Recent comments

  • Top 10 Movies & Albums of the Week (2013)   4 weeks 6 hours ago

    One strange thing I've come to discover is that spaced-out listening is a more reliable way to come to understand a complex work than repeated, back-to-back listening. If I listen to something over and over again consecutively, I get nowhere with it. However, if listen to it once and come back later to it, the music makes more sense to me. I guess that's the way the neural processing of music works. Strange, is it not?

  • Top 10 Movies & Albums of the Week (2013)   4 weeks 6 hours ago

    Goodness! Based on what you said it sounds like it will end up being one of my favorite compositions once it eventually comes around to me. After all, many of my current favorites are the ones I struggled the hardest to understand (Ives's 4th, Gesang der Jünglinge,...). Thanks for shedding some light on that bewildering work for me. And thanks for the link. Now that I've given it another listening the forcefulness of the pounding of chords are starting to sound tragic rather than banal. Perhaps I should also move on to the 2nd movement. The 1st movement might make more sense if the sonata is listened to as whole.

  • Top 10 Movies & Albums of the Week (2013)   4 weeks 7 hours ago

    I've liked it a lot for a long time but it's moving up really fast now, and currently, there's a very good chance that I'm underrating it. It's an extraordinary work, one of the most touching masterpieces in the solo repetoire. The 2nd movement is an elegant, utterly miraculous fugal stream-of-consiciousness, a series of trips down memory lane, eventually entering a state of dreams and magical sweetness, and perhaps even acceptance of the afterlife. The whole work is something of a precursor to Shostakovich's 15th. Beethoven is looking back on his life, facing his deafness, facing death, in elongated variations of themes and emotional waves running over him, weaving in and around eachother, coalescing, namely nostalgia, moments of gentleness and sorrow and touches of heaven and whimsy. The sheer scope of emotions it runs through and how evocative it is of Beethoven's interior mental imagery, is unprecedented and extraordinary. The 1st movement features those stuttering chords of defiance -- in your face, forceful yes, but also inept. Amidst the force, there's a simultaneous inertia and struggle to them; the energy is that of an old man, someone who's partially lost his will. This isn't the resolute, heroic, impervious strength of his 5th Symphony anymore.

    Kempff's is the best performance I know of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Z7KdfdYZc

  • Top 10 Movies & Albums of the Week (2013)   4 weeks 8 hours ago

    I've been struggling with Beethoven's 32nd Piano Sonata. I haven't listened to the second movement yet because I want to figure out the first one first. But I just don't get it! The main theme just seems too blunt and forceful, too in-your-face. Beethoven is notorious for his defiant gestures, but this time he went too far! For me, it just sounds rather banal. But every critic (including Scaruffi) raves it as his greatest piano work. So now I've got this feeling that there's something deceptively ingenious about it and I just haven't figured it out yet. For that matter, I'll wait before I rate.

  • THE TOP 30 MOST OVERRATED ROCK ALBUMS   4 weeks 11 hours ago

    Maybe I'll win the antipathy of many, but the truth is: many of Beatles's albums are overrated.

  • Greatest Songs/Tracks/Movements of All Time (Classical, Rock & Jazz) [under major revisions]   4 weeks 14 hours ago

    NOTE: Sister Ray, Ascension, 1st Movement of Mahler's 9th, and 4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th are all under very strong consideration for a 9.3+ rating... any one of them, along with Atlantis, could be the greatest track/movement of music ever... I am approximately 97.265% certain that no other tracks/movements currently listed could be 9.3+ ... NOTE #2: meticulously rating all these tracks in exact order ain't easy :)

  • Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Guitarists   4 weeks 23 hours ago

    how do you put buddy guy at 30 and just call him a blues guitarist and put jimmi hendrix at 1 when jimmi hendrix learn all his licks and stage presence from watching buddy guy learn your history wouldnt be a jimmi without buddy even eric clapton learn from buddy guy and calls him the best

  • Every animated movie ever created (alphabetical)   4 weeks 1 day ago

    You missed Snow white Happily Ever After love this one BTW not a disney movie more of a spoof i guess you could say

  • "Top 5 Side Ones. Track Ones"   4 weeks 1 day ago

    Many songs were left out from this list :(

  • Rolling Stone: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time: The Immortals   4 weeks 1 day ago

    Another thing, why isnt Dion on this list?

