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.

Older and (Hopefully) Wiser

Once a year - Thanksgiving at my brother’s house - we say Grace before dinner.

We usually force one of the kids to do it, 'cause that’s one of the fun things parents get to do. But this year my older brother Pat volunteered.

2017 was a tough year for us, with several of our relatives passing away. Mom was bad enough, but the hits kept coming, with Uncle Pat and Aunt Theresa, too. And all that by March.

The kicker, though, was our cousin Gene, who was just a couple of years older than us. It was the first death in the family of our own generation.

So Pat touched on that when he started Grace, and although he is probably the strongest of the siblings, he still got choked up part way through.



Loudon Wainright III: Older Than My Old Man Now

I first heard Loudon Wainright III on was with Album III back in 1972. (Remember “Dead Skunk”? It’s the leadoff track here.)

It was a good, but not great, album. LWIII was obviously talented, brutally honest, and funny. But maybe a bit too clever. His songs have always been autobiographical, but while writing about being a bit of a jerk can provide entertainment, it can also be limiting.

Well, he’s been at it for decades now, and you could count on hearing him on your local Americana station on a regular basis with a funny, clever or topical song. He was probably no one’s absolute favorite, but he was always damned good.

But now, after two failed marriages and finding himself older than his dad was when he died, he’s having to come to terms with big things, like family, aging, illness, and well, dying.

In doing so after all these years, he approaches greatness.

LWIII touches on a number of styles here: blues, talking folk, cabaret, ballads. These are tried and true vehicles for such subject matter.

He's always had a pleasant voice, but it seems to suit him and his themes a lot better now. Instead of being youthful and callow, it’s now aged, and still funny as hell.

It starts off okay, with a slick, jazzy tune that introduces the themes but that's a bit too general about them.

But after that, things kick up a notch or two with “In C” which both spoofs the somber solo piano arrangement he’s using while simultaneously kicking ass with it. The lyrics are mordantly funny, but deadly serious, with the following summary of his first marriage:

But I blame myself
And I blame her
The cruel and foolish people that we were

This is followed by the title song, an acoustic blues number about how his father’s death should have freed him from their tempestuous relationship, but only left him adrift. He starts it off by reading a piece by his father, about the very same thing.

“Double Lifetime” - a talking folk song - is about wanting more time, since we tend to f*ck up the time we’ve been given. And as more time goes by, this request seems eminently reasonable to me.

And he keeps at it, mixing styles and inviting his ex-wife and kids along.

The best of these family collaborations is probably the one with his son Rufus ,"The Days That We Die". Their relationship has been troubled and the song is about, well, troubled father-son relationships. Because the cycle continues.

And then there's "My Meds" which I can definitely relate to, and the hilarious “I Remember Sex”, a duet with Dame Edna.

Another highlight is “Somebody Else” with Chris Smithers - whose sandpaper voice is the perfect foil for LWIII's smooth tenor. It’s about the guilt and, yes relief, you feel when you hear about someone else’s death:
He was a guy, just somebody I knew
Once he paid me a compliment, right out of the blue
I was so relieved it was he who was dead
Just a guilty survivor, could’ve been me instead

The peak may be the wordless interlude near the end. Just LWIII humming tunefully. Those few seconds contain all the joy life can bring despite the pain and loss contained in all the other songs.

But even with that, he’s smart enough to end it with “No Tomorrow”, which gives good advice yet pulls no punches.

So, like the life he’s lived for the last seventy-one years, this record is filled with ups and downs.  Sometimes hilarious, brutal or tragic. Sometimes all three at the same time. But always true.

They say living well is the best revenge.

Hell, sometimes just living is.

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