Saturday, January 23, 2010
How things manage to blow in the face of orgasmic awesomeness
February 23, 2010. One month from today. It's a Tuesday. There will be a new episode of Lost. Joanna Newsom's new album is scheduled to come out. It is also National Pancake Day. Construct a better day. I dare you! But, of course, I find out the guy who is supposed to work the board meetings, which I am not supposed to work anymore, is going to be out of town. And as of now, that means I have to plan to work late that day. CRUEL!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
New Year's Resolutions
A quick list of the New Year's resolutions. These are the ones I can remember. New Year's Eve I was coming off a binge of cookies, candy, pizza, ice cream, presents, snow, all sorts of things, that had lasted the previous week. I was in prime mode for unrealistic resolutions and I think I thought about making a lot of them. These are the ones I can remember, thus the ones that I'll stick with.
1. Pitchfork Ban Year 2: Self-explanatory. I should be able to stick with this one pretty easily.
2. Watch fewer TV shows: It has become apparent to me that I'm way too easily sucked in to TV shows. Right now, as all my shows are taking a break from new episodes, my nights are so free it's unbelievable. While the season is in full swing though, I'm constantly checking Yahoo TV listings and skillfully planning what I'll watch live, what I need to record, when something will rerun so that if it's playing at the same time I'm watching one thing and recording another I'll still be able to get the new episode of this other show within the week. It's stressful. I guess this is really not to watch less TV but to follow fewer TV shows. I will still be watching lots of television. But there's really no reason I need to be steadfastly following Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen, Tough Love, Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab (I don't know if I can give this one up honestly), PTI, Around the Horn, Community, Office reruns, UFC rehash, and so on into infinity. Do you know how stressful it was trying to fit all those in and keep up with Christmas specials last month? Brutal. Mostly I need to learn to let these shows go and not feel like I'm missing out on anything. If they get good, I'll hear about it and I'll check it out. Community is the perfect example. I've watched since the first episode and so I feel invested in it. But it's never ever really been that funny. I keep waiting for it to take a leap into the same level as the rest of those Thursday shows but it really doesn't look like it's going to. And 90% of the characters annoy me, but I keep watching because What If It Gets Awesome?! Bad. BAD! I should maybe think about getting a hobby.
3. Play music more. For my own benefit. So depressing. Two years ago I bought the Harmony Rocket I had been after for years. Such a pretty piece of work. And after the first week I had it, I've maybe really played it four or five times. So sad. I want to pick it back up, just for my own enjoyment, so I don't get mad at myself when I realize I'm not up to writing songs and I shouldn't consider taking it outside the house. Just try to get back some of that enthusiasm I had in my bedroom in middle school. And it should be relatable to that, considering my ability after this lay-off might be hovering somewhere around what it was when I first picked up the instrument.
4. Lay off the candy: This one, at least in the short term, is going to be insanely hard. I have yet to be able to keep myself from strolling the candy aisle to see what's there when I go to the grocery store. But I need to knock it off, and I'm going to try for the whole year. The problem with my candy operation is this: I want to try all the new candy that's out there. Sometimes I would get lucky and the things I wanted to try came in singles, but lately, with things like all the varieties of Kisses and the new Pieces line, I had to buy a size of bag that was meant to be consumed over a lengthy period of time or by multiple people. I do not operate that way. What would inevitably happen is I would buy a big bag of candy, wolf down some, enough for a review, and then one of two things. Suck down the rest in the span of, say, a couple of days, maybe, then be disgusted with myself, and swear off candy. Until next week. Or, I would wolf down some, enough for a review, suck down a little more, get disgusted with myself, and throw the rest away, knowing that if I kept it around I was not going to be able to resist sucking down more, and wasting a lot of money. It all depended on how quickly I got disgusted with myself. (Which I guess is a pretty good barometer of how good the candy is. If I want to suck it down faster than I get disgusted with myself, it's probably good candy.) So, I don't want to do that anymore, and the easiest way to avoid it is to just convince myself I'm going cold turkey on candy. Lord knows I don't seem to be able to instill any willpower in myself. It's going to be really hard for a while though. Like the other day I was in the grocery store, and they're already putting out Valentine's candy, and even Easter candy, which includes Reese's Hearts and Eggs. I think Reese's Eggs might have the absolute greatest chocolate/peanut butter combo ratio of them all. Love 'em. Not this year though. Very hard to keep myself out of that candy aisle. It's a lot like my thing with TV though. I need to convince myself that by not partaking in candy and TV, even if it's only around for a limited time, I'm not doing anything life-threatening, not missing out on anything catastrophic.
I kind of want to extend the candy ban to sweet baked goods and pastries too. It's not right for a single person living alone to buy an entire cake. What am I going to do with an entire cake other than eat the whole thing? Well, more likely scenario, buy an entire cake, eat a piece, not want it anymore and throw the rest away, along with a good chunk-a-change. However, that resolution will not apply to birthday parties or holidays. Even the candy thing may not apply to birthday parties. I'd rather be struck dead than not participate in another ice cream party topping festival.
5. Follow more MMA. I'm really enjoying this sport, but I've only really been following one part of it, the UFC. Need to get into other fight leagues, especially the Japanese ones. Shouldn't be hard, considering the UFC is going to start suing "pirates" and other organizations seem to have fewer problems with their fights showing up on the internet.
Man, it hasn't been five minutes and I'm already kind of regretting the candy one. I'm really not sure how long that one lasts.
1. Pitchfork Ban Year 2: Self-explanatory. I should be able to stick with this one pretty easily.
2. Watch fewer TV shows: It has become apparent to me that I'm way too easily sucked in to TV shows. Right now, as all my shows are taking a break from new episodes, my nights are so free it's unbelievable. While the season is in full swing though, I'm constantly checking Yahoo TV listings and skillfully planning what I'll watch live, what I need to record, when something will rerun so that if it's playing at the same time I'm watching one thing and recording another I'll still be able to get the new episode of this other show within the week. It's stressful. I guess this is really not to watch less TV but to follow fewer TV shows. I will still be watching lots of television. But there's really no reason I need to be steadfastly following Top Chef, Hell's Kitchen, Tough Love, Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab (I don't know if I can give this one up honestly), PTI, Around the Horn, Community, Office reruns, UFC rehash, and so on into infinity. Do you know how stressful it was trying to fit all those in and keep up with Christmas specials last month? Brutal. Mostly I need to learn to let these shows go and not feel like I'm missing out on anything. If they get good, I'll hear about it and I'll check it out. Community is the perfect example. I've watched since the first episode and so I feel invested in it. But it's never ever really been that funny. I keep waiting for it to take a leap into the same level as the rest of those Thursday shows but it really doesn't look like it's going to. And 90% of the characters annoy me, but I keep watching because What If It Gets Awesome?! Bad. BAD! I should maybe think about getting a hobby.
3. Play music more. For my own benefit. So depressing. Two years ago I bought the Harmony Rocket I had been after for years. Such a pretty piece of work. And after the first week I had it, I've maybe really played it four or five times. So sad. I want to pick it back up, just for my own enjoyment, so I don't get mad at myself when I realize I'm not up to writing songs and I shouldn't consider taking it outside the house. Just try to get back some of that enthusiasm I had in my bedroom in middle school. And it should be relatable to that, considering my ability after this lay-off might be hovering somewhere around what it was when I first picked up the instrument.
