Friday Night Relaxer: Triple J’s Hottest 100 1993-2012

This is my first Friday Night Relaxer for a while… since June 2011 to be exact. They used to be among my favourite blog posts to write and to be honest since stopping writing them I have never really felt like a “blogger”. A blog has to have that personal element to lift it from just a collection of columns (or in my case, graphs).

So I’m going to try and get back into the swing. I’m also going to try and restart my “Flick of the Week” Posts, because the last one I did of those was .. ahem… 108 weeks ago.

This weekend Triple J is doing its hottest 100 of the past 20 years.

It’s kind of an odd music period for me. For the first 10 of those years I was fairly well invested in music, but the past 10 years old-cootdom fairly well mugged me and had me switching over from Triple J to your more easy listening stations. To be honest I was probably in that potion well before then, but that was the time I stopped even trying to resist.

Oddly, because my daughters like music and my wife still refuses to settle into the rut which I have so nicely made, I probably know more music now than I did 5-10 years ago. Most weekends we have V on listening to the Top 40. The good things is V is guaranteed to have a top 500 of the 80s and 90s running most weekends, so I’m fairly safe from the dangers of knowing too many of the lyrics of the top 10.

When I did my first draft of this list I realised I am terribly middle of the road, even when I am trying to be edgy. I re-did the list to try and pretend to be more edgy. I ended up with the same list, but with one more U2 song. So, yeah that was a fail.

And with that here’s my list. Mostly I came up with by looking at the Hottest 100’s of the past 20 years, and a few others that I just like. I left out a few that I nearly put in to look coolish – like Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”, and I left out Powderfinger's “My Happiness” because I guess I felt it was a bit too middle of the road and I already had enough of that in there.

There’s nothing from Oasis, which back in 1995 would have seemed impossible. No Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails. No Jeff Buckley either, because I couldn’t chose a cover version to be one of the best songs. Nick Cave’s “Into my Arms” was in the list, then out. I’d probably change the list next week, but oh well here it is (no particular order… I think)

1. Pulp – Common People

Look, just don’t even argue with me. This is the song of the 1990s. It just is.

Sure Smells Like Teen Spirit might be the song of the early 1990s, or perhaps Losing My Religion, or perhaps Creep, or maybe… look. Forget it, none of them are as atypical 1990s as this. The only one that comes close is Pulp’s Disco 2000. This song is the most listened song on my itunes playlist. Mostly I think that is because when I go grocery shopping I put my iphone on and this song invariably is in the genius mix of any song I choose (the same applies to The Smiths “This Charming Man”).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this song.

2. Hole – Doll Parts

I don’t particularly like Courtney Love, I never bought a Hole album. In fact if I was forced at gun point to even hum another of their songs I’d be in strife; maybe “Miss World”. Probably I’d start out humming it and end up humming this song.

I don’t care that this song was written and recorded before Kurt Cobain died, the lyrics are brilliant and to me they capture the grunge era as good as any song.

I love a song that seems to wear its heart, spleen and lungs on its sleeve and yet also contains the line “I fake it so real, I am beyond fake”,

And when she absolutely howls, “And someday, you will ache like I ache/Someday, you will ache like I ache”, then Love is either finding as much deep pain to reach that sound as any singer before her, or is she one of the best signers at faking it. Either way I don’t care. 

3. Radiohead – Paranoid Android

Part of me really wanted to hate this song. When it came out I read so many over the top orgiastic mentions of it in Q and other music mags that really. Vomit. Please.

I am not really a Radiohead fan. I didn’t even try too hard to like Kid A. And well after that I tried even less.

But geebus this song has it all. Given in my view the greatest song of all time is The Beatles, “A Day in the Life”, it’s little wonder I love this song. It feels about 3 songs slammed together with no sense of care that they fit, and yet fit they do in a glorious amalgam of pain and joy.

And geez, “When I am king you will be first up against the wall” is a line that wins me over with every listen. 

4. Greenday - Good Riddance (Time of your life)

For crying out loud, really Greg? This 2:30 min piece of treacly pap?

