R.E.M. released 15 studio albums between 1983 and 2011. I tend to group the albums into three eras:
The Early Years. This covers their first four albums from 1983-1986.
The Big Success. This covers their platinum sales era, six albums from 1987-1996.
The Post-Berry Funk. The five albums they were under contract to do after drummer Bill Berry left the band. Covers 1998-2011.
I’ll eventually come back and justify my rankings but for now here are two lists, the first is all 15 albums in chronological order followed by my arbitrary list of best to worst.
Murmur, 1983
Reckoning, 1984
Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985
Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986
Document, 1987
Green, 1988
Out of Time, 1991
Automatic for the People, 1992
Monster, 1994
New Adventures in Hi-fi, 1996
Up, 1998
Reveal, 2001
Around the Sun, 2004
Accelerate, 2008
Collapse Into Now, 2011
My ranking:
Automatic for the People
Lifes Rich Pageant
Monster
Collapse Into Now
Murmur
Reckoning
New Adventures in Hi-fi
Fables of the Reconstruction
Out of Time
Accelerate
Document
Reveal
Green
Up
Around the Sun
It’s a testament to the ultimate resilience and strength of the band that the top five albums encompass their entire 28 year span of releasing albums.
Although I do not listen to it as often these days I still rank Automatic as their best album because it’s a perfectly balanced combination of maturity, experimentation and accessibility. The band went ‘dark’ but lost none of their tunefulness in the process. They also produced some of their most beautiful songs.
Their follow-up Monster nearly matches every strength of Automatic, including having no filler but does so with a completely different sound, as brash, weird and cacophonous as Automatic is quietly majestic. In between the two I’ve placed their final album Collapse Into Now which has the band exiting in fine form with an album that offers a little of everything in an energetic, well-crafted package that recalls their best work while staking out its own identity.
At the bottom of the list is the only R.E.M. album I’d describe as weak. Around the Sun is not a poor effort but much of it has a listlessness that suggests the band was either bored or tired of the whole thing.
Illustrating how whimsically I can change my mind, reference this post in which I ranked the top five R.E.M. albums as follows:
As I love any excuse to make a list this has inspired me to list from best to worst the Pink Floyd albums from 1971 to 1994. I don’t include the pre-1971 material because I am not familiar enough with it to offer up an opinion.
First, here’s the chronological order of the albums:
Meddle, 1971
The Dark Side of the Moon, 1973
Wish You Were Here, 1975
Animals, 1977
The Wall, 1979
The Final Cut, 1983 (minus Rick Wright)
A Momentary Lapse of Reason, 1987 (minus Roger Waters)
The Division Bell, 1994 (minus Roger Waters)
And here is my ranking, with notes attached:
The Wall. This is a sprawling and at times meandering and indulgent album but when it works it works fantastically well and the shining moments are transcendent ones, from the theatrical opening crescendo and fade to David Gilmour’s soaring guitar that concludes “Comfortably Numb”. The Waters/Gilmour work on this album is consistently strong and the album is the better for it.
Wish You Were Here. More a mood piece than any of the albums on this list, Wish You Were Here is bookended by the long instrumental “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and if you don’t like that song you’re left with all of three others to enjoy. Fortunately even these are terrific. “Welcome to the Machine” is creepily effective, the title track fittingly melancholy, with only “Have a Cigar” being a bit ordinary.
Animals. Bookended by the spare and short acoustic track “Pigs on the Wing” this concept album contains one of the band’s longest songs, “Dogs”, which clocks in at 17+ minutes and it’s on the strength of “Dogs” that I place Animals where I do. The song begins slowly then plays through several movements, using sound effects, reverb and more to capture the feeling of alienation, of drowning in an unhappy world where fairness is a rare commodity and loneliness is in abundance. Not exactly make-out music but a mesmerizing journey.