4. Lay off the candy: This one, at least in the short term, is going to be insanely hard. I have yet to be able to keep myself from strolling the candy aisle to see what's there when I go to the grocery store. But I need to knock it off, and I'm going to try for the whole year. The problem with my candy operation is this: I want to try all the new candy that's out there. Sometimes I would get lucky and the things I wanted to try came in singles, but lately, with things like all the varieties of Kisses and the new Pieces line, I had to buy a size of bag that was meant to be consumed over a lengthy period of time or by multiple people. I do not operate that way. What would inevitably happen is I would buy a big bag of candy, wolf down some, enough for a review, and then one of two things. Suck down the rest in the span of, say, a couple of days, maybe, then be disgusted with myself, and swear off candy. Until next week. Or, I would wolf down some, enough for a review, suck down a little more, get disgusted with myself, and throw the rest away, knowing that if I kept it around I was not going to be able to resist sucking down more, and wasting a lot of money. It all depended on how quickly I got disgusted with myself. (Which I guess is a pretty good barometer of how good the candy is. If I want to suck it down faster than I get disgusted with myself, it's probably good candy.) So, I don't want to do that anymore, and the easiest way to avoid it is to just convince myself I'm going cold turkey on candy. Lord knows I don't seem to be able to instill any willpower in myself. It's going to be really hard for a while though. Like the other day I was in the grocery store, and they're already putting out Valentine's candy, and even Easter candy, which includes Reese's Hearts and Eggs. I think Reese's Eggs might have the absolute greatest chocolate/peanut butter combo ratio of them all. Love 'em. Not this year though. Very hard to keep myself out of that candy aisle. It's a lot like my thing with TV though. I need to convince myself that by not partaking in candy and TV, even if it's only around for a limited time, I'm not doing anything life-threatening, not missing out on anything catastrophic.
I kind of want to extend the candy ban to sweet baked goods and pastries too. It's not right for a single person living alone to buy an entire cake. What am I going to do with an entire cake other than eat the whole thing? Well, more likely scenario, buy an entire cake, eat a piece, not want it anymore and throw the rest away, along with a good chunk-a-change. However, that resolution will not apply to birthday parties or holidays. Even the candy thing may not apply to birthday parties. I'd rather be struck dead than not participate in another ice cream party topping festival.
5. Follow more MMA. I'm really enjoying this sport, but I've only really been following one part of it, the UFC. Need to get into other fight leagues, especially the Japanese ones. Shouldn't be hard, considering the UFC is going to start suing "pirates" and other organizations seem to have fewer problems with their fights showing up on the internet.
Man, it hasn't been five minutes and I'm already kind of regretting the candy one. I'm really not sure how long that one lasts.
I tried...
I was going to put together a list of my favorite video clips from the past decade, which I guess would actually be things I watched the most. But, I ran into a couple of problems. First, so many of the ones I wanted to include were not available for embedding, or else just not out there uploaded somewhere. Second, I started going through some of the old cd's I had burned with videos on them, trying to find ones I wasn't thinking of. And the most interesting thing I came across was two discs worth of video of Adam & I practicing in the Little Theater and some Trinkle. And then I got severely depressed. Because I was enormous and an ass. Lots of cringing going on here Sunday night. But anyway, I decided to narrow the decade down to these two available clips, one of which, of course, is probably almost 20 years old.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Quick reviews
Want to get these out of the way before I start making some lists. I will keep these short.
First thing I tried was some of the new Pieces line. Seems like these took a loooooooooooong time to be released, they should have jumped on this train years ago. Expanding the line that started with Reese's Pieces, they've now taken and made pieces out of other candy bars. They've done it so far with York Peppermint Patties, Almond Joys, and Hershey's Special Dark. I bought the Yorks and the Almond Joys. The Yorks are delicious, they're pretty much what you'd expect. They taste like little crunchy peppermint patties in M&M-like form. Cram them. In a good way. The Almond Joys are a little more interesting. I wasn't sure how these were going to work out, trying to cram coconut AND almonds into a little M&M-size candy. How is that possible?!? When M&M wants to put even one of those ingredients in they have to double or triple the size. Well, I didn't really notice the almond so much, but the coconut is dominant on these. Not just in flavor like the coconut M&Ms, and you don't really notice it if you just have one, but if you cram a handful in your mouth and start chewing, you get the sensation of the exact texture of a coconut candy bar. There's real coconut in there, so all the people who found a reason to be angry about there being no real coconut in the M&Ms can shut up AND have a miniature candy now. Not my favorite flavor, but I could see them being really addictive.
Last review. Turkey Hill Ginger Snap ice cream. "Spiced ice cream swirled with ginger snap cookies." The ice cream was not way out there spiced but definitely off vanilla. You could detect ginger and cinnamon in there, but it wasn't an overwhelming flavor. The ginger snap cookies were more solid and crunchy than the Ben & Jerry's version, which was more like dough. More like what you'd expect if you had a bag of ginger snap cookies. And there was no caramel swirl in this, which was fine with me. Glop is fun sometimes, but after the debacle of the sweetness of Maple Blondie I just wanted some rather straightforward ice cream.
First thing I tried was some of the new Pieces line. Seems like these took a loooooooooooong time to be released, they should have jumped on this train years ago. Expanding the line that started with Reese's Pieces, they've now taken and made pieces out of other candy bars. They've done it so far with York Peppermint Patties, Almond Joys, and Hershey's Special Dark. I bought the Yorks and the Almond Joys. The Yorks are delicious, they're pretty much what you'd expect. They taste like little crunchy peppermint patties in M&M-like form. Cram them. In a good way. The Almond Joys are a little more interesting. I wasn't sure how these were going to work out, trying to cram coconut AND almonds into a little M&M-size candy. How is that possible?!? When M&M wants to put even one of those ingredients in they have to double or triple the size. Well, I didn't really notice the almond so much, but the coconut is dominant on these. Not just in flavor like the coconut M&Ms, and you don't really notice it if you just have one, but if you cram a handful in your mouth and start chewing, you get the sensation of the exact texture of a coconut candy bar. There's real coconut in there, so all the people who found a reason to be angry about there being no real coconut in the M&Ms can shut up AND have a miniature candy now. Not my favorite flavor, but I could see them being really addictive.
Last review. Turkey Hill Ginger Snap ice cream. "Spiced ice cream swirled with ginger snap cookies." The ice cream was not way out there spiced but definitely off vanilla. You could detect ginger and cinnamon in there, but it wasn't an overwhelming flavor. The ginger snap cookies were more solid and crunchy than the Ben & Jerry's version, which was more like dough. More like what you'd expect if you had a bag of ginger snap cookies. And there was no caramel swirl in this, which was fine with me. Glop is fun sometimes, but after the debacle of the sweetness of Maple Blondie I just wanted some rather straightforward ice cream.
More listing
Starting this at 1:30 (I woke up at 1, I haven't done that in a really long time) and it will probably be all day or more before I finally get it published, because I'm just so easily distracted.
First of all, I'm taking it back and I am actually going to make a Favorite 10 of the Decade list. No explanations, because this list is really so obvious it's almost embarrassing. But I went through allmusic's best of each year lists and realized there were some things I really liked that were worth noting. I didn't include reissues though, and I limited myself to one album per artist (thus meaning no Furnace Room Lullaby or Milk-Eyed Mender on here, though they easily could have been). So I guess it kind of ends up being a 10 favorite artists of the decade as much as albums. First of all, honorable mentions to M. Ward's Transistor Radio, Brian Wilson's SMiLE, A.C. Newman's The Small Wonder (really wanted to put that on there but I had New Pornos and felt like I was double dipping) and Calexico's Scraping.
So here's what I decided was my decade top 10.
