A few years ago, one of my Christmas "stocking stuffers" was a coffee table book on the history of the NFL. Cleverly titled "The Football Book" and published by Sports Illustrated in 2006, the book includes article excerpts from several of the great football writers who graced the pages of SI, including Paul Zimmerman, Peter King, Dan Jenkins and Michael Silver, as well as the great feature writers George Plimpton, Gary Smith, Frank Deford, and S.L. Price. The book also includes Dr. Z's (how Zimmerman was known to his biggest fans) indispensable All-Decade Team choices, which are guaranteed to be the perfect argument starter.
But as good as the writing is, the highlight of the book is the photography, which shouldn't come as a shock given that the "Illustrated" part of SI was always key to its enormous success. The photograph at left was taken by Neil Leifer, who, over the course of a career that spanned several decades, earned the right to be called a legend. It's a wonderful photo that evokes both the effort and grace that is involved in the game of football, but is also evocative of the atmosphere at Lambeau Field, longtime home of the Green Bay Packers.
What made this photo of particular interest to me is that it comes from the first NFL game that I have a memory of watching. The game was played on Saturday, December 7 in 1968 (the year the Colts went 13-1, and were then upset by the Joe Namath-led New York Jets in the Super Bowl). My dad drove over to a friend's house to watch it, and for some reason brought me with him. I'm not exactly sure why I remember all this, but that's the strange way my mind works sometimes.
With the help of Spotify, there's no question that I listened to more new music this year than ever before. On the one hand, that's a great thing. On the other, it did make me wonder if there was such a thing as "too much music." It's my own fault, but I found myself too often reaching for the shiny new object (i.e. that week's new releases), and not spending enough time doing a deep dive into those albums which I enjoyed the most.
By the end of the year, I think I'd figured it out. But there are still going to be a lot of 2020 albums that end up on my "subjects for further research" list.
This list is the list from which my year-end Top Ten will come. That will be, and this is a promise that will be kept, sometime during the holiday break - and definitely sometime before year's end.
My picks for the best of 2020, with further refinement to come:
"Either/Or" is enjoyable enough as music, but it's impossible to separate the album from the circumstances of the artist who created it.
For anyone unfamiliar with Elliott Smith, he died in 2003 from two stab wounds to the chest, and it doesn't appear to have ever been fully determined whether it was suicide or homicide. His life had not been an easy one.
A lot of the album is reminiscent of some of Sufjan Stevens' work, but after a couple of listens I'm not sure it's anywhere as musically interesting. The standout track is "Cupids Trick," which takes the same general approach but adds a dash of mystery to the proceedings (not to mention some additional instrumentation).
When Greil Marcus reviewed The Belle Album for Rolling Stone in late 1977, he wrote "...we may someday look back on The Belle Album as Al Green's best..." After more than half a decade of hit singles (and outstanding albums) that one could rightly call "legendary" without engaging in hyperbole, that was a heady claim to make. There were no hit singles from this one, and I honestly don't recall ever having heard any of the album's songs over the course of the 40+ years since its release.
The shocks I felt when listening to the album for the first time were all happy ones. At first, it felt a little disorienting to hear synthesizer and clavinet on an Al Green record - this was the first album he recorded without longtime producer Willie Mitchell at the helm, and the first without the fantastic crew of Memphis musicians (Al Jackson Jr., Wayne Jackson, several others) who came to represent the "Al Green sound." And then, lo and behold, there's Al Green himself playing a quite mean acoustic guitar!
And when the album's fourth song, "Georgia Boy," rolled around I realized that it was simply foolish to have waited so long to dive into this one. This certainly fits my definition of a great album. Whether it's his best, as Marcus speculated might be the case in 1977, is a question worth contemplating.
The point of this project is to write, at least a little bit, about a notable album from the past that I've never listened to all the way through, until setting up a Spotify account.
Kicking off the series is Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue," released in the late summer of 1977. It was the summer of Star Wars. I was working six days a week at McDonald's, getting ready to begin my senior year of high school. My musical tastes were beginning to expand a bit, mostly with the help of the Rolling Stone Records review section. 1977 was the year I bought my first albums by Talking Heads, Blondie, Ramones and Elvis Costello, but my purchases that year also included Hotel California, Rumours, Aja, and admittedly more than a few albums that are probably best categorized as "forgettable."
I almost bought this one. It received an excellent review in RS by Billy Altman, who called it "a wonderful and truly touching album." Because I remember this sort of thing, I do remember picking it up in the record store, and perusing the packaging, and mulling it over. For whatever reason, I never ended up walking out of the store with it.
Listening to it now is a bittersweet experience, because we know how his story ended - Brian would end up being the tortured Wilson brother with a happy ending, not Dennis. But this is excellent work; you can really hear the promise behind Wilson's songs. You can hear the influence of The Beach Boys, but this is not a Beach Boys record. His gravelly voice has a lot of depth, and on songs like "Pacific Ocean Blues," "River Song," and "Rainbows," you can hear both artistic and commercial potential. You can definitely hear why the album has gained supporters in the decades since its original release.
Here we are in July, which seems impossible. There are times when I can't believe we're coming up on four months since the shutdown began; other times it feels as if the time has flown by. My hair is the longest it's been in my entire life. We celebrated my 60th birthday in April, but needless to say the big party we were planning never quite got off the ground. If it's possible to have a daily out-of-body experience, that's what the first six months of 2020 felt like.
That feeling could be applied to the year in music as well. The year that is now half over has seen the biggest change in my music listening habits since the mid-1980s, when the vinyl record bins in music stores began to make way for the CD racks. I'd already started buying a lot fewer CDs in the months leading up to 2020, for the simple reason that most of the record stores (yeah, I still call them that) in Sacramento have closed up shop. With the exception of a handful of CDs I bought in the Fall, most of my purchases were MP3 purchases, which went straight into the hard drive and the iPod.
