Ranking the Iron Maiden albums

I'd sorted out my mental Iron Maiden ranking by eighteen, around the time I gushed over the albums for pennies. I don't listen to them much any more, what with being all old and craving diminishing novelty, but listening along with Martin Popoff's Album by Album book was an excuse for a retro retrospective and to see where the newcomers slotted in.

I might as well make my vital opinions a matter of public record. Here are my The Top 16 Iron Maiden Studio Albums. Up yours, Irons.

Alrightreads: I

Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

1940-50 (collected 1950) / Audiobook / 253 pages / USA

****

Charmingly retro and remarkably relevant for their vintage, today's sci-fi is still riffing on these philosophical, foreboding and occasionally funny tales. They also have practical value as troubleshooting guides for how to carefully phrase instructions during the brief period where we're still in control.

Faves: 'Reason,' 'Little Lost Robot,' 'Evidence.'

Worsties: 'Runaround,' 'Liar!,' 'The Evitable Conflict.'

Iain M. Banks, Inversions

1998 / Audiobook / 345 pages / UK

***

This Wolfeian slow-burning sci-fantasy would be a jarring interlude if you were exclusively following Banks' space opera, but it's a nice expansion of his broader palette, especially since the regular Culture books haven't exactly been gripping me. Now back to the madness, I guess.

Tony Rayns, In the Mood for Love

2015 / Ebook / 96 pages / UK

**

Like a procrastinating student seeking escape in displacement activities as the deadline looms, a Wong Kar-wai superfan and insider is seemingly so troubled by the short page count he's allocated to fit everything in that he wastes almost half of it on completely pointless synopsis to spite himself. The rest briefly covers the aesthetic and production and dabbles in symbolism, but much of that didn't exactly need pointing out either.

Robin Ince, I'm a Joke and So Are You: A Comedian's Take on What Makes Us Human

2018 / Ebook / 320 pages / UK

****

Robin Ince attempts to discover, via covert autobiography, what makes comedians tick, while repeatedly reminding us that the pathetic data available is inadequate to draw any conclusions.

Martin Popoff and guests, Iron Maiden: Album by Album

2018 / Ebook / 256 pages / Various

****

A bunch of Iron Maiden fans, some more famous than others, one of whom was actually in Iron Maiden, natter away through the comprehensive discography. There's some interesting trivia and streamlined band history along the way, like you'd find in other books, but it's mainly just people's worthless, enjoyable opinions about stuff. Even the bad albums get their fair shake.

Alrightreads: H20

Philip José Farmer, The Fabulous Riverboat

1971 / Audiobook / 253 pages / USA

***

I wasn't done with Riverworld's mysteries after the first round, so I was glad to stay aboard and see how immortal society was getting on. But I think I'll abandon ship here rather than risk it running aground or capsizing through increasingly unlikely historical team-ups.

Eric Drooker, Flood!: A Novel in Pictures

1992 / Ebook / 138 pages / USA

***

Frans Masereel's woodcuts on drugs! I'll take a lesson from the text-free text and shut up.

Leo Braudy, On the Waterfront

2005 / Ebook / 88 pages / USA

****

These short books are handy pointers to some great films I probably never would have got around to if I was relying on my formulaic tastes. This one fills in the important social and symbolic context for the ignorant, goes over the production, then hangs loose with jacket symbolism.

S. Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer, They Might Be Giants' Flood

2013 / Ebook / 152 pages / USA

**

These children's songs aren't really begging for analysis, so the duo take turns on chapters covering the post-cool band's history and random tangents. Their enthusiasm's cute, at least.

Phillip Crandall, Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet

2014 / Ebook / 176 pages / USA

***

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to party all day and night, but when I heard some of these headache-inducing shoutalongs on music channels back in the day, it didn't occur to me that their creator should be taken seriously as an artist. Seems like a nice chap, at least.

Alrightreads: How to

Albert Ellis and Raymond Chip Tafrate, How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You

1997 / Ebook / 192 pages / USA

****

Since my predictable rage quickly dissipates once a temporary annoyance predictably resolves itself (until the just as predictable reprise), I've never dwelled too much on the problem I clearly have. But now that my outbursts are waking up a sleeping baby all the way from downstairs, it seemed like it might be a good time to deal with this, before she becomes a predictably naughty toddler or I have a predictable heart attack and miss the rest of it. This long sales letter for a modern take on stoicism has lots of good tips.

