Relevant from the just passed 1989 (and possibly upcoming 2001) @bestalbumbrackets.bsky.social tourney. For fans of the Boston indie scene and of soap operatic drama… open.substack.com/pub/johnpstr...

A passion project I've been working on... Full documentary coming 2026.

It took me a few times to get thru THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE. Feeling tired today; maybe this wasn't the best choice? After "Dinosaur Act" I kept glazing over. Opening track "Sunflower" and closing "In Metal" were the only songs that made me sit up in attention, tho "Laser Beam" is beautiful.

I could do without having to listen to Basement Jaxx's ROOTY again.

Merry Christmas Eve, finally made the list of my favorite albums of '89 @bestalbumbrackets.bsky.social

1989 fans might spot that Haco, singer of tournament runners up After Dinner, sings on NEW GEOCENTRIC WORLD OF ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE. Not her best work.

@bestalbumbrackets.bsky.social Discovering that 2001 seems to have been a poor year for country but a great year for rock with like, polka and klezmer influences for some reason

Seasonally-appropriate tidings to the good folk of the Best Albums hive.

Need to see the bell curve on this 😁

RIP Mani. Sad to see you go, but A+ on the album cover coffin. www.bbc.com/news/article...

My notes on Grapefruit March, 3rd track of 1st disk: "warbly-echoing distorted singing; all hell breaks loose at 6:30 or so, jamming with kaiju-like shrieks & gum-band strings, distortion, frantic low vol drumming. Guitar shredding, then haphazard noise from 16 min onward. Finally, just feedback"

I listened to 2 of the 3. Quite an experience! I actually quite liked their version of IN C and wondered if something like that could sneak into the tournament.

If we need to I’d suggest that as the one we all rally behind.

i just added some power metal albums to the 2001 Master List to keep @kentmbeeson.bsky.social busy

I am still adding to 1989 😂

I like their version of IN C a lot (and I love that hearing this is how somebody became aware of Terry Riley):

Travis!

Hahahaha I added those because I looking at Discogs and other 2001 lists and AMT have a big following in Japanese psych circles so I merely added all their 2001 releases. Some of you would like the ABSOLUTELY FREAK OUT (ZAP YOUR MIND!!) cover though.

I have one that was an internet only release so I'm not sure if it is qualified. If it hadn't been released we wouldn't have Curve, GIFT which was being held by the record company. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Da...

I use that excuse for LOTS of things,,,,

Love the optimism of the person that suggested three different Acid Mothers Temple albums. Buddy, I know you want to try all the flavors, but, while we're waiting in line to order, can we pick out your super-duper #1 favorite?

Yes! Someone post the link! I have a cat on me!

Are you still taking additions to the master list?

Give them the Elbow you mean

Im normally happy to fly the flag but this was a dark era for British ‘rock’ music - Elbow, Feeder, this Manics record, Starsailor, Stereophonics… be off with them all

It's no Devil Without a Cause

Just anything that's only average. There's enough really good stuff that you don't have to include your 100th favourite album.

Kid Rock is another piece of low hanging fruit

You either die from lung failure or you smoke long enough to become that coworker who keeps telling you to watch Zeitgeist

I concur

I wonder if we could run math on the number of bands with The in their title. I suspect it’s unusually high in 2001 relative to recent years.

Anti recommendations? Okay, can we PLEASE not include Microphone's THE GLOW PT 2 in the bracket? It's SUCH an annoying album.

The ellipses with the extra dots is the "these go to eleven" of ellipses. It's one more elliptical.

honestly, it took me a while to get into it, too. i agree with this: you really just need to be able to absorb the entire album in one go. you can't take it piecemeal. it's a whole work and you need to take it in from start to finish.

not learning anything about matt pike's political beliefs

We got a huge vinyl of Dopesmoker from our Third Man Records subscription. Never listened tho.

happy to see the 1184 love! I'm not much of a metalhead anymore (for various complex personal reasons, tastes changing, and also all the nazis, which windir thankfully were not) but this is one of my very favourite metal albums

Anything that has song titles like "Barely Legal," which takes The Strokes out of the running.

You still can

I hope STP makes the tournament so I can tell the world how I broke up with someone in early 1993 for the grave sin of “liking stone temple pilots” (among other things)

So many….but I saw 311 in the preview of the master list so there’s a start

There is one other thing that would probably help with enjoying the album DOPESMOKER to the highest degree

My recommendation: if possible, put yourself in an enclosed space such as a car or a small room and blast it as loud as is comfortable. I was always a bit back-and-forth on Dopesmoker until I did that, then it really sucked me into its dimension

track two on the Windir album has an accordion + military snare breakdown? okay

Why is five periods (ENDTRODUCING…..) the Wikipedia standard? Discogs entries waffle between three and five periods. How do we know what the accurate number of periods is?! I think we need a weeklong Google pool to help determine what the right answer is.

And the backside of both record sleeves has what appears to be 3 ½ periods — no doubt the work of a sloppy typesetter, combining an ellipses with a period, which strangely have different dimensions created by the font designer.

This has me going down a rabbit hole. My vinyl copy has only … (an ellipses) on the spine, and …. (four periods) on the center label.

Yup. Basically people saw the white stripes (I wish they’d also seen the gories but no) and then assigned the term to any rock that wasn’t metal or hardcore punk or grunge.

Yeah I've never really gotten why people called the Strokes garage. Sometimes they kinda halfway sound similar to the Gories or something but for the most part they're more like post-punk or just straight alt rock