The Fifteenth Annual Jaybee-bies: Well, THAT Sure Sucked

Executive Summary:

2025 was everything we feared it would be, and more.

• Personal: I'm getting over (I hope) an illness.
• Music/Personal: Due to the above, I did the world a huge favor and stopped "playing" guitar for a while. The world took no notice. So I had no choice but to start again. This time with a focus on having fun. You've been warned.
• Music: Per my last post, I'm feeling more alienated than ever from the current music, probably due to thoughts on mortality. Jazz, Blues, and Oldies were great, as usual. Otherwise, I kept looking for the weirdos. Thank god I found some.
• Politics: After a long year, I'm seeing a little bit of daylight. How about you?

Humans:

Best:

• Some judges
• A very few congresspersons
• Janet Mills
• Many, many others who, in my current state, I just can't bring to mind. Feel free to write in your favorites.

Worst:

Some old winners (Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Jesse Waters) are working extra hard at being awful just to keep up with the new kids:

• All the tech bros with no balls
• All the media outlet owners who really don't give a shit about media
• Elon Musk
• Laura Loomer 
• Nick Fuentes (do I really have to point this out?)
• Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas 
• ICE
• Mike Johnson
• Pam Bondi
• Stephen Miller

Best Books:

I managed to read some books this year, none of which changed my life, but many that taught me things, some of which I might have been better off not knowing. I hope it's all made me a better person.

• Peter the Great by Robert Massie - Great Russian history. I see Adam Driver in the title role. 
• The Age of Revolution 1789-1849 by EJ Hobshawm - A tad (or two or three) drier than Massie's book, but it's got such a grasp of the entire era, it's worth it.
• The Killing Fields of East New York by Stacy Horn - History on a much smaller scale. Not to worry, there's still plenty of evil here to go around.
• The Family by Ed Sanders - Just some light reading before tackling Infinite Jest.
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion - Even less sixties nostalgia than The Family.
• Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns - Even less sixties nostalgia than Bethlehem.
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - I read it on my tiny iPhone SE, which took nearly all summer. And as I did with Gravity's Rainbow, I ended up frustrated, annoyed, and wanting to read it again, maybe this time with a highlighter.
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - Chuck D patiently explains it all to us. Great first line: "Listen up, motherf*ckers."

Best Movies:

• Wake Up, Dead Man
• Okay, Superman

I don't even remember if I saw anything else. I simply have to get out more!

Best TV:

I was stingy with my time this year, so I was reluctant to commit to an entire series. Mike Schur is a safe bet, though:

• A Man on the Inside

I simply must stay in more!

Best Concerts:

Do the 40th anniversary screenings of Stop Making Sense and Clue count? (Answers: Yes and No)

Music Awards:

Most Work (But Worth it): 

   Can

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): 

   Luckily, nothing this year.

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

   Heartworms

Best Nostalgia:

   Louis in London

Best Artist:

   Cindy Lee

Best Albums of My Year:

1. Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee (2024) - A dark time, indelibly stamped by this odd, lonely, beautiful record.
2. Handsome Family: In the Air (2000) - Cindy Lee swapped for Johnny Cash, the cold tundra swapped for the country, where everything is Very Normal. Right.
3. Duke Ellington/Charles Mingus/Max Roach: Money Jungle (1962) - Seemingly effortless group creation on the fly.
4. CMAT: EURO-COUNTRY (2025) - Containing great tunes, great singing, and sheer gusto.
5. Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio (1952) - Improvisational genius improvising away, accompanied by a crack trio, none of whom are exactly slouches either.
6. Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past is Still Alive (2024) - This simple, straightforward country rock album patiently waited for me to catch up to it. I feel so dumb!
7. John Coltrane: Crescent (2024) My Coltrane sweetspot appears to be just before he takes off for the stratosphere. An excellent intro to his work.
8. Geese: Getting Killed (2025) This one gets extra credit for conceptual integrity.
9. Adrienne Lenker: Bright Future (2024) - Oh so fragile and yet it outlasted other, more "muscular" records.
10. Otis Redding: Dictionary of Soul (1966) - Of all his not-quite-great albums, this one is probably the best.

Honorable Mention: The Pretty Things, Oklou, The Housmartins, Waxahatchee, Iggy, Dijon, and Louis Armstrong

Best Compilations:

1. Slim Harpo: The Best of...

2. Big Joe Turner: The Very Best of... 

3. Little Richard: The Georgia Peach

The Album I Listened To Most but Had the Least to Say About It Due to Density (Mine, not the music's.):

 Boards of Canada: Music Has the Right to Children

Songs:

• Some of the best songs I heard this year can be found here. It's a weirdly folk/country/hard rock hybrid. Good luck!
• And since Cindy Lee is not on Spotify, here's a link to hear the entire album. I recommend you play it really early, or really late:

Conclusions:

I've been listening differently this year. Circumstances persuaded me to look to the past in hopes of finding something timeless. So I took my eye off the new and the shiny. A well rounded person would do both.

So then, how could you, dear reader, gain any useful knowledge about this year? You're busy, you want to have fun. Why am I dragging you to the old abandoned mine shafts? It's always been the conundrum of my approach. 

The other issue is ranking some new records against many that have stood the test of time. It's almost as though the new music doesn't belong on the list at all. But I'd rather think of it as how I feel about these records right now as opposed to for all eternity.

And yet, on Bluesky, I'm seeing more and more folks mixing the old and the new on their lists of books and records in the name of describing the year they had. As the inventor of this approach, I approve.

