The 10 Best Selling Albums of 2010

Given that we are at the end of the year / start of a new year I figured that I would take a look back at the year in music by discussing the ten bestselling albums of the year. Note that I have no idea how this list was created nor do I own or could even say that I have listened to any of these albums so this will essentially be snarky comments on things that I have no clue about. Not much difference than the rest of my posts when you think about it.

(By the way, Katy Perry, who has horrible skin, came in at number eleven which just goes to show that even sleeping with a muppet does not guarantee chart success.)

#10: Alicia Keys “The Element of Freedom”: I believe the element of freedom is bismuth. One of the things that you will notice about the top selling artists is that with a few, very minor exceptions, they could have appeared on the bestsellers list in 2000. I’m pretty sure Alicia Keys has been around that long. Basically the only people who still actually buy music are people who were buying music in 2000 and haven’t updated their taste in music since then.

#9: Sade “Soldier of Love”: Or 1990 for that matter. Every time I think of Sade I end up thinking about Chaka Kahn whose only song, hell the only lyric I know, is her going “Chaka Kahn Chaka Kahn”. I have no idea why this sticks in my head the way it does. Anyway, you really can’t talk smack about Sade because she just has way too good of a voice. I’m actually happy to see her on the list.

#8: Michael Buble “Crazy Love”: I’ll hand it to Michael Buble for seeing a niche and exploiting it. There is always going to be a need for Frank Sinatra type music and with Frank gone (barring a Tupac like comeback) he decided to dedicate himself to being the guy still making that big band style music. There will always be a market for it because it is a really timeless brand of music. Plus, it is music that you buy for your parents or grandparents and thus he is much more likely to sell physical copies of his music and get paid as opposed to people just stealing it online.

#7: Susan Boyle “The Gift”: Sigh. For a moment there it was looking like this list would be a reality show free zone. Again, I doubt that anyone bought this for themselves. It is called “The Gift” because everyone bought it as a gift for that person that they kind of know but don’t really want to go through the effort of thinking through an actual present. It is the musical equivalent of a Chili’s gift card. I’m sorry but given the fact that her entire story is “non-attractive people can sing, too!” is too cynical even for someone like me to get behind. The fact that this is her main selling point just makes me disgusted about the music business in general.

#6: Black Eyed Peas “The E.N.D.”: Oh please be the end. I would be overjoyed if this is the end of one of the most annoying bands in existence. Outside of “Let’s Get It Started”, which was overplayed the third time it hit the airwaves, I’ve really had no patience for this band especially given that it features Fergie who hits the trifecta of not being able to sing, dance, or look attractive. It’s basically dance music for people who don’t actually like dance music or hip hop for those unfamiliar with hip hop. If you are listening to the Black Eyed Peas you need to be aware that whatever aspect of their music that you like there are a number of people out there who do that much, much better.

#5: Taylor Swift “Speak Now”: No one is going to believe this but I actually like Taylor Swift. I first heard her three or four years ago (whenever Teardrops on my Guitar originally came out) and I found her to be a perfectly acceptable country artist. Good singer who made it through a lot of hard work as opposed to a reality show victory. I’m really happy that she is making it big though I think she is hitting the overexposure level and is going to have to be a little careful if she wants to have a long career. Still, nice to see her make a strong showing.

#4: Lady Antebellum “Need You Now”: The second country entry on the list, which shows that since music sales have dropped the individual genres are now on a much more even playing field than ever before. Basically my only knowledge of this band is that someone told me I should style my hair like one of the guys in the band for my wedding. I’m not even sure who it is or what his hair looks like but I will just automatically assume that it is a bad idea. I just have a feeling that fifteen years ago someone was told “You should wear your hair like that Billy Ray Cyrus guy at your wedding!” I would like to at least be in my own wedding pictures.

#3: Justin Bieber “My Worlds”: As I’ve been mentioning the fun thing about the music business now is the fact that since most people my age and younger get their music online (often through nefarious methods) the acts that would have been best sellers when I was in college no longer breakthrough on the charts. Mainly the people who are buying music tend to be rather old or tweens. Hence the popularity of Justin Bieber whose market consists entirely of twelve year old girls who have money to buy music but haven’t learned how to use Bit Torrent yet. Again, I know nothing of his actual music and God willing I never will. I think I can live a full and productive life without ever hearing him sing.

#2: Eminem “Recovery”: Eminem is still alive? Good for him. I have actually heard some tracks from this album and it looks as though he is back in serious mode and making some really good music. Eminem has always had this strange tendency of going beyond putting humor into his songs to actually becoming something along the lines of a hip hop Weird Al. Just look at a few of the videos and ask yourself “Could Weird Al star in this?” That is what makes his career so tough to figure out. He can produce some of the darkest, most intense, stuff you’ll ever hear but the next single will be a comedy track.

#1: Lady Gaga “The Fame (Monster)”: Yes, this was the year of Lady Gaga who seems to have entered the realm of being famous for being famous. Now I know that she does make music and I’ve heard some but even someone who is oblivious to the music scene probably knows her as that woman who wears all of the wild outfits. She really did create an image of Madonna for the 21st Century as her fame is more dependent on her than her musical output. In this day and age that is what you need to do to be a superstar. Without MTV or consistent radio play the only way to become famous is to act as though you are famous already and have the internet cover you as someone who is important. It’s fascinating from a cultural perspective at least.

Music on a personal level

I read Nick Hornby’s latest novel “Juliet, Naked” this weekend and like most of Nick’s work it is an absolute masterpiece. To be honest if there is any writer that I would like to be like it would be Nick Hornby as his books center around music, relationships and literature and how they all interact. His latest is no exception as one of its central themes is that of being a music fan and the connection that one can create to music.

Of all the art forms, music may be the one that creates the most intensely personal reaction between the artist and the consumer. I think that it is because at its core music is mainly consumed on a very personal level. When you put on your headphones music becomes an entirely solo experience. Only you are hearing that song at precisely that moment and no one around you can even tell what you are listening to. The act of listening alone changes the facets of a song, which is why listening to a band live is so much different than listening to an album. It is not just the fact that the slick production is missing; listening with others changes the way a song sounds.

Compare this to other media. Movies are meant to be viewed with other people, which is why a comedy is never quite as funny at home as in the theater. Laughter is contagious or so say the people who put laugh tracks on television shows. Television is also more of a group experience and most other performance arts require a crowd. But music is pretty unique in that it can really be an intimate experience with mass produced content.

(Yes, I know I should put books in the same category as music here especially given there is no concert analogue for literature. No one is going, “Dude, did you listen to that Tom Wolfe book reading bootleg I sent you?” A lot of these arguments would fit for books as well. Just go with me for a moment. I mean, what is a good song other than a poem with a good beat.)

What the intimacy of music allows for is a connection between the fan and the artist that no other media can match. A song can speak to you, can be used to inspire you, can become the soundtrack for your life. It can be an enigma in which you spend hours trying to decipher every last meaning. Certain artists become parallels for your own life with their records seeming to tie to every moment you encounter. For me I can say things like “The only thing that kept me going in 1998 were Kelly Willis CDs” or “Every time I listen to Josh Rouse something good happens” and mean every word of it. There is a connection there that can’t be denied and that I have never felt from a movie or a TV show.

The strange thing though is that most, if not all, of that connection comes from the fans themselves. When Kelly Willis recorded “What I Deserve” she did not do so in order to provide me personally with music that made my life worthwhile. She created great songs, songs that she felt had meaning and heart, and hoped that someone out there would listen to them. But the meaning and importance that I put into them are all my own. Same as people do with Bon Jovi songs or Bruce Springsteen tracks or god forbid the latest Creed album. Music creates fans who feel an incredibly personal connection to the music even though it may be one the musician never intended.

Nick Hornby understands that nature of being a fan of music. Yes, sometimes it is very geeky to spend all of your life centered around little discs or computer files that you use to define who you are as a person. But to be honest, I’ll still listen to Kelly after a hard day at the office. At times, music is all you need.

The slow decline of my music fandom

Some interesting comments on my last post regarding my evolution as a music fan. First off, I would never list Belly as obscure and lame. I still have a crush on a red-haired Tanya Donnelly from the Feed the Tree video. And looking back at my 25 songs I would say that they fall mainly in the category of obscure but really good though I will have to admit that Freakwater has been described by music critics as sounding like cats being tortured and I completely see their point. But all in all I like the music on my Zune.