In February, at the urging of my sons, I finally made the leap to the streaming world, and signed up for a premium Spotify account. The floodgates opened, and haven't closed since. Accustomed to physical media that can be held onto, it's been strange. On the one hand, I haven't bought a single CD since the year began. On the other hand, I've listened to more music in the past six months than, quite possibly, any other time in my entire life. There are times when the sheer volume of availability is overwhelming - what should be listened to today? An old Joni Mitchell or Beach Boys album that I've never heard all the way through, or the new releases by Run the Jewels or Bob Dylan? Or maybe the incredible quarantine playlist from Questlove, which then just sends me down another deep rabbit hole? But if you're going to have a problem, then I suppose this is a good one to have.
By my count, I've listened, at least once, to 45 newly released albums all the way through. Quite a few of those are records that demand greater attention, and may very well end up in a year-end Top Ten. But for now, I've selected twelve albums that stand above the rest. When, God willing, we look back on this time from a space of normalcy, these are the ones that I'll remember for speaking to the moment.
In alphabetical order:
Honeymoon, Beach Bunny. Sounding like the GoGos filtered through "Rocket to Russia," this has been my go-to album when a respite from the real world was most needed. The hook-to-minute ratio is off the charts.
how i'm feeling now, Charli XCX. Recorded entirely in quarantine, revealing once again that with this artist, there is a lot to be found under the surface.
The Unraveling, Drive-By Truckers. When I wrote about this album in February, I called it their bravest yet. Little did I know how prescient it would be.
Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan. His first album of original tunes since 2012, and worth the wait. He gave us a taste in the early spring with the almost 17-minute "Murder Most Foul," a musical chameleon - it can be anything you want it to be (sort of like Dylan himself). The rest of the album doesn't quite stand up to that lofty standard, and it will take me a while to fully figure it out, but for now I'm comfortable saying that it's somewhere between "very good" and "epic."
Walking Proof, Lilly Hiatt. Trinity Lane, her last, was outstanding - but Walking Proof is a quantum leap above anything she's ever done. The entire record is instilled with a sense of confidence on every song - it's probably my #1 album of the year, so far.
Reunions, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. He and his band just keep getting better and better. And without question, the absolute funniest musical artist to be found on Twitter.
World on the Ground, Sarah Jarosz. It's hard for me to describe what it is that I find so appealing about this record - there's something about the music that just feels filled with mystery.
Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa. It may be going too far to call this one of the best dance records since Madonna's debut, but then again, it may not be.
Bad Luck, Sylvia Rose Novak. Country punk? Outlaw country? Americana rock? Call it what you will, but it's a great album.
Folk 'n Roll Vol. 1, J.S. Ondara. Armed with a great backstory, Ondara has written the diary of the first two months of the quarantine, right up until May 25. Here's hoping that Vol. 2 deals with the aftermath of that dark day.
RTJ4, Run the Jewels. Quoting Robert Christgau here, who gave the album an A+: "Who knows whether this would feel so right absent a historical moment when trying to distinguish rage slavery from righteous anger is a waste of emotional wisdom? With trap on its opiated treadmill, the gangsta sonics that power El-P and Killer Mike's inchoate aggressiveness will feel tonic to anyone with both an appetite for music and a political pulse."
Color Theory, Soccer Mommy. An emotional maelstrom, from the very first chords.
And what the heck, here's a few Honorable Mentions that could find their way closer to the top before this dumpster fire of a year is over: Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers; Danzig Sings Elvis; Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple; Saint Cloud, Waxahatchee; Women in Music Part III, HAIM; Chromatica, Lady Gaga; Invisible People, Chicano Batman; Never Will, Ashley McBride; Homegrown, Neil Young; Lamentations, American Aquarium; Gigaton, Pearl Jam; Open Book, Kalie Shorr; Saturn Return, The Secret Sisters; We Still Go to Rodeos; Whitney Rose; Your Life is a Record; Brandy Clark; Alphabetland, X.
Happy Summer, everyone. Here's hoping the great sounds continue.
There have been a lot of great and/or memorable musical performances on late night television over the years - Elvis Costello beginning one song and then storming into "Radio, Radio" in December 1977, Patti Smith delivering a shattering performance of "Gloria" in April 1976. More recently, there were incredible performances from Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar on SNL, and Billie Eilish just last year.
But however you rank the greatest late night TV performances, this one certainly has to be near the top of the list:
I think this is what they mean when they talk about leaving it all on the stage. What makes the performance particularly notable is Letterman's reaction to it. He was nearing the home stretch of his legendary late night career by this point, and on most nights was so grumpy and/or disinterested that it was difficult to watch. But his visible joy following Samuel T. Herring's performance was in itself a joy to watch.
And well earned that joy was. This is a great song, plain and simple, and one of those songs that sounds as exciting and fresh on listen #100 (or 200, 500...) as it did on first listen.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #2 - "Seasons (Waiting on You)," Future Islands.
I've commented on this phenomenon elsewhere, but every now and then, you hear a song for the first time and it just takes your breath away. The chills run up your spine, and you just want to keep listening to the song over and over. And when it's the first song on an album, sometimes it takes a while just to get to the second song.
"Slow Burn" is such a song. When I heard it for the first time, I thought that Kacey Musgraves had captured the Holy Grail, creating a song that was not really country, not really pop, but transcended every category one could conceivably assign to it and reach a level that this artist - great as she has been over the course of three albums - had yet to achieve.
She will be around for a generation. Let's just hope there is a music industry waiting for her when we emerge on the other side.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #3 - "Slow Burn," Kacey Musgraves.
Usually the first thing that grabs me with a song is the music, but on this one it was these lyrics, near the end of the song:
Outside the tents On the festival grounds As the air began to cool And the sun went down My soul swooned as I faintly heard the sound Of you spinning "Israelites" into "19th Nervous Breakdown"
A little explanation be in order. First of all, I've loved both "Israelites" and "19th Nervous Breakdown" since I was about 9 years old. Second, I love to experiment with transitions between songs - so hearing that snippet was like giving candy to a baby.
There is also something about the easy lilt of this song that is irresistible. For me, at least.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #4 - "Ya Hey," Vampire Weekend.
Well, it's been 41 days since my last post. Has anything happened during that time?
