Last week's chart had no new albums in the top 10, so I did not review anything new.

Despite being released for six months, Dookie by Green Day took a while to reach the top ten in the charts. My memory is a bit hazy, but I feel like I became aware of Green Day and this album roughly around this time 30 years ago when I was a beginning 9th grader in high school. At the time it was incredibly cool that this album was made by a band from my home town of Berkeley. It was recorded in Berkeley and the cover art (click here for a high resolution version) had many Berkeley and East Bay landmarks:

• A BART train
• The Chevron Richmond refinery and oil tank farm
• UC Berkeley's Sather Tower (a.k.a. The Campanile)
• The ASUC Student Union building
• A few London Plane trees
• The East Bay hills behind campus

Dookie is probably one of my favorite albums. At the time of writing I've listened to tracks off the album over 500 times. This album definitely has the ability to transport me back to my youth when feelings were bigger and responsibilities were fewer. This album should be in your collection to listen to whenever you need a bit of punk in your day.

Squeaking in at #10 is Candlebox by Candlebox. They were formed in Seattle around the same time as much bigger groups, such as Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam. This album did quite well, but they never reached the same heights on subsequent albums.

I was never that much into Candlebox. I suppose I heard a few of the songs off this album on the radio, but it never made a big impression on me. 30 years later listening to them again my opinion hasn't changed. It's still not that exciting to me. I'll probably never listen to this album again.

Rising to the #3 position, the Forrest Gump Soundtrack is made up of, except for the Forrest Gump Suite, entirely non-original songs. The movie covers 30 years of Forrest Gump's life, from 1951 to 1981, and the songs were chosen to evoke different periods of American history that compliment the on-screen action.

If you click on any of the various online music providers linked at the top of this post, you'll find that none of the links go to full and complete albums. For likely dumb licensing reasons the streaming albums are missing songs. It's dumb because most, if not all, the songs are already available on the streaming platforms, but just in other albums. For example, here is a playlist a user on Tidal made that looks to have all the songs in the movie (although the order looks to be a bit off). Furthermore, you can still buy the soundtrack on physical media (*) which indicates that the licensing agreements are still active.

I have seen the movie and I find it entertaining, and in particular, I think the music helps frame the different periods in American history Forrest Gump experiences quite well.

The album itself is a good collection of American music spanning the 30 year time frame of the movie. Most are genuine hits and there's no filler or pointless covers unlike other soundtracks I've reviewed before. Of all the soundtracks I've reviewed so far, this is by far the best. The only proviso to the album is that on its own, e.g. if the movie never existed, because the songs cover such a wide range of Americana, they are a bit scattered thematically. But as a way to recall the movie, if you want to do that, it works well.

(*) At the time of this writing, you can buy a cassette tape version for nearly $90! Compared to the $14.48 CD version, which is better in nearly every respect, that's quite a premium.

Last week there was no un-reviewed album in the top 10. This week we jump to the #2 album, which is new to the list this week: Voodoo Lounge by the Rolling Stones. I don't think I need to introduce the Rolling Stones at all. They are one of the most successful and popular rock bands of the last sixty years. If you don't know who the Stones are, I don't know what you're doing on the internet and reading my website. How? Just, how?

By count, the Stones are in the top ten of my listening history over the last 18 years. Below is a histogram of my listens broken down by year. It looks like the last few years I've somewhat reduced my rates, but I think this has more to do with my focus on trying to find new music I like rather than disliking older music. I definitely still like the Stones and I will still continue to listen to them.

Voodoo Lounge is not the best Stones album, but it's not bad. The first two songs, Love Is Strong and You Got Me Rocking each get a fair amount of radio airplay. Both are on the compilation Forty Licks, which I'm pretty sure I purchased in CD form around the time of release in 2002. Voodoo Lounge itself is just fine, and it's worth a listen. The Stones have many truly great albums that you should definitely check out.

Hitting #7 on its first week on the charts, Who I Am by Alan Jackson is pretty standard mid-90s country.

This kind of country has never been "my jam," and this album has not changed my opinion. The songs on this album are not awful, not great, but again, not for me. A few of the songs off this album are on Alan Jackson's 34 Number Ones album. So, yeah, nothing special.

In summary, this album gets a big ol' "meh" from me.

Peaking at #2 this week is the soundtrack for the animated movie The Lion King.

I'm pretty sure I did not see this movie in the theaters when it came out. I was a 14 year old and animated children's movies were too uncool for me (not that I was a very cool 14 year old, to be honest). As it happens, just recently I took my two children (tell that to my 14 year old self) to the re-release of The Lion King in theaters, which I think was the first time I ever watched the movie from beginning to end. I already had a pretty good idea of the arc of the story, both because of the films popularity, and also because it's based on Hamlet. Similarly, I have never watched Titanic, but because of its popularity I am pretty sure I know all the various plot points (also, the boat sinks).

The Lion King is a good movie that at only 88 minutes is shockingly short when compared to modern movies (the live-action The Little Mermaid is 135 minutes long!). The star-studded cast of this movie basically guaranteed the public's interest, and the execution of the plot, characters, and music propelled it to one of the biggest box office hits ever.

Watching the 30 year old film in the theaters it struck me how computerized animation has changed animated movies. The Lion King was hand-drawn, meaning that each cell had a limited amount of complexity. It's not practical to have to redraw complicated scenes hundreds or thousands of times, each at slightly different angles. When I look at modern movies, animators can design and place complicated 3D objects in the digital world just once, and the computer handles rendering that object for all frames. Obviously, this allows for much richer and detailed animated worlds, but there's something to be said for the restrictions that hand animation puts on movie makers — they need to find ways to make a visually meaningful frame some other way.

