Ah, The Smiths. Less than two years ago all I knew of them was their name and “indie” street cred. And less than three years ago, that was all I wanted to know.

See, there’s this funny thing that happens when you convince yourself you’re redefined. When I discovered “progressive” acts like Rush and Dream Theater in high school, I didn’t just move away from radio and pop, I swore it off. Cold turkey. Why bother with basic time signatures and market-focused three-minute tracks when there was so much more out there worthy of exploration, I thought. What could 99% of what’s played through Clear Channel, Inc. teach me about emotion, creativity and expression? How could that Product possibly enrich my life?

In my defense, about most of what’s played on the radio (these days), a lot of that is true. But as a generalization, it’s more than just a little ridiculous. It’s the classic kneejerk oversimplification of someone embarking on something they haven’t quite figured out and, so, have no real idea what they’re talking about. It’s the Renounce & Evolve theory. Bartering extremes for experience.

It’s impossible to compare the heart-soaked lyrics that Morrissey brandishes on his sleeve to the allusion-packed concept scripts of Neal Peart’s. How can you set Rush’s balls-out rock sensibility next to The Smiths’ dry, almost flippant tone and tell yourself you’re being fair? These bands, and all bands, are the same in that they share a common goal: to make you feel. Except the means by which they reach that end are all unique. Learn to love the differences and you move from somebody who likes bands to someone who appreciates music.

Is It Really So Strange?

The best thing going for The Smiths (and most consistently executed in The Queen is Dead) is Morrissey’s one-of-a-kind sense of irony and humor. In so many songs, he has this way of smirking as he bares his soul, giving his music an almost double-sided personality—ultimate truth mixed with just the perfect hint of absurdity. Whether it’s love or heartbreak or whatever, it’s this strange ability to be just short of self-deprecating while simultaneously taking himself “too” seriously that gives the band depth and mystique. (“I want to live and I want to love,” Morrissey sings, “I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of.” And then we go, “…Yeah. I can see that.”)

There’s a hopeless, honest, over-the-top sense of romanticism in his songwriting that I think is universal—sometimes subconsciously and sometimes because Morrissey’s extremes are the way we might wish things really were. On the latter side of the spectrum, we have “There is a Light That Never Goes Out,” and these classic lines:

If a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die.
And if a ten-ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine

…Okay. We can see that. Right?

But the most surprising track on the record, and one of my favorite examples of a darker Morrissey at work, is the album downer “I Know It’s Over.”

This is a song so gruelingly wrenched in despair, a song so pitiful and sad, that you almost wouldn’t notice that it’s about a love affair that never actually happened. The way I read it, it’s told from the perspective of a guy who could never muster the courage to express himself to the object of his fantasies, and now she’s getting married. Under that pretense, the idea is a little funny. But written as it is in a first-person style, we see someone so trapped in depression, pessimism and loneliness that it sometimes feels like he’s literally dying. And then it’s sad again.

Watch his thought process below, how the word “even” is thrown in (line 4) to cue a seemingly positive sentiment, only to reverse on itself to show how the guy can’t even get a break inside his own imagination.

I know it’s over
And it never really began
But in my heart it was so real
And you even spoke to me and said:

‘If you’re so funny
Then why are you on your own tonight?
And if you’re so clever
Then why are you on your own tonight?
If you’re so very entertaining
Then why are you on your own tonight?
If you’re so very good-looking
Why do you sleep alone tonight?

‘I know…
‘Cause tonight is just like any other night
That’s why you’re on your own tonight’
…
Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head …

Talk about brutal. God, I love that.

There’s not a huge sense of the tongue-in-cheek in “I Know It’s Over,” but the melodrama is all there, in spades*. Emotions are so heightened and expanded here that you can’t help but be enclosed inside of them. This character isn’t just lonely, he’s crippled. And it’s a credit to Morrissey as a vocal force that we buy into all this instead of casting it off as adolescent or pulling the terrible “aww” card. It’s a dare that we can’t win: try not to participate in this anguish.

*Another great example of Morrissey at his direct and melancholic best is “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” from a couple of their b-side releases. I’ll take any chance I can get to reference this song. It’s perfect.

But as a whole, The Queen is Dead is not at all a depressing album. Stopping on a dime, it shifts toward airy, upbeat ditties like “Cemetery Gates,” fun ones like “Frankly, Mr Shankly,” and plenty of others laced with Morrissey’s patented dry and sarcastic wit, like “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (“And now I know how Joan of Arc felt… la la laa la laaa…”).

There’s nothing about this album that I dislike. I think it’s truly one of the best examples of Good Pop that you could find, playing to all of the strengths of the genre/style without ever lending itself to its pitfalls. It has sense of humor, it’s fun, sad, happy, sweet, thoughtful, tongue-in-cheek. It’s a piece that gets better and better with every listen. And once you realize that you’ve fallen for sad 80s British pop, when you’re in your room or cooking dinner and catch yourself doing your best deadpan Morrissey impersonation (“I’d rawtha be famous than righteous or hoeely, any day, any day, any dayyyyy”)… you start thinking twice before generalizing.
 
 
Listen:

“There is a Light That Never Goes Out”

Apparently Rolling Stone recently published a list of “the” Top 100 Beatles songs. Just in time, too; you can only dodge the question so often at parties before your friends start wondering why you’re always in the bathroom. Having opinions is so much easier when you’re backed by an authority.*

*More good news: Next month Time will be compiling an ordered list of the Top 10 Best Colors, and Esquire will be doing the Best 20 Jelly Belly Flavors. Finally, right?

Now, despite certain moral aversions I have toward the Top Whatever, in the spirit of my 50 Albums Project (The 50 Most Important Albums in My Life, not The 50 Best) I’ve decided to play along. It was my cousin who piqued my interest in the idea when he sent over his personal 25 and I realized how similar, yet so totally different, my own picks would be. I mean, it’s The Beatles. Sophie’s choice was a cakewalk compared to this.

