That ubiquitous-in-“alternative”-subsections-of-every-major-city bumper sticker, that one that goes:
That bumper sticker needs to be stapled to my forehead right about now. Because I’m suffering a serious crisis of consciousness. As in, my every waking, conscious moment is spent consumed with the knowledge that we were all sold a false bill of sale. And thats a harsh fucking pill to swallow, a terrible reality to realize you are living.
Doesn’t matter if youre still in school or haven’t been there in years, all of us remember how, growing up in America (or perhaps any “Western” country for that matter), we were constantly indoctrinated with the LIE that if we worked hard and studied and stayed true to ourselves, we would be able to live the life we set out to make for ourselves. Remember that? We were regaled with tales of our forefathers, most notably George Washington and Abe Lincoln, having struggled against and overcome incredible odds and various diversities to make it to the pinnacle of human achievement…and that, if we just reached down into the well of our own deepest capabilities, we, too could be so great.
But alas, we couldn’t be so great, it turns out, if we weren’t born with trust funds or in some other way fast-tracked to the Ivy League cornucopia of great jobs, all-encompassing dental plans and one way tickets to that fabled Good Life. We made all the right moves. We studied til our brains were bleeding. We graduated at the tops of our college classes. We fully bought into the fantasy they tricked all of us into believing was real and true and possible. And then, when the scam finally caught up with them and the bottom dropped out on everyone but those in power, both politically and financially, WE were the ones whose asses had been handed to them. They had covered every angle. They, like all great casinos, were the house that couldn’t lose. We were the suckers who had to leave the joint wearing trashbags or whiskey barrels in order to cover our shame. And despite all the evidence showing all of us in said rags just who exactly was behind the great swindle, their bought-and-paid-for political stooges from BOTH parties had already done preemptive ass-covering. The robber-barons hadn’t done anything illegal at all. They were PERFECTLY within their rights to gamble away our inheritance. Our “assets”, you see, were never really ours in the first place. Our homes and cars and college funds were merely on loan, to sedate us into thinking that we too would eventually be able to work our way into a place at the table, our own little meager part of that fabled good life.
Because the banks and the corporations that now employ so many of us, they had a right to make a profit. Didn’t matter how immoral the practices were that were enacted in order to fleece us of our livelihoods, our well-paying jobs which they took and then replaced with hollow facsimiles that had none of the autonomy or wage rates and were spent daily emasculating us, making us feel as though we didn’t really deserve anything more than to barely scrape by from one month to the next, one day to the next–we must not have worked hard enough if we hadn’t gotten an ample enough piece of the pie. And woe to he who would DARE complain about getting the shaft, that ungrateful fuck.
Because remember, we have been CONDITIONED to vote against our own best interests. We have been indoctrinated into believing the swill being force-fed us by our corporate overlords, who show us “informative” infomercials (in required classes of 30+ employees at a time) detailing just how destructive and against our free-will unionizing is. I mean, I’ve actually had people tell me that unionized school teachers or steel workers making mandated $25 an hour paychecks are definitely ripping off the tax payers because nobody “deserves” to make that much money. And what about the motherfucking CEOs making 250X the salary of the average worker?? I would scream politely back. They deserve to make tens of millions of dollars a year??? They deserve Golden Parachute guarantees that allow these CEOs to leave companies employing thousands of people in ruins while they waltz away with 200 or 300 million dollars in cash and stock option severance packages????? I mean, the number of astounded question marks has gotten truly absurd. So absurd that I cant think about anything else anymore. I eat sleep and breathe VENGEANCE now. But not in the gun-wieldy, mow down every innocent civilian I just happen to bump into sense. More in the sense of I am now generally less suicidal than I have ever been in my entire life. And you should be too. Because as depressing and spirit-crushing as all of this is to realize, especially when we have been taught so differently than this harsh reality we now wake up with every day, the truth of the matter is that we are now, every single one of us who chooses to pay attention, AWAKE. We are the citizenry watching the Emperor waltzing down the street, pointing at him and laughing. THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES. The gig is up. We are on the cover of Time magazine.
