I haven't touched my LJ in almost a year, but I thought this Best Album for Every Year I Done Been Walking This Earth was as good a reason as any. I just hope it doesn't end up like a carbon copy of Tom's. As Tom did also, bold means one of favourite albums ever.

1982: I quite like what I've heard of Sonic Youth's debut self-titled record, but I suppose Thriller - Michael Jackson gets it.
I own a bitchin' version of the "biggest selling album of all time."

1983: Murmur - REM.
I've always considered REM and U2 not very similar bands sound wise but of a similar generational group in amongst the bands I listen to. But I do like Murmur way more than War.

1984: Born in the USA - The Boss
Takes this out by a motherfucking country mile.

1985: Scarecrow - John Cougar Mellencamp
narrowly beats Brothers in Arms. Wow, that was close.

1986: Graceland - Paul Simon.
Poor '86, it's just ... unfair.

1987: The Joshua Tree - U2
I do have a soft spot in my heart for Jennifer Warne's Famous Blue Raincoat. That's entirely through parental osmosis though. I've got to appreciate that phenomenon though, I wouldn't be so into Bob Dylan if it wasn't for my Dad. I'm hoping to get my future son into Beck using this method. I tried to use it with my little brother Joe with Beck and Radiohead, but when got "musically aware" he up and went emo.

1988: I'm Your Man - Leonard Cohen

1989: Bleach - Nirvana
I've never owned or listened to The Offspring, the earliest album I ever had was Ignition. I didn't even buy The Offspring when it was re-released and re-mastered when Smash was super popular. Death of a Dictionary by Public Affection gets a special mention because I'm a loser.

1990: 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours - Green Day

1991: Nevermind - Nirvana
Kind of a no-brainer.

1992: Unlplugged - Eric Clapton
I do have to mention Kerplunk, Core, Automatic for the People, and Rage Against the Machine.

1993: August and Everything After - Counting Crows
Sorry Radiohead, but Pablo Honey is really quite average. I'm sure even you think so by now. Siamese Dream almost got this but August and Everything After is just such a tight focused album and is still probably the greatest debut record ever by any band. Undertow came close but Tool would get better in later years.

1994 (holy shitballs): MTV Unplugged - Nirvana
I can't really explain all these so I'm just list them all:
Dookie - Green Day
Mellow Gold - Beck
Smash - The Offspring
Throwing Copper - Live
Music for the Jilted Generation - The Prodigy
Sixteen Stone - Bush
Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
I will tell you one story about '94 though. Back then when Dookie came out I started telling all my friends at school that I was going to be a "Green Day Freak" - T-Shirts, all the albums, posters, the whole bit. When I Come Around has a real good beat for if you're walking. My Walkman got a lot of use with that album.
When Insomniac came out I was by that stage kind of excited but didn't really like it's first single Geek Stink Breath. I once threw up while the song's music video was on tv, I'm sure it was because of something unrelated but I liked the song even less after that. I've thrown up during two music videos in my lifetime: the aforementioned Green Day song and Roll With It by Oasis, I can't really even listen to the songs now without feeling slightly queasy. After Insomniac Green Day didn't really release anything of substance until American Idiot. Nimrod and Warning were both powerfully avearge.

1995: Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters (Dave Grohl's greatest solo album)
Collective Soul's self titled cd get's a mention and hastalgia kicks in big time with Everclear's Sparkle and Fade. Also Ben Harper came into his own with Fight for Your Mind.

1996: Odelay - Beck
I almost didn't even check Wikipedia on this one. Odelay is what got me into Beck and what has enriched my life oh so much ever since. Bringing Down the Horse, No Code, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi get special mentions though.

1997 (almost bigger than '94): OK Computer - Radiohead
Secret Samadhi - Live
Ixnay on the Hombre - The Offspring (I was really excited about this back then, it delivered too)
Disciplined Breakdown - Collective Soul (perfect, from start to finish)
The Colour and the Shape - Foo Fighters (Dave Grohl's best band album, not counting the Nirvana ones)
Time Out of Mind - Bob Dylan (the best comeback album of all time)
Urban Hymns - The Verve

1998: Yield - Pearl Jam
Honourable mentions: Mutations - Beck, Try Whistling This - Neil Finn.

