10 famous albums, a nice warm forest clearing, a 3-prong electrical outlet, and trail mix
Jan 10 '03
The Bottom Line If you like most of these albums, congrats! You are so right. Now buy weirder ones. If you do so already, continue. I hope i can help.
Well, see, i wasn't going to do a favorite albums list here. But then i found out it was possible and that other people were doing it. And then i found that an interesting Epinion writer named Guildenstern had found himself a clever way to get lots of extra time in this forum by making top-10 lists in all different categories. And i thought "Whoa, Machiavellian!". Well, actually, i thought "Neat!", because my Mom still uses '50's slang and taught me to think in it. But then either Bill or Ted popped into my mind, a haggard remnant of the '80's, and i invented an quote for whichever of him it was to mispronounce. Onward, then:
Ten Favorite Albums That I Can Pretty Much Assume You've Heard Of, Even Though I Don't Know You Yet
(This list allows people who don't know the bands i review individually to realize exactly how untrustworthy my tastes are, even if my descriptions are fair)
1965 Simon and Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence.
By choosing this, i reveal: that i miss harmonizing along with my Mom when she played the autoharp and sung folk songs built for harmonizing. That i realize how, even if my Mom arguably had (and has) a nicer voice than Paul Simon, we still needed the heck out of Art Garfunkel's angelic voice, instead of my childish pipes wavering somewhere near what might or might not have been the right pitch. That i think poetic pretensions are good things, at least if they're not designed to defeat interpretation, and especially if a good poem like Edward A. Robinson's "Richard Cory" is cleverly adapted to actually sound rock'n'roll. That i think introverts need anthems. That maybe self-glorifying murderers don't need paranoid anthems of their own, but i'll buy the attitude long enough to enjoy some well-strummed chords. That the preposterousness of "Was 21 years when i wrote this song/ i'm 22 now but i won't be for long" basically just amuses me. That sometimes i shut up and enjoy good melodies, but especially if i knew them long before Dad ever started plying me with 20th-century orchestra weirdness.
1967 Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
By which i reveal: that i won't be scared away from a correct opinion just because eleventy-million people vouched for it so quickly that reviewers had to start preferring Revolver just to feel good about themselves. That i think British music-hall, circus music, marches, chamber music, and washes of interesting noise were just as valid rock roots as the blues were. That i'm happy for music to be happy. That my taste in album artwork runs to the crowded and garishly multi-colored. That i'm still amazed that the Beatles -- even if they technically invented very little -- played more genres than anyone had ever played together before, and played them in a way that anyone, even complete newcomers to the sounds, could like.
1972 Yes, Close to the Edge.
Revealing: that crikey, i even kinda regard Roger Dean as a gifted artist (though he's no M.C. Escher or Milo Kandinsky, i agree). That i like ambitious concept albums, choirboy harmonies, and friggin-amazing lead-melody basslines in 13/16 time. That i'm picky enough about tight song structure, even if it's complicated song structure, that i easily choose a dense array of connected five-minute sections over the side-long drift of Tales from Topographic Oceans. That in these days of ProTools, i respect the heck out of a band that did all its edits with scissors and scotch tape, risking the permanent loss of real music if they misplaced a single cut. That i respect even more how, when the end of the side one suite was water-damaged and came out super-loud and bizarre, they said "Okay, then" and learned to reproduce it in concert.
1977 Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks.
Revealing: that i was picked on in junior-high enough to be overjoyed at the archival discovery of lyrics like "I kick you in the brains, you've got nothing to say" or "F--- this and f--- that, f--- it all you f---ers, f---ing brat!". That i was really proud at the time of my Johnny Rotten impression, which honestly wasn't too bad. That i enjoyed having older strangers yell "Hey! Cool t-shirt!" more than i was saddened when well-meaning peers squinted at my chest and said "never mind the... bow-locks? Sex Pistols? What's that?". That, in choosing a favorite in a genre that celebrated ineptitude at musical instruments, i end up picking a band that actually could play, at least after Chris Thomas overdubbed six hundred guitar solos. That i don't value anger enough to pick an angry album that i actually, in the end, take seriously.
1983 Police, Synchronicity.
Revealing: that the human voice is my favorite expressive instrument, and that with patience i will almost always start interpreting a "distinctive" voice as "good". That unfortunately i only understand jazz and (on "Murder By Numbers") dub reggae when it is diluted into other things. That i think good synthesizers were the beginning of rock's yet-ongoing Golden Age. That even as a teen, i already felt in my bones that i would need to be armed with songs about being an office drone, at least for awhile. That while i'm certainly a sucker for thoughtful, quirky love songs of the deepest devotion, a basically-mundane love song will do more for me if it's creepy. That i like the phrase "dark Scottish loch" almost as much as i like improvising variants of "every yard you rake/ every game of Quake/ every scalp you flake/ every dead you wake". That off-kilter rhythms excite me more than on-kilter ones, and that dancing is more fun if i have to pretend i have seven legs.