What is interesting though was the idea that my taste in music would grow more mainstream now that I am not in clubs any more. Well, I was never in dance clubs but I am out a lot less often and haven’t gone to a concert in a year and that has brought up an interesting point with me. I wouldn’t say that my taste in music has grown more mainstream in the past year. What in has become is very stagnant to the point that I am simply not buying much new music. For example, I still haven’t picked up the latest Wilco and Son Volt releases despite the fact that they are two of my favorite bands of all time and I do not go a week without listening to one of them.

Part of the reason that my music tastes have grown stagnant is entirely because I am not going to concerts and as a result am not exposed to opening acts. For every awful opening act that I have seen in my life (up to and including Tom Brosseau who I still wish I would have thrown a beer bottle at even though that sentiment has resulted in physical threats made against me the last time I mentioned it on the blog) I have encountered some amazing acts who I become huge fans of. From my 25 songs Carbon Leaf, The Frames, Anders Osborne and Richard Buckner were all opening acts on bills that I saw over the years and they all became some of my favorite artists. If it wasn’t for going to concerts I would never have heard of Carbon Leaf but they are now my best example of a young band with huge potential. Without stepping out into the live music scene you lose those discoveries.

(As to why I haven’t explored the music scene here it basically isn’t anywhere near as convenient as it was in KC. There half the shows I went to were within ten minutes of my apartment and the others were about an hour’s drive away in Lawrence, where it helped that I didn’t really care about the impression I gave when I came into work late the next morning after spending the previous night hanging out with college students. Now I do care and pretty much every band I like plays an hour (and a few states) away and it makes it a lot tougher. Plus, I am just getting too old to do forty concerts a year. My ears need a break.)

But concerts aren’t the only reason my musical tastes have stagnated. The traditional ways of finding out about new music have disappeared for me. We already knew that MTV and VH1 are useless in terms of discovering new music though I will give VH1 props for providing us with The Pick Up Artist and Daisy of Love. My biggest problem is that I am someone who also found bands by reading music magazines and they pretty much no longer exist. No Depression folded and Paste is barely surviving to the point that they had to ask their subscribers for donations. I own CDs from bands just because I liked their ad much less those that had a good writeup. It really was one of my entry points: read a review, maybe see the band or just take a flier on a disc.

That is another reason behind my music purchase slowdown: the death of the record store. Even Borders is doing away with the majority of its music section. There was nothing better than spending part of my day just roaming the aisles of a record store and looking to see if I found anything interesting. It was just how I spent my lazy afternoons. Now I don’t even know where an independent store is relative to where I live (compared to being able to walk to a few in KC) and that entire experience has disappeared.

Now I know that most people would just say “Well, why don’t you just buy your music online like everyone else?” But the strange thing is I really don’t like getting my music that way. Heck, I don’t even like reading the music mags online even though that is where they have all repositioned themselves. For me there just needs to be a physical component to the entire process. Music is something that you can hold in your hand; it is not something that is just bits sent across the ether. Plus, when you have access to a nearly infinite amount of music you have to wade through an awful lot of crap to find the good stuff. That is why I always talk about the curse of The Long Tail. We now have access to every single song ever recorded and as a result of infinite choice we buy nothing.

I doubt that my tastes will ever become mainstream. I just hope that I am able to recreate my niche as a discerning music consumer.

25 songs

A friend of mine on Facebook posted this idea and it was the first useful thing I have seen on Facebook in ages. For the last time: I don’t care about your Mafia Wars game! No one cares about your Mafia Wars game! Nor do I care about what fictional character you most resemble. But this one was a bit more interesting.

Simple idea. Put your iPod on shuffle and write down the first twenty five songs that come out. No cheating and not listing a song that you are embarrassed that you have. Just a list of the first 25 songs you hear. Now admittedly I do not have an iPod but I do have a Zune, which is the size of a small tackle box but does have a shuffle feature. It is twelve menus down but you can do it. So here is my 25.

1: Veruca Salt “Number One Blind” from “American Thighs”
2: Kasey Chambers “Hollywood” from “Wayward Angel”
3: Carbon Leaf “Mary Mac” from “5 Alive”
4: Lucinda Williams “Get Right with God” from “Essence”
5: Waco Brothers “Lake of the Vinegar” from “To the Last Dead Cowboy”
6: Scott Miller and the Commonwealth “Loving that Girl” from “Thus Always to Tyrants”
7: Mary Lou Lord “The Lucky One” from “Got No Shadow”
8: The Frames “God Bless Mom” from “Set List”
9: Emmylou Harris “Little Bird” from “Stumble Into Grace”
10: Iris Dement “Near the Cross” from “Lifeline”
11: U2 “Can’t Help Fallin’ in Love with You” from “The Eye of the Fly” (1992 concert bootleg)
12: Anders Osborne “Don’t Pray for Me” from “Live at Tipitinas”
13: Ryan Adams “Two” from “Easy Tiger”
14: The Sundays “Blood on my Hands” from “Blind”
15: Old 97s “Making Love with You” from “Down to the Promised Land”
16: U2 “I Fall Down” from “October”
17: The Sundays “Cry” from “Static and Silence”
18: Freakwater “Flat Hand” from “Springtime”
19: Black 47 “Walk All the Days” from “Live in New York City”
20: Richard Buckner “Stutterstep” from “Impasse”
21: Kelly Willis “Get Real” from “Kelly Willis”
22: Iris Dement “Calling for You” from “My Life”
23: Lucinda Williams “Steal Your Love” from “Essence”
24: Cowboy Junkies “Escape is so Simple” from “Open Road”
25: Arcade Fire “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” from “Funeral”

So what does this tell us? First off, it shows that the shuffle feature on my Zune is rather crappy as I got two songs from the same album and repeats of four different artists (I’m not going to sit around and calculate the odds of that happening but it was more than it should.) Pretty even mix of male versus female vocalists (12 male versus 13 female.) I have seen fourteen of the acts in concert and that is not including Scott Miller (who I saw when he headed up the V-Roys) and Iris Dement (who I drank with before her daughter in law (Pieta Brown)’s concert but never actually got to see her perform.)

Other than U2 you are really stretching in terms of popular acts. Arcade Fire definitely is known and Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris are common names to music fans. Veruca Salt, Black 47 and Cowboy Junkies all had a hit or two in their day and Glen from The Frames has an Oscar but I figure that most people would look at this list and not have any of the discs. It also shows my usual songs from collections that no one has ever heard of (I have more U2 bootlegs lying around than I would like to admit.) That is what most people will point to when they talk about my music snobbery. Even my U2 songs are relatively unknown.

Anyone else have some thoughts here? Am I a music snob who will never admit to liking anyone popular? What does it say that when I choose 25 songs at random from my Zune that I have had a beer with several of the acts? Is there any reasoning behind the surprising number of religious songs that appeared? Help me out.

Might as well retire my headphones

(For those of you who were wondering just what I meant when I wished everyone a happy Bloomsday here is the explanation. The novel Ulysses takes place on June 16th (a date chosen by Joyce because that is he when he first met his wife, Nora Barnacle) and it is tradition in Dublin and amongst all hyper-literate people to spend the day celebrating the greatest novel ever written. In Dublin people trace out the exact route the characters take throughout the day (I’ve walked parts of it when I’ve been there.) On my way to work I drive past this prep school and today I saw a man dressed like James Joyce. Made me happy or at least mildly content to be in Delaware.)

I am aghast at all of these spurious claims that My Beloved Lindsay stole jewelry from the set of a photo shoot. Think of all the other possibilities. What about the photographer or the makeup artists? What about the possibility of a team of elite, highly attractive, female cat burglars entering the building, stealing the jewelry via a string of intricate acrobatic maneuvers, and escaping unnoticed? It’s like people think Lindsay would just walk off the set with a bunch of diamonds just so she could pawn them for drug money. Come on, how likely is that?

Ok, I was just flipping around the web searching for music to listen to while I write and just found out that one of my favorite websites ever, fabchannel.com, went under three months ago. This is horrible news for me. Fabchannel was one of those sites that made sitting in an office in Kansas bearable. Their concept was incredibly simple. They would film concerts in Amsterdam with high quality video and audio and post the full concerts online. They had an advertisement or two in the mix when you called up the concert and several links to buy the CD on Amazon but that was about as intrusive as it got. Sadly, the constant fighting with the record labels have proven too much and they have been forced to shut down.

This to me is just a big sign as to how stupid the music industry is at the moment. This was a wonderful set of relatively cheap promotion just sitting out there and they end up just tossing it away. These are shows that the average consumer was never going to see so it is not as though that they were risking ticket sales. Obviously if the show sucked they would have the right to pull it to protect their band’s image. They would even have a complete, professional grade, concert to release on DVD if they so desired. I spent hours listening to The Frames, Josh Ritter, Damien Rice and Arcade Fire on this site. I became bigger fans of all of those acts as a result and have seen them all in concert. That is how you promote music in the new media landscape.