The Dark Side of the Moon. The biggest problem with this album is that certain parts of it, notably the instrumental “Any Colour You Like” are rather dated, sounding very much of the era they were recorded in. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but you can’t help but imagine people grooving out on the shag carpet while listening to this. The classic tracks here are tight and strong and hold up perfectly 40 (!) years later. Sure, “Money” has been overplayed as much as any other 70s FM hit but even putting it aside you still have “Time”, “Us and Them” and “The Great Gig in the Sky”. More than any of the other albums here, this contains Rick Wright’s strongest contributions.
The Division Bell. This was the last album the band recorded and came seven years after the previous. Much like Dark Side it has moments that firmly tie it to its era, with the ringing guitar of “Take it Back” bringing to mind U2 of all things. At its worst it presents some of the same calculated moves as Momentary Lapse but overall holds together with greater consistency. There are no standout tracks here but Gilmour’s reliable vocals and guitar work, alongside solid contributions from Wright, make this a good effort.
Meddle. An odd album that is the final embrace of psychedelic weirdness before the band would establish its more familiar sound. This is a fairly mellow record, apart from the propulsive opening instrumental “One of These Days”, with most songs feeling like the aural equivalent of a gentle stroll. The oddities come in the form of the bluesy “Seamus” complete with barking dog accompaniment, the breezy confection of “San Tropez” (penned by Waters, of all people) and the mostly instrumental track “Echoes” that comprises the entire second half of the album. Over 23 minutes, “Echoes” drifts from Gilmour’s wistful vocals to strange, even unnerving sound effects and back again. There is no easy way to listen to this album. The shorter tracks and “Echoes” could be from entirely different records. If you’re in the mood for a bit of everything, though, you’re set.
The Final Cut. This is more a Roger Waters solo album than a Pink Floyd effort. Gilmour’s guitar is absent from many songs, he provides only one vocal, and the rest of the tracks are given over to Waters’ overtly political and pessimistic observations of humanity. While there is a consistency in both the music and tone, this is not an easy album to get into, but if you give it time you’ll be rewarded by several standout tracks, from “The Gunner’s Dream” to the now-included “When the Tigers Broke Free” which was previously only found in the film version of The Wall.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Why is this ranked last? It began as a David Gilmour solo effort, and indeed a lot of it sounds like Giilmour’s solo album About Face from three years earlier. I have two major problems with the album. The first is the effort to make it sound like Pink Floyd feels overly calculated, as if the female backing vocals, guitar solos, and themes of alienation were items on a checklist. The other problem is the lyrics. While Waters had his excesses and obsessions, he could craft some nice wordplay. Gilmour, even when helped by others, writes mostly in clichés and catchphrases, tackling ‘big’ ideas with trite phrasing. At best the lyrics stay out of the way, at worst they actively work against the song. “One Slip” is a wonderful sounding track, but the lyrics are awful.
I will, I will she sighed to my request And then she tossed her mane while my resolve was put to the test Then drowned in desire, our souls on fire I lead the way to the funeral pyre And without a thought of the consequence I gave in to my decadence
“Drowned in desire”? “Our souls on fire”? And I’m not even touching the whole “drowned” followed by “on fire” part. This is just bad and emblematic of the album as a whole. There are some fine songs here. I particularly like the opening instrumental “Signs of Life”, the sprawling closer “Sorrow” and “On the Turning Away”, which has a quiet majesty, even if the lyrics are junior high-level simple. Overall, this is easily the slightest of Pink Floyd’s albums and far from essential.
What better way to conclude an evening of spamming posts to my blog than to provide a summary of my current state of writing or SOW as I like to call it (starting just now).
I have divided my writing into four categories, each more daring and fancy than the previous!
Category 1: Blog and forum posts Status: Firing on all cylinders
I do this sort of writing every day, without effort and often without thought. Whether it’s posting the latest online gaming bargains on Broken Forum or lamenting my inability to float in water on this here blog, this is the one category that is never wanting for output. Each in its own way helps improve my fiction writing, too, by either simply exercising the writing muscles that may atrophy otherwise or through communal efforts like National Novel Writing Month.
