Funeral to Finish

  These days I guess we mostly know Billy Corgan as a joyless, self-important asshole, so it's sort of reassuring to learn that when the band was making this album, he was also a joyless, self-important asshole.  But ONCE AGAIN we must separate art from the artist because this album fucking RIPS. I somehow never got into the Pumpkins back in the 90's (although I did see them at the Tibetan Freedom Day concert in 1996 at Golden Gate Park , a touchstone for San Francisco Gen-Xers if there ever was one), so I had never heard this album before.  In fact, the only song I'd heard on it was "Today," and that's mostly just because it was permanently on MTV when MTV used to show videos all day and I was home and "between jobs" or whatever.  "Today" is great song!  But there are so many other great songs on this album.   The whole affair starts out with a drum roll, fittingly enough, since Jimmy Chamberlin's intricate drumming is the driver behin

  I guess Rolling Stone thinks this is the Beatles' worst album because it's the first one we've seen and therefore the lowest ranked and I'm assuming all 12 Beatles studio albums will be on here.  I guess I can see it, which is to say that the worst Beatles album is still better than most other albums ever made.   It's weird, when I first listened to it (and I never owned this album, I'm guessing I never really listened to it all the way through before) it seemed like kind of a patchwork or pastiche.  There's the ragged, poppy, almost demo-sounding "Two of Us," and later there's the orchestral and grand "The Long and Winding Road."  There's a reason for this, of course - by the time they recorded this, the band was openly feuding with each other, and then they eventually just quit and moved on to the sessions for Abbey Road , which was then released before this album was. But man, oh, man, the high points on this album are super

  This album is like jukebox paradise, which is no doubt how I first encountered a lot of these songs.  This is an easy Top 500 album, just for "Everyday People" and "Hot Fun in the Summertime" alone.  And then, of course, there's the wackily titled "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)," which hit #1 in February of 1970 and is a certified jam. This band has such a fascinating history.  They formed in San Francisco and played at Woodstock.  But by 1970 they had relocated to Los Angeles and Sly was essentially a full-time drug user (coke and PCP, primarily) that it made gigs spotty.  Original drummer Greg Errico left soon after and went on to have a tremendous career, playing with Bowie, Journey, and Jerry Garcia.  Here's a super fucked up Sly on the Dick Cavett show in 1971: Following decades of drug abuse, Sly ended up living in a camper van in the Crenshaw area of LA, where a retired couple made sure he got at least one meal a day.  He's m

  Even if you don't know it, you are almost certainly familiar with at least one of the songs on this album, and that song is "Pressure Drop," an inspired and instantly catchy ode to karma.  Toots himself recalled, "It’s a song about revenge, but in the form of karma: if you do bad things to innocent people, then bad things will happen to you.  The title was a phrase I used to say.  If someone done me wrong, rather than fight them like a warrior, I’d say: 'The pressure’s going to drop on you.'"  This is not the common understanding of this song!  Rather, it seems like most people interpret it as some kind of kickback anthem.  Like this Coors light ad: (BTW here's an interesting piece about this ad and how it subverts the normal beer-commercial tropes, which I guess it does! Despite the fact that it uses a song about revenge and justice.) "Pressure Drop" has been covered many times, including this fantastic version by the Specials: (No offe

  In my mind I keep two different "Best of" lists: the objective list and the subjective list.  In other words, there are the songs that I think are maybe the Greatest Songs in Rock, and then there are My Favorite Songs, and those are two very different lists.  Same with albums, I guess.  I think Sgt Pepper is one of the best and most important albums in rock history, but it's not in my personal top 20. This album is a dead lock for Top 500 because of one song and that song is "Rosalita," objectively one of the best songs in the history of rock music.  I was borderline obsessed with "Rosalita" when I was aboooouuuuut 13 or 14 years old maybe, and while I still love it, our ardor has cooled.  It is no longer one of my favorite songs, but I still firmly believe it is one of the best songs.   (This is a live version, but it's similar to the version on this record and it's probably even better of a song live.)  So for "Rosalita" alone, t

  You know what, I kind of admire the Arctic Monkeys for this.  They could have stuck with their rock revival sound (you might remember the great rock revival of the early aughts, what with your Strokes and Kings of Leon and Libertines and ugh yes your The Darkness too I guess) that sold them eleven trillion records but instead they moved to LA and got, well, LA about it.  Where their first album,  Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not , is a bottle-throwing, pogo dancing party, this is the grown-up aftermath.  It sounds like 3 am in LA, brooding and introspective and, well, rich. This is a good album!  There are a lot of good ideas and a couple of great songs (my personal favorite is "No.1 Party Anthem," which is decidedly not a party anthem, get it?, but ymmv) but honestly this is one of the few albums that I don't understand why it's here.  I mean, Whatever  I could see, it's a fantastic record and a fully developed sound for a first album which

  Before we proceed we must pause and acknowledge what some have referred to as the Best Tweet Ever: I don't know if it's the best ever, but it's really good.  The image of an old white guy stunting on the first black President with his superior rap knowledge is a powerful one.  Alas, this is not my favorite Wu Tang album (remember Ghost's Supreme Clientele from a while back? Yeah, that's the one), it is certainly a very good album.  (One of the top Google results for "liquid swords" is "Why is Liquid Swords so good?")  It's got the perfect blend of everything that made Wu Tang famous: hustling, street life, kung fu, and tight rhymes. Lyrically, this probably outstrips Clientele and maybe most other Wu albums.  You can pick a verse from almost any song, but it's shit like this (from "Gold"): Snake got smoked on the set like Brandon Lee Blown out the frame like Pan Am Flight 103 He got swung on, his lungs was torn A kingpin jus