One Year, 100 Albums: #1 Smashing Pumpkins "Siamese Dream"

Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream, 1993

And so we've arrived here at the #1 position. Anyone who knows me at all probably guessed this would be the album at #1.

Siamese Dream is the only album I have displayed in my house. Smashing Pumpkins are the only band, in fact, to have a place on any of the walls of my house. I have a "shrine" in my room with a vinyl copy of Gish, a ZERO t-shirt, a photo I bought in college, and my original Wal-Mart censored copy of Siamese Dream.

I got into the Smashing Pumpkins through the follow-up to Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I was spending a lot of my time at my friend's house playing video games and listening to the radio when the singles from that album started playing on the radio. I fell in love with the song "Zero" and my friend made me a tape of the songs from the double album that he thought were the best. They were mostly from the first disc and so, to this day, the songs on the second disc aren't as familiar to me.

While I was stoking the flames of my fandom, I discovered the songs "Today" and "Disarm" and was just blown away. This was one of those "listen to the radio in hopes of hearing them" kind of situations. And so I decided I wanted to get myself into a situation where I could hear them whenever I wanted. I needed to get a copy of Siamese Dream.

I don't remember why there was a delay in my actually getting the album. I don't know if I was saving allowance or what, but I DO remember writing about being excited to get the album in my 8th grade English class.

But then the day came when I went with my mom to Wal-Mart (the local Target hadn't been built yet and so this was the most convenient option in our eyes. Plus we were already there probably looking for clothes or something.) to make the big purchase. This would have been Fall 1996. I found the CD, looked at the back, and found it blank. Hm. Oh, I guess it's just an artistic decision of the band. (Silly silly James)

Once I realized that the CD tracklist wasn't anywhere to be found (I later realized this was the Wal-Mart censored version. The track "Silverfuck" caused them to remove the tracklist. And make no other changes to the album. I hesitated for so long to buy (What's the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis because some of the tracks were blank on the back of the CD and I didn't want to play them and hear all sorts of profanity that I imagined filled them.) it became my mission to figure out what the songs were based on the liner notes which had old pictures with the lyrics and titles hand-written on them. I knew "Today" and "Disarm" from already knowing them and I could figure out "Quiet" and "Spaceboy" and "Sweet Sweet" pretty easily. But the rest of the songs required a little detective work. It turned out that "Silverfuck" appeared in the credits, so that was the song that had no title in the cards. Eventually I had them all figured out but in the meantime, I'd formed this deep connection with the album. It's weird to think about but I might not love this album and this band as much if I'd gotten the uncensored version. Of course I probably wouldn't have been allowed to get an album with a song called "Silverfuck" at all, so I guess sometimes Wal-Mart's oppressive censorship can sometimes work out for the best.

The whole album is beautiful and angry and sad. It's an album I'm so at home with that it feels like a security blanket when I'm listening to. I'd never really realized it until I started typing this paragraph, but it's true. I feel safe and comforted when this album is playing. I guess that's why it made #1.

I know I'm not alone in my love for this album, but when I was young, I had no idea. There wasn't a large, accessible social media network to shout my love for this album to the masses and, even if there had been, I'm not sure if I would have taken the opportunity.

I often credit this album, along with The Simpsons, as the means by which I made my first real friends in Virginia. 7th Grade had been a rough year, friend-wise but, armed with obsessive recall of Simpsons quotes and instructions from Billy Corgan to "Stay cool and be somebody's fool this year" ("Cherub Rock") (I recently actually read the actual lyrics to the song and it dawned on me that the lyrics that I had taken for gospel were actually sarcastic....but that's ok. I feel like you take what you need from music. And the artist's particular intent is not necessarily the end all be all.) and he's declaration "I just want to be me." ("Mayonaise") ("Mayonaise" has permanently prevented me from ever being able to spell the word "mayonnaise" ever ever ever.)

So yeah. It's my favorite album. And in honor of that and the end of this series and everything, here's all 4 music videos for singles released from this album, in the order in which Wikipedia tells me they were released.

Smashing Pumpkins - Mayonaise

You can buy Siamese Dream at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

I want to take a second really quick to thank some people who have supported this project from way back when I was starting to post these things last summer and who have continued to support this project through Likes and Comments (Facebook or otherwise) ever since. So thank you to Jim (Happy Birthday!), Tyler, Chad, Nat, and Kate.

And a big thank you to everyone who read even just this #1 on the list. It's cool to know there's something of an audience out there! THANK YOU.

One Year, 100 Albums: #2 Bob Dylan "Blood on the Tracks"

Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks, 1975

Oh goodness. This album. First of all, Bob Dylan claims this ISN'T about a horrible, gut-wrenching breakup. Which is, of course, hooey. Every song is about the end of love or betrayal or even, on "Idiot Wind" how stupid the both of you are.