Yes. Maybe because it reminds me of the last episode of Seinfeld. Maybe because it also reminds me of the last episode of the first season of The Panel. It’s a song that make you want to go through your photos and make a movie with this as the backing track. Who gives a stuff that it’s about a break up.

This isn’t a song I search for on my playlist. But when it comes on I never give it a skip. And at 2:30 min it doesn’t wear out its welcome either.

5. Arcade Fire – Wake Up.

I won’t lie. I had no idea about this song until I heard it on the trailer for “Where the Wild Things Are”. Maybe I’m including it just to prove I have listened to at least one new song in the past 10 years. There’s not much rock music anymore that deserves to be put along side anything written before 2000, but this one has a great rhythm to it.

6. The Shins – New Slang

Yep, I came to this through “Garden State” – a not very good film with a very good soundtrack.

Do the lyrics mean anything? Probably not. I’m pretty sure I’ve been singing them wrong these past 5 years. I’m not a big one for getting the lyrics right. I still sing the wrong lyrics to Kids in the Kitchen “Current Stand” and I got that on a tape for Christmas 1985.

But this song just is a wonderful, lazy, languid, easy sound. It reminds me of when I was at university, and that’s pretty impressive given I left university 8 years before this song was released.

7. U2  - Beautiful Day

Yes it’s U2 and you all hate U2.  Stuff you. I don’t. I threw in my lot with them back in 1986 and I’m not about to change now. When this song comes on the radio I turn it up and I start smiling.

Look I could keep going, but there’s no way I’m convincing anyone. This is my list so get your own.

8. The White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button

Was a toss up between this and 7 Nation Army, but I like the beat on this better. And the video. Maybe I also like that The Simpsons parodied it. Maybe it’s here because I don’t want to appear as old as I really am.  This or the Arcade Fire would probably be the first one to drop.

9. James – Laid

This came out in my final year at uni, and it’s about the most fun song ever written. Is it a “great” song? Nah. But it was a great one to dance to and sing loudly with your friends when you’re up late, young and have had just enough to drink to make you think life will always be this fun.

10. Augie March – One Crowded Hour

Like Bolero it just keeps building that same rhythm over and over. The intensity of the song continues to build and by the end all the emotion of the song is laid bare. Love it.

And so there you go. That’s my 10… I think…

Friday Night Relaxer: Vale Borders

I first encountered Borders in 2001 when my wife and I visited friends who were living in Vancouver. I think I spent about 3-4 hours in the Borders and I probably drooled most of the time. So I was a bit sad to hear this week that all the stores in Australia were closing.

Back then in 2001 I was in total awe.

My God the books!

Living as I did in Cairns at the time, which is not exactly replete with City Lights type bookstores, it was a joy to be in a place where I could think of a book I had been searching for in Australia and voila there it was (so yep, thank you I will buy that copy of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes). I bought my cup of coffee, read a magazine, then sauntered off around the store, found a collection of William Goldman’s essays from Variety (The Big Picture), sat down in one of the very comfy chairs, and read the whole thing.

I then bought it.

I read another book – and also dozed for a bit (we had arrived the previous day and I was pretty jet-lagged), and then went searching and found a copy of The 42nd Parallel by Jon Dos Passos (bought it), and left thinking this is as close to heaven as I’m going to get.

I’ve always loved bookstores. When I was a kid and we’d go shopping in Adelaide I would happily stay in a bookstore while my parents went off around the rest of the Westfields. At that stage I wasn’t even that big of a fiction reader, but I would happily look at the books on sport, or biographies or history section. Even the crappiest chain store bookstore was bliss for me.

When I went to Japan as an exchange student this love continued as I found some excellent bookstores in Tokyo that had copious amounts of English books – it was actually that year that I really discovered fiction.

And so when I encountered Borders in Vancouver and another in LA and the Barnes and Noble in San Francisco (and also the magnificent City Lights), I was as happy as a book lover could be (apparently there were other sites in Vancouver, LA and San Fran which also made the trip worthwhile).

