I'm not some elitist coot who refuses to listen to new music - I catch the top 40 show on C4 every Friday - but add up the same proportion of incredible records you find this year and apply it to last 40+ years and you might just happen to find a few more great CDs in the alphabetical stands. And by might, I mean will. Yes, this entry is driven by my wishing more people to delve into older music because I did and - holy fuck. It seems dumb even having to explain how much better some of this stuff is. Do yourself a favour if you haven't already. And I'm not writing this because I think everyone only listens to new music either, but I just can't get my head around the idea of a Nickelback CD selling 2 million-plus copies when alternatives exist and guns were not pointed at customer heads. The mind boggles. So yeah. There ARE SOME people who buy a lot of music because its new and "in fashion" so to speak. And maybe its taste but maybe even THAT is because they simply aren't exposed to older stuff for the very reason that "new" gets all the airplay as part of the music industry being a commercial venture like the film industry. But these people might be interested to instead seek out alternatives when they've heard something like:
The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle - Bruce Springsteen (1973)
Unlike a lot of padded-out CDs which either limp to the obligatory ten-track mark or go on longer by repeating the same melodies (Nickelback) to make it look like you get more stuff when you check the tracklisiting on the back of the case, Springsteen's second album stops after track seven, and if you listen to it it becomes clear why. When New York City Serenade comes to a close after just under ten minutes of piano, jazz and rock n' roll you aren't left feeling like you need more. The number of tracks doesn't make an album complete. The quality of the tracks that are already there do. The Wild... feels cohesive without Springsteen doing what a lot of popular modern artists do to achieve the same effect ie. choosing a style and then making a bunch of songs that all sound the same within that style and bunging them on a CD in whatever order works best (the style comment aside, even Radiohead committed this sin with Hail To The Thief - a record of great songs that doesn't feel satisfying because, unlike the band's previous efforts, its all over the place). The album is cohesive because of a sense of setting, the music captures the feel of the "scenes" around which the songs revolve, and if anything its the variation that makes it all the more cohesive because Springsteen is very much a storyteller and listening to something like this is like taking a journey through Asbury Park and along 57th Street witnessing the stories of his songs.
Track Picks: Everything that isn't Wild Billy's Circus Story, the album's one weak point being that (otherwise good) song's plodding intro. The last three tracks are mindblowing. A- or 4.5 out of 5. Not just minus 0.5 points for track four's opening, but because The Boss's 1975 follow-up Born To Run shows there's an even higher echelon of Springsteen album possible, and that must get the A.
posted by Steve @ 7:52 PM
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