The genie is out of the bottle. Pandora’s box has been opened, the man behind the curtain revealed. It can never go back to the way it was before. These are exciting times. And they are scary. None of us knows how this is going to turn out. But at least now we know what is really going on. And we don’t have to feel guilty for being angry. This is the motherfucking United States of America, where truth and justice and hard work and integrity and love of our fellow man, regardless of race or color or creed or sexual orientation was supposed to be all that was needed to unite us, to give us a level playing field. And we let the sharks take over the tank and they were who we KNEW they were and they did what sharks fucking do. So don’t be mistaken: this post has nothing to do with woe-is-me. But it does have everything to do with all of us seeing the forest for the fucking trees and doing our parts as HUMAN BEINGS to take back the power that we, as human beings, “are endowed with by our creator.” Our forefathers, those same forefathers that even a souless dickwad like Dick Cheney claims to revere, said these words. Now its time we all started living like we are just as human as the faceless tyrants who tried to turn us into mindless robots so they could pad their bank accounts on our suffering. NOW WE TAKE THE POWER BACK, one fucking day at a time.
We took in the Decatur Book Festival a few Saturdays ago. It was smoking Atlanta hot, and therefore pretty much misery-inducing, ‘specially when you factor in that we were ferrying around 3 kids under 8. But the day started off nice enough (before the heat). Somehow we’ve lucked out, found a way to live on a beautiful shade-covered street just outside the ATLanta city limits, but still only a minutes-walk away from public transportation and all that lies on the other side of a $2 bus fare.
By the time we arrived at the Downtown Decatur location, the kids were already pissy, what with it being smoking hot and whatnot. It was too hot for anything other than icecream and maybe swimming, neither of which was at our immediate disposal. But I had my copy of Severance, and was determined to follow through on my hours-old dream of having it signed by the singular talent that is Robert Olen Butler.
So we got to the high school where he was reading, and I went in to the auditorium where Butler was already reading. Kara hung back in the hall, bless her heart, so that the aforementioned 3 under-8 kids could be attended to without disrupting Mr. Butler. He was reading from his latest novel. It was way, way different from Severance. I was kind of lost. But the prose seemed good, for what that’s worth. And, as I do anytime I find myself in the presence of other writers, I began to compare myself to him. And, of course, found myself lacking in most every way. Especially when he finished reading and it was time for the Q & A. He was so self-assured, so convinced of his very RIGHT to be on that stage, admired by the 1 or 2 hundred people in fawning attendance. And he actually mentioned how, just as it says on his wikipedia page, he considers himself a “literary chameleon”, who never wants to write the same sort of book twice. But surely he hadn’t been responsible for writing his own Wiki page, right? I mean, Big Time authors (or Big Time Anythings, for that matter) don’t have to spend time on such banal things as Wikipedia entries. They have biographers and rabid fans to do that for them, no?
Well, screw it, I thought afterward, while we waited in line for ROB to sign my copy of his book about 60+ people who have been decapitated and what must have been going through each of these severed heads as its last moments of consciousness slipped away. For every Spielberg there’s an Ed Wood or maybe, if we’re being slightly more generous, McG. Hell, even millionaire, omni-present author Steven King has gone on record calling himself something like “The burger and fries of American literature.” But I can’t be that either as long as I’m writing about truly fucked up family shit and not killer clowns terrorizing generations of children. So here I am, these few years into my pro writing life, still not knowing where I fit in. But I do know this, dear readers: both Robert Olen Butler and myself like the smell of ink on paper, of musty books found in the back of old book shops (imagine that–an old book shop–a relic of pre-internet times, endangered as hell if anything ever was). He even wrote as much for me in the front of Severance. And while that won’t do shit for my as-yet non-existent Wikipedia page, at least I can go to sleep a little easier knowing that both the great Robert Olen Butler and myself both like taking a good whiff of a book every now and then. (Immortality, here we come!)
You know, whenever this song comes on the ol’ iPod, I almost always hit the >> because how many times can you hear a computer-generated voice say the same shit before it becomes rote. The album from whence it comes (OK COMPUTER, for those who have been in a cave or coma) has been out since 1997, after all. But like all art worthy of multiple looks, there is more to this than meets the tired ear. Especially when yr riding yr bike home from a hard day at 11 o’clock at night–I find that this is the time when I do some of my most revelatory thinking.