It's some of the clearest writing of Dylan's career. Something that has frustrated me with albums like Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde is that the words SOUND nice, but what the hell is he talking about? I mean, I'll still listen to them, but it's with the understanding that he could basically just as easily be saying nonsense words that sounded cool together. It's a pedestrian complaint and I'm 100% aware of that. It doesn't hold me back from enjoying any of those albums, but it does make me enjoy Blood on the Tracks more.

Most of my cool anecdotes about this album I gleaned from this book, which I highly recommend if you like this book. It goes through the overall context that the album was recorded in (in both NYC and Minnesota) as well as going into stories from the musicians themselves about the recording of each song.

I've featured two songs with stories in that book because I could have picked literally any song to feature and felt great about having picked it. That's the atmosphere we're working with here in the top 2.

"Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" is a Western epic that I just love. The story from the book is that when Dylan went to record the harmonica part, he came in and the whole band winced at how he was playing. He was off-key, off-time, just everything. But then they realized it worked. It worked better than it would have if he was playing "correctly".

And then there's "Meet Me in the Morning" which was not a song that ever really caught my attention until I read about it in the book. The slide guitar player tells a story about how Dylan provoked him into anger and that that is why he played the solo so passionately and intensely. Now when I hear the song, I smile because I can FEEL the guitar player seething in annoyance, coming in before Dylan is done singing the verse and just basically setting the track on fire. And it's become one of my favorite songs on the album.

When I was a lad, my Dad gave me three Dylan albums for my birthday: Freewheelin', Blonde on Blonde, and Highway 61 Revisited. If I were to give my son introductory albums for Dylan's career, I'd include Blood on the Tracks. I don't know which of those three I'd cut, so I'd probably give him 4 albums. Or, geez, I don't know.

Fortunately, I don't have to make that kind of decision, because I'm hoping to one day be able to set up my CDs in a way that the kids can pick albums out and play them and get to know them. I won't quote the whole Nick Hornby passage about Dylan albums, but I feel like it's a nearly impossible decision to pick just three or even five Dylan albums to introduce someone to him.

Oh what the hell. I have it from an email I sent to a friend nearly 4 years ago (Thanks GMail!) So, here's the whole Nick Hornby passage (from Songbook):

"I'm not a Dylan fan. I've got Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited, obviously. And Bringing It All Back Home and Blood on the Tracks. Anyone who likes music owns those four. And I'm interested enough to have bought The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3, and that live album we now know wasn't recorded at the Royal Albert Hall. The reviews of Time out of Mind and Love and Theft convinced me to shell out for these two, as well, although I can't say I listen to them very often. I once asked for Biograph as a birthday present, so with that and The Bootleg Series I've got two Dylan boxed sets. I also, now I look, seem to own copies of World Gone Wrong, The Basement Tapes, and Good As I Been to You, although this, I suspect, is due more to my respect for Griel Marcus, who has written so persuasively and brilliantly about Dylan's fold and blues roots, than to my Dylanphilia. And I have somehow picked up along the way Street Legal, Desire, and John Wesley Harding. Oh, and I bought Oh Mercy because is contains the lovely "Most of the Time," which is on the High Fidelity soundtrack. There are, therefore, around twenty separate Bob Dylan CDs on my shelf; in fact I own more recordings by Dylan than by any other artist. Some people -- my mother, say, who may not own twenty CDs in total -- would say I am a Dylan fanatic, but I know Dylan fanatics, and they would not recognize me as one of them."

Bob Dylan - Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts
Bob Dylan - Meet Me in the Morning

You can buy Blood on the Tracks at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #3 Elliott Smith "Either/Or"

Elliott Smith Either/Or, 1997

One night, I was listening to my friend Andrew Bain's radio show. He played a song that really caught my ear. It was so quiet and, for some reason, that drew me even further into its siren song. When the song was over, Andrew's cohost gave him grief about playing a song with a number of curse words in it (I found out recently that after a certain hour, FCC rules about profanity stop applying, but none of us knew that then), but I wasn't listening very hard any more. I was too busy thinking about how great the song "Say Yes" was and how I would get my hands on the album.

This was Freshman year of college. I can't remember if it was Fall or Spring semester. I think it might have been Spring Semester because I was single when I came home for Spring Break. The reason that's important is that I bought Either/Or (because an album with 11 tracks of silence plus "Say Yes" would be worth it) and the book Replay, went home, and read the book cover to cover while the album played on repeat. When I was finished with the book, I started it over, reading and listening deep into the night. It's an experience that made both the album and the book more special to me, and also inextricably linked them in my mind. So, one of the things that you have to do to see Either/Or from my perspective is read that book a couple of times. It's a great book, even if it's not a Great Book, you know?

The other memory I have of the album, which makes me think that maybe that experience happened on Fall or Winter break (I was single off and on all year), is the memory of being really sad (which generally means exhausted, but they feel the same in the moment) and of going out VERY late at night with my Discman with this album loaded into it and my journal (which means I could look up what date that was and align the dates for certain...if I was writing this at my house) and just sort of meditating on life and love and all sorts of Freshman year of college stuff.