Joseph Garcia, Sign with Your Baby: How to Communicate with Infants Before They Can Speak

1999 / Ebook / 106 pages / USA

***

I don't have the patience to put this wacky professor's theory to the test, but it turns out I'm doing some of these instinctively anyway.

Dominic Gettins, How to Write Great Copy: Learn the Unwritten Rules of Copywriting (a.k.a. The Unwritten Rules of Copywriting)

2000 (updated 2006) / Ebook / 192 pages / UK

***

If I'd known this was almost squarely aimed at the modern day Mad Men (& Women) trying to come up with a killer slogan, I wouldn't have bothered, but it's always good to go through the general rules again. Though I'd say they're not 'unwritten' if they were already written down in the first edition and in most other copywriting books. Plenty of UK-centric examples to show American readers what that feels like.

Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

2010 / Audiobook / 233 pages / USA

***

I figured this was riding on Ready Player One's indulgent retro wave and was surprised that this one came first, though you can never be sure when time travel's involved. All the genre references try to obscure that it's just The Man Who Folded Himself.

Gill Hasson, How to Deal with Difficult People: Smart Tactics for Overcoming the Problem People in Your Life

2014 / Ebook / 182 pages / UK

***

No jaw-dropping revelations in this matter-of-fact guide for the socially underdeveloped, but some consolation that my customary self-deplatforming detox is sometimes the best solution, especially when I could be hanging out with a happy baby instead.

Alrightreads: Hell

Ira Levin, Rosemary's Baby

1967 / Audiobook / 245 pages / USA

*****

There are lots of gaps in my horror history, but this update of the haunted house mystery feels like a major milestone. Having a baby of my own made it especially affecting as it went along (I was a callous psychopath before, obviously), and the technically horrific ending was quite the relief.

Mary K. Baxter, A Divine Revelation of Hell

1993 / Audiobook / 208 pages / USA

*

Baxter's Inferno isn't troubling the classics in the literary department, but the insistent call to action after every derivative description places it more in the self-help field anyway. Which is strange, because following its guidance would make you an evil bigot too.

Stacey Abbott, Angel

2009 / Ebook / 136 pages / UK

**

It's been long enough since I sped through the series without pausing to smell the putrescence that a retrospective was welcome, but stuffy academic overanalysis wasn't the best way to go about it. Maybe Grandreams put out an annual?

Joe Bonomo, AC/DC's Highway to Hell

2010 / Ebook / 131 pages / USA

***

This celebration of raw simplicity gives up on futile in-depth analysis after the first song, instead inviting various voices to recount the background story of Satanic panic and self-destructive lifestyles.

Pete Astor, Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Blank Generation

2014 / Ebook / 144 pages / UK

**

Recapping the entire history of recorded music is apparently necessary for understanding these punk songs.

Alrightreads: H

Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus, or What's the Hurry, Son?

1990 / Audiobook / 302 pages / USA

***

Another fictional biography of a 20th century American that's too long to really hold my interest, coming at the end of my Vonnegut voyage didn't do it any favours, but I got on better with its teller than most.

Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Mœbius 0: The Horny Goof and Other Underground Stories

1972-90 (collected 1990) / Ecomic / 72 pages / France

**

A collection of pre-Metal Hurlant juvenilia (in tone, not age), coloured in for posterity it doesn't deserve, but there'll be a few people who absolutely love his self-described blend of "bawdy humour and fairly sophisticated science-fiction." Maybe these deluded liner notes have been taking the piss all along and the sarcasm just didn't translate well.

Nicholas Temperley, Haydn: The Creation

1991 / Ebook / 144 pages / UK

***

Spends too long on the awkward Bible adaptation of the libretto and its translations before being redeemed by an interesting breakdown of instrumental symbolism. That's mainly what I'm here for.

Stefan Petrucha and Charles Adlard, The X-Files: The Haunting

1996 (collected 1997) / Ecomics / 160 pages / USA/UK

***

It's a shame Stefan Petrucha's X-Files run had to end so soon, since he had a great handle on tone and character and could knock out some classic monsters-of-the-month (sometimes the humans are the real monsters, ahhh), once he got the conspiracy twaddle out of his system. Admittedly, his sentient video game story is down there at the bottom of the burning bin with similarly-themed TV episodes.

Iain M. Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata

2012 / Audiobook / 528 pages / UK

**

The End by default rather than intent, this scientific rapture naturally pairs with The Quarry as unintended epitaphs you can have fun reading too much into. It's at least something to keep you engaged when the dreary mystery pastiche keeps dragging on.