So last night I’m peddling up this hill and this “song’ comes on and because I am really pushing and can’t afford to let go of a handle to fast forward, I am forced to listen to it. Being as it’s right after the 10 year anniversary of the biggest catastrophe to hit our land in generations, what first strikes me is how pre-9/11 the piece sounds. And, subsequently, how pre-Mortgage-bubble-burst/economy collapse/Great Recession it all is. Just the two word phrase “At ease” sounds antiquated. I don’t personally know a single person who feels ”at ease” about a single fucking thing. We’ve been at war for a decade now. And regardless of political declarations of official warzone ”pull-outs, all of us know there’s no end in sight to any of it, Bin Laden shot in the face and buried at sea or not. It’s positively Orwellian, and we all know it, whether we have a close personal relationship with 1984 or not…
So as the piece progresses, I start thinking that this is the first time I’ve ever thought that Radiohead’s everywhere-trumpeted prescience has been seriously undercut by jack-booted reality. Hell, if anything (I was thinking as I peddled that monster fuck of a hill), we should be nostalgic for a time when our biggest problems was that it seemed like we had it all figured out, that were moronicly naive: We were regularly exercising 3 days a week, weren’t eating saturated fats, enjoyed drinks now and then, cried at good films (to prove to ourselves we were still human and “real” despite our robotic consumerism)…our kids safely secured in our well-tired cars.
But then, just as I crested the hill, I realized that Thom Yorke and Company might have pulled another fast one. Maybe, even though FITTER HAPPIER was released a good 4+ years before 9/11 changed everything for everyone, Thom was doing something more than merely holding the mirror up to our fragile sense of security and self-assurance, a wink in his glinting eye. Maybe he wasn’t just saying we’re pathetic when we think we have it all figured out, when in reality we’re just pigs in cages jacked on antibiotics. Maybe he was saying that that pre-9/11 feel was ALWAYS illusion. That we were never safe in the first place. Maybe he was saying enjoy these petty advances you’ve made in your lives while you can because soon, very soon, that cozy shag rug is gonna be pulled out from all of us.
Or maybe I was just overloaded on endorphins and lack of oxygen. All I know is that nearly every single person I know is struggling to keep treaded tires on their cars (if they still even own one) and is one lost paycheck away from eviction notices, can barely afford to go to a doctor let alone stay swimming in antibiotics, and gave the cats to the pound because it was just two too many mouths to feed.
Yeah, so I decided I’d start a new kinda post here on Cruel World, one that would serve to illuminate some of my favorite passages from books/ short stories that I’ve read and loved over the years. Sometimes the “favorite” in question will be an entire paragraph–maybe even a whole page from a selection that I found truly inspired, where you could get into the skin of the writer and almost HEAR The Muse whispering directly into his/her ear. Other times (such as tonight’s selection), the chosen words will be a mere sentence. But oh, dear god, what a sentence…
Feel free to add yr 2 cents. I’m not writing this shit to toot my own horn (for the most part). Rather, I want to connect with my 6 (60?) readers out there and have a conversation, if people still do that anymore, or have even the slightest inkling to not just “Stumble” on to the next thing before they really have a chance to suck the marrow out of the words being presented them.
So here goes.
Tonight’s sentence is from the last section of Southern Gothic short-story virtuoso Flannery O’Connor’s superb short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” …
“She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
A little background: this is a story, for those of you not privileged enough to have had the pleasure of reading O’Connor’s most famous work, about a family (mother, son, daughter-in-law, grandson, granddaughter) on a roadtrip of bucolic 50′s southern backroads. The bulk of the story merely serves as a set-up for the final page or two. In that initial 5/8 (or more) of the story, we are introduced mainly to a stuck up, racist, whiny, close-minded, pissy old woman who even in her old age thinks she knows everything and therefore makes everyone’s lives around her miserable with her constant pontificating about everything being wrong with everything. Nothing is good enough for her, no one lives up to her stringent standards.