This isn't the place to write my thoughts about "the new normal," but that will be coming eventually. For now, to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen from his legendary 1978 show at the Roxy, "Y'all are just gonna have to settle for some rock 'n roll."
It's pretty funny to think that the original plan was to finish this Top 50 list before the New Year began. But better late than never, a wise sage once said, so let's embark on the final stretch.
Clocking in at #5 is the estimable Jason Isbell, one-time Drive-By Trucker and current leader of a great band of his own, the 400 Unit. The band's name alone is evidence of Isbell's humor, "400 Unit" being the nickname for the psychiatric ward of Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital in Florence, Alabama. There may have been a time when Isbell wondered whether he might end up there himself, after having been fired by the Truckers for being a mean and angry drunk and by all accounts (including his own), an insufferable jerk. But the best stories are ones of redemption, and Isbell recovered to the point where he was one of the best artists of the last decade.
I loved this song from the very first time I heard it. And it has survived the test of being overplayed, and still sounds fresh (and at times, very funny, although it's certainly no comedy routine). It's a perfect example of Isbell's ability to spin a yarn, and this is a great one.
"Songs She Sang in the Shower," Jason Isbell. Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #5.
I've been struggling to come up with something profound to say about this song, which begins and ends with the line quoted above. After a few failed attempts at profundity, the most important thought to leave you with is that it's the best song on an album that is a masterpiece. It's really best to just listen, drink it all in, and think about what he is saying, and how he is saying it.
The one semi-cogent thought to leave you with is that, during the course of the song's 3:34 running time, Lamar achieves a level of intensity that represents the very best of what music can offer.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #6 - FEEL., Kendrick Lamar.
The Song A Short Story, starring Jeff, Ron and Richard (and featuring Jenny Lewis)
I. A Hot July Night, 1973
"If you don't turn that radio off, we're never going to get this show rolling."
It's July 1973. To be specific, it's the early morning hours of July 6, 1973. A Friday morning, although as far as we're concerned it's still Thursday night, the night after the 4th of July, and it's really, really hot. Too hot to sleep in my book, although Morte - Richard was his first name, but back then we all called each other by our last names - is snoring quietly behind us.
Nelson (Ron was his first name) is hot under the collar because he wants us to get to the task at hand, which is throwing toilet paper all over the big tree in the front yard of the house where Kirsten lives. Kirsten is the girl that Nelson has a crush on, and what better way to demonstrate that by decorating her front tree with toilet paper? All I can say is that it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.
The three of us are laying on top of sleeping bags in this little section of green space between Ron's house and mine, and I've got my little Panasonic transistor radio pushed up against my right ear, trying to find the perfect volume - loud enough for me to hear, but not loud enough to wake up my mom and dad. Their bedroom window isn't far from where we're "sleeping," and take my word for it, it would not be good if my dad had to come outside and tell us to knock it off and go to sleep. It would be even worse if Ron's dad came out. He wasn't anywhere near as nice as my dad.
"Why don't you start trying to wake Morte up, instead of bugging me? There's only three songs left."
I was listening to "The After Midnight Countdown," as they called it, on KROY - 1240 AM on your radio dial. Anyone who lived in or around Sacramento in the Sixties and Seventies should remember KROY, will probably remember a few of their DJs. Those guys (and yes, it was all guys in those days) didn't just play records - they were personalities...heck, they were legends, and everyone had their favorite. Mine was Bob Sherwood, but coming in a close second was Chuck Roy. Chuck was handling the countdown on this hot night, which was a little unusual; he was usually the 3-7 p.m. guy. Always closed his show with "Treat," by Santana, talking over the first part of the song with a monologue that was sometimes hysterically funny, and sometimes somewhat philosophical. I guess he was having to fill in for someone on vacation. But Chuck was not the kind of guy who was going to mope around about having to work the midnight shift on the hottest night of the year - nope, he was having a great time, cracking horrible jokes, introducing each new track with a level of enthusiasm that only he could muster. I wish I could remember some of his jokes, but I'm confident enough in my distant memories to know that they were terrible. They always were. But despite the fact that it was after midnight on the night after a major holiday and heading into the weekend, meaning there were probably three people listening, Chuck was building the excitement leading up to the #1 new song like this night's countdown was going to result in the greatest musical revelation since The Beatles.
"Coming in at #3 - He's been gone for a while, and it's probably best not to ask where, but now he's back and this song sounds like it's heading all the way to the top."
It's "If You Want Me To Stay" by Sly and the Family Stone. I really liked this song. It still sounds good today, but what I failed to appreciate at the time was that, as good as it was, it really didn't hold a candle to much of Sly's earlier catalog - including any of the songs on Sly's Greatest Hits album. What I know now is that those songs were as good as anything that's ever been released, so there's no shame in not being quite that good. Bottom line: good song, then and now.
"At #2 - He's a living legend, and boy o boy, on this new track he sounds frisky."
This one is "Let's Get It On," by Marvin Gaye. OK, I have a confession to make. My 13-year old self really did not like this song. I mean, really really really did not like it. All I can say is that while I think my 13-year old self had pretty damn good taste in music, no one is perfect. I got this one wrong. It happens.
By this time Richard was awake, and giving me a look that was half "I'm still asleep, even though my eyes are open" and half "Why the f*ck are you holding that ridiculous radio up to your ear like that?" When you put those two halves together the outcome isn't positive, and I knew that my time listening to the Midnight Countdown was just about up. Come on, Chuck, please don't cut to commercial, just play #1 so I can join these two idiots in our idiotic quest.
"All right folks, the song you've been waiting for - it's a new artist, one we haven't heard from before and man o man, I think you're really going to like this one. She's from Las Vegas, Nevada, and before you turn out the lights, I want you to give a listen to Jenny..."
It was at this moment that Ron grabbed my arm, and hissed (that's really the only way to describe the sound that came from him at that moment) "All right, Vaca, we're out of here. Four rolls each."
