Best Albums of a Lifetime

So, Idolator and the Onion A.V. Club (I am officially a nerd)have posted about this lately and I decided to make mine: The Best Albums of my lifetime according to me. Whatever my favourite album was that came out that year (except for the years I can't recall musical influence in my life like ages 0-3) it goes on the list...no matter how bad.

1982- Thriller- M.J. (since I don't remember it from my infant/fetus days, but love it now, it's totally on the list.) Probably the only thing I'd heard in those two weeks was my dad singing to me and Christmas music. So maybe "Oh, Holy Night."

1983-Either: Madonna-Madonna or Star People-Miles Davis (equally)

1984-Straight Ahead-Amy Grant (ouch)

1985-Songs From the Big Chair-Tears For Fears

1986-True Colors-Cindi Lauper

1987-Joshua Tree-U2

1988-Forever Your Girl-Paula Abdul

1989-Rhythm Nation-Janet Jackson

1990-DC Talk-DC Talk (here we go on this kick...not that I regret it but I'm pretty sure I missed some really good music over the next couple of years)

1991-Heart in Motion-Amy Grant (wish I could say REM-Out of Time or Pearl Jam-Ten or even Toad the Wet Sprocket-Fear, come ON!)

1992-It's a two-way tie between: No Doubt-No Doubt; Not Ashamed-Newsboys

1993-The Sign-Ace of Base; Music Box-Mariah Carey

1994-Grace, Jeff Buckley (though I had not a clue who he was then, so probably was listening to Dookie-Green Day; Superunknown-Soundgarden; or Smash-The Offspring); Greatest Hits I & II-Queen

1995-Collective Soul-Collective Soul; 311-311; Pieces of You-Jewel; Home-Blessid Union of Souls

1996-Romeo and Juliet Soundtrack-Various; Crash-Dave Matthews Band; Sublime-Sublime

1997-The Legend of Chin-Switchfoot; Rock Crown-Seven Mary Three

1998-5-Lenny Kravitz; Hello Nasty-Beastie Boys; Miseducation of Lauryn Hill-Lauryn Hill (this was an interesting year)

1999-Synkronized-Jamiroquai; Mirrorball-Sarah McLachlin; Make Yourself-Incubus

2000-No Strings Attached-*NSync; Parachutes-Coldplay; Stankonia-Outkast; B-Sides-Moby

2001-Jimmy Eat World-Jimmy Eat World; Poses-Rufus Wainwright; Room for Squares-John Mayer

2002-Come Away with Me-Norah Jones; MTV Unplugged-Dashboard Confessional; Details-Frou Frou; Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots-The Flaming Lips; Makeup the Breakdown-HotHotHeat; The Guest-Phantom Planet; O-Damien Rice (very progressive year)

2003-Destination:Beautiful-Mae; Such Great Heights-Postal Service; How to Start A Fire-Further Seems Forever; Dirty Sweet-Jet

2004-Garden State Soundtrack-Various; Absolution-Muse; Hopes and Fears-Keane; Antics-interpol

2005-Some Cities-The Doves; Employment-Kaiser Chiefs; Why Should the Fire Die?-Nickel Creek; ()-Sigur Ros; Come on Feel the Illinoise-Sufjan Stevens

2006-Mute Math-Mute Math; The Greatest-Cat Power; Continuum-John Mayer; Robbers & Cowards-Cold War Kids

2007-Boxer-The National; Armchair Apocrypha-Andrew Bird; Little Voice-Sara Bareilles Once Soundtrack-Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova; Across the Universe Soundtrack-Various

2008-Goodbye Blues-The Hush Sound; Vampire Weekend-Vampire Weekend (and that's only so far this year)

Well, As you can see I'm terrible at picking favourites. Alas, but at least now you see where I came from and the progression to where I am today. Make your own...enjoy!

And now for the vocal stylings of...

If two people's voices ever complemented each others, it would have to be Sam and Sarah Beam of Iron and Wine. The melodic and harmonic qualities of their voices interweave in tone and volume throughout the sounds of the other instruments, at times barely distinguishable from them. The show last night was fantastic! Well done.
*insert fantastic photo here (no photography allowed and I'm opposed to stealing bandwidth)*

I love Graucho Marx because...

he said things like this...

“Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?
A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.”

“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”

“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.”

“I was going to thrash them within an inch of their lives, but I didn't have a tape measure”

“Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know.”

...and those things make me laugh (yes even the fruit flies one).

advertising as cultural anthropology

I have been away from the blogging world for quite a while. There came a point where I realized that I was a "member" of too many things. That happened in college...you don't want to miss anything so you are a part of everything...it got dull and I couldn't keep up with all of the things that I was on, 'cause, let's face it; I'm technologically fickle. I don't want to be able to be contacted anywhere, anytime, while I'm doing anything, but I do want it when I want it, ya know? Typical American.
So, I've been rather sleepless lately, which normally I would complain about, but it has given me a lot of time to think about my life and the lives of those that I'm around. I'm naturally drawn to the actions of people: watching them, observing, generalizing, predicting, comparing, interpreting, etc. I find it a fascinating subject of study. That would explain my draw to both photography and advertising. As a young adult I found a fascination with interviewing people (As in the case of a dean at school, I researched his past and present and went in with a list of questions and deductions that I had made from that research). I love the artistic interpretation that I can insert with photography and advertising is using all of that to target the people that you observe in order to influence their spending. All this to say that I am really just a cultural anthropologist stuck in a capitalist economic environment.

In protest of X

Amazing what kinds of things the symphony makes you think of. I love it for that reason. Good orchestral compositions transcend a mere appreciation or enjoyment of the music itself. It goes much farther, for me, to the point where you are elevated to a much higher level. It takes you to a place of memories and ideas and free thought flies around and you just grab it out of the trees like a leaf. It sounds like I am smoking pot, I know, but hear me out. By the way, I'm not, never have. Take, for example, tonight: approximately 2 pages into the "Moon Reflected on the Second Spring" by Hua Yanjun, I began to ponder. Do we really need the letter X in the alphabet? It serves no purpose except for the silent decoration of French words and the notorious copying of the sound of the letter Z. Which brings up another point: Is it really X that needs to go or Z? If I had to make that decision, I would probably choose X. X is just the cooler of the two letters. Z is a bit choppy and takes a good three strokes to finish (for the sake of argument let's forget that cursive exists) and just when you are gaining momentum you have to change direction. X is two strokes and you can make the last one as strong as your pen desires. ...Or your sword. What if Zorro had been spelled Xorro? He would have had momentum on the second sword swipe and seriously doubt that other guy would've come back for more. Also, much cooler scar. To sum up, I move that we petition for the removal of X or Z (pick your favorite to keep) from the alphabet. 25 letters would suffice...no one ever remembers if there are 26 or 28 letters anyway.

I've got a crush...

As i was leaving work the other day after a long day at school and the LSU student media advertising offices (yay,yay) I had a strange and wonderful feeling of infatuation. I flung my bags over my shoulder and headed out of the "basement" where i had been with a computer and phone and stressful deadlines. As soon as I hit the air outside with the pre-sunset glow in the sky and a breeze that blew light and free, a bit unusual compared to the weather we have had lately, my heart fluttered. It was then that I realized, I have a crush. I have a full blown infatuation. This fondness is an amazing, fun, incredible, enlightening thing. You may ask, who is this? do i know him? yes you do. Depending on your level of involvement you may know him very well, or you may have only heard of him. His name is Free Time. YES! I have a crush on free time. The kind of free time that you know can fill with tons of things or nothing and it doesn't matter, cause it's FREE. It's mine and it's free. And I don't care who knows it...Free Time is mine. Shout it from the rooftops.

Blessed Yes rocks the Shane and Shane show at the Backdoor. Other bands of the night included Jake Smith Band, Monk and Neagle and of course Shane and Shane. Blessed Yes rocked though. And I'm not just saying that because the lead redhead/singer is my roommate.

Brooke's show...the all new Blessed Yes. www.blessedyes.com.  

How Mike will lay.