My 100 Favorite albums of all time. Done.

#1) The Replacements - Let It Be (released in 1984, I got this on cassette at City Lights my freshman year of college. I already owned all of The Mats/Westerberg's major label albums except Don't Tell A Soul)

Side one brings up the good memories. "I Will Dare" a giddy, nervous first date, "My Favorite Thing" bursting with adoration and gleeful disbelief on that perfect morning after. The boys are back in town on "We're Coming Out" and we're all cracking up and having ice cream cuz "Tommy Got His Tonsils Out." Good times and you're really appreciating them because you've found someone to fall asleep with and you love each other so, "Androgynous." For the encore, the band flexes their pop-metal muscles with a cover of "Black Diamond," revelling in the pleasures of cheeseburgers, cafeteria food, psychotic guitar solos, good jokes, rock radio, garage bands playing ironic covers unironically well, bad movies, being midwestern schleps without a care in the world.

"Unsatisfied"'s either a statement of nonconformist pride or an anxious cry of desperation or the most gorgeous song the Replacements ever recorded or a song I'm dying to hear performed on American Idol. The triumphant riffage on "Seen Your Video" and "Gary's Got A Boner" are undercut by Paul Westerberg's cranky lyrics. Turns out he can't just turn the TV off when Huey Lewis comes on and the cheap, physical side of the whole dating thing is starting to get him down. "Sixteen Blue" is allegedly an "Everybody Hurts"-style paean to the hip adolescent but Paul sounds like he's realizing that he STILL doesn't understand a goddamn thing, that he's STILL a deluded romantic. Despondent, alone (band must be off getting drunk somewhere cuz they ain't here), confused, needing to make a connection, he calls her up and gets the "Answering Machine."

Story of my life.

Three things that cracked me up on ILX today:

"Stand Up and Holla!" says the RNC

Bad Taste In Music? Hire "Coleman"

This is the thread where think up names for saxophone albums (this one's my fault)

#2) The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat (released in 1968, I got this on cassette from Streetside Records in Bloomington, IN the summer after 8th grade. Me and my only friend at the time, Pat Stevens, were both kind of disappointed by it. Except for "Sister Ray")

The only way you can beat the best Chuck Berry is through insanity and bombast. It has to feel like an accident, and it's pretty clear nobody knew what the fuck they were doing when White Light/White Heat. The topics on this album are, in order, matricidal speed freaks, a hapless romantic getting his mind split open while sitting in a cardboard box, lobotomized transvestites, a woman's long-awaited orgasm, another mind getting split open and a crime/sex story that makes up in enthusiasm ("Whip it on me, Jim! Whip it on me, Jim!") what it lacks in clarity. The band sounds giggly as fuck, guitars bouncing off the walls, Lou Reed screaming "suckin' on my ding-dong! too busy suckin' on my ding-dong!" and Maureen Tucker just pounding away, oblivious to the carnage around her. It's like Animal House if they HAD been handing out amphetamines during finals week. Everybody talks about how important the Velvet Underground is, but nobody talks about how fun these freaks were. It's not like they were just artists. Don't make me drive during "Sister Ray" unless you want to see me pop a wheelie.

New addition to the songs-on-Billboard-charts-I'll-listen-to-all-the-way-through!

#1 - Modern Rock Charts) Lostprophets, "Last Train Home": I just got the album from the radio station and discovered that Eric Valentine (Smashmouth, Good Charlotte, QOTSA) produced it and it's on the radio this very second. While the song is kind of lame, I like to imagine that 30 years from now a presidential candidate will use it as his theme song. I was about to write his/her but no woman would pick this.

Singles in Billboard charts other than the Top 50 that I listen to all the way through when they come on the radio.

#2 - Modern Rock Charts) "Cold Hard Bitch" - Jet: If you say a naughty word you should be spanked. To the beat. They're one single away from making my three-hits-I-like-and-I-buy-you rule.

#5 - Modern Rock Charts) "Lying From You" - Linkin Park: These guys are one song OVER the three-hits-rule. Everybody do the Chester! Point accusingly, slowly step forward and waaaaaaah. Do the Chester!

#10 - Modern Rock Charts) "Heel Over Head" - Puddle Of Mudd: SECOND goofy Local H-sounding single in a row where the Mudd dude wonders why you won't talk to him anymore! Take a hint, dork.

#12 - Modern Rock Charts) "Maps" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs: you don't love them like I love them.

