Funeral to Finish

  For lack of a better word, this album is just spooky.  Recorded in 1936 and 1937 when Johnson was just 25 and 26 years old, it's really just a scratchy recording of the man and his guitar, but it would go on to become the foundation for a lot of what we think of as "rock" today.  Even if you don't know anything about early blues or know what a I-IV-V sequence is, if you listen to this you'll immediately go "Oh! That's the blues sound!"  It's that recognizable. The recordings languished in obscurity for many years until John Hammon persuaded Columbia Records to issue them as a set in this album in 1961.  There is probably no way to overstate the impact this collection had on popular music.  Everyone from Bob Dylan to Keith Richards to Eric Clapton was immediately galvanized by what they heard on this record.  Of course they were.  Johnson's voice, which varies from a plaintive whine to an anguished growl, sounds like it's issuing straigh

  If you were part of any "scene" in the 80's or 90's (and, I'm sure, today), you knew all about the evil of "selling out."  Selling out was what happened when someone in the scene accidentally became successful, like more successful than house shows or pop-ups or whatever you had.  Like getting a record deal with a major label or getting an agent or selling your art in a gallery to rich people.  Selling out was the worst thing that could happen to someone because it meant they were no longer real . This was Green Day's sellout album, when they left (amicably, by all accounts) indie local Lookout! records and signed with Reprise.  Everyone in the East Bay punk scene was SO MAD!  You are not ever supposed to actually make money.  That is not cool.  The punk club 924 Gilman banned Green Day from entering the place and as far as I know the ban is still in effect.  Sellouts! [UPDATE: I am informed via Twitter that the ban was lifted a while back and the

  I've known this day was coming for a while, and here it is, and I still have the same problem: how to write about an album that's intensely personal to me, one that I've listened to all the way through maybe more than any other album in the last 20 years, one that's rightfully regarded as one of the best, if not the best, record of the 90's, and still languishes here at 376.  Not everyone likes this album and that's fine.  There's a probably apocryphal Jerry Garcia quote that goes "Not everyone likes us, but the people who like us really, really like us," and that's true of this album as well. How to describe this album.  I guess it's lo-fi psych-folk, with some funeral marches and Bulgarian folk influence?  No, it's campfire songs for those with schizoaffective disorder?  No, it's indie rock from an alien planet?  The very first thing you hear, in "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1" is a simple strummed acoustic chord patte

  God, I forgot how hard this album goes.  This album absolutely fucks.  This album is a pure jagged slice of early-00's NYC dance punk, and it makes you feel young again, or even young for the first time.  I don't know how these songs were written but if you told me they locked themselves in a squat with no heat in Brooklyn for three days with nothing but red wine and Adderall and this is what came out of that I would believe you.  I was listening to it in my own house and I wanted to jump around and throw something through the window.  Fuck, this is a great record. You are immediately drawn to Karen O's voice, a seething, screaming, prowling instrument that, at first anyway, dominates the sound, but then you realize that Nick Zinner's guitar is just as important, buzzing through the whole thing, playing off the vocals (or vice versa, I don't know).  Karen O and drummer Brian Chase met at Oberlin, which makes sense because these songs are all arty and avant-punky a

  My first thought was "Man, this sounds dated," but then I realized it came out in 1983, making it essentially the "Rock Around the Clock" of hip-hop.  The top 3 songs of 1983 were "Every Breath You Take," "Billie Jean," and "Flashdance...What a Feeling," and although those are all incredible songs in their own regard, none of them have the immediacy and the urgency of any song on this album. Listening to it again now, you're struck by the heaviness of the beat and the frequent interplay between DMC and Run.  They frequently trade off vocals in the middle of a line, finishing each others' thoughts.  Their rhythm became so understood to be the voice of hip hop that it's the go-to whenever anybody wants to do the I'm-a-white-person-doing-a-rap, like "My name is MICHAEL and I'm here to SAY I like doing RAP in an obvious WAY."  That dot-dot-DOT-dot-de-dot-dot-DOT vocal pattern is the backbone here and became u

  Like many adolescents in the 80's filled with suburban ennui and a taste for sci-fi and fantasy, I had a Rush phase in my early teens, which involved a fair amount of listening to this record, arguably Rush's best or at least most accessible.  Their two biggest (and probably most radio-friendly) songs are both on here, "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight."   But don't take it from today TK, take it from TK's writing about this album in the school newspaper in nineteen-eighty-*cough*:  "'Tom Sawyer' was almost based on keyboards, with guitar secondary; their transition to techno-pop was almost complete.  Other cuts that proved notable included 'Limelight,' 'YYZ,' and instrumental named for the airport designation of Toronto, and 'Red Barchetta,' which survived zero airplay to become a sort of underground classic."  OK that's enough from you, young TK. No, I am not linking to this opus from my teen years. Later o

  This album is making me rethink my longstanding aversion to jazz.  I could actually see myself putting this on again and listening to it of my own volition, which is not something I thought would ever happen with a jazz album.  When we last encountered jazz  in the form of Ornette Coleman, it was so disjointed and skittish that even someone who loved it said it was like an "atom bomb falling on a chicken coop."  But this is not that kind of jazz!  It is, I learned, be-bop, and I know I sound like someone who has just come to your country and thank you how to use money please but there are actual songs with structure and recurring themes.  It's actually fine background music!  I guess it could be foreground music too if you're not me. I'm not alone in my feelings about Ornette Coleman.  Guess who else was dubious about it?  CHARLES MINGUS JR.!!!  He said, about Coleman, "...if the free-form guys could play the same tune twice, then I would say they were pla