Blogging on Meds

Since all digital music is free now I’ll steal and check out pretty much anything. Sometimes I’ll have a really guilty curiously like an Unkle song with Ian Astbury contributing vocals, other times I just want to know my enemy and will download the latest blogtastic pile of shit to know what I hate. It’s a great way to waste time at work and all your embarrassment is safely tucked away on a hard drive, no harm no foul. Googling the name of those curious but mostly disappointing reunion records and the word “mediafire” is your best friend. This piracy technique was the reason I actually heard Dinosaur Jr.’s most recent record, Beyond. Barring the weird song with the semi-White Zombie riff it was surprisingly good. Unfortunately when you have seven billion mp3s good = forgettable and ends up just sitting somewhere never to be heard again. Going to see Dinosaur Jr. now expensive and the equivalent of a high school reunion. Everyone is doughy and tragic. Spending hundreds of dollars for a nostalgia trip is tempting at times but not for Gray Mascis 2008. There are better alternatives in this sketchy economy.

A few weeks ago I spotted a 7″ at Academy Records in Williamsburg from Sleepwall. The description read “really awesome new band like Dinosaur Jr. and early Built To Spill check it out!”. I love record store descriptions, they’re operating on some fucked up elementary school lunch room trade psychology like “Hey man I’ll trade you this really awesome apple for your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups because apples are SO good”. I’m usually not swayed but who the fuck sounds like Dinosaur Jr. these days and $5.00 is an afforadble gamble. Everything I read tells me that people are really trying to be fiscally responsible so the economically concerned part of my brain, which usually fails me, decided that Sleepwall was an undervalued stock and that they were just the type of opportunity you need to jump on in a down market.

Door opens, top comes off the record player, vinyl removed from paper sleeve, glance at the layout for clues, throw on the A-side, wait for the static to turn to guitars and so it begins. Wait a fucking second, there’s a legit Dino-ish riff struggling to get out of the tiny speakers on my portable record player followed by a catchy vocal line and a very driving song. Right after the first spin I give it another spin to make sure I wasn’t hoodwinked, nope this is the real deal. Clips of Neil Blender flash through the space over my beard but I’m not seeing long stringy hair, Fender Jazzmasters and washes of green and purple. Sleepwall has a modern feel despite the similarities in their sound to late 80s/early 90s indie rock. I go back into the caverns in my brain and go “wait if I heard this in the early 90s would I just think it was average, there was a lot of power poppy shit then.” My brain then called me a fucking pussy and said “What the fuck is wrong with you dickhead? Who gives a shit about the early 90s when you wore corduroy and were obsessed with indie rock, you were a freshmen 15 years ago you fucking loser”.

Photograph by : Eric Schwortz - http://www.iamtheeric.com

My brain was totally right as it usually is when it’s critiquing the manifestation of it’s thoughts, it’s weird like that, thanks brain. The beauty of the world today is that a web search can then provide you with all the info you need about a band. I was nervous because Sleep and Wall are really common words and I didn’t want to bring up a bunch of shit about Ambien and Carpentry but I was quickly directed to their Myspace page. My next bit of info was that they were from Long Island and Brooklyn, which instantly made me like them more because they’re local, and they’re young so that makes me like them even more because it sucks to only be surrounded by old dudes as washed up as yourself. Digging through pictures I notice that of the Sleepwallers is wearing a Cro-Mags shirt, and I recognize the other cat….something is familiar about this. Further inspection left me with these details : other people dug Sleepwall and felt that they were Dino Jr.-ish, some of the dudes were in Hardcore bands and everyone that wrote about them on the interweb dug them.