(10) Jazzanova - Of All The Things
(9) Cat Power - The Greatest
(8) The New Pornographers - Electric Version (hard one to choose from their first three)
(7) Robert Belfour - What's Wrong With You
(6) Bob Dylan - Love And Theft
(5) Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War
(4) ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Source Tags & Codes
(3) Arcade Fire - Funeral
(2) Neko Case - Blacklisted
(1) Joanna Newsom - Ys
------------------------------
My top 5 bands that get a lot of attention I don't think they should:
(5) Iron & Wine (even when I was way into nothing but new folk music, I hated this guy. King of the weakly whisperers.)
(4) The Walkmen
(3) Kings of Leon
(2) The Mountain Goats
(1) The National
and I would just like to shout out here to the Black Keys, Modest Mouse, Deerhoof, and Malkmus/Silver Jews/reunited Pavement. And I would really really love to put The Decemberists on here, but it's a little disingenuous considering how much I used to like them. It makes me want to cut myself.
------------------------------
Top 20 Albums That Had A Major Effect On Me This Decade (not necessarily from this decade). I can't really try to order these. They mattered to me for such different reasons, it would be kind of impossible to compare them.
Television - Marquee Moon: Hard to overstate what a big deal discovering this album was for me. Heard about it on that VH1 Top 100 Albums show, the one line I could make out from the feature was stuck in my head for days before I downloaded it and fell in love. In a weird way, it broke the stranglehold that guitar-based classic rock had on my listening habits, by being a guitar-based rock album. The songs were just so different from anything else I'd been listening to, the guitar was new to me, although the working relationship of Lloyd and Verlaine wasn't all that different from a lot of classic rock bands I'd listened to, what they made of it was.
The Flaming Lips - Transmissions From The Satellite Heart: Also hard to overstate. Another monster guitar album for me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure how Ronald made the sounds on this album and loved the fact that the band came up with songs to support them. This first, then with help from Clouds Taste Metallic, forced me to fall head over heels in love with this band.
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea: The language, the melodies, Mangum's unhinged jaw, instrumentation that ran the gamut from an acoustic guitar to everything plus horns made this the album that for years after I heard I was not hesitant to call my favorite album ever.
Elvis Presley - From Elvis In Memphis: I had been into the typical Sun Session Elvis for a long time before. But when I finally listened to this album, over and over and over, I realized there was way more to Elvis than I had ever thought. Not my fave of his anymore, but the major one in my fandom.
Bob Dylan - The Basement Tapes
The Band - Music From Big Pink: I'm putting these two together since they kind of overlap and I was obsessed with them at about the same time and for similar reasons. I fell in love with the idea of making music for no other reason than because. And fell in love with Richard Manuel's voice.
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady: Fave jazz album, fave instrumental album, at a time when I was falling out of love with guitars this album let me fall in love with horns.
Joanna Newsom - Ys: Just plain my favorite album released this decade. For a period of a couple months after this was released, I would go for a walk everyday and listen to this in its entirety.
of Montreal - Coquelicot Asleep In The Poppies: I gave these guys a lot of attention as what seemed like the last of Elephant 6 and because they were this little indie band with seemingly limited resources that managed to make what sounded like really involved records. Have a hard time listening to it now though because of the cute factor.
V/A - Golden Apples Of The Sun: Comp that made me fall in love with neo-folk, which lasted for a pretty good amount of time.
The Sonics - Here Are The Sonics: Fueled my garage love more than anything
The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious
The Shins - Oh Inverted World
The Strokes - Is This It?
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells: Putting these all together because they were from that first summer when I first started putting a little credence into semi-indie rock that was getting hyped like mad, which seems to have become a major trend in popular music. The Hives, I don't remember where I heard them first, probably MTV, so reminiscent of The Sonics that I couldn't avoid them. The Shins, good singing, and learned about them from a stamp of approval from Zach Galifianakis. The Strokes, too catchy and pretty too ignore. And The White Stripes, gimmick after gimmick after gimmick that all worked and all supported songs with a lot of Zeppelin in them.
(about 7 hours between when I wrote that last one and when I've come back to this. These descriptions are going to get much shorter.)
Magic Sam - West Side Soul: Started the decade with this. First band we put together, this is all I wanted to play.
Robert Belfour - What's Wrong With You: My favorite blues album released this decade, and the one that made me want to play acoustic blues with itches.
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Pt. 1, 4th World War: I went crazy for the "Honey" single when I first saw the video, thought it was one of the best new songs I'd heard in a long long time. The album was just as good, though completely different from the single, and it made me realize neo-soul was something that was worth checking out.
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation: This gave me the itch to check out all those years of indie I had no idea existed. Informed what I listened to for a good three or four years.
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat: Mostly side two. As much as I wanted to be Ronald Jones, side two of White Light/White Heat was just as much of an aspiration.
My Morning Jacket - At Dawn: Someone sent me "If It Smashes Down" on a mix. Loved the voice. Jim James completely changed what I was looking for in male singers. Being that that is basically a solo performance, I wasn't prepared for the interplay of the band when I heard the whole album, and the variety of performances that ranged from gorgeous "I Needed It Most" to balls-out "Honest Man" and a mix in "Strangulation," creating this mix of several of my beloveds including Brian Wilson and Gram Parsons and even my old classic rock tendencies. I do think they kind of stepped it up with It Still Moves, but At Dawn was always my favorite.
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds: Nothing to say.
Bruce McCulloch - A Shame-Based Man: How much did I love this? The greatest mix of hilariousness, surrealism, and not horrible music.
Neko Case - Blacklisted: Exactly what I wanted at the time that I found it. Her voice is still one of my absolute favorites, and I think this collection of songs is still her best. Sparing instrumentation that still shimmers, and her voice can often make you see things in vibration. And these songs sound timeless to me, I'd stack them up against anything.
Honorable mentions: Randy Newman - Sail Away, The Stooges - Fun House, Mitch Hedberg - Strategic Grill Locations, various comps from Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, and Elmore James. There's probably a lot of stuff I should add to this list that I'm not thinking of, but what kind of list would it be if there wasn't? Not one of mine! Probably a few more than 20 too. So if I wasn't sticking to a set number, why did I end up with honorable mentions? This must be why the professional list-makers at Rolling Stone get paid millions upon hundreds of dollars.
------------------------------
These are my top three guilty pleasures of the decade. Guilty pleasures are not something I usually recognize, usually if I like something I know why and I consider it a good reason. But, there was that one year where I had the MTVHits channel, with its videos OnDemand, and I watched it a lot. And in particular I became enamored with these three.
(3) Beyonce - "Get Me Bodied": I especially liked the second half of this. I'd walk around my apartment going "Do the scissor leg. Touch your heel touch your toe," in a really quiet voice. And for some reason I deemed it awesome that she had gotten the former Destiny's Child members to be in the video. Why did I think that was so great? I never cared about Destiny's Child before.
(2) Lil Mama - I was pretty sure I was supposed to hate "Lip Gloss" but there was no way I was going to. I liked that it was this big fake drum in space with a vocal on top that was the 00s equivalent of Kris Kross. And even though it was all big fake drum, Lil Mama felt the need for a "no music" section. Ironically, if I was younger at the time, say high school age, I would have hated it, because I would have hated the people it was pandering to (or representing, however you want to look at it). But maybe because I'm way too old to be listening to it, I had the reaction of "Oooo, Lil Mama! What are the 'mac-mac brushes'?!" And then I loved the follow up "G-Slide" just as much, because it reaffirmed the Kriss Kross association. Lil Mama tour bus might ride through your town. Any chance that's the same bus Kriss Kross missed? What's weird is that I saw these videos and there was no album. For the longest time there was no album! I looked and looked and it just had not come out. Kept getting pushed back. Then the album finally came out and I didn't hear anymore from Lil Mama. Then I find out she's on some dancing show and otherwise is just trying to make Jay-Z's life hard. One other thing, her head is enormous. Her head to body ratio is something like a Pep Boy or Mars Attacks. That's a little intriguing.