I wish that there would be a better venue for really high quality music to be presented to the public. I mean in the 120 Minutes sense of the term. One show, one location on the web where there is just a dedicated stream of new and interesting music. Thanks to the Long Tail it is so hard to find music that is good because there is just so much stuff out there. First person who figures out a way to that will become very wealthy indeed.

Top 20 artists of the decade

So I came across this list the other day of the top selling artists of the…naughts? The first decade of the 21st century? How can we be nine years into this decade and we have yet to come up with a name for it yet? Anyway, here are the best selling (apparently in terms of discs sold) artists.

#20: Celine Dion: 17.6 million
#19: Kid Rock: 17.6 million
#18: Johnny Cash: 17.9 million
#17: Dixie Chicks: 18.3 million
#16: *NSync: 18.4 million
#15: Alan Jackson: 18.5 million
#14: Metallica: 18.5 million
#13: Rascal Flatts: 18.8 million
#12: Josh Groban: 19.1 million
#11: Nickelback: 19.2 million
#10: Jay-Z: 19.4 million
#9: Creed: 20.4 million
#8: Linkin Park: 21.1 million
#7: Nelly: 21.2 million
#6: Kenny Chesney: 21.4 million
#5: Britney Spears: 22.9 million
#4: Toby Keith: 24.2 million
#3: Tim McGraw: 24.3 million
#2: The Beatles: 27.6 million
#1: Eminem: 31.1 million

Let’s see what we can learn from this list as it is rather fascinating. First off, we can see the impact of the rise of iTunes as I would be hard pressed to point to any of these twenty artists and mention any significant work in terms of sales in the past three to five years. The list is loaded more towards what was big at the first half of the decade.

We also have the back catalog wonders in Johnny Cash and The Beatles. Now both of them did have some pretty significant releases this decade but in reality all of those sales are coming from people returning to their music. In my mind, people going for back catalog will actually want the CDs and not an iTunes track. Add to that the Josh Groban and Celnie Dion sales, which mainly come from less technically savvy people and therefore move more physical product than virtual product.

You certainly cannot discount the country music field with seven of the top twenty. Though even I am amazed that people are still buying Alan Jackson records. I didn’t even know that he was still making music. I am happy to see the Dixie Chicks on the list as they are a group that deserves their success. As opposed to say, Nickelback or Creed for whom the world would be better served if they both met with a case of permanent laryngitis.

But it is the decade of Eminem and by a pretty significant margin. Again, most of this is from his work at the start of the decade when most people bought CDs as opposed to digital tracks and he undoubtedly was the biggest act at that time. I also can’t question his talent because he can bring it when he wants to. I do wonder at times that his humor tends to cross the line into Weird Al territory. Some of his videos and songs seem to be more of a parody than anything else and the whole Bruno bit from the MTV awards just shows once again that he is playing the role of Eminem. I’m not sure if that is a bad thing (Bono has been playing Bono for two decades now) but for someone whose entire persona is built upon him being real it casts an odd tinge to the entire piece.

The Influential 15: Music

One of the annoying things about Facebook recently is that I have received a barrage of notes by people filling out questionnaires in order to reveal facets of their deeper personality. This is an extension of the ever popular “25 random things” meme that became so widespread that even I put one together. Now it seems to have become more trivial and I can’t find any reason why I would care who some random person from the past first talked to this morning. I know this seems like a strange rant from someone who has spent the past four and a half years posting his entire life to the internet but I have two reasons why I feel my blog is superior: 1) All of these posts are lovingly hand crafted and are not dependent on questions someone else has devised and 2) After years of building a readership the thought of competition in a more readily accessible form frightens me.

Still, one of the latest notes I received caught my interest. It is to simply list the 15 most influential albums of your life. I liked that idea and have decided to expand it. All week I will be posting top 15 lists of the most influential albums, books, movies, television shows and cultural events of my life. Now note that I am talking influential here and not favorite or best. I will be listing a few things that I absolutely hate. This is a list of what changed my view for good or for bad.

Let’s start with the music list.

Men at Work “Cargo”: This is the first musical recording that I ever purchased with my own money. I bought the cassette at the Musicland inside the North Riverside Mall, for those of you who are intent on tracking every moment of my life. I would like to think that now that Colin Hay is this respected, indie artist that this showed my musical cred at an early age. More likely it is an indication that I liked the song Down Under a lot and wanted to get their new album on the hope that it would just contain 12 different versions of that song.

Nirvana “Nevermind”: All you need to know about me is that I had just turned eighteen when this album was released. The first time I heard the opening guitar riffs on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” the entire universe changed. I was never a hair band type of guy and could never understand what everyone saw in Bon Jovi or Poison. All I needed were to hear those first few seconds of intro and I knew that music had changed. Personally I still find Come As You Are to be the high point musically and from a video perspective. That song was the death of hair metal.

Sting “The Soul Cages”: It probably is odd for anyone who knows my musical tastes now to discover that a) this was the first CD I ever purchased and b) Sting was the first concert I ever attended. I wish it was because I was a huge Police fan but it was more that I was a fan of Sting’s rather whiny solo work. I’m listing this here because it is the first CD of what would become a massive collection and it really is the first step on a journey of a thousand miles.

Jeff Buckley “Grace”: What can I say? I found this album fascinating when I first heard it and anyone who was in college in the early 90s and didn’t think that Last Goodbye explained their life is lying through their teeth. After Jeff’s death (and all of the fame that he gained from it) makes it difficult to appreciate this album for what it was. Everyone paints it to be a glimpse of brilliance from someone who didn’t have a chance to fulfill his potential. I just like it for what it was when I first bought it: an album that you would listen to in the dark at two in the morning in order to see if it helped you to make sense out of life.

Spice Girls “Spice”: For the record, I do not and have never owned this album. But it really should be mentioned in the same sentence as Nevermind. While that album marked the end of hair metal the Spice Girls marked the death of grunge. Sure, we all held onto some hope after Kurt’s death that someone would pick up the mantel but the Spice Girls becoming huge was an indication that we had returned to the age of bubblegum pop. To be honest, I’m not sure if we have left it yet. And as much as I hate to admit it, my mood does brighten whenever I hear “Wannabe”.

Zachary Richard “Snake Bite Love”: I’m not entirely certain if this is the first Zydeco record I purchased or not. If it isn’t it was in the first group as I know I bought it while still in college. First off, if you ever want a starting point in learning the music of Louisiana Zachary Richard is a wonderful place to start. This disc is all sorts of brilliance and that is before you get to a song that consists entirely of singing the praises of crawfish. I’m listing it because it marks the start of my becoming incredibly fluent in a style of music that you never hear on the radio and that is something I think everyone should do at least once in their life.

Kelly Willis “What I Deserve”: It is going too far to say that this disc saved my life but it certainly kept me going during a time when things were really dark. There is just something about her voice that digs into my soul and on certain songs I really do get chills up my spine every time I hear them. It is an album by someone who was ready to give up on the music industry and decided to try to just once create the music that she believed in and not what someone sitting in an office thought was listener friendly. By being true to herself she had the biggest release of her career and gave me something to listen to during many a dark day stuck in a cubicle.

Uncle Tupelo “Anodyne”: The number of chances that I had to see Uncle Tupelo while I was in college and didn’t go astounds me. I really didn’t become a hard core music fan until well into my twenties and by then the band had broken up and I realized that the best music I have ever heard was being played three blocks from my dorm room and I didn’t go. For those less into the history, this is the band that resulted in the formation of Wilco and Son Volt and pretty much paved the way for much of the alternative country scene. This is their final album and is pure brilliance the entire way through. Why does this disc make the list? Because ever since I heard the song “Chickamauga” I have always contemplated the meaning of the lyric “Catch yourself in midair thinking your dreams can never be bought.”

Josh Rouse “Nashville”: For the life of me I am not sure exactly how I ended up buying this disc. At best I may have heard a song from it on the Americana music channel on my cable system. That is a really tenuous start for a trip to the music store to plop down some money on something you are not even sure you will like. But I don’t believe I have ever become a fan of anyone faster than I have of Josh Rouse. I can’t explain what is so wonderful about his music. It’s rather simple singer songwriter stuff but there is something about it that really speaks to me. And for some reason if I listen to his music good things tend to happen to me. He’s my good luck charm.

