The 00s, or, Why I Aughtta...

Delayed Reactions:

At family gatherings, my dear old dad had the curious habit of reviving topics that we had finished discussing the hour before. At 4pm, let’s say, we would be discussing how the local football team sucked, but by five we’d have moved onto how the local baseball team sucked. Just as we’d be ripping into an overpaid leftfielder dad would bring up the overpaid quarterback again, and suddenly we’d all be back on football.

Well I’m getting more like my dad all the time. Young folks listen to music, decide what’s a hit, and move on to the next thing. With radio being the big waste of time it is, and me with my so-called adult life, I don’t even hear about that music until the next year when the annual-best-of polls come out. (But now, thanks to metacritic.com, I at least know what people think when it first comes out.)

It’s that time lag that kept me from getting a CD from this decade until late 2001. So there I am, pretending to be cool by advocating music that the target demographic has long since finished with, and that my demographic couldn’t care less about.

Now add to that the fact that I’m still catching up on other decades (not to mention centuries), and it means that a lot of my musical highlights came from other decades:

• The 90s: The Magnetic Fields’ “69 Love Songs”, Randy Newman’s “Faust”, Luna’s “Penthouse” and Belle and Sebastian’s “Tigermilk”
• The 80s: Nothing. Screw you, 80s.
• The 70s: Richard & Linda Thompson’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”, Nick Drake’s “Five Leaves Left” and “Pink Moon”
• The 60s: Brian Wilson’s “Smile”, The Zombies’ “Odyssey and Oracle”
• The 50s: John Coltrane/Thelonious Monk Quartet - Live at Carnegie Hall

Then there is my lifetime self improvement project, resulting in my getting some great compilations of Hank Williams, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Johnny Cash, Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, and Igor Stravinsky. And let’s not forget “Nuggets”.

My reactions to music outside of my favorite genres – rock/pop – can sound more appreciative than enthusiastic. Sorry, it just takes me more time to learn the new territory. Here are ten records - jazz/hip-hop/world/classical - that I’ve probably underrated out of sheer density.

• Jazz: Benny Goodman’s “Famous Carnegie Hall Concert”
• Hip Hop: Kanye West’s “The College Dropout”, Burial’s “Untrue”, De la Soul’s “Three Feet High and Rising”
• World: “The Music In My Head”, “Rough Guide to Youssou N’Dour and Etoile Dakar”
• Classical: Mozart’s and Brahm’s Requiems, Mahler’s Second Symphony,
• Country: James Tally’s “Got No Money, No Bread, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love”

If you care to know all the dirty details of my musical decade, check out these posts: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.

Quick Jaybee, Before It’s 2019:

If I winnow it all down to just those records I got this decade that actually came out this decade, and that I love without reservation, they are, no particular order:

Old 97s - Satellite Rides

Good old alt-country-ish rock and roll from start to finish. The voice and lyrics are a bonus.

Fountains of Wayne – Welcome Interstate Managers

Perfect pop songs, about real life.

Shins – Chutes Too Narrow

Tunes up the wazoo, with a couple of the decade’s greatest songs.

Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Ditto with the tunes, but more orchestration. And at least three of the best songs of the decade.

Arcade Fire - Funeral

So full of passion, you don’t quite believe it. But they mean it, man.

Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

What a voice! And how beautiful is that spare sound.

The Go Betweens – Oceans Apart

Getting older, looking back, just in time.

Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of Bewilderbeast

A White Album for our decade.

PJ Harvey - Stories of the City, Stories of the Sea

“I feel immortal when I’m with you.”

Wussy - Funeral Dress

“And if they offered I would take it, a free ride out of this place…”

Honorable Mentions/Bronze Medals/Ms. Congenialities:

These records are great! but maybe not GREAT. That’s okay. We’d all like to meet Abe Lincoln, but we probably don’t want to spend the whole party with him:

The Wrens “The Meadowlands”, The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, Orlando Lopez’s “Cachaito”, The Red Hot Chili Peppers “By the Way”, Modest Mouse’s “Good News for People Who Like Bad News”, Orchestre Baobab’s “Specialists in all Styles”, The Streets “A Grand Don’t Come for Free”, Radiohead’s “Kid A” and “In Rainbows”.

