The one hundred sixty-eighth album: #168 King Crimson - In the Court Of the Crimson King
After listening to the title track of this album for the songs list, I have been looking forward to this album - the evocative song made me look forward to a full album of that. The collection of five lengthier prog rock songs, each of which invokes its own mood and creates a small story, complete with named subsections like chapters of a story. Moonchild, for example, starts with Dream, an ethereal song that feels like floating in a dream, then leads into a lengthy improvised section called The Illusion - the first part working better than the improvised second half.
The album is effective in its setting of mood and it kept me interested throughout, bringing in different elements each time. The final track, Court of the Crimson King, stays the most effective. This is both because of its use of the storytelling to its best effect, and because it avoids the vocal distortion some other tracks have that dilute the message. It feels well constructed - like the rest of the album, but even tighter, and it really is the best example of what the album can do.
The one hundred twenty-first TV show: #864 The Walking Dead
I feel like the TV show's Walking Dead has much of the same failings as its comic counterpart. While it starts off as an interesting take on the genre, it gets quite involved in its own hype and goes for violence and shock over story telling. For that, it feels like it starts off interesting, but some people are too easily killed while we stick with others I don't care about. It's well done, but after a while just doesn't hold up.
The one hundred twentieth TV show: #866 Maison Close
Some shows just never connect with you. Maison Close is a show recommended as [art of the revival of French high quality drama, coincidentally launching around the same time as Game of Thrones. It has the same propensity of soft core pornography, as you'd expect from a show set in a brothel. However, it never really captured us like Game of Thrones did or, indeed, as its contemporary Les Revenants did. I don't care about the characters - most of them aren't unlikeable, but there's nothing that I find myself connecting to. The circumstances are, at times, dire, but I view it with some sort of emotional detachment. There are horrible scenes and people are abused, but it's done to tell a story I can't get invested in.
The one hundred sixty-seventh album: #167 The Kinks - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
There's an odd anti-authoritarian bent through the songs of the Kinks. Where previously we saw them somewhat celebrate/mock village life, this album feels like a commentary on society - the subtitle is quite accurate in how the album feels.There's an underlying story in here, but feels like a strong commentary on the decline of the Britsh empire going on at the time, unavoidable trends that were happening and how people deal with it. It's not a criticism on them, but it feels like it's unavoidable while they try to live their life in a way that makes them comfortable (which includes some denial).
Although some of the songs have a Dylan influence, the music is closer to rock music, sounding more up beat and bigger. Some songs use a lot of sound effects, while the guitar melodies feel more evocative. In the end there's a good, happy feeling from it - sometimes masking, I suppose, the real problems, but it makes for a more pleasant casual listne. It's never too dark, but that's not the tone I'd expect from the Kinks anyway. Instead, it's fine and fun, serving the lyrics well without making it feel too serious.
The seventy-fifth book: #64 Castle Rackrent - Maria Edgeworth
Reading up about the history behind the novel puts a bunch of it into perspective. The novel describes the life of four owners of the titular Castle Rackrent and its nearby lands and their walk through life, through the eyes of their steward's father who both works to keep things together and, in the end, ends up profiting from it as well. It takes a bit of time to get used to - I didn't really really get a hold of it until the second owner, a litigous figure whose life has some interesting descriptions as a result, and it draws you in more as we go through time as Jason, the steward, gains control.
What's interesting isn't just the story of these people, but the insight into landowners of the day, filled with traditon that both exploited tenants a titme, but also caused hardship on the landowners. It didn't help that it seems like it was updated to support the union between the Ireland and the UK, which made this group look rather more foolish. Even so, as a historical document with some truth behind it, reading it was interesting enough to make you get a good insight in what was going at the time and how different members of landowners treated their responsibilities.
The one hundred sixty-sixth album: #166 The Grateful Dead - Live/Dead
The Grateful Dead's Live/Dead clocks in at a "healthy" 75 minutes, with the first track, Dark Star, clocking in at 23 minutes. It's an extended jam around the original two minute song that has a tendency to fade into the background after a while. Althought this would have been different on vinyl, I didn't spot the change between this and St. Stephen, which also has a longer jam session included in the song. St. Stephen's lyrics, at least, stand out more and make for a more interesting story.
The nature of the jams meansthat the songs continue to blur together - while their core may be more unique, there aren't enough tricks in here to separate one ten minute jam from another fifteen minute jam. Perhaps it doesn't help that this is fairly jazzy rock as well, not the best of genres if you want to make an impression. While the core of each song stands out - Turn On Your Love Light even has some crowd sounds - it just doesn''t work as an album unless you already know you're into it.
The seventy-fourth book: #63 Hyperion - Friedrich Holderlin
Here's another one for my theory that epistolaries are really hard to do, and terrible when not done right, combined with the general desire to show off rather than entertain or tell a story. Hyperion is a number of letters from the titular Hyperion, who is living in Greece during the late 1700s. In part he gets involved in the wars and troubles of that era, but you need to know the situation closely to be able to tell from the clues in the letters, as I barely noticed. There are love stories, but with the one sided telling, there wasn't much there that I managed to work out.
Instead, there are references to mythology and to works I don't recognise, in a flowery language that makes it hard to follow any real through line. Holderlin was a poet, and that shows in places, but it leads to a work that needs to be interpreted - and I don't think I actually got it at any point.
The one hundred sixty-fifth album: #165 Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul
Before starting the album, I had to check I'd actually copied everything for my ipod. Hot Buttered Soul only has four tracks, two of which are long (turning the 3 minute walk on by into a 12 minute song that keeps strentching and going through different versions of the rhythm, quite tightly composed but also maybe a bit too much of that thing. It's followed by Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic, which follows this same pattern, meandering through the song and exploring a number of different angles. It feels jazz-like, but not quite as loose and with a far bigger group of musicians and instruments.
In contrast, One Woman feels the most constrained. It's still over five minutes long, but all content, and probably the best example of the core of one of Hayes' songs. It's still quite sweet and gentle and works well. It's followed by By The Time I Get To Phoenix, which kills me with the long monologue that introduces it - it then goes into the same vamping song that the other songs offer. At times it works and sounds good enough, but too often it drags it out in a way that doesn't add much and it feels like a more constrained form, as we'll get from soul at other times, will work better. At the same time, with the way it defines soul, it takes a step forward, so I guess you win some and lose some here.
The seventy-fourth comic: #3 Max und Moritz
Max und Moritz is a fairly short morality tale, showing seven pranks by the two boys played on various people in the village they live in - usually to their own benefit, in particular to fill their bellies. It's mostly done told in rhyming couplets combined with a few drawings - at most one or two per page, to enhance the story but not as a vital part of it. In that sense, it's more an illustrated children's book than a full comic, but knowing how there is a version of comics that uses these (Tom Poes comes to mind for me) it is part of the heritage. The boys get away with some pretty horrible stuff, ruining people's lives, but they get the violent comeuppance that feels like the hallmark of the time. It's not the most complicated stories, but there's some variety in the different setups and it makes for a nice diversion.
The full story is available online, if you want to read it yourself with an English translation.
The one hundred sixty-fourth album: #164 The Youngbloods - Elephant Mountain
Although this album opens with violins, setting a country vibe, by the time On Sir Francis Drake, the third track comes around, it has settled more into a jazz rhythm, nice gentle songs that sometimes have a bit of a country background but mostly fall into the easy listening category - nothing here that works you up or stresses you out, it's pretty simple and sweet, nothing complex, but it's good at doing its job.