With their 11th selection, in the category of 1981-1985, The Rubes are "thrilled" to select the numbe one selling album of all time - Michael Jackson's "Thriller".
Review from allmusic.com
Quote:
Off the Wall was a massive success, spawning four Top Ten hits (two of them number ones), but nothing could have prepared Michael Jackson for Thriller. Nobody could have prepared anybody for the success of Thriller, since the magnitude of its success was simply unimaginable -- an album that sold 40 million copies in its initial chart run, with seven of its nine tracks reaching the Top Ten (for the record, the terrific "Baby Be Mine" and the pretty good ballad "The Lady in My Life" are not like the others). This was a record that had something for everybody, building on the basic blueprint of Off the Wall by adding harder funk, hard rock, softer ballads, and smoother soul -- expanding the approach to have something for every audience. That alone would have given the album a good shot at a huge audience, but it also arrived precisely when MTV was reaching its ascendancy, and Jackson helped the network by being not just its first superstar, but first black star as much as the network helped him. This all would have made it a success (and its success, in turn, served as a new standard for success), but it stayed on the charts, turning out singles, for nearly two years because it was really, really good. True, it wasn't as tight as Off the Wall -- and the ridiculous, late-night house-of-horrors title track is the prime culprit, arriving in the middle of the record and sucking out its momentum -- but those one or two cuts don't detract from a phenomenal set of music. It's calculated, to be sure, but the chutzpah of those calculations (before this, nobody would even have thought to bring in metal virtuoso Eddie Van Halen to play on a disco cut) is outdone by their success. This is where a song as gentle and lovely as "Human Nature" coexists comfortably with the tough, scared "Beat It," the sweet schmaltz of the Paul McCartney duet "The Girl Is Mine," and the frizzy funk of "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." And, although this is an undeniably fun record, the paranoia is already creeping in, manifesting itself in the record's two best songs: "Billie Jean," where a woman claims Michael is the father of her child, and the delirious "Wanna Be Startin' Something," the freshest funk on the album, but the most claustrophobic, scariest track Jackson ever recorded. These give the record its anchor and are part of the reason why the record is more than just a phenomenon. The other reason, of course, is that much of this is just simply great music.
Tracks:
1 - Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
2 - Baby Be Mine
3 - The Girl Is Mine
4 - Thriller
5 - Beat It
6 - Billie Jean
7 - Human Nature
8 - P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)
9 - The Lady In My Life
Flipping through records trying to find one to fit categories I came by an old one that I like. Not to many's taste I imagine...
I select in Electronica, 1981's "Non - Stop Erotic Cabaret" by Soft Cell.
Vocals Marc Almond
Electronic Instruments David Ball
1 Frustration
2. Tainted Love
3. Seedy Films
4. Youth
5. Sex Dwarf
6. Entertain Me
7. Chips On My Shoulder
8. Bedsitter
9. Secret Life
10. Say Hello , wave goodbye
All songs by D Ball/M Almond, except 2: Ed Cobb
I am pretty sure everyone has heard "Tainted Love" so I will ignore that track.
I can't tell which one of Bobblehead or troutman is trying to be funny, but I AM NOT picking Nickelback with my 12th pick like the spreadsheet suggests. Jackasses.
The British Invasion are pleased to select in the Folk category
Highway 61 Revisited
by
Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited is Bob Dylan's sixth studio album, released in 1965 by Columbia Records. It is Dylan's first album to be recorded entirely with a full rock band, after he experimented with the approach on half of Bringing It All Back Home. It is commonly tagged as documenting the "angry young man" period in Dylan's career, in-between the playfulness of its surrounding albums; many of the songs on Highway 61 are of an accusatory nature and feature rough, loud takes.
Featuring hits and concert staples such as "Like a Rolling Stone", "Desolation Row", and "Ballad of a Thin Man", it is also generally considered to be among the artist's best and most influential efforts. Dylan himself commented, "I'm not gonna be able to make a record better than that one... Highway 61 is just too good. There's a lot of stuff on there that I would listen to."[1]
Anal Bum Cover selects, in the Electronica/Techno category, The Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 1 by Nortec Collective.
Quote:
Comprised of a small stable of producers who fuse traditional Mexican music with contemporary electronic music, the Nortec Collective debuted in 2002 on Nacional Records and proceeded to garner a respectable following, especially among critics.
