30Hz 25 Best Albums of 2015

Post author By jdp
Post date February 10, 2016
2 Comments on 30Hz 25 Best Albums of 2015

Let me start by saying that I did not select Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly as my favorite record of 2015. So this list at least has some novelty going for it. I read as many as five different lists from major music publications with Kendrick Lamar foisted up as the best tent-pole record of the last year. Hey, I liked the record as much as the next guy… okay, maybe not quite as much as the next guy since it’s not even on this list. Let’s just say I liked it fine, but it didn’t hold my attention the way that these 25 records did. It wasn’t ever played on repeat. My kids don’t subconsciously know the lyrics to “King Kunta,” (I’m awaiting my Father of the Year award. Please don’t take the “Baby Got Back” situation into account.) and I don’t own it on vinyl. That’s maybe the true test these days. Did I like the record enough to pick it up on vinyl? I’d wager that almost all of these records wound up in my vinyl stacks.

Also, my apologies for the lateness of this list. You probably don’t care about 2015 anymore and that’s gravy. But in my Killer Jams list I promised a subsequent Best Albums list. I don’t break promises. No, that’s not true either. I occasionally forget about promises, but I do not intentionally break them. Forgetting and willingly refusing are two completely different forms of betrayal.

best albums of 2015

30 Hz 25 Best Albums of 2015

…and yes I still call them “albums.”

Honorable mentions:

Adele, Alabama Shakes, All Dogs, Amason, Beach House, De Lux, The Decemberists, Father John Misty, Floating Points, Joanna Newsom, Lower Dens, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Ratatat, Sleater-Kinney, Wolf Alice.

25. Wilco – Star Wars

homepage_large.f81f39b6 And on the seventh day, Wilco created Star Wars, the record nobody f’ing new about. One day it just appeared, a fluffy white cat on the cover, apropos absolutely nothing. I thought I was being pranked, quite honestly. I didn’t take it seriously at first. Then slowly the album opened up. I just kept coming back, uncovering new moments of that rough and irascible Wilco beauty.

Star Wars @ Amazon

Tags best albums of 2015, best music of 2015, best records of 2015

30Hz Bl-g Cinema

Backstage Blogathon: A Night at the Opera

Post author By jdp
Post date January 23, 2016
No Comments on Backstage Blogathon: A Night at the Opera

Welcome, Backstage Blogathonners! And a special thanks to our hosts Movies Silently and Sister Celluloid. This is my tardy entry that was written and stored away in December, waiting for the blogothon dates to arrive… and yada yada yada… I completely forgot to post the thing. Better early and late at the same time than never.

Backstage at A Night at the Opera

Research has proven that the Marx Brothers have turned more people into classic movie fans than any other act in show business. There are pie charts and Venn diagrams to back this theory. It’s fact. Incontrovertible. Contained on certified documents stored in the vaults of the First National Bank of Freedonia.

I couldn’t have been more than six or seven when my parents first showed me a Marx Brothers movie – Animal Crackers. The result? A lifelong love affair with classic cinema. Well, I attribute that to the Marx Brothers and a whole bunch of Universal horror flicks I devoured one special Halloween. Special props to The Invisible Man.

Get lost, guy. This isn’t about you.

At such a tender, innocent age, I couldn’t fully grasp Groucho’s wordplay or keep up with Chico as he sparred, in staccato fits and spurts. No matter how much I consciously understood, the Marx Brothers enchanted me through physical comedy and dialogue with the rhythm and unpredictability of a great jazz improvisation. Though I eventually grew to understand the finer linguistic machinations of Groucho’s acerbic wit, the brothers Marx were always immediately accessible. I’m embarrassed to admit, however, that it would be years before I realized Groucho’s mustache was actually *gasp* painted on. I was slow on the take there.

Tags a night at the opera, backstage blogathon, chico a night at the opera, chico marx, groucho marx, groucho marx a night at the opera, gummo marx, harpo a night at the opera, harpo marx, Marx brothers, zeppo marx

Cinema

The 30/007Hz First Watch 2015 Hertzie Nominations

Post author By jdp
Post date January 14, 2016
1 Comment on The 30/007Hz First Watch 2015 Hertzie Nominations

The 30/007Hz First Watch 2015 Hertzie Nominations

Movie awards season just kinda gets me down. A bunch of films created to win awards win awards. A bunch of actors that took roles with the purpose of winning awards win awards. Sometimes a movie stumbles into fame and fortune — although most likely that fame is fleeing and that fortune is minimal. We all still talk about The Artist constantly, right? (For the record, I do really like The Artist.)

Sometimes I care, personally, about the outcome of the Oscars or Golden Globes. Sometimes. For example, I cared last year when I wanted Michael Keaton to win all the awards in the history of awards. Call it nostalgia. Call it misplaced energy. I still have VHS tapes containing Touch and Go and The Squeeze, dubbed from VHS rentals. (In case you’re not keeping track of your largely forgotten 80’s movies, those are both Michael Keaton films.) Remember when you could actually exhaust the tape’s will to live? It was a badge of honor. I wore out my first VHS copy of Batman (1989) and wear that invisible badge with pride. More pride than any of my legitimized Cub Scout badges. Like the one that I earned in part for holding a glass of water at arm’s length for a certain amount of time or balancing on one foot. Lunacy. Pure, sash- and patch-clouded lunacy.

But I digress.

Nowadays, the biggest kick I get from Oscar season is winning my own Oscar pick ’em pool… which once had about 30 people involved… and now is just my wife and I betting who scoops litter boxes for a month. Once upon a time I sought out the Oscar nominated films and watched just about every one. This was also a time during which I was employed, at least partially, by my willingness and ability to write about such things. Times have changed. I’ve seen a few. I’ve missed a bunch. I spend more time watching older movies and random-ass spy movies I find on YouTube than I do frequenting theaters to watch this year’s Oscar bait. Not because I don’t want to go to the theater — it’s one of my absolute favorite things to do in this world — but because these movies don’t necessarily interest me much anymore. The pandering for awards, the pandering for press about receiving awards, the press pandering about these movies for readership. It’s a vicious, lugubrious cycle of self-gratification. Even the battle cries about “snubs” and “inequity” in the nominations have become prosaic. I can’t even tell anymore when I’m actually supposed to dust off my pitchfork or when it’s just a drill.

Back to points. I watched roughly 200 movies in 2015. Only about 20 of those were in the theater. Most of them were first time viewings. Instead of contributing to the vicious cycle of criticizing the Academy Awards, I’m going to dish out some of my own nominations. My field of contestants? All of the movies I viewed for the first time, from 1903 through 2015, are in the running. The process is arbitrary, subject to my increasingly eccentric tastes and, best of all, completely unpredictable. Whatever strikes me as memorable, meaningful, poignant… the criteria is simple: Entertain me! Thrill me! Make it all about me.

Right. Let’s get this started. I don’t have the cash to pay an actress to read a teleprompter with video screens in the background, so here’s Myrna Loy in a bathtub instead. (So I borrowed the bit from The Big Short. Sue me.)

Tags 2015 hertzie nominations, academy award nominations, academy awards, alternate oscars, hertzie awards, predictable academy awards