The Syndicate

Voting JaggedJimmyJay

He suggested the use of turquoise, but didn't used it in either of his rainbow lists.

To be fair, I remember nothing about it after all this time. That's what my old ratings tell me.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Dream Theater

Images and Words

Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory

Systematic Chaos

Train of Thought
Octavarium
Falling into Infinity
A Change of Seasons

A Dramatic Turn of Events

I really love Octavarium. I think that isn't a popular opinion though.

Dream Theater


A Change of Seasons
A Dramatic Turn of Events
Falling into Infinity
Images and Words
Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory
Octavarium
Train of Thought
Systematic Chaos

Golden wrote:
I really love Octavarium. I think that isn't a popular opinion though.

Wait til you see mine.

Dream Theater

Images and Words
Octavarium
A Change of Seasons
Awake
Train of Thought
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Scenes from a Memory
Systematic Chaos
The Astonishing
A Dramatic Turn of Events
Dream Theater
Black Clouds and Silver Linings
Falling into Infinity
When Dream and Day Unite

G-Man wrote:

MovingPictures07 wrote:I got this idea after seeing the rainbow colored album rankings in G-Man's The Wall (Speed Game) thread.

I'll give you all an artist or band, then you give me your ranking of their albums. We can always take turns nominating bands and artists as well, whatever you all want. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Feel free to use whatever colors you want, but I'm going to be using the following color/ranking scheme, comparable to a 5-star rating on RYM or PA:
Perfect -- 5.0
Almost Perfect -- 4.5
Awesome -- 4.0
Good -- 3.5
Average -- 3.0
Somewhat Poor -- 2.5
Poor -- 2.0
Abysmal -- 1.5
Anti-Music -- 1.0

Rating scale question- Say I have an album I feel is worth a 4.25 (again, I'm grading each song and taking an average for my album score)... Do I color it in Awesome Green (4.0) or in Almost Perfect Blue (4.5)? Would you say that a perfect album is strictly 5-stars or anything 4.6 stars and up? Just trying too hard to be accurate here.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Sounds like a good time for some turquoise.

Rush

This is an incredibly hard one, and one that would change if you asked me again tomorrow, but here goes anyway. Also, some would call me weird for ranking Moving Pictures so low and Presto so high.

Permanent Waves
Presto
Clockwork Angels
Power Windows

Grace under Pressure
Signals
A Farewell to Kings
Hemispheres
Snakes & Arrows
Counterparts
Moving Pictures

Vapor Trails
Test for Echo
Roll the Bones
2112
Hold Your Fire
Caress of Steel

Fly by Night

Rush

Time to kiss any musical credibility you folks may see in me by posting my Pink Floyd discography rainbow. I have Ummagumma as a combined album but also scored and positioned for the live record and the studio record on their own. I wasn't sure how others were scoring them. Nothing fell into the "Good" range, which surprised me. This is a very crude scoring system that I'm using though to evaluate each track on its own and then averaging them together. I'm curious to see how some of my favorite artists fair in this system.

For the record, in using MP's color scale, I'm operating such that point level he listed is the maximum value for the cateogry (in other words, anything between a 4.5001 and a 5 is in the 5.0 color. You can figure it out from there.) Animals and Obscured by Clouds are the only two albums that have the exact same score. I think my spreadsheet put Obscured ahead of Animals because it has an earlier release year. Maybe I'll alphabetized tied album scores in the future.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Wish You Were Here

A Saucerful of Secrets
The Wall
Meddle

Ummagumma (Live Tracks)



Obscured by Clouds
Animals
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Atom Heart Mother
Ummagumma (Combined)
The Division Bell
More

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
The Endless River
The Final Cut

Ummagumma (Studio Tracks)

Since others are just throwing their lists out there, next week I will do The Beatles. I own all of their studio albums except for Yellow Submarine and am much more familiar with how much I like/dislike certain songs than with Pink Floyd. If I can find all the Rolling Stones albums on YouTube, I'll do them after that. After all, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones pretty much set the stage for everything that came after them. Might as well start at the source!

Never mind, wrong thread.

I'm actually more than ok with your list, G. You recognizing the beauty of Saucerful of Secrets compensates your inability to grasp the majesty of Animals.

Who next?

How about Talking Heads?

Remain in Light
Fear of Music

Speaking in Tongues

More Songs About Buildings and Food
77

Naked

True Stories

Little Creatures

Ricochet wrote:I'm actually more than ok with your list, G. You recognizing the beauty of Saucerful of Secrets compensates your inability to grasp the majesty of Animals.

I've only listened to Animals maybe three times in my life. My take on it is that there are really only three full tracks and the two Pigs on the Wing snippets. Sheep is the only song on the album that I loved. The other two main tracks just rambled on for too long for me.