(1) Paramore: This one is really pretty embarrassing. I work with this guy who is always talking about Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift and how he's always watching what they're up to. He just sounds like a statutory rapist. I do not want to sound like that, so I would never bring up how much I listen to Paramore, which I swear is strictly a musical thing. I saw their videos on MTVHits and for some reason they just struck a chord with my like button. Even though they look like the most annoying brats of all time, I got sucked into what sounded like a lot of enthusiasm for a young band. It's weird, because they have no musical similarity whatsoever, but whenever I saw them I got this Katrina and the Waves vibe. Because it was a band that sounded like they were excited to be playing with a girl singer that didn't mind shouting at the top of her lungs. I write that out now and I look at it and I STILL don't totally understand why I think that's such a good thing. But, here's the embarrassing part, it didn't stop with those videos. Checked out the album, listened to it multiple times, two years later their next album comes out, and I'm all over that one too. Maybe even enjoying it MORE than the first one.
And I'm ending there. For today. I may put a couple others up later, I'd at least like to get my resolutions up there, hoping that if I make them public I'll feel more pressed to stick with them.
First of all, I'm taking it back and I am actually going to make a Favorite 10 of the Decade list. No explanations, because this list is really so obvious it's almost embarrassing. But I went through allmusic's best of each year lists and realized there were some things I really liked that were worth noting. I didn't include reissues though, and I limited myself to one album per artist (thus meaning no Furnace Room Lullaby or Milk-Eyed Mender on here, though they easily could have been). So I guess it kind of ends up being a 10 favorite artists of the decade as much as albums. First of all, honorable mentions to M. Ward's Transistor Radio, Brian Wilson's SMiLE, A.C. Newman's The Small Wonder (really wanted to put that on there but I had New Pornos and felt like I was double dipping) and Calexico's Scraping.
So here's what I decided was my decade top 10.
(10) Jazzanova - Of All The Things
(9) Cat Power - The Greatest
(8) The New Pornographers - Electric Version (hard one to choose from their first three)
(7) Robert Belfour - What's Wrong With You
(6) Bob Dylan - Love And Theft
(5) Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War
(4) ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Source Tags & Codes
(3) Arcade Fire - Funeral
(2) Neko Case - Blacklisted
(1) Joanna Newsom - Ys
------------------------------
My top 5 bands that get a lot of attention I don't think they should:
(5) Iron & Wine (even when I was way into nothing but new folk music, I hated this guy. King of the weakly whisperers.)
(4) The Walkmen
(3) Kings of Leon
(2) The Mountain Goats
(1) The National
and I would just like to shout out here to the Black Keys, Modest Mouse, Deerhoof, and Malkmus/Silver Jews/reunited Pavement. And I would really really love to put The Decemberists on here, but it's a little disingenuous considering how much I used to like them. It makes me want to cut myself.
------------------------------
Top 20 Albums That Had A Major Effect On Me This Decade (not necessarily from this decade). I can't really try to order these. They mattered to me for such different reasons, it would be kind of impossible to compare them.
Television - Marquee Moon: Hard to overstate what a big deal discovering this album was for me. Heard about it on that VH1 Top 100 Albums show, the one line I could make out from the feature was stuck in my head for days before I downloaded it and fell in love. In a weird way, it broke the stranglehold that guitar-based classic rock had on my listening habits, by being a guitar-based rock album. The songs were just so different from anything else I'd been listening to, the guitar was new to me, although the working relationship of Lloyd and Verlaine wasn't all that different from a lot of classic rock bands I'd listened to, what they made of it was.
The Flaming Lips - Transmissions From The Satellite Heart: Also hard to overstate. Another monster guitar album for me. I spent a lot of time trying to figure how Ronald made the sounds on this album and loved the fact that the band came up with songs to support them. This first, then with help from Clouds Taste Metallic, forced me to fall head over heels in love with this band.
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea: The language, the melodies, Mangum's unhinged jaw, instrumentation that ran the gamut from an acoustic guitar to everything plus horns made this the album that for years after I heard I was not hesitant to call my favorite album ever.
Elvis Presley - From Elvis In Memphis: I had been into the typical Sun Session Elvis for a long time before. But when I finally listened to this album, over and over and over, I realized there was way more to Elvis than I had ever thought. Not my fave of his anymore, but the major one in my fandom.
Bob Dylan - The Basement Tapes
The Band - Music From Big Pink: I'm putting these two together since they kind of overlap and I was obsessed with them at about the same time and for similar reasons. I fell in love with the idea of making music for no other reason than because. And fell in love with Richard Manuel's voice.
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady: Fave jazz album, fave instrumental album, at a time when I was falling out of love with guitars this album let me fall in love with horns.
Joanna Newsom - Ys: Just plain my favorite album released this decade. For a period of a couple months after this was released, I would go for a walk everyday and listen to this in its entirety.
of Montreal - Coquelicot Asleep In The Poppies: I gave these guys a lot of attention as what seemed like the last of Elephant 6 and because they were this little indie band with seemingly limited resources that managed to make what sounded like really involved records. Have a hard time listening to it now though because of the cute factor.
V/A - Golden Apples Of The Sun: Comp that made me fall in love with neo-folk, which lasted for a pretty good amount of time.
The Sonics - Here Are The Sonics: Fueled my garage love more than anything
The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious
The Shins - Oh Inverted World
The Strokes - Is This It?
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells: Putting these all together because they were from that first summer when I first started putting a little credence into semi-indie rock that was getting hyped like mad, which seems to have become a major trend in popular music. The Hives, I don't remember where I heard them first, probably MTV, so reminiscent of The Sonics that I couldn't avoid them. The Shins, good singing, and learned about them from a stamp of approval from Zach Galifianakis. The Strokes, too catchy and pretty too ignore. And The White Stripes, gimmick after gimmick after gimmick that all worked and all supported songs with a lot of Zeppelin in them.
(about 7 hours between when I wrote that last one and when I've come back to this. These descriptions are going to get much shorter.)
Magic Sam - West Side Soul: Started the decade with this. First band we put together, this is all I wanted to play.
Robert Belfour - What's Wrong With You: My favorite blues album released this decade, and the one that made me want to play acoustic blues with itches.
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Pt. 1, 4th World War: I went crazy for the "Honey" single when I first saw the video, thought it was one of the best new songs I'd heard in a long long time. The album was just as good, though completely different from the single, and it made me realize neo-soul was something that was worth checking out.
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation: This gave me the itch to check out all those years of indie I had no idea existed. Informed what I listened to for a good three or four years.
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat: Mostly side two. As much as I wanted to be Ronald Jones, side two of White Light/White Heat was just as much of an aspiration.
My Morning Jacket - At Dawn: Someone sent me "If It Smashes Down" on a mix. Loved the voice. Jim James completely changed what I was looking for in male singers. Being that that is basically a solo performance, I wasn't prepared for the interplay of the band when I heard the whole album, and the variety of performances that ranged from gorgeous "I Needed It Most" to balls-out "Honest Man" and a mix in "Strangulation," creating this mix of several of my beloveds including Brian Wilson and Gram Parsons and even my old classic rock tendencies. I do think they kind of stepped it up with It Still Moves, but At Dawn was always my favorite.
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds: Nothing to say.
Bruce McCulloch - A Shame-Based Man: How much did I love this? The greatest mix of hilariousness, surrealism, and not horrible music.
Neko Case - Blacklisted: Exactly what I wanted at the time that I found it. Her voice is still one of my absolute favorites, and I think this collection of songs is still her best. Sparing instrumentation that still shimmers, and her voice can often make you see things in vibration. And these songs sound timeless to me, I'd stack them up against anything.