She insists on the son taking the family on a detour off the main road so she can see a house she used to live on. The car gets a flat. While her son tries to fix the car, his mother and wife and young children looking on, from the woods emerges an escaped convict (“The Misfit”) and his fellow escapees. One by one the convicts lead the family members off the road and into the woods, where the jarring crack of gunfire reports are heard by the grandmother. Finally the Misfit emerges from the woods one last time. This time he is wearing the son’s shirt. The grandmother, finally taking in the full, horrifying reality of what is happening (has happened) to her family, to herself, begins talking to the Misfit. She speaks to him of God (he denies believing in anything that could allow something like him to exist), of love, of forgiveness, finally telling him he could be one of her own children. She reaches up and touches the Misfit’s face. He shoots her dead, then utters the line, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
………..
………..
………..
This story has clung to me (I have clung to it) since the first time I read it in college. No, not even the story. That sentence. This old, bigoted, judgmental waste of space and time finally discovers her humanity–something REAL about herself that isn’t all surface and bile. It is, of course, too late in nearly every way by the time she has this epiphany. Even as her son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren are murdered she still maintains this weird sense of being above it all, in charge. Truly, it takes her own mortality confrontation for her to display the slightest shred of compassion for anyone else. But (and this could be my own opinion alone, as I don’t remember any of the criticism I was surely forced to study alongside the reading of the story itself), the point of all of it is that, even if it was only in her last fleeting and pathetic moments, she DID have the all-important realization that somebody aside from herself was worthy of her gentle touch, her compassion. Unfortunately for her son and grandchildren, they weren’t there to be the recipients of this 11th hour (and 59 minutes) conversion from cunt to saint. But, then again, if she had been that person on a regular basis then the Misfit never would have been able to utter that fucking line. That beautiful line that kills me every time.
“She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
I’ve gotta be honest, this sentence, this ONE FUCKING SENTENCE, has come back to me so often in the course of my life. Because how many times have I known beyond doubt that if I’d had the proverbial gun to my fucking head that I would have tried harder, aimed higher, pushed further, accomplished more, seen wider horizons, never allowed for a single excuse for anything, never hurt anyone with such flippancy, never chosen the Self over the Other–never, when it comes right down to it, given myself an excuse to slow down or slack off or choose Death or self-destruction or anger or fear over Love (the Only thing that matters, in my admittedly hippie-tinged perspective)?
………..
So, yeah….I try to keep this perfectly-crafted sentence in mind as often as possible. I try to imagine the Misfit’s gun to my head. Not because I fear death–at least not in the traditional sense. It’s because I don’t ever want to leave this motherfucker without knowing that I tried my goddamnedest to be the person I TRULY want to be. And THAT is why I get teary-eyed when I watch videos of people jumping bikes and skateboards and landing spectacular ski tricks and death-defying BASE jumps, when I see video of people climbing sheer walls with just chalk on their hands–because these people are living TRUE LIVES. They know the gun is at their head at every moment, just as it is all of our heads. And they live more truly, more deeply, more passionately and truthfully than most of us will ever live.
NO, I’m not strapping on skis or skateboards or parachutes but I AM FLYING. (And without drugs, you cynical bastards!). Because now I live this dream. Now my daily life is the reality of the gun, the impending “doom.” And it is beautiful. It is so luminescent and spectacular and fullllll of love and truth and life.
On the promise of good reviews and the seemingly type-cast-as-some-form-of simian Andy Serkis portraying the lead role of Caesar, my beautiful fiance Kara and I took in the newest re-boot of The Planet of the Apes franchise, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.
At first I only saw it as yr standard mid-late summer popcorn B-movie fare. It has some pretty crappy acting in it (the star human is, after all, James Franco) and regardless of how far special effects have come since James Cameron did some fucked shit with the Terminator 2-predating THE ABYSS water creature, you could still tell that any time it showed one of the “damned dirty apes” swinging around and gnawing human flesh and what-have-you, you were watching the fruits of the labor of some nerd sitting at a computer typing in code to make what you were seeing on the screen seem real.
But then the iconic Charlton Heston line was finally spoken.
But this time it wasnt some uber-male Republican future NRA president uttering the iconic command. No, this time the line was given to the douchebag college-student/part-time ape sanctuary worker to utter. He says it to our movie’s hero (Caesar, the “damned dirty ape” in question) just before Caesar knocks his block off (to loud applause from the screening’s audience–though, to be fair, we watched it at one of those cinema bar & grill deals, and by the time we were 3/4 into the film, every single person in that theater was three shits to the wind).