Since the 50 Albums Project started, I’ve not really been posting peripherally on here (and I think it’s better that way), but with this we’re sort of playing in the same ballpark. Consider it an extra. A bonus. It’s here maybe only for me to look back at years later to see how much my tastes have changed.

The trick is to try to make your list in no more than 30min. I won’t lie to you, it’s hard (especially when you get down to ordering). But it is interesting. And you’ve got to be honest with yourself that, given the day (or the stylistic phase), your entire set might change.

So here’s mine. It’s not perfect and the ordering is pretty meaningless but, it’s the best I can do.

Give it a try. And feel free to post what you come up with in the comments.

Honorary Mentions

Oh! Darling
She Said She Said
Wait
Nowhere Man
Run For Your Life
No Reply
And I Love Her
Glass Onion
Rain
We Can Work It Out
Girl
I Me Mine

Top 25

25. She’s Leaving Home
24. I’ve Got a Feeling
23. If I Needed Someone
22. I’ll Follow the Sun
21. Eleanor Rigby
20. Yer Blues
19. Help!
18. Ticket to Ride
17. Tomorrow Never Knows
16. Here Comes the Sun
15. And Your Bird Can Sing
14. I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
13. A Hard Day’s Night
12. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
11. Don’t Let Me Down
10. Helter Skelter
09. Norwegian Wood
08. Julia
07. For No One
06. Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey
05. I’m Only Sleeping
04. Let It Be
03. Happiness is a Warm Gun
02. A Day in the Life
01. Abbey Road Suite

Thick as Brick earns a coveted place on the Mellotron Sounds 50 Albums List not because it’s so important musically (even though it is) or because I love it (even though I do), but more because of what it represents.

A near-45 minute epic, all one singular track, the arrangement transitions often, from acoustic elements to electric, organs to flutes, guitars to xylophones, putting to tape one of the most committed concept albums ever recorded—one, we’d only find out later, is actually a satire.

Straight from the horse’s mouth (the horse is Tull frontman Ian Anderson):

“Thick as a Brick was written as a spoof, as a send-up of a concept album. The record preceding it, Aqualung, had been viewed by some critics as a concept album, which I disagreed with…. So I said, “OK, let’s give them the mother of all concept albums.” An integral part of that was to pretend the lyrics had been written by an eight-year-old boy, a preposterous, sort of precocious child who came up with these convoluted and vague-sounding lyrics all set to a continuous flow of music. It was a lot of fun to do. I wasn’t trying to deceive people. I just thought everybody would get the gag.”

So that explains the lyrics*. But Thick as a Brick is a musical spoof the same way Edgar Wright’s movies (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim) are cinematic ones—which is to say, it really isn’t.

*Some lyrics:

“So! Where the hell was Biggles when you needed him last Saturday?
And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you through?
They’re all resting down in Cornwall –
writing up their memoirs for a paperback edition
of the Boy Scout Manual”

Most people would be lying if, through all of the movements, the flute-work and drawn-out instrumentals, they told you this album never feels bombastic. I’ll be the first to admit, at times the bridges get a bit long and the passages a bit redundant. But where a lot of satires set out to strictly mock, Thick as Brick—the same as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz or Scott Pilgrim—is sort of co-conscious, allowing itself the space to get lost in the form that it’s supposedly making fun of. This kind of send-up isn’t biting or elitist. It’s a hat-tip, with the satirist in full appreciation of what gives its subject power in the first place.

Edgar Wright doesn’t hate zombie movies or action movies or comics/video games, he loves them. It’s just that he’s smart enough to acknowledge, and play off of, their clichés. That’s what makes his films worth watching and not all snickers and nudges. I’d bet there’s a part of Ian Anderson that feels the same away about prog, even if he does resent the classification.

I’ve always seen directors like Edgar Wright as sort of kids in candy stores. With every topic he centers his films around, with every frame, you can see a grown-up giddiness peaking through the seams, thrilled just to be there, a part of the magic he’s been so in awe of since he was a kid. And I truly believe that capturing and contributing to that magic is why he, and in turn, Jethro Tull, do what they do. The genre doesn’t matter; these guys are magicians, pushing the boundaries of their respective mediums to advance the affect of the greater “music/film experience.” And even if they’re doing it with a smirk, each are creating/have created media worth paying attention to. Because it’s genuinely passionate.

You can’t fake art. Force it and people will notice, even hate you for it. So in the end Thick as a Brick really does do serious work, in contributing to the “progressive rock” concept catalog and in being flat-out volatile. Anderson’s voice is sweet when it wants to be, and the band can be pretty when it feels like it, but when that first transition comes, you realize that you’ve just been strapped in for a ride you weren’t anticipating. Then, somehow, it’s 45 minutes later and you’re right back where you started and it all made perfect sense.

No matter what the inspiration, it’s impossible not to respect a piece that goes this far, takes this many chances. It’s this ownership over the form that fascinates me about musicians and directors, the claiming of a piece of “theirs,” taking a leap that guarantees that at a project’s end one person (or small group of people) will take full credit for success the same as they will blame for failure. With that in mind, it seems ridiculous for showmen like Jethro Tull to decide on a “satire” and not lace it with heart and honest ambition. If Thick as a Brick is really joke, I think maybe Anderson and the guys got distracted in the set-up. The punchline, then, would have to be the realization that they’d actually made a beautiful, complex and memorable record.

It isn’t funny ha-ha but, hey—they’re laughing.
 
 
Listen/Watch (if only to see crazy Ian Anderson in action):

“Thick as a Brick” (live, abridged), Part I

Honorable Mention: Ayreon – The Human Equation

Speaking of ambition, Ayreon’s The Human Equation has got to be one of the most unique albums I’ve ever heard. To this day, I couldn’t honestly tell you how much I “love” the piece, but as a longer, crazier, more varied and more obsessively committed example of what a contemporary concept album can be, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get under my skin.