Category 2: The Ferry (2009 NaNoWriMo novel) Status: Like a slow ship steaming along a lazy river
I am slowly working through the second draft of my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel The Ferry. My intention is to do some work on it every day and have it self-published with a decent cover before the end of the year. I will start work on another novel sometime this year, as well.
Category 3: Short stories olde and new Status: Like a car that sat all winter and you wonder if the battery’s dead but hey it’s not, so you may actually get somewhere
On the olde side I am working on cleaning up 30+ short stories with the intention of putting them together into a single volume to self-publish. I have no set timeframe on this and the stories vary in terms of work needed from minimal to ‘maybe this should be buried in the back yard if I had a back yard’. I am also working on new stories as I think of them, as long as they don’t distract from my novel writing. Unless the stories are so super-awesome that they simply must be written. Yeah.
Category 4: Writing exercises Status: Uncertain
I have participated in writing exercises on and off since my days as a callow youth in college when I wrote bad poetry (my specialty) right up to having my own website devoted specifically to the task (which started out nicely but collapsed when I could not keep up the silly pace I had set out for myself). As my last few attempts to gather like-minded people to participate has met with middling success I haven’t done anything of late. I’ve decided on a new approach, which is to semi-regularly challenge myself with a particular exercise, complete it, then invite others to do the same and if they do, more to share and if they don’t I’ve already done my bit on keeping myself challenged and engaged.
Occasionally I get the urge to indulge the drawing ‘n painting artistic side of me and the results are usually halting, uninspired and incomplete. And here’s one of them!
The Unfinished Tree (rejected U2 album, 1987)
This is based on a photograph I found by cleverly doing an image search on the phrase ‘spooky tree’ in Google. The original:
As you can see my early rendering has captured none of the original spookiness and the tree exists in an existential white void, without bound, without limit, without me being arsed to finish the dang thing. Mostly it was an excuse to break out my digital tools and see how I fared with them. I used the Bamboo Fun tablet and Corel’s Painter Essentials 4, a cut-down version of their pricey Painter program. I could see myself getting some traction with this combo if I devoted enough time to it but the chances of me carving out that sort of time is pretty small these days.
Still, I was at least inspired to create a new category of post for this (Creative) so that’s something. I promise to maybe finish you someday, would-be spooky tree.
All I can say is I’m glad this is not how driving works in real life, as nearly every trip I take in a car in GTA3 ends this way.
I never finished the game when I originally played back in 2002 (dig those awesome textures) so I’m going in this time with a specific goal: to collect all 100 packages hidden throughout Liberty City. I’ll also be doing any other bonus activity as I see fit (taxi, ambulance and fire missions, other optional missions, stunt jumps and so on). My goal is pretty much to just do the things I find entertaining and skip as many of the ‘real’ missions as possible. I dimly recall a number of them being quite annoying so I’m happy to avoid them if possible.
My original plan was to play the game as a ‘good’ bad guy but I don’t think you can open up the rest of the city without shanking at least a couple of (no doubt deserving) people so I abandoned that fairly quickly. If all goes well (or especially if it doesn’t) I’l be recording my efforts for posterity on Broken Forum, which has a huge and frightening sub-forum devoted to the Let’s Play format.
I recently finished reading John Dies at the End by David Wong, editor of cracked.com*. This is not a long book but it took nigh-forever to finish reading because every reading session was started just late enough that I’d nod off within 30 minutes. This is not a knock against the book, it would have happened no matter what I was reading at the time.
This is a silly and plot-light tale that began as an Internet thing™ and eventually evolved into an actual book (which I bought via the Internet, thus completing the circle). It follows a pair of dopey guys in their mid-20s as they fight weird-ass (and I use the term literally) demons and other things that threaten to destroy the world as we know it. Apart from an ending that feels a bit like “Uh, how do I wrap this all up?” the journey is fast-paced, absurd and often very funny. The sub-genre of funny horror is ill-served so this is a welcome addition to it.