Those two memories make this album feel like it was made specifically for me and so it's always a source of great joy and a feeling of community when I talk about this album and other people like it, too.

You can definitely hear him cribbing some stuff from The Beatles, once you know that he was a huge Beatles fan. It's the stuff from the minor key songs like "And I Love Her" that I hear most. It's fun to make that connection. Sort of like listening to The Ramones, knowing their love of the Bay City Rollers.

I think that Elliott Smith made a great contribution to music with this album for sure, but also all of his other albums. His death hasn't been mourned as much as other, bigger names, but I think the fact is that we haven't felt the full vacuum of his absence yet. As the years go on, I think the Elliott-shaped hole will begin to resolve in our cultural vision. Hopefully there's a kid out there with a poetic mind and an acoustic guitar unknowingly  walking a path to fill it as best as anyone but Elliott Smith himself could.

Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
Elliott Smith - 2:45 A.M.

You can buy Either/Or at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #4 Fleetwood Mac "Rumours"

Fleetwood Mac Rumours, 1977

I came to this album later in life than I feel is fair. This is SUCH a high school album and I feel like I would have listened to it every day in my car if I'd discovered it in 1998 instead of many years later. I don't even know when I finally decided to give this one a listen. 2007? Later? I know that when I first started listening to it, I told my Dad how much I loved it and he told me a story about listening to it over and over when he was roughly the same age as I was.

It's an album that, for me at least, is better the more you imagined everyone playing on it hated each other. I like to imagine scowls and glares in the studio and then this AMAZING album coming out of the whole ordeal.

I was talking to a friend on the phone today about that part in Wayne's World where Wayne says that everyone knows Frampton Comes Alive because you received a copy when you moved to the neighborhood along with samples of detergent. I've always found that this line rings false for me. But I was realizing on the phone with my friend that it rings true if the album is Rumours. I feel like everyone knows this album. Whether everyone LIKES this album, I don't know. But I can't figure out what's not to like. Sure, "Don't Stop" and "The Chain" are a little dated or something, but seriously? You don't like "Songbird"? "Go Your Own Way" doesn't do anything for you? "Gold Dust Woman" leaves you cold? I don't think so. If you "don't like" Rumours, then my bet would be that you haven't listened to it or you haven't listened to it recently.

So, I wanted to do a blog post a number of years ago that would have featured two pieces of writing about the first several seconds of two songs. But, for whatever reason, I never wrote that post. But here is one of the pieces of writing. It's from Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live. It's amazing. Everything I've ever read by him is amazing.

"I once interviewed Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, arguably the least pretentious semi-genius of the modern rock age. We started talking about how the best parts of songs are usually accidents; Tweedy mentioned that the most transcendent moments in pop music are inevitably unintentional, because listeners reinvent those mistakes and give them a personal meaning no artist could ever create on purpose. This segued into a conversation about Fleetwood Mac, and I told him about the way Quincy and I would incessantly play the opening five seconds of "I Don't Want to Know"[sic] at maximum volume. This is because--if you play the song loudly enough--you can hear Lindsey Buckingham's fingers sliding down the strings of his acoustic guitar. His sliding phalanges make this unspeakably cool squeak; it sounds organic and raw and impossible to fake. Q and I would play this opening sequence over and over and over again, and we were convinced that this was the definitive illustration of what we both loved about music; we loved hearing the inside of a song. And when I told that story to Tweedy, I was surprised how inexplicably happy it made him.
        'It's so great to hear you say that,' Tweedy said. 'I don't know Lindsey Buckingham personally, but--from what I know about him--I would assume he's the kind of artist who wants to control every single element of how his music is perceived. Yet the one moment off Rumours that was most important to you and your friend is a little crack he couldn't spackle over. Nobody can control anything, really.'" (Buy the book!)

Oh, and here's the song for reference:
Fleetwood Mac - I Don't Wanna Know

Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
Fleetwood Mac - You Make Loving Fun


You can buy Rumours at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #5 Weezer "Weezer"

Weezer Weezer, 1994

For a long time, this album was, kind of like Graceland, an album that I dreamed of one day owning for myself. I would occasionally convince a friend who owned it to play it, or I'd hear "Buddy Holly" on the radio (this was rare) and all would be right with the world.

And then one day, I owned it. I could put it on whenever I liked. I remember that I bought it when we were out for the day in Boston because we ate lunch at Faneuil Hall. Actually, I may have been visiting with my friend Lisa, because I seem to recall she was there too. I remember being anxious to get home and listen to it and revel in the idea that this fantastic album was MINE.

All of that comes from the fact that this is nearly a perfect album. There's no song that isn't fantastic. It's a masterpiece.

If you think back to my post on The Offpsring's Smash, you'll recall that I said there were two albums from 1994 that were fantastic but that built up expectations that the band failed to deliver on, in the long run.