Over the top, 2 discs and not in any way for everyone, The Human Equation is really more a musical than a “concept.” It’s about a man who’s slipped into a coma and is digging through his past in order to find a little peace. But here’s the kicker: all of the emotions he’s sifting through are performed by guest musicians—Me is played by Dream Theater’s James Labrie, metal frontmen (Devin Townsend, Mikael Akerfeldt) sing Fear and Rage, a woman sings Love, there’s even an opera singer playing the part of Pride.

And so there’s a real “prog community” element to it. I’ve joked before that all of these prog rock bands, it’s almost like they all live in the same neighborhood, see each other around town, make small talk and invite one another every now and then to collaborate. In the sphere of my current playlist, you can follow a pretty coherent web of exploration, what led to what and why: Dream Theater’s first keyboardist started bands called Chroma Key and OSI, the latter of which Porcupine Tree’s dummer performed with in one album. Porcupine Tree creator, Steven Wilson, has a couple other bands: No-Man and Blackfield. Dream Theater’s drummer performs in Neal Morse’s work, and Morse used to lead Spock’s Beard. Spock’s Beard’s drummer recently toured with Frost*. Morse and Portnoy also play together in Transatlantic, a band featuring the guitarist from the Flower Kings and the bassist from Marillion. Etc., etc.,….

To be sure, The Human Equation has it’s share of cheese and it sometimes doesn’t work. But it usually does, and it gets major points for originality. It’s an album almost impossible to describe. It’s insane. You just have to hear it.

From the beginnings of “progressive” rock with Rubber Soul/Revolver at #40, Frost* is the mark that we’ve officially reached the other pole of the spectrum.

What started as an in-his-spare-time synth experiment of pop music producer Jem Godfrey’s, Milliontown was never intended as a proper album. It was more of a pet project, an after-work “labor of love” that sort of took on a life of its own and gave birth to what is now Frost*, one of the latest and most uncompromising prog-rock outfits with a flair for layering, excess and the wonders of post-production.

Think of it this way: If Rubber Soul/Revolver was the start of a kind of musical awakening, Milliontown is what happens 5 cups of coffee afterward. In my review for Liquid Tension Experiment I (my #47 pick), I refer to the album as an exercise in “showy virtuoso freakout,” and in a sense, you could file Milliontown into the same log. Where this album is a little different, though, is in its sense of self-awareness. Is it self-indulgent? Definitely. Pretentious? There will always be people who call prog pretentious. But because of Godfrey’s background in pop, it’s a bit more grounded, also—emotionally. It chooses its melodies carefully, digging deeply into each as if it were trying to find out exactly what could lie at their ultimate ends. This core keeps the piece from ever devolving into that masturbatory “so what” kind of prog, where the guitarist and keyboardist take turns showing off just how fast and technically they can solo. It proves that this frenetic, long-song model still can work, that the word “progressive”* in 2010 doesn’t have to mean “clinical.”

*I think it’s important to acknowledge that the word “progressive” is probably one of the most loosely defined terms in music. Like all labels, it really means nothing: ambition, experimentation, non-traditionalism. But bits of these qualities are/should be incorporated into all forms. And so “Prog” was born, a category for the hard-to-categorize that over time became known for, among other things, its complex compositions and electronic elements. So (sigh…) for my purposes, let’s call “Prog” anything that ignores traditional song structure and, in borrowing from other styles, endeavors to create something that might surprise people. It’s a stupid setup: Neutral Milk Hotel is “progressive,” but good luck getting anyone in the community to call it “Prog.”

There is definitely a part of Milliontown that understands that clichés are clichés for a reason and that there’s value in tradition. But then there’s another, more enthusiastic part that gets off on breaking the rules. And, really, it’s that latter quality which makes this, Frost*’s debut record, special.

In Case of Emergency, Prog

Maybe one of the coolest things about Frost* has little to nothing to do with listening to its albums. It’s “The Frost Report,” a video blog* chronicling almost every part of the band’s life cycle: Jem in his home studio, Jem trying out new keyboard accessories, Jem showing you how to use ProTools, Jem and the band on tour, recording, rehearsing, acting stupid and always, every second, swept up in the awe and energy of taking their hands and creating something with them that wasn’t there before.

*Does anybody really say “vlog”?

Funny, informative and often ridiculously random, “Reports” are a window into Frost*’s creative process and, to me, kind of define this Internet-powered modern age of music we’re in, where album teasers are the norm and artists are releasing EPs on iTunes the second after they finish mixing them. With “The Frost Report,” we’re literally welcomed inside Jem Godfrey’s home, where we watch as he builds, passage by passage, the music we’ll soon be keeping in our CD racks and iPods and cars. And almost more interestingly, we’re invited into the personality of that music, the band’s group dynamic and inside jokes—we even get to see the pride and excitement in them when they put together something nobody was expecting.

You couldn’t say this about a band 20 or 30 years ago. Back then, music was something else entirely, something that just… was. It wasn’t pieced together by real people like you and me; it was a kind of magic, mysterious and spinning. (Check out an article by Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson for a deeper discussion of this subject)

What I write about Milliontown today is completely different than what I would’ve written if I had no access to the faces behind the noise. Or, who knows, maybe I wouldn’t have written about it at all.*

*The Internet has made our relationship with music interactive. In as much as “The Frost* Reports” have enriched my experience with the band, you have to wonder if this kind of overexposure is always a good thing. For an album like Milliontown and a band like Frost*, I would say yes, absolutely—because part of the point of this band is to relish the prog “formula” and celebrate its spirit. But for other bands, genres, this might be a different story.

