The Eleventh Annual Jaybee-bies: My 2021

Executive Summary:

Better than 2020. 

Abstract:

At first, I thought 2021's edge over 2020 was slim, and only because of not having a fascist in the White House. (Don't worry, there are still plenty in Congress.)

But in fact, it was a year of musical richness.

Yes, I did my usual "disappointment" post, but when I look back on how much enjoyable pop music I heard even while doing deep dives on LVB, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Bill Evans, I'm a bit stunned.

Best Humans:

Stephen Colbert

Bernie Sanders

And way too many others to mention.

Worst Humans:

Pretty Much Everyone at Fox News, although Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and Jesse Watters all deserve special mention.

Kristen Manchin

Apologies for not bothering to mention all the new dictators who are actively making the world a worse place.

Best Books:

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson.  Easily the best popular science book I've ever read.

Connections, by James Burke. A companion to the 1980s series, Jimmy actually knows of which he speaks.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. And yet another book about how we humans think. Bu the best one, and really, the one all the others are based on.

Best Movies:

I didn't really see many for obvious reasons, so I don't really give a shit. Or is that vice versa?  But here are the ones I did see. 

Don't Look Up: What is the issue everyone is having with this movie? It's funny, bleak, entertaining.

Spiderman: No Way Home: I'm not a huge superhero movie person (I used to be a big comics person, though.) but this one got me all choked up.

Get Back: A lot less depressing than Let It Be. But so so sad given what would ultimately happen.

Best TV:

What We Do in the Shadows

Derry Girls

Music Awards:

Most Work (But Worth it): 

Thelonious Monk (8 album set!), 

John Coltrane (8 album set!) 

Bill Evans (12(!) album set (leftover from last year.)

Time to slow down, Jaybee?

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): 

Weyes Blood Titanic Rising Stately, serious, perfectly good, quite playable for company, but no intensity.

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

Township Jazz and Jive: But in this case in a great way.

Most Disappointing: 

Spoon: Fine, but nothing to shout about.

Big Thief: Same here. I guess I like to shout.

Best Artist: 

The continent of Africa, apparently. (More on this next time.)

The Best of My Year:

1. Phoebe Bridgers: Punisher - A sweet voice, a gift for melody, and a good sense of humor in trying circumstances.

2. Fontaines DC: A Hero's Death - With its similar arrangements throughout, each song still somehow sounds unique.

3. Perfume Genius: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately - Pop musician goes baroque and somehow manages to pull it off. It just wore down any reservations I had.

4. Dramarama: Cinema Verite - Is it a songwriter album or a rock n' roll record? Both.

5. Etran de L'Air: No. 1 - It's amazing what energy and momentum you can generate with just a couple of guitars, a set of drums, and an enthusiastic audience.

6. The Paranoid Style: A Goddamn Imposible Way of Life - So many words! So many in-jokes! But the singer articulates them all and the band has just the right combo of sleaze and swagger.

7. The Go-Betweens: 16 Lovers Lane - The best Australian band ever provides yet another reason why they are. 

8. Waxahatchee: St. Cloud - Kate Crutchfield made an almost perfect rock and roll record a few years ago with Out in the Storm. This time she nearly matches that feat, this time with country music.

9. Humperdink: Hansel and Gretel - Not being familiar with German, for all I know the lyrics consist entirely of variations on the phrase shove that old bitch in the oven! And yet it's lovely and sometimes sublime.

10. Rachid Taha: Bon Jour - High-quality rock music that just happens to be made in Africa.

Honorable Mentions/Also-Rans/Tieds for Tenth: Toots and the Maytals: Funky Kingston, Ya Ndest Dalienst: Belalo, Sharon Van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow, Teenage  Fanclub: Bandwagonesque, Spiritualized: Ladies and Gents We're Floating in Space, The Rough Guide to Music of the Sahara, Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures, Jocelyn Pook: Flood, Teddy Bears: Devil's Music, Elizabeth Cook: Welder, TV on the Radio: Dear Science, Various Artists: Township Jazz and Jive.