When Borders opened in Adelaide, I was rather overjoyed as each year when we went home for Christmas I would stock up on books. Though if I was honest, the Borders in Adelaide didn’t change my buying habits much because I would often end up buying the books from the great Imprints bookstore on Hindley Street or the Mary Martin Bookshop on Rundle Street. If I am also honest, the Borders in Adelaide (and the one in Sydney) never really had that great welcoming vibe that did the bookstore in Vancouver. Neither store ever had the come on in and saunter around, grab a book and have a read, buy it if you like it vibe.

They sold coffee though. Gloria Jeans coffee…

When the Canberra store opened however things did feel better – it was just one floor – a wide open expanse. It had a great kids section where someone would often be reading stories on weekends, and my book crazy 5 year old (at the time) daughter was in raptures. It was her absolute favourite store (this was before she discovered Smiggle).

But as time passed I realised that we would go each week and let my daughter do some colouring-in and browsing of the kids books, but my browsing became less and less, because the content in the shop began to shrink. A shelf here and there was taken away. It wasn’t much, but it was noticeable. It went from being a store where I could come across a book I would likely not find anywhere else to one where I would say – you’re kidding they don’t have a copy of Bleak House? No Crime and Punishment?? No Solzhenitsyn at all???

We would buy a book for my daughters (they had a good supply of the “That’s Not My…” books that my youngest loves). But I stopped buying. A couple years back I wrote a blog post called Ten Books Needed in the Perfect Bookstore. It was a bit of a response to Borders lack of content.

Back then I also wrote  a blog titled How Much does that Book Cost? in which I despaired at the lack of logic in the price of books, noting that in Borders a copy of Winton’s Cloudstreet which came out in 1991 cost $29.50, but his latest work Breathe (which had just been published) cost $27.50. And of course a couple shelves away I could get Our Mutual Friend for $18.99, but Oliver Twist for $9.99.  

I wrote how I could go next door to JB Hi Fi and find logic in the price of DVDs and CDs (you never for example expect to pay more for Achtung Baby which came out in 1991 than U2’s latest album – unless it was a special remastered re-issue, and even then it would likely be the same price as the latest release not more). Similarly you don’t pay more for the DVD of the first Harry Potter movie than you do for the most recent.

Logic. Wonderful thing.

But of course that is not the only reason I stopped buying books there – the actual prices themselves were absurd. With the Australian dollar where it is shopping at The Book Depository with its lovely nil shipping charges is just too good to resist.

Booko has become one of my most visited sites as I compare prices across the world and buy with a couple clicks.

The close of Borders will nonetheless be a sad occasion, but when I went in on Wednesday lunchtime after hearing the news that it was closing the place felt pretty soulless. And what’s more the 20% off didn’t make anything more enticing. I grabbed a couple kids books for my youngest daughter. Went looking to see if a copy of Barnaby Rudge was there (one of the few Dickens I don’t own), it wasn’t. And so I left.

It will be sad because the place will leave a big hole in my daughter's life – she truly loved racing down the back to the kids’ area. But for me, the book addict, it won’t cast too much of a pall. I will still go out each weekend to the great second hand bookstores around Canberra,  and also to the fabulous Book Grocer in Kingston which is staffed by people who know books, and which has great books at great prices – $10 for a copy of Roger MacDonald’s 1915, why thank you, yes I will buy that!

There are a number of reasons why Borders failed. Yes the Parallel Import Restrictions play a part – but that doesn’t explain why Borders in the US also went belly-up. It is bizarre to think we could even care that Borders is going. Its demise perhaps makes You’ve Got Mail now officially the most dated movie of the 1990s – remember the book chain owned by Tom Hanks that run Meg Ryan’s little bookstore out of town was modelled on a Border’s type chain – so now, not only is no one meeting anyone through email, neither are massive bookstores chomping away the little guy.