1999: The Distance to Here - Live
Silverchair's Neon Ballroom is the best album Australia has ever released. S&M is mindblowing...well...the first disc is anyway.

2000: Parachutes - Coldplay
What about that Hybrid Theory eh? Kid A is pretty damn incredible.

2001: One Nil - Neil Finn
I really liked Jack Johnson's Brushfire Fairytales at the time. It's just a shame he went on to release it again complete with all the same songs another three times. The Optimist LP by Turin Breaks I actually discovered after hearing their next album Ether Song. Underdog (save me) is one of my favourite songs of all time. I love Live's V too, I remember calling them a "very powerful rock band" at the time. What a strange young gent I was. 7 Worlds Collide is one of the best albums NZ has ever produced. Definitely the best live album.

2002: Sea Change - Beck
No other contenders here. If I could do more than put this in bold I would. Possibly my favourite album ever. A Rush of Blood to the Head was good though.

2003: Hail to the Thief - Radiohead
I just can't buy a copy of this album that's in good condition. First I bought the special edition in book-like packaging and that got scratched up to shit because the cd sat in one of those paper scratch-everything sleeves. I then bought a copy of the standard edition that must of been kicking around the bottom of the draw at the store, it had massive surface scratches on it right away. I didn't return it because I bought it hardcore cheap and figured 'get what I paid for.' Muse's Absolution is mega awesome. Thirteenth Step is the best album Meynard James Keenan has ever put out (yes, I'm counting the Tool ones.) Also this year I discovered Placebo and Turin Breaks with Sleeping with Ghosts and Ether Song respectively.

2004 - Funeral - Arcade Fire
Auckland Band Eight's Moving is the best album New Zealand has ever produced. As I mentioned before, American Idiot was a massive return to form. Green Day better not go and ruin themselves again.

2005: Guero - Beck
I still call Guero the world's only 'Greatest Hits' album to consist of entirely new material. But it was still the best album released that year. Gramsci's Like Stray Voltage came close though.

2006: The Information - Beck
The Information arrived in my mailbox from Amazon on my Birthday. It's hard to compete with that. Only Skin and Bones came close, and The Eraser was good too.

2007: In Rainbows - Radiohead
In Rainbows got it's physical release on the last day of 2007. What a shit year for music that was.

2008: Modern Guilt - Beck
The year is only half over so this will probably change. Viva la Vida was alright I guess, that title track is awesome. I really hope this year gets better.

I'm sure I've forgotten some here, but this has been fun.

- Danny

I, like wibblepuppy, feel bad when I just fill up my Livejournal with talk about videogames. So today I decided to create a place where I can feel ok about doing just that.

Video-Matic

- Danny

The phenomena of "Nintendo thumb" has evolved somewhat: whenever I play Metroid Prime 3 I get whole frikkin "Nintendo hand". My pointer hand sometimes cramps and seizes up like crazy (especially during bosses), and the rest of the time both my hands are shaking like crazy. The game is intense on the extremeties. Aside from the pain involved the game's gesture based controls are incredibly cool. It's amazingly sastifying ripping shields off with the grapple beam, and I love opening those doors with the twisiting, turning, pulling, pushing and pumping.

Hyper mode is an interesting strategic addition to the Prime series. You can use it to make bosses a shit load easier...and harder....all at once!

http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks_vol4_index.jsp

This makes me excited about the idea of form explaining function. I'd like to be in the kind of job that had discussions like this:

I remembered an experience I once had when I was working on Mario Bros. (Gunpei) Yokoi-san⁹ had asked me, “What’s something that wouldn’t be able to move if you stepped on them?”, and I replied, “Well, that’s a turtle”.
From that point on, ideas began to continuously flow outwards, and wetalked about things like “I think it would seem more natural if you’reable to step on the turtle.” and “When you step on it, should itsinsides come out?” In the end, you were only able to knock over the turtle from the bottom, and were not actually able to step on them.