R.E.M. “Life’s Rich Pageant”: Like every other suburban kid R.E.M. was my entry point into the alternative scene. You really can’t diminish the importance of that; the fact that there was a world beyond Top 40 radio was mind blowing as a 17 year old. Of all their recordings I have to say that Life’s Rich Pageant is the one that best represents the group. There are lyrics that you can comprehend (or at least have words), jangly guitars that stood apart from the rest of the music scene, and one of my favorite songs of all time in “Fall on Me”. It really is the band at its pre-widespread popularity best.

Neko Case and Her Boyfriends “Furnace Room Lullaby”: This record got me into business school. Ok, that is not entirely correct. My GMAT score got me into grad school; this was what I listened to night after night while writing entrance essays. Even the music snob in me is happy that Neko has gained a real following after my first seeing her as one of maybe a hundred people in a bar. Her voice, which is best if heard in a smoky, slightly dingy club, really does sound like Patsy Cline after a tortured love affair. She has my favorite voice on the planet.

The Frames “Set List”: Tough to choose a Frames album that really works for this list so I will go for this one. When I first started listening to them in 2004 it was really difficult to get a sense of their back catalog and this live album was the best in introducing me to their music and give me a sense of just how powerful they were in concert. Given that they have become, in all of their various incarnations, my favorite band I just have to list them here.

Lyle Lovett “Joshua Judges Ruth”: This was the first disc that I purchased that would unequivocally be considered a country record. Lyle was always viewed to be a country act and slightly strange looking. But I was able to get over that hurdle of “Country = Horrible” and start myself on a journey into music that is much closer to my own tastes than I ever imagined. The talent of Lyle cannot be doubted either. This album contains one of the best lines written by any person in any medium, ever: “There is nothing as unwavering as a woman when she has already made up her mind.”

Tori Amos “Little Earthquakes”: Yes, I had to get one of the “Alternative Female” records on the list. The amount of music that I purchased in the 90’s by female singer songwriters was stunning. Some I still count amongst my favorites (Liz Phair), some haven’t aged as well (Sarah McLachlan) and some I really wonder just how drunk I was when I made the purchase (Paula Cole, I am looking in your direction). But much like Nirvana broke the mold so did Tori. No one was making music like this, or at least not that you ever saw on MTV. Imagine seeing Motley Crue’s ode to strip clubs “Girls, Girls, Girls” and then have it be followed up by a song like “Silent All These Years”. It marked a sea change in what music could (and really should) be.

Arcade Fire “Funeral”: There are a lot of discs I could put in this last spot. What I wanted to do was list a more recent one that made me stop what I was doing and go, “You’re not supposed to be able to do that.” Sufjan Stevens and The Polyphonic Spree both fit the bill but I felt it better to acknowledge Arcade Fire because, seriously, no one should be able to make music like they do. It breaks so many rules but in the end you are mesmerized by it. I probably listened to Rebellion (Lies) a dozen times the first night I owned the disc. That is the sign of an influential album.

Tomorrow: My 15 most influential books. See you then.

Best of 120 Minutes: Since I mentioned it, here is the video for Come As You Are.

Nirvana MTV Music

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Air “The Virgin Suicides”
2) Mike Doughty “Haughty Melodic”
3) John Mayer “Any Given Sunday”
4) Bob Dylan “The Essential Bob Dylan”
5) Richard Buckner “S/T”

Bring me back Mr. Wizard!

I haven’t done one of these for a while. Let’s fire up the wayback machine and see what the Top Ten songs were this week in 1994. For referenceAfter going through this list you will see why claims that the music industry has gone totally downhill might not be a correct statement.

#10: Mariah Carey “Hero”: I can’t recall this song offhand. I’m going to assume that in it Mariah decides to have her voice do a three octave range on a single word even though it adds absolutely nothing to the song. Do you realize that we have Mariah to blame for the way every American Idol contestant sings? Where it is entirely about the singer’s range and absolutely nothing about the song? What a legacy to have.

#9: US 3 “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)”: Ok, I totally dug this song. In fact, I was always amazed that you never heard anything from these guys again. This was a blend of hip hop and jazz and it worked extremely well. Plus, it had this awesome video that made the band look like the coolest guys in the world. I’m happy to see this song made the top ten.

#8: Richard Marx “Now and Forever”: Because power ballads will always chart from now until the end of time. Especially when it gets close to prom season. Fun story, I lived in a dorm with a guy who looked exactly like Richard Marx. Not kind of like him, a complete mirror image except for the fact that he had a southern accent. Do you know how hysterical it is to have dinner every night with a Richard Marx impersonator who speaks in a drawl and does nothing other than ramble on about the Dallas Cowboys? It made life so much more interesting.

#7: All-4-One “So Much in Love”: I have no memory of this song whatsoever. None. I mean, I drank a lot in college and the band name is vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place this song in a million years. Oh well. I’m sure they meant well.

#6: Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting “All for Love”: This song is from the soundtrack to “The Three Musketeers”, a film I would make fun of except that Julie Delpy was the romantic lead in it and I can say nothing bad about anything associated with Julie on the belief that she may one day read this website. This song was the follow up to Bryan Adams song in the Robin Hood soundtrack. Since that was a big hit they decided to add in Rod Stewart and Sting to create a supergroup of slightly annoying blonde vocalists (ok, I like Sting but the other two outweigh his good qualities). If you went to a wedding in 1994 there is a high likelihood that you heard this song and then had dreams of cutting Rod Stewart’s throat with a broken beer bottle.

#5: Toni Braxton “Breathe Again”: Music for people who want a more soulful Mariah Carey or a less relying on duets with her late father Natalie Cole. I’d say more about her work but to be honest the female R&B scene was never something that I was ever really interested in. It has always sold an immense number of records but the entire genre just does nothing to me. It needs more guitars.

#4: Mariah Carey “Without You / Never Forget You”: Another Mariah Carey song? I remember her being big when I was in college but I didn’t think she was this popular? That said, she is another performer whose popularity has always baffled me. Though I still remember her incredible performance in the film “Glitter”.

#3: Salt-N-Pepa featuring En Vogue “Whatta Man”: Another good song on the list. This was a fun mix of hip hop and R&B that also turned out to be the high point for both groups. Ever notice how some acts have a big hit and then fall off the face of the earth? I’m not talking about a one hit wonder where the follow up fails. I mean does anyone know if Salt-N-Pepa even released another album after this one? Did the loss of Spinderella destroy the group?

#2: Ace of Base “The Sign”: Sigh. For all of my claims that the music scene while I was in college was the best ever I still have to deal with the fact that songs like this were at the top of the charts. And here is a horrible secret of mine that no one knows. Some people have probably guessed that whenever I take a test I typically have a musical soundtrack running through my head. I always study to music and I just keep the songs playing in my mind when I take the test. Well, whenever I sat in room 151 of Everitt Lab to take a EE test I always sang Ace of base songs to myself. I have no idea why. It probably explains my grades, though.

#1: Celine Dion “The Power of Love”: It’s a pre-Titanic Celine. Meaning that we didn’t all hate her with a passion yet. We soon would, of course. Here is my favorite Celine story. For her show in Vegas when she sang her big hit from Titanic the stage would transform into the bow of a ship and she would stand on the edge. Couples in the crowd would then, and I am not making this up, stand on their seats and reenact the scene from Titanic. And a sight like that makes my cynical heart….grow a lot more cynical.

The State of Music: 2008

Figured that I would start my 2008 Year in Review on a musical note this time around. Let’s take a more global view and examine the top ten best selling albums of the year and figure out what that tells us about our pop culture tastes and the music industry in general. Sales volumes are in millions of units

10) Beyonce “I Am….Sasha Fierce” 1.46M
9) Jack Johnson “Sleep Through the Static” 1.49M
8) T. I. “Paper Trail” 1.52 M
7) Metallica “Death Magnetic” 1.57M
6) Taylor Swift “Taylor Swift” 1.6M
5) AC/DC “Black Ice” 1.92M
4) Kid Rock “Rock N Roll Jesus” 2.02M
3) Taylor Swift “Fearless” 2.11M
2) Coldplay “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” 2.14M
1) Lil Wayne “Tha Carter III” 2.87M
Source: Nielsen SoundScan via The New York Times

My opinions on all this

Apparently my music tastes are popular again: It surprises me that I own one of these discs and really don’t have a good reason why I don’t own a second. I picked up the Jack Johnson disc the week it came out and while it is rather underwhelming, even for a Jack Johnson record, it is perfectly fine music. Not as good as his earlier work and his fanbase has become filled with Abercrombie and Fitch wearing douchebags but I’m not upset that I bought it or anything. I haven’t picked up the new Coldplay disc mainly because I haven’t heard anything that made me feel like it was a priority but if I saw it at a store for ten bucks I’d probably grab it. Given that I am now a 35 year old male and therefore completely worthless from a marketing perspective I’m surprised that anything I listen to made the list.