The more you listen to something, however, the more you come to understand and appreciate it. Maybe somewhere down the road I can revisit Pink Floyd and see if any of my ratings change.

MovingPictures07 wrote:Who next?

Fixed it for you.

Guess Who?

I could try ranking The Who, but my list will be controversial I'm sure.

The Who

Quadrophenia

Who's Next

Tommy

The Who Sell Out

My Generation

The Who By Numbers
Who Are You

Haven't heard any of the few others. Quadrophenia is the main album I'll ever spin if I ever want to listen to The Who; I almost never listen to any of the others, including Who's Next or Tommy, these days.

I have to agree here; I am not a big WHO fan, BUT Quadrophenia ranks highly in my favorite album lists. It stands the test of time, while most Who recordings are now pretty dated.

S~V~S wrote:I have to agree here; I am not a big WHO fan, BUT Quadrophenia ranks highly in my favorite album lists. It stands the test of time, while most Who recordings are now pretty dated.

How about one more? That'll give you all three new artists to tackle, at the least.

King Crimson

Discipline
Larks' Tongues in Aspic

Starless and Bible Black
Three of a Perfect Pair
Red

The Power to Believe

Beat
Islands

Thrak
Lizard
In the Court of the Crimson King

In the Wake of Poseidon

The ConstruKction of Light

My ranking of the Belew era is bound to be odd; I don't care. Belew era ftw.

Talking Heads


Tina Weymouth
JaggedJimmyJay
Ricochet

Remain in Light

Stop Making Sense
''77

More Songs About Buildings and Food
Speaking in Tongues
The Name of This Band is Talking Heads

Fear of Music
Naked

Little Creatures
True Stories

King Crimson



In The Court of the Crimson King

Lizard

Red
The Night Watch
In The Wake of Poseidon

Absent Lovers
THRaKaTTaK
Happy with What You Have to Be Happy With
B'Boom

Larks' Tongues in Aspic
USA
THRak
The ConstruKction of Light
EleKtrik
Three of a Perfect Pair

Starless and Bible Black
The Power to Believe
Discipline
VROOOM VROOOM

Islands
The ProjeKcts
ProjeKct Two - Space Groove
Level Five

Earthbound
Beat

Now for the band that so many people call the fathers of progressive metal even though I don't think any of their albums are remotely progressive metal save maybe for 1-2. They're still old favorites of mine.

Queensryche (shut up, I can't get Google to load to find an umlaut)

Promised Land
Operation: Mindcrime

Empire
Tribe

Operation: Mindcrime II
Rage for Order
Queensryche (EP)
Hear in the Now Frontier
Q2K

The Warning
Queensryche (2013)
American Soldier
Dedicated to Chaos

Take Cover

Queensrÿche

What you have to do is copy & paste the name with the umlaut (it works with all diacritical marks)

Yeah I meant I couldn't load any pages that featured the word with the umlaut to copy. My wi-fi is basically a 28k modem right now.

Somehow The Syndicate is the only site that is consistently loading cleanly.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Now for the band that so many people call the fathers of progressive metal even though I don't think any of their albums are remotely progressive metal save maybe for 1-2. They're still old favorites of mine.

Queensryche (shut up, I can't get Google to load to find an umlaut)

Promised Land
Operation: Mindcrime

Empire
Tribe

Operation: Mindcrime II
Rage for Order
Queensryche (EP)
Hear in the Now Frontier
Q2K

The Warning
Queensryche (2013)
American Soldier
Dedicated to Chaos

Take Cover

Wow, my list would look pretty much exactly like this.

Iron Maiden


Powerslave
Somewhere in Time
Brave New World
The Final Frontier
Piece of Mind

The Number of the Beast
A Matter of Life and Death
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
The Book of Souls
Iron Maiden

Killers
Dance of Death

The X Factor
No Prayer for the Dying
Virtual XI

Fear of the Dark

Radiohead

OK Computer
The Bends
In Rainbows
Hail to the Theif
Kid A
The King of Limbs
Amnesiac
Pablo Honey, dragged up by the aura of Creep.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:Iron Maiden


Powerslave
Somewhere in Time
Brave New World
The Final Frontier
Piece of Mind

The Number of the Beast
A Matter of Life and Death
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
The Book of Souls
Iron Maiden

Killers
Dance of Death

The X Factor
No Prayer for the Dying
Virtual XI

Fear of the Dark

CAUGHT SOMEWHERE IN TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME

Iron Maiden

Somewhere in Time
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Powerslave

Brave New World
Piece of Mind

The Number of the Beast

Iron Maiden

Killers

Yes, Somewhere in Time is the best. If you don't think so, you haven't heard it enough.

I have heard some of the rest, but not enough to comfortably place them anywhere, though I doubt the ones I've heard would place above Killers. Need to work on that.