So...of course I missed the artist's full name, and the name of the song. I didn't even get to hear the whole song. But what I heard, changed my life forever. (Not really. But it seemed so at the time. Everything seems really dramatic when you're 13 years old). A guitar lick, followed by a female vocal and an arrangement that blended the best of early Seventies Soul with the best of early Seventies pop. As we packed up, I even got to hear a little snippet of an awesomely cool guitar solo near the end, right before Ron ripped the radio out of my hand, turned it off, and threw it on the sleeping bag.
The toilet paper? It went to good use. A guy a couple of years older than us, who lived across the street from Kirsten, even came out to help out a bit. And he - if memory serves, his name was Ned - contributed the piece de resistance to our little crusade. The thing that turned something epic into something epicly stupid - an M-80 firecracker, which we lit on the front porch of Kirsten's house. Yes, we really did do dumb things like that back then, and the one thing I really remember about that night is how hard we were all laughing as we frantically ran down the street, back to our relatively safe haven. No one saw us, no one heard us (or if they did, it was late enough that they chalked it up to experience), and eventually we went to sleep.
The #1 song that I didn't quite get to hear? Oh well - a song that good, I would hear it again. That's what I told myself at the time.
Except I never did. Not even once. And because this was the way my mind worked at the time (and truth be told, not much has changed), I clung to those short snippets of music - creating an entire song in my mind, imagining who "Jenny" was and what might have happened to her, wondering most of all how such an incredible song could just slip into the darkness like that. Over the years, I began to wonder if that part of the night was a dream. Maybe I was the one snoring quietly, and not Richard.
II. A Hot July Night, 2014
I bought four CDs on the way home from work that day, but only had time to listen to three of them before heading to bed. It was another hot July night, one of those nights where you have trouble deciding whether to open the windows when you go to bed, or just leave the AC on all night. We chose the latter, but then faced the first-world dilemma of trying to find that exact temperature that a) will allow you to sleep restfully, while b) not having to cover up with a bunch of blankets that at some point during the night will leave you overheated and soaked with sweat. I failed in the effort, leaving myself wide awake at 3 in the morning. Not wanting to wake Debra, but wanting desperately to do something other than toss and turn and worry about the work day ahead of me, I decided to make myself relatively useful and give a listen to the last new CD of the day: "The Voyager," by Jenny Lewis.
I would imagine that, like most music fans, my first exposure to Lewis had come via her lead role in the band Rilo Kiley, which made at least a couple of great albums in the "decade of the aughts." Her album with the Watson Twins was one that I bought on the strength of the cover photo alone, thinking that an album with a cover that good had to have some great music inside. That theory has not always worked for me, but in this instance it did.
The album's opener, "Head Underwater," was a promising start. That segued into "She's Not Me," and...
Have you ever felt the feeling that follows when your heart literally skips a beat? The first time it happened, it scared the you-know-what out of me. I was having some particularly bad digestive problems at the time, and one of the side effects was a slightly irregular heartbeat. In any event, it's unnerving because you can literally feel your heart stop beating for a moment, and then you get this feeling of light-headedness, and then (hopefully) everything goes back to normal.
That feeling is exactly what happened when "She's Not Me" began playing. And I was instantly transported back to that hot July night, 41 years earlier, the night I spent with Ron and Richard throwing toilet paper over a tree and lighting a firecracker on the front porch of the house where a girl lived that Ron really wanted to ask out. Because this was the song that Chuck Roy played that night, and then disappeared into the darkness for four decades.
Of course, I know that's impossible. But I'm telling you, that's exactly what happened. And this is what it sounded like:
I lost track of Richard a long time ago. Tragically, Ron took his life in the 1980s, after a bad breakup. He always did wear his heart on his sleeve, even if it sometimes took the odd form of throwing toilet paper. My mom and dad still live in the house, but the place between what was then "our" house and Ron's is all paved over, and my guess is that no one in their right mind would allow their 13-year olds to sleep overnight in the front yard in this day and age. I'm not even sure if Chuck Roy is still alive, though I'm pretty sure now that "Chuck Roy" wasn't his real name.
What is left are the memories of a hot July night, and this song.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #7 - "She's Not Me," Jenny Lewis.
For me, this song's life began with a Gatorade commercial. This one was on HEAVY rotation when it first came out; you could not watch a sporting event without seeing it multiple times. After several times wondering "WHAT IS THAT SONG?," I finally Googled "Gatorade commerical lightning bolt" (it seemed likely that was the song's name), and lo and behold, this popped up:
It's one of those songs that can easily be described as "timeless," because there probably isn't an era since rock 'n roll began that it wouldn't fit, and wouldn't sound great. It's also a classic driving song, one of those that just screams to be turned up as high as the dial (and the eardrums) will allow.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #8 - "Lightning Bolt," Jake Bugg.
"Hankering" is such a great word. I'm not exactly sure why it appeals to me so much, but it's one of the words that I try to work into a conversation, or online dialogue, as often as I can.
The fact that "hankering" is used in "Best Years of My Life," however, is not why it made the Top Ten. It made the Top Ten because it's a truly great song by one of the truly great groups - and I mean, really really great - of the entire decade.
For the uninitiated, Pistol Annies is comprised of, from left to right in the video, Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley, and Miranda Lambert. In total, the trio released twelve albums during the decade of the 2010s: three Pistol Annies albums, four solo albums by Lambert, three solo albums by Monroe, and two solo albums by Presley. Two of those albums (Presley's "American Middle Class" and Pistol Annies' "Interstate Gospel") made my Top 30 of the Decade, and if I expanded that list to 50, Lambert's "Platinum" and Monroe's "The Blade" would have joined them.
In short, they're great. As in, great on an historical scale. They are at the vanguard of the new wave of women country artists that have scorched the musical world with their boldness, their brilliance, in recent years. Although you may not know it, since country radio is still loathe to give them the spotlight they deserve.
"Best Years of My Life" is a great place to begin diving into their catalog.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #9 - "Best Years of My Life," Pistol Annies.
To kick off the Top Ten - THE TOP TEN! - we have, without a doubt, the best Civil War ballad that's been written in the 21st Century. And one with a fascinating back story - after all, it's not every day that an artist collaborates on a song with her husband and her ex-husband.