Honorable mentions: Randy Newman - Sail Away, The Stooges - Fun House, Mitch Hedberg - Strategic Grill Locations, various comps from Charley Patton, Blind Willie McTell, and Elmore James. There's probably a lot of stuff I should add to this list that I'm not thinking of, but what kind of list would it be if there wasn't? Not one of mine! Probably a few more than 20 too. So if I wasn't sticking to a set number, why did I end up with honorable mentions? This must be why the professional list-makers at Rolling Stone get paid millions upon hundreds of dollars.
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These are my top three guilty pleasures of the decade. Guilty pleasures are not something I usually recognize, usually if I like something I know why and I consider it a good reason. But, there was that one year where I had the MTVHits channel, with its videos OnDemand, and I watched it a lot. And in particular I became enamored with these three.
(3) Beyonce - "Get Me Bodied": I especially liked the second half of this. I'd walk around my apartment going "Do the scissor leg. Touch your heel touch your toe," in a really quiet voice. And for some reason I deemed it awesome that she had gotten the former Destiny's Child members to be in the video. Why did I think that was so great? I never cared about Destiny's Child before.
(2) Lil Mama - I was pretty sure I was supposed to hate "Lip Gloss" but there was no way I was going to. I liked that it was this big fake drum in space with a vocal on top that was the 00s equivalent of Kris Kross. And even though it was all big fake drum, Lil Mama felt the need for a "no music" section. Ironically, if I was younger at the time, say high school age, I would have hated it, because I would have hated the people it was pandering to (or representing, however you want to look at it). But maybe because I'm way too old to be listening to it, I had the reaction of "Oooo, Lil Mama! What are the 'mac-mac brushes'?!" And then I loved the follow up "G-Slide" just as much, because it reaffirmed the Kriss Kross association. Lil Mama tour bus might ride through your town. Any chance that's the same bus Kriss Kross missed? What's weird is that I saw these videos and there was no album. For the longest time there was no album! I looked and looked and it just had not come out. Kept getting pushed back. Then the album finally came out and I didn't hear anymore from Lil Mama. Then I find out she's on some dancing show and otherwise is just trying to make Jay-Z's life hard. One other thing, her head is enormous. Her head to body ratio is something like a Pep Boy or Mars Attacks. That's a little intriguing.
(1) Paramore: This one is really pretty embarrassing. I work with this guy who is always talking about Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift and how he's always watching what they're up to. He just sounds like a statutory rapist. I do not want to sound like that, so I would never bring up how much I listen to Paramore, which I swear is strictly a musical thing. I saw their videos on MTVHits and for some reason they just struck a chord with my like button. Even though they look like the most annoying brats of all time, I got sucked into what sounded like a lot of enthusiasm for a young band. It's weird, because they have no musical similarity whatsoever, but whenever I saw them I got this Katrina and the Waves vibe. Because it was a band that sounded like they were excited to be playing with a girl singer that didn't mind shouting at the top of her lungs. I write that out now and I look at it and I STILL don't totally understand why I think that's such a good thing. But, here's the embarrassing part, it didn't stop with those videos. Checked out the album, listened to it multiple times, two years later their next album comes out, and I'm all over that one too. Maybe even enjoying it MORE than the first one.
And I'm ending there. For today. I may put a couple others up later, I'd at least like to get my resolutions up there, hoping that if I make them public I'll feel more pressed to stick with them.
Lists
So, lists. I'm not going to make a "Favorite albums of this year" or "Favorite albums of this decade" list. Those lists would be short and uninspired, because I just haven't been paying that much attention the lasts few years, and largely the albums I liked that came out 2005 and before I don't like now (things such as the Decemberists and of Montreal. Wow have I ever switched off on stuff like that!). There have been a few albums from this decade that have become ones I'd place among my favorites. Blacklisted and At Dawn come to mind. There were a lot of albums in The College Years and the couple years after that I loved to death but now I can't stand to hear. I don't want to revisit them much. There's really only been one album this decade I can think of (Ys) that I would stack up with any other throughout time and wish to be buried with. That is, if I had to be selective about which records I was going to be buried with. It seems like most other things I've heard have been pleasant enough to listen to once or else trash.
(Someone is driving through the neighborhood honking their horn, apparently because they think honking a car horn is a universal way of saying it's a new year to all the people sitting in their homes that obviously have no desire to be anywhere near that fucker and his car. Or it's just a way for him to get some attention, whether it's from someone in his house or someone in his passenger seat. I hope he hits a tree. Or finds a canyon.)
That's not to say I haven't listened to a lot of stuff that was new to my ears during this decade that I did enjoy. (Although, not so much the last year.) But it really has no relevance to the last decade. They're only relevant to me. For instance, in college I was probably the last person to figure out the Velvet Underground was awesome. More recently, I'm probably the last person on Earth to figure out Yes is better than just Fragile. But, anyway, maybe I can make a few lists.
First of all, in terms of new music I tried to follow, the overwhelming trend this decade seemed to be that I would get into a band heavily, get incredibly excited when they were about to put out a new album, and then be disappointed with the new effort. My top five examples:
(5) Wilco - A Ghost Is Born. I don't care much for Wilco now, but at the time I thought they were super geniuses. I thought they were versatile in the styles they covered with excellent execution, thought the lyrics were good, and the instrumentation was pretty interesting too. Then A Ghost Is Born came out and I was bored to tears. End of that. Where before I had liked Jeff Tweedy's vocals, all of a sudden everything he sang from then on sounded like he was as bored as I was listening to him.
(4) The White Stripes. I'm not really sure which album to pick here. I was crazy about them. Bringing blues (though as much a put-on as it has ever been) into indie in a simple way that was both fun to listen to and eye-catching. Elephant came out and had a bunch of tracks on it I really liked, but by and large I wasn't that taken with it. So was that the disappointment? After that Get Behind Me Satan came out and I didn't care much for that at all. A big departure for them, and not one I was enamored with. But actually, after some time, I grew to like that one more and more. So was that the disappointment? Icky Thump, that was absolutely a disappointment, and it's totally indicative of why I can't stand to see Jack White's face anymore. I couldn't help but think that album would have been a lot better if hadn't been trying so hard to make himself a jack-of-all-trades. He wants to be everywhere and everything to everyone, and sort of assumes that anything he does will get a massive stamp of approval. And so far it has, even though every album he makes sounds more half-assed than the one before, especially when it comes to the White Stripes.
(3) My Morning Jacket - Z. Sweet merciful christ did I love My Morning Jacket before this album came out! I guess what I loved about It Still Moves was just the guitar rock aspect of it. The songs sounded ENORMOUS, and you got this back and forth in the guitars that was rare. Then Z comes out and it's dominated by keyboards, or at least that's what I heard. I was so mad. And that happened a lot to me this decade, keyboards taking over. I am not totally averse to keyboards. At the time I was heavy into The Band, and part of why I was so into My Morning Jacket was that I thought they incorporated a lot of that guitar-keyboard interplay on At Dawn and It Still Moves that made The Band so great. But they synthy sounds on Z that seemed to come with the new keyboard player just sounded so inorganic to me that it was a total turn-off. And when I read the lyrics. Geez. I had thought of Jim James as a pretty good lyricist, but I didn't like these at all. Like "A good showerhead and my right hand, the two best lovers that I ever had." (In fairness, after that I went back and read a lot of his previous lyrics and was less impressed than I thought I'd be.) I've since sort of come to terms with and can listen to this album, but still not the follow-up I was hoping for.
