The 13th Annual Jaybee-bies: 23 and Me

Alex G, Not Jesus C

Executive Summary:

Music: Pop good.  Jazz and Blues great.

Music/Personal: Still striving for competence on guitar. 

Personal: I'm a grandfather now, and getting close to retirement.

Politics: Too many wars, dictators, climate deniers, and general assholery.

Abstract:

Pop in a holding pattern.

Jazz strikes back. 

The Blues never went away.

Oldies make a comeback. 

Fascists making a comeback, too, and way too many people are okay with it.

(Note: Shouldn't abstracts be longer than executive summaries??)

Humans:

Best:

The same group as last year but with one addition:

• An ex-President - Jimmy Carter

Worst:

And the bar just keeps getting lower:

• Jim Jordan
• Tucker Carlson/Jesse Watters/Marc Levin/Laura Ingraham (what's plural for despicable?)
• Elise Stefanik
• An ex-President. You Know Who.
• The Usual Suspects

Best Books:

• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead - Pre-Civil War slavery with a bit of fantasy thrown in. 
• The Known World by Edward P. Jones - Pre-Civil War slavery with no fantasy, or illusions, for that matter.
• Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe - The Troubles. F*ck you, Gerry Adams. 
• Quantum Criminals by Alex Pappademas and Joan Lemay - Steely Dan, for better or even better than that.

Best Movies:    

• Poor Things
• Oppenheimer

I'm sure there were other good ones, but I don't get out much.

Best TV:

• Ted Lasso
• The White Lotus
• The Bear
• Baby J
• Slow Horses
• Reservation Dogs
• Catastrophe

Suddenly I'm a couch potato.

Best Concerts:

None. I'm still waiting for one that's worth time/trouble/$.

Music Awards:

Most Work (But Worth it): 

• Various Artists: The Music of Erik Satie

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): 

Educationally worth it, musically, not so much: all that time spent on Lou Reed, and specifically his first five solo records. Granted, it was wonderful to re-listen to the VU albums, and the good LR solo-ish records. But I was hearing those first five from scratch. And none of them cracked my top ten. Some way to spend the summer, huh?

Most Surprising (and Not Necessarily in a Good Way): 

But this year it is in a good way! (Lou Reed doesn't count, because I didn't have high hopes to begin with. Thank god for the Steely Dan book. I finally got to it after Christmas. I should have read it sooner. It reminded me of how they produced way more great music in the 1970s than Reed managed. They weren’t exactly summer breezes either but at least they had something to show for it.

Most Disappointing: 

The Dismemberment Plan: Emergency & I

Best Nostalgia:

Talking Heads: The Name of this Band Is Talking Heads - They really were a great band with great songs, just like I thought.

Best Artist: 

Miles Davis, due to sheer volume. 

I got ten (eight new) albums by him, and aside from Bag's Groove and Aghartha, I haven't gotten to the bottom of any of them yet.

The eight new ones came from two "Four Classic Album" collections. Here they are:

• Cookin'
• Steamin'
• Workin'
• Relaxin'
• Miles Ahead
• Sketches of Spain
• Porgy and Bess
• Elevator to the Gallows

I will get to this before I die.

Best Albums of My Year:

At first, I felt like I had to split genres this year because it seemed ridiculous to put Alex G ahead of Roots of Jazz Funk. But because I lean pop-centric, I'm enjoying Alex more right now. In a couple of years, though, who knows if that'll still be true? 

But goddamn it, my pop-democratic brain decided to mix them back up. The only true genre is Good, and that's subjective anyway.

1. Alex G: God Save the Animals
2. The Beths: Expert in a Dying Field
3. Various Artists: Roots of Jazz Funk
4. Galaxie 500: On Fire
5. Duke Ellington Orchestra: At Newport
6. Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden
7. The Smile: A Light for Attracting Attention
8. Miles Davis: Bag's Groove
9. Fleetwood Mac: Live at the Boston Tea Party, Vol. 1.
10. Thelonious Monk: Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 2

Honorable Mentions/Also-Rans/Tieds for Tenth: John Coltrane: Africa Brass, Forlorne: Daydream Hangover, Sun Ra: Lanquidity, Alvvays: Blue Rev

Oh, and Mrs. Jaybee's Favorites:

• The National: The First Two Pages of Frankenstein
• boygenius: the record

What can I say? She's way better at staying current than I am.

Best Compilations:

1. Ella Fitzgerald
2. Coasters
3. Billie Holiday

Album I listened to the most but had the least to Say About (Due to Density – Mine, not the music's.)

Erik Satie: The Music of Satie

Some of the best songs - including some great jazz - I heard this year can be found here.

Conclusions:

A new granddaughter has pushed my musical concerns back to somewhat normal proportions. A positive development I think.

Pop was good but not great, a crucial difference. It does make me wonder if I'm all Popped out. Maybe I'm at that point where I get off the fence and stick to finding great older records and give up on current stuff. I've felt this way before and what typically happens is that someone puts out a pop album that completely dominates my imagination. I hope it happens. I'd like to avoid geezerdom if possible.