The song began as a collaboration between John Leventhal (Cash's husband) and Rodney Crowell (Cash's ex-husband) even before Rosanne herself entered the picture, with Leventhal giving the melody to Crowell for potential use on one of his albums with Emmylou Harris.
But let's let Ms. Cash tell the story:
We kept the first four lines that Rodney had—it was an actual 19th century personals ad. I wanted to keep that and then turn the rest of it into the Civil War song, where she found him through a personals ad. It’s based on two of my own ancestors. I researched them and we wrote it together. He came over to my house, we wrote part of it at the table, and then we wrote part of it by email.
So maybe it's also the best song ever (at least partly) written by email? I can't really answer that question, since I have no idea how many songs have been written by email. There can't be that many, right? By the way, for a more complete picture of how the song was written, please check out the excellent interview with Cash and Leventhal by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, here. Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #10 - "When the Master Calls the Roll," Rosanne Cash.
"The Unraveling," the twelfth studio album from Drive-By Truckers, is not a party record. You don't really need to play it to figure that out; all you have to do is read some of the song titles: "Armageddon's Back in Town," "Heroin Again," "Babies in Cages," "Awaiting Resurrection." None of those titles bring to mind a bunch of hoopin' and hollerin', beer or two in hand, while dancing on the top of a table all night.
The song titles are not false advertising, as evidenced by a sampling of these lyrics from "Heroin Again":
Insinuate a fever dream
Instigate a requiem
A deafening explosion of shame
An orgasm inside your brain
Silly young men
Why you using heroin
Thought you knew better than that
Or these, from "Babies in Cages":
And are we so divided
That we can't at least agree
This ain't the country that
Our granddads fought for us to be?
Babies in cages
"The Unraveling" is hardly DBT's first foray into the realm of the political. For more than two decades, Patterson Hood has been exploring the contradictions he encountered during the course of his days growing up and becoming an adult in Alabama - a phenomenon he's often called "the duality of the Southern thing." The difference is that in the band's earlier days, a song like "The Three Great Alabama Icons" (one of whom was George Wallace) might be bracketed by obvious party anthems like "Dead, Drunk & Naked" and "Let There Be Rock," and a song like "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" (about the murder of Bryan Harvey and his family) would be immediately followed by "3 Dimes Down," possibly the greatest party song that Mike Cooley ever wrote (and I'll let you look up what that one is all about). Even the band's 2016 "American Band," which delved more deeply into current day politics than any previous DBT record, feels light as air in comparison to the new record.
The album's centerpiece, and the song that will be talked about the most, is "Thoughts and Prayers." In this era of mass shootings in common public gathering areas, those simple words have taken on a much different meaning. Rather than a sincere (if ultimately inadequate) expression of sympathy and sorrow, they're now viewed by many as a symbol of a generation's inability (or lack of will) to take any meaningful action to stop something that everyone agrees is a horrible societal development. Patterson Hood leaves no doubt as to which side of the argument he is on:
When my children's eyes look at me and they ask me to explain
It hurts me that I have to look away
The powers that be are in for shame and comeuppance
When Generation Lockdown has their day
They'll throw the bums all out and drain the swamp for real
Perp walk then down the Capitol steps and show them how it feels
Tramp the dirt down, Jesus, you can pray the rod they'll spare
Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers
It's one thing for an individual to make a statement like this. But when an artist whose livelihood depends in large part on the support of a demographic which quite likely (and accurately) will take this song as an affront to the very existence of that demographic, that's something very different. There's a lot at stake for a band to be writing and playing songs like this, and while DBT never has (and never likely will) reach the heights of popularity of a group like the Dixie Chicks, we all saw what happened to them when a certain line was crossed. Even a group as popular as they were at the time saw their audience change dramatically, pre- and post-comments about George W. Bush.
The album's sound matches its material. Having gone through numerous personnel changes over the years, since 2014 DBT's sonic approach has been focused primarily on a guitar-pronged attack (sometimes two, and sometimes three, when sometimes keyboardist Jay Gonzalez picks up his ax). That's true here as well, but there's also the added element of the sound mix, which feels constricted throughout, and almost claustrophobic - another signal that "The Unraveling" is a very different record than those which preceded it.
"The Unraveling" is relentless and unforgiving. Might it have benefited from a bit of lightness, amidst all the darkness? Perhaps. But there's no questioning that "The Unraveling" is Drive-By Truckers' bravest album.
His Wikipedia page describes Todd Snider as "an American singer-songwriter with a musical style that combines American, alt-country and folk.
Well, this one is a rocker, plain and simple.
The song is the perfect musical companion to the films Margin Call and The Big Short, which in very different ways tell the story of the 2008 market collapse. Here, that collapse reaches all the way to a high school teacher, down in Arkansas. And the story doesn't have a happy ending.
It's one of the catchiest refrains you'll hear - listen to this song a few times, and I promise you won't be able to get the phrase "Good things happen to bad people" out of your head. The year it was released, that phrase was the perfect description of someone who unfortunately spilled over into my life from time to time, so the song had particular resonance.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #11 - "New York Banker," Todd Snider.
As befits a man whose mother was an English professor and whose father is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Larry McMurtry, James McMurtry knows how to spin a musical yarn.
The lyrics of "South Dakota" read like they could be an outline for a well-filmed, well-directed but somewhat depressing film about a young man who comes home from the war, tries to make a go at life in South Dakota, but following one calamity after another, reluctantly re-ups for one more tour overseas. Close with the tight shot of the protagonist getting on the plane, shaking his head. Fade to black.
There ain't much between the pole and South Dakota And barbed wire won't stop the wind I won't get nothing here but broke and older I might as well re-up again
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #12 - "South Dakota," James McMurtry.
Oxford defines genius as "exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability."
Oxford defines insane as "in a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior or social interaction."
Pick which definition you think best suits Kanye West. I'd say that in any given moment, both could apply.