Photograph by : Eric Schwortz - http://www.iamtheeric.com

So I am not going to mention J’s band anymore because they really only have a super Dino vibe on one track, everything else including the Is This Factual Ep is riffy power pop that sounds very much rooted in Indie Rock. Not the iTunes genre Indie Rock, Indie Rock as in I’m Lou Barlow, I have floppy hair, I suck at getting chicks, I used to be into fast hardcore but now I smoke weed and really dig fuzzed out pop songs. The infectiously catchy yet twisted pop of Bobby Pollard, the sound of lo-fi recordings, lo-fi beer and lo-fi cigarettes. That is the best shit. Remember when you first discovered this type of music and you wanted to get anything that remotely sounded like that? Anything that remotely fit the description of power poppy indie rock would be consumed from Archers of Loaf and Polvo to Overwhelming Colorfast and Fluf . Every record, tape and CD out there on SST, CRUZ, Merge or whatever label might contain a song that perfectly summed up how you felt about being a semi-burned out 90s guy and would occupy your brain on a loop making you feel invincible even at your lowest. The hottest chick on earth could spit at you but if Web In Front is blasting in your head who-gives-a-fuck! Thanks Indie Rock.

Sleepwall are young, focused and promising, if you’re a douche you’ve got reservations because of the Cro-Mags shirt. I’ll tell you this, it’s not ironic and who better to be playing music like this than dudes transitioning from music with mosh parts than hardcore dudes with good taste? That’s who the fuck formed Indie Rock in the first place so stop pretending you have any clue what the fuck you’re talking about and enjoy a great new band. Bass player Joe Cristando is probably Italian so I already love him, he bought some shit in a blizzard during my estate sale which is super nice and then he hooked me up with a sampling of their tracks. That’s extreme bro status right there instantly. They’re working on songs for an LP with Jason Lowenstein from Sebadoh which promise to up the ante of their mopey but hopefully infectious guitar pop. All the elements of great power pop are there : guitars are notey and jangly but with enough crunch to avoid sounding flat. The vocals are simple, catchy and delivered with a perfect cadence, the rhythm section is steady and solid and they sound like good friends that have been itching to do this for a hot second. Come In From The Cold is wedged in my head between Hyper Enough and Second Chance. Nice Company! Download it ,

buy their 7″, befriend them virtually and check them live if you are near these spots :

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Playing “rock” music is dangerous. Not like “yeah bro fuckin’ Altamont!” dangerous, dangerous in the sense that more often than not when you see 4-5 people aligned on stage with the standard guitar, drums, bass, vocals set up they are going to be douches. The rock format has become a career choice, a lottery ticket where the right combo of numbers can lead to fame, fortune and an airbrushed photo on the cover of Alternative Press.

Seeing Deerhunter last night at the newly opened Le Poisson Rouge on Bleeker Street in Manhattan reminded me that some bands can execute rock music with precision, dignity and skill. Deerhunter go about their business with little bravado but heaps of enthusiasm and an “awww shucks” innocence that sucks you in. Led by Bradford Cox who resembles a deflated life-sized Thurston Moore balloon (No disrepsect to dude and his condition, it’s just a description) Deerhunter leaks tracks almost daily through their blog sometimes with well documented tragic results. If you haven’t found their music for free yet you suck at the internet. Cox’ internet persona is often difficult, volatile and a bit troubled but live he’s engaging. His banter is playful and honest without pretense, charming when it succeeds “The only french I know are Stereolab lyrics” (in reference to the club’s french name) and cringe worthy when he fails “So you guys here in New York are into pop songs and the avant garde right? That’s a real New York thing right?”. He’s cute even when failing, he’s not a nerd with too much swagger trying to mask that he’s a geek, he’s just having a conversation with a few hundred people.

Beginning with the blog only hit Cavalry Scars, soon to be released on Weird Era Cont., Deerhunter showed why their pulsing brand of shoegaze tinged pop is so infectious. Alternating between the springy psychedelic pop of Cryptograms and the Fluorescent Grey Ep and the stripped down drive of Microcastle, they hit every fan favorite. There was a glowing omission of the track Strange Lights that everyone wished to hear and as psychically requested it appeared in an amped up, washed out haze state that ended the encore.