People really like Taylor Swift: How she got two albums in the top ten is beyond me. Especially given that her self-titled debut was released in 2006 (and I know this because I was very vaguely involved in the music biz at the time). It is perfectly harmless, vaguely country music in that American Idol / Carrie Underwood vein. Meaning that there is absolutely no talent behind it other than a pretty face and a voice that works well under the influence of ProTools. While not a horrible indictment on the state of our culture it isn’t exactly what I would send on the next probe to outer space.

Old People Sell (and Buy): Two of the top ten acts (AC/DC and Metallica) have careers that span nearly thirty years or even more. While Kid Rock doesn’t have nearly that long of a span of work most would say that he is also well past his expiration date. So what does this tell us? First off, people immediately know what they are going to get with these artists. They are so well established that it is almost a knee jerk reaction to pick up their music. I mean, it’s a new AC/DC record; you know it is going to rock. Kid Rock will put together a rock / rap hybrid that is surprisingly decent.

Second of all, what do you think the average age of a AC/DC or Metallica fan is? Let’s say you got into Metallica when they broke huge in 1991 when you were 16. You’d be 33 now and a huge group of the old school fans would be even older. I would bet good money that the majority of these purchases were made by guys in their thirties and forties trying to prove that they still are hardcore metalheads. Even the Kid Rock stuff probably landed in the late 20’s demographic. Teenagers aren’t buying this music because teenagers don’t buy music. They steal it like petty thiefs (more on that next).

Finally, how the hell did Chinese Democracy not make the Top Ten? If people bought AC/DC out of nostalgia you would think that Guns N Roses would benefit in a similar fashion.

New Artists Can’t Catch a Break: The only debut album on the list is Taylor Swift’s and that is not really a debut given that it is two years old. Everyone on this list is solidly established with bestselling discs already to the credit. In the history of music that is insanely rare. Music is built on fads and one hit wonders and groups that come out of nowhere and catch the cultural zeitgeist and then disappear.

The disappearance of the big, new breakout star is a serious issue. (I’m discounting the whole Miley Cyrus / Jonas Brothers world at the moment.) Since record labels no longer exist in any real form the ability to grab a new artist and market them down our throats has vanished. With no universal cultural outlet like MTV around it is also tougher to get an artist in front of enough people to become a phenomenon. What we now have are a lot of new artists breaking out slowly with few superstars appearing, which makes one wonder what this list will look like 5 years from now.

The Curse of the Long Tail (which will be my sociology master’s thesis if I ever get around to writing it): The top selling album this year sold 2.87 million copies. Here are some other numbers for reference: Jewel’s “Pieces of You” sold 12 million copies as did Pearl Jam’s “Ten” while Hootie and the Blowfish sold an insane 16 million copies of “Cracked Rear View”. Now I know that many people will scream that I am comparing two totally separate timeframes here, which is true. But can you honestly tell me that 14 million people downloaded the new Coldplay album illegally? Are any of the artists on this list a part of the pop culture world like Hootie and the Blowfish were in 1995? Of course not. I truly feel required to explain who Taylor Swift is but I feel no need to explain Jewel even though she has been meaningless for more than a decade.

And this is what I call the curse of the long tail. The idea of the long tail is this: thanks to Amazon and iTunes and the like we now have an almost infinite amount of music at our fingertips. Whereas before all that was available was what you could find at the record store (and that universe could be limited if your only store was in a mall) now any type of music is there for purchase. What happens is that you have less hits (as shown by the stats above) but more of the lesser known artists get purchased. Basically I am no longer forced to buy a Hootie and the Blowfish CD because I find that I can get a greater level of enjoyment by purchasing a techno bluegrass disc. But this has had one huge impact on the music industry that no one discusses, which is that it causes people to buy less music than before and be happier for it.

Take my Hootie purchase (hypothetical as I never did buy the disc). Now if I can buy something else (say the incredible disc by She & Him featuring Zooey Deschanel on vocals) at the same price and be happier (or have higher utility in economic terms) then that is by all effective measures a good thing. Expand that to the idea that I intend to receive so much happiness from buying music over the course of the year. In a long tail world I’ll need fewer new CDs to reach the same level of happiness. This is great for me because I save money but bad for the music industry because they moved less product. But that still doesn’t match the damage caused by the second part.

Because you have to ask yourself the following question: Why did 16 million people decide to buy a Hootie and the Blowfish disc. That is more than 5% of the U.S. population and when you take out the elderly, small children and the Amish it becomes an even greater portion. What drives that purchase decision? I contend that it is not the music itself that drives it but the sheer fact that other people are buying it causes a herd behavior to form. Since everyone you know has a copy you buy one. The people who only own ten or twenty discs just purchase these mega hits and they do so only because there is a cultural imperative to do so. They don’t want to be left out so they make a purchase.

But now that we don’t have hits and nothing is super popular those people have no need to purchase music (or even steal it). Do I feel less a part of popular culture because I do not own the new Coldplay disc? No and I am someone who prides himself on being in touch with the music scene. There is not a single disc on the top ten where I feel that I was left out on a conversation because I did not know about it. When people talk about the long tail they assume that those 15 million copies that Hootie sold but Lil’ Wayne didn’t goes to the techno bluegrass purchases that I make. Except they don’t. Those purchases aren’t made anymore because the people who used to buy those discs don’t even need listen to music anymore because they can be culturally safe without it.

That is why the music industry is stuck in the curse of the long tail at the moment. It is bad enough that people steal music (and yes it is theft. I have too many friends who are musicians for me to think anything else.) but their overall market has shrunk but is happier as a result. I don’t have a solution for it yet but I do worry about whether my favorite new acts will ever get a chance to be heard.

So I was reading the paper the other day...

Due to all of my childhood recollections there are a great number of serious news stories that I have neglected to comment upon in the past week or so. I’ll try to catch up…

The Gov. Blagoevich Scandal: As I have been telling everyone for the past week: bribery is not a crime in Illinois so I don’t see what the big deal is. Who doesn’t get paid for a senate seat? And if the Children’s Hospital wants some additional funding I see nothing wrong with them ponying up some additional cash for the old campaign fund. (That is the most insane part of the entire story. He blackmailed a freaking Children’s Hospital.) Even better is the picture of the Governor outside of his Chicago home next to a sign promoting “Rat Catching” services.

I really didn’t think he would last the week but it now looks as if we are in for a long haul of impeachment hearings, court cases and nothing happening in the state until we can finally get him out of office. I really want to understand his mindset. Even if he is not convicted his political career is over. So instead of stepping aside he decides to fight to the end and take the entire state down with him. Maybe common sense will hit him at some point like a flying shoe. Speaking of which…

The shoe throwing incident: Others have written about this and I will have to agree. I have no love loss for this president. I started the blog after he was reelected and I will be glad to see him out of office. The state that the country is in right now is his legacy. But even with that, I am disgusted by the way that this was immediately treated as a joke. A “look at the wacky hijinks Bush has gotten himself into this time” type of thing like a sketch on a bad comedy show. He is the leader of my country, the most powerful nation on the planet. We are a country that does not bow our flag to any world leader. We stand with pride and honor at all times. But now our president has been reduced to ducking shoes like some honcho of a banana republic (either the nation or the clothing store). I’m ashamed and disgusted by the act.

Simply Red releases a Greatest Hits CD: I saw this a little while back. I know of only one Simply Red song. I can’t actually name it but I know that they had one song. Now they apparently have twenty tracks for a Best of disc. This astounds me. I couldn’t believe that anyone would want one tack, much less twenty. Or even remember who they are. That is marketing for you.

Whopper Perfume: For those of you who are like me and are desperately seeking to find that perfect gift for that special someone in your life I direct you to go to your nearest Burger King and pick up a bottle of Eau d’Whopper. I am not making this up. Some of the people at Burger King came up the idea of a scent of “flame broiled goodness” called Flame and they are actually selling it. So if you like your women smelling like grease and looking like they are available on the dollar menu here is your best opportunity.

This just tops the Penn State fragrance that was all released this month. Because even Mystery can’t compete with Joe Pa.

Space Shuttles for Sale: Ok, I am going to call upon my financing team to work with me on this one. I know the markets are tight but this might be the best thing ever in terms of impressing women. I originally thought that buying Bjorn Borg’s Wimbledon trophies would be the smartest move I could make (bring a woman back to your place, have her see the trophies and when she asks go, “Oh, I won Wimbledon a few years back.”) but this would top it. Some guys buy a sports car for their mid-life crisis. I buy a freaking space shuttle.