Weezer is the poster child for this concept. A band whose first two albums hinted at nearly unlimited potential. They were as different as night and day, but they were both great. Surely the album that followed Pinkerton would be the album that changed the world. A collection of music that historians would point to and say, "Mankind's endeavors in music all led up to this, Weezer's 3rd album".

And then we got The Green Album which, if it was made by another band, say, as their debut, would have been a great, though perhaps slightly rudimentary, study in how to make power-pop music.

But then you re-listen to The Blue Album and all the pleasant things you have to say about The Green Album fall away. I think that the band would have been fine to release The Blue Album, Pinkerton, and then one more album which contained all the gems on the rest of the albums they've released.

But I digress.

You should own this album. I don't care what kind of music you listen to. This is an album that defies genre and age and everything else. It's not just good rock music. It's Great Music.

Weezer - My Name is Jonas
Weezer - In the Garage

You can buy Weezer at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: Thanks and Mashup!

So, before we get into the Top 5 tomorrow, I just wanted to thank all of you for reading these silly posts I've been doing this year. It's been so fun for me to write and I hope it's been fun for you to read!

A while ago, I put together a 2 (or 2.5) second mashup of a song from each album in the Top 5. It's 5 different singings of the word "You" because without all of "You", this would just be me shouting into the void.

So, here's the mashup. See if you can figure out what the Top 5 are!

The "You" Mashup

One Year, 100 Albums: #6 The Ataris "End is Forever"

The Ataris End is Forever, 2001

This is, if the list is to be believed, my favorite pop-punk album. And I think that, outside of the list,  it's certainly way up near the top.

I had first heard The Ataris on the Life in the Fat Lane Fat Wreck Chords comp. The song was "San Dimas High School Football Rules" and, if you've ever heard that song, you'll agree, it's one of the greatest pop-punk songs of all times.

So I tracked down the Fat Wreck Chords EP that had that song on it: Look Forward to Failure and I got some songs on Napster and I tracked down the Kung Fu Records album that song on it: Blue Skies, Broken Hearts, Next 12 Exits. And I absorbed it all. All the frustration and longing and anger and humor of being a teenager who was constantly wanting girls but never wanted by them was there.

Then I heard that they had a new album coming soon: End is Forever.

I often think that New Found Glory's Sticks and Stones was the first pop-punk album I ever eagerly anticipated, but that's not entirely right. It was the first album I ever eagerly anticipated with other people.

I eagerly anticipated End is Forever 100% on my own. And that first time I put it in my Discman was GLORIOUS. Actually, I can't think of a time that I've played this album and not been moved. Something about the heartfelt lyrics, fast pace, and clips from Clerks and Good Will Hunting make for a nearly perfect pop-punk experience.

The Ataris - I.O.U. One Galaxy
The Ataris - Fast Times at Drop-out High

You can buy End is Forever at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #7 The Beatles "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band"

The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967

So, what the hell am I supposed to say about this album that hasn't been said before? It's not a niche album that's near and dear to my heart like Dessa. It's not a genre classic that maybe isn't familiar to some people like Thursday or the Get Up Kids. It's The Beatles.

I remember checking this and Rubber Soul out of the library in Brookline one summer and realizing that the band that I had grown up hearing play songs about love and submarines also made this weird psychedelic stuff that wasn't as straightforward as who loves whom (yeah, yeah yeah) or how much loving they're giving or how many days a week they're loving that person or what kind of day's night it'd been.

It was nearly impossible to pick just one Beatles album for this project, so I went back to the first principles of this whole thing: the Desert Island. What Beatles album do I love but also haven't listened to to death? Weirdly, I feel like I listen to Revolver more than anything else and then maybe Abbey Road? After some amount of deliberation, I decided this one was eclectic and great enough that I could listen to it sitting on the beach watching hope of rescue dwindle for weeks.

Of course, I'd probably make some sort of Beatles mix CD to take with me. I mean, that's what everyone would do, right? Because surely there's no one that can say that all of the Beatles songs they could ever want to listen to exist solely on one album. I just can't imagine that being the case. I mean, for one thing there's the second side of Magical Mystery Tour which is all Sgt. Peppers outtakes (Ok, I just looked it up and only "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" were Sgt. Peppers outtakes. But my point remains the same.)

All the songs on this album are my favorite songs on this album. Favorite moments? I like the "animals that eat each other" part of "Good Morning Good Morning". I like the "Leave It" part at the end of "Lovely Rita". I love how trippy "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" is. I love how hard the "Sgt. Peppers (Reprise)" rocks.

I mean come on. This album is one of the greats. I know it's been hyped to death and there are probably people that are like "Ugh, that album is SO over-rated" or whatever. And I readily accept that there are people who don't like the Beatles or don't know who they are and have no interest in finding out. But I maintain that this album has something for everyone.

I couldn't find an acceptable video of a performance of a song from this album. So here's three songs from the album. And if you've never heard this album before and these songs are an introduction for you, please leave a comment. I'm very very interested in learning more about your world view.