If you are a humorless monster (and I use the term literally) you may not find this to be a literary masterpiece but that’s okay. There’s already a sequel out for you to froth over. I’m not picking it up yet because it’s still out of my price range but I will eventually. Sorry, Mr. Wong–if that’s your real name (spoiler: it’s not).
* I still can’t decide if Cracked was an excellent alternative to Mad magazine or a shameless ripoff. Probably a little of both. The website is nothing like the magazine of yore, which is not a bad thing. It’s just a web thing.
There’s nothing quite like the sensation of laying down to sleep and finding yourself unable to breathe. This happened a few nights ago when my über-cold left my nose completely stuffed up. I had to breathe through my mouth, which made me dizzy. I eventually fell asleep probably due to exhaustion. When I awoke in the middle of the night one of my nostrils had kindly opened up enough to permit semi-normal breathing.
Worst cold ever.
Also the last post I’m making about it. Colds are pretty boring to read about and if I could capture the misery of the past week in a way that was truly entertaining, I’d be rich. Hmm. I may have to think about this.
Onward to the rest of what should hopefully be a healthy remainder of 2013:
Valentine’s Day is coming up. My favorite manufactured holiday when I was a kid because of the candy. I was especially fond of chocolate-covered marshmallow hearts. Mmm. Now I prefer the day after when all the candy gets marked down 50%. I usually treat myself to something small that I can work off without too much guilt/effort.
Running: This is probably still about three weeks off. I’m going to start stretching exercises to make sure my tendon is ready. The first run will be a short test that will also serve to calibrate my new iPod nano. The best thing about it, apart from the electric green case…
…is that it incorporates the Nike+ sensor/receiver so I don’t need to attach any extra hardware to my shoe (or the iPod). An added bonus is no more infernal clickwheel to deal with, especially one that refuses to function in the slightest bit of rain, making the end of a jog unusually difficult to, well, end. The test run will be done at a track to ensure maximum accuracy for the calibration. In the meantime I’ll try to return to the pool/gym at least a few times each week until the runs resume. Excelsior!
Diet: My weight has steadied out around 156-157 but should start going back down soon as I start packing a modest lunch to work and resist the siren song of the donut. My goal is to be back to my usual weight by my next physical, probably a few months from now.
This site: I have found a few themes I may be able to hammer into something serviceable for my needs. This is a long term project so I’ll probably work away at it a little at a time. I am planning on having a revamped site up before the end of the year.
While I am still not quite ready to return to running I decided to take advantage of the mild ‘n dry weather and do a simulated run around Burnaby Lake by walking the route. I estimated it would take around 3 hours and the pedometer on the iPod said it took 3:04 hours, so I trucked along much as I had anticipated. I even stretched the walk out a bit by taking the freeway trail (which I used for three weeks last summer when one of the boardwalks on the lake was being replaced). By the time I was heading back alongside the Brunette River I was getting tired and a little cranky.
The rounds on the elliptical are helping but I’m clearly not in prime condition. Also I didn’t wear my spiffy new running shoes and instead wore my cheap-o ones that are designed for maximum discomfort. In all, not my best-planned effort but it’s always nice to eat ice cream guilt-free.
I managed to start the sequel to the head cold I had over Christmas last night and like many sequels, it sucks. It didn’t affect my walk but here in the evening I’m feeling tuckered and my throat is irritating me, even more than when I try to sing. I’ll probably head off to bed early and dream of the wonderfully creative things I may have done if I didn’t feel like poop.
In the meantime, here is a stock image of my new running shoes, the Minimus 1010s. They are much like my previous pair but are blue instead of glow-in-the-dark orange. I kind of miss the orange, actually. Reading reviews on the New Balance site, it sounds like I may be looking for another pair shortly after I resume my runs. That would be rather disappointing, as my last two pairs of New Balance shoes have been very durable.
