About Damian Lopez-Gaston

Damian Lopez-Gaston is an experienced senior manager working as an Event Director. He enjoys movies, music, bike riding, hiking, camping, taking day trips, photography, playing guitar, volunteering, game nights, home improvement, gardening, cooking, and goofing around, with an appreciation for the arts and culture, and the quality of a good home life. damianlopezgaston.net

Classic Reggae Playlist

Here’s my playlist of the best and most important in classic reggae music.  Reggae isn’t my main forte but I put a lot of work into it and I think it is a very respectable playlist. It sure makes for a fun listen. Please let me know if I missed anything that should be on here.  Enjoy!

SPOTIFY: Classic Reggae Playlist

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Full list… 1. No Woman No Cry – Bob Marley & The Wailers

Space, Stars & Moon Playlist

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apolo 11 moon mission, I put together a playlist of great songs in some way related to space travel or the heavens.  I included Brian Eno’s “Apollo” (soundtrack to “For All Mankind” documentary) and Public Service Broadcasting’s “The Race For Space” albums in their entirety.


SPOTIFY:  Space, Stars & Moon
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Full list… 1. Space Oddity – David Bowie

1970’s Punk Playlist

Here is a playlist of what I think are the best and most significant punk songs of the 1970’s! These are songs that helped develop the punk aesthetic or delivered it fully formed.  Let me know in the comments which songs I might have missed.

