Blog-posts by nature don't command high expectations. That is a source of dubious and ignoble appeal to my slacker tendencies as well as an affront to my skills and ambitions as a writer. I try to tend to this gap in values by writing especially crafted and developed essays for my blog at my own leisurely pace.
Failures are much easier to cope with when I think of myself as a blogger rather than a writer; they can even provide a refreshing holiday. When I finished my last essay, without knowing what to write next, I tepidly began a piece titled “Good Names, Bad Names.”
Thunderballz is a good name for an AC/DC cover band, I wrote. Gaylord is a bad name to give a homophobic baby.
And that's as far as I got.
I decided to compose a list of my 20 favorite albums, similar to the countdown I put together for video games that I enjoy and for the same reason: I needed to grant some time for more legit ideas to percolate while keeping my mind active with a creative diversion. As a blogger rather than an author, I consider myself immune to crimes of obsessive self-indulgence.
Here are the rules: I won't include live albums, regardless of how great I think they are, because they so often encompass eras or entire career-spans of musicians. The merits of a single recording session shouldn't be compared alongside of a live performance with multiple sessions to pick and choose from for optimum material. For that reason, I will only type that I'd love to gush about Nirvana's Unplugged in New York, Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, and Johnny Cash's concert at Folsom Prison, but stubborn logic prevents me from doing so in this forum.
In the interest of providing a more diverse list, I will refrain from including more than one album by a band or musician. That is why I won't elaborate on my fondness for Radiohead's Kid A, Beck's Midnite Vultures, or a handful of worthy candidates recorded by the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
Greatest hits albums? Get the fuck out of here. The audacity!
Apologies, ladies, for devising such a sausage-fest in my highly subjective celebration of terrific music. Can I be forgiven if I insist that, “There is something wrong with me, not you”? I doubt it. That line didn't go over well in bed, either. Also, I will, perhaps, give disproportionate credit to the songwriters involved and therefore diminish the contributions of the other musicians in a band. Such biases may offend bassists and drummers but seem like a natural conceit to storytellers who sing in voices people love to hear.
20.Jets to Brazil—Orange Rhyming Dictionary (1998): The countdown commences with its least acclaimed entry. Wikipedia, a different reference guide not printed on the front of this LP, lends little more than insight into the gag behind the album's title. Get it?!
In 1995, a multitude of haughty punks betrayed and disparaged Jawbreaker—JTB frontman Blake Schwarzenbach's former band. The backlash from purists arose when Jawbreaker capitalized on their fringe-success by signing with a major label. In light of the mainstreaming of punk that was led by bands like Green Day and Blink-182, genre-elitists reckoned it unforgivable for a group to accept a pay raise for making great music. Disenchanted fans literally turned their backs on the band throughout Jawbreaker's final concerts. It was a misguided condemnation of the trio who had delivered the masterful 24-Hour Revenge Therapy, a denouncement of grown men who still loved punk-rock but had become tired of sleeping on couches and riding vast distances from gig-to-gig in a ramshackle van. Come on. There is a difference between ideals and delusions, punk-kids.
Orange Rhyming Dictionary marked Blake's transition into indie-rock/ emo, and he reveled in the leeway allowed for an expansion of sounds and sentiments that other scenes had to offer. Blake was free to dwell in the somber and contemplative riff of “Chinatown.” He was in no hurry, felt no need for thrashing abrasions when he relayed the story of lying depressively on the floor and observing that his curtains resembled a “Sea Anemone.” He was still a romantic who wanted to proclaim his love for a woman, as he did in Jawbreaker's “Jinx Removing,” but his delivery in “Sweet Avenue” was less feverish, more thoroughly developed and refined.
Aside from its notable ballads, Dictionary excels with an enticing blend of distortion and purity, propelled by both disenchantment and resolve. The album opens with “Crown of the Valley,” a tale of spoiled nostalgia that rollicks with a near-perfect alt-rock groove highlighted by Blake's pleading, “Oh God, stop tearing off the roof of my experimental bathroom/ It's the only thing that's halfway mine, and not for your prying or lying eyes.” On the 10th track, he builds upon suspenseful dread, types for miles and creates worried piles of paper before conclusively indicting his muse, who keeps fucking up his life. Blake endured the communal backlash that spelled the demise of his first band, acknowledged his cynicism of punk-cynics and radio-friendly profiteers alike, and retained his integrity. As was the case in the escape-anthem “Morning New Disease,” he was still dreaming of a life that wasn't his, but at least he kept dreaming, and for that, I am thankful.
