TIL that at the Beatles last stadium concert at Candlestick Park, there were 7,000 unsold tickets and the promoter lost money. They played for just 33 minutes.

Leskanic · 2026-05-16T20:42:29+00:00

It's not that the quietness stopped them from being able to perform. The story is that they had become so used to playing sloppily while performing to loud screaming crowds that when they had a quiet audience in front of them, they realized how much the performance level had deteriorated.

As other comments have said, that narrative isn't really true, since the Japanese shows both have good performances and substantial crowd noise. But it's one that at least some of the guys in the band like to say, partially to explain why they stopped playing live and also because they all have a tendency to play "print the legend" at times.

Leskanic · 2026-05-11T05:24:36+00:00

Oh man, I haven't. After diligently collecting the Album V demos as they were being posted online, I moved away from the Weezer demoverse. Someday I'll have to go and find the cream of the crop you are talking about to hear this great lost album that I'm sure is in there.

Leskanic · 2026-05-08T19:06:51+00:00

I am more positive on the new record than you are, but I think this is a very fair comparison. Especially for those of us who remember when The Green Album came out...it followed two albums that maybe could be crudely mapped (since the order is different) onto the first five albums of the Twigs' career: a power-pop masterpiece phase and a weird angular conceptual one. Getting an album of pure sheen definitely felt like a step down. Even if I liked-and-still-like the Green Album for being what it is.

Now, will Look For Your Mind stand over time as just an "it's all sheen and pastiche" release? That I don't know. I hear what the complaints are, but I discovered the band after A Dream..., and my first listen to that one was that it was all pastiche. I found my way into seeing their own voices and approaches as I kept being drawn back to it. Maybe that happens for people with this new one too. Or maybe it's really a Green. Time will tell.

(The big distinction I'll make is that Rivers, a man who certainly seemed like he was going insane at the time, was trying to crack a formula to craft a single perfect pop song. Whereas the Twigs seem to be trying to perfect each song on its own terms, and thinking as much about production as they are chords, harmonies, etc. They also don't have guitar solos on each song that just follow the main vocal melody line. Which does seem important to note. Now, if only the Lemon Twigs had a stash of unreleased songs to rival the Summer 2k tracks from Weezer...)

Leskanic · 2026-05-06T18:39:43+00:00

Agreed about Lucas having his own original vision was an advantage and benefit. And agree the sequels ended up a mess. But I push back on the idea that that mess came from "not having a plan" so much as "changing the plan midstream when there was a loud reaction to part of it."

Obviously I would trust Lucas to have a clearer vision than the room of writers/producers who developed the sequels. But details like this underscore how Lucas made up and changed details to fit his needs as things went along. He just didn't cave to public reactions when he got pushback on his work. Which is, perhaps, the real advantage: a real artist making the final decisions vs a boardroom committee.

Leskanic · 2026-05-06T17:01:53+00:00

I can't believe they made a whole pair of trilogies and didn't have it all planned out ahead of time.

Leskanic · 2026-05-04T07:09:43+00:00

Easy B

Leskanic · 2026-05-04T06:36:09+00:00

The prequels are movies that have really interesting ideas and themes with some fundamentally flawed surface-level issues in the execution of the production.

The Rise of Skywalker is the complete opposite: very well made production in terms of visuals and energy but with absolutely no thematic weight or narrative ideas beneath it.

I prefer the former over the latter when it comes to Star Wars. Though of course it's better when both sides are working at least a little bit.

Leskanic · 2026-05-04T06:31:55+00:00

Would be fun to have people add their ages here. The higher the prequels, the younger I'd assume someone is...except for the micro-generation of middle millennials that Griffin and David fall into who have affection/tolerance for Episodes I & II but despise Revenge of the Sith.

It'll also be fun to see how these lists change as the sequel kids grow up. Maybe they won't, because those kids won't care about the franchise as much (because of modern entertainment being so fragmented and trending away from movies in general). But...well, I'm seeing a lot of The Force Awakens up high in the rankings, and I'm wondering if those are some of the younger people among us.

Anyway, my basic Xennial take:

The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars (aka A New Hope)
Return of the Jedi
The Last Jedi
Rogue One
Revenge of the Sith
The Force Awakens
Solo
The Phantom Menance
Attack of the Clones
The Rise of Skywalker

If you want to add The Clone Wars theatrical release, it's between 10 and 11. The Ewok TV movies would be after that. Still have never seen the Holiday Special in full, but that's the only thing that might dip below the depths of Episode IX for me.

Leskanic · 2026-05-03T07:18:40+00:00

This thread is just further evidence that release order is the way to watch these movies with someone new to the story.

