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Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (work in progress)

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:20 pm
by Rob
Today I updated from #2874 (Art Pepper's Smack-Up) to #2905 (Elvis Costello's Spike).

Right, less than 100 to go! I'm nearing the end of this and if I'm lucky this will be done within a week or so (time is a bit tight at the moment, so I can't promise anything).

While updating I listened to Smack-Up by Art Pepper:
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Art Pepper is thinking about what he will smack up next. Or he is remembering LL Cool J on the photo from my last post.

A very light jazz album. Not of the easy listening kind so much, as rather gentle. Maybe a bit too much for a project like this. I never felt it as more than background listening, but perhaps it reveals its strength on closer listening.

New page, so here is the playlist:

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (work in progress)

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:15 pm
by Rob
Today I updated from #2906 (Kings of Convenience's Quiet Is the New Loud) to #2947 (Neil Young's Le Noise).

No news.

So, today I listened to quiet is the new loud:
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This a very clichés, but effective depiction of a silent place. In fact, if you Google "silent place" you mostly get nature spots with empty benches. If you Google "quiet place" you get mostly pictures of a very distressed looking Emily Blunt.

So, according to the Kings of Convenience's album title, quiet is the new loud. I ben to differ. I had a mild headache and this very quiet album had the opposite effect a loud album might have had: it was soothing. This is very gentle folk album, with echoes of Simon & Garfunkel. Very well played and beautifully sung. Not particularly original, but with such a felt execution, who cares?

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (work in progress)

Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2019 3:55 pm
by Rob
Today I updated from #2948 (Wayne Shorter's The All Seeing Eye) to #2984 (Elvis Presley's Elvis Country (I'm 10,000 Years Old).

The update on itself was not noteworthy, but some of you might wonder why I stopped with only 16 albums left, while that is 20 minutes work or so. Simple: time issues. In fact, I might not able to finish this before Thursday or Friday. Though after the last 16 albums I will do a check of the list to see if no huge mistakes have been made, so I'm not done yet.

While updating I listened to The All Seeing Eye by Wayne Shorter:
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There are many theories surrounding the Illuminati's All-Seeing Eye, but here is one I never heard: the eye belongs to - or is at least modeled on - Wayne Shorter. Think about it!

This is very mysterious jazz, with a darker mood than usual, as you might expect with this title. Like a lot of jazz I can't say much more about it after one listen, but I did like it.

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (work in progress)

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2019 7:58 pm
by Rob
Today I updated from #2985 (Disco Inferno's D. I. Go Pop) to, you know, the last one, being #3000 and containing the album Experience by The Prodigy.

DONE!

...

Well, not quite.

...

I really feel that the list needs a final check, especially after what happened when I hit 1.000 and some albums just plain disappeared. I'm not going to check every song in the playlist, but I'm going through the whole list to see if nothing is missing. So, the words work in progress will still remain, but hopefully I can remove them after the weekend.

So, during this last update I listened to Disco Inferno's D. I. Go Pop:
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You see folks, this is what it looks like when you go pop. It drains your soul. You end up as happy as these guys on this photo.

Of course, this is an album title in the same vein as The Who Sell Out, Frank Zappa's We Are Only In It for the Money (and Supergrass' lesser derivative In It For the Money) and the curiously titled 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Throbbing Gristle, which not only doesn't contain any jazz, funk or a combination of the two, but also has only 11 songs. So, when D. I. Go Pop, they just keep making experimental rock, of course. The first song, In Sharky Water, for example contains a lot of water sounds, which I suspect would annoy pop audiences (and I'm hardly a fan either). There are moments when the music stops for a second, like a glitch in my headphones, though perhaps it was meant to convey the scratch in the CD, given the time of release. The voice is mixed weirdly in the whole, making focusing on the lyrics hard. The whole sounds muddled. I'm not taken with it, especially not after actually falling for their The Long Dance in the 90's Poll, but music like this has a place.

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (work in progress)

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 6:03 pm
by Nassim
Rob, this has been one of my favorite threads ever in an AM forum, maybe my favorite non all-time poll since the original Hall of Acclaim post ! Your sense of humor and wit is fantastic and reading all the descriptions of the albums have been a real pleasure !

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (work in progress)

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2019 9:32 pm
by Rob
Nassim wrote:Rob, this has been one of my favorite threads ever in an AM forum, maybe my favorite non all-time poll since the original Hall of Acclaim post ! Your sense of humor and wit is fantastic and reading all the descriptions of the albums have been a real pleasure !
Thanks Nassim, I appreciate it. This weekend I will finish this though, if all goes to plan.

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 1:51 pm
by Rob
PROJECT COMPLETE!

For real!

The double check was rather interesting. Apparently I didn't make a single mistake, except on December 13th, when I made three mistakes...
This sounds better than it is as I already did a small check every update of what I did that day and already fixed a lot of fault that way. I guess I forgot that check that December day.

So, here it is the complete Taste of Acclaimed Albums list:


3 songs per album, unless the album has less songs.
8.972 songs! Many of which actually don't appear on the AM song list!
715 hours and 59 minutes! That's almost 30 days uninterrupted listening! A month!

To be honest, if I knew it would take me over 6 months to finish this I probably wouldn't have done this and I can't see me doing it again for a future update, unless the process can be done faster. I hope people will use it and discover some things though. Playing the list randomly, has already brought me some good unknown songs.

I also liked listened to the albums for this project, even if I sometimes only learned to know them superficially. A lot I want to hear some more, though.

Enjoy the list!

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 2:09 pm
by panam
Bravo!!!! I love your enthusiasm!!! I'll listen this playlist all day!

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 2:38 pm
by StevieFan13
Amazing work, Rob!

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 3:31 pm
by Honorio
Agree with Nassim! This has been a wonderful thread!

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 4:58 pm
by Henrik
Such an outstanding work, Rob! Thank you!!!

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 7:09 pm
by DaveC
Great idea, superbly executed. Thanks Rob.

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 8:06 pm
by Romain
Thanks Rob, the time robber. How mny hours... how many hours we're going to waste with your playlist now :-)

And thanks for your sense of humour, very appreciated.

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2019 9:17 pm
by Rob
Thanks all for the kind comments. I don't do this for applause, but it sure is welcome ;)

Re: Playlist: A Taste of Acclaimed Albums (Complete!)

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 1:36 am
by Sweepstakes Ron
Thank you so much for doing all this, Rob! I can definitely understand your feelings of apprehension regarding the whole arduous process, but I believe you absolutely deserve to be commended for sticking it out the whole way through.

As an aside, do you have a list of albums which have less than 3 tracks in the playlist?