Obviously the internet beat Borders. But I don’t think it did itself any favours. Borders reminds me a bit of Channel 9. Under Packer Nine was always the biggest and the best. Yes it made a profit, but being Number 1, and the biggest and the best seemed more important than being the most profitable. Let Channel 10 play the low revenue, low cost game. Nine was big. And then it was sold to bean counters who slashed and burned as they tried to cut costs and make a profit and well being “Still the One” seemed less important. And so the ratings absolutely tanked across the board.

Borders had to be big, and had to be well stocked, had to offer big service – story readings, coffee, comfy chairs. You had to want to go there because it was BIG. In the last couple years, yeah it’s been big in size, but has felt small in scope.

Floor space is pointless if there feels like more space than books.

But maybe bookstores are dying. I still seem to spend plenty of time in them – the Dymocks in Canberra central is nice and has a “we know books” vibe. So too does the Paperchain bookstore in Manuka (another favourite of mine). If the big bookstores are dead, but the smaller, independent ones (even though I know Dymocks is not) remain, I don’t think that will be too bad a thing. 

Have a relaxing weekend (I know I’ll be relaxing in a bookstore).

Friday Night Relaxer: Record Books

A couple months ago I wrote a piece for the Walkley Magazine on 10 Things You Need to Know to Blog Your Way to Success (success, obviously being a pretty flexible term).

Rule Number 5 was Be regular 

Ironically, since writing that I have probably been less regular than I ever have in the past 2 and a half years (3rd anniversary comes up in July). The regular irregularity continues tonight, as this post was meant to be a piece on some favourite novels of mine. Life, as it always does, intrudes and so I shall have to hold that over till another week. I wanted to post something however if only to arrest the irregularity of posts. 

And so instead I shall direct you eyes to this rather wonderful idea that someone I follow on Twitter (by the name of Crackers_76) linked to today.

It is the page by a guy known as “Cee Gee” who has redone album titles as though they were books. It is one of those genius ideas that you come across every now and then on the internet.

Now I am on record as believing you truly do and should judge a book by its cover. I’m also pretty strongly into analysing  movie posters. But record covers have never held much magic for me. Perhaps because we never had a record player growing up and so it was just the small cassettes that I had, which never really conveyed a great sense of art.

But if you had to tie me down and get me to answer the question though, I would have to say my favourite record cover is “London Calling” by The Clash:

It just conveys everything you need to know in that one picture. The referencing of Elvis Presley is perfect, but combined with the absolute riotous anarchy of the guitar about to be smashed, it is rendered perfect.

Just as with Presley in 56, this one in 1979 was a real you either get it or you don’t cover.

You’re with us or against us.

And when it comes to The Clash, I’m most certainly with them.

But as I say, record covers have never grabbed me like book covers or movies posters.

I can see an old edition of a book I read in High School and will get a rush of memories more than I would if I saw a record cover from the same period. Probably it is because I am rather obsessive about books and movies, but less so about music (I think I saw those who were music obsessives and knew I could never match them!)

However this idea of turning album covers (or more correctly the album titles) in to books is genius. And I recommend you go to the guy’s page and have a look (and check out as well the cool photos has has taken featuring people holding album covers).

Here are my favourites. I think they perfectly capture what could easily be the spirit of the album’s name (especially when he used the real names of the singers as he does with David Bowie and Prince).

          

Have a good weekend – I’ll try to get back some regularity soon!

Friday Night Relaxer: The Best Trilogies of All-time

Ahhh “trilogy”. Is there any phrase more likely to gladden the heart of a movie fan? That knowledge that a good first film has not totally been ruined by a sequel and thus the studio has consented to make one more film in the hope of eking a bit more cash.

Back in January when I did a list of the best Pixar films of all time I said of Toy Story 3 – “it is without doubt the greatest 3rd film in a trilogy ever”. After boldy making such a statement I knew I would not be able to leave it rest. I also started thinking about what is the best trilogy of all time – a much tougher question given you have to weigh the merit of all three films – such a quandary becomes most stark when you encounter The Godfather trilogy.