Alrightreads: Greyscale

Stan Lee and Mœbius, Silver Surfer: Parable

1988 / Ecomics / 72 pages / USA/France

**

A post-Dark Knight gritty prestige miniseries drafting in a respected artist from adult comics was promising in principle.

I forgot Marvel was crap.

Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Alexandro Jodorowsky, Mœbius ½: The Early Moebius and Other Humorous Stories

1963-91 (collected 1991) / Ecomic / 66 pages / France

*

These collections can't have been doing too poorly if they could scrape the barrel this clean. Going even further back than the previous early years and retroactivrly zeroed volumes, this presents Moebius' vintage "funnies," which are as humorous as is conventional for the form. It can't even fall back on nice art or imaginative zaniness this time, looking more like Viz.

David Cooper, Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra

1996 / Ebook / 112 pages / UK

***

Prioritising style over substance, the author and other quoted scholars strive to visualise the complex architecture of the work, fractal or otherwise. I have no idea how this relates to what I'm listening to, but it all sounds clever.

David Batchelor, The Luminous and the Grey

2014 / Ebook / 112 pages / UK

***

The artist's enthusiasm for vibrant colour is infectious, until he calms down and recounts the history and science of colour for a few dozen pages so it's just about long enough to be a book.

Charles Fairchild, Danger Mouse's The Grey Album

2014 / Ebook / 160 pages / Australia

*

Reading this tedious meta-analysis of an artistically vacant mashup of two artists I don't care about was something of a cultural low point for my year.

Alrightreads: Gold

Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws (Le Crabe aux pinces d'or)

1940-41 (collected 1941) / Ecomics / 63 pages / Belgium

****

Notably introducing Captain Haddock – who's hopefully got over his drunken, racist rampages now – this thrilling pursuit by smuggling ship, camel and speedboat is one of the more cinematic entries, helped by some nice full-page scenes cutting down on the repetitive plot beats (though Tintin still gets twatted over the head several times). It might've been better off without the dénouement that draws attention to how nonsensical those clues were, it's not like we remembered by the end anyway.

Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

1978-95 (collected 1995) / Audiobook / 345 pages / USA

***

Misleadingly named after one of the leftover stories contained within (that implicitly weren't good enough to be anthologised while he was still alive), the disappointment continues when you see that these stories only make up the first third of the book, and only a handful really qualify as stories between the worthless skits. The rest is his expert writing insights that are probably helpful if you didn't give up on your dreams a long time ago.

Peter Williams, Bach: The Goldberg Variations

1997 / Ebook / 120 pages / UK

***

Joe's easygoing harpsichord epic gets a skimming overview, searching for meaningful connections and briefly considering the merits of wacky astrological interpretations. Not paced for listening along, but a good primer for obsessing on your own time.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, Abba Gold: Greatest Hits

2004 / Ebook / 131 pages / France

**

- "What's your favourite Abba album, then?"
- "Tough one. I think I'd have to say 'The Best of Abba.'"

Even when trying to put aside the superlative Partridging, this doesn't convince in its case for the greatest hits package as artistic statement when she has to rearrange the tracks to make a meaningful narrative and talks more about the reactions than the music.

Bob Proehl, Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin

2008 / Ebook / 144 pages / USA

**

There's little substance to the pioneering country rock album itself, so we all but ignore that for a selective history of all the extracurricular decadence that was going on when they weren't making it, unhelpfully organised into themed chapters to appear more interesting.

Alrightreads: Gods

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine

1965 / Audiobook / 218 pages / USA

***

Vonnegut's feel-good novel, despite the customary tragedy and pervading cynicism, it was quite a pleasant, knowingly naive fable, but I preferred the summaries of bad Kilgore Trout books along the way.

Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves

1972 / Audobook / 288 pages / USA

***

The old timer shows the New Wave he's still relevant with this fresh take on alternate universes, alternative energy and the end times with creatively alien aliens. The hard chem-fi's too rich for my wimpy blood, but I admired its total rejection of the comfort zone.

Donald Burrows, Handel: Messiah

1991 / Ebook / 140 pages / UK

**

Despite finding the archaic warbling falsetto inherently comical, I made it longer into the feature-length musical than I expected. This companion is less divinely inspired, being primarily concerned with setting the record straight about edits and performances over the 250-year history and filling out the page count by reprinting the lyrics. It only gets a point for bringing up the interesting Life of Brian-style controversy where a bunch of loud idiots preemptively decided Handel was a very naughty boy.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Hammer of God

1993 / Audiobook / 226 pages / UK

****

"Almost a millisecond of Arri Tech computer time had been devoted to the problem."

