The two hundred and eightieth album: #280 Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
Possibly more than any other album before, Selling England by the Pound is an album that I feel the need to listen to again, so I can parse it and place it. While some act have some baroque elements in addition to their normal rock, or on the other hand go showy with it. While Selling England by the Pound has its showy moments, it integrates it here into eight tracks that manage to create an odd vision of England, a look at a fantasy rooted in reality. That doesn't mean it's flattering or nostalgic, but it recontextualizes events in a really fascinating way.
The art rock music is over the top, sure, but in a way that I like, not pushing it too far but creating a production out of it - creating something more resembling an older symphony while using rock instruments. The long tracks - pushing ten minutes - don't wear out their welcome as they thrive on variety, using a common theme that they move around and play with. It's a lovely album, more than I was expecting, and I've made a note to find more of Genesis' albums beyond the one I'll cover in a few months.
The one hundred and third comic: #703 One Piece
It's clear that One Piece is one of those successful anime and manga series that has connected with a lot of people and been quite popular. I quite enjoyed it too - the pirate setting is different, the power sets exaggerated, appropriately so for a comic like this, but with a good amount of variety in the powers that don't overwhelm or overpower what's possible. Eight volumes in, the joy and the wackiness held up, with some good characters that come through and some interesting settings.
The issue it ran into for me - and it's one that comes up frequently with these sorts of series - is that at a certain point, the storylines get longer. I guess it helps to capitalize on designs and not reveal your hand too early, but dealing with each villain takes ages, the plots become repetitive and the fight scenes can't sustain the action for that long. By volume eight it has worn me out and I started to wish it would move faster, to the point where I didn't notice skipping half a volume as the temporary betrayal for a good reason seemed obvious enough. Something abridged would have worked well, but this requires you to be in for a bit too much of a long haul.
The one hundred and fifteenth classical recording: #708 Igor Stravinski - Les Noces
While one of the issues with a lot of ballets is that they are quite visible and that means you lose out listening to a recording of it, Les Noces stands out as different. The piece is chaotic and dramatic, the choir sounding distressed, and unlike what I would expect to make for the serene sound you would normally set a ballet to. Instead, it feels like a chaotic opera, a wedding gone wrong (or, some would say, a typical contentious one) and it feels strong enough to create the scenes in your mind.
This piece has its own hectic, almost droning sound, and it's off putting if you're not quite ready for it, but it settles into a pattern that finds harmony and meaning in that sound, a story that makes sense in a more real and down to earth way and feels like it works in this setting.
The two hundred and seventy-ninth album: #279 Lou Reed - Berlin
Berlin succeeds reasonably well as a rock album. As a solo act, rather than a rock band project, the focus is heavily on Lou Reed's vocals and guitar playing, which stands out especially for his slightly slurred, dark style of singing. It feels dark and aggressive, with some very maudlin songs. As a 'rock opera', the story doesn't reach through, but the tone of the album works really well.
It didn't really hit me until The Kids, though, where the shouting children really tugged at me and reached me. There's a build up to it, but as a long of the tracks blur a bit they tend to feel like an on going work - there are differences between tracks, but just as much a recurring theme. I don't know whether the darkness here always connected with me, the combination sometimes feeling a bit off, but this is an album that connects with a specific mood and I can see it being great to listen to when you do feel that way.
The two hundred and seventy-eighth album: #278 Can - Future Days
More Can? After Tago Mago I should have known what to expect, and these fourty minutes in four tracks give it away soon enough. The album seems to be background electronic rock, subdued with some odd sounds in there, dragging its themes out for a long time. Unlike other long tracks, it doesn't overly rely on repetition, but instead gets in a variety of sounds that fit the general theme of the song, if not the album. I'm not sure whether I could tell the difference between tracks each time, but as ambient music this did its job quite well.
The one hundred and sixty-fourth TV show: #45 The Donna Reed Show
Watching The Donna Reed Show is an odd experience. For the most part, it's a sitcom squarely from the 1950s, with a proper housewife and a standard nuclear family. The kids are well behaved and willing to learn their lessons. The father is a pediatrician, dedicated to his job but with wise advice when it's needed. Donna Reed of course plays the stay at home mother, keeping the house clean, cooking well and keeping on top of the required social engagements. It's at its best when they can break the facade - when the kids can be sassy, the husband goofy and Donna Reed's character not be perfect. It feels like too often, though, they're restricted enough that they can't do so. It means that the joy is in the small moments, a gag in a scene and a comment here and there.
It's the fifties sentiments that constrain and limit the series and it needs a good plot to break through that - selling pickles, for example, rather than dealing with rejecting a boy as a dance partner for being too short - so the lessons don't matter as much. When you find that, it feels quite good to follow, but the series mostly just feels too outdated to keep me interested too often.
The one hundred and fourteenth classical recording: #479 Claude Debussy - Fetes Galantes
As much as this list covers the bigger classical pieces, when you think about people gathering around a piano to sing a song it feels like Fetes Galantes might have been the sort of music used. A piano and a vocalist are all the instruments needed for these songs, a small and simple set of them. They sound lovely and simple, but because of their lack of power lack some staying power as well - lovely but simple.
The two hundred and seventy-seventh album: #277 John Cale - Paris 1919
At what point does a wall of sound cross over from big into over the top? While Paris 1919 features some nice, meaningful pop songs, but on a number of them the orchestral score takes over, creating a sound that's over the top and distracting without feeling they make the song better - it's John Cale's voice and lyrics that matter, worked best with an instrumental backing that's simpler, or feels more integrated - Andalucia does the former well, while Paris 1919 manages to walk the balance well enough that the urgent violins work in the context of the song, rather than feeling overbearing.
The two hundred and seventy-sixth album: #276 Hawkwind - Space Ritual
Pulling off a double album is a tricky thing. You need to be able to fill ninety minutes with music that is consistent enough for your sound but has enough variation to keep your listeners interested. Having lengthy prog rock tracks helps fill the sound, but as this album proves, their repetitiveness can jar and not all tracks can sustain the interest for as long as is needed. Even a short track like Upside Down feels like the repetition wears out its charm. Part of this is the live aspect of this album, which was meant to be an audiovisual spectacle that obviously doesn't translate as I listen to it now.
What it means is that I find myself tuning out large parts of the labrum until a track has a reason to grab me again, with most of it just getting lost as a repetitive drone stops appealing to me.
The one hundred and thirteenth classical recording: #159 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Symphony no. 41, "Jupiter"
After a rough Monday, I needed something to lift my spirits a bit. This symphony did so quite well, a high energy performance with its romantic elements, some gentle elements interspersed with bombast. There's something in there that gives you a lot of energy, with a finale that especially manages to set up that finish and just left me with that optimism I needed today.