Screenwriter William Goldman once said that all sequels are whore’s movies – meaning they are only ever made for money. That is true to an extent – after all there’s a reason George Lucas hasn’t explored the “Willow” galaxy to the extent he has the Indiana Jones or Star Wars worlds.  Sometimes though – such as with Mad Max 2, a sequel can be an improvement (perhaps) on the original because the first was on the cheap and the second allows the filmmakers to do everything he or she wants. Sometimes though this extra money can lead to Mad Max 3.

But while this year there are more sequels being released than ever before (Box Office Mojo has it at 27 this year compared to 19 last year), we need not get too snooty about sequels – after all Shakespeare had no concerns churning out Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3, and also Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Antony and Cleopatra is a virtual sequel to Julius Caesar. A good sequel can still be a good film.

The first problem in deciding to examine the best trilogies and best third films etc, is to remember them all. This was proving to be a fairly annoying enterprise, until I remembered the good folk at Box Office Mojo have a page for “franchises’. Now I have been very liberal with my use of the phrase “trilogy”. I haven’t included the Harry Potter films because the story obviously did not end with Number 3, but I have included Twilight and Narnia series because this far they only have three (the next Twilight film comes out in November – incidentally up against Happy Feet 2). Similarly I’ve kept in Star Trek even though there are many of them, mostly because I feel the first three do feel like a nice story arc. Ditto the first three Alien films, but the Halloween, Friday 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and James Bond series are not.

Other series where the fourth film has come a long way after the third – Indiana Jones, Die Hard – are in. I try my best to forget there even is such a thing as the fourth Indiana Jones film, so that works out well. The Rocky first three are in as well, because with the end of the third a nice circle had been completed, and if it were not for the fact that Rocky needed to win the Cold War for us (and I think I speak for all of us when I say, I am glad he did) the series probably would have ended there.

Other were tricky – the Hannibal Lector films, for example. Not really a trilogy, but I thought bugger it, and so put in the first three with Anthony Hopkins. Other films like the Sergio Leone “Dollars Trilogy” of spaghetti westerns are not strictly a trilogy, but I love them, so they’re in. There was a Jaws 4? Oh dear yes. So horrible, so let’s pretend there wasn’t and call it a trilogy.

All in all I came up with 61 trilogy series.

The way to judge them? Well I could do it myself, but you may be shocked to know I have not seen all of the Blade films, nor all of The Santa Clause films. So instead I have left it up to the Rotten Tomatoes scores. Sure Rotten Tomatoes is not perfect, and in some way I prefer Metacritic – but both have their faults – Metacritic for example gives Superman II a score of 99. And I doubt anyone, even director Richard Donner, would give it that high a mark. I also could have used the imdb scores. But I feel they are too compressed, and also too fanboy-centric. So Rotten Tomatoes it is. I must acknowledge there is a bias towards older films – mostly because there are fewer critics from which to gain an average score, and also because generally only good older films get reviewed. 

But hey, let’s not get too precious about it.

Before we get to the good ones let’s dispel a few myths. As a rule the second film is not the best film of a trilogy, even if The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the Star Wars trilogy and Mad Max 2 is the best of the Mad Max film, or even if Aliens is the best of the Alien films. Far and away the best film of the trilogy is usually the first. Out of the 61 films the first film had the best Rotten Tomatoes score of the series 49 times. The worst film? The last – that happened 34 times.

Only in five trilogies was the “worst” film the first one – Jackass, The Phantom Menace, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Mighty Ducks and Step Up

Ok now, let’s have a look at the Rotten Tomato scores of the Top 10 worst first film of a trilogy – ones that obviously did not generate sequels due to artistic merit but lots of cash:

Trilogy	First
Mighty Ducks	12
Step Up	20
Big Momma	30
Underworld	31
Porky's	32
Home Alone	43
Jackass	49
Twilight	50
Blade	55
Free Willy	55

The Mighty Ducks scored 12 on Rotten Tomatoes, but $50m box office in the US for a $10m budget means give more – especially when they don’t get any more expensive to make. But as you can see even the 10th worst gets a 55 score, which isn’t horrible.