And just to give this some context, here’s a sampling of what some major news outlets said:

Rolling Stone

Paste Magazine

Robert Christgau
Metacritic

NME (if you want to hear what's going on across the pond)

Going Forward:

There was a hell of a lot more to this decade than just music. Not all of it good, by any means. But music is my safe haven where magic happens - just a simulation of life’s real joys, which unfortunately can’t be burned onto a CD to be played at will. Music can, however, reminder me that those joys do exist. Sometimes I forget.

Sometimes music lets me down. It happens when I’ve asked more from it than it can possibly provide. I begin to think that I’m done with it, and that in the new decade I’ll be looking elsewhere (Books? Art? Other human beings, perhaps?) for magic. But then those decade-end polls just whet my appetite all over again.

It’s good to be alive, for any number of reasons. Music is definitely one of them.

Decade: 2007 - Highway '07 Revisited

Since I’ve already done a roundup of 2007 and 2008, I’m just going to give them a quick once over to see if I’ve changed my mind about anything. (Have I ever?)

Here's the original post for 2007.

There’s not much to add, except to say that Neko Case, while not outdoing the Go Betweens, did outlast them. While it clear from the start that “Oceans Apart” was great, “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” hung back and slowly took over. Once it kicked in, we played it for weeks straight. It’s definitely one of the best of that year, and of the decade, too.

The other Go Betweens record – “Spring Hill Fair” - turned out to be pretty good, but not great. Sometimes the GBs –at least the Robert Forster part - are all elbows. It’s on “Oceans Apart” that they grow wings.

So the revised “Great List” stands as:

The Go Betweens – “Oceans Apart”

Neko Case – “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood”

PJ Harvey – “Stories of the City, Stories of the Sea”

And the “Really Goods” now are:

Nick Drake – Pink Moon

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Featuring Eric Clapton

Thelonious Monk – “Solo Monk”

The remainder of that year’s music more or less stays where it was in my original estimation, although some records will continue to swim around inside my brain, only to surface years from now, at the oddest times.

If I’m lucky.

My 2007

Around now, a lot of young people are reveling in the year-end best-of reviews of music and pop culture in general. Debating siblings and friends about what album was the best one released in a given year is a fun way to participate in the culture. It used to be for me, at least.

But at my advanced age, I can’t possibly keep up with all of the musical developments of the year. There are just too many artists to keep track of to be able to weed out the great from the merely worthwhile. And the term “worthwhile” takes on an added urgency when you realize that you don’t have many “whiles” left as you used to. So the things you spend it on – musical or otherwise – better be, well, worth it.

So I’ve left 2007 pretty much alone, letting the dust settle on it before jumping in. Instead, I’ve begun to dip into 2006, along with any other pretty colors that may have momentarily attracted my limited attention span.

So I have to define the musical year differently. My 2007 is not based on what was released this year. It’s based on what I either bought or was given. So it couldn’t be anything like yours.

Anyway, here’s mine:

Loved Them:

I’m not yet sure if either of these CDs is hall of fame material yet, but the Go-Betweens go deep and Polly Jean has a high on base average.

Oceans Apart-The Go Betweens (2006)
Beauty, pain, death, tears, and maybe forgiveness. Guitars, too. Never heard of them? Don’t get me started…

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Now playing: The Go-Betweens - Darlinghurst Nights
via FoxyTunes

Stories of the City, Stories of the Sea-PJ Harvey (2000)
I’ve gotten two of her earlier albums: “Rid of Me”, which is like knocking off a bottle of scotch on a Saturday night with a psychotic/nymphomaniac, and “To Bring You My Love”, which is like spending Sunday morning with her, after she’s found religion. Both can be bracing experiences, but aren’t my idea of fun. Here, you get hit with the chiming guitars right out of the gate, and she’s telling you how she’s got to get away from the violence. So she moves from England. To New York. Before 9/11. So her timing's not great, but the important thing is that she’s upped the tune factor, and cut back slightly on the histrionics. The result is bracing, but in a fun way.