The Beatles - Fixing a Hole
The Beatles - Within You Without You
The Beatles - Good Morning Good Morning

You can buy Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (I'm assuming to upgrade from vinyl or something) at Amazon and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #8 Rise Against "Revolutions Per Minute"

Rise Against Revolutions Per Minute, 2003

I feel like everyone has an "angry" album. The album you listen to instead of burning it all to the ground and going off and living in the desert because the world is against you and it always will be. Revolutions Per Minute is that album for me. But it's so much more than angry, yelly catharsis.

The hint that this is the case is right there in the title. And in the album art. The title's a pun on the unit of playing speed of a vinyl record vs how many times can you revolt in a minute's time. (Five Iron Frenzy did SORT of the same thing with their live album Proof The Youth are Revolting). The album art (the cover and the back and the inside of the liner notes) features objects of destruction hybridized with everyday objects. For instance, the cover features a pair of headphones plugged into a grenade.

This is an appropriate symbol for what this album contains. Half reflections on living life to its fullest despite what naysayers you might encounter and half anthems to inspire people to fight against oppression in all its forms. In the most moving songs on the album, the first type and the second type meld together.

My favorite track, however, is solidly in the second type of songs. It's called "Blood-Red, White, and Blue" and is one of my all-time favorite protest songs. And before you call me out on it, yes, it has a bitchin' guitar solo. But that's only PART of what makes this song great.

I want this to be an album that my children and their children discover and draw inspiration from. Inspiration to stand up for others, to stand up for themselves, and to fight for the life that will make them happy instead of settling for a life that doesn't make waves.

Rise Against - Like the Angel
Rise Against - Blood-Red, White, and Blue

You can buy Revolutions Per Minute at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #9 Saves the Day "Stay What You Are"

Saves the Day Stay What You Are, 2001

It kind of feels like this album has always been in my life, even though it actually made its way to my ear during my Freshman year of college. I believe I downloaded each song from LimeWire (which was the custom in that time and place). I actually had the track order wrong, swapping the positions of "Freakish" and "As Your Ghost Takes Flight" (or maybe "Freakish and "This is Not an Exit") which still bugs me to this day. I hate getting to know an album in the wrong order.

Saves the Day kind of remind me of what Alkaline Trio's California cousin would be like (even though StD is from New Jersey). They're bright and poppy, but the devastating and sometimes disturbing imagery is present in their songs as much as (if not more than) the darker, Chicago-based band.

There's imagery of self-mutilation, other-people-mutilation, the band getting revenge against others, and other people getting revenge against them. It's all wrapped in a candy coating, but the bitterness is there.

If I could pinpoint my feelings after listening to this album, I would say they're somewhere in the range or "we're all messed up in various ways, but it's possible for all of us to make it through and come out the other side stronger and happier. or we won't make it through at all and they'll toss our rotting corpses on the garbage heap." So it's certainly an album of contradictions

Saves the Day - Jukebox Breakdown
Saves the Day - This is Not an Exit

You can buy Stay What You Are at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #10 Barenaked Ladies "Maroon"

Barenaked Ladies Maroon, 2000

Barenaked Ladies are another band where there was really no way to satisfactorily pick just one album that is my "favorite". They all have pros and cons. In the end, I went with Maroon. I think that it typifies the kind of music that people don't realize BNL are capable of making.

I feel like the album is a primer in Barenaked Ladies' songwriting, starting off with some over-the-plate pop songs ("Pinch Me" "Too Little Too Late") and then getting into some more ornate, detailed fare ("Go Home", "Falling For the First Time") before kicking it into high gear with detailed stories ("Conventioneers"), pun-heavy dramas ("Off the Hook"), and gut-wrenching tragicomedies ("Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep At the Wheel").

This is the kind of album that you play for someone who thinks that the band is just a novelty act playing cheesy "rap" songs like "One Week" or "Another Postcard".

Actually, the funny thing about Barenaked Ladies is that MOST of their songs are at least semi-serious. They're certainly not saying to themselves "What wacky subject matter can we write about next?" when they go to record a new album.

Go get this album, fall in love with the band, and then get the rest of their albums. (NOTE: When Steven Page left the band, something happened to them that I'm not sure is entirely good. I often think that maybe he was the catalyst that made the band step up to the plate. I am still trying to wrap my head around All in Good Time (the first album after he left) and I haven't even heard Grinning Streak (the second).

Barenaked Ladies - The Humour of the Situation
Barenaked Ladies - Helicopters

You can buy Maroon at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #11 Thrice "The Artist in the Ambulance"

Thrice The Artist in the Ambulance, 2003

I read an article in Alternative Press magazine (I think) about Thrice's album The Illusion of Safety that talked about how it was just crammed full of riffs and was really good. I had heard a couple of songs on compilation albums that I liked, so I picked it up. And loved it. So when I heard they were releasing a new album, I eagerly anticipated it. The 2003 Warped Tour comp had "Under a Killing Moon" on it, so I listened attentively to try to get a handle on what this new album would sound like.