In one edition of the “Report,” Jem discusses his love of pop music and compares the genre to a family sedan. It’s safe, he says, rides smoothly, is accessible. But every now and then, he pauses, you just crave a sports car, something dangerous to climb inside and tear through the streets in to remind yourself that you’re alive. Prog is that sports car. And Milliontown is the kind of album that’s best appreciated under that pretense.

Without even trying, it’s one of the most insightful metaphors about the genre that you could make. I’m all for smooth acoustic plucking and lazy piano lines, but whether it’s the beautiful “Hyperventilate” opener, the intense“Black Light Machine” or the 26+min title track, listening to Milliontown and albums like it remind me why I love and how I fell in love with this medium. It’s the enthusiasm and curiosity of boundaries that gets me, qualities in music that should never, ever be considered “progressive.”
 
 
Listen/Watch:

“Frost Report,” Feb. ‘08, Writing Album 2, Experiments in Mass Appeal

CHECK OUT THE REST OF THIS WEEK’S REVIEWS HERE!

*Something to keep in mind: Order-wise, my list is pretty bunk. I try to stick to general sets but the fact remains that often I sacrifice where I’d really keep a certain album for the sake of better readability. St Anger, for example (my #50 pick), would really be closer to the top 30-20—but it’s a good opener, so I started with it. And Rubber Soul/Revolver? Well, suffice to say that A) there’s another Beatles’ album closer to the top, and B) thematically, they make sense here. So as a general rule, take my ordering semi-lightly. All for the greater contextual good.

Building the Bridge

As obscenely popular as The Beatles were through their first 5 or so LPs, it’s pretty inarguable that they’d have never become THE Beatles if not for the way they grew, evolved stylistically, thematically and tonally with the times. Records like Rubber Soul and Revolver aren’t just incredible pieces of work; they’re freeze-frames of a metamorphosis, documents of a startling and rare brand of becoming. Where Rubber Soul works as a testament to growth, Revolver jolts alive as one of awakening.

Listen to Rubber Soul and you get to witness the best band in the world mature, test out some darker shades of sarcasm and retrospect in their songwriting. This isn’t “Can’t Buy Me Love” or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand;” it’s a different and deeper kind of pop.

And then we have Revolver, where it’s almost like John, Paul, George & Ringo accepted the mantle, grew confident in the fact that they were the best band in the world—not just the most popular—and decided to start acting like it.

As a segue out of the 40s portion of my list, where everything’s pretty straight-up rock and nostalgia, there’s really no better albums I could pick to mark a shift into new territory. I love each of these records not only for what they symbolize musically, but also for their accessibility—which I could say about the entire Beatles discography (and is maybe even the greatest accomplishment of their later, more ambitious releases).

Look anywhere and you can find a thousand Beatles reviews far better and more knowledgeable than anything I could come up with here, but just think: this is a band that went from Please, Please Me (their debut) to Sgt. Pepper’s in only 4 years. You don’t have to be a muiscphile to appreciate how crazy that is. And to think it all started with Rubber Soul and Revolver.

If you’re young and love music, it’s all too easy to romanticize the 60s and 70s. Radio stations were filled with bold and creative bands, all high off of the styles and forms they were making up as they went along. The charts were stacked with the likes of Crimson, Hendrix, Floyd, The Beatles. And there was an urgency and life to all of this—albums were produced faster and with less in mind about selling singles and more about contributing something new and worthy of airplay.

It’s just fascinating to me, the culture of change and discovery, that one minute everyone can be listening to an album like Rubber Soul and have absolutely no idea that the next they’d be assaulted by something like the White Album, or Are You Experienced?, or In the Court of Crimson King. Nobody could guess what a band’s next release would sound like because groups were taking risks it wouldn’t make sense to take if they were spending multiple years and countless dollars on every new piece and page of their catalog. Music was used for things back then that it’s hard to even imagine it could be used for now, because everything was exploding, breeding as much as being bred by everything else. The age of enlightenment had begun, and The Beatles were as much a product of it as they were the catalyst.

About a Revolution…

Don’t be fooled, the Beatles Revolution didn’t start with Lennon in a white suit and beard, singing about peace and universal love. It started as a group of kids with hair past their ears, getting so popular that they had room to literally do anything they wanted to.

Revolver has the band so much in their creative element, complete with horns, strings and a perfect dash of Eastern influence, that at the time, I’m sure, it was clear that this wasn’t at all the same foursome that everyone had fallen in love with just 3 years earlier when they hit the States. Which isn’t to say they weren’t still sweet: McCartney has some of his best ballad work in Revolver, with “Here, There and Everywhere,” “Got to Get You Into My Life” and the amazing “For No One.”

Where the album really shines, though, is in defying expectation, creating one of the most eclectic albums I’ve, to this day, ever heard*.  A record with tracks like the textural and haunting “Eleanor Rigby” set next to one’s like Harrison’s sitar-driven “Love You To” really shouldn’t work—and it almost definitely wouldn’t in any less capable hands.

*Both albums have weak points, sure, but if you steer clear of the Ringo tracks—Revolver’s insufferable “Yellow Submarine” and the mediocre-at-best “What Goes On” in Rubber Soul—you’ll be hard-pressed to find any.

It’s a funny thing, deeming a 60’s timepiece as “modern.” These albums were recorded and released more than 30 years ago and, though I view Rubber Soul a little differently, I can’t help but see Revolver as an album that will always, always stay relevant. It’s a point to aspire to, and as long as any piece of work holds up a certain element of surprise or mystique, it will always be new.

But, this is The Beatles. You know this band, these albums and these tracks. The best I can do is outline a perspective and pretend that what I’m saying is novel. It’s not. And that’s exactly because these records are that good.
 
 
Listen:

CHECK OUT THE REST OF THIS WEEK’S REVIEWS HERE!

Andy’s only a year younger than me and I get a serious s kick out of how annoyed he gets when instead of his name I call him “Junior” and “Squirt” and “Sport” and “Tiger.” He’s from Missouri and it’s our new tradition that every year he come to Florida to spend a couple weeks in Palm Coast, to hang out with my brother and me and Matt Clay and Jose, who we affectionately refer to Our Puerto Rican Friend Jose. Or Joselito. Depending on the context.

