Posts by kilovh

  • Decades in Music

    So, let me throw my $.02 into the ring here.

    First of all, I am a huge fan of some music from every decade since the 1920s. That does not mean I think every decade was created equal, however.

    I think the first misconception we have to put away is that corporate involvement either kills or saves music. This is clearly not true. Sometimes (eg, the 70s) mainstream music is the real deal, the stuff that will last for generations to come, the stuff people will be listening to far into the future. Sometimes (50s, some of the 00s) the mainstream stuff is pap that no one will remember five minutes from now that has no true artistic merit. That is why there has always been some good music, since the 20s. You just have to know where to find it.

    With that preface, here is what I think about the decades since the 60s. These are off-of-my-head impressions. It may be that if I actually went and checked charts for these decades I'd remember tons of things good and bad that I've forgotten. But I'm a musical optimist. There's always more good stuff around the corner, if your know where to look...Also, this is talking more about popular music that feels connected to its time, not to timeless or world music thatm ay have been created then but shouldn't really count for or against the decade. I'll throw in some great live performances for fun and because they really give you a taste for the time:

    ---
    1960s - Genesis. The beginning. The big bang. This is when modern pop music was revolutionized ever by the Beatles and was giving all of its grounding and form. Everything that came after is based on this decade. However, not everything here (Despite the claims fo aging hippies and young hippie-wannabees) is worth the effort. Not everyone that played at Woodstock was a visionary. Not everyone that took drugs and picked up a guitar will be remembered forever. However, there were some truly transcendent and special things going on in this decade, eg Jimi Hendrix, Santana, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Beach Boys, Kinks, etc. etc.

    Best Live Performance: Santana playing Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock:


    ---
    1970s - This was the apex of mainstream music. There was simply no better time in history to own a radio. The hippies had grown up a bit, the record engineering was better, and some entirely new genres took off. For me there are too many great bands from the 70s to count. For example, just in 1971, the world first heard monumental albums by: Led Zeppelin, The Who (at their prime), The Rolling Stones (ditto), David Bowie, Marvin Gaye, Jethro Tull, Yes, The Allman Brothers Band (Duane Allman is the messiah), Funkadelic, Mahavishnu Orchestra, John Lennon (his solo work), Rory Gallagher, America, Can, ELO....This is a decade stuffed full of excellent, excellent music. And I didn't even mention Fleetwood Mac, CCR, Queen, Elton John, Deep Purple, Simon & Garfunkle, Aerosmith, etc etc

    Best live performance: The Allman Brothers Band playing Statesboro Blues at the Fillmore. No video unfortunately, but the best slide guitar of all time.
    ---
    1980s - Mainstream music takes kind of a nosedive but it's okay because we get punk and the beginning of the underground scene. This is when the really really good punk, post-punk, and new wave stuff started coming out. If you were turned into the mainstream all you'd get was michael jackson and synthesizers (though there is some arena rock that is actually great music, eg Queen, Bruce Springsteen). But if you had an ear to the ground, you would have heard some of the greatest artists ever, such as The Cure, The Smiths, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Pixies, Dead Kennedys, The Pogues, Bruce Springsteen, Violent Femmes, the Pogues, Queen, Minutemen, and Queen. And this is not to mention the huge heavy metal explosion with the likes of metallica, iron maiden, and a zillion other awesome bands if you're into that type of thing. [BTW - I am not anti-synthesizer in particular; I'm anti-synthesizer when it's used for BS like disco (which existed in the otherwise sublime 70s, btw) but some electronic music really is fantastic].

    Best live performance: Queen at Live Aid. On many people's lists, this is the greatest live performance of all time. Freddie Mercury is transcendent and the crowd of zillions is in the palm of his hand.


    ---
    1990s - Watershed decade. The mainstream radio stuff actually wasn't bad at all compared to the eighties, but the indie music renaissance was truly getting going and some of its first stars remain its brightest. Some really bad record engineering practices really took off in this decade but that's a discussion for a different time. Some of my all-time favorite albums are from the 90s. Artists include Nirvana, Neutral Milk Hotel, Guns 'n' Roses, Sigur Ros, Oasis, GY!BE, Massive Attack, Jeff Buckley, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, REM, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Rage Against the Machine, SOAD, Weezer, Soundgarden, and that one song from harvey danger.

    Best live performance: Nirvana unplugged in New York playing The Man Who Sold The World. Not much moving and it's played to total silence, but it's so freaking beautiful...


    ---
    2000s - Radio music takes a decided nosedive, mostly due to the influence of hip-hop (the 00s musically only really seemed to start at like 2004 anyway). But oh boy the underground music just kept coming. This is when I got really into piracy so I remember a lot of the play-by-play album releases especially after '06. Daft Punk! Explosions in the Sky! more Radiohead! The White Stripes! The Decemberists! Saltillo! Of Montreal! Battles! Death Cab! QotSA! Wilco! Lady Ga Ga (kappa)!

    Best live performance: Can it be that an electronic band actually performs well live? I'm not sure what to choose for this decade. But I've never heard a crowd go more insane than the one here.


    ---
    2010s - I am at this point thoroughly removed from whatever might be considered mainstream at this point. Almost every time I hear something mainstream it either sound like some nasally imposter trying to be as good as real indie bands or some myrmidon grunting to a beat. (Though occasionally the good stuff makes it big -- Ed Sheeran is good; Fun. is good.) I feel at this point that it may actually be too easy for just anyone to distribute music and it becomes harder to find good stuff not because of corporate BS but because you have to find the people who are generally talented as opposed to the people who just fit some sort of mold. However, in that talented group, you have Real Estate, Bastille, Janelle Monae, Beach House (their album Bloom may be my favorite of the past five years), Bon Iver, Fucked Up, Of Montreal, Vampire Weekend, M83, etc...