Throughout this century, Kanye has been impossible to ignore. But for the first decade of the century, while his behavior - his antics - were impossible to ignore, I missed his music. It was only when I heard "My Dark Twisted Fantasy" playing in my son's room, shortly after its release, that the genius part of the equation became impossible to ignore.
For me, this song will always be Kanye doing his best in coming to grips with the contradictions that have defined his public life. And if one song can define an artist's work, this is his masterpiece.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #13 - "Runaway," Kanye West.
One of the reasons that I'm determined to keep better notes this year - not quite a diary, but just a set of notes on various things that happen - is that I want to begin making better note of how I discover new musical artists. I can't quite remember how I discovered Ashley McBryde; maybe it was American Songwriter, and maybe it was Robert Christgau (who gave her 2018 album a B+; I liked it more than that). The point is, I want to remember.
None of which has anything in particular to do with this song. You may not have known that I'm a sucker for sentimental songs like this, and this is a great one. There's little I can add to the story - just listen.
And here is the recorded version, from the album:
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #14 - "The Jacket," Ashley McBryde.
Not even the world's most popular celebrity lives their life in full public view. However, the degree to which the story of Elton John's life, as he recounts it in "Me," felt familiar - and sometimes intimately so - says a lot about just how much of his life has been an open book.
At one point while reading Elton's hugely entertaining autobiography, I commented to my wife that one thing which made it so great was that Elton "has no fucks to give." At this stage of his life, he's completely comfortable putting it all out there, and he doesn't particularly care if some of his life's episodes make him look foolish, selfish, or just plain dumb. That was all part of the journey, and he owns it all, and always with self-deprecating humor. His ability to laugh or roll his eyes at the earlier versions of himself is the key to the book's success. At no point does he seek forgiveness for his bad behavior; and if one seeks to judge him, he really doesn't give a shit. It's all part of the story of Elton John, and the reader is better off for this approach.
Elton John has been one of the most important musical figures in my own life, one in which music has played an important, and even formative role. He wasn't my first musical hero - that would be some combination of The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater and Dionne Warwick (which is a story unto itself) - but he was my musical hero during my early teenage years, those years that for many form the musical blueprint of one's life. I now own thousands of albums across various media, but the first album I bought with my own money was an Elton John album ("Honky Chateau"). And while it's true that the legacy of subsequent musical heroes has surpassed that of Elton's, it's also true that his place in the Hall of Fame is richly deserved, and true that few artists have surpassed the accomplishments of the richest three year period of his career - from 1972 through the end of 1975. During that period, he released six albums that ranged from very good to great - the aforementioned "Honky Chateau," "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," "Caribou," "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy," and "Rock of the Westies." That's approaching Beatles territory, right there.
There are so many stories that one could point to as being highlights of the book - Elton meeting the Laurel Canyon musical royalty shortly after his legendary performances at the Troubador in 1970, his experiences with the Watford football club, his interactions with the royal family, his accounting of the disastrous decision at Wembley in 1975 to follow incredibly well-received sets from The Eagles and The Beach Boys by playing all 10 "Captain Fantastic" songs in order, with few having ever heard them before, his complicated relationship with his mother - but the one I'll share is what he thought after seeing and hearing The Sex Pistols for the first time:
I was in bed alone at Woodside one Sunday morning, half watching television, when a guy with bright orange hair suddenly appeared on the screen and called Rod Stewart a useless old fucker. I hadn't really been paying attention, but now I was suddenly riveted: someone slagging Rod off was clearly too good to miss. His name was Johnny Rotten, he was wearing the most amazing clothes and I thought he was hilarious - like a cross between an angry young man and a bitchy old queen, really acidic and witty. He was being interviewed about the burgeoning punk scene in London by a woman named Janet Street-Porter. I liked her, too; she was gobby and bold. In absolute fairness to Rod, Johnny Rotten appeared to hate everything - I was fairly certain he thought I too was a useless old fucker. Nevertheless, I made a mental note to ring Rod later, just to make sure he knew about it. 'Hello, Phyllis [Elton's pet name for Stewart], did you see the TV this morning? This new band were on called the Sex Pistols and, you'll never believe this, they said you were a useless old fucker. Those were their exact words: Rod Stewart is a useless old fucker. Isn't that terrible? How awful for you.'
I didn't really care what they thought of me. I loved punk. I loved its energy; attitude and style, and I loved that my old friend Marc Bolan immediately claimed he invented it twenty years ago; that was just the most Marc response imaginable. I didn't feel shocked by punk - I'd lived through the scandal and social upheaval that rock 'n roll provoked in the fifties, so I was virtually immune to the idea of music causing outrage - and I didn't feel threatened or obsolete by it either.
From that passage, you can appreciate the humor, the candor, and above all the clarity that Elton had about where his own career fit into the larger spectrum of rock 'n roll history. Even then, he knew that his time in the zeitgeist was over, but as subsequent albums proved, he didn't try to change what he was.
A passage on the book's last page provides a blueprint for how Elton has looked at his life: "I live and have lived an extraordinary life, and I honestly wouldn't change it, even the parts I regret, because I'm incredibly happy with how it has turned out."
With "Me" and the film "Rocket Man," Elton is back in the spotlight in a way he hasn't been for a long time. Here's hoping that a new generation of fans will discover his work.
"Hamilton: An American Musical" was the greatest cultural event of the 2010s. It was also, perhaps, the most unexpected cultural event of the 2010s. Back at the turn of the decade, one certainly could have gotten good odds for a prediction along the lines of "Yeah, I'm thinking a Broadway musical about one of the founding fathers...you know, the guy who wrote some of The Federalist Papers, shot by Aaron Burr, that guy...that will definitely be the sensation that people talk about for decades!"
The only word to describe the show is remarkable. There are an incredible number of great songs in the musical; the pace never really lags at any time. And while it's understandable that the cost and the limited number of venues have made it difficult for many people to see it live, if such an opportunity arises everyone should avail themselves of it. As great an experience listening to the soundtrack album is, it pales in comparison to seeing the show performed live.