It’s Bradford’s blogging and appearance that get the most attention but Deerhunter’s rhythm section is what grounds the band and acts as their stealth secret weapon. Moses Archuleta is a steady and precise drummer, the one you wish the dude in your band was. There are two types of drummers : those who worship Dave Grohl and his “sick” fills and those who actually play the drums. With his emphasis on anchoring the songs Moses eschews steroided out self-fellating avalanche fills and keeps the focus on the song. Josh Fauver strums out catchy often Kraut Rock leaning bass lines. His presence on stage is entertaining. His syncopated pogoing and Madchester head lean make you imagine him plucking along to “I Am The Resurrection” in a teenage bedroom, dirty socks and homework discarded on the floor for the love of the beat. The back drop has changed for Josh but the mood hasn’t, even in a zebra striped all-over-print shirt that looks like it hung in a Polish boutique in Greenpoint, Josh looks cool, not cocky cool, fun cool. With Fauver and Archuleta steering the ship the waves of sound can crash, expand, splash and soar in any direction without sounding messy.

Deerhunter continues to surprise and deliver. Microcastle’s tight structures and craft contrast the hiss and experimentation of Weird Era Cont. but they are both Deerhunter. With so many bands afraid to deviate from their formula to ensure the merch money and crowds don’t dwindle it’s nice to know Deerhunter doesn’t give a fuck. They’ve taken down the wall between band and audience through their whole presentation and interaction. The worst they can do is fail your ears for a few minutes only to have a new crop of sounds loaded in their barrel ready to explode.

Full set list below :

Calvary Scars
It Never Stops
Spring Hall Convert
Dr. Glass
Hazel St.
Saved By Old Times
Operation
Fluorescent Grey
Nothing Ever Happened

BREAK

Bradford played drums, some dude did some shitty scat thing that wasn’t funny.
They played some grindcore …it had a mosh part.
Intro (as in Microcastle)
Agoraphobia
Strange Lights

This dude took the pictures I used, thanks man.

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Earlier this week the Walkmen headlined Bowery Ballroom a few times and Fox News New York realized it was prime opportunity to conduct an awkward interview and have a “local” band perform on a blindingly bright stage. You can check it here because the vid isn’t embeddable, watching Walkmen melancholy collide with newscaster enthusiasm is a treat. It’s moments like this that you realize how amazing the brain of a newscaster really is. If you’re interviewing the Walkmen on television you might take a second to familiarize yourself with the new album they’re promoting and ask a question that would evoke more than a one word answer. That’s probably what you or I would do because we like things other than ourselves but for a blond spazzy news anchor it’s not the case. Instead they opt to ask questions that usually occur on a mismatched blind date delivered with clunky faux-energy from a vapid stare that screams “Fucking kill me, I am completely devoid of any thoughts more complex than ‘does my hair look ok?”‘. It’s kind of awesome

So yes back to the Walkmen’s new album You & I which you can purchase for $5.00 on Amie Street. You can feel good about your purchase because you didn’t steal the record like I did and you’re donating money to a good cause :

“All donations go to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in honor of Luca Vasallo, a friend to the band and a current patient who is seven months old and doing a great job fighting a very difficult disease,” said Peter Bauer of The Walkmen. “This is a very good organization that certainly deserves the attention.”

After cutting and pasting that I kind of felt like a shit bag so I decided I would legitmately buy the album. It’s a good cause and it’s nice to see a band realize that their music isn’t this precious commodity that can only retail for $17.99 so they can fund extravagant lunches for record executives and never get paid their royalties. But upon going to the site the record was $8.98 and there was no mention of any dontations so I guess I missed the boat. I’ll investigate because the Walkmen kind of made me feel like I stole quarters from a donation jar at Dunkin Donuts or something.

The album is a nice nod back to what the Walkmen do best which is play a unique brand of guitar based music that pulls from a huge canon of influences shaping a sound which is somber, aggressive, atmospheric, new and old all at once. It’s incredibly uncool to praise the Walkmen as they were part of that post 9/11 New York boom where even the Liars (yeah the Liars) inked major label deals and the sound of affordable Williamsburg Lofts was going to be the soundtrack to the new America. I’m fairly sure all this yielded was that super annoying Yeah Yeah Yeah’s song where Karen O’Shit cries in the video and sounds like Gwen Stefani with herpes…oh and the cut out bins were robust with the next-big thing so Marvelous 3 and Dishwalla got some company from their cousins in Brooklyn.