But drunk or not, I, in my ever-present cultural attune-ness, realized that I was witness to a major paradigm shift. Because this time, it wasn’t the white people–the humans–we in the audience were meant to root for. This time our sympathies were meant to lie with those of the damned dirty apes. Because who in these dark financial and political times isnt feeling more and more like we are being shut out of the promised land? Who isnt feeling caged and treated like not much more than batteries, energy, indentured servants whose sole purpose is to provide the labor that serves to merely keep our heads from finally sinking beneath rising tides, while those who employ us (if we are employed at all) line their bank accounts on the fruits of our meager wages?
Yeah, there was something happening here. And what it was WAS EXACTLY CLEAR: it was becoming our time.
Now, dont get me wrong (you never do, right?….we’re always on the same page, yeah), I’m not one to advocate for social revolution (or am I?). All I’m saying is that this B-movie with shitty James Franco acting (oxymoron???) made me think that maybe–just maybe–we might be witnessing something bigger than a movie studio trying to find a new angle to tell an old-ass story (started by a French guy, btw) because they’ve run out of ideas (and while we’re on the subject, movie studio people, let me remind you that both futureproofand Sanctuaryare both available for adaptation should you ever tire of remaking the fucking Dukes of Hazzard). Maybe–just maybe–we were sitting in these movie theaters (or at home utilizing illegal downloads, as the case may be) watching art imitate life (metaphorically, of course). Maybe we were (are) about to take the power back.
Or maybe we were (are) just late taking our daily morphine shot. And Andy Serkis has a long career ahead of him portraying other caged apes trying to break out of the fucking cell. Or maybe I’m just drunk… on beautiful possibility.
I have not written a proper blog post in what…2+ years? But I’m back now for two reasons: I have a new book to promote (more on that in future posts) and I just couldn’t stand the nauseating proliferation of hack writers out there claiming to be everything they ain’t. I can’t go to Huffington Post’s book section without seeing at least one article either by or about some hack motherfucker who should be washing dishes for a living or at the very least have the common decency to live off his daddy’s trust fund and leave all of us real writers and readers to the stuff of actual life as it is lived by REAL PEOPLE. Yes, I’m looking at you James Frey, you hack fuck. I mean, when I stepped away from my Writer’s Desk in 2009, he’d been eviscerated by Oprah and all but declared legally dead by everyone that matters to any writer or artist trying to make his voice heard above the multitude of chattering wannabe professional masses. But then I flip open my brand new $200 laptop (Jesus, I have been in a cave) and the guy has a new book out that he has exclusively published with some art gallery and is now flogging THAT shit on a two-part Oprah where she’s proclaiming him her life-long friend?? And this prick is America’s “literary badboy”? Kerouac and Miller are spinning in their graves. There is absolutely nothing dangerous or authentic AT ALL about this fuckin guy. And he isn’t the only one. He’s just the one who has made the biggest ass of himself in service of the Almighty Dollar. I mean look at this picture (courtesy of The Guardian UK):
What a fucking prick.
I’m not saying the guy hasn’t had his share of struggle because, hell, being human is in and of itself a perpetual struggle for our own souls among the detritus of a black, empty universe, right?
But I personally have never understood how it is that somebody can basically whore himself just so he can have the nicer house or the faster, shinier car. I have more respect for a jackasshole like Ryan Dunn, who, while displaying no discernible talent, endeared himself to tens or hundreds of thousands of people worldwide simply by doing drunk tricycle stunts with Steve-O, and through such endeavors was able to buy a Porsche just as bangin’ as James Frey’s. That he bought the proverbial farm in said car while drunk and going 130 at 2 a.m. in bumfuck Pennsylvania only substantiates his authenticity.
But what’s the point then, if all the guy was going to do was waste whatever good will he had by literally crashing and burning? The point is that he was REAL and maybe lived just a little TOO close to the goddamned edge for his own good. Now, in the words of our great Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket, “Doc J and 8-Ball are wasted.” And we’re left holding our dicks in our hands, wondering where everybody went….