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Now playing: PJ Harvey - You Said Something
via FoxyTunes

Really Good:

These are very entertaining records that might yet move up to Love over time.

Pink Moon - Nick Drake (1972)
This is sparer than “Five Leaves Left” – no strings, just Nick and his guitar - maybe because he’s closer to the end.

Solo Monk - Thelonius Monk (1964)
If you don’t know what a great composer he was, you could mistake him for a Scott Joplin for the 60s. You might even think he’s hitting the wrong notes, but he’s just re-writing things as he goes.

Still Getting My Ears Around:

Egypt - Youssou N’dour (2004)
This is the guy (yes, the guy) who sings at the end of “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel. He’s a superstar in his native Senegal, and I quite liked his album “Nothing’s In Vain”, but I’m not even close to getting to the bottom of this very pleasant mixture of Middle Eastern and African music.

Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - Neko Case (2006)
This is pretty and spooky at the same time - like a country music soundtrack to “Twin Peaks”. And when spread out over a humongous playlist in Windows Media Player, each song stands out. I’m just not yet convinced that all the individual parts add up to a great CD.

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Now playing: Neko Case - Hold On, Hold On
via FoxyTunes

The Discount Bin, or Hey, at $6.99, how can you go wrong?

Aoxomoxoa - The Grateful Dead (1969)
The songwriting is beginning to strengthen, and they never sounded so muscular in the studio. Only one laughable track. (Hey, they were on drugs at the time.) And the bonus jam tracks are very good.

Disappointments:

Neon Bible - Arcade Fire (2007)
Actually quite good, just not as powerful as it’s trying to be. And a letdown after "Funeral".

Live at the Apollo - James Brown (1962)
I really shouldn’t complain. It is James Brown live after all. But it’s short, so a greatest hits collection (like “30 Golden Hits”, or the 4 CD box set “Start Time” would be better. Definitely not bad, but sometimes live albums make you feel like you had to be there.

Return to Cookie Mountain - TV on the Radio (2006)
It’s got tons of sound, and is occasionally striking, but too often is just a lot of noise. And the singing isn’t good enough. But I’ll keep trying.

What I Got for Christmas:

This amounts to a subset of “Still Getting My Ears Around”. This is where I ask for gifts that I’d feel too guilty just getting for myself. There’s usually some experimentation here, which can be cause, during the cold winter months, for joyful immersion or deep depression as I ask myself just what kind of weird music I’m getting myself into. But as our use of the word “weird” is merely a reflection of our own provincialism, I carry on proudly, feeling superior to all around me. And isn’t that the point of life?

So I won’t know what I’ve got until at least March.

Spring Hill Fair - The Go Betweens (1986)
Will this be yet another classic from the Australian band of the 80s? Yeah, you heard me. You can keep your INXS, Men at Work, etc.

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, featuring Eric Clapton – (1966)
Bitchin’ blues guitar from a post-Yardbirds and pre-Cream Clapton, and crappy singing from Mayall. Next year, I’ll go back to the originals that are covered here.

Brazil Classics, Volume 4: The Best of Tom Ze (1970s)
Gentle, but strange Tropicalia.

The Rough Guide to Youssou N’dour and Etoile Dakar (1980s)
A long vacation in Senegal.

I suppose that I ought to have a “Bad” category, but I rarely feel like I’ve gotten something that falls into that category. This may seem like the denial of a grim reality – bad music – but I guess I’m just too pig headed. I’ll force myself to listen to something over and over until I get it. Sometimes I never do. It’s great!

I got fourteen CDs altogether this year, and by my rough count, they average out to about 20 years old each. This gives the lie to my blog’s description, which refers to “current pop music”. But let’s face it, you don’t think in terms of years anymore, anyway. You think in terms of decades. Ouch!

It was an average year. I wish that there were a few more “Love”s. The great years are the ones where I get a truckload of music and five or six Loves rise to the top. I find that, unlike most things, more music is better.

Well, that was my 2007. How was yours?