Of course, once I purchase it a few improvements will need to be made. Racing stripes for one. A kick ass stereo system and some hydraulic jacks will also be added. To pay for it I’ll get MTV to film it as a series called “Pimp My Space Shuttle”. Xzibit probally could use the work.

Publishing note: I’ll post another Kansas City dating story over the weekend as a treat for those of you who do check the site. I think I’ll tell the story of my introduction to the Kansas City scene. It is definitely worth checking out.

A disc you don't own but should

It’s late at night so this will be a shorter post than usual. So instead of my usual ramblings I am going to try to be slightly more direct tonight.

Step One: Please click play on the above video and listen to what is one of the most mesmerizing songs that I have heard in ages.

Step Two: Spend the next ten minutes silently singing the phrase “It’s not over” in a sense of determination and almost vengeful pride.

Step Three: Go to whatever location you purchase music (and I mean purchase, not download without paying) and buy the disc “Wire Waltz” from The Last Town Chorus. I am just amazed at the sound of this disc. I know that I’ve posted the cover of Modern Love before as well but seriously, this is just a standout record. The lap steel is just incredible and seems to be its own force on the disc. I only learned about them this year so I’m slightly behind the coolness curve but they are still way too unknown than should rightfully be the case.

(And yes, I could say that I am unbelievably smitten with Megan Hickey. Anyone who can write, play and sing like that just leaves me in stunned awe. Though based on this song she is also someone I would try desperately not to piss off.)

I’d like to write more but today was filled with interviews with more interviews tomorrow that I really should a) prepare for and b) get some sleep for. But at least things are moving. At some point I should hopefully be gainfully employed. Can’t say that I am looking forward to it but it would make me get up in the morning. That is probably a good thing.

You got lucky

Wednesday Night Music Club: A lot of people wonder why I am the way I am. I certainly am a few standard deviations from the average. I’d like to blame this Tom Petty video for some of this. It’s not something that an eleven year old should be exposed to three times a day for months as this video was always on MTV. I think I’m still scarred by the baby turning into a pig. And why the hell are they eating Alice at the end? Tom Petty looks freaky enough as it is; I didn’t need a psychedelic video to cement that point.

(For as many strange influences I encountered in my youth due to having three older siblings my younger brother had it worse. It’s pretty amazing for me to realize that I started playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was nine years old. We taught my little brother how to play when he was six. That’s probably a little too young to be discussing enchanted swords and slaughtering kobolds. )

Tom Petty has been on my mind recently. Obviously there was the Super Bowl halftime performance, which brought him more mainstream attention than he has received in a decade. But mainly it is because I listened to Full Moon Fever today because it showed up in the random CD algorithm on Sunday. I think the best way to explain my music collection is discussing why I have Full Moon Fever.

Now I bought my first CD player in 1991; buying my older brother’s old one when he got a new system. I also started college in 1991 and I could guess that Full Moon Fever was in my first batch of CDs purchased. Definitely within the first twenty. Now I have zero problems with the purchase. It is a good album and was massively huge and even the music snob in me has no problems with Tom Petty. I don’t know anyone who bad mouths him. He’s written some great songs, never seemed like a bad guy and would always put on a good show on tour.

But I can say in all honesty that today was the first time that I played that CD since college. It’s just been sitting in my CD collection for more than a decade. Now some people would consider that to be a waste. Obviously at some point I could have sold it for some financial benefit but it is something I would never consider. I mean, it is a good disc after all. Just because I don’t listen to it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have it.

That’s the strange mindset I have with music. Of all my discs there are probably fifty that I listen to regularly. A few others fall into a once a year category. Some discs I keep solely for certain moods: Sonny Landredth when I’m depressed, Howie Day when I’m bored, Paula Cole when I want to remember that I’m an idiot. But there are others that just exist. I don’t have a problem with that. I’m kind of proud of it. That is what a collection is for after all. Even as I work on filling the Zune Full Moon Fever isn’t on the list of discs to burn. But someday I will just so I can have it in another media. And it will probably be another decade before I listen to it.

Bill Gates knows cool

I’m not sure what concerns me more: the fact that the Wall Street Journal reported that my company is planning thousands of layoffs or the fact that when I log into my company’s intranet site I am greeted by an image that contains a black velvet painting of Elvis and a clown that looks way too much like Pennywise for my liking. Apparently this is a motivation tactic that no one told me about in grad school. “In a pinch, psychotic clowns are always useful in improving morale.”

Haven’t accomplished much tonight other than making some headway in my effort to copy all of my CDs. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it but I’ve picked up a new MP3 player. I got one for last Christmas and though I like it and still use it it is only a 4 GB flash player so I can’t go all out in terms of loading it with my CD collection. Hence as a present to myself I got myself a 30 GB Zune. Yeah, that’s right I got a Zune. That’s how uncool I am.

Well, that’s not true. First off, I am way cool. But more importantly I actually had a pretty valid reason for getting one. My music collection is almost entirely in CD form and I actually care about things like sound quality. I don’t need to feed an iTunes habit because I’ve simply never used iTunes. I don’t see a need to tie myself to one format and amazingly, Microsoft gives me a little more flexibility around just what I do with this thing. Doing the math, it still looks like it is going to be too small for my entire CD collection but it should be more than enough space for all the music I actually care about.

Oh, and since Microsoft forces me to name every single device this has been christened “Julie Version 2.0”. It’s smaller than the original Julie but has more memory and is easier to travel with. And yes, my screen background is a picture of Julie Delpy. I need to have something to look at every day that makes me happy.

Not much else going on today. Looks like we will get an inch or two of snow tomorrow, or as the forecasters here like to call it “a level 3 killstorm.” Honestly, I expect to see lines outside of supermarkets as people horde supplies in the event that it may take them slightly longer to get where they’re going.

Completely random note to end the night: I got an email earlier this week asking if I was interested in purchasing a forty thousand dollar painting. It’s a wonderful painting and a one of a kind original but I’m not sure if it is worth oh, I don’t know, everything I own. It would look great above my TV except that I would have to sell the TV in order to buy it. Still, it’s nice to know that my mailing lists think that I’m well off.

Blasts from the past

Is it ok to be incredibly thrilled over a Geico commercial? It’s just that I saw one featuring that dude from the Police Academy movies who made all the funny sound effects. The ad itself actually introduced him as “that dude from the Police Academy movies who made all the funny sound effects.” This guy’s entire career, including being name The Onion’s Man of the Year, can be summed up by simply stating “he’s the dude from the Police Academy movies who made all the funny sound effects.” That my friends is the definition of fame.

So I have to say that last night’s episode of How I Met Your Mother was probably the best of the season. The writing hasn’t been as spot on this year as it has been in past seasons, mainly because I’m not sure what the focus is this season. Season One was Ted pursuing Robin. Season Two was Lily and Marshall getting married. This year has Ted scoring skanky chicks while Marshall sells out. It really hasn’t found its rhythm yet.

But this episode did finally deal with the fact of how in the world are Ted and Robin acting as friends after breaking up. This is one of those sitcom events that HIMYM is centered enough to try to address because in real life once you break up with someone you never see them again. Especially after a year long relationship. The awkwardness and the fact that you never truly stop feeling something for the other person (at least in my experience) makes a transference to friends status extremely difficult. Not saying that it’s impossible, not saying that I haven’t done it myself, but it is not an easy state of affairs.

Oh, and Barney got slapped again. You have to like any show where a major ongoing plot line is one character slapping another. That definitely would have made Everybody Loves Raymond more interesting. Well, that and actual humor.

I’m kind of low on topics tonight so I’ll just talk about an upcoming concert that I’m probably going to attend. It’s certainly not one that I ever expected to occur a few blocks from my apartment. Well, at least not since I graduated from college. See, The Lemonheads are going to play Record Bar in a few months. Or at least Evan Dando plus a couple of guys that he is calling The Lemonheads are going to play Record Bar. To be honest, I don’t even think that Evan could name the other guys in the band.

Even though I was never a big fan I’ll go just because they were the type of band that I really wanted to see when I was in college. That’s what makes the show so weird and I’ve seen more than a few of these. You take a band that was if not on top of the world could at least see the top and revisit them a decade later and see what has happened. I’m not sure what it is like for the band to now find themselves playing for a hundred people in Kansas City. I know on some level they view it as their job and in some cases they are still playing the songs they love. Just look at the Camper Van Beethoven clip I posted this week, they’re still having fun (usually as Cracker) but playing to smaller crowds. In other instances it’s kind of sad as even the band realizes that they have reached an age where they know of nothing else to do with their lives.