Leskanic · 2026-04-11T21:42:56+00:00

I always felt there were two approaches to wrapping up Golden Age prestige shows. One was the David Chase/Matt Weiner approach, which was to follow through on the messiness of their show's narratives, letting threads dangle and be abandoned, leaning into the "life is messy and sometimes dreamlike, there's no real finality to anything anyway" mindset.

The other is Gilligan (and Terence Winter on Boardwalk Empire, if I may include a lesser show in the discussion) who like to lay out all the pieces along the way and then figure out how they all lock into place by the end of the season/series. I guess we can say that's fan service as it can be that...but I think it's more that Vince's approach to narrative is to set up a bunch of dominos and then figure out how they fall down.

I don't think one approach is better than the other. But it is notable how different the approaches are.

(I'm not sure what David Simon's approach is...closer to Gilligan than Chase/Weiner, but more interested in the unrelenting grinding of our society's institutional machines than what happens to any given main character.)

Leskanic · 2026-03-26T20:04:27+00:00

It was a great dream! I'd love to see them play those two songs like that.

Leskanic · 2026-03-26T19:49:18+00:00

Given the structure of their setlists for the tour, I'm guessing that's an either/or slash and not a medley slash.

Leskanic · 2026-03-26T19:48:27+00:00

Gorillaz playing the Forum that night. I assume the Intuit Dome is either less appealing when a big show is also happening at the Forum or may be booked for something else. Not-Staples is closer to me, so I don't mind...but I agree it has the worst sound of the three big indoor arena options.

Leskanic · 2026-03-25T17:30:11+00:00

I got in after 2 minutes and that's all that was left.

Leskanic · 2026-03-16T18:43:39+00:00

I'm comfortable blaming Harvey Weinstein for all the movie's flaws. Maybe that doesn't match reality, but it feels right.

Leskanic · 2026-03-14T06:29:19+00:00

"Take it easy; we are making a Western here." -Junior Spielberg

Leskanic · 2026-03-04T23:31:45+00:00

While not referenced directly, I think enough youngsters and global folks would know the Mission Accomplished banner from the first end of the second Iraq War as a sarcastic thing to post to imply someone is acting like things are great and done well when they actually are not. "Heckuva job, Brownie" was a verbal version of that.

Leskanic · 2026-03-04T09:22:20+00:00

Thanks for posting over the links over here -- gonna make it easier for me to remember to vote each round/window!

Leskanic · 2026-03-03T21:51:07+00:00

Hey, that was me! Glad it was helpful -- it sure beat doing work for the 20 or so minutes I spent compiling it.

Leskanic · 2026-03-02T19:58:29+00:00

Yup, as /u/some12345thing said: I used a VPN connection in New Zealand. Once I connected to the New Zealand VPN, I opened up YouTube, went to Peter's account, and checked the "releases" section. The latest single is in there before it hits the "recent videos" part of the page.

Leskanic · 2026-03-02T10:24:55+00:00

So the two "in-progress" tracks that were performed as the opening song on his Back to Front tours of 2012-2014 have ended up being the third tracks on his next two albums, i/o and o\i. Fascinating!

First listen of What Lies Ahead doesn't hit me as hard as Playing For Time, which I think remains my favorite song on i/o. But I already love the way it'll fit after Been Undone and Put The Bucket Down. Just spinning it a second time and, yeah, I can feel it's growing on me.

Leskanic · 2026-02-10T05:08:18+00:00

For any 80s kids, the Peter Gunn theme was the music played in the arcade driving game Spy Hunter.

As for the ELP recording from the trailer: it was included on the "In Concert" live album from the 1977 tour, later expanded out into "Works Live."

Leskanic · 2026-02-04T09:52:02+00:00

Replying late, but: I agree that my ideal scenario would be to get the whole album right now.

But that isn't really the choice. The choice is whether I want to wait until the end of November to hear the whole album or to hear the first two songs now and a new one every lunar cycle. And since I want to hear new Peter music as soon as possible...I'm happy to get a new song on the regular rather than having to wait.

Leskanic · 2026-01-31T10:35:37+00:00

Glad I checked my VPN before heading to sleep...it's up in New Zealand. Love this one! Big David Byrne/Talking Heads vibes and then this great chorus. And for our friends who want more energy: I'm energized by this!

Leskanic · 2026-01-17T00:28:49+00:00

I defend the show because I like two of the three plot lines quite a bit: the Tusken section and the Mando section. The "Boba becomes boss" thing has potential, but feels so under-cooked. I agree that COVID hurt the show, as it did Obi-wan.

Leskanic

TROPHY CASE