As a soundtrack, this album is fine. There are some catchy songs and they're fun to listen to outside of watching a movie. Soundtracks are always a bit jumbled because part of a movie soundtrack is to compliment what's on the screen, and that's obviously missing on a soundtrack. The Elton John versions at the end of the album are decent, he's good at what he does.

My final word is that the movie is worth seeing, and the soundtrack exists if you want it, but it's not essential.

Here is the 2024 page for the Tour Pool I've been a part of for 17 years. I'm on team Florky which are in second to last place as I write this. Which is pretty typical.

A few weeks ago I reviewed the Above the Rim Soundtrack. This week's album, Regulate… G Funk Era, also includes the hit "Regulate" which propelled that earlier album to high sales. Regulate… is at #3 this week.

Overall this album is decent mid-90s West Coast Hip-Hop. As I wrote in the earlier post, this album is worth quite a bit more than the Above the Rim soundtrack. So listen to this one, and ignore the other one.

For the second week in a row an album debuts at #1 for its first week on the charts. Purple by Stone Temple Pilots is an album that has continued to get radio airplay in the 30 years since it was released. Their first album, Core, is one of the great Grunge Rock albums. Purple is more radio-friendly, but also more psychedelic when compared to Core.

According to last.fm I've listened to tracks off this album over 250 times since 2006. It is likely that I will continue to listen to it, and so should you.

Over the weekend I visited the Denver location of Meow Wolf. Meow Wolf was started in Santa Fe in 2008 and has opened a few other locations since then. Each location has a wide variety of immersive and interactive art. The Denver location is called Convergence Station and is an interdimensional transport hub linking together various different worlds. The different worlds each have their own style and theme that mix facets of Earth with alien. The art is very fractal – there's more levels of detail the closer you look at things. My favorite room is a street scene with Blade Runner-esque vehicles and futuristically weird businesses along the street. There are a few pictures of that below.

It's a very hectic and overwhelming thing to visit. I don't think it was particularly busy when I visited it, but it's not a place for someone who dislikes crowds, noises, or visually busy places. It is not a calm place. But I am not that person, so I found it enjoyable and interesting. If you ever visit a city with a Meow Wolf, I think it's worth checking it out.

Coming in hot and debuting at #1, Ill Communication is one of Beastie Boys best albums. On the Wikipedia page, the genres listed are Hip hop, New York Hardcore, Jazz, Funk, and Punk, which shows the breadth of the music on this album.

I've never really been big into Beastie Boys, but sometimes I do like to listen to hip hop and Beastie Boys are definitely among the places I go for that. This album is one that should not be forgotten and deserves to be replayed. Check it out!

Debuting and peaking at #5, Fruitcakes by Jimmy Buffett is not my usual fare.

The title song, Fruitcakes, is basically a middle aged man ranting about his opinions. I'm now a middle aged man and I realize how valuable my opinions are (not very), and I don't need to hear Jimmy's opinions, either. There are a few covers on this album that don't try anything very different from the originals, which I dislike and find pointless. About the nicest thing to say about the songs on his album is that they are definitely by Jimmy Buffett.

Looking at the various streaming music services, only one song from this album (Fruitcakes) cracks Jimmy Buffett's top 40 most-played songs. This album peaked at #5 due to the strength of his past catalog and then quickly fell out of the top ten. This is not a great album and deserves to stay mostly forgotten.

Peaking at #10 the eponymous debut album for the male R&B group represents their zenith of popularity. This band is close enough to a one-hit wonder that the individual members of the band have not been deemed important enough by Wikipedia editors to warrant pages of their own.

The early to mid-90s was a fertile time for boy bands, examples include Boys II Men, NSYNC, and Backstreet Boys. Many of them can trace their success to The New Kids on the Block who were successful in the mid to late-80s.

I have to admit that one of the hits off this album, I Swear, I always though was an NSYNC or Backstreet Boys song. In fact it was originally by none of them and was a John Michael Montgonery country song. The only other song off the album I recall hearing 30ish years ago is So Much in Love which is also a cover. I'm often against covers of songs especially when the cover doesn't bring a new style or perspective to the song. I Swear translated a country song to R&B which makes it somewhat interesting, but the cover So Much in Love is very similar to the original keeping the doo-wop style.

In summary, this album will not be included in my future playlists. I was never into boy bands (*) when they were popular, and 30 years of my changing musical tastes (and they have changed, I swear!) has not broadened enough to include this album.

(*) There are some songs that are exceptions…

Coming in at #6 is the soundtrack for the 1994 Film The Crow. The movie is infamous because the star of the film, Brandon Lee (the son of the famous martial artist and actor Bruce Lee), was killed during filming of the movie due to an improperly-prepared prop gun. The movie came out on May 13, 1994, but this album went on sale a few weeks before the movie came out. The release of the film propelled the album to the top of the charts one week from "now."

Combined with the notoriety of the movie, the album likely did well considering the strong suite of artists and songs on the album: The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, Violent Femmes, and Pantera. Looking a few streaming services, a fair number of the songs by these popular artists included in the album are among the top 10 songs played for each.

There are a few weaker songs on this album by less-well known artists, but that's okay, the good songs on this album are very good. I'm not sure I'd play this album as a whole much going forward, but the great songs are definitely worth playing again.

I don't think I've actually seen the movie before, and having done this review I think I will remedy that soon!

Here are a few photos from today's visit to the Denver Botanic Gardens. We visited a few months ago during the winter (on a nice day) and it was nice to see the gardens in full springtime bloom.