Chris and I are still young, probably 17 and 15 at the oldest, and it’s not that we’re introducing Andy to anything esoteric or weird. It’s more that where he’s from—the in-the-middle-of-nowhere chunk of rural land just outside of St Louis called Hillsboro, where he races dirt bikes and has to travel 20 minutes to the nearest grocery—he’s used to listening to country and a bit of rap. So the radio rock we send him back home with, usually, seems pretty new.

Metallica, Trust Company, Van Halen, A Perfect Circle—these were all in the rotation at one time or another. But this year, it’s Ozzy, and we’ve been playing a lot of “Over the Mountain” and “Mr. Crowley” and “Flying High Again” to set the mood.

When it came to full albums, though, the only ones we ever really committed to were Ozzmosis and Down to Earth—probably because of their 1995 and 2001 release dates. That was right around the time “The Prince of Darkness” became a regular in the Cavaliere spin cycle.

Everybody likes to bring up the “bat head” episode when Ozzy comes up in conversation but for me, I guess you just had to be there. I never cared much about the “evil Ozzy” theatrics, probably because I wasn’t alive yet for most of them. Instead, I was floored by the idea that Sabbath had fired this guy and how he ended up being one of the most iconic figures in the history of rock, ever, a “godfather of heavy metal.” When I came around, the Ozzy I knew was harmless, funny even. He had his own reality show with his wife and kids; he was getting old and holding onto his art for dear, dear life; and he was making self-demystification albums like Down to Earth* and Ozzmosis, a piece, unlike Down to Earth, that I can’t help but label a career benchmark.

*The opening lyrics of Down to Earth are: “I’m not the kind of person you think I am / I’m not the antichrist or the Iron Man”

With surprisingly graceful instrumentation by guest musicians Zakk Wylde and Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, Rob Trujillo of Metallica, Steve Vai and ex-David Lee Roth guitarist Joe Holmes, and keyboards by Yes’ Rick Wakeman, the album is as emotional—even sometimes to the point of being “pretty”—as it is hardcore and flat-out cool. Where Down to Earth sometimes forces the whole “I’ve grown up” theme, Ozzmosis seems comfortable to let it speak for itself. The album is good because it almost seems unaware of its blossomed maturity, not losing the edge that bands often misplace when they realize they’re not kids anymore.

I don’t expect everyone to be into music like Ozzy’s. In fact, I might go so far to say that, to really appreciate him, in some way you had to have been bred on his sound, indoctrinated on it, almost. My indoctrination was hearing his unlikely (read: really kinda bad… like a fox) rock voice playing in the CD player of my first car. It was playing digital files of it that I’d downloaded on AOL at 56k. It was having it on in the background while Andy, Chris, Mattclay and I laid around on couches and carpet in the middle of lazy summer days playing “What do you wanna do?”

What you definitely don’t have to grow up with to appreciate, though, is Ozzy’s spirit. After being canned from one of the biggest rock groups in the world, ruining himself on drugs to the point of becoming a public laughing stock; after he begins mumbling, stuttering instead of talking and taking tiny, cautious steps around the house like an old man, he still had enough life to try the reinvention thing. And Down to Earth in 2001 wasn’ t his final encore, either; in just a couple months he’ll be releasing yet another solo album, called Scream. He’s 62 years old.

Good or bad, fan or not, Ozzy’s Ozzy for a reason. He may have made his bones on buckets of blood and black trench coats, but albums like Ozzmosis prove that there’s real artistry there, an understanding that with enough belief in the form, hard rock can serve a thousand purposes at once, be the goddess or the whore, defile as swiftly as it can save. And if you’re still not convinced, you’ve at least got to give it to him for, if nothing else, being one of the most enduring figures in rock n’ roll—warts and all.
 
 
Listen:

Honorary Mention(s): Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill; Weezer – Blue Album

Between Hootie, Third Eye, Green Day and now Ozzy, maybe I should just call it a day, add “The Macarena” to the 40s portion of my list and give it the title it really deserves: Honorary 90s Nostalgia List.

As such, no nostalgia reel would be complete without mention of the two albums above. About Weezer, I’ll just say that it should be mentioned. “My Name is Jonas” was not a song I took lightly in 3^rd grade. About Alanis, I’ll say that for a while Jagged Little Pill had a legit spot on my list but was, unfortunately, sidelined for space. Since its release all those years ago, I’ve still to find few, few female musicians who earn their keep the way Alanis does in this album. It works not only because her voice is so incredible and the crazy ways she manipulates it are so consistently cool; but mostly, it works as a testament to anger. Becoming indignant can be a huge part of the grief/coping/”moving on” process, and in case you’re too afraid to get there yourself, Jagged Little Pill has enough venom in it to go around. “All I Really Want” and “You Oughta Know” stand as awesome proof of that.

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*Sorry about the delay in posting this week. A last-minute change to the order of my list moved what was going to be this week’s pick way into the future. But I’m like the mailman, ladies and gentlemen, delivering witty and creative bits of autobiographical criticism through rain, sleet, snow, or numerical indecision. Because that’s my job. And you depend on it.

Everything I knew about early rock I learned from my Uncle Jimmy. He was a New Yorker in his 20s when my brother and I were little and just happy to be there, up north where the grass felt different and it might actually snow for Christmas. He loved horror movies, always owned the latest Madden and hockey game and would play them with us under the alias “The Master.” He’d take us to the movies, Mets games. He’d play Wiffle ball with us in the backyard, had a German Shepherd named after Charles Haley, sung in a band and rocked a haircut that would now be recognized as a “mullet,” but then was a “perm” (but just try getting him to admit that).