Sigur Rós


Takk...
( )

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Ágætis byrjun

Kveikur

Von

Valtari

Turnip Head wrote:Sigur Rós


Takk...
( )

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Ágætis byrjun

Kveikur

Von

Valtari

I've never heard of this band.

Epignosis wrote:

Turnip Head wrote:Sigur Rós

I've never heard of this band.

Post-rock band from Iceland. It's... not for everyone. But this is my favorite song by them and gives you a good idea of what they're like. I find that it's excellent music for focusing and writing.

Still never heard of them. Ask MP how little I've heard of them.

Oh okay then :P

Turnip Head wrote:

Epignosis wrote:

Turnip Head wrote:Sigur Rós

I've never heard of this band.

Post-rock band from Iceland. It's... not for everyone. But this is my favorite song by them and gives you a good idea of what they're like. I find that it's excellent music for focusing and writing.

Funny you mention them, I was just over at a friend's house playing board games, and her husband was in the other room blasting Sigur Ros on his pretty stellar sound system.

They've got some good music for sure, though I only have one of their albums (Valtari).

Valtari is my least favorite as you can see from my rainbow. Funny, I didn't really think it was possible to "blast" Sigur Ros :P But I'm always alone when I listen to them (#foreveralone).

Turnip Head wrote:Valtari is my least favorite as you can see from my rainbow. Funny, I didn't really think it was possible to "blast" Sigur Ros :P But I'm always alone when I listen to them (#foreveralone).

I say blast, because I could clearly hear it through the hallway, and the quality was excellent. :P

I suppose you're right. I'll save the blasting for 2112.

Turnip Head wrote:Sigur Rós

Ooh oooooh

(#youarenooootaloooone)

( )

Takk

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Valtari

Ágætis byrjun
Kveikur
Von*

*funny thing, I remember defending this album from the their-debut-sucks-ass PA hoards, back in the day, but I can hardly remember the music now, nor would I think anymore that it holds up well to their classics. I have no issue with Valtari, it's pretty pleasing actually and it was the album they promoted back when I saw them live... until they said right, enough of that and resorted to just blasting me into outer space with Popplagið \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/. I think Kveikur is the one that suffers the most from lackluster identity or having any remarkable high.

Sigur Rós

Takk...
Ágætis byrjun

Kveikur
( )
Valtari

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Von

I think "Ísjaki" is the remarkable high of Kveikur, it's probably my second favorite track of theirs behind only "Viðrar vel til loftárása". Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust feels like a bloated caricature of Sigur Rós to me. "Ára Bátur" for example seems to follow the most typical Sigur Rós formula and it actually makes me laugh.

If only to be divisive and uncomforming...

One Direction
Made in the A.M.
Four
Take Me Home
Midnight Memories
Up All Night

I absolutely love Sigur Rós.

( )
Ágætis byrjun
Takk...

Valtari

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Kveikur

Von

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I think "Ísjaki" is the remarkable high of Kveikur, it's probably my second favorite track of theirs behind only "Viðrar vel til loftárása". Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust feels like a bloated caricature of Sigur Rós to me. "Ára Bátur" for example seems to follow the most typical Sigur Rós formula and it actually makes me laugh.

Agree about "Ísjaki" for sure, but "Brennisteinn" helps gives Kveikur an identity too. The first time I listened to the album and Brennisteinn came on as the opening track, I was like "Holy shit what's happening".

I see what you're saying about Vid spilum endalaust, it was like like they were trying for a more commercial sound. It reminds me of Jonsi's solo album, which I like quite a bit more, but I do like some of the shorter songs on there.

Epignosis wrote:Still never heard of them. Ask MP how little I've heard of them.

Exactly.

Seriously though, I can't ever thank Rob enough for what he did for me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what wedding gift I would get for Daisy in anticipation of last August 8th, but nothing was good enough. I began gravitating toward a music box, but I wanted the gift to be unique to us, so I was only happy with the idea if the music box was able to play a Sigur Rós song when opened. I wasn't even sure if such a thing was possible. After some searching, I uncovered that it was, and found a willing vendor on Etsy. I backed out though after just still not feeling totally right about it; the music box sacrificed some of the elegance I desired in order for it to play Sigur Rós, but the real killer is that I wouldn't be able to get it play a particular song that I wanted.

Don't ask why or how, but "Staralfur" organically became the "our song" of our relationship, since Sigur Rós was the band that Daisy and I really bonded over. She had never heard of them before I introduced them to her, and being that music is very important to both of us, one of the first things we talked about was music, and I've shared many bands/artists with her over the years and vice versa. There was something that really struck a chord with her about Sigur Rós though, and it didn't take long before they became the band we listened to when we were together, for a while all the time. Even though Takk... is her favorite album, we both found the beauty of "Staralfur" to be a fitting 'relationship song' for us. If you'd ask either of us exactly how it happened though, I'm not sure we even know. It just sort of happened. We didn't even truthfully consider a different song for the processional for the wedding.