Jazz and blues filled the gap. The former via new records and the latter by dipping into ones I already had, more or less. (Sorry that BB and Sonny Boy count as 2022 records I just hadn't gotten to yet.)

Still nice to still have a democracy. But I'm worried.

Seventh Annual Jaybee-bies: Listening to Fiddling While Rome Burns

Best of Times, Worst of Times, Ho-hum:

So how good a year was it (Musically speaking)?

Great! I’m usually complaining about now but this time around I really can’t.

There hasn’t been anything quite as great as last year’s Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest, but 2017 was way more consistent than 2016.

It’s been such a good year musically that even though I didn't get any great holiday (my definition) music, I realize that was probably too much to ask for. In a way, I did get it, just too early, and everything since then has been trying to catch up. Most of it great stuff, too. Just not for the holidays.

It was so good that my son’s record - good as it is - just made the top 10. But I have to grade him hard here, don’t I?

And how bad a year was it?

Well, my mom died in 2017, along with an uncle, aunt and cousin. I made a playlist for her. The effort involved digging into a lot of music from my childhood, which was emotionally draining. So it’s a good thing that the music was there for me.

And, of course, there’s this sociopath trying to destroy the country, but hey, what the fuck, right?

(I Still Suck at) Resolutions:

I still say “awesome” and “let's get on the same page” way too much.

I don’t get 10,000 steps in a day.

I don’t write 1,000 words per day.

I don’t exercise.

I don’t eat enough vegetables.

I eat too many sweets. (Hey, I thought dark chocolate was a health food!)

I could probably cut down on the drinking a bit.

So how can you expect me to follow my musical resolutions, like getting guitar lessons from my son Michael?

So how did I do with last years resolutions?

Buying fewer CDs: A  mp3s: 20  CDs: 9

Buying Current Year Music: B-  Still pretty crappy. Just Randy Newman, American Epic (if that counts, Nick Cave (if that counts), Jens Lekman, the New Pornographers.

2018 Resolution: 

Catching up on the current decade: I’ll be focusing on the 2010s and so may not do so well on the Current Year Music resolutions. Nothing like clashing resolutions to start off a successful year!


Top Ten Albums:

Tied for first:
Innocence Mission: Glow (1995) - Their seeming lightness is overcome by sheer joy.
New Pornographers: Whiteout Conditions (2017) - A big ole box of hooks and snark. 
King Creosote and John Hopkins: Diamond Mine (2011) - Like Glow, this one is so fragile you think it's going to break, but it never does.
Loudon Wainwright III: Older Than My Old Man Now (2012) - An older, wiser man looks death, and even worse - family - in the eye.
Courtney Barnett: The Double EP, A Sea of Split Peas (2013) - She's sly, she's funny, she's a bit insecure, but she's got a great deadpan delivery

6. Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Style (2015) - Some hooks and sounds even more brilliant than Denial, but hampered by airplane-hangar sound.
7. Jon Hopkins: Immunity (2013) - In a genre not reknown for deep emotion, this one wears you down until you hear the heart beating underneath.

8. Jens Lekman: Life Will See You Now (2017) - He writes in a style even my mom would have liked, and happens to be pretty great, too.

9. Todd Snider: Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables (2012) -  Strong medicine, this explains how Trump happened. I'd buy it if he could have explained why Bernie didn't happen.

Tied for tenth:
Death Cab for Cutie: The Open Door EP (2009) - Expert, driven, tuneful music.
Forlorne: The Old and Weathered Glass (2017) - Son of blogger gets even better.
Low: Things We Lost in the Fire: (2001) - This one feels like they know 9/11 is coming and they're already in mourning.
Roots: How I Got Over (2010) - Combines the best of Kanye and Lamar.
Future Islands: Singles  (2014) - Just a shade shy of awful, they manage to do all the right things to make it almost soulful.

Yeah, I cheated. There are fourteen.

Honorable Mentions:
Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and the Jazz All Stars, Kanye West, Miles Davis, Cloud Nothings.

Am I saying that the Top Ten are better music than the Honorable Mentions? Yes, but just for now.


Most Fun: New Pornographers

Most Bracing: Todd Snider

Most Work (But Worth it): Kendrick Lamar, American Epic

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): Nick Cave

Most Surprising: Innocence Mission

Most Disappointing: Sonic Youth: Dirty

Best Artist: Courtney Barnett

Favorite Songs: My favorites can be found here:


Observations:

Pop beat out everything. It beat out hip-hop and jazz. Hip-hop because it’s not one of a go-to genre of mine, and jazz because those records were already familiar to me and thus lose out to the new.

One might think protest music would be the order of the day but sometimes pop - not stupid, empty pop, but instead smart, brainy pop - was the right medicine.

Last year’s music gave me hope. Let’s see how far into 2018 it gets me.