Spotify: 1970’s Punk Playlist
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  1. Blitzkrieg Bop – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
  2. White Riot – Remastered – The Clash
  3. Heart Of The City – Nick Lowe
  4. (I’m) Stranded – The Saints
  5. Neat Neat Neat – The Damned
  6. In The City – The Jam
  7. Final Solution – Pere Ubu
  8. Roadrunner – The Modern Lovers
  9. One Chord Wonders – Radio Edit – The Adverts
  10. Born to Lose – Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
  11. Search and Destroy – Bowie Mix – The Stooges
  12. Oh Bondage, Up Yours! – X-Ray Spex
  13. 1 2 X U – 2006 Remastered Version – Wire
  14. Blank Generation – 2017 Remaster Audio; Remastered – Richard Hell
  15. Cherry Bomb – The Runaways
  16. Personality Crisis – New York Dolls
  17. Teenage Depression – Eddie & The Hot Rods
  18. (Get A) Grip (On Yourself) – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
  19. Your Generation – 2002 Remaster – Generation X
  20. Lust For Life – Iggy Pop
  21. Gary Gilmore’s Eyes – The Adverts
  22. What Do I Get? – 2001 Remastered Version – Buzzcocks
  23. X Offender – Remastered – Blondie
  24. Someone’s Looking At You – The Boomtown Rats
  25. Free Money – Patti Smith
  26. The Modern World – The Jam
  27. New Rose – The Damned
  28. See No Evil – Television
  29. Mannequin – 2006 Remastered Version – Wire
  30. Suspect Device – Single Version – Stiff Little Fingers
  31. Love Comes in Spurts – 2017 Remaster Audio; Remastered – Richard Hell
  32. Sonic Reducer – Dead Boys
  33. Shot by Both Sides – Magazine
  34. Mystery Dance – Elvis Costello
  35. Trash – New York Dolls
  36. The Day the World Turned Day-Glo – X-Ray Spex
  37. Do Anything You Wanna Do – Eddie & The Hot Rods
  38. Teenage Kicks – The Undertones
  39. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – Ian Dury
  40. Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) – Buzzcocks
  41. Rocket USA – 1998 Remastered Version – Suicide
  42. Mongoloid – 2009 Remaster – DEVO
  43. Warsaw – 2010 Remaster – Joy Division
  44. Lexicon Devil – Germs
  45. (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures – The Rezillos
  46. The Wait – 2006 Remaster – Pretenders
  47. Pablo Picasso – The Modern Lovers
  48. Wasted – Black Flag
  49. Sheena Is a Punk Rocker – 2017 Remaster – Ramones
  50. She’s So Modern – The Boomtown Rats
  51. We’re Desperate – X
  52. Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie and the Banshees
  53. Hanging On The Telephone – Blondie
  54. Top of the Pops – The Rezillos
  55. California Über Alles – Dead Kennedys
  56. Another Girl, Another Planet – 2008 re-mastered version – The Only Ones
  57. Typical Girls – The Slits
  58. Human Fly – The Cramps
  59. Radio, Radio – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
  60. Psycho Killer – Talking Heads
  61. Babylon’s Burning – The Ruts
  62. Alternative Ulster – Stiff Little Fingers
  63. Boys Don’t Cry – Single Version – The Cure
  64. She Is Beyond Good And Evil – The Pop Group
  65. Is She Really Going Out With Him? – Joe Jackson
  66. Get Over You – The Undertones
  67. Peaches – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
  68. You Can’t Put Your Arms Round a Memory – Johnny Thunders
  69. Little Johnny Jewel – Parts 1 & 2 – Television
  70. Don’t Dictate – Demo – Penetration
  71. Neutron Bomb – The Weirdos
  72. Boredom – Buzzcocks
  73. T.V. Eye – Remastered – The Stooges
  74. No Fun – The Stooges
  75. I Wanna Be Your Dog – Remastered – The Stooges
  76. Sister Anne – MC5
  77. No More Heroes – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
  78. I Don’t Wanna – Sham 69
  79. Let Me Dream If I Want To – Live – Mink DeVille
  80. Borstal Breakout – Sham 69
  81. Ambition – Subway Sect
  82. Homicide – 999
  83. Damaged Goods – Gang Of Four
  84. Ask the Angels – Patti Smith
  85. True Confessions – The Undertones
  86. Lovers Of Today – The Only Ones
  87. God Save the Queen – Sex Pistols
  88. Anarchy in the U.K. – Sex Pistols
  89. Whole Wide World – Wreckless Eric
  90. Public Image – Public Image Ltd.
  91. Ready Steady Go – 2002 Remaster – Generation X
  92. Into The Valley – Skids
  93. Dancing The Night Away – The Motors
  94. The Sound Of The Suburbs – The Members
  95. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out! – The Fall
  96. Saturday Night In The City Of The Dead – Ultravox
  97. London’s Burning – Remastered – The Clash
  98. Complete Control – The Clash
  99. Chinese Rocks – Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
  100. (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais – The Clash
  101. Tommy Gun – Remastered – The Clash
  102. Beat on the Brat – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
  103. Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
  104. Two Tub Man – The Dictators
  105. (I Live For) Cars and Girls – The Dictators
  106. Aloha Steve & Danno – Radio Birdman
  107. Murder City Nights – Radio Birdman
  108. This Perfect Day – Single Version / 2004 Digital Remaster – The Saints
  109. Judy Is a Punk – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
  110. I Wanna Be Sedated – 2002 Remaster – Ramones
  111. Holidays in the Sun – Sex Pistols
  112. Pretty Vacant – Sex Pistols
  113. We Are the One – The Avengers
  114. Soul Twist – Mink DeVille
  115. Got The Time – Joe Jackson
  116. You – Eater
  117. (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
  118. Rip Her To Shreds – Remastered – Blondie
  119. The Staircase (Mystery) – Siouxsie and the Banshees
  120. All Around The World – Remastered 2017 – The Jam
  121. Rockaway Beach – 2017 Remaster – Ramones
  122. White Punks On Dope – The Tubes
  123. Everybody’s Happy Nowadays – 2001 Remastered Version – Buzzcocks
  124. Grinding Halt – Remastered – The Cure
  125. Action Time Vision – Alternative TV
  126. First Time – The Boys
  127. Ghost Rider – 1998 Remastered Version – Suicide
  128. Where Were You – Mekons
  129. Fiction Romance – 1996 Remastered Version – Buzzcocks
  130. I Can’t Stand My Baby – The Rezillos
  131. Playground Twist – Siouxsie and the Banshees
  132. Be Stiff – 2010 Remaster – DEVO
  133. Science Friction – XTC
  134. Right To Work – Chelsea
  135. Rocket Reducer No. 62 – Talk – MC5
  136. What Love Is – Dead Boys
  137. Mighty Idy – DMZ
  138. Heart of Darkness – Pere Ubu

Best of R.E.M. – 1982-1996 (playlist)

Somebody asked me what I thought was the best R.E.M. album. They had several great albums so it took some deliberation to come up with a worthy and well considered response.  But I did know that R.E.M.’s three best albums are easily Murmur, Reckoning and Automatic For The People, so I could start there.

Murmur is amazing.  It is an album that is out of time.  It sounded like nothing else when it came out.  It sounded like nothing before it and, actually, like very little after it.  It is a masterful and enigmatic debut from a band with a new sound that was fully formed when they arrived.  Murmur’s influence on music then and contemporary popular music since is profound and inestimable.  For all the great albums out there, not all of them can claim that they changed music.  Murmur is definitely one of the albums that did.

A year after their auspicious debut, R.E.M. amazingly soars to new heights with their follow up, Reckoning.  Here they craft their sound into pop songs that are at once catchy like you’ve known them all along but that also sound like absolutely nothing that came before.  The songwriting is unique and memorable and the band plays with a propulsive drive that is unequaled on any of their other albums.  Reckoning’s influence on almost all alternative music since is as far-reaching as Murmur if not more.