So let’s look back for a moment at James Frey and his literary legacy (so far). He burst onto the scene in 2003 by giving a name-dropping one-man shit-fest interview to the salmon-colored New York Observer (remember when a brand could be differentiated merely by having a differently-colored background?—I still have the purple Raekwon Cuban Linx cassette tape). In this interview, handsomely summed up by Salon.com (no salmon color paper—or any paper at all—for them!), Frey slams Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace and presumably all the other Daves He Knows.
Upon later reflection (post-Oprah enrichment, of course), he said that he was past that or only saying it for the shock-value or what-the-fuck ever. I leave it to you to research the veracity of this yourself, as I’m done looking up James Frey links, as I have recently (in the past 20+ minutes I’ve spent spewing this blog on all of your eager/bored/accidentally stumbled-upon eyes) grown re-disgusted with everything he represents.
You remember how
and his cronies all went on Fox News during the waning days of that horrid presidential “administration” and performed their pathetic excuse for damage control by saying that history would prove that the unilateral bullshit wars they’d shat upon the world were both just and necessary for all of us to move forward into our Brave New World? Yeah, that’s the kind of bullshit that powerful people, people with money, do when they see that everything they’ve done in order to line their own pockets is total shit. But far from it being some kind of introspective wake-up call, it’s more about them discovering that the great majority of the populace is FINALLY on to their game. So they take to the airwaves and proclaim future righteousness, the Copout Pricks. As though they could give two fucks about whether or not the future will be their “final judge.” What they care about is that they and their children and their grandchildren, etc will never have to worry about putting food into their mouths or keeping gold-and-diamond encrusted roofs over their heads. This is the mentality that has infiltrated EVERYTHING we see in our daily lives. And it has never been more clear than it is now. The economic disparity has never been wider in this, our magnificent First World Beacon Of Democracy and Equality. And because of that disparity a great many of us have decided that we are going to do whatever it is that we have to do to keep up with the Big Dogs—the James Freys of the world, who already had everything they needed and decided to fake some shit so that they could have even more. It’s people like James Frey and J.A. Konrath (I’ll dig MUCH deeper into that hypocritical fuck soon) who have bastardized The Authentic and sold us a false bill of sale.
But I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be like that. I’m here to tell you that there are people JUST LIKE YOU out here who are fighting the good fight, who are living True, Authentic lives and aren’t selling themselves out for a buck or two here and there. That still exists. I am living proof of this reality. YOU are that proof. We are ALL fucked up. But that doesn’t mean we have to resort to the games of charlatans and poseurs. We can scrape by and keep our wits about us and still strive to make our lives better via sweating and tearing and bleeding. That is our legacy. We are made in the fucking stars. And I am going to prove it to you.
Yes, it is up for argument, of course. But I know what i hate, and for these albums, there was nothing to hate on, save a stray throw-away track here or there. That’s pretty much how I determined which albums to include and which to leave off: did the WHOLE product deliver? I didn’t limit myself to numbers, as in only 2 for each year, but instead just went with albums I could not leave off unless some Strokes hater held a gun to my head. It’s complete coincidence that I ended up with the nice, sort-of-round number of 25.
This list is not exhaustive, I’m sure people will mention a few that I’ll kick myself for forgetting while I was making this. Others will mention albums I wish I could forget, such as anything by TV On the Radio, a band that I cannot for the life of me understand why it is so well-regarded. One last heads up: don’t bother offering any Dave Matthews or John Mayer suggestions. They have, at best, 3 or 4 good songs between them, definitely not enough for placement on such hallowed ground.
2000:
sunny day real estate—the rising tide
This album is full of jangly guitars and soaring vocals bellowing beautiful lyrics–it always makes me remember the ocean and the beginning of my marriage. All good memories.
Damn, gotta say, when this came out it seemed like Chris Martin and company actually had a chance of giving Radiohead a run for the money in the art-rock circuit (that is a circuit, right?). But then all their albums sounded exactly the same. Not saying they didn’t have good songs on other albums, but come on: most of it sounds exactly the same–for example, one single song on Viva la Vida, their latest, has been the subject of upwards of 5 different plagiarism lawsuits by artists ranging from Cat Stevens to Steve Vai. Regardless, Parachutes was a beauty when it came out, and when you factor in the sweet memories that go along with it for me, it’s only gold.