#13 - Modern Rock Charts) "Ride" - Vines: hey D-Plan, I know you're peeved that they stole your "Time Bomb" video concept but their video is funnier. Them's the breaks.

#19 - Modern Rock Charts) "Float On" - Modest Mouse: And you may find yourself breaking onto the modern rock charts...and you may find yourself with a top 20 album chart debut...and you may find yourself with an unusually danceable and fulfilling single...and you may ask yourself, WELL? HOW DID I GET HERE?

#9 - Adult Top 40) "Bright Lights" - Matchbox 20: one of these days I'm going to explain why Matchbox 20 have been growing on me a lot. For now, I'll just let you wonder what the fuck is wrong with me.

#15 - Adult Top 40) "Extraordinary" - Liz Phair: you've succeeded, Liz. You've made me love you. *mechanized drum roll*

#6 - Top Digital Tracks) "Ocean Avenue" - Yellowcard: I was sooo worried that Simple Plan had written a song I can tolerate that these guys get on my list simply out of gratitude.

#3) Chuck Berry - Chuck Berry's Golden Decade (released in 1967, my sister gave me an Italian import copy on vinyl last Christmas. When she gets me something I didn't ask for, odds are I'll like it more than what I had wanted)

So everybody says he invented rock and roll, and I'm willing to accept it. Especially since these songs are completely devoid of unnecessary bullshit (initial models tend to be among the most effective). Each song immaculately captures the concept he's trying to express in an artfully concise manner that's spirited without getting reckless (usually its one or the other these days). 24 blueprints for the perfect song. I should really find The Great Twenty-Eight since there's some skips on my copy of this out-of-print release, but that album doesn't have "Anthony Boy" on it.

Singles in the Billboard Top 50 this week that I listen to all the way through when they come on the radio:

#1)"Yeah!" - Usher, Lil Jon & Ludacris: frankly, I'm surprised more people haven't started yelling "WATCH OUT!"

#2)"I Don't Wanna Know" - Mario Winans, Enya & P. Diddy: Can somebody recommend me more great songs about guys begging their lovers to keep their infidelities a secret?

#3)"Burn" - Usher: Reminds me of my former boo-ooo.

#4)"Tipsy" - J-Kwon: I love rap songs that have counting in them.

#6)"This Love" - Maroon5: The video contains the most horrifying image that MTV has ever given me (it involves rose petals), but this song has really grown on me. It's like the most tolerable elements of Lenny Kravitz & Matchbox 20 put together.

#8)"My Band" - D-12 feat. Eminem: D-12 are much better at making sick jokes than bitching about how nobody cares about them, especially when the only reason I like this song is Eminem's hysterical hook-spewing. I'm hopeful that his next album will feature more of his growing vocal musicality rather than the pretty-good-for-pretty-boring "Eye Of The Tiger" maudlin shit like "Lose Yourself" and "Sing For The Moment."

#11)"Freek-A-Leek" - Petey Pablo: The chorus hook annoyed me at first but I really enjoy the giving nature of Pablo's raps. Here, there and everywhere.

#14)"The Reason" - Hoobastank: When I compared them to Journey in Blender they called me mad! Well who's laughing now???

#15)"My Immortal" - Evanescence: Cuz some wounds won't seem to heal, plus I still get a kick out of Sarah McLachlanized nu-metal.

#17)"Toxic" - Britney Spears: Now I understand why God gave us Britney Spears.

#29)"Numb" - Linkin Park: I said it before, I'll say it again. Alice Cooper + Depeche Mode + Vanilla Ice = GENIUS!

#33)"Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" - Jet: I seriously didn't realize till a week ago that this was the "Lust For Life" beat. People who bitch about this song clearly don't realize how rarely a dance tune pops onto rawk stations.

#34)"Hey Ya" - Outkast: Yes, I'm still not sick of this song.

#39)"Sorry 2004" - Ruben Studdard: woo!

#40)"Salt Shaker" - Ying Yang Twins feat. Lil Jon & Tha Eastside Boyz: Feeling hanh! hanh! hanh!

#46)"Roses" - Outkast: And I haven't even seen the video yet.

#49)"I Miss You" - Blink 182: If it wasn't for the goofy lyrics and absurd cockney vocals I'd probably break down every time I heard this song. So I guess I shouldn't be complaining.