The circumstances I mentioned above pulled me away from playing guitar for a while. Time was looking more and more limited, and I decided listening to actual pros was a better use of it than playing mediocrely (yes, I just made that word up). I fight the same war on the reading/writing front. Why write a word when there are so many great books to read? I don't know, but I will anyway.

I eventually drifted back to theh guitar, ignoring the voice asking me what the point was to trying to get better at this point. Then Son Michael bought me a new guitar - a nice electric one I really have no business playing. But Mike said I had a rough year and should "have some fun", whatever that is.

On the real-life front, I've gotten past my horror, or at least compartmentalized it. Elvis C was wrong, you know. One can be disgusted by events, but given how many people get hurt, there's never a justification for feeling merely amused.

Have a great new year anyway.

Getting Desperate Near the End of the Road, or Just a Few Randos?

  

The Pretty Things

The Housemartins

   

Jane Siberry

As I'm sure you spend most of your free time obsessing on just how Jaybee picks an album to buy, I feel I owe you an explanation:

When picking my next album to buy, do I 

• Research the f*ck out of every possibility
• Just buy something on a hunch or suggestion

Although I typically mention how I choose a given album, in general, I choose the first option (RTFOOEP). It has its shortcomings, but I've always believed it will produce better results in the long run.

Getting older does remind one, however, that we don't have as much "long run" as we used to. And recent events have shown I may have even less than I thought.

So, lately I've been making impulse buys, based either on the odd Quora comment (very dicey) or off-hand critic reference (also not without risk). The result has been albums that may not be pantheon-level but will likely satisfy something in me, even if it's mere curiosity. When I find myself saying I always wondered about that album I've decided - at least for now - to just cut to the chase. No more wondering, Jaybee, okay?

So, here are three artists I've had my eye on for some time. I was just waiting for the right recommendation to get me to try them out.

Jane Siberry: Bound by the Beauty (1989)

This Canadian singer-songwriter has twenty albums in her Allmusic Discography, so it was tough to figure out which one to try. I might have opted for a best of, but some rando on Quora answered a question about underappreciated artists, and included this album as an example. Since the same poster had mentioned numerous other albums I'd been a big fan of, he/she (let's face it - he. "She" is likely too busy adulting.) seemed like a good source, so maybe it was time to give Jane a try. Another post that same day also recommended the same record, and that was that. Never once did I ask myself Who are these people?

This record is a bit slick and a bit cute. Cute is fine, but slickness is unforgivable. Little touches like expert piano tinkling between lines or other gestures of virtuosity drive me nuts. (The jazzy reverbed guitar on "Hockey" is bearable, though.) It's like pop music for the old at heart. So my first impression was kinda negative. Mrs. Jaybee, who has less patience than I about such things, also gagged.

At first, I thought she sounded like the Cocteau Twins without all the reverb and echo, but then I thought of someone else.

"Sounds like Kate Bush," I said to Mrs. Jaybee.

"Kate Bush League, maybe," she replied.

After a couple of listens, though, two songs suddenly stood out as beautiful and distinctly lacking in either cute or slick. Suddenly, I needed to rethink this review. The singing is less mannered than it first appeared. The accompaniment, less fussy. Even "Everything Reminds Me of My Dog" sounds okay now.

But it's not quite enough to put it over. Perhaps a best of would have been best? Of?

B

The Housemartins: London 0, Hull 4 (1986)

I've had my eye on this record for a while, and the same rando I mentioned above recommended it highly, so I pulled the trigger. So not purely impulse.

These Brits are very tuneful. So tuneful in fact that one could miss the lyrics that are, shall we say, pointed? It's the Thatcher era, and since the band members are ACTUALLY CHRISTIAN, they take issue with the direction their country is heading. (Imagine that!) My favorite line is from "Freedom":

    So this is freedom, You must be joking!

Paul Heaton is the main songwriter and singer, He's got a pretty, and pretty focused, soprano, which could wear over sixteen tracks. Luckily for us, he keeps the melodies coming. 

Much of the musical attack is piano-based, so you're not getting raucous rock 'n roll here. Just sharp, precise pop. 

Now, who would want to (re)visit England in the eighties? Not many. But who would want to hear an energetic and musical album that avoids all the crud (synths, nasally vocals, hair, etc.) from that awful decade, and sticks a knife into its false platitudes?

Most anyone with a brain, I'd say.

A-

The Pretty Things: Parachute (1970)

This long-lived British band has been many things - in 1965, blues-based rockers a la the Rolling  Stones (and thought by many at the time to be better), and creators of possibly the first rock opera S.F. Sorrow, per Peter Townsend, a key influence on Tommy.

Was it Wikipedia that told me that Rolling Stone named this Album of the Year in 1970? No, it was probably another Quora answerer. Having read some of their old reviews, both in compilations and on one of my favorite websites, perhaps I should have held back. 

But the record sounds pretty damned good! They have nice harmonies, good melodies, guitars that get the job done, and, when needed, a nasty rock 'n roll sneer when called for.

I don't hear anything innovative, but I do hear many AOR 70s rock motifs being deployed. Even knowing they'd be deployed elsewhere, and sometimes more skillfully, that just tells me how durable they are.

In the meantime, I enjoy them just fine right here.

B+

I don't know how long my randomish picks will continue. I'm just trying to say Yes, instead of Later. Later may end up being Never.