Uncle Jim was the kind of guy you’d imitate and look forward to hanging out with. Even though he was so much older than us, he’d go out of his way to spend time with Chris and I, almost like he actually wanted to, like he actually “got” us. In his bedroom closet there was a bottle of tequila with a worm resting curled and fuzzy at the bottom; pinned to a cork board over his desk, a picture of a topless blonde lying on the beach. When we got a little older, he told us about the first time he got caught drinking cheap beer underage by his friend’s dad who sighed and said something like, “If you’re gonna do this, at least use the good stuff”—then handed them some Budweiser. Then about the signal one of his friends came up with that meant his parents were gone for the night and it was prime to party: he’d turn on the Christmas lights that were kept up year-round outside his house.

We always looked up to Uncle Jimmy. So it’s no surprise that when he introduced my brother and me to Van Halen in his car one day—probably while he was taking us to ice cream or to Modell’s to pick up a stickball bat for the schoolyard—of course we loved it.

You can cite a million things in records like 1984 and Van Halen to appreciate, and considering the fame and reputation of this band, a million past reviewers already have. It’s Van Halen—not exactly the most original pick for a Top Whatever list, I admit. But for me, it isn’t so much how insane Eddie is on guitar or how perfect a presence David Lee Roth projects that makes these records special. It’s the balls-out, tongue-in-cheek showmanship that gets me.

Van Halen (not Van Hagar!) epitomized the culture of excess that defines so many avenues of rock n’ roll. I think of their music the same as I do professional wrestling, what with DLR gracing the stage in his flowing mane and trademark tights with no shirt, jumping from the drum platform to pull off mid-air splits, Eddie turning away from the crowd at shows when he’d solo to build mystique, and song after song that were as much about jokes as they were kicking your ass (“Ice Cream Man” comes to mind, a tune about sex [go figure] that starts soft and bluesy with Roth, like a jackass, “dedicating one to the ladies” then blows up to remind you it’s a rock song).

Van Halen’s music with David Lee Roth was nothing short of the sound of pure enthusiasm, a kind of unbridled creative delight it’s doubtful we’ll ever see again in the mainstream circuit. A group today just couldn’t get away with what VH did back then. They were new and untouchable and, like so many great bands, a representation of their decade.

Disco? Uncle Jimmy didn’t want to listen to disco, the 70s were over—and the release of 1984 made him 13 years old and so ready to try out what breaking the rules felt like. When he’d see his buddy’s Christmas lights on and head over there for some good old fashioned American underage drinking, he wanted to do it with something playing in the background that would make him feel like even more of a badass than the illegal beverage hanging from his fingers did. He wanted something he could imitate, hang a poster of on his bedroom wall and call his own.

He found that in Van Halen, which made it no wonder when he chose “Panama” to be the song he’d walk out to at his wedding reception nearly 20 years later, when he and his wife would be presented as a “Mr. and Mrs.” for the very first time. He walked out with his new bride Anna, with whom he now has two girls, and he pumped his fist in the air as everyone clapped for them. The music was blaring and they were smiling and perfect in that moment, ecstatic to be leaping into life the way they were, like madmen dressed in tights, jumping from the highest platform they could find and never once dreaming of closing their eyes. Because the age of humility was over. And if you blinked, you might miss something awesome.
 
 
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The first CD I ever bought was a cassette.

I‘m not sure why this is; by the time of Dookie’s release in 1994, CDs had been the standard for years. I even distinctly remember having a CD setup in the house. It was my dad’s, a multidisc changer connected to an ancient silver tank receiver and two wood-paneled cabinet speakers.  Christmas music would blast in a constant loop out of it during the Season; I even remember shuffling through my parents lot of jewel cases lined in a cheap black plastic pull-out drawer, just staring at cover art—Michael Jackson leaning on an elbow in his signature white suit, all the Chicago albums that were impossible to differentiate since they were numbered instead of named and rarely had pictures on the front.

But I was buying tapes, not because I was a purist but more because of this awesome yellow Walkman I had that you could use underwater just by snapping shut a gray clasp on its side. I never used it like that, of course, but I could if I wanted to, which is more than I could say about your Walkman.

Regardless, with my parents’ money I picked up Dookie along with tapes of REM’s Monster and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet. Even at 8 years old I appreciated an inscrutable dose of eclecticism.

15 years later and I have to admit that Green Day isn’t a band that I necessarily love. But when constructing a list of not 10 or 20 but 50 of the most important albums in your life, there are bound to be a few like this, a few automatics that sort of “are what they are” but would leave the list incomplete if they weren’t on it. For me, Dookie and Insomniac (a kind of Dookie II in my mind) are perennials. They’re the two albums in my collection that have been there the longest, through phases and fads, new schools and bigger CD racks. And there aren’t many I can say have endured all that—most albums from this far “back in the day” at one point or another made the walk of shame into the nethers of my “Rejects” pile, a dried out Ziplock in the glove compartment of my car where I keep all the discs I don’t listen to enough to store in my binder.

Green Day was always a band you could relate to, the one group it seemed nobody disliked. Their early stuff was simple enough—not a lot of light bulbs or surprises there—but maybe that was part of what made it so alluring. You always knew what you were getting with these guys: they played fast, were bitter and loud, and Billy Joe even sounded like he was right around your age.

There may not be much obvious depth to Dookie or Insomniac, but these are two records that deserve their due. With them, Green Day more or less revitalized the mainstream punk-rock sensibility, made absolutely no bones about filling their tracklists with two-minute explosions of songs, spawned a ton of imitators, and did it with a sense of genuine adolescent wisdom and even, dare I say, a glimmer of emotion. Both of those things are especially evident in tracks like “Coming Clean” (the post-puberty thrasher), “Sassafras Roots” (the pseudo love ballad) and “Stuart and the Ave.” (the ”destiny is dead in the hands of bad luck” contemplation) . Plus, “When I Come Around” still sometimes plays in my head as a kind of muscle memory when I ride my bike around the block of my hometown. And Insomniac ‘s album art is still one of my gut favorites ever.