Galaxy in 15 days.

- Danny

I just paid for Radiohead's new album!

ELECTRIC!

- Danny

I have a new bed. Hopefully I will no longer wake up in a crater with back pain.

- Danny

cnn news report

I suspect Giant involvement.

- Danny

The Simpsons movie was super-mega-power-hyper awesome!

I've been telling everybody I can today that I have forbidden my little brother Joe to see the movie intil he becomes a Judge of the Supreme Court. Sadly he's the only who has got the reference so far.

- Danny

With today being just a week to go until Deathly Hallows I have decided to begin shutting myself off from the Internet and any other forms of media that may be potentially dangerous. Operation Shutdown will run from now until the moment I finish the last page.

So far I've found that Grawp and Bellatrix will feature heavily, the trio ride a dragon at some point, and some readers may absolutely loathe the book due to the nature of its' plot. This angers me (and probably now you as well..sorry) because it may not seem like much but to me it's just too much, I really don't want to kill this book like I did the fourth movie*. So I decided to act a little sooner than I did in the lead up to Half Blood Prince.

Now it goes without saying, but as I am shutting myself down from a world of people I don't know I would of course not appreciate sensitive information being passed to me from people I do know. I can't really threaten anybody in any way because I'm such a wuss, but suffice to say I won't like you at all for, I dunno, a good couple of years.

The main focus of Operation Shutdown is to make this an enjoyable book for all of us, in which all of it's twist and turns are truly what they are meant to be: unexpected.

- Danny
(If you pre-ordered at Borders Chch, I'll see you at 11.01am.)

BTW - O.O.T.P the movie doesn't really deserve a full length post. On the whole it was kinda dodge, making many of the same mistakes that dogged the last two films. I will see it again though. I always see Harry Potter movies at least twice in an attempt to judge them more as a movie than an adaptation. And then I always buy them on DVD regardless of quality because I'm crazy like that.

* I looked at so many stills from that movie in the months leading up to it, in the end the movie itself was just like a moving Slideshow.

Another Harry Potter movie.

Shall I expect good things or fear the worst?

Report to follow.

- Danny

Weezer's break up didn't last to long, new album out in 2008.

The Verve have also reformed. Tour then studio.

Pokemon Diamond isn't everything I hoped for. It pissed me off the other day and now I'm not playing it. I also did a little to much training at the start and so far the gyms have been an absolute piece of piss, which is of course boring. I definitely plan to get back into it someday.

Spaced is incredible, well the first season is. So far what I've seen of the second season is good but not quite as brilliant.

Transformers was a lot of fun, but ultimately really silly. It hasn't affected my childhood at all. My childhood still feels great because the TMNT movie kicked so much ass.

I finally saw Pirates today. The best part was the Harry Potter trailer at the start.

I got Hot Fuzz on DVD a few weeks ago, I really can't decide whether it or 28 Weeks Later is the best movie I've seen all year. It keeps me up at night. I think I like them both equally but for completely different reasons.

Spiderman 3 was good but does anyone else think the 32 year reign of the American Blockbuster is almost over?

"What doesn't kill you, that makes good TV...What does actually kill you, that makes good YouTube."
- My friend Brywn Williamson

- Danny

I haven't updated in ages so I thought I'd cover off some stuff that's going on.

Work: my manager is leaving soon and naturally being the 2IC I figured I'd put my name in the hat for the job. However I found out yesterday that the job is most likely going to an existing manager whos transferring down from another store. I suppose it makes sense to take someone who's already a manager over someone who needs to be trained up that little bit but I know some of my staff'll be angry because I've had a few of them tell me there's no reason I shouldn't get it. My current manager told me to not to take it personally and try to look for another job to quickly because a new store is opening up in Northwood soon which will of course need a manager. I'm not really a fan of travelling that far for work everyday (my commute is already close to an hour as it is) and I've tried twice now (counting this time), while being with the company, to get promoted in an environment with a staff that I know and trust but everytime I've been promoted thus far I've had to transfer between stores. I've now worked in four different branches in the space of three years (it's my anniversary on June 1st...I know, scary), I'm like a kid growing up and going through to many schools: It's so hard to make friends.