Because it's my list, when the issue of declaring these two songs being in a tie came up, I ruled in my favor and went with both. And I'm going with both because they represent the emotional heart of the story. They both appear in the second act, and they chronicle how things fell apart between Alexander and Eliza; and how, under the most tragic circumstances, they came back together.
First, "Burn":
I'm erasing myself from the narrative Let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted When you broke her heart You have torn it all apart I'm watching it burn Watching it burn The world has no right to my heart The world has no place in our bed They don't get to know what I said I'm burning the memories Burning the letters that might have redeemed you You forfeit all rights to my heart You forfeit the place in our bed You'll sleep in your office instead With only the memories of when you were mine I hope that you burn
And then, "It's Quiet Uptown":
There are moments when the words don't reach There is a grace too powerful to name We push away what we can never understand We push away the unimaginable They are standing in the garden Alexander by Eliza's side She takes his hand It's quiet uptown
So...where to begin? Thank you Alexander and Eliza Hamilton for being who you were, thank you Ron Chernow for writing the definitive biography, thank you Lin Manuel Miranda for deciding to read the book on vacation, and then turning your substantial genius to this work. Thank you to the incredible cast, not just the original cast with so many leading lights, but also the wonderful cast we were privileged to see in Chicago, in October 2018.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #15 - "Burn" and "It's Quiet Uptown," from Hamilton: An American Musical: Original Broadway Soundtrack.
"Wrecking Ball" is probably Bruce Springsteen's most political album, even more so than "The Rising." In his autobiography he called it "a shot of anger at the injustice that continues on and his widened with deregulation, dysfunctional regulatory agencies and capitalism gone wild at the expense of hardworking Americans."
"We Take Care of Our Own," much like "Born in the U.S.A." nearly three decades prior, was a widely misunderstood song - if you focus only on the chorus, it's hard to hear it as anything but an uplifting song. But when you dive deeper into the verses, it's pretty clear that what Bruce is really saying is that all too often, we don't take care of our own.
It's a song that fits right in to any reasonable collection of his best.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #16 - "We Take Care of Our Own," Bruce Springsteen.
My introduction to Robert Crais came courtesy of my late Aunt Lenore. She was always a voracious reader, but after retiring she became whatever status is beyond that - I can't even think of an appropriate word. I'm pretty sure there were times when she could finish three novels in a day. For the most part, she read crime novels, and after a while she simply ran out of room to store them. She'd put together boxes of paperbacks, letting me take whatever I wanted, sometimes making a suggestion or two. And that was how I ended up with "L.A. Requiem," the 8th Crais novel to feature his star protagonists, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.
Little did I know that not only was "Requiem" Robert Crais' masterpiece, but also one of the great crime novels of the past 50 years. In a way, it was also a turning point for Crais, as if he realized that it was going to be really difficult to ever top - particularly if he didn't take a break from Elvis and Joe. So he did, writing a couple of standalone novels which introduced new characters before resuming the saga of Elvis and Joe. After that, the Elvis/Joe novels were a bit different. Some have been billed as "Elvis Cole novels" and some as "Joe Pike novels," but since they all included both characters, Crais seems to have settled on "Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels," although in some Cole gets more "page time," and in others it's Pike.
Pike is the lead in "A Dangerous Man," and the story begins with him. He's making a deposit at the bank, and as Isabel Roland - the teller who handled his transaction - walks out for an early lunch, she is forced into a van by two kidnappers. Pike overcomes the kidnappers, ensures they are arrested, and makes sure Isabel makes it home safely. Upon their release on bail, the kidnappers are murdered, Isabel vanishes, and the game is afoot. The story is full of dangerous men - Hicks, Riley, Ronson, Stanley, "the Cowboys" - but none are so dangerous as Pike and Cole. Over the course of the story, they begin to unravel the mystery of Isabel, and why she would be of interest to so many dangerous men. John Chen, LAPD criminalist (and neurotic) extraordinaire, plays a part in the story, as do various members of the LAPD, LA Sheriff's Office, and US Marshals.
As always the book is tightly written, and as always the book is suspenseful. It's a good and fun read, but it also feels slightly as if Crais was going through the motions - he's gone the "Elvis and Joe save damsel in distress" route on more than one occasion, and it's unclear whether this entry adds anything to their history and lore that we didn't already know. You'll never hear me complaining about a novel written by Robert Crais and featuring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. But I don't think "A Dangerous Man" represents top tier Crais, or top tier Elvis & Joe.
During the course of a career that is now in its fifth decade, Elvis Costello has covered a lot of musical ground. He hit the boards as an "angry young man" - never quite punk, but clearly influenced by punk. He's made a country album, he's collaborated and made an entire album with Burt Bacharach, he's written songs with Paul McCartney, and he's made an album with The Roots.
La Marisoul is the featured performer here along with Costello, and this song has exactly the type of mysterious vibe that I love to hear. The arrangement is all tension; you think that the tempo will pick up, but it never does - and the song is all the stronger for staying its course.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #17 - "Cinco Minutos Con Vos," Elvis Costello and The Roots.
Someone, I think it was Greil Marcus, once wrote something along the lines that difficult political times result in the best art, as expressions of protest and dissent.
Where they fit into the spectrum of American history is for future historians to decide, but these are some challenging times, no doubt. And they've resulted in some great music, this song being one of the primary examples. There are allusions to President Trump, although he's never mentioned by name.
Ultimately, the key lines are the ones that leave the listener with hope - and can be applied universally to the picture the singer paints, which is one of good vs. evil.
The road is heavy and the road is long And we've only begun to fight We just can't give in, we just can't give up We must go boldly into the darkness And be the light.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #18 - "The World Is On Fire," American Aquarium.
This list started coming together late last summer, when I'd decided to give the ole blog a reboot. I don't have a database of my album purchases per se, but I've manually digitized every purchased CD since the early 2010s, which makes it easy to sort by year. Working from that, I then consulted the key year-end polls from the decade, just to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything.
That led to a working list of about 50-60 albums. There were a handful that I knew would be at or near the top, but trying to delineate, say, between #25 and #26, was more of a chore. When it came down to brass tacks, I went with the one that I listened to more often.