With so many also-rans it sure seems like a pretty good year.

Some of the best songs I heard this year can be found here.

Conclusions:

My cup ran-eth over.

Too bad about the rest of the country.

Spring 2020: The Time Machine Had an Undo Button

Just another morning in the Jaybee household where I'm listening to an opera while checking out a video on who invented Heavy Metal music.  Who said multitasking was dead?

It’s probably too late to explain to people that I’ve not become a classical music snob. It’s just that there are some mountains – and LVB is one - worth climbing.

But I assure you I am still a pop music snob/t, meaning that I sort of stand by a remark I’ve made a few times that I love music, and I hate people who merely like it. They’re the ones who buy all the bland crap cluttering up the record bins and record charts, thus discouraging the recording of the weirder/ deeper stuff I prefer. But things are much better these days: a random glance at the Billboard top whatever is likely to elicit curiosity from me rather than vomit.

Which is to say that I have been listening to pop(pish) music while climbing the LVB mountain. It resulted in a Jazz avalanche that I'll have to dig out of at some point but whatever.

Don’t believe me? Okay, here goes:

Waxahatchee: St. Cloud (2020)

The young lady who made one of my favorite rock and roll albums of that last decade has gone country and produced something almost as good.

With her slightly gravelly voice, these simple tunes occasionally risk sounding repetitive. (Rock and roll covered that shit up good.) But the tunes, voice, and passion win out. 

A-

"Can't Do Much"

Etran De L'air: No. 1 (2017)

They’re from Africa and have electric guitars. When they crank out are long, primitive but hypnotic call and response grooves. Guaranteed to drive anyone who insists on melody or pretty voices absolutely nuts. I like those things, too but I consider this to be my vacation from it.

It amounts to a so so quality live recording.  Two guitars, rudimentary drums. I don't even hear a bass. And yet it does what rock and roll was always supposed to do: get people up and dancing. You can hear the audience doing just that, even though they never heard the band before. You can tell because at the end one of the band members has to tell them their name. 

A raw, but - if you're open to it - vital record.

A-

"Agrim Agadez"

Perfume Genius: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (2020)

This one is just the opposite. Slow and ornate, it's just the kind of long, arty opus with overwrought vocals that should rightly sink most other records of the type. But this one damn near soars. Every time he starts to get precious he backs it up with a good melody or arrangement.

I hear dance, rock, electronic, and chamber music. And I've not yet gotten to the bottom of it.

A-

"Leave"

Jocelyn Pook: Flood (1999)

To call this vocal music "classical" might be misleading. The only reason I do is that its best track showed up on a Most Relaxing Classical Music collection (which by the way is really good). The other tracks are not quite at that level, but the overall weirdness itself draws me in.

Another serious, arty record that doesn't make me bust out laughing at all the wrong times. Quite an accomplishment.

B+

"Blow the Wind/Pie Jesu"

Phoebe Bridgers: Punisher (2020)

So when I come back from that vacation from melody and pretty vocals this is where I want to go. Her voice is usually a whisper, so she sounds fragile but then she'll come out with a line about starting a garden after a skinhead neighbor goes missing, or I won't forgive you, but don't hold me to it.

So the songwriting is sturdy, and the arrangements bring out the best in them, especially "Graceland Too".  The title of which - along with her smashing her guitar of SNL - shows she has a healthy (dis)respect of her predecessors. David Crosby tweeted that her SNL stunt was "pathetic". She replied "little bitch".

How could you not love that?

A

"Graceland Too"

You might notice that three of these records came out last year. Old LVB muscled out a lot of 2020. Somebody had to.

But I'm back, at least in the Jaybee sense of being at least a year behind current music, getting distracted by jazz, opera, and heavy metal. In other words, I'm all over the place. 

Where I belong.