(2) Neko Case. Another one where I wasn't sure which album to pick. Blacklisted hit me hard when I first heard it. These very mysterious songs, they seemed out of time, classic, and a beautiful balance of song and story. And obviously her voice thrilled me. When I heard Neko was working on a new album and Garth Hudson was going to be out, little squeals of excitement came out of my ears. When Fox Confessor came out, not so enamored with it. I thought the mood on Blacklisted was so natural, here it seemed like something she was trying to create. She was very wordy now, sometimes at the expense of lyrical flow. Some of the songs like Teenage Feeling and At Last, I just plain didn't like. Then I heard her trying to connect all these songs to Russian folk tales. Geez. Basically an intellectual exercise where Blacklisted was completely visceral. The big problem is, that album is actually very good. Star Witness is up there with anything else she's done. Another big problem is that I have met several people who got into her on the basis of this album and think it's a masterpiece, which a lot of people do think. But it bothers me because those people don't even acknowledge, or perhaps haven't even heard, Blacklisted. Anyway, as I say, Fox Confessor was a very good album, but initially a disappointment. Middle Cyclone came out and just was not memorable. Now she was very very wordy, and it always sounded like she wanted to speak more than she wanted to sing, making the songs a lot less than memorable. Middle Cyclone is definitely the lesser album, but I don't know if it was quite as big a disappointment.
(1) Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Oh boy, do I really want to get into this? I loved everything about The Flaming Lips from their inception to the time when I got into them, which I guess was 2001 or 2002. They made great albums, they got better and better with every album, they made great B-sides, they did lots of crazy stuff with the packaging of their records and singles to promote fanaticism, they had a revolving cast of some of the most genius musicians to contribute to "indie" rock in ways that other bands just seemed completely incapable of approaching, and their live show seemed to be taking steps to since the days of flaming cymbals to becoming a circus. I loved that they had that one hit, and that seemed to actually keep them more obscure than they should have been. It seemed like people knew that hit and figured that was all they needed to know. I loved telling people at WCWM that I was going to do a nine hour Lips show and having them say, "Shit. I didn't know they had that much music," and knowing myself that I was not going to be able to fit in all I wanted to play in nine hours. Yoshimi was the first album newly released while I was into them. I convinced myself at the time that I liked it, I forced myself to like it, but deep down I wanted more from them. It seemed so gimmicky to me, it reminded me of someone trying too hard to be weird, which became what the Lips were all about after that. The live show became the same thing for, what, four years? Bringing people to dance on stage, a plastic bubble, Wayne's suit, the same list of songs (had to stay the same so they could play to the tapes!). I was not impressed anymore, and I think it started with Yoshimi. The robot gimmick, Do You Realize as a pandering to the audience, pandering throughout the album, trying to approach these big questions which their audience just ate up, but ultimately I thought were too easy for these guys. And they did make some great songs at the time. Funeral In My Head is still one of my favorite Lips songs. And I could just as easily say Mystics here. That was definitely a disappointment, that was just a disaster. They should never have made anything that awful. But Yoshimi is the one that sticks with me, because I was waiting for it with such anticipation.
Well, now it's 2am. That took too long. If I keep writing too much explanation I'm not going to get much written. I'll try.
Favorite Things Of The Past Year:
(5) Limited Edition Everything: Lots of fun hunting, lots of fun doing my best impression of serious reviewing, lots of good discoveries, a couple of favorites being the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms and Ginger Snap Ben & Jerry's. I even have a new review to put tonight for Turkey Hill Ginger Snap. Ooooo! Controversial comparisons! I had an enormous satisfaction when, after a couple months, I finally found that Snickers Fudge bar I had been obsessing over. It was fun, but I think I'm going to let that hobby be stuck in 2009. I'll explain that more if I make a list of resolutions.
(4) Texting: In general, I hate cell phones. They are a necessary evil in my opinion. I can't imagine not having one with me in case of an emergency in my car, but I cannot buy into them wholesale. I really hate that people feel like because you have a cell phone, they are entitled to your time. There have been numerous times at work where people from the schools have gotten my cell phone number from HR, called and left a message, completely subverting the proper channels they're supposed to go through to put in a help call to me, and then been mad when I didn't get and respond to the message immediately. They like to think because they called my cell number, I have no excuse for not immediately responding to them. Well, here's my excuse. I didn't tell you you could get ahold of me through my cell phone. Personally I can't buy into carrying this thing around with me at all times. And the fact that everyone on Earth does so now is becoming really inconvenient for me. It also just plain bugs me that people cannot stay off their phones. Like, I live right next to the college. When school is in and I drive out in the morning to go to work, I drive by countless students walking to class and every single day talking on their phones. Who are they talking to at 7:40 in the morning every single day?!? That means they have an accomplice in this. If someone wanted to call me everyday at that time, after a while I would just have to convince them they don't want to talk to me through obscenities and threats of bodily harm. That's off-topic. Despite how much I dislike cell phones, this year I fell in love with texting. Mostly to my family. It's rare that I need to have a long conversation with my family, I guess because they're all so close. Usually all I need to know from them is where I need to be and at what time. I don't need all the hello's and pleasantries of a phone conversation anymore, all I need to is a quick text. Then I can disperse the pleasantries in person. So convenient too. If I send my brother some bullshit text just to remind him that my kung fu is superior to his kung fu, there's no sense of urgency yet applied to texting. You get to it when you get to it, a lot like email, and that's all anyone expects of it. Unlike a call, where if you don't answer immediately, it's an inexplicable national disaster! Should we call the police?!? I will be very upset if texting takes on that quality in the future. Right now I'm looking for a new cell plan that lets me limit my monthly minutes to a bare minimum but gives me unlimited texting. Not easy to find. Because most months I literally use between zero and two minutes of calling, but I use more texts than I'm allotted.
(3) Jazz and Prog: I was in such a musical rut for most of this year. I was listening to the radio a lot, like the hits stations, just to have something playing while I was driving around. But I wasn't really into anything. I shifted my focus constantly, mostly between current pop hits, neo-soul, and a lot of lunk-headed classic rock. When I went to the beach, I ended up having a bunch of Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins on my mp3 player, and since the water was way too cold to go into, I ended up sitting on the beach a lot listening to that. And I was totally bowled over. When I got back, it was back to the same old stuff for a while. Eventually I just said "I've had enough of this!" and wanted something that was exciting, being good for driving, but I just didn't want lyrics or singers, because posturing vocalists were irritating me at the time. I also wanted something to explore. Thus my new enthusiasm for jazz. I knew next to nothing about it really, so I decided I was going to start buying an album a week from someone I had never heard of, but that could get me excited based on an allmusic description. That didn't last much more than a month, but my interest had definitely been tickled. AND even better, I didn't feel guilty about buying jazz CD's, because the records are so much more difficult to find than old rock. Then there's my latest enthusiasm for prog. Mostly Yes. I had always had problems with prog, thinking it was more of an intellectual exercise than an emotional one. Yes kind of helped me put that to rest. So far I've only struck the tip with Yes, ELP, King Crimson, and a little Mahavishnu Orchestra. (And thank you, Adam, for that last rec. Definitely enjoying the first couple Mahavishnu albums, and I would probably never have checked them out if you hadn't told me to, because the words jazz-fusion in general make me cringe.)
(2) Lost and The Shield: The two TV series I breezed through this year. Started the year off having gotten the first season of The Shield as a Christmas gift. Fell in love with the series and blew through it in a couple months. Similarly, finally gave into the recommendation of Lost when it was presented to me by The Kissicks in a way I could not refuse. "Here are all four seasons, you can start from the beginning and watch as much as you want." And I got majorly hooked, quickly. Most times, if a show where the major evil could have easily been a giant cyclops or a dinosaur but instead turned out to be a menacing plume of smoke, I would be screaming angry. Not this time. That show developed so masterfully, and I'm siked for the final season coming up. Both these shows were obsessions for me, literally haunted my dreams and for the time I was watching practically altered the way I perceived the outside world.