I bought The Artist in the Ambulance from a Best Buy in Virginia Beach on my way home from pulling cable at one of the High Schools. I was driving a coworker home and, when we got back in the car and I popped the album in, his complaint was that all the songs sounded the same. I can see his point, but that's only going to seem true if you aren't paying much attention. I don't begrudge him his lack of attention. I just think that anyone who's actually listening to this album will agree that it's an amazing one.

I lump this album in with Rise Against's Revolutions Per Minute in the category of "Punk Albums with Heart". The whole thing is about thinking and not letting people shut you out of learning and picking your own path. That soaring too close to the sun is sometimes the only thing you can do to truly be free.

It all culminates in the title track which is about how singing is all well and good, but it's not enough. It's a challenge the band is putting to us and also to themselves to do more than speak, to do more than sing. To try to make an actual difference in the world.

"Rhetoric can't raise the dead
I'm sick of always talking when there's no change
Rhetoric can't raise the dead
I'm sick of empty words, let's lead and not follow"

This is a song and an album that inspires me and I think that's something you don't often find.

Thrice - Cold Cash and Colder Hearts
Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance

You can buy The Artist in the Ambulance at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

NEXT WEEK WE BUST IN TO THE TOP TEN!!!

One Year, 100 Albums: #12 Paul Simon "Graceland"

Paul Simon Graceland, 1986

For a long time, this album was kind of the Holy Grail of music. I knew that I liked "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" from when my Dad played it for me as a kid. I had seen the video for "You Can Call Me Al" with Chevy Chase and thought it was hilarious. But I didn't know anyone who had it and I had never seen it in a store.

I don't know when I finally tracked it down, but it may have been as part of my ongoing project to listen to all the Grammy winners for Album of the Year from my birth to present (I have similar projects with Best Picture and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners).

I don't remember my reaction when I first listened to it, but over the years, it has become clear that it is one of the all-time greats. I believe there was some hubbub about him working with South Africans during Apartheid or something, but I don't think that's something people generally think of anymore. Am I wrong?

The album is all over the place in terms of genre, but I think that it traces a clear line between the roots of rhythmic music in Africa, through the titular home of Elvis, and eventually settles in New Orleans for songs like "That Was Your Mother". It's a fun way to think about the album.

But no matter how you think about the album, it's worth it to check out the whole thing. If you ask me, this was the peak of Paul Simon's solo career.

Paul Simon - Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
Paul Simon - That Was Your Mother

You can buy Graceland at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #13 R.E.M. "Automatic For the People"

R.E.M. Automatic For the People, 1992

I recently talked on my podcast about how I came to know R.E.M. I was in 6th grade and would listen to the Lion King soundtrack over and over as I did my spelling homework. Eventually, my mom suggested that I might want to listen to something else. Say, for instance, this R.E.M. album Out of Time. I took it under advisement and eventually did start listening to other music. Specifically the first two Kriss Kross albums. Not *exactly* a win in Mom's column, but not a loss either.

It was probably two years later that we were in Crest Books, a musty old used bookstore that is now the headquarters of a limo rental place, and for some reason, I was browsing the books and Mom was browsing the CD's. She bought Automatic For the People for me and gave it to me in the car. I looked it over and it seemed ok, but I wasn't completely sold.

I remember the specific events around which I became sold. It was basically bedtime, but Mom was on the phone with someone so I was listening to this album on my Discman while I waited for her to get off. For whatever reason, maybe the headphones, maybe the silence of a quiet house, this album struck home. I may have read along with the lyrics in the liner notes (I don't recall if the liner notes for this album had the lyrics or not...) or maybe I was just in the right place, cognitively, but it really struck me that these were stories! Narratives in music! Not just silly, "I love you, won't you love me too" stuff, but narratives with emotions and complications!

And, in what I'm realizing is becoming a theme in some of these stories, some of the songs had profanity in them! I found out what the "Star" in "Star Me Kitten" stood for. I heard lyrics like this, from "Ignoreland"

They amplified the autumn, nineteen seventy-nine.
Calculate the capital, up the republic my skinny ass.
TV tells a million lies. The paper's terrified to report
Anything that isn't handed on a presidential spoon,
I'm just profoundly frustrated by all this. So, fuck you, man. (Fuck 'em)

By the time I got to the gorgeous one, two punch of "Nightswimming" and "Find the River," I was hooked. The lyrics and music touched me in a way that was rare at the time and I knew that this was an album for the ages. 

Later, I'd find that this album was somehow linked in my mind to the time in which it was released and I started thinking about what it would have been like to be an adult in 1992 and getting this on cassette tape. In fact, I wrote a poem about listening to "Drive" as a character from that time. I had an epigraph from "Sweetness Follows," so I guess that means the poem is more about listening to the whole album. Anyways, this is super awkward, but here's that poem and then we'll do the video and featured songs.