Technology: My in-home surround setup is more or less complete thanks to this little bad boy I bought off Trade Me for a cool $350. My movies finally sound proper, and when there's an absence of sound on any particular speaker my new amp doesn't pump a buzz through it that could wake a dead guy, which is so refreshing. Now I say that my setup is more or less complete because for reasons only known to Microsoft Service Agents my Xbox 360 is playing up with it's whole Three Rings of Doom thing. A Windows Computer at least sometimes has the decency to tell you what it's error is, a 360 just freezes lots and then displays three red lights and expects you to go "oh dang, I guess it's off to Australia for service for another month." I can't understand the logic behind making such a flawed machine so dogged by production faults right from the get-go. Y'know I wouldn't mind if they had make the Xbox 360 even bigger than it already is just so the Ram and Motherboard weren't cooking each other all day. I've heard reports that the first thing the service centre do with a 360 when it gets to them is simply move the ram module so this stops happening. You get it back and for a while everything's hunky-dory but then the Ram module naturally shifts back into place and then the whole process repeats itself.

Social: I discovered an awesome area of Christchurch last night: S.O.L Square with the lights and bars and couches and stuff. Fat Eddies is a great bar! 48Hours was not as fun as last year, but I think we ended making a better film than last year. Fuck my friends Mark, Pete and crew made an awesome movie! I just can't wait to find out whether both of us go to the finals or not.

Music: Linkin Parks new album is disappointing. But Linkin Park are a silly band so I never really expected all that much. I'm going to go out today and buy LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver becuase they are my new favourite band. I shall tell those of you that are uninformed what it's like.

My quest to finish all the Harry Potter books before Deathly Hallows comes out is not going to well. I think I need to put in some time outside of bus trips. Goblet, Phoenix and Prince are really long books.

- Danny

It finally arrived today!



It's warm, it fits nice, and it says beck on it. Expect to see it a lot.

Does anyone want a new copy of The Terminator on DVD, Amazon keep sending me things that aren't the real special edition with documentaries and stuff even though thats whats described on their page. I figure I'm just gonna try and find it in a real world shop somewhere.

I saw Dylan Moran tonight. He was fucking awesome. It was the biggest stand up comedy gig I've ever seen. Yes, even bigger (and much better) than John Cleese. I also caught up with some friends that I hadn't seen in ages and renewed old ties. Me and my friend Alice agreed to go to Order of the Phoenix as soon as it comes out. We managed to miss For Your Consideration even though we both really love Christopher Guest movies, so we're gonna try our darndest to see this. You see Alice is one of the few people in the world I can have in-depth conversations about Harry Potter with.

I fixed my sound issue I was having with Vista, I bought these a while ago. If I turn my computer up too loud it fucking hurts.

- Danny

1. When is Doug Pray going to make a documentary about emo's?

I'd watch it.

2. You know how you get covers of songs and remakes of movies, well has anyone ever covered a book*?

3. Oddly there was an interesting topic bought up on More FM breakfast the other day: can you actually get to an age where you are too old to eat Chezzles?

- Danny

* The only example I can come up with is King James covering The Bible. Oh and also, I'm not talking about old time storytellers with that passed down by word of mouth shit or old time stories that are retold over and over again.

At the last two movies I've been to there were no ads of any kind. Just trailers then movie.

Jack Valenti just died.

It seems he got his wish.