The Walkmen are much different, they got a little too Dylan and a little too ambitious with the horns on their last album A Hundred Miles Off but they’ve always managed to have their own shimmery sound that hits on something real. Live they successfully fuse the control and command of the all-American rock band with the urgency of classic American hardcore. Hamilton isn’t doing flips like HR but the first time I heard The Rat live I knew this wasn’t a bunch of douches up there trying to fellate themselves, they really meant what they were doing and had an energy that said more than “Hey we’re cute guys in cute clothes and we’ll hit on your girlfriend while you’re taking a piss because we’re amazing!”.

Maybe the reason the Walkmen aren’t cool is because they are a very personal band, many of the songs sound like scotch-soaked tales of disappointment swapped between old friends. The vintage equipment and gentle tape hiss that marks all the Walkmen’s recordings conjures up that tragic tone of a depressing Christmas Album with that unnerving skip during the Little Drummer Boy or a trapped housewife drinking alone out of a thick glass on stained couch in 1950-something. The Walkmen revived private school cool, not Vampire WEAK-end, by showing up on stage looking hungover from a wedding, in wrinkled suits with a faint scent of booze on their breath. Unfortunately the Walkmen’s story has already been told and all they now do is make solid records while Vampire Weekend are newer, cuter, and so damn quirky plus they TOTALLY dig world music and Ivy League schools, the perfect soundtrack to a new boring wine and cheese party christening a Brooklyn Condo.

*My apologies for the Roman Catholic analogies my Jewish Brothers and Sisters, Parochial School wormed Christ into my brain and I can’t shake it.

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UPDATE!

I should have searched Youtube first, because this cat below created a much nicer video of the same Canyon Country jam I worship and wanted to reference. I’ll be deleting my bootleg one that might cause seizures and  link to the real deal

Every summer needs a summer jam, a song that you make bad choices to, consume frat beer out of a plastic cup to and usually sweat somewhere to. The summer jam normally is the rap song that the industry pays the radio stations and crooked DJs to play more than other songs. The pulsing beat and 1.5 hooks per minute are become your soundtrack whether or not you consent.

I love summer jams but summer records are even better. Records that slip through the cracks most of the year but whe mixed with humidty, fried food scents, and hot pavement they resonate. They remind you of discovering a girl’s tan lines for the first time, smoking dirt weed in the woods with a BMX gang, getting panic attacks and new sneakers before labor day and other sentimental shit.

Mr. Erik Snyder turned me onto There’s a Forest In The Fire by Canyon Country in the Fall of 2005. It was a breezy record that sounded like the Verve if they came from Orange County California and had beachy surfer hair not greasy mops and bad teeth. It sounded like one big blond grin and flip flops, slow steady, deliberate and optimistic and totally fucking bummer at the same time. Unfortunately this mini-masterpiece was hard to track down. It wasn’t on iTunes, I hate mailordering shit and I even flaked on borrowing Snyder’s copy

Fast forward to summer 2006, I have a song in my head from Canyon Country, a song I’ve heard twice. Luckily the world wide web is at my fingertips and I find Canyon Country’s myspace profile and proceed to buy their album now featured on iTunes. If I wasn’t impatient I would have gone to the Darla site and purchased a physical copy but I needed to have instant satisfaction.

My goal was to share an mp3 from Canyon Country but Steve Jobs has ensured that I cannot do this with my DRMed iTunes digital music files and I don’t have the patience to follow some hacker’s step-by-step on freeing music so instead I crafted a crude iMovie using some footage of a beach (how cute) I found on the nerd and spliced it with Safe my favorite tune from Canyon Country.

I know my job as a blogger / culture informed dude is to turn you onto the hottest new Blog Party but I’m not, instead just buy this fucking record, there are a million sites that have it for cheap, it’s got like a million songs and who gives a shit if they aren’t a band anymore you’re not leaving your house anyway to actually see music live this summer unless it’s free or some miserable festival with too many bands and haircuts.

Here’s what the Darla site says :

Canyon Country’s debut album. Written and performed by Nick Huntington (Freescha, The Surf The Sundried). Released on California’s Attacknine Records. Recorded after Freescha’s last album “What’s Come Inside Of You”, this is an entirely different treasure chest of tunes. 19 songs filled with delicate pianos, soft acoustics, organs, mellotrons, violins, cellos, echoing voices, and monolith drones. Music under the vast night sky, humming with the horizon line. Shhh…

So yeah get this and check out Nick’s other projects they’re all excellent and he’s a righteous dude.