Automatic

Yeah, yeah we were altogether
lost in our little lives

R.E.M. “Sweetness Follows”

Driving through Central Illinois

On a cold winter’s day

Michael Stipe’s voice is haunting.

But fitting.

How can this Georgia boy

Strumming an acoustic

Add his own layer of frost to the windshield?

The landscape is the brown of all the leaves of America

That fall

But never hit the ground

They settle on these fields.

The interview is tomorrow.

November 14, 1992

For a job

A life

I don’t know.

R.E.M. - Drive
R.E.M. - Ignoreland

You can buy Automatic For the People at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #14 Doomtree "No Kings"

Doomtree No Kings, 2011

Sometimes you're lucky enough to be following a group early enough that you get to witness them achieve master status. That was the case with No Kings and Doomtree.

In their respective posts for this series, told the story about discovering P.O.S and I think I told the story about finding Dessa a little bit later.  Man, I hope I did. So, anyways, I'd seen the whole Doomtree crew in concert and followed them on Twitter and all of that when they announced that they had a release date for their next crew album and that they were heading up to a cabin to record it.

This was a bold move. What if something had gone wrong? What if they hadn't like what they came up with at the cabin? Most of the group spoke/tweeted about how much pressure it added to select a release date before anything had been recorded. It was like Babe Ruth calling his shot.

And then they knocked it out of the park.

This is the first album that I've ever felt addicted to. An album that, as it ended, for the longest time, I found myself thinking, "Well, it's not like I'm NOT going to listen to this again right now." Part of it has to do, I believe, with the way the last track, "Fresh New Track" (arguably the best song on the album) ends without a concluding downbeat.

But it's also the fact that this album is expertly sequenced. I'm talking from track to track on the album as a whole, but also from rapper to rapper on individual songs. The way that the emotional weight shifts when you move from a Dessa verse to a Mictlan verse? Amazing. The way Cecil Otter's verse on "Team the Best Team" hits the ground running? Exhilarating. The entirety of "Little Mercy"? Breathtaking.

The whole thing is captivating from start to finish and it's my hope that everyone who has been reading these posts will take a moment to at least listen to the tracks below. You won't regret it.

This is one of the rare albums that we can actually go to the AFD archives and look at my original review. So let's do that and then we can watch the video and listen to the songs. Setting the Wayback Machine for November 2011....

Doomtree - Little Mercy
Doomtree - The Grand Experiment

You can buy No Kings at Amazon, Amazon MP3, iTunes, the Doomtree Web Store, and the Doomtree Bandcamp page

One Year, 100 Albums: #15 Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here"

Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, 1975

Well, Pink Floyd was another tough band to pick just one album from. It seemed like Dark Side of the Moon would be the obvious choice because I love the story of finding my mom's cassette tape recording with the typed out labels and it was the first album by PF that I immersed myself in.

But I also really really loved The Wall, with it's totally messed up story and how it rocked and creeped me out in equal measure. It's an epic concept album and, if you know me, you know that this is right up my alley.

But then there's Wish You Were Here. What a beautiful album. I don't remember how I came to own it. It seems like it was a purchase during a time when I was buying as much Pink Floyd as I could and just blissing out as I drove around in my car. However I came to own it, it feels like it's somehow always been a part of my life. I remember a road trip where my mom and stepdad were upset about some aspect of the trip and were jabbing back and forth. I put this album in and cranked it.

I don't know the history of the album. I saw something about either Gilmour or Waters telling either Waters or Gilmour that they wouldn't be putting a couple of their songs on the album (the first two songs played in the FULL CONCERT below are those songs, I believe) or something. This album feels like the opposite of an album like Rumours or Blood on the Tracks or even The Wall. It's an album out of time for me.

I love the slow build of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts I-V" and the symmetrical slow breakdown of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts VI-IX". I love the cynicism behind "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar". And show me a person who isn't enraptured by the title track. Point them out to me. Seriously, I don't think it's possible.

Pink Floyd - Welcome to the Machine

You can buy Wish You Were Here at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #16 Radiohead "The Bends"

Radiohead The Bends, 1995

I came to Radiohead via OK Computer. I loved the video for "Paranoid Android" and really really loved the whole album.


I found a book called Radiohead: Hysterical and Useless which was published in 1999 and recounted their history up through OK Computer and it was a fascinating read.

Unsurprisingly, the book covered a lot about the album before OK Computer, The Bends. The way the author and the band talked about the songs, it sounded amazing. I was visiting my Dad in Boston at the time, so we took on a mission to go around to as many record stores as it took to find this album. And it took more than two. It was an age before iTunes allowed for instant gratification the way it does today.

Well, the album was even more amazing than described! And it turned out that I'd heard a song from it, "High and Dry" many times on DC101. I just never knew it was Radiohead! It was quite the revelation.