1987 10,000 Maniacs, In My Tribe.
Revealing: that Bob Dylan loyalists to the contrary, i know a clear and soft voice (e.g., mine) can be as passionate as a crusty Okie drawl -- especially one coming from a fellow upper-Midwest Jewboy like Dylan. That indeed, if Natalie Merchant always has the speech impediment i heard when i saw her interviewed, articulateness can be an _expression_ of passion. That i need records for swaying, as well as for dancing. That i agree with her: literacy and peace are good while poverty and child-abuse are bad. That i appreciate how daring some of her politics really are: there's a big gap between "child abuse is bad" and "it is my responsibility to interfere with it when i see it, even if i'm rude", and a bigger gap between "war is bad" and "i need to decide how to love my brother the soldier without making him think i tolerate his job". That i prefer politics, in the end, from someone who can slow down after her rant, hear opera through the door, and wonder who's playing it and what's his story.
1991 U2, Achtung, Baby!
Revealing: that if a singer has the vocal chops to justify his huge ego about them, i'll care about the chops, not the ego. That this doesn't change if he sings through a wind tunnel or a tin can. That i think rock's Golden Age got higher carats as synthesizers got even better. That some of Bono's corny lines appeal to me; somehow even his nth-generation usage of the "fish needs a bicycle" line charms me. That i didn't spend my entire life living with my freshman-year roommate, and so, after four years of his absence, it had finally been long enough since i'd heard this album six gazillion times that i wanted to make it six gazillion and, say, twelve. That even though Boy, U2's debut, was a fundamentally perfect exploration of a tightly constrained musical universe, and i adore it, in a pinch i'll cast my vote with a sloppy and wild exploration of a much bigger one.
1992 Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes.
Except, of course, when i choose the fundamentally perfect exploration of a constrained musical universe. Gawd, i love Boys for Pele, and Scarlett's Walk is my favorite album of 2002; it might be just as honest to pick those albums which, in their elusiveness, their explorations, and (in Pele's case) their vast unpredictability, have a whole lot more to do with Tori Amos than did this obviously mainstreamed debut. But ah, Earthquakes. Her piano playing has never been better; as glenn mcdonald has observed, she plays like the piano is as natural an extension of her body as her wrists themselves. Her singing has never been less mannered, and i don't mind her mannerisms but her voice is so beautiful. Her lyrics have never been clearer. And this album is a useful way to sort out the people who say "all the songs sound the same" as idiots whom we can safely ignore. Rachmaninoff's influence strolls next to George Gershwin's, the title track is as ambitious as most of Yes's work, and who else can evoke the terror a rape scene with no instruments (besides voice), a couple fleeting references to Barbados, and no fart-brains laughing from the third row?
1994 Nine Inch Nails, the Downward Spiral.
Revealing: that while i actually liked high school, which was surprisingly welcoming of my class-clown/ rebel/ harmless-lunatic persona collection, college sucked for me worse than junior-high. That even if it hadn't, i'm as bowled over by Trent's mastery of 128-track recording as by any other isolatable set of sounds i've heard. That even if it hadn't, i think i'd still recognize the fleeting moments of perfect resonant conviction in his pity-me pity-me stream of callousness: "Don't you tell me how i feel!", or "I want to know everything/ i want to go everywhere/ i want to f--- everyone in the world/ i want to do something that matters!", or "He couldn't believe how easy it was. He put the gun to his face: bang! So much blood for such a little hole. Problems have solutions". That i still like concept albums, 65-minute symphonies in thirteen movements with cleverly half-hidden repeating themes.
1994 They Might Be Giants, John Henry.
Revealing: that i know i'm a dork and, post-college, came lastingly to happy terms with it. That i know silliness is good. That i wish i could whistle, or at least wiggle my ears. That i appreciate the space where rock meets performance art. That i don't give up on a band the instant it decides to see what new things it can do. That i especially don't mind seeing a band trade some of its black humor for empathy (cf. "Why Can't I Be Sad?"). That i'm glad to finally see a use for Allen Ginsberg. And that i earned my Economics degree. Because if for some darn reason you long-standing TMBG fans don't enjoy the 20 minutes of rock songs, there's still 40 minutes of barbershop quartet, diffident square-dance, circling vocals over accordian, and tributes to digging up dead painters. And if you do like the rock songs, as i do, well! 60 minutes is more than 40. I rest my case.
2002 Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Revealing: that when i say "ten", and when i say "i rest my case", well.... i almost mean it.
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Epinions.com ID:
voxpoptart
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Brian Block
Location: Greensboro, NC
Reviews written: 201
Trusted by: 281 members
About Me:
Epinionator emeritus: a fancy term meaning "Occasionally I'll post something, then vanish again". Enjoy?
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