True, I’m at that same point in mine. It’s just as scary for me, I just don’t have to do it in front of an audience.

Music through the ages

I’ve been playing around with the idea that we are seeing a turn around in what has been an abysmal music scene as of late. I’m talking about the mainstream here, I’ve been thinking that there has been a reinvigoration of talent in mainstream music. I figured a good benchmark would be examining the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. It’s not a perfect measure but it’s a good indication of what is popular at any point in time.

Let’s start with the 1992-1993 season, when I was a 19 year old sophomore in college. I consider this to be the high point of music, partially because I was 19 and that is just naturally when music is coolest. Here are the acts from that season.

Bobby Brown / Sinead O’Connor / Spin Doctors / Arrested Development / 10,000 Maniacs / Morrissey / Sade / Neil Young / Black Crowes / Bon Jovi / Madonna / Mick Jagger / Paul McCartney / Sting / Mary J. Blige / Soul Asylum / Peter Gabriel / Lenny Kravitz / Midnight Oil / Willie Nelson / Paul Simon

Wow, I’m not sure if you could fault any of those selections. The worst band on the list is Spin Doctors who admittedly had three great songs. Sadly that is all they had in them. Bobby Brown has turned into a joke but he did have talent at one point in his life. There’s a couple of older acts but I’d say this is pretty cool. Mainstream hadn’t accepted grunge quite yet but could come to terms with Soul Asylum and Black Crowes. Not bad at all.

Let’s fast forward seven years to 1999-2000, what I consider to be the nadir of modern music. At 26 it was pretty much the nadir of my life as well. Here’s the list

David Bowie / Marc Anthony / Dr. Dre / Snoop Dogg / Eminem / Foo Fighters / Garth Brooks (as Chris Gaines) / Sting / Beck / R.E.M. / Blink-182 / Macy Gray / Jennifer Lopez / DMX / Fiona Apple / *NSYNC / AC/DC / Christina Aguilera / Sisqo / Neil Young / Britney Spears / Kid Rock

First off, should we give Sting and Neil Young props for being on the show seven years later? Especially since they were older acts as well, though this is probably due to Lorne Michaels just booking people he knew. But this is a pretty sad list. There are positives in Foo Fighters and Beck along with Dre, Snoop and Eminem. R.E.M. had gotten pretty awful by this point but still had name recognition.

But boy, are there some bad acts on this list. Starting with Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, which might be the craziest musical decision ever. I’ve been saying all week that the only way I’m seeing Garth is if he plays part of the set as Chris Gaines. Then Blink-182 (pretty much a waste of space), *NSYNC (a definite waste of space), Christina Aguilera (disgusting to all five senses) and Sisqo (did he even have a second song?) Seven years later and I have no interest in hearing any of these acts again, even in a quasi ironic sense. There’s definitely no musical reason to listen to them. And then there’s Britney and we’ve discussed her enough. All in all, not a good time for music.

Is there any hope? Well, let’s see who played last year

The Killers / Corinne Bailey Rae / My Chemical Romance / Beck / Christina Aguilera / Ludacris / Tenacious D / Gwen Stefani / Akon / Justin Timberlake / The Shins / AFI / Lily Allen / Keith Urban / Arcade Fire / Snow Patrol / Carrie Underwood / Avril Lavigne / Bjork / Linkin Park / Maroon 5

It’s another mixed bag. The effect of American Idol is definitely felt as we have a lot less bands and a lot more people who happen to sing (the Justins and Christinas and Carries of the world). There’s also a surprising lack of hip hop and R&B, which might be a sign of the market that SNL attracts. Some acts offend me as a music fan (Linkin Park) and others as a human being (Avril Lavigne). And for some reason there is a lot of emo as apparently the viewers of SNL like to cut themselves.

But here is why I think things might be turning around. The Shins and Arcade Fire were both able to play on Saturday Night Live. That wasn’t possible seven years ago. Neither band is on a major label and they have no video play to speak of. The Shins became known thanks in part to Garden State and Arcade Fire became popular through their own awesomeness. To gain this degree of mainstream exposure is pretty amazing.

Do I think that music will return to what it was in the early 90’s? Of course not. For one thing, I’m not 19 any more. At 34 I’m at the very edge of the demographic and in ten short months marketers will no longer give a damn about me. I expect certain aspects of music today to be outside of my tastes simply because it isn’t written for me. But I find it good to know that the idea of a band and of musicianship is being resurrected. That’s the fear of an American Idol ruled world. It’s a focus entirely on the singer and not the song. But Arcade Fire creates art as opposed to commerce. The fact that they can get General Electric to put them in front of millions of people is a sign that things are going in the right direction.

(Coming Sunday: An anniversary three years in the making! Yes, there will be gifts! And balloons! And dancing girls! And those miniature hot dogs! It will be legen, wait for it…)

Hasek to the castle

(I know this is of interest to no one other than me but according to my writer’s journal this is my 202nd entry of the year and I’ve written just shy of 160,000 words. I’m now somewhere north of 750 blog posts as well. And the three year anniversary of the blog is coming up in a few weeks and you know what that means. Actually, if you do please let me know. I’d really like to find out.)

There are times in your life where you begin to question just precisely when you lost the plot. Driving to Lawrence on a Wednesday night to see a band from Prague mainly just so you could say that you’ve seen a band from Prague is one of those times. Actually, I owe much thanks to a friend of mine for telling me about Uz Jsme Doma, a rather cool band from my homeland. Though traveling the US to play next to pinball machines at the Replay Lounge seems to be an odd fate.

Now despite the fact that I am Czech and have a last name that is apparently unpronounceable I don’t actually speak the language. I can recognize it when I hear it and it does sound familiar at some level but it is odd to hear people singing in it. Not that I don’t listen to music in foreign languages. I’m a huge fan of the Iguanas and most of their stuff is in Spanish and I don’t know how many Cajun and zydeco discs I have that are in French. But it was comforting in a way to hear the language in the crowd and during the sound check. It is a part of who I am, after all.

(Personally, I just like the fact that when someone asked me today about why I went to Lawrence to see a band I had never heard of I was able to answer “Because I can.” At the end of the day, sometimes you have to do things just because you can do them. It keeps you from being a target market complete with focus groups and fun sized self sealed packages of enjoyment.)

You might have noticed that this makes four shows in Lawrence in eight nights, which I believe is a new record for me. It also is one of the reasons why I’m taking tomorrow off from work. I just cannot run that many late nights and long drives in a row. It didn’t help that one of the long time friends of the blog decided that at 2:15 in the morning it was vitally important that I know that he was currently watching old Beavis and Butthead videos. I’m a bit sleep deprived right now as a result of all of this.

I guess that is a sign that I really am growing old. I swear that a year or two ago I could bounce back from a schedule like this a lot quicker. Not that it was easy, just that I didn’t get home from work and immediately want to lie down and not move for twelve hours. I hate the fact that I’m going to be forced to admit that I’m an adult sooner rather than later. I can hide the gray in my hair but I can’t hide the fact that closing time is getting harder and harder to reach. I read somewhere this week that at 35 you realize that you have become the person you are going to be for the rest of your life. I’m ten months away from turning 35 and that scares the hell out of me. I still need to evolve.

And with that, enjoy the weekend everyone. At least Notre Dame is guaranteed not to lose this time.

Now excuse me, I have to go watch Mean Girls

I love the fact that people write that they “tolerate my obsessions”. I assume that they could care less about my compulsions. And it’s not that I am obsessed with my beloved Lindsay, this is simply a level of devotion quite similar to what Dante had for Beatrice. It’s all meant to inspire a work of great literature as opposed to, say, a restraining order. And anyway, given that I’m the Comptroller for the Lindsay Lohan Liberation Front it’s kind of my job. Trust me, it’s not the easiest group to keep the books clean. I’m still trying to figure out how to properly depreciate three crates of peppermint schnapps.

Of course, the reason for the comment that started the previous rant was my statements on Garth Brooks fans. Remember that I am nothing if not a music snob. I started to dislike Dave Matthews when he became popular and wouldn’t go see Coldplay just because I didn’t want to be surrounded by 20,000 people who knew nothing about music. I’m not sure why I correlate popularity with suckiness but I do. Now, as to Garth I did find out a few things that does put the story a bit more into his favor. First, the only shows that he is doing in 2007 are in KC. That explains the nine night stand but raises the question “Why not tour and why KC?” Apparently being centrally located comes in handy occasionally. Also, they aren’t using the stadium for anything else so might as well fill it with Garth.