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Who is the voice of a generation?

Some brosef named Ian Shapira (Princeton 00′) attempts a Chelsea Clinton takedown in the WaPost today, under a headline of “Too Solemn for Her Generation?”

Like me, Chelsea’s a twentysomething (28 to my 29), a member of the generation that, as it happens, I spend a lot of time learning and writing about. We’re ironic, sarcastic and self-deprecating, a reflection of the pop culture and politics that played out while we grew up in the 1980s, 1990s and onward. We were weaned on Chevy Chase movies (”Spies Like Us,” of course, being the best), grunge and MTV’s “The Real World” (seasons 1 and 2 only, please) and trained by the Onion, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to detect spin in the most banal comments. People my age shed privacy at the nearest high-speed Internet connection and, more often than not, display the very grown-up qualities of self-awareness and self-reflection.

Correction: You, Mr Princeton, were weaned on The Real World (Puck sucks), grunge (Soundgarden sucks), and Chevy Chase (Fletch and Caddieshack aside, he sucks too). Actually a lot of 90s youth from the Northeast pursued underground cultures like hardcore-punk or emo, skateboarding, indie rock, riot grrrl, rollerblading even (guilty) or whatever, nevermind. Moreover, many of us value privacy, despite Shapira’s beef with Chelsea:

She’s clinging to her privacy as she did a decade earlier, which, to her contemporaries, could make it all the more difficult to buy what she’s selling. Maybe it’s time to finally meet the press and — not to micromanage my new Facebook friend too much, but — act our age.

Shapira misses a defining fact about “our generation.” Our generation (I’m 29 too) was actually the last to grow up in relative privacy, free from the internet’s all seeing eye. It was only around 1997, when I turned 18 and graduated high school, that the net really began to instant message, email, and social network us towards fully transparent lives.

So to say Chelsea, by wanting to keep some privacy, is out of step with her generation is incorrect. In fact, she’s holding on to the sanctity of our generation. As the last pre-web gen, many of us don’t want our lives becoming “self branded” myspace ads. Weird, some of us believe in that age old American concept of private citizenship.

Too often I cringe whenever the WaPost strays from politics and national security. Really, who is this DC-based Princetonian speaking for? What does Shapira represent? A fast-tracked uber-reporter living in the Beltway bubble—that’s about all. Maybe his essay makes sense for the under 25-set, but Generation Chelsea (born 77-80) grew up during the web revolution. We were the youngest to see life before and after. Having seen both, not all of us embrace every new technology. Some of us might say life was better before cell phone cameras and Facebook, back when life was more private…

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Gimmick rockers unite! Actresses Scarlett J and Zooey D both go indie…

Best album ever by an actor—Scarlett J? So says New York Magazine. Somehow I doubt it (does Kris Kristoffersen count as an actor or singer?). Actually, it sounds like the worst album ever recorded in world history: Scarlett covering Tom Waits tunes in a Nico-y voice and recorded in Louisiana with the guy from TV on the Radio. (Even Dick Dead in the graveyard at midnight with Diesel jeans sounds better.)

This=good?

We’ve finally heard her forthcoming album of Tom Waits covers for ourselves, and it’s official: Scarlett Johansson just gave us a Woody Allen. (And by the way, can’t you just hear the little man saying schwing?) The disc, Anywhere I Lay My Head, is good.

And yes, girl can sing. Not like Waits — that, of course, would be impossible, not to mention unbecoming. Think Nico, if Nico weren’t a Germanic death angel but the remaining American actress of her age who has not openly displayed her vagina. And who here is the Woody to Johansson’s crooning alter-ego? Dave Sitek, that arrogant white guy from TV on the Radio. (He acted as producer. David Bowie, by the way, also sings on a couple of songs, but obviously he’s no 24-year-old actress.)