  • Greatest Films - Extended List   4 weeks 1 day ago

    Yes, it's great. At worst a "high" 7 (7.2), but probably should be on this list ... just haven't watched it in a few years and need to see it again to be sure

  • Greatest Films - Extended List   4 weeks 1 day ago

    Have you watched Alien?

  • A (far from) comprehensive list of horror films - 1896-1949   4 weeks 2 days ago

    Check out this site (http://archive.org/details/silent_films) to watch a lot of the early silent public domain horror films

  • Every animated movie ever created (alphabetical)   4 weeks 2 days ago

    hans christian andersen the little mermaid
    its on youtube made in 1978
    have to watch it in parts

  • MUSIC SURVEY FOR ALL LISTOLOGISTS   4 weeks 3 days ago

    1. What are your five favorite albums? (No particular order to this)
    Who's Next, The Who
    Close to the Edge, Yes
    IV, Led Zepplin
    Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
    Quadrophenia, The Who
    2. I focus on how much i like the songs vs what percentage of the album are great songs. If an album has both, then it is probably on this list.
    3. Quadrophenia, The Who
    4. Yessongs, Yes (it is a concert album, so this may not count, but if it does it is definetly the winner IMO).

  • Greatest Songs/Tracks of All Time (Rock & Jazz) [extensive updates in-progress]   4 weeks 4 days ago

    Probably "Edition II" (also it was the first recording and Coltrane considers it the standard version).

  • Greatest Songs/Tracks of All Time (Rock & Jazz) [extensive updates in-progress]   4 weeks 4 days ago

    Which edition of Ascension do you prefer?

  • Quotes from Books I Read in 2008   4 weeks 5 days ago

    Unless I'm missing something huge, The Silver Brumby is a horse book. (Yes, I know what a brumby is. I read Banjo Patterson.) How did that happen?

  • "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"   4 weeks 5 days ago

    Whatever list you look at, you'll always find movies that you think shouldn't be there and miss others that you feel should be there. To satisfy you, The Fountain is on Empire 500: https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/empire+500/

  • Greatest Songs/Tracks of All Time (Rock & Jazz) [extensive updates in-progress]   4 weeks 6 days ago

    Oh brother... :)

  • Greatest Songs/Tracks of All Time (Rock & Jazz) [extensive updates in-progress]   4 weeks 6 days ago

    The tracklisting for Parable of Arable Land has been in flux since the original vinyl. The back of the LP sleeve indeed lists the collage at the end of "War Sucks" as a "Free Form Freakout", yet the actual labels on the vinyl neglect to mention it, only listing the Freakouts that preface each "song".

  • "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"   4 weeks 6 days ago

    hmm what about- The Fountain (2006), Darren Aronofsky.
    It is truly amazing.

  • 01. Best Works of Music of All Time   5 weeks 9 hours ago

    Someone sure likes rateyourmusic...

  • Books Read in 2013   5 weeks 11 hours ago

    You've got a typo in King of Elfland's Daughter.

    How was it, by the way? It's been in my to-read-someday list for a long, long time.

  • Greatest Songs/Tracks of All Time (Rock & Jazz) [extensive updates in-progress]   5 weeks 14 hours ago

    Oh, now I realize what you meant. You see, I know about the 1993 CD, but that's why I was confused: I thought the Pink Stainless Tail entry was about the track on that particular CD titled Pink Stainless Tail (I think you had only "Track #2" written with it before actually, glad you made it more specific). Also, are you deliberately ignoring the first free-form freakout on Side 2, or did you forget it, or perhaps that would be included in your PST entry though you don't mention it at all? If it is included, then that'd mean the title track is the only track not included. Poor guy :(

    The remaster's track-listing has a slight difference from the original's by the way: War Sucks and the free-form freakout that follows it and thus ends the first side are combined into one 6-minute track, which is why, instead of the original's 13 tracks, it has 12 tracks. Also, you might've noticed the 1993 CD has a ("bonus"?) 2-minute track at the end. I think it's the track on the remastered CD that's called "Former Reflections Enduring Doubt (Unreleased Alt Stereo Edit & Mix)". Confusing isn't it?