Without further ado:
1. Drive-By Truckers: American Band
2. Kendrick Lamar: DAMN
3. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs
4. Hamilton: Original Broadway Soundtrack
5. Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City
6. James McMurtry: Complicated Game
7. Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel
8. Beyonce: Lemonade
9. Counting Crows: Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation)
10. Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball
11. The National: Trouble Will Find Me
12. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
13. Drive-By Truckers: English Oceans
14. Alabama Shakes: Sound & Color
15. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: The Nashville Sound
16. Rosanne Cash: She Remembers Everything
17. Sleater-Kinney: No Cities to Love
18. Future Islands: Singles
19. Vampire Weekend: Father of the Bride
20. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp A Butterfly
21. Sufjan Stevens: Carrie and Lowell
22. Bettye Lavette: Things Have Changed
23. Jack White: Blunderbuss
24. John Hiatt: The Open Road
25. Angaleena Presley: American Middle Class
26. Old 97's: Most Messed Up
27. Blood Orange: Freetown Sound
28. The Highwomen: The Highwomen
29. David Bowie: Blackstar
30. Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
It's rare that a band's eleventh album is their best - hell, it's rare that bands exist long enough to record eleven albums. But there's no other conclusion to reach than to go with DBT for the #1 spot. English Oceans was a step forward for the band, particularly for Mike Cooley. But American Band went well beyond that - a remarkably poignant, cogent and hard-hitting statement about the world, and far more political than anything they'd recorded before.
Some other quick thoughts:
- Without a doubt, Kendrick Lamar is the Artist of the Decade. Good kid, m.A.A.d city just missed the cut, and there are many (at least one of my two sons, for example) who consider it his best.
- At the dawn of the decade, it would probably have been fair to say that the most unlikely type of album showing up on my list would be an Original Broadway Soundtrack. But there's just no questioning the brilliance of Hamilton. If you haven't seen it, by all means try to get there - wherever "there" might be.
- Pretty good decade for Vampire Weekend, especially when you consider that they took most of it off. I was never sold on 2010's Contra, which always felt too fussy to me, but a lot of people think it's their best, and it's showing up on a lot of "Best of Decade" lists. For me, Modern Vampires demonstrated a musical and lyrical depth that they're unlikely to top again.
- James McMurtry is proof that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree - the stories he tells on Complicated Game would fit right in on one of his father's story collections.
It's probably fair to say that Kacey Musgraves, by now, is a full-fledged crossover superstar. (Feel free to let me know if you've never heard of her, which would put a bit of a dent in my theory). Over the course of the decade she's undergone a fascinating transformation, moving towards a synthesis of pop and country that, at it's best, is truly magical.
This song was recorded and released before that transformation began, although you can pick up bits here and there. This is a song that rarely fails to bring a smile to my face. And in a song full of favorite moments, my very favorite is probably the way she pronounces "horrr....ible."
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #19 - "Follow Your Arrow," Kacey Musgraves.
Sturgill Simpson is my favorite kind of artist; the kind who takes an "I'm gonna do what my muse tells me to do, and I don't really care what the rest of y'all think." Classic album that sounds by Waylon Jennings on acid? Check. Concept country album based about the sea, in part based on his time in the Navy? Check. Album of acid-rock accompanied by anime videos for each song? Check. Oh and during all that, some of the most stinging lead guitar ever heard on Saturday Night Live, while accompanying Chris Stapleton? Check.
But Simpson's greatest accomplishment may be the way he transformed "The Promise."
When the album ("Metamodern Sounds in Country Music") and song came out, I had no idea that this was a cover version. And when you listen to the original, what Simpson did is all the more amazing.
If the definition of a great cover version is one that results in an artist claiming the song for his/her own, then "The Promise" has to qualify for one of the greatest covers of all time.
Top 50 Songs of the Decade, #50 - "The Promise," Sturgill Simpson.
Well, it should be obvious by now that the Top 50 Songs of the Decade series won't be finished before year's end, unless I was talking about 2020 (which I wasn't). So we'll take a brief break from the countdown to focus on the best albums of 2019. You can see which albums I bought over on the side of the blog - and there were a lot of good ones this year, which made this chore way more difficult than I originally anticipated. I'm comfortable with this list, but no doubt over time the sands will shift here and there - they always do.
I'm indulging in a bit of fantasy by allotting points on the Pazz and Jop scale, 100 points among ten albums with no album being awarded more than 30 or fewer than 5. I have no idea how much thought Robert Christgau put into that scale when he invented the poll...dear lord, almost fifty years ago now...but it makes as much sense as anything. Without further ado...
1. Vampire Weekend: Father of the Bride 16
2. The Highwomen: The Highwomen 14
3. The National: I Am Easy to Find 12
4. Purple Mountains: Purple Mountains 12
5. Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi: There Is No Other 11
6. Lana del Rey: Norman Fucking Rockwell 10
7. Billie Eilish: When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? 8
8. Bruce Springsteen: Western Stars 7
9. Black Pumas: Black Pumas 5
10. Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Colorado 5
After making an incredibly strong first impression, I thought for quite a while that Father of the Bride was a little on the long side, but after repeated listens, it's impossible to deny it the top spot. It's almost as if Ezra Koenig is showing off here - the influences he's channeling are remarkably diverse, and he pulls it all off while barely breaking a sweat.
In the days (and maybe weeks) to come, I'll have a little more to say about the other albums, as well as throw out a few "Honorable Mention" candidates.
A few years ago, one of my Christmas "stocking stuffers" was a coffee table book on the history of the NFL. Cleverly titled "The Football Book" and published by Sports Illustrated in 2006, the book includes article excerpts from several of the great football writers who graced the pages of SI, including Paul Zimmerman, Peter King, Dan Jenkins and Michael Silver, as well as the great feature writers George Plimpton, Gary Smith, Frank Deford, and S.L. Price. The book also includes Dr. Z's (how Zimmerman was known to his biggest fans) indispensable All-Decade Team choices, which are guaranteed to be the perfect argument starter. 