(1) Netflix: You know how the number 1 of Letterman's top 10 lists is usually the least entertaining entry of all? That's what this is. Finally broke down and joined Netflix this year, after everybody else on Earth, and, big revelation, I can't get enough of it. Initially I did it because I was getting heavy into martial arts movies and wasn't going to find them on VHS at the thrift stores, and I was sick of dealing with the always iffy quality of torrents. Since then I've used it to feed my MMA obsessions, my love for Westerns, through the streaming I was able to watch the entire original The Office and after years and years of remembering that commercial I saw so long ago finally saw the movie Satisfaction. I could not be more pleased with it, and can't believe I ever though eight dollars a month might not be worth it.
Well, I want to come up with some more lists, but being seemingly incapable of briefly explaining myself, I'm kind of wondering when I'm going to get to bed. Might post some more tomorrow if I come up with something, but that just about sums up the decade doesn't it? Disappointment in and distraction from music that used to rule my life. Dismay. On the bright side, I'm listening to Sade's Stronger Than Pride album for the second time tonight and it is fantastic. And I have record news and a couple new/ltd. edition reviews that I should get up tomorrow, plus a list of resolutions I'll try out. And I'll try to come up with a couple more lists reflective on the past year(s). I should at the very least be able to make a list of the albums that hit me hardest this decade, even if most of them are not from this decade.
But lastly, here's one more thing. The #1 sign that I am old, way older than I ever realized. Songs from my youth are now considered oldies. Once the oldies station stopped playing 24/7 Christmas music this year, they officially announced they'd be playing music from the 80s on the oldies station. I'm hearing music from Elton John (Too Low For Zero-era) and Eurythmics on there that I have distinct memories of hearing on the car radio as a child when they were still considered fresh if not brand new. Now, I was jarred the first time I heard Welcome To The Jungle on a classic rock station, but I could justify that as sort of a loose translation. But oldies?!? Bring on the shaving kits and baby food.
(Someone is driving through the neighborhood honking their horn, apparently because they think honking a car horn is a universal way of saying it's a new year to all the people sitting in their homes that obviously have no desire to be anywhere near that fucker and his car. Or it's just a way for him to get some attention, whether it's from someone in his house or someone in his passenger seat. I hope he hits a tree. Or finds a canyon.)
That's not to say I haven't listened to a lot of stuff that was new to my ears during this decade that I did enjoy. (Although, not so much the last year.) But it really has no relevance to the last decade. They're only relevant to me. For instance, in college I was probably the last person to figure out the Velvet Underground was awesome. More recently, I'm probably the last person on Earth to figure out Yes is better than just Fragile. But, anyway, maybe I can make a few lists.
First of all, in terms of new music I tried to follow, the overwhelming trend this decade seemed to be that I would get into a band heavily, get incredibly excited when they were about to put out a new album, and then be disappointed with the new effort. My top five examples:
(5) Wilco - A Ghost Is Born. I don't care much for Wilco now, but at the time I thought they were super geniuses. I thought they were versatile in the styles they covered with excellent execution, thought the lyrics were good, and the instrumentation was pretty interesting too. Then A Ghost Is Born came out and I was bored to tears. End of that. Where before I had liked Jeff Tweedy's vocals, all of a sudden everything he sang from then on sounded like he was as bored as I was listening to him.
(4) The White Stripes. I'm not really sure which album to pick here. I was crazy about them. Bringing blues (though as much a put-on as it has ever been) into indie in a simple way that was both fun to listen to and eye-catching. Elephant came out and had a bunch of tracks on it I really liked, but by and large I wasn't that taken with it. So was that the disappointment? After that Get Behind Me Satan came out and I didn't care much for that at all. A big departure for them, and not one I was enamored with. But actually, after some time, I grew to like that one more and more. So was that the disappointment? Icky Thump, that was absolutely a disappointment, and it's totally indicative of why I can't stand to see Jack White's face anymore. I couldn't help but think that album would have been a lot better if hadn't been trying so hard to make himself a jack-of-all-trades. He wants to be everywhere and everything to everyone, and sort of assumes that anything he does will get a massive stamp of approval. And so far it has, even though every album he makes sounds more half-assed than the one before, especially when it comes to the White Stripes.
(3) My Morning Jacket - Z. Sweet merciful christ did I love My Morning Jacket before this album came out! I guess what I loved about It Still Moves was just the guitar rock aspect of it. The songs sounded ENORMOUS, and you got this back and forth in the guitars that was rare. Then Z comes out and it's dominated by keyboards, or at least that's what I heard. I was so mad. And that happened a lot to me this decade, keyboards taking over. I am not totally averse to keyboards. At the time I was heavy into The Band, and part of why I was so into My Morning Jacket was that I thought they incorporated a lot of that guitar-keyboard interplay on At Dawn and It Still Moves that made The Band so great. But they synthy sounds on Z that seemed to come with the new keyboard player just sounded so inorganic to me that it was a total turn-off. And when I read the lyrics. Geez. I had thought of Jim James as a pretty good lyricist, but I didn't like these at all. Like "A good showerhead and my right hand, the two best lovers that I ever had." (In fairness, after that I went back and read a lot of his previous lyrics and was less impressed than I thought I'd be.) I've since sort of come to terms with and can listen to this album, but still not the follow-up I was hoping for.
(2) Neko Case. Another one where I wasn't sure which album to pick. Blacklisted hit me hard when I first heard it. These very mysterious songs, they seemed out of time, classic, and a beautiful balance of song and story. And obviously her voice thrilled me. When I heard Neko was working on a new album and Garth Hudson was going to be out, little squeals of excitement came out of my ears. When Fox Confessor came out, not so enamored with it. I thought the mood on Blacklisted was so natural, here it seemed like something she was trying to create. She was very wordy now, sometimes at the expense of lyrical flow. Some of the songs like Teenage Feeling and At Last, I just plain didn't like. Then I heard her trying to connect all these songs to Russian folk tales. Geez. Basically an intellectual exercise where Blacklisted was completely visceral. The big problem is, that album is actually very good. Star Witness is up there with anything else she's done. Another big problem is that I have met several people who got into her on the basis of this album and think it's a masterpiece, which a lot of people do think. But it bothers me because those people don't even acknowledge, or perhaps haven't even heard, Blacklisted. Anyway, as I say, Fox Confessor was a very good album, but initially a disappointment. Middle Cyclone came out and just was not memorable. Now she was very very wordy, and it always sounded like she wanted to speak more than she wanted to sing, making the songs a lot less than memorable. Middle Cyclone is definitely the lesser album, but I don't know if it was quite as big a disappointment.
(1) Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Oh boy, do I really want to get into this? I loved everything about The Flaming Lips from their inception to the time when I got into them, which I guess was 2001 or 2002. They made great albums, they got better and better with every album, they made great B-sides, they did lots of crazy stuff with the packaging of their records and singles to promote fanaticism, they had a revolving cast of some of the most genius musicians to contribute to "indie" rock in ways that other bands just seemed completely incapable of approaching, and their live show seemed to be taking steps to since the days of flaming cymbals to becoming a circus. I loved that they had that one hit, and that seemed to actually keep them more obscure than they should have been. It seemed like people knew that hit and figured that was all they needed to know. I loved telling people at WCWM that I was going to do a nine hour Lips show and having them say, "Shit. I didn't know they had that much music," and knowing myself that I was not going to be able to fit in all I wanted to play in nine hours. Yoshimi was the first album newly released while I was into them. I convinced myself at the time that I liked it, I forced myself to like it, but deep down I wanted more from them. It seemed so gimmicky to me, it reminded me of someone trying too hard to be weird, which became what the Lips were all about after that. The live show became the same thing for, what, four years? Bringing people to dance on stage, a plastic bubble, Wayne's suit, the same list of songs (had to stay the same so they could play to the tapes!). I was not impressed anymore, and I think it started with Yoshimi. The robot gimmick, Do You Realize as a pandering to the audience, pandering throughout the album, trying to approach these big questions which their audience just ate up, but ultimately I thought were too easy for these guys. And they did make some great songs at the time. Funeral In My Head is still one of my favorite Lips songs. And I could just as easily say Mystics here. That was definitely a disappointment, that was just a disaster. They should never have made anything that awful. But Yoshimi is the one that sticks with me, because I was waiting for it with such anticipation.