To paraphrase Jerry Seinfield, What is it with “quirky” actresses recording lame albums? Another new Indie-Hollywood duo, M Ward and an actress named “Zooey Deschanel,” are hyped in the NYT today. Per NYT: “Zooey Deschanel is often cast as the quirky naïf or the ironic wit…”

In what might be the worst paragraph of National Poetry Month, Melana Ryzik describes the life and times of Zooey D:

Though she was raised and lives amid celebrity in Los Angeles and has appeared in both hugely popular films (“Elf,” in which she briefly sang) and critical and cult favorites (“Almost Famous,” “All the Real Girls”), it’s easy to imagine her puttering around a cozily decorated Williamsburg loft. She takes home doggie bags, prefers tights to spray-tans and uses David Bowie’s “Changes” as her ring tone. She knits and crochets and makes brownies and gingerbread because, she said, “I like the way people react when you bake, which is, like, just pure childlike joy.”

I don’t know much about M Ward, though I do—or used to—like Merge Records, who released this gimmick of an album. I may be decade late, but I suppose now is the time to officially declare indie rock dead.

Indie classicists Pavement, Archers of Loaf, and Built to Spill are among the most underrated bands ever. If those bands formed today, post-Indie takeover, they would be playing Archers’ “Web in Front,” Pavement’s “Gold Sounds,” and BTS’ “Carry the Zero” at sporting events. Every one of their respective albums rule (how many bands have 8 solid outings like Archers?) and nearly all push new boundaries. Pavement, on their first three records, moved from jangly pop to post-pop to stoner fuzz. BTS recorded 10 minute songs on “Further From Now On” after “Keep it Like a Sceret,” an album of 4-minute tunes.

Yet since 1999 indie has gotten safer and safer, moving further and further mainstream, growing risk averse, and sounding boring as hell—like a genre shivering in the face of internet downloads. Modest Mouse is largely to blame (though Antartica is a classic). That Volkswagon song did it.

And Arcade Fire, despite being pretty decent, put the nail in the coffin by kissing Bruce Sprinsteen’s ass. Yes, the Boss rules (Promised Land anyone?), but what he stands for (stadium guitar solos, Made in the USA pride, un-ironic lyrics, the red-head-girl-next-door, union work) is the opposite of indie values (solo-less tunes in rock dives, anti-commercialism, ironic lyrics, dyed-haired art school chicks, non-union service industry work).

Now we have scary bad bands like Vampire Weekend stealing the “indie” flag. Kwaito infused Ivy prep-pop is not cool, not indie. Kwaito is South African rap/house music. White kids from Columbia U stealing kwaito’s style makes Eminem look like Fredrick Douglas. To do so and then put on tennis outfits and look cute is like wiping your ass with an anti-apartheid poster. Looking like an Afrikkaner while playing South African ghetto music sucks.

Vampire Weekend and South African Afrikkans share a colonial style! And they rip-off South African Kwaito music too! This is similar to wearing an SS uniform and playing klezmer music.

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Urban Hymns was released in Fall 1997 and a washed out video of a ronned out emaciated handsomely ugly Brit battle rapping everyone on a street shot them into American Pop Culture. Soon fat dorm chicks were making 12 beer mistakes with Smitty to the Verve Pipe and Bittersweet Symphony back to back. Nike , Cruel Intentions, etc, etc.

Tour dates have been announced for their return to the US, let’s revisit 1998.

Essentially 1998 was the year of the Verve in the US, the same year they called it quits. Did you ever think 1998 would be an epic year for tunes? Ten years later it seems pretty fucking important , check out the roster below, keep in mind this is just a summary, there was more shit going down but in retrospect viva la 98, shit was more legit than then Nah Nah Nahs or Crap and Kim or whatever blog crap I have to digest as awesomely Pitchforkian.

Belle and Sebastian - If You’re Feeling Sinister
Has one band blown it harder than these jerk offs. You get touted as the new Smiths , you instantly become huge with your mopey, miserable, melancholy tales of despair and then…yeah you release a bunch of shitty singles and boring records and become just some band. Shitty bands like the Killerzzzz that have gone platinum, what the fuck was wrong with B&S. They probably want to fucking kill Arcade Fire. Don’t they have a record cover with some animal sucking a girl’s tit…did that have something do to with it. G-Ross.