    Best live performance: Janelle Monae playing "Come Alive" at Glastonbury, probably. It's for the ages. Amazing.


    ---

    It's hard for me to say what the best decade is, though if I were forced to pick it might be the 70s. My point here is more - there's always good music. Just gotta know where to look.

  • The Hitman Series

    @Sardonic Pickle Blood Money is by a zillion miles the best hitman game. So good. All anyone ever wanted was more of that, jsut expanded. Then we got hitman absolution, which is the best argument for squeenix to never get involved in an action title again (although they did make sleeping dogs which I am currently enjoying)

  • Games you wish you had...

    I'll definitely agree with @LinkSkywalker that FFX had the best mechanics of any FF game. I think my favorite of the playstation era was probably IX, which was the only one I finished sort of in one chunk without breaking for other games and the like. I think the best story of an FF game in the playstation generation is probably XIII. FF6/3 is probably the greatest final fanasy of all time though and I think it may be the one I've spent the most time playing. Speaking of Square Enix, Chrono Cross for playstation was actually really really good, though I think there were only like 12 people in the universe who played it. Doesn't seem as common a purchase.

    I'm not sure what games I'd be most upset to have missed. It actually might be a zelda game or two; it might be super mario 64 which revolutionized the whole world, it might be something else. I'm a bit spoiled in that the PC (plus emulators) has always been my most-used system, so this non-backward-compatability losing games thing hasn't been as much of an issue (except for the awesome DOS games its hard to make work on modern PCs)

  • Emulators: Good or bad?

    I love emulatorrs! Especially considering that I never owned an SNES but have played a whole bunch of SNES games (INCLUDING CHRONO TRIGGER OMG PROBABLY THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME NO TAKEBACKS) and have played GBA games waaaaay after my GBA broke (so much good stuff - golden sun, advance wars....GBA emulator is still my go-to console if I ever wanna play a round of sonic the hedgehog. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance...so much good stuff). Playstation and PS2 emulators are essential for me as well since I odn't have those systems either anymore though I do have quite a few game disks for them. I have tried wii/gc emulation but the usb controller i have is a ps2 layout and it is indeed weird to use with those systems. But for playstation it's great; I really can't complain. My least favorite things about more modern emulation is the way games made for TVs ten years ago look like absolute garbage on a 1920x1080 screen...

  • Bioware, Bethesda, and the fate of Turn Based Battles in RPGs.

    Fascinating. Stop apologizing this is interesting stuff worth reading.

    So you didn't like any of the mass effects, or kotor, or freakin' Jade Empire for that matter which wasn't bad? I mean, this is a diversion about bioware and has nothing ot do with turn-based battle seeing as except for mass effect all these games are turn-based. I'm just surprised. Aside from Jedi outcast and Jedi Academy which are more cult hilts and have the advantage of only well-implemented lightsaber battles in the history of star wars games, KotoR is generally regarded as the best SW game of all time, and I think that reputation is well-deserved. The story is compelling, the character progression seems solid. In fact the only downside to the game might be the problem you're describing here -- there are certain force moves that make even the final boss way too easy and you just end up spamming the same move from halfway through the game until the end. (I actually felt, btw, that KotoR 2 suffered from the bethesda-itis I ultimately dislike, which is why I felt the first one was better.)

    But Mass Effect? Great story, great progression, a skill-based combat system (since it's a shooter), compelling characters especially in mass effect 2, extremely high production values, great voice acting, some open-world aspects, somewhat varied sidequests, persistent characters from game to game (a great feature I'm surprised isn't used more often...)...I thought they were ace. Probably my favorite game series in recent history. No other series imo is consistently as good. I know I'm in a minority about fallout but I guess I just never "got" it.

    But I just thought -- there is a great modern game with turn-based combat, and its name is Transistor. That turn-based system never got old. In fact, just remembering it now makes me want to try more stuff. What a great game. And despite (or maybe because of) it being turnbased I enjoyed it more than Bastion. It's actually a great example of how an action engine was granted much more depth through strategy and turn-based elements.

    Of course, you can't compare the turn-based system of transistor to final fantasy, which is why it didn't even occur to me until now that transistor is turn-based. You move around with limited motion, using moves that you crafted yourself (from tons of different options) to take out enemies who all have their own unique strengths and weaknesses -- watching the character actually perform the move is not the boring part between your choices but on the contrary an extremely satisfying execution of your choices...

  • What was the first game you ever played?

    RPGs have come a long way since then though. Playing FFXII makes me wonder if the turn-based rpg is dead. I suppose the question is - was the turn-based system just a limit of the technology of the time, or does it have its own merit? Because Mass Effect for example is to my mind perhaps the most immersive RPG experience I have ever had and they're third-person shooters. (I suppose the modern competitor against Mass Effect would be the Elder Scrolls games which despite many hours of Skyrim I never felt as attached to. I really don't jive well with Bethesda games, despite the many things they do well. Only game of theirs I've played recently that feels polished is Dishonored. No, I'm not a big fallout fan; fallout seems to suffer from the same insane "We can build an entire detailed universe but we can't make a decent HUD or interface" problems as TES. I always feel like they need more designers on their team. Not imaginative worldbuilders. More nuts-and-bolts type people. Because BioWare games just work and look absolutely gorgeous for their time, whenever they come out. They're smooth as butter. Whereas with Bethesda there's always these flaws that need overlooking, imo.)

Zelda Community is not affiliated with Nintendo®.
Copyright © 2000-2024, Zelda Cavern.
All Rights Reserved.