19. Nirvana-Nevermind (1991): For Kurt Cobain, the album that defined the Seattle grunge-explosion and spelled the demise of hair metal proved those dark adages about being careful for what one wishes for and catching hell due to answered prayers. It was the same desire to connect with listeners on an emotional level that would later daunt and terrify him when he was deemed the spokesman for his generation. Like Dylan before him, he resented the lofty distinction. Both men felt troubled and wearied by such expectations and hated to be perceived as Messianic figures. Cobain lacked the will-power of a survivor, however, which was unlike Dylan. Heartbroken and enfeebled by addiction, the disillusioned voice of the early-90s ultimately decided life wasn't worth the trouble.
To express the impact generated by the first track and lead single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” is redundant by now. It stands as an exceedingly rare hit that alters the landscape of popular music, for good or ill—depending on whose side you were on in the Axl/ Cobain rivalry that was ignited by their bad-ass vs. smart-ass confrontation before the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. “Teen Spirit” is as overplayed as “Whole Lotta Love” and maybe even “Welcome to the Jungle”--songs packed with such timely impact that they hardly require further listening at this point.
That should not count as a demerit against Nevermind, however; despite allowing for more studio-polished production touches from Butch Vig, Cobain did not scale back on his sometimes enlightened, sometimes adolescent vitriol for the sake of a #1 single. “In Bloom” and “Come as You Are,” likewise, garnered airtime on MTV and rock radio without yielding much compromise of artistic intent. The former was a landmark of slacker irony for its skewering of those who like all the pretty songs, even when they know not what the message is. The latter was a riff-hypnotic, desperate plea for true friendship from a man who was lying when he swore that he didn't have a gun.
It is the tracks that received little-to-no exposure on MTV or rock radio that solidify Nevermind as a personal favorite, though. Amidst the mid-tempo laceration of “Lounge Act,” Cobain lets us know that even alt-rock saviors struggle with unrequited crushes as he confides, “I've got this friend, you see, who makes me feel/ And I wanted more than I could steel.” Drummer Dave Grohl commands blistering beats of punk-fueled aggression on tracks like “Territorial Pissings” and “Stay Away.” Bassist Krist Novoselic lends a sinister buoyancy to tracks such as the quiet-to-loud, bipolar anthem “Lithium.”
Cobain, was, of course, the star of the show, in ways both fitting and tragic--and that is perhaps best evidenced by the doom-struck empathy he evokes for a victim of atrocities named “Polly.” In response his acknowledgment of the ballad, Bob Dylan remarked, “The kid has heart.” My favorite track is “Drain You,” a gripping horror show of human selfishness and insincerity. “One baby to another says, 'I'm lucky I met you'/ I don't care what you think unless it is about me/ It is now my duty to completely drain you.” He goes on to evoke the story of Original Sin, charging, “You taught me everything without a poison apple.” It is a grave misfortune that Cobain believed he had learned all that he needed to know when he died by his own hand at the age of 27.
18.Elliott Smith—From a Basement on the Hill (2004): Despite the appearances of this and the previous entry, not all of the ensuing albums were primarily written by suicidal heroin addicts. It's just a happy coincidence how it turned out this way!
On one level, it seems like a morbid bias is at work in adoration of the songs that essentially served as one man's self-inflicted goodbye to the cruel world. On another, and perhaps more humane level, most of the tracks are just so damn plaintively beautiful and alive with melancholic melody that such a bias is owed to From a Basement on the Hill.