#4) Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet (released in 1968, I got a used CD of it from City Lights sometime in early 2003)

"[Jagger's] writing love songs that turn out to be hate songs and hate songs that turn out to be love songs, revolutionary songs that end up being songs about being unable to find something to commit yourself to, or being unable to find yourself, and I just realized, yes, there's a mind here." - Frank Kogan in an interview with Popped.

The guitars on this album sound like they could slice your fingers off.

#5) Led Zeppelin - ZOSO UNTITLED LED ZEPPELIN IV (released in 1971, I had all but "Four Sticks" taped off of a Led Zep box my friend Ben - who I really need to e-mail one of these days - got from the library during our junior year in college. I finally bought a used CD copy from City Lights in 2003)

Thanks to alt-culture propaganda, I hated these guys before hearing a single note. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that some friends (well, they were friends when they weren't wishing I'd evaporate) forced me to watch The Song Remains The Same and listen to "Stairway To Heaven" in their car that I actually had an opinion about them founded on an actual listening experience: they were OK. I can't remember if Stairway To Hell or Ben's box set came first but somewhere down the line I learned to listen to what's good about these guys rather than what's supposed to offend me. While I still have little need for most of their pre-IV/post-Houses material, those two albums are masterpieces of rock goddery (Houses Of The Holy was disqualified from my list because I still only have the songs off the box set taped - I don't have "The Crunge," which is a fuck of a lot better than "No Quarter," which I find almost unlistenable). This isn't the kind of music that inspires you to start your own DIY band because they're not giving you any faults to get away with. Power and groove are there, vocal and guitar gymnastics, tender balladry, hard-dick swagger, buckets of shameless self-lionization: goldens gods don't give "they're losers like me" Pavement fans anything to connect to.

Now that I can appreciate beauty at face value and bands that don't share my own personal awkwardness (either that or I lost some of the awkwardness - it's all very chicken and egg), this stuff is astounding. "Going To California" taps a longing so deep in me that I forgive the fact that Plant could be talking about Jewel ("la, la, la, la...."), "When The Levee Breaks" is highlighted not only by some of the most disturbing pain/pleasure shrieks ever recorded but a thunderous groove only topped by ANOTHER Led Zep track ("The Ocean") and maybe some AC/DC numbers, though none of those are nearly as vicious. "Misty Moutain Hop" is the funniest song about hippies I've ever heard (even if the jokes are mainly in beat). Chuck Eddy was right with what he said about "Rock And Roll" (don't have those words with me) and I bring the house down when singing that at karaoke (my friend Carey supposedly does it with "Black Dog"). My karaoke version of "Stairway To Heaven" was considered "Dylan-esque" by one bar patron and while I still find the opening flutes a bit poofy I don't get MAD about that anymore. This might not work for everybody but "Stairway To Heaven" always sounds best if I imagine some may queen found a "bustle" in her "hedgerow" while "spring-cleaning" to it.

#6) Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps (released in 1979, I got this on cassette sometime in middle school)

Here's what I wrote about it a little over a year ago.



#7) Aerosmith - Rocks (released in 1976, it was another of the excellent used vinyl purchases I made in Boston over Thanksgiving 2002)

Here's what I wrote about it exactly one year ago - maybe THAT'S why blogger wouldn't let me publish yesterday!

Counting down my 100 favorite albums of all time...

#8) Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks (released in 1975, my sister burnt me a copy a year or two ago by request)

...I would sit up all night with my misery and this album, playing it over and over, wallowing in Dylan's wretched reflection of my own confusion: "Women - who can figger 'em?" I imagine it was also a big hit with the recently divorced.

At length I concluded that any record whose principal utility lay in such an emotional twilight zone was at worst an instrument of self-abuse, at best as innocuous as a crying towel, and certainly was not going to make me a better person or teach me anything about women, myself, or anything else but how painfully confused Bob Dylan seemed to be. - Lester Bangs, 1976

There's only one person who I'd listen to this album with and I don't think its going to happen anytime soon.

