Making music, remembering music, ordering music, great TV

Internet Todo List for Enthusiastic Thinkers, S2E06

Four things:

• Classic Albums, wherein the performers and producers who made some really great pop music explain how they did it, is on Netflix Instant right now. I highly recommend the one on Steely Dan’s Aja. The Apostrophe one is great too, if Zappa is your jam.
• Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring celebrated the hundredth anniversary since it premiered. I collected great reading on the Rite from various sources. What I enjoyed most was the all-day stream of back-to-back interpretations of Rite of Spring. I was surprised that I could listen all day, finding new and interesting things in each interpretation, whether it was of the orchestral or “four hands” piano variety. I guess that makes the Rite my desert island album, per se.
• “Fifth studio album” happens to turn up several great albums: Blood Sugar Sex Magick, Janet, Diver Down, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Joshua Tree, So, The River, etc. I was surprised how hard it would be to pick one of these albums as the best fifth studio album of all time.
• Breaking Bad is really, really good television. There’s an episode in the second season, “Better Call Saul”, where an entirely new character is introduced. It’s a brilliant episode because this particular character jumps fully-formed into the plot. In just one episode, we find out who he is, what he does, what he won’t do, and what his motivation is. This show is worth your time to binge watch, though I recommend cutting it with something light-hearted like Archer or Arrested Development.