When do bands release their best albums?

I was in a discussion about the best albums released by various bands and it got me thinking how there is probably a numerical sequence of "best" albums depending how long it took for bands to reach their peak. This musing also gave me a reason to fish out some CDs...

There's a sequence here

Often a band's first album becomes the high bar all their other music gets measured against. There are good reasons for this - those albums are usually developed over a length of time, forged in difficult circumstances and without too much input from commercial interests. But for other bands it takes a while...

In terms of first albums, it might not objectively be their "best" album musically, but I personally don't think the Killers have bettered Hot Fuss in their subsequent output.

Similarly, the only Oasis album I can be bothered listening to is Definitely Maybe. Garbage's eponymous first album is their best, with their attempt to copy it (Version 2.0) and try to do something different (subsequent albums) never reaching the same heights.

However, some bands only break through with their second album.

How to Make Friends and Influence People is Terrovision's best album in my opinion and it was their second album. It is a lot more polished than their debut. The same could be said for Nirvana's Nevermind, if grunge could ever be called polished. That's the album that helped Nirvana break through into popular consciousness and it became the seminal grunge album as a result.

Parklife was Blur's third album. It wasn't just their defining album, but also became the album that defined Britpop. As a band they tried to move away from it and from Britpop in subsequent albums, but never quite managed it. 

Fully Completely was The Tragically Hip's fourth album. It's widely regarded as their pinnacle and was a lot heavier than the preceding three albums. The Hip then went in a radical new direction for their next album, Day for Night, trying to find a new distinctive sound.

The Joshua Tree was U2's fifth album released as they became the ultimate 80s stadium band creating the ultimate stadium anthems. My favourite U2 album is actually their eighth one, Zooropa. (People go on about Achtung Baby as well and that was their seventh album but I think the hype about that album marking a 'new sound' for the band is over-rated. Zooropa was the step beyond that a lot of fans didn't really engage with.)

Metallica's "black album" was also their fifth album. Purist fans might disagree but this is the album with mainstream appeal and meant Metallica became more than just another metal band.

The cover wasn't all black!

Diesel and Dust was Midnight Oil's sixth album. Beds Are Burning was the international hit, which is strange because the pure Australian-ness that came through that song and the album should have made it less accessible than their previous records. 

American Idiot was Green Day's seventh album and relaunched the band. I think its their best, and I say that as someone who bought Dookie back when it was new. The individual members of Green Day had been through a lot of problems and in some ways this album was a hard reset. It gained them a huge new audience of young fans and even inspired a musical.

Automatic for the People was REM's eighth album. The debate over which album is their best album could last all night, but this is the album with several singles that remain their most played songs. 

So those are some best albums numbered one through eight. Does anyone want to nominate a band's ninth album as their best?

Bonus picture - getting out my CDs I discovered a relic sticker of a shop that doesn't exist any more!

Playability

Often when you talk to someone frequently the same topics come up again and again. With my little brother it's the subject of "playability" in computer games. As far as we're concerned you can forget your fancy graphics and whatnot, what really matters is whether the game is playable.

My proof, if proof were needed, is Zelda on the Super Nintendo versus Zelda on the N64. I loved Zelda on the SNES - except I can only play it with Oasis' Definitely Maybe on in the background (long story, but for me the two go together). But on the N64 it was a so-so rpg, with huge distances you had to cover to get anywhere. It didn't look as good either. Zelda on the SNES was cute. On the N64, it was humdrum. Basically the "better game" lacked playability and effectively killed off Zelda for me, although the screenshots on the Nintendo DS adverts have almost re-converted me.

Recently I've been playing PacMan on Facebook, which is further proof that graphics only get you so far and it's 'playability' that counts. PacMan has been around for almost three decades and yet it knocks many other games into a cocked hat. When I teamed up for a game of Halo with Irony Boy, I loved it, but Destroy All Humans 2 wasn't my bag. One had "playability", the other didn't. Wii Sports is the defining moment in Nintendo's triumph of "playability". Of course the graphics are something else too, but there's a reason Nintendo keep bagging awards for Wii Sports - it's simply great to play.

My favourite top thirteen most playable games

Arcade/Spectrum/other truly ancient consoles
PacMan
Batty
SNES
Super Mario World
The Legend of Zelda - a Link to the Past
Super Star Wars
Game Boy
Tetris
Super Mario World 2 - Six Golden Coins
N64
Mario '64
F-Zero X
X Box
Project Gotham Racing
PlayStation 2
Zoo Puzzle
Gamecube
Super Mario Sunshine
Nintendo Wii
Wii-Sports

So what games do you rates most playable?