#9) The Clash - The Clash (US Version) (released in 1979, I got this on used cassette at Arboria sometime in late high school)

Total poseurs (would real punks write metaphors as cute like "Jail Guitar Doors" and incorporate so much boogie?), but so are Good Charlotte so it wouldn't be fair to hold that against them. Mick Jones sounds like a bigger wuss than either Madden brother on his two spotlight songs, and when CBS decided to share his hokey "REEE-PREHHH-SHUUN" chant with the world they got embarassed enough to create "Complete Control," a song so spirited and anthemic - how come more bands didn't put Lee Perry in charge of their guitar overdubs?- that I'm surprised Fugazi felt the need to write original material (glad they did though)."White Man In Hammersmith Palais" is probably the catchiest way to imply that you're really naive and earnest and while I'll always get a dose of electric shockers from "Clash City Rockers," tracks like that and "London's Burning" don't inspire violent protest as much as it inspires me to bop around and maybe start Rancid. That said this stuff puts a little more phlegm in whatever little bit of defiant spit I can muster up in my safe suburban home with its sharp static-infested guitar hooks, snapping beats and urgent, bad-mood-good-boy personal protest. One time I got lost in NY and listened to this album at least six times straight. Good times.

#10) Van Morrison - Moondance (released in 1970, my supervisor at a library I used to work at loaned me several of Morrison's albums. I grabbed a cheap copy on vinyl at City Lights not long after. The rest I either didn't need to own or could settle for taping)

I've never cottoned to Astral Weeks, which always feels too indulgent and murky for me to find it as transcendent as so many do (though I'll undoubtedtly give it another try some year). Instead, this is the album that makes Morrison seem truly mystical to me, thanks to adding, as Robert Christgau put it, "punchy brass (including pennywhistles and foghorn) and a solid backbeat (including congas) to his folk-jazz swing, and a popwise formal control to his Gaelic poetry." The best musical artists are able to naturally merge their influences under the focus of their personal expression, and this album is a shining example of such focus. The lyrics cover just about everything that brings me pleasure in life, inspiring so much goodwill that I actually enjoy reading the flowery "fable" by his wife in the liner notes. Moondance is so pleasant and unindulgent that I'm probably going to make a tape of it soon so that I can play it in on my walkman this summer. It begs to be heard in the open air.

#11) Madonna - You Can Dance (released in 1987, I bought a used vinyl copy in Boston over Thanksgiving weekend in 2002. I got soooo many kickass albums up there. Soooo many.)

Yeah, you can dance to this, but the remixes here are too long and too tinny for me to start busting moves in my apartment (frankly, I'd probably find these same seven songs more danceable in their original versions). Instead I appreciate this album more for its meditative grooves, zoning out as the musical slowly alters and fluctuates. Of all the disco divas (which is what she is on this album), I find Madonna's lyrics to be the most rewarding, filled with advice, encouragement and confidence (there's no Donna Summer-style pining here). When she isn't asking you to do your thing, get into the groove, dance (for inspiration) and get into the spotlight, she's making you HERS and making the party last all night. You can criticize her drive, but she won't feel paralyzed, nuh uh. This compilation doesn't capture everything that Madonna is capable of, merely encapsulating one facet of her personality perfectly. Side one builds up your spirits and side two tells you get the fuck out the house and find that party. The CD has three remixes of tracks already on the LP's seven, and I have a hard time believing those "dub mixes" are crucial.

#12) Prince - Purple Rain (released in 1984, I bought a used vinyl copy for 50 cents at the UUAW Book Sale my senior year of high school)

The finest blockbuster album in pop history. The finest pop-metal album in history, which makes sense because its the soundtrack to a film about a young genius who learns that he's not worth a damn until he writes a power ballad (and "Purple Rain" may well be the finest in all of creation). He screams a lot, plays a lot great guitar solos, foretells the existence of web porn, instigates the PMRC, writes the best and most blatant messianic pop song of all time, writes the best and most blatant fame song of all time, and made doves cry while animals struck curious poses. What cracks me up is that this wasn't even the best album to come from Minnesota that year.

Counting down my 100 favorite albums of all time...

#13) The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers (released in 1976, I totally can't remember where or when I got this CD, but it was either late 8th or early 9th grade)

If you're able to express a unique perspective in clear language over treblicious guitars and energetic grooves, I'm probably going to like you. If you're obsessed with girls and nerdy, I'm probably going to enjoy your music even more. If your song about your relative lack of self-destructiveness is backed by a hysterically caffeinated distorted pulse, that song's probably going to be my favorite. If you've got a slow ballad about telling a girl you don't do drugs, it was probably my favorite in high school. If you somehow end up dignified and old 30 years after your initial recordings rather than tired, comeback-hungry and old, you're probably Jonathan Richman. And while I'm impressed by your consistency over the years, I have to admit that your initial burst of unabashed dork nervous romanticism tops everything else you've done because you had one of the best bands in the world backing you up. You also had a better drone strum than Lou Reed.