Don’t worry, I still have my calves. They’re right where they should be–above my ankles and below my knees. I am remembering them in particular due to my first trip to the gym last Wednesday. My partner and I headed over to the Canada Games Pool here in New Westminster to do a basic cardio workout that would not stress my Achilles tendon but would help get my flabby self back in shape before I resume my runs.
The pool has a full-featured gym so I paid $48 for a 10-pack of visits and in return got a shiny ID card with requisite horrible photo that could be scanned upon entry. I did my first scan and was set.
The gym area was surprisingly busy but we managed to find a pair of free ellipticals next to each other. Jeff also found a nice young instructor named Ryan who went over the basics of using the machine, as I had never been on one before. It seemed pretty straightforward. I got on, started the timer and began a 25 minute workout. I raised the tension up a bit to 3 (from 1) and reduced the incline down to 3 (from some value I can’t recall). This was done to better simulate a cross-country run instead of a jog up the side of a cliff. Within five minutes my calves were aflame. This is why you exercise regularly, to avoid your muscles crying out in horror at what you are doing to them. Fortunately they warmed up quickly and were fine the next day. I experienced a bit of minor soreness in my upper leg muscles but that was all. Given that my last run was in mid-November I consider this a rousing success.
I opted for only 20 minutes of workout instead of the full 25, not wanting to max it out the first night. I burned 173 calories–enough to take care of the ice cream I’d had for dessert earlier. I burned a few more when Jeff and I played a few rounds of ping pong, shot some hoops and then sweated in the whirlpool. In all it was actually kind of fun and I’m looking forward to our next trip. I may bring my iPod along for the elliptical part, though. It will distract me from constantly looking at the timer counting down, the analogy for which is indeed a watched pot that never boils.
It’s been just over a month since I completed my project for National Novel Writing Month 2012 and I’ve had enough time to assess what worked and what didn’t and put together some thoughts on the contest itself.
First, let’s look at my overall performance in the four NaNoWriMo’s I’ve participated in. I have a 50% success rate:
2009: Finished novel The Ferry in 21 days.
2010: Stalled at 17,210 words on expansion of short story Low Desert.
2011: Stalled at 5,073 words on expansion of short story The Dream of the Buckford Church.
2012: Finished novel The Mean Mind one day early.
The Ferry started life as a short story that started growing into something that might have become a novel had I not abandoned it in 1993. Which I did. When I picked it up in 2009, I dusted off the unfinished beginning, fixed it up a bit and continued from where I’d left off, following a rough plot outline I had written down in my head. The headstart allowed me to finish early but I’d have finished early regardless, as I wrote the thing in a blur. Something else that contributed to an early and easy finish that’s important (as I’ll explain in a bit in reference to 2012’s entry) is this: The Ferry is a straightforward story. It takes place almost entirely in one location with a small group of people and is spread over a mere 24 hour period (less, actually). The entire narrative is as direct as it could be. Things happen as they happen. There are no flashbacks, no subplots, no back story. It’s a monster movie waiting to be filmed (please write or call if you are interested in purchasing the rights. Unless you are Uwe Boll. No, even if you’re Uwe Boll. Maybe especially if you’re Uwe Boll).
2010 was a noble attempt and the short story (originally titled “Hello?”) lent itself to expansion to novel-length. The problem there is I had no real plan on where to take the story beyond its short story roots. I tried writing it with the same kind of narrative directness as The Ferry but ran out of steam quickly.