- Danny

Speaking of Death: I had a scare today: I heard the words Keith Richards, died today, and ninety-one on the radio's morning news while at work today and became incredibly worried and wondered if I had heard it right for the rest of the day. I did think it was kind of strange that they said he'd lived to be 91, no one is really sure how old that guy is but still...that's too old. Anyway, when I got home I found out it was actually Keith Richard's mum that died, which makes more sense. Of course every two-bit journalist who thinks they're witty out there is wondering if he's gonna snort her as well. Some journalists are idiots.

I was real hardcore bored today so I just thought I'd check to see if X-Entertainment was still running. I was very suprised to find it still there and being regularly updated, still by it's founder Matt no less. So I read a little, wasn't overly impressed, but put it into my Firefox bookmarks anyway.
Y'see about 5-6 years ago X-E and WWDN were undoubtedly my two favourite haunts on the internet and really inspired the birth of DannyRambles. So in effect, this journal might not even be here without these internet sites. Back then was also the height of my Videogame Message Board phase (GFunkMonk89, where are ya bud?). I've often thought of getting back into these, maybe not videogame ones but Forums in general, they were so exciting. Especially when I got into arguments (you know it Omega_Weapon!)

Vista - I recently installed it and I like it. It works nice and looks nice. So far I have only found one really big sound channel related fault that I can kind of alleviate by getting a decent sound system for my computer to replace the three cheap sets of speakers I have to comprise a 5.1 setup.

Btw:


Thanks Mugglenet!

- Danny

I take it everyone has seen these by now:

US
UK (Children)
UK (Adult)

I think it's time to calculate how long it will take me to read 1-6 again so its all fresh in my mind.

- Danny

Why has it taken me so long to discover Arcade Fire?!

I bought Funeral after only hearing Rebellion (which is my new favourite song) and I love it!

What I'm wondering is: Is Neon Bible any good?

What I've read is mixed.

- Danny

My Keyboard came back from repairs* today, it works just fine, although its still a little bit out of tune which I discovered today turned out to be exactly half a step. My first thought as to why I was out was that the majority of songs I played along with must be actually played on piano's tuned down half a step, a practice quite common in guitar circles - infact it's practically the basis for the careers of Guns 'n' Roses and Live. However, before tuning the Keyboard down I put 8 crotchet beats of middle C into my Midi making program and attempted to match that with my middle C, the result was that my keyboard's default tuning was sharp against this program which just generates it's notes at perfect pitch and has no way of tuning those notes other than Transposing, which just effectively maps each note on to the key next to it. I've never seen the purpose of doing this, maybe some more musically able person can explain it to me one day.

Having my Keyboard away was hard. I pulled out my ageing dusty Acoustic Guitar named Carlos (on account of the brand) because I've always enjoyed just tinkering around making music when I'm bored. I had forgotten how fucking sore my fingers get when playing Guitar. At least Piano keys are for the most part smooth and soft, if you haven't played Guitar for a while then the fret-board is like a barbed-wire fence and pressing down on that wire and moving your fingers up and down stings, grates, and makes your fingers fucking bleed. Ted Nugent has said in interviews that when he was learning he'd practice every day until his fingers bled, and when he looked down one day and didn't see a pool of blood below his guitar he realised he was a good guitarist. That's fucking gross. And also kinda of Emo. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to one day get those calluses back on the tips of my fingers that used to make Guitar playing so easy, but I've mellowed out somewhat nowadays. I find teaching myself the Keyboard much easier.

Although I haven't really truly picked one instrument over the other, a lot of that has to do with not being very good with either (monkeykingjoe says I'm amazing on the Piano but as far as I'm concerned I'm powerfully average) so I haven't decided which instrument I can do more on. My Keyboard is capable of making more artificial noises which replicate different instruments but I certainly know more playing techniques on the Guitar to vary the sound I get out of it so I still get enjoyment out of both instruments. One thing I've discovered is that regardless of what instrument you replicate Keyboards have this strange way of always sounding exactly like a Keyboard even if its a Piano your Keyboards set on, the notes always sound kinda fake. Whereas with an Acoustic Guitar, if it's got a new set of strings on it then it sounds rich, full, and amazing - and with proper amplification it can sound even better. It can only of course only sound like one instrument, because that's what you pay for it to do, but it always sounds real**.