I even feel like I grew up with this band a bit, maturing in middle school when they released and I rocked to Warning in 2000.

In their own way, Green Day seemed like pioneers, a sign of the times incarnate that walked with us through elementary, middle and high school, playing the part of yet another generation’s indignant and jaded moral compass. “Good Riddance” played as my graduation song in middle school, for God’s sake, as it probably did for hundreds of other schools across the country (And I bet none of the administrators or parents ever even pegged the sentimentality in it for sarcasm; it was our little secret).

Push comes to shove, I don’t think Green Day’s influence ever physically manifested itself in me but somehow, it was always nice to know it was there. Despite the attitude of their early work, it served in a way I never quite recognized back then as a sort of reminder that we kids weren’t totally alone in this whole “strung out on confusion” thing that they call growing up.

But that didn’t mean we couldn’t still be pissed about it.
 
 
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*It was really tough this time picking just a couple songs to attach here, so I went mostly w/ hits. Do yourself a favor and revisit these albums in full if it’s been awhile. Hopefully these couple are just the push you need.

Runner-up: Bush – Sixteen Stone

What amps up the head-scratchery in this whole cassette mystery is the fact that Sixteen Stone came out the same year as Dookie, and I owned that, too… on CD. Let me use this space to say that I do little to no research before writing just about anything, and if I follow a misremembered thread of memory because I think it might make for a better story, well, that doesn’t bother me. So lay off, okay? They’re my memories.

As for Sixteen Stone, you know this album, everybody knows this album—what’s to say? Gavin Rossdale’s throaty rock voice. “Everything’s Zen.” “Glycerine.” Bush’s dirty, distorted sound tinged with the just perfect dash of metal angst. “Machine Head.” “Comedown.” This album is stacked and couldn’t be more 90s if it tried.

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“I hope this letter finds you well”

I really can’t say exactly what it is about The Moon is Down that draws me in the way it does. Maybe it’s the beach imagery, the romantic “fling” glorification or the general sense of urgency with which the record comes alive. But whenever I listen, there’s this indefinable visceral reaction I get; and it doesn’t just boil inside of me, it erupts.

The closest thing to “emo” (whatever that means) in my CD collection, Further Seems Forever’s debut release (and only with Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba) isn’t just a series of love songs and angst ballads. It’s a document of summer, an autobiography of a youth spent on the coast that’s told in flashes and bursts, lustful sweeps of electric melancholy and guitars that chug and drive and yearn, trying their hardest to echo like so many memories.

A Boca Raton native, Carrabba’s got a thing for the beach. And it’s not just here—Dashboard has more than its fair share of nods to the beautiful way that weather, seasons and the coast can break your heart. The most obvious of these is probably D/C’s Dusk and Summer album, which pictures Carrabba on the front cover, standing in the glow of a Florida shoreline just before nightfall, looking both intensely fulfilled and perfectly miserable. This is his home, Carrabba, and I imagine it’s where almost everything worth remembering in his life happened to him.

There’s a frantic sense of that in the Moon is Down, a sense that surrounded by this force, the force of the familiar, the ocean can either be infinitely comforting or hopelessly depressing. It can wrap its arms around you or leave you tiny in the sand, alone to ponder just how quickly it could swallow you up if it wanted to.

Because of how popular (and annoyingly controversial) Dashboard is, it’s hard not to read The Moon is Down from a Chris Carrabba angle. But for me that’s part of its magic. It’s like hearing a bare bones acoustic version of a song that’s all distortion and drum fills. It can sometimes be revelatory.

The Carrabba most people are familiar with is raw and sentimental, strumming away at his acoustic six-string while slowly drowning in a kind of hyper sensitivity that, if you look close enough, shockingly resembles Total Honesty*. It’s the Dashboard M.O. So when you fill it out, filter it through anger and speed and strip it of its sweetness, it makes for a strange and interesting game of Could’a Been.

*I think Sarah Vowell was right in This American Life when she said that the break-up lyrics that always ring the most genuine, are the most utterly pitiful ones. I also think Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree is dead on that the saddest songs are often the most beautiful.

And maybe that’s where the mood I love so much in this piece comes from: that mixed bag quality of swirling the colors of garage emo-rock, capable lyricism and Carrabba’s gravity together to make something that kicks and tears, but never feels abrasive. Maybe that adds to the ”postcard of youth” factor, too—the “young townies” out at night, one minute in love with their “long forgotten beach town” and the ships offshore that they’d make stories for with girls, and the next feeling strangled by it, when the girls leave for summer and the sea transforms into a symbol for nothing more than miles and space.

“Always remember the sound of the stereo”

What’s interesting is how, for Carrabba, all of the most intense emotions seem inextricably tied up and fused with setting. Love, summer, heartache, the lifeguard stand—every aspect of each object and memory in his songwriting bounces shades off the others. Look at “So Long, So Long” from Dusk and Summer, a love letter in the purest sense of the word to Florida’s coast in the middle months, told from the perspective of someone leaving town and watching as he drives away the beach run across his car window like the beam from an aging film projector.

Ideas are so wound up into one in this track that it sometimes seems impossible to know when one reference starts and another begins.

“I drive this ocean road

And remember (the small of your back, nape of your neck, I remember everything)

As I drive. I’m waving this town goodbye”

Though “So Long, So Long” has got to be Carrabba at his most direct with the beach/love/home dynamic, The Moon is Down is him at his most consistent. Even in the songs that don’t scream “FLORIDA” it’s always clear that it’s there, whispering light static somewhere past the trees and in the background. The shoreline isn’t just a theme here, it’s a living, breathing character. It doesn’t speak or act, necessarily, but it looms, casting holy or ominous shadows over all the words and actions happening around it.