The biggest differential in quality is also interesting. How many times has an excellent first film been destroyed by the sequels (yes, The Matrix, I’m looking at you)? Here are the top 10 series with the biggest differences in quality from best to worst:

Trilogy	High	Low	Difference
House Party	95	0	95
Alien	100	10	90
Jaws	100	13	87
Hannibal	96	15	81
Major League	85	5	80
Crocodile Dundee	88	11	77
Meet the Parents	84	9	75
Beverly Hills Cop	84	10	74
Superman	94	24	70
The Santa Clause	80	15	65

Yep – House Party the first got a 95 score (no I haven’t seen it either) But by number three it was scoring zero. Alien III did not quite live up to the brilliance of Aliens, and neither did Hannibal ever look like winning the Oscars that The Silence of the Lambs won.

Of course having little difference in quality of the three films is no guarantee of greatness. For example the difference in Rotten Tomatoes score of the first three American Pie films is only 7, but I doubt given the high is 59 and the low is 52, that will have you rushing to buy the box set.

But enough time now to unveil the Top 10 best third film of a trilogy of all time:

Trilogy	Third
Three Colors: Red	100
Toy Story 3	99
The Good the Bad and the Ugly	97
The Return of the King	94
The Bourne Ultimatum	93
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	89
Mad Max III	81
The Revenge of the Sith	80
Clear and Present Danger	78
The Return of the Jedi	78

As you can see, we are not talking the greatest films of all-time. By and large, when filmmakers get to the end of the trilogy they are really struggling to sustain any narrative. The first does because the Three Colors films were conceived as parts of a whole. The Good the Bad and the Ugly, as I say is a bit of a cheat, and The Return of the King is really just the end of the whole big long film that happened to be split into three parts. That Toy Story 3, a film not even conceived of when the first Toy Story was made achieves such excellence is a pretty major achievement (and also shows I wasn’t too far off!).

For your amusement, here are the best 2nd films in a trilogy:

Trilogy	Second
Toy Story 2	100
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior	100
Aliens	100
Evil Dead II	98
Terminator II	98
The Godfather Part II	98
The Empire Strikes Back	97
The Two Towers	96
Spiderman II	93
For a Few Dollars More	92

Again Toy Story is at the top (given a pretty good indication of which finishes top overall! What you also see here is that the quality of the best second films is a long way above that of the best third films. I have never seen Evil Dead II, but have all the rest, and apart from Toy Story 2 and For a Few Dollars More, these are my favourite films in each of the series (though I may reconsider on The Godfather Part II).

But enough. Let us see the Top 20 all time best trilogies (all 61 seemed a bit of a stretch!)

	Trilogy	Average
1	Toy Story	99.7
2	Colours Trilogy	96.7
3	The Dollars Trilogy	95.3
4	The Lord of the Rings	94
5	Mad Max	92
6	Star Wars Original	89.7
7	Evil Dead	89.7
8	Indiana Jones	89.3
9	Terminator	89.3
10	The Godfather	88.7
11	Star Trek	86.3
12	Jason Bourne	85.7
13	Jack Ryan	82.7
14	Spiderman	81.7
15	Alien	78.7
16	Back to the Future	78
17	Lethal Weapon	76
18	X-Men	75.7
19	Rocky	74.7
20	El Mariachi	73.7

Toy Story just nabs it over Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Blue, White and Red. Evil Dead gets in there for horror fans, and even the execrable mess that is The Godfather Part III isn’t enough to keep that series out of the Top 10.

My Top 10? Here you go:

	Trilogy
1	Toy Story
2	The Lord of the Rings
3	The Dollars Trilogy
4	Star Wars Originals
5	Jason Bourne
6	The Godfather
7	Indiana Jones
8	Terminator
9	X-Men
10	Alien

I must admit I made that selection very quickly. The first two Godfather films are so good I am prepared to go through the third. And why no Three Colors trilogy? Well because I… ummm… haven’t seen them.

And with that I shall duck out of the way from all the scorn from film fans everywhere!!

Have a great weekend