2011 was a repeat with a different story but with the additional complication of the story being complicated. The short story hints at complexities existing between the waking and dream worlds and I intended to flesh this out but eventually it felt like trying to untangle the cord of your earbuds before getting on the bus. You can either untangle the cord and miss the bus or get on the bus and try untangling the cord as you slosh around against all the other passengers standing around you. Neither option is optimal, so the real solution is to untangle the damn cord before leaving home. Or in terms of NaNoWriMo, spend some time before November plotting out the story, even if you end up deviating from what you’ve planned because going into NaNoWriMo with a complex story and little to no outline to guide you is like going into a dark cellar without a lantern. You will be eaten by a grue.
Which brings me to 2012’s effort. Did I complete the objective? Yes, I wrote 50,000 words. Did I finish the story? No, it did not reach an actual conclusion, unless you consider the last scene a particularly obscure ‘What if?’ scenario where it is left to the reader to imagine the rest of what happened. Unlike 2009 I am not happy with the effort this time. There are parts of The Mean Mind that work very well. The opening third of the book flows well and I was fully engaged with the story in the first few weeks of November. But while I actually had a plot outline this time (having learned from 2010 and 2011) it became clear that this was not going to be a slim 175-page novel. Sure, it also wasn’t going to be a Steven Erickson-alike that would bend the shelf it was placed upon but I soon realized there was no way I would complete NaNoWriMo unless I did some serious compression with the story. Long scenes were reduced to lines, characters were brought in quickly and sketched minimally, ciphers to be detailed later. The plot jumped with a kinetic energy that was not invigorating but maddening–like reading one of those Reader’s Digest condensed novels (what an awful idea those were) that had been further chopped in half again. You know how a lot of people complain that some of Stephen King’s books are too long? Imagine IT or The Stand being 200 pages in length. They just wouldn’t work.
That’s how The Mean Mind felt. By the time I passed 50,000 words I was relieved to be able to stop writing and put it aside. I haven’t looked at it since. I will, eventually, and if I like enough of the skeleton I may try adding flesh to its bones.
But going forward I will make sure that my next NaNoWriMo effort (and I will do it again, unless I’m hot and heavy in the middle of something else) a trifle, something suitably shallow or pulpy, where the pace is brisk, the characters broad and the action worthy of Michael Bay. Or maybe even Uwe Boll.
No, not even Uwe Boll.
Or to put it more simply: I’ll keep it simple. And the story will be better for it.
The good news is I should be running again in about a month, with my Achilles tendon all healed up and ready to go.
The bad news is that means a lot more boring posts about running for everyone to read! At least I’m honest enough to admit I’m the only one fascinated by them.
Despite ending on an injured note, 2012 was by far my best year for running. I improved in every area and ran every month except for December. My only regret is that I missed hitting 1,000 km by a single measly run. So close!
The stats, as pulled from my Nike+ profile:
988.96 km total distance 4:57/km average pace 68,844 calories burned
73% of runs in the afternoon
15% in the morning
12% in the evening
Number of months I ran 100+ km: 7
Month when my overall average pace dropped below 5:00/km: June
Best month: September (4:38 average)
I don’t know why I added the random bold. I just like it.
It’s been weeks since the last update but I continued to toil away on my novel, completing it a day early with an official word count of 50,050.
I give you my tiny jpg award picture:
Woo!
In 29 days of writing I had:
21 days when I wrote over the 1,667 minimum (most was 4,545)
2 days when I wrote under the 1,667 minimum (1,013 words and 12 words, respectively)
5 days when I wrote 0 words
1 day where I mucked up and forgot to add an entry but was probably around 1,800 words
Although I met the requirements of NaNoWriMo the novel is still unfinished and is a structural mess, though at least it’s not a structural disaster. In hindsight I think it was too ambitious to fit within the constraints of the 30 day write-like-a-madman format but there’s enough in there to make a rewrite (eventually) worth pursuing. And it helped reinforce the habit of writing every day (I believe I would have skipped fewer days if the requirement had only been to write and not to a minimum word count to stay on track).
Overall I’m pleased to taken part and to have won but The Mean Mind will be tucked away for now while I go back to finishing up The Ferry.