His last solo novel before he started licensing synopses to protogees, the world-building orientation that comprises the first two thirds of the novel before the compulsory drama shows that he never lost his enthusiasm for dreaming the utopia, he only learned to moderate his predictions slightly. We'll see in 2110.

Aaron Cohen, Aretha Franklin's Amazing Grace

2011 / Ebook / 176 pages / USA

**

This set of over-the-top cover songs live from church was apparently pretty important, but the story is told as uninterestingly as possible.

Top 5 vaporwave albums

Since seeing the label recklessly applied to an ambient album I liked a lot last year, I've tried hard to find at least ten ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ albums I actually liked.

I thought I'd managed it a couple of times, when immersing myself for days on end, but then I'd accidentally listen to some different music that was actually good and wonder what I was doing.

Beyond this very short list, it would just be diminishing returns of repetitive Dream Catalogue hypnagogia and other relaxing/eerie original compositions rather than wonky samples, which isn't in the spirit anyway. I surrender.

Alrightreads: Ghosts

Arthur C. Clarke, The Ghost from the Grand Banks

1990 / Audiobook / 253 pages / UK

**

I'm not sure why I was disappointed that a novel inspired by the discovery of the Titanic turned out to be a morbid tale of hubris, but however fitting, it wasn't very enjoyable.

Iain Banks, Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram

2003 / Audiobook / 368 pages / UK

***

Iain Banks has an elaborate piss-up. I've read most of his books, but didn't know all that much about the man. He was keen to fill me in on the lot.

Richard Wiseman, Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There

2011 / Ebook / 189 pages / UK

*****

I followed the Prof's blog while he was promoting this, but didn't feel I needed to read it, since I'd read and lived enough sceptical debunking already. Enough time's passed that it managed to be nostalgic as well as entertaining, when it wasn't depressing. My scepticism hasn't waned, but the need to belittle people's wrong beliefs has, unless they're actively causing harm. The tone is cheekily educational rather than condescending, but as one of that lot, I would say that.

David Mitchell, Slade House

2015 / Audiobook / 233 pages / UK

****

The Bone Clocks didn't do much for me, partly for being so long-winded. Its more concise sequel/reworking is a much better version of the same thing, told as a haunted house horror anthology over five decades.

Grafton Tanner, Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts

2016 / Ebook / 104 pages / USA

****

"Absurd, hilarious, unnerving, and sometimes boring."

A thoughtful exploration of the philosophy (presumably) underpinning vaporwave and YouTube Poop that makes the case for the intentionally shoddy, stolen, almost unlistenable music's artistry. Those satisfied consumers in YouTube comments enjoying it on the surface level are happy in their ignorance, don't take it away from them.

Alrightreads: Germany

Theodor Storm, The Rider on the White Horse (Der Schimmelreiter)

1888 / Audiobook / 150 pages / Germany

**

I was swept away by the stormy, spooky opening that resurges in full force at the end. It's just a shame about nearly all of it.

Matthias Schultheiss, Bell's Theorem: Lifer (Die Wahrheit über Shelby 1: Lebenslänglich!)

1986 / Ecomic / 48 pages / Germany

*

This seemed to be nominated as the classic German graphic novel series. I guess they've been too preoccupied with electronic music and board games to bother developing that particular art form. A load of edgy shit.

Robin Stowell, Beethoven: Violin Concerto

1998 / Ebook / 140 pages / UK

**

One day, a Beethoven scholar's going to chill out and wax lyrical about what they enjoy in the music, rather than playing detective with sources in the ongoing war of authority. There's probably stuff you can plagiarise for your essays, at least.

Thomas Elsaesser, Metropolis

2000 / Ebook / 96 pages / Germany

***

A circa 2000 Metropolis website in book form, these brief introductions and literary analyses are only slightly more substantial than something you might get with a deluxe DVD. Most interesting was the comparisons of how reactions to the film changed over time, those observations now 20 years out of date themselves.

Stephen Catanzarite, U2's Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall

2007 / Ebook / 128 pages / USA

*

Or, 'Sunday School, Bloody Sunday School.' A subtitle is our polite warning that normal album commentary will be suspended while someone presents their wacky theory, rant or fiction. This goes with the former, his puritanical Catholic reading of rock lyrics not being any more convincing than the average conspiracy theorist's dot connecting, and less entertaining.