Based primarily in Tijuana, the largest city in the Mexican state of Baja California, just across the border from San Diego, CA, the so-called nortec movement took shape in the late '90s. At that time, producer Pepe Mogt began fusing cutting-edge electronic music with traditional Mexican music of the region such as norteńo and banda. (For example, the actual word nortec comes from norteńo and techno.) Granted, this wasn't exactly a revelation, for electronic music producers had been fusing styles together from the get-go; however, it was relatively novel in Mexico, where electronic music had little presence at the time.
Tijuana was a particularly fertile city for the movement to take shape, because of its thriving club scene fueled by techno-savvy young stateside Californians who perennially cross the U.S.-Mexico border to party, not to mention the abundance of DJs who cater to these border-crossing thrill-seekers.
Tracklisting:
1. Polaris - Bostich
2. Casino Soul - Fussible
3. And L - Panoptica
4. El Vergel - Bostich
5. Elemento N - Plankton Man
6. Norteno de Janeiro - Terrestre
7. Cantamar '72 - Clorofila
8. Trip to Ensenada - Fussible
9. El Lado Oscuro de Mi Compadre - Terrestre
10. Synthakon - Bostich
11. Tijuana for Dummies - Hiperboreal
12. Ventilador - Fussible
13. No Liazi Jaz - Plankton Man
14. Tepache Jam - Terrestre
I'm going to screen participants for my music draft that I've been dreaming up. We will not have any dead weight and it will be nothing but awesome.
Cool kids only.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
What careful screening process you will use to weed out the cool kids?
A careful scouring of past drafts to see who shows up and participates and who abandons it when they get bored.
Or maybe I'll just wield and iron fist and start whacking participation rights if people are chronically behind.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
I'm cool Dis. Honest guv. Don't let my recent tardiness at times fool you. I've had a lot on my plate recently.
Whatever, I'm in, whenever, wherever if you'll have me!
Oh, don't you worry...you have a lifetime exemption!
Seriously, it's not tardiness that bothers me...it's when folks just disappear forever and don't have the courtesy to say anything. That's what I'm trying to avoid.
The people who put very little effort in are a bit bothersome to me too, but I don't want to be to big of a jerk!
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
A NS band that received a fair bit of airplay with their lead single, Curious. I would imagine this was a result of Can-con, and while Can-con does foist endless repetition of some content, it also will allow some smaller bands to have a chance at some radioplay that they would not have gotten otherwise. This is an album that deserves to be heard, even if the band disbanded long ago (and that allowed the guitarist, Mike Smith, to go on to his role a Bubble in Trailer Park Boys).
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
"I hadn't really been thinking about doing a solo album until I had a handful of songs that didn't really fit with the band, so I started with those and it just grew into a full record," Matthews said. "I kind of thought it'd be fun to put it out."
Critics have said that the album is darker than Matthews' past albums with his band. [2] Many fans, while at first skeptical of Matthews' desire to release a solo album, quickly praised his efforts. The album is noted for its moodier tone and the fresh direction shown in Matthews' songwriting [3].
Since 2003, Matthews has performed Some Devil material in concert with a group coined Dave Matthews & Friends, which consisted mainly of musicians that appear on the album. He has also played album material solo and with long-time acoustic duo partner Tim Reynolds. During the 2008 summer tour, Dave Matthews Band played "Gravedigger" and "So Damn Lucky" regularly.
I am proud to own Gravedigger. I think my favorite track is 'Save Me'. Good stuff, and Dave is right it doesn't really fit with the band, although they play Gravedigger an awful lot live.
Hope to catch them for the first time in September in KC.
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
It's all summed up really beautifully by the first of the two video clips here. There's a spacey hippie chick sitting in front of a bunch of balloons talking about a list of upcoming guests including "the world's foremost Dylanologist and an experimental laser light show." Then the camera cuts to the Motor City 5. It's not peace, love and understanding.
They solved the age old problem of how to make your record sound as good as your live act by releasing a live debut record. The title track is right up there as one of the all-time best rock and roll songs.
The MC5 mark the point where 60s psychedelic music turned into something else. They were that much louder, darker, looser, and trashier. Their involvement with really far left politics was also telling of the split going on at the time between the soft hippie left and something more nihlistic and destructive. They got in fights. They smashed things. They did massive amounts of drugs. Wayne Kramer ended up in jail. And they famously said to their record company after being signed, "Yeah, we're a great band, but you really have to come up to Detroit to see these friends of ours called the Stooges..."
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