Well, now it's 2am. That took too long. If I keep writing too much explanation I'm not going to get much written. I'll try.
Favorite Things Of The Past Year:
(5) Limited Edition Everything: Lots of fun hunting, lots of fun doing my best impression of serious reviewing, lots of good discoveries, a couple of favorites being the Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms and Ginger Snap Ben & Jerry's. I even have a new review to put tonight for Turkey Hill Ginger Snap. Ooooo! Controversial comparisons! I had an enormous satisfaction when, after a couple months, I finally found that Snickers Fudge bar I had been obsessing over. It was fun, but I think I'm going to let that hobby be stuck in 2009. I'll explain that more if I make a list of resolutions.
(4) Texting: In general, I hate cell phones. They are a necessary evil in my opinion. I can't imagine not having one with me in case of an emergency in my car, but I cannot buy into them wholesale. I really hate that people feel like because you have a cell phone, they are entitled to your time. There have been numerous times at work where people from the schools have gotten my cell phone number from HR, called and left a message, completely subverting the proper channels they're supposed to go through to put in a help call to me, and then been mad when I didn't get and respond to the message immediately. They like to think because they called my cell number, I have no excuse for not immediately responding to them. Well, here's my excuse. I didn't tell you you could get ahold of me through my cell phone. Personally I can't buy into carrying this thing around with me at all times. And the fact that everyone on Earth does so now is becoming really inconvenient for me. It also just plain bugs me that people cannot stay off their phones. Like, I live right next to the college. When school is in and I drive out in the morning to go to work, I drive by countless students walking to class and every single day talking on their phones. Who are they talking to at 7:40 in the morning every single day?!? That means they have an accomplice in this. If someone wanted to call me everyday at that time, after a while I would just have to convince them they don't want to talk to me through obscenities and threats of bodily harm. That's off-topic. Despite how much I dislike cell phones, this year I fell in love with texting. Mostly to my family. It's rare that I need to have a long conversation with my family, I guess because they're all so close. Usually all I need to know from them is where I need to be and at what time. I don't need all the hello's and pleasantries of a phone conversation anymore, all I need to is a quick text. Then I can disperse the pleasantries in person. So convenient too. If I send my brother some bullshit text just to remind him that my kung fu is superior to his kung fu, there's no sense of urgency yet applied to texting. You get to it when you get to it, a lot like email, and that's all anyone expects of it. Unlike a call, where if you don't answer immediately, it's an inexplicable national disaster! Should we call the police?!? I will be very upset if texting takes on that quality in the future. Right now I'm looking for a new cell plan that lets me limit my monthly minutes to a bare minimum but gives me unlimited texting. Not easy to find. Because most months I literally use between zero and two minutes of calling, but I use more texts than I'm allotted.
(3) Jazz and Prog: I was in such a musical rut for most of this year. I was listening to the radio a lot, like the hits stations, just to have something playing while I was driving around. But I wasn't really into anything. I shifted my focus constantly, mostly between current pop hits, neo-soul, and a lot of lunk-headed classic rock. When I went to the beach, I ended up having a bunch of Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins on my mp3 player, and since the water was way too cold to go into, I ended up sitting on the beach a lot listening to that. And I was totally bowled over. When I got back, it was back to the same old stuff for a while. Eventually I just said "I've had enough of this!" and wanted something that was exciting, being good for driving, but I just didn't want lyrics or singers, because posturing vocalists were irritating me at the time. I also wanted something to explore. Thus my new enthusiasm for jazz. I knew next to nothing about it really, so I decided I was going to start buying an album a week from someone I had never heard of, but that could get me excited based on an allmusic description. That didn't last much more than a month, but my interest had definitely been tickled. AND even better, I didn't feel guilty about buying jazz CD's, because the records are so much more difficult to find than old rock. Then there's my latest enthusiasm for prog. Mostly Yes. I had always had problems with prog, thinking it was more of an intellectual exercise than an emotional one. Yes kind of helped me put that to rest. So far I've only struck the tip with Yes, ELP, King Crimson, and a little Mahavishnu Orchestra. (And thank you, Adam, for that last rec. Definitely enjoying the first couple Mahavishnu albums, and I would probably never have checked them out if you hadn't told me to, because the words jazz-fusion in general make me cringe.)
(2) Lost and The Shield: The two TV series I breezed through this year. Started the year off having gotten the first season of The Shield as a Christmas gift. Fell in love with the series and blew through it in a couple months. Similarly, finally gave into the recommendation of Lost when it was presented to me by The Kissicks in a way I could not refuse. "Here are all four seasons, you can start from the beginning and watch as much as you want." And I got majorly hooked, quickly. Most times, if a show where the major evil could have easily been a giant cyclops or a dinosaur but instead turned out to be a menacing plume of smoke, I would be screaming angry. Not this time. That show developed so masterfully, and I'm siked for the final season coming up. Both these shows were obsessions for me, literally haunted my dreams and for the time I was watching practically altered the way I perceived the outside world.
(1) Netflix: You know how the number 1 of Letterman's top 10 lists is usually the least entertaining entry of all? That's what this is. Finally broke down and joined Netflix this year, after everybody else on Earth, and, big revelation, I can't get enough of it. Initially I did it because I was getting heavy into martial arts movies and wasn't going to find them on VHS at the thrift stores, and I was sick of dealing with the always iffy quality of torrents. Since then I've used it to feed my MMA obsessions, my love for Westerns, through the streaming I was able to watch the entire original The Office and after years and years of remembering that commercial I saw so long ago finally saw the movie Satisfaction. I could not be more pleased with it, and can't believe I ever though eight dollars a month might not be worth it.
Well, I want to come up with some more lists, but being seemingly incapable of briefly explaining myself, I'm kind of wondering when I'm going to get to bed. Might post some more tomorrow if I come up with something, but that just about sums up the decade doesn't it? Disappointment in and distraction from music that used to rule my life. Dismay. On the bright side, I'm listening to Sade's Stronger Than Pride album for the second time tonight and it is fantastic. And I have record news and a couple new/ltd. edition reviews that I should get up tomorrow, plus a list of resolutions I'll try out. And I'll try to come up with a couple more lists reflective on the past year(s). I should at the very least be able to make a list of the albums that hit me hardest this decade, even if most of them are not from this decade.
But lastly, here's one more thing. The #1 sign that I am old, way older than I ever realized. Songs from my youth are now considered oldies. Once the oldies station stopped playing 24/7 Christmas music this year, they officially announced they'd be playing music from the 80s on the oldies station. I'm hearing music from Elton John (Too Low For Zero-era) and Eurythmics on there that I have distinct memories of hearing on the car radio as a child when they were still considered fresh if not brand new. Now, I was jarred the first time I heard Welcome To The Jungle on a classic rock station, but I could justify that as sort of a loose translation. But oldies?!? Bring on the shaving kits and baby food.
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