Writers and editors

The next issue of the magazine is pretty much done from a writing point of view. Now it’s in for editing – a hugely important part of the process. I used to hate having copy I’d written neatened up by an editor, but over time you kind of get immune to it. And recently I’ve been reflecting on how it’s very useful to have someone cast a critical eye over what you write and make sure it’s tidied up.

It’s easy to spot the moment when a writer, or other creative, stops listening to the editor and begins to believe his or her own hype. Here are a few examples…

Example #1 JK Rowling
I risk the ire of Clare for daring to comment on the great JK, but truth to tell her books were better when they were edited to a readable length. But after ‘the Prisoner of Azkaban’, Rowling went stratospheric and no editor was going to tell her ‘look, love, you’ve got to cut this down a bit.’ Cue ‘Goblet of Fire’, which seemed to go on and on and had one of the most ridiculously unlikely twists at the end involving a character who was actually someone else in disguise.

Then the films came out and Harry Potter was suddenly accessible to the majority non-reading population. And JK Rowling decided at this point that she could write epics.

But she can’t.

At least, not if ‘Order of the Phoenix’ is anything to go by. A good editor would have cut about a third to a half of the 500+ pages, got rid of the side stories which added nothing to the basic tale, and produced a good book as a result. Instead all the lickle kiddies had to wade through pages of turgid filler to get to the good stuff. It was so bad I haven’t read book 6 and won’t be reading book 7 either.

Example #2 Oasis
Oasis’ first album remains one of the pinnacles of British rock. It’s got everything – soaring, powerful guitar riffs, Liam’s rock and roll snarl, clever lyrics, all wrapped up in a bundle of decent songs.

But then the Britpop bubble expanded, with Oasis at the centre. I didn’t personally like their second album as much, although it did contain the still-hummable Wonderwall, and one or two other classics. But they were more into slagging off their rivals, saying offensive things in NME, partying and sacking drummers by this point. With nobody around to rein them in, because they were Oasis and weren’t going to be told what to do by anyone, they were able to set their artistic sides free. And what have they done since? Absolutely naff all.

Example #3 George Lucas
Let’s not get into the ‘how did the prequels go so wrong’ discussion here. But let’s ask the question, why does George Lucas feel the need to go back and rework his original films? Not only did he stick a load of stupid animals into the Mos Eisley scenes for cheap laughs in Star Wars, he completely cheesed up the end of Jedi, and hashed up Sy Snootles’ best musical number ever with an annoying new character called Yuzzum.

Then to add insult to injury, in the special edition DVD set he replaced Jeremy Bulloch’s voice in Empire Strikes Back with the antipodean twang of the guy who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones.

But of course, Lucas is never one to miss a marketing trick. So, just when you thought you’d bought your last set of Star Wars DVDs, he releases a new set which contain the original versions as well as the ‘remastered’ (insert your own suitable description here) versions. Then he has the cheek to say "I don’t know why anyone would want to watch the original versions…" Because they’re better, George, that’s why. Now why don’t you go and get funky with the original cut of Howard the Duck or Willow.

Example #4 Peter Jackson
You take Lord of the Rings’, one of the most loved books ever written in the English Language. You manage to turn it into three films, which amazingly please the die-hard fans of the book and your average cinema-goer. Now the world is your oyster. You could do pretty much anything you want to.

You go and re-make King Kong…

Quiz answers

To appease Ab who has been cursing me for putting on a quiz, and to illuminate everyone else, here are the answers to last week's music quiz.

"Lay back, head in the grass; chewing gum, having some laughs; yeah, we were having some laughs" Sterophonics: Dakota (specifically the live version off the Live from Dakota album. If you ever doubted the 'Phonics were Welsh, listen to the way they introduce this...]

"I'll die when I'm done..."
Gnarls Barkly: Crazy

"under your skin feels like home; electric touch on aching bone"
Snow Patrol: You're All I Have

"still care about your hair and the car you drive; doesn't matter if you're sixteen or thirty-five"
demigods of rock Bowling for Soup: High School Never Ends

"ambition got cast aside; thrown away when the batteries died"
more Welshies with The Automatic: Raoul

"don't stop and don't look back, uh huh; 'cos your love's like a heart attack, c'mon"
Supergrass: Kiss of Life

"I never really gave up on breaking out of this 2 star town"
Killers: single of the moment, Read My Mind

"I'm sick of working all week for people I cannot stand"
Even more Welshies, Lost Prophets: Everybody's Screaming!!! (possibly the only song with three exclamation marks in the title?)

"there's no profit in ever being right, we gotta fight some more"
Ocean Colour Scene: Profit in Peace

"kill all the fags who don't agree"
Green Day: Holiday, from the awesome American Idiot album

"dance if you wanna dance; please, brother, take a chance"
Oasis: The Masterplan