I was surprised when I determined that this was my favorite Radiohead album, but I guess it makes sense. It has all of their weirdness, all of their softness, and all of their hard rocking guitar-ness. It's kind of a blueprint for everything they'd done before and everything they've done since.....except maybe Kid A. That album, I'm convinced, was given to them by God or aliens or something out of this world.

It was incredibly tough to pick feature songs from this album. I decided to include a softer song ("Black Star") and a harder song ("Just") and to include the single that Cher in Clueless referred to as "the maudlin music of the University station" and "cry-baby music", "Fake Plastic Trees" (It's apparently Clueless week....for these two days (Yesterday and Today).)

Radiohead - Just
Radiohead - Black Star

You can buy The Bends at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #17 New Found Glory "Sticks and Stones"

New Found Glory Sticks and Stones, 2002

I would say that New Found Glory are the seminal pop-punk band of my life. They were the first band that played this kind of music where I loved it and jumped around to it and wanted more, more more!

The summer that this album came out, they put the first single, "My Friends Over You" on a Drive-Thru Records sampler that you got if you purchased the Something Corporate Audioboxer EP. Which I happily did. The song was so good and I was so excited.

And then it came out. And it was good. But like almost all of the albums on this list, it took me a little bit to get into. The songs weren't as immediate as the ones on the self-titled album that preceded it (Reason: These songs are more complex).

But now, of course, I look at it as a classic. It's one of maybe 4 albums I would give someone who was interested in the pop-punk genre. In fact, I can't think of any time I've heard someone who likes the genre having a bad word to say about it. So this one is kind of a no-brainer.

I'm listening to it as I type and bouncing in my seat. If I wouldn't look RIDICULOUS, I would get up and jump around. MAN, I love this album.

Here's a video for the song "Head On Collision" done by the Troma people that did movies like Toxic Avenger and stuff. This song is also where the band All Time Low got their name!

New Found Glory - My Friends Over You
New Found Glory - The Great Houdini

You can buy Sticks and Stones at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #18 White Stripes "Elephant"

The White Stripes Elephant, 2003

I featured this album for a month a couple of months ago on my podcast, so I feel sort of like I'm ALWAYS talking about this album. Fortunately, it's a fantastic album that I don't mind talking about.

In the months leading up to my purchase of this album, "Seven Nation Army" was all over the radio and MTVU (which was the station that one of the dining halls always had on. I kind of think I count this as "the radio" in my mind sometimes). So one day I went into Circuit City and, on the recommendation of a number of friends, listened to the samples of a couple of songs from the album. (Background: CC (along with many other stores) had these devices in their CD sections where you could scan the CD and read info about the band and the album and listen to samples of the tracks on the album.)

The reason I purchased the album was because of the sample I heard of the song "Black Math". They picked the part of the song where the guitars go from sluggish and trippy back into the fast and driving speed that the song is at most of the time. I love tempo changes in songs and so that, plus knowing how amazing "Seven Nation Army" is, led to me purchasing the album.

It's been more than a decade since I bought the album and it has transformed into almost a Classic Rock album for me. There are songs that hearken back to the 60's and 70's ("There's No Home For You Here""It's True That We Love One Another"), and then there are those weird, out of time White Stripes songs ("Ball and Biscuit" "The Hardest Button to Button" "Little Acorns"). And it's the combination of these two sounds that made them the amazing band they were. It's a hell of an album. It's all over the place and once you learn the twists and turns.

The White Stripes - Black Math
The White Stripes - The Hardest Button to Button

You can buy Elephant at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

One Year, 100 Albums: #19 P.O.S "Never Better"

P.O.S Never Better, 2009

This album was the gateway into Doomtree and Dessa and all of that, so it is very important to me. The really funny thing is that I stumbled on it basically by accident. The year was 2009 and I was taking my sister to her first Warped Tour. I had made a list of all of the performers scheduled for our date and was going through and listening to the top song listed for them on Last.fm. Just to get an idea of what we might want to check out.

So the top song for P.O.S was "Drumroll (We're All Thirsty)" so I checked out the video. And was blown away. I was completely enthralled and confused and excited. What was this? It was like rap made by punk rockers.

Well, that turns out to have been a biographically accurate statement. Stef was in a punk band before he was a rapper. That background shows on all of his album, but I think it's most evident on this one. There are punk rock samples, punk rock ideas, and punk rock guest vocalists.

It's still way up there on the list of "Hip-hop albums that don't sound like anything else out there" along with Madvillainy and Enter the 36 Chambers.

I decided not to feature my all-time favorite song from the album "Low Light Low Life" and I think the reason is that I feel like it would be giving away gold. It's TOO good a song! You can check it out on YouTube or Spotify or whatever, but I really want everyone I know to own a copy of this album.

So let's get on that, shall we?

OH! I also didn't feature the song that samples from the movie Knocked Up. It's a pretty amazing sample. 

P.O.S - Savion Glover
P.O.S - Terrorish

You can buy Never Better at Amazon, Amazon MP3, iTunes, the Doomtree webstore, and the Doomtree Bandcamp page