Archers Of Loaf - White Trash Heros
No it’s not Icky Mettle and yes it’s not essential Archers to the average floppy haired former Indie Rock Gas Station Jacket jerk off but this is a great record. The bookends could be two of their greatest songs. Dude says “Flicking ashes on heads of teenage kids with poorly tuned guitars”. Did Sebadoh or Superchunk write anything that rad? Did they do a song that got appropriated for MTV Sports and Danny Cortez? Is that a good thing? Not sure but the record is great and they actually did something challenging with their sound which most bands of their loose genre never did without injuring ear drums.

Juvenile - 400 Degreez
With Mannie Fresh calling the pitches like Varitek, Juvenile and the Cash Money Millionaires put the southern drawl on the map despite no one knowing that the fuck he was saying “You got that check cashing card ha, you got Girbaud jeans ha…you gsdhldsk k sklbs haaaa little boyszzzz run Forrest run Forrest” . They made the 2 Live Crew look like the descendants of the Fat Boys and ran shit hard, this was a landmark in rap, if you talk about the south please talk about Juvy not Andre 3000 and his broke ass stolen wig, Keith want that shit back.

Air - Moon Safari
Remember this whole shit, when boring people who wanted to feel cutting edge needed something new and French dudes like Air gave you a break from Kid Rock. I’m sure plenty of tight Manhattan apartments had this queued up in case some Shout type guy could convince some entry level chick in a striped shirt to come check out his slides.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Some people really give a shit about this stuff, it makes me feel uneasy like that guy with no eyebrows in Modest Mouse, like I can hear how mentally unstable dude is and it wigs me out. The biggest ripple was felt by Blakebreaker. He went from being in a great band with great lyrics to becoming a harmonica toting Honky that sang about his bassist and beards. Thanks NMH. Couldn’t you have influenced someone I hated like the Throw Up Kids or something?

The Beta Band - The Three Eps
Remember that scene in High Fidelity, that’s pretty much it. See how much music has progressed in ten years? What would they throw on now to sell a bunch of CDs..that’s right nothing because people don’t buy music or go to record stores. That movie sucked but the dude Ian with the Pony Tail played by Tim Robbins was great, anyone with a vest who wears crystal with a loose pony tail is onto something.

Pulp - This Is Hardcore
Yup before Jarvy played mp3s at Shitshapes he made girls with self esteem swoon with his witty lyrics and bravado. Now he’s kind of a cartoon of what a clever import should be. Clever lyrics kind of have a shelf life kind of like OJ Simpson jokes , after you get a few chuckles or go “Oh man, that’s brilliant!” it’s not much different than some Ramones lyrics about sniffing glue. What’s amazing is the album cover, does it get any better? Thank you Mr.Saville. I always thought a Hardcore band should call their record This Is Britpop and have some HC chick getting banged by a dude in a hooded sweatshirt.

Jay-Z - Vol. 2 …Hard Knock Life
Jigga wasn’t always a Brand® that mouthed the words to Amy Winehouse songs at the Spotted Pig doing that sistah neck thing complete with a 24 inch No No No finger wave. Sure Biggie had hits but Jigga flipped the game in that he didn’t make commercial rap, he made rap records that were commercially accepted. Maybe it’s that grating sound of little black kids in Annie wigs stomping on my head when I hear Hard Knock Life that makes this maybe my 2nd favorite Jigga album but it’s a classic. Spring Break rap.

Spiritualized - Live At The Albert Hall
Everyone owns this but no one really listens to it, that’s power. Good work J.Spaceman.

Honorable Mention

Mercury Rev - Deserter’s Songs
Their best record, better than anything the Flaming Drips have ever done, if they had a jokey single they’d be the hot band to like.

Elliott Smith - XO
“That dood that sings the fahkin’ song in Good WIll Huntin is wicked ugly dood, he looked like he was comin from a bendah on the Oscahs dood.”

Cam’ron - Confessions Of Fire
Not even close to the best Cam record but think about that cover and tell me it’s not worth mentioning.

Rad If You Need To Clean Your Dorm
the roots, lauren hill, outkast
Lowercase because I don’t give a shit, I don’t know the names of their albums

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