“Coast to Coast” begins the posthumous release with an orchestral overture suitable for a horror movie. The macabre tunings are followed by percussive kicks and cracks and an ominous guitar riff that sounds like a buzz-saw spinning with sinister patience. Smith pleads for amnesia to forget about his emotional ties to friends and loved ones after his mind has been made up on the matter of life and death. Smith admits that he doesn't consider himself the sort of person who makes other happy and gives up on constructing that facade. “Let's Get Lost” finds the pained singer/ songwriter longing for the comforts that introverts get from solitude. In “Shooting Star,” Smith wails a riff of haunting, bad-trip acid-rock and likens the appeal of an unreliable love interest to the fleeting faith experienced by those who wish upon meteorites that pass across the galaxy, far away from us. “King's Crossing” marks a macabre journey into the psyche of an abject drug addict—redeemed by Smith's gripping honesty and gift for melody. Without pretension, in hindsight, he defies his audience to, “Give (him) one reason not to do it.” A female voice recorded the response, “Because we love you,” after the fact, when Smith's swan songs were being mixed and polished in the studio.
“A Fond Farewell” stands as Smith's equivalent to Cobain's “All Apologies.” With detached resignation, Smith compares his internal crisis to bidding “Farewell” to a friend “who couldn't get things right.” To him, his life and demise added up to “A little less than a happy high/ A little less than a suicide/ The only things that you really tried.” Elliott Smith sold himself short.
17. Cake—Comfort Eagle (2001): As outrageous as this seems, more so than Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, Cake singer John McCrea impresses me most with his less-than-spectacular, limited-range vocals. McCrea, much like the legends I have perhaps dubiously compared him too, excels in his knack for accommodating insightful and cynical narrations to a voice that—if not exceptional—never wavers far from truth and wit.
McCrea enthralls with vivid character sketches of a global variety, from Austrian noblemen and opera singers who perform in foreign lands to the aspiring writers and offbeat radio deejays of America. “Meanwhile, Rick James” offers a twinkling rockabye of keyboard notes to soothe a man helpless in his efforts to protect his girlfriend from the allures of big city seediness. Multi-instrumentalist Vincent DiFiore juggles keyboard and trumpet duties with the greatest of ease. He lends spooky tones to the title track, an ironic denouncement of the greed and hubris symptomatic of expanding empires, as well as sharp flourishes of brass to “Short Skirt/ Long Jacket,” McCrea's dynamic plea for an ideal lover.
Comfort Eagle is a fine rock album with astute pop-sensibilities. McCrea is a wily cynic who can still deliver earnest affection (in “Love You Madly,” for instance), as well as unaffected heartache in the closer, “World of Two.” His workmanlike baritone in no way diminishes his songs because they are so thoroughly crafted and labored over with focus and care.
16. David Bowie—The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972): There is a chance that Ziggy Stardust may not truly qualify for the concept album hall-of-fame (alongside of Sgt. Pepper and Tommy) because it's possible that Bowie was too spaced-out and loony to discern the act from the real thing. Ringo Starr, for instance, could no doubt tell the difference between himself and Billy Shears, but in the early '70s, Bowie's distinction between identity and character seemed, at the very least, hazier. Ultimately, I think Ziggy Stardust was a splendid compromise of schizophrenic ticks and art-rock grandeur that put Bowie in the role of his supernatural yet doomed alter-ego.
It's telling that on the opening track, “Five Years,” Bowie readily admits that he feels like an actor. The conceptual premise of Ziggy is (loosely) established here: with our doomsday lurking in a half-decade, a visitor from another planet with musical chops and a garish taste in wardrobe is left with only so much time to enlighten us with his lewd and ethereal brand of rock music. In the process, however, Ziggy's focus wavers; his excesses are most clearly exposed in the pseudo-title track, when it is revealed he “took it all too far,” ravished his own ego, and collapsed under the gravity of his messiah-complex. Ziggy's story-arc concludes, predictably but no less powerfully, as a “Rock and Roll Suicide.” In resuming the fixation for cosmic mysteries that he founded with “Space Oddity,” Bowie played the role of an ill-fated alien rather than a man, loaded the songs with kitsch, but somehow never forfeited his project to the forces of farce. There are psychedelic preachings, to be sure, romping yet somewhat obtuse hippie-commands to “Freak out in a 'Moonage Daydream,'” but Bowie seemed a worthy prophet nonetheless. The first words of “Rock and Roll Suicide” stand as testament to that...
“Time takes a cigarette and puts it in your mouth.” And later, he wails the only condolence for such a grim truth: “You're not alone.”
(Wham, Bam, thank you, ma' am. 2,500 words is enough for now. I am—after all—a blogger, not an author. More to come.)
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