Pantera is the most famous metal band to ever come out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Their influence on metal is still being felt decades after their last album, and everyone who's been in the scene doubtless has his or her own opinion on what constitutes their best work. This is my take on their legacy in terms of what represents them at their best, and what represents the worst they had to offer. Here are all nine of Pantera's studio albums, ordered from worst to best. A few of these placings will no doubt be controversial to more hardcore Pantera fans!
Category: Reviews
bookmark_borderBooking.com removed my negative reviews
I've made many long road trips over the past decade or so, with most of my nights on the road having been spent in various motels across the U.S. and Canada. For the past several years, I've mostly made use of Booking.com to book my lodgings whenever I'm not able to stay with friends or family. Booking.com has proven to be a great resource for finding places along my way, particularly when I'm trying to decide whether to stop for the night or if I can continue a bit farther onward. I can look for patterns or trends among recent reviews and also try to find last minute deals. But there's an apparent issue with this website that needs to be acknowledged, one I've encountered a couple of times and which has called their ratings' reliability into question for me. And it's this: I've posted several reviews on the site in recent years, and the two most negative ones have both been deleted.
bookmark_borderA guide to avoiding fake oldies compilations (re-recordings, live versions, and fake artists)
Maybe it's happened to you. There's an artist or a song you really like, you come across it on a compilation CD somewhere, excitedly buy the disc, and eagerly pop it into your CD player... only to find that the songs you thought you bought were in fact shadily marketed re-recordings and not the original hits!
bookmark_borderNew and used music stores in the DFW area
With the decline of physical media over the last decade, the experience of digging through bins full of items in search of that hidden gem, or stumbling across that item you never thought about before but now just have to have, is increasingly on the wane. Fortunately, there are a surprising number of brick and mortar stores still active in the Dallas-Fort Worth area ready to cater to that very need, serving those audiophiles and music lovers among us who still appreciate that old time experience.
This retailer has been serving the DFW area since 1984, and it's one I used to frequent regularly during my last year of high school.
SOME IMPORTANT NOTES:
1 - For this post, I am only reviewing places that specialize in or do a substantial amount of business in the sale of physical music and music-related items, and that exist as brick and mortar stores open to the public. I am not considering places such as dedicated flea markets and internet based businesses.
2 - Creating a scoring system, and determining how much to weight each item being scored, have been challenging. None of the ratings or reviews in this post should be taken as indicative of whether a particular store is worth your business or support. Some of the stores reviewed are corporate, but others are owned by individuals or families, and some play roles in their local communities that go beyond the sale of physical media. All are evaluated based strictly on how well they are likely to serve the buying needs of a music fan with somewhat broad/eclectic tastes - I'm not looking at things here from an investment perspective. Other factors worth considering, such as how well a particular store serves a specific music market, genre, or neighborhood, are not factored into the ratings. See an explanation of the ratings here.
(Special thanks to Alex Pogosov and Alison Pham for their suggestions and feedback)
Forever Young Records (Grand Prairie)
2955 S State Highway 360, Grand Prairie, TX 75052
This retailer has been serving the DFW area since 1984, and it's one I used to frequent regularly during my last year of high school.
Pros:
- The store features a very large selection of well-organized, new and used CDs and vinyl
- There is a good-sized new arrivals section for used CDs
- Compilation CD series (Time Life, etc.) are grouped together by series name
- Continue reading "New and used music stores in the DFW area"