We saw Sigur Rós live in Detroit on April 1st, 2013, and it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen (which is tough to say; I've been to many good concerts over the years) in the beautiful Fox Theatre (the exact opposite of downtown Detroit, it was stunning). It definitely became one of our most treasured experiences together.

So, fast forward to my proposal; I spent months agonizing over how I would do it. In the end, I decided to capitalize on the one thing unique to us, Sigur Rós, and I bought Ágætis byrjun on vinyl, since we had talked about getting their records on vinyl before -- but hadn't yet, since most of them are either relatively or ridiculously expensive. At first I wanted Takk..., since that was her favorite album, but it was way more expensive and realized that Ágætis byrjun made more sense given that it contained "Staralfur". Anyway, my proposal was pretty simple, but I ordered the vinyl without her, taped the ring box real good to the album cover, then stuck it back in the shipping box as if I hadn't opened it. I knew she was off work on a particular Saturday (July 26, 2014), and wanted to surprise her then because I knew we'd have some time alone, and had a whole evening planned (dinner, etc.) thereafter. Long story short, she loved it, and awesomely she had planned a surprise for me that same day; I hadn't thought I was going to see some of my friends (Draconus, Russtifinko in particular) again before leaving for San Antonio a week or so later, especially with Russtifinko having recently moved to Cleveland, so she surprised me with them coming over... anyway, that's a different story, so I won't continue further along that path. It turned out to be the perfect proposal day, even if my plans for after the proposal were completely altered.

All the more reason I wanted the wedding gift to have to similarly reflect our history with Sigur Rós. After backing out of the music box idea, and mulling for a few days, I had a sudden idea. Knowing Rob for almost a decade now (crazy to say), and thinking specifically of his most recent Christmas gift for Roxy in the gift exchange where he covered some of her favorite bands, I knew the man could write, and more importantly, cover music really well. I thought, if only there was some way to recapture that night when we saw Sigur Rós live in concert, but to put a new refreshing twist on it... and I approached Rob with the idea of covering literally the entire setlist (plus "Staralfur" as the final bonus track, since they didn't play that live when we saw them). He was hesitant at first, especially given his relative unfamiliarity with the band (he had heard ( ) years ago but it didn't make an impression), but being the friend he is, agreed to it.

The resulting gift literally was the best possible outcome I could have asked for, blowing away the already very high expectations I had for Rob's musical abilities. And Daisy absolutely loved (and still loves, of course) the gift, and couldn't believe it when I told her at the wedding with CD in hand. I really couldn't be more thankful for the way that it worked out, and according to Rob, he gained an appreciation for the band in the process, so who could have asked for anything better?

Anyway, that's the story of Rob, Sigur Rós, and my relationship/wedding.

Awesome story, Alex.

Turnip Head wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:I think "Ísjaki" is the remarkable high of Kveikur, it's probably my second favorite track of theirs behind only "Viðrar vel til loftárása". Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust feels like a bloated caricature of Sigur Rós to me. "Ára Bátur" for example seems to follow the most typical Sigur Rós formula and it actually makes me laugh.

Agree about "Ísjaki" for sure, but "Brennisteinn" helps gives Kveikur an identity too. The first time I listened to the album and Brennisteinn came on as the opening track, I was like "Holy shit what's happening".

I see what you're saying about Vid spilum endalaust, it was like like they were trying for a more commercial sound. It reminds me of Jonsi's solo album, which I like quite a bit more, but I do like some of the shorter songs on there.

Brennisteinn also got me hyped, but then the rest felt . I'll have to revisit for Ísjaki, I don't recall it being boners.

Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust is like cut in two, I think. The first half is like SR breaks character, but despite goofy, Animal Collective-esque tracks like the opener, I still especially like stuff the Inni meeny diiny dainy whatever second track. Very upbeat and energizing. Then, Festival onwards, it almost slips back into Takk-like comfy slippers and, whilst that puts it on an inferior spot than Takk, it's still comfy slippers moody listening time.

Dom wrote:If only to be divisive and uncomforming...

One Direction
Made in the A.M.
Four
Take Me Home
Midnight Memories
Up All Night

I've never heard of this band.

I had a lot of fun on that project (and frustration at times, often due to my own shortcomings or technical mishaps), but it helped me tremendously in terms of arrangements and "sound chasing."

Alex and Annie's wedding was a special time for our family, getting to meet so many wonderful people for the first time ever, and all around having a good time.

Here's a few tracks for you, if you're curious.

"Sæglópur"

"Brennisteinn"

And my favorite, "Hrafntinna"

Oh my heck... !!!