#14) Neil Young - Decade (released in 1977, I listened to the Bloomington, IN library's copy on CD throughout middle school and finally bought it on cassette at the Mike's on North Atherton after moving to State College)

It's impressive how satisfying and cohesive this album is, seeing as how Neil Young has probably made more worthwhile albums than any other artist I can think of (I've intentionally avoided buying some of his most hailed albums so that I can have some classic Neil to hear for the first time when I'm older. Unless I find it cheap, I might not buy Zuma until after the guy dies). Not only does Decade have some of the strongest "compilation-only" tracks I've ever heard ("Down To The Wire" and "Campaigner" are among my favorite Young songs ever), it also keeps you from ever having to buy another album with Stephen Stills on it by grabbing all of Young's crucial Buffalo Springfield and CSN&Y numbers (though I still prefer the MTV Unplugged versions of "Helpless" and "Long May You Run"). Some of my fondest musical memories involve sitting in the library's listening room in middle school, listening to "Like A Hurricane" and "Cowgirl In The Sand" for the first time (off of their vinyl copies of American Stars'n'Bars and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere respectively - though they're both on Decade too), his voice so lonesome, vulnerable and honest, his solos fraught with caustic emotion that they struck me as both frightening and liberating. It's possible I found these songs so beautiful that I've suconsciously set up my life so that they'd ring truer with every passing year. And they do. Hell, today I got knocked out by goddamn "Heart Of Gold."

Me on the Vines in the Voice. Feel it!

#15) Minor Threat - The Complete Minor Threat (released in 1988, I got a used CD of this near the very end of college - or right after)

I've met a lot of people who were originally into hardcore and metal who gradually moved towards calmer indie tastes, but I did the exact opposite. What little Minor Threat I heard in high school struck me as generic and tuneless. Where Fugazi made immediate sense to me, this stuff took a lot longer for me to appreciate. Today, while Ian MacKaye's entire career is exemplary (I'm dying to hear his new band, the Evens), this CD feels like his finest achievement: a coherent, genuine testimonial that provides cathartic, musical force without indulging in the theatrics of domination, expressing political and personal disgust while admitting a vulnerability that explains and justifies the fervor of his indignation. You can hear the band's growing ambition and skill as the album progresses - the bells and swells of "Salad Days" have the flamboyancy of Queen compared to "Filler" - as well as the gradual subject shift from outside enemies to the dissolution of the very world he was defending. To paraphrase Chuck Eddy in Stairway To Hell, musically these guys never took the shortest distance between two points.

Some find Minor Threat overly pious, but I think a lot of that stems from people's defensiveness about their own activities. Though I drink, I appreciate songs like "Bottled Violence" and "In My Eyes," which demand nothing more than personal accountability and the right to self-expression. The last verse of "Think Again" is a must-hear for any paid or unpaid critic, and while I drink, smoke pot (if somebody else is buying) and might well indulge in casual sex if it was ever offered to me (a moral dilemma I've yet to have to face), I do NOT play golf... which is why I feel OUT! OF! STEP! WITH THE WUURRROLLLD! Anybody who hears "Cashing In" should know better than to call the band humorless and "Salad Days" may be one of the most heartbreaking dismissals of nostalgia in existence. Their influence is astounding (they invented the phrase "straight edge"), and even if they bit off more than they could chew, at least they fucking tried. What the fuck have YOU done?

#16) The Bats - Daddy's Highway (released in 1987, I got this at the Virgin Megastore in Manhattan sometime near the end of high school. I definitely considered it a find)

Probably my favorite album that I'd define as "pastoral," Daddy's Highway mixes jangly folk with a lithe, bouncy beat in a fashion that I haven't been able to find on any other album (let alone on the later Bats material I've heard). REM's Murmur is as close as I've come across, but Michael Stipe's vocals are harsh and murky compared to Robert Scott and Kaye Woodward's strong harmonies. I'd probably find it all a bit samey if I wasn't so in love with the pretty throb of this music. This album is the barometer against which I hold all similar "college rock." By comparison the Go-Betweens feel too poncey, the Dream Syndicate too pretentious and countless others too ineffectual or leaden (while the rattle of the Bats' guitars sometimes reminds me of songs like New Order's "Temptation," the whole techno element puts the Manchester band in a whole other field). Daddy's Highway has a natural grace and joy that other bands should be aspiring to (if their goal is to get played on my stereo at least once every two months for the rest of my life).