And yeah, I can see the point that he puts on a nice show and the tickets are reasonable. It’s just music that I don’t get. I still have a hard time admitting that I listen to country music. It’s why I always use the alt-country label even though that is completely meaningless. I’ve seen Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett this year and that is country music but I call it something else. I just have an issue with people wearing cowboy hats without irony I guess. It will be a good show but it’s just not my style.

Actually, my biggest issue is that I hang out at a bar a few blocks from the arena and I dread what the parking situation is going to be like. I’ll get a sense of it this weekend when they have the first show (Elton John) going up against a Wilco show down the street. It’s definitely going to be a clash as I’ll be amongst the Gen X hipsters at Wilco while the…while the…who the hell goes to see Elton John anyway? That’s just a show you attend to say that you saw him in concert right? I saw Fats Domino for that reason but at least I knew that was going to be a good performance. Again, I fear the mainstream. If you can sell out a basketball arena you are probably not for me.

Changing Gears Part 1: While watching the weather this weekend I noticed that there is a city named Tightwad, Missouri. First off, I am so going to retire to Tightwad. Second, any guesses as to what their high school mascot is?

Changing Gears Part 2: Sadly I didn’t win the Nobel Prize for Physics this year. Apparently my power plant consisting entirely of drinking birds is too avant garde for the establishment. Dr. Holonyak got screwed over again and he does deserve it one of these years. For those who wonder why I’m still so proud of my electrical engineering background (and the University of Illinois in particular) here is what was done by people in my program historically. John Bardeen (who passed away just before I entered Illinois) won two Nobel Prizes in Physics, one for inventing the transistor and the other for inventing the superconductor. Jack Kilby (who was still a professor emeritus when I was there but I never met) won a Nobel Prize for inventing the integrated circuit, Holonyak invented the LED. While I was there they built Mosaic, the first web browser, in the same building I was taking classes in. So pretty much the greatest inventions of the second half of the twentieth century were made by Illini.

Oh, and we also built HAL. Watch the movie, he’s born in Urbana. That’s how awesome the Illini engineering program is. We were building killer computers 40 years ago.

One win from a bowl game...

Best of 120 Minutes: Figured that since I featured videos from Veruca Salt and Liz Phair over the past two weeks I might as well complete the Wicker Park triumvirate and play Urge Overkill. There was a brief moment in the early 90’s when Chicago was considered to be a hip music town. It really just consisted of these three bands and the Smashing Pumpkins (sometimes people would stretch and include Hum and Poster Children but in all honesty, I’m the only person on the planet who still remembers those bands.) It’s strange as to how few good rock bands came from Chicago. Until the early 90’s the best group was Styx as Cheap Trick is technically from Rockford. Anyway, at one point in my life I recommended Urge Overkill (and Sister Havana in particular) as proof of my awesome taste in music. Yeah, that didn’t really work out for me.

I find it incredibly funny that the first game that Notre Dame wins is the one that I don’t watch. If I watch every down they play horribly. If I avoid the game completely they pull off a big road upset. In the words of that wonderful poet Alanis Morisette, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think.” Well, at least I now don’t have to worry about a winless season. It’s still going to be a brutal season but that and a loss by USC makes life more bearable.

Plus, I did get to watch my Illini pull off one of their biggest wins ever. Ok, so it was a completely overranked Wisconsin team and I think that a few people had us as the favorites but damnit, we officially beat the number five team in the nation and that’s all I’m going to focus on. Do you know how long it has been since we beat a top five team? Hell, do you know how long it has been since we’ve won three conference games in a season? As always, I’m impressed by the current generation of Illini fans, who always wear orange and are loud and rambunctious. This is counter to when I was a student where we made up the most cynical fanbase ever. We booed our own team on homecoming. Admittedly, anyone who gives up a 17 point lead to Northwestern on homecoming deserves to be booed.

I’m just happy that my school is actually respectable in football again. Illinois is a school that never gets the respect it deserves. It’s one of the top schools in the country but no one ever realizes it. I was in a EE program that is equivalent to that at MIT, Stanford and Berkley but it’s tough to get anyone to admit it. Though I was happy to see that Dr. Holonyak got mentioned in the publicity commercial for the school at halftime. I met him a couple of times and the guy only invented the LED. Not a minor accomplishment.

Ok, there is one big music story that I need to touch on. As I mentioned last week, when I saw Arcade Fire with a three quarters filled Starlight I had my faith in humanity restored. Then I remembered that Garth Brooks was playing the Sprint Center in KC and I lost it again. Well, the tickets went on sale on Saturday and not only did that show sell out but they added eight additional shows. I’m not making this up. There is so much demand for Garth Brooks tickets in KC that he can sell out a basketball arena for nine consecutive nights. I’m not sure if this is a good sign for Kansas City or humanity in general.

Seriously, do you have any desire to see Garth Brooks? Even in a post-ironic “let’s make fun of the crowd” sense of the term? We’re talking about someone who hasn’t been relevant for a decade. Given that there are roughly 18,000 seats this means that nearly 150,000 people in this region want to see him play. That’s frightening. There is no other way to put it. I was one of like forty people seeing Mark Olson play. I doubt that Polyphonic Spree will sell out a small venue. But enough people for a sizable city want to see Garth. Just bizarre.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Belly “Star”
2) Cowboy Junkies “The Trinity Sessions”
3) Bob Dylan “The Essential Bob Dylan”
4) Jack Ingram “Jack Ingram”
5) The Gourds “Shinebox”

Salacious Crumb is my Homeboy

(I was asked once what my ultimate fantasy is. This is pretty much it. I so need to go to the StarWarsCon this year for the 30th anniversary celebration. Where else can you get in touch with your inner Wookie?)

(Yep, Peter Pan syndrome. That’s what my novel will be about.)

A couple of music industry topics to close out the week…

Topic # 1: As many of you know, we are a few days away from losing internet radio as we know it. Barring a last minute action by the government, the rates that internet radio stations pay artists for streaming their music is going to skyrocket and essentially put all of them out of business. Those owned by big companies may survive by being a loss leader but others, including my refuge from the work day blues Pandora, will most likely disappear.

As a result, I’ve been listening to a lot of Pandora in an attempt to get my last bit of enjoyment from their music predictions. Sometimes they are spot on, allowing me to listen to Viva Voce this afternoon. But twice over the past few weeks I’ve been recommended the worst possible song.

The first one was when after listening to my usual mix of female singer-songwriters (Beth Orton, Tift Merritt, Kathleen Edwards, Lucinda Williams, etc.) I suddenly found myself listening to a cover of the Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed.” As performed by the lovely and talented Hillary Duff. Part of me can vaguely understand how an algorithm would come up with that but seriously Hillary freaking Duff? Why in the world would you want to spread that across the internet.

This afternoon was even more bizarre, to the point that I really think that the staff at Pandora are just goofing around knowing that they’ll be out of business in a week. That is the only way to explain how I had an Aimee Mann track be followed by David Hasselhoff. I’m not making this up. I was just working away, listening to good music, and next thing I know I’m listening to David singing from the Baywatch soundtrack. First off, I just have to state that the Germans must have no taste in music cause this was just awful. But more importantly, what in my music collection would ever suggest that this is something that I would want to listen to? And do I lose all credibility as a music snob knowing that my musical tastes encompass David Hasselhoff?

Topic # 2: Since the U.S. is cracking down it means that I’m going to have to cross the border for my music. Thus, thanks to Ariela (who wins the award for coolest name ever) I am now really jonesing for the music at radio3.cbc.ca. It’s podcasts of mainly Canadian artists though they have a full Waco Brothers concert, which is awesome beyond words. Lots of New Pornographers as well as the Immaculate Machine singing in French. It’s kind of bizarre hearing the same song in French but Kathryn Calder is even more attractive singing in a foreign language. Definitely worth checking out.

(This also just shows my growing Canadian fanbase. Remember, thanks to favorable exchange rates I’m 1.27 times cooler in Canada than I am in the U.S. Though you could probably make a couple of coolness arbitrage deals if you want to work the market.)

Topic # 3: On my huge list of things to do I am going to try to digitize my CD collection. Not sure why I’m planning on this, other than a desire to fill up a hard drive and degrade music quality by going from CD to MP3. However, this should make it possible for me to put together a CD consisting entirely of cover songs that I have collected over the years. This won’t be an official part of the Battling the Current collection but once it’s done I’ll make it available to anyone who wants a copy. I’ve got some strange songs hidden around including Richard Thompson singing “Oops I did it Again”, which everyone should hear at least once.

Have a great weekend.