---

My two favourite songs at the moment are Interstate Love Song by STP and The Day I Tried to Live by Soundgarden. I'm on a real Alternative/Seattle trip at the moment because I'm reading Five Against One: The Pearl Jam Story. I was on the bus one day reading and a particular passage in the book got me really excited about listening to Alive again. So I stopped the random songs my Mp3 player was playing and used it's incredibly slow and archaic browsing menu to find Alive. I was incredibly underwhelmed both during and after the song, it just felt boring. After switching my MP3 back to random the next song it picked me was Smells Like Teen Spirit, which was just as exciting and awesome as it was when I first heard it well over a decade ago. This little musical moment didn't make me think anything special. I just kind of made me stop and go "hmmm". When a friend of mine (who's not the biggest Nirvana fan) first heard You Know You're Right he said "that's crap, it sounds just like Alice in Chains," and I said "Well at least it doesn't sound like Pearl Jam." He didn't quite get me because he is one of the biggest Pearl Jam fans I know but my point was of course that it sounded different, different to every other rock band with a Vedder hard-on.

Its a bit of a dilemma really because when I read Dave Grohl's biography I could listen to Nirvana when he was talking about that and move on to Foo Fighters later on in the book all the while getting great pleasure from the music all over again, but when I'm reading this book I'm loving the book side of things but I just can't get back into the music. Believe me I have tried, over the last couple of days I listened to a lot of what used to be my favourite PJ songs to try and get excited about who I'm reading about but I just can't find anything really striking about the music. Obviously Eddie Vedder's voice is phenomenal (well pretty much based on Springsteen's - which is far from a bad thing***) but musically most of Pearl Jam's songs are just bland formula rock songs. The album they released last year for instance was severely mediocre. I'll finish the book, but I don't think I'll listen to much of the music while doing so.

---

In tecnological news: My free copy of Windows Vista finally arrived but I've discovered I can't install it yet because my Nintendo Wifi adaptor won't work with it all, apparently their engineers are currently working on a solution. Until I get a Wireless router this is my only way of getting my Wii and DS online, which I something I really don't want to give up anytime soon. I purchased two new games electronically recently: A Link to the Past on the VC and Symphony of the Night on XBLA. I think A Link to the Past is the first VC game that I have actually now paid for twice: once on the VC, and once in actual real life (with insurance money from some stolen Atari Lynx games at a Kmart store in Porirua in about 1992/93). I clocked LTTP again just recently which was a buggy and painstakingly hard to control journey on an emulator so it's nice to have a version of the game that's a little closer to the real thing. But I'm not playing that just yet, what I am playing and loving is Symphony of the Night. You can have your PSX version back homagenz because I think I'm further on the XBLA version in just two days of playing**** than I was on that.

I don't know if I've talked about this before but the other day I finally finished Final Fantasy IV. A game I've been playing on and off across several different platforms for maybe the last 12 years or so.

- Danny

* I've never had very good luck with repairs: They said 2-3 days with my Keyboard and it turned out to be about a week and a half; when my 360 was away they said 2-3 weeks...turned out to be a month and a half. I got a free game from the MS Rep out of it though.

** My friend Callum has a name for people who talk like this, usually in groups in dark corners at parties: Guitarrr Wankerrs.

*** When I first heard The Fuse off Springsteen's album The Rising it had been a while since I had heard a Springsteen song and I thought "Cool! Eddie Vedder's guesting on this!" What a dummy I was.

**** I'm on holiday you see.

Hot Fuzz is one of my favourite movies of all time.

- Danny

Old guy comes into work today and asks me about Ipod's. So I says, knowing there are loads of different types of Ipods out there, "is there a particular model you were after?" He says "Well I've been doing some reading about one of the I-River ones."

Christ, I'm sick to death of viral marketing...although I suppose mind-share is truly the culprit here.

- Danny