Funeral to Finish

 As you'll notice below, I have irritatingly refused to rank the Top 10, which all together exist in a nebulous cloud of Top 10ness. 20. Beulah, Yoko 19. Wolf Parade, Apologies to the Queen Mary 18. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music 17. Dandy Warhols,  Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia 16. Game Theory, The Big Shot Chronicles 15. The Beatles, The Beatles (White Album) 14. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 13. Elliott Smith, XO 12. The Clash, London Calling 11. R.E.M., Murmur The Top 10 The Libertines, Up the Bracket Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea The Wrens, Meadowlands The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street Weakerthans, Reconstruction Site The Trash Can Sinatras, Cake The Loud Family, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain The Beatles, Abbey Road R.E.M., Reckoning This was fun!  Let's do it again never. The single question I was asked most often was "Did you discover any new music that you really like b...

Sorry, this is not three Warped Tour bands, it's a description of the artists who were somehow NOT included on the Rolling Stone list. First off, let me say what a wild and weird feeling it is to get up in the morning knowing I don't have to listen to anything in particular.  I have more than two years of new music to catch up on and my Spotify algorithm thinks all I want is music from the 70's.  It's going to take me years to get it back to normal. 1. The Jam The Jam isn't just  a great band, although they were that too, they're a totally influential, important band.  You can hear them in everyone from Blur to Bloc Party to Arctic Monkeys to my beloved Libertines.  The fact that they broke up in 1982 and lead singer Paul Weller has resolutely refused to do the now-perfunctory reunion probably hasn't helped, but they should be on this list. Album that should be on the list: All Mod Cons 2. Van Halen I know why they aren't on the list; they have a reputat...

  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th...

Just another short break before we get to the top spot, which I have been listening to/digesting/trying to think about.  My own Top 20 will follow the number 1.  Thanks for sticking with me through this over the last 2+ years. 80. Husker Du, New Day Rising 79. Belle & Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister 78. Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols 77. Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus 76. TV on the Radio, Dear Science 75. Smiths, Meat Is Murder 74. Todd Snider, East Nashville Skyline 73. Wings, Wings Over America 72. Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison 71. De La Soul, Three Feet High and Rising   70. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver 69. Weakerthans, Reunion Tour 68. Pearl Jam, Ten 67. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here 66. Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home 65. Pogues, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash 64. Rolling Stones, Tattoo You The last really great album the Stones ever made, despite "Start Me Up."  "Hang Fire," ...

  I have a few theories about why this often-boring, massively overrated album is so beloved by old white music critics.  First, it famously took thousands of hours of super-intensive studio tinkering to make, and old white guys love tinkering with things.  Second, after the album went out of print in the mid-70s, it became a cult classic, and old white guys love something that's very hard to get and so is available only to hardcore collectors and guys who get to estate sales at 8 am on a Saturday to see if there are any old records.  Third, it's become a Third Rail album that is now so accepted as brilliant that you look like a dope in front of your other old white guy friends if you say it mostly sucks.   The first single on this record - which was actually released under Brian Wilson's name, and was intended to launch his solo career - was "Caroline, No," an absolutely inert dud of a song that sounds like something Andy Williams would have recorded on a ...

  Like many music dorks my age, I've always been captivated by lists.  I mean, obviously, I'm doing this project , which is just my takes on someone else's lists.  From time to time, I've compiled my own lists of my favorite music in some form or another, but I have never undetaken the daunting task of figuring out my favorite 100 albums and then putting them into order from 1 to 100.  It's an inherently transitory task, as it represents my feelings about these albums at this particular date in history.  Nevertheless, the top 20 at least is very, very similar to a top 20 list I made about 15 years ago, so it's not all out of left field. Brief comments on some of the albums, as warranted. 100. New Order, Low-Life Kind of a forgotten New Order album, but the first one I bought, way back as a youth.  I still remember the tracing paper sleeve that let you slide band members photos in and out so you could have whoever you wanted on the cover.  Best known pr...

  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g...

  I was somewhere with my friend Doug - I'm not sure when or where, but it was probably in North Beach in the early 90s - when this song was playing.  I was marveling at its gorgeous melody and listening to the lyrics: Until the day is night and night becomes the day (Always) Until the trees and seas just up and fly away (Always) Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four (Always) Until the day that is the day that are no more (Did you know you're loved by somebody?) Until the day the earth starts turning right to left (Always) Until the earth just for the sun denies itself (I'll be loving you forever) Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through (Always) Until the day that you are me and I am you (Always) Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky (Always) Until the ocean covers every mountain high (Always) And I jokingly remarked something about how this song must be called "Always" because, reader, I was not familiar with this album as ...