Five albums and a switch to a major label later, R.E.M. deliver their most transcendent masterpiece, the haunting and elegiac Automatic For The People. It is a timeless album from a band at the height of their powers.  Moving away from the pop of their two previous albums, Green and Out of Time, Automatic harkens back to their roots but their ruminations on life and loss make it epic in scope. Automatic may not be as exciting as Murmur or Reckoning but it has the edge on them because of its emotional depth and what it lacks in importance it makes up for with greatness.

Here’s how R.E.M.’s top five albums shake out for me:

1.  Automatic For The People  (1992)

Automatic for the People

2.  Reckoning  (1983)

Reckoning

3.  Murmur  (1983)

Murmur

4.  Life’s Rich Pageant  (1986)

Life's Rich Pageant

5.  Document  (1987)

Document

 

With a band like R.E.M. it is always good to revisit their albums in their entirety from time to time because it reminds us of how great their body of work actually is, where they were at the time and a little of how it felt when each was released.  They were truly a great band. They arguably had thirteen years or so of greatness – which were basically the years with Bill Berry – and then thirteen years that were good but, unfortunately, never attained the same level of greatness.  They definitely made some very good music in the second half of their recording career but Berry’s departure feels like something from which the band never quite recovered.  It was like there was always something missing and some of the magic was lost.  That drummer was more of an integral part of the band than anyone could have realized.

Here is my playlist of the best R.E.M. songs from when they were a quartet (1982-1996), presented chronologically.  In some instances, especially for the first couple of albums, I chose the best version of the song I could find when the version I would have preferred was not available.

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Film Festivals Favorites – 2013

When at film festivals, I often don’t get a chance to watch a whole lot of films.  What I do get to watch mostly depends on what is available when the opportunity presents itself or what is playing at the theater I’m running.  I may not always see the movies that get a lot of the attention but I usually end up catching an interesting assortment of memorable films.   These are some of my favorites from this last film festival season.

 

FRANCES HA

Frances Ha is directed by Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) and stars Greta Gerwig as Frances, a twentysomething New Yorker whose dreams may not exactly be coming true but she gets by with an irresistible lightness of spirit.  In one way, it is yet another film about someone of that age group trying figure things out but Gerwig, who started out as a supporting actress in a series of mumblecore films and played opposite Ben Stiler in Baumbachs’ Greenberg, gives a charismatic and kinetic performance that makes the film.  It is not only her best performance yet but she co-wrote the screenplay as well.  The film is often reminiscent of some of Woody Allen at his best and it demonstrates just how influential of a filmmaker he really is.  It is shot in beautiful, high contrast black and white (again calling to mind Woody Allen).  Frances Ha is an endearing and funny film about growing up and finding your way and about friendship and hope.

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A Post-Punk Playlist

For this playlist, I concentrated on the period right after punk blew up, roughly 1978-1982. With less emphasis on the nihilism and anarchy of punk music, it gave way to an interesting, very creative and unique period in music. Many of the roots of New Wave, Goth, Industrial, 80’s dance music, some Alternative, etc. are found in this period.

Several of these bands continued to make post-punk music for many years.  Also, there have been lots of bands since who make music that is post-punk in style.  I focused on this time frame specifically because this is a snapshot of what took place right after punk had peaked and because there was such a concentration of great bands.  Some bands, like Pere Ubu, were already making music that belongs to the post-punk aesthetic even before punk music came to prominence in 1976 and 1977.  Other bands, like Television (who are great though not included here), were playing post-punk music while being closely connected to the punk scene itself as it was happening.

No Wave was in many ways a post-punk movement but is only represented here with James Chance and The Pop Group (I may do a separate No Wave playlist later). Joy Division is featured rather prominently because they are arguably the most influential of these bands.   Of course, some great bands got left out and there can always be discussion about what is and what isn’t Post-Punk but, overall, I tried to do justice to a great period of time in music.

Spotify: Post-Punk Playlist
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Wendy & Lucy

Director: Kelly Reichardt
2008

The simplicity of Wendy & Lucy, a modest but powerful portrait of human suffering, is strikingly unadorned while at the same time being deceptively simple; a testament to the adage that less is more. It is naturalistic and contemplative, with little or no meaningless imagery and, while minimalistic, it has an excellent sense of proportion.  It is unvarnished; nothing in it is romanticized or overstated.  It’s an example of everything that is right with independent film in this country.  We know how mega-blockbusters spend millions of dollars to get movies to feel like exhausting carnival rides but, in the end, it is far easier to pull off bombast than delicacy.  You can hide imperfections in an avalanche of stimuli and frenzied rapid movement and this is a considerable part of what makes Wendy and Lucy feels even more perfect and exquisitely realized.  It has not a scene or word out of place and not a scene or word more than it needs.  Every word matters, every shot counts – there is nothing that is non-essential in it.  The film is perfect at its 80 minute running time and we are reminded that long doesn’t necessarily mean important or short trivial. Continue reading