There’s value in all of this, though—at least for Carrabba there is. With albums like The Moon is Down, it’s clear, home is Home as much because of the painful things that happened there as the peaceful ones. The most important moments we have, it tells us, are simply the ones worth remembering. You have to embrace all of it, or else one day you might look up and the sea will just be lying there stagnant, a meaningless pool of filth and ripples.

Like so many of Carrabba’s themes, the whole of The Moon is Down is leagues greater than the sum of its parts. This isn’t something that was planned, I’m sure, but it shines through in mood, becoming a record with a genuine sense of history shoved inside its scattered images. The little things literally become the big things here, a sentiment that’s echoed often in Carrabba’s work and perfectly in the title track of Dashboard’s Dusk and Summer.

He sings:

“Some things tie your life together

In slender threads of things to treasure

Days like that should last, and last, and last.”

And so they do.
 
 
Listen:

Dashboard Confessional: “So Long, So Long”

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In it, these two overweight wannabe rockers (Jack Black & Kyle Gas) crammed themselves into a mall’s karaoke booth, rigged it into a recording studio and sung about an impromptu jam they once wrote that just so happened to be the best song in the world. Granted, they couldn’t exactly remember how it went, but that didn’t matter—this was a tribute. And really, “greatest and best song in the world”? That was just a matter of opinion, anyway.

Needless to say, after discovering this treasure the D became my new favorite thing. I bought their album, ate up concert videos and their short-lived HBO sitcom from which most of the material on the CD originated, became well versed in all things Jack Black and, honestly—no joke—began seeing rock music a little differently.

You see, “Tribute” isn’t the only piece in the D’s illustrious canon that’s commemorating something. Their whole debut album, every track, it’s as much a love letter to Dio, Maiden, Sabbath and the self-important, animalistic, bombastic life of rock n’ roll as it is a mockery of those things. “Kielbasa” and “Double Team” are about sex and how good (and uninhibited) sex can be with rock stars; “The Road” is the obligatory woes-of-touring track; “Kyle Quit the Band” covers inter-band rivalries and casts Black as the abusive and temperamental lead; “Explosivo” makes little to no sense but starts with an a cappella number about weed then erupts into directionless ass-kicking; “Fuck Her Gently” shows off the guys’ softer side; and then there’s “City Hall,” the social reform epic.

It’s all here: Drugs, Sex, and obscene amounts of Rock n’ Roll. There’s even a jab at the soulless state of modern radio in “One Note Song,” where Jack excitedly calls Kyle in to listen a tune he just wrote that consists of nothing more than steady monotone plucks on the same string–except with “bendies” thrown in every 3 or 4 plucks to liven things up.

“But it’s one note,” Kyle deadpans. “Anybody could’a wrote it.”

“But guess who did write it,” Black fires back. “Me, baby. Me!”

Utterly brilliant.

What transforms Jack and Kyle’s “effort” into “opus” here is, aside from the fact that it’s hilarious and completely observant of its genre, these guys really do have serious talent. “If Kyle’s fingers be silver, Jack’s voice, then, be gold”—and really, seriously, they both are. Kyle Gas is as adept a guitarist as they come in any band—folk-parody duo or otherwise; and Jack Black can really, really sing. Then for good measure they throw Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nivana) on the drums, and what we get is an album that works on a surprising amount of levels*.

*Try not to sing along to “Rock Your Socks;” try not to bang your head to “Explosivo;” try not to at least giggle to “Friendship Test,” when Jack sheepishly tells Kyle that he loves him, only to shy away and pretend that it was a only test when Kyle doesn’t reciprocate. “Whoa-ho-HO, man!” he laughs, “Wh-wha-what happened before, when I said I love you—that was a test. …Because, man, I could’a made a total ass of myself!”

These are a couple of guys who truly do love and revere rock music, but they have sense of humor enough to acknowledge the big joke of it all, and enough talent to squeeze a small place for themselves inside its canon. Sure, they could lose a few pounds and add some *actual* sex appeal to their dynamic—but then the jokes wouldn’t be half as funny. Relentless self-aggrandizing hits hardest when you’re bald and out of shape, climbing onto an Open Mic Night stage to shred on the ax and point out in the crowd all of the possible “Backstage Betties” you’re considering hooking up with after the show.

When I was initially structuring my Top 50, it didn’t immediately occur to me to include the D’s 21-track masterwork. I mean, it isn’t even really an “album” in the traditional sense of the word. It’s an album in as much as something like “The Jerky Boys” or Adam Sandler’s “What the Hell Happened to Me!” are albums—more comedy than music. So where’s the line? Then it struck me: “album” or not, the D, and “What the Happened to Me!”, equally cracked me up at different stages of my life (remember the talking goat sketch? And of course the old cockn’balls standby.). And just as much as any of my other picks, they’re both completely steeped in context. I remember when I was little I would only listen to Adam Sandler albums when my parents weren’t around, with the volume turned low at sleepovers or when they’d leave for groceries or walks. And when I was dating my first girlfriend, for months I was embarrassed to rock the D in front of her. But what it really comes down to here is that Jack and Kyle took a gimmick and mastered it: the loser rock gods, the fat guys strapped with acoustic guitars, thanking Ronnie James Dio for all he’s taught them, then announcing that he’s “too old to rock” and that it’s time he gave his “cape and scepter” to their new rightful owners. I can never stop loving that.

In The Pick of Destiny, Tenacious D’s origin story and biopic, Jack Black makes a guy’s head explode from the sheer, raw power of his rock. Then he apologizes, seamlessly turning it into the very next verse in his and Kyle’s song.

Nonchalant and unsympathetic, he sings:

“Sorry

I did not mean to blow your mind

But that shit happens to me all the time.”

If you can find me a more unabashedly rock n’ roll lyric in anything in the history of rock n’ roll, good God… no doubt, my head will be next.
 
 
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