Fave Tracks: Trouble, We Never Change
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ghostface killah—supreme clientele
It could be argued that this album signaled the death knell of what many hip hop purists (such as yours truly) consider to be “true” hip hop. Yes, we are elitist bastards. But without getting into arguments about the greatness (or lack of greatness) of Lil Wayne and Chamillionaire, anyone can at least appreciate the cementing of Ghostface’s status as the best rapper to emerge from Wutang Clan. I mean, have you heard Iron Man? And then he follows up with this a few years later. BEASTLY! Listen up. This was as good as it was going to get for many, many years (one could argue).
The first of two Radiohead albums on this list, Amnesiac constantly ended up in my regular rotation during the glorious “Aughts.” It is possibly one of the most accessible ‘Head albums, surpassed perhaps by only 2008′s In Rainbows in terms of listenability.
Fave tracks: Pyramid Song, Knives Out
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white stripes—white blood cells
I remember exactly where I was when I first heard this introduction to The White Stripes, and how many albums can you say that about? It blew my freaking mind. Jack White entered the realm of genius for me with his fusion of old blues and modern rock. There is still no better stimulant on the market for getting a day started off than this banger.
Fave Tracks: Hotel Yorba, The Union Forever
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the strokes—is this it?
Here we have the controversial British version of the cover for this first Strokes album, which was of course not available in the more prudish U.S. But with or without that art, it was still a revelation, and came out the gate with more buzz than a thousand beehives. Backlash followed, of course, but regardless of whether Julian Casablancas can actually sing or that his voice was doctored with various studio trappings to make him sound better (a charge I don’t buy after hearing their later efforts), this album along with White Blood Cells is a killer on every level.
Fave Tracks: Someday, Hard To Explain
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bjork—vespertine
There are some incredibly beautiful tracks on this album. Bjork is from another planet. Her voice itself is poetry. I love her.
Fave Tracks: Hidden Place, Pagan Poetry
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2002:
neko case—blacklisted
The first of three albums by Neko Case, this album showcases her voice in a way that makes the term alt-country not sound completely stupid. For whatever reason, I am reminded of the Michael Scott quote in the TV show “The Office,” when he says, “ You don’t call retarded people retards. It’s bad taste. You call your friends retards when they’re acting retarded.”
Fave Tracks: Tightly, Pretty Girls
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the flaming lips—yoshimi battles the pink robots
From crazed punk beginnings to the masterpiece that was ’99′s The Soft Bulletin, this follow-up to that revelation of Wayne Coyne’s song-writing ability was a true window into this incredibly sensitive soul. And after meeting him in person (and basically forcing him to take a copy of my book), I can say that he is about as genuine a rock star who also happens to be a real person as any rock star has ever been. If that makes any sense.
Fave Tracks: Ego Trippin’ At the Gates of Hell, Do You Realize??
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beck—sea change
I first heard this Beck album while “working” as a DJ at UNC Greensboro’s 10 watt student-run radio station. It’s the first full-length Beck album that I know of that has him actually writing lyrics some sense can be made of—a real (wait for it…) sea change in his style. It is also heartbreaking, about his breakup from some model, I hear.
Fave Tracks: Little One, Lost Cause
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2003:
yeah yeah yeahs—fever to tell
This 3-piece, Karen O-fronted band is garage rock at its finest as far as I’m concerned. She’s so weird and rock-starry. I’d be afraid of her in real life. Which is just how she likes it, I’m sure. Just listen how she whispers “I’m rich, rich, rich rich rich. I’ll take you out boy.” F-ing hardcore, regardless of the tear sliding down her cheek in the “Maps” video.
For me Ben Gibbard is sort of the poor man’s Thom Yorke, and a total bastard (he married my imaginary girlfriend, Zooey Deschanel). But with this album and his other project, The Postal Service, he pretty much cemented his place in the starry night of my soul or whatever. He writes some catchy shit. But I think an Amazon reviewer said it best: “If you’re an overblown emokid with a yen for the melodramatic, you should buy this CD. You may now stop reading.”
Fave Tracks: Lightness, Passenger Seat
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2004:
air—talkie walkie
This album is on here because I like it more OVERALL than their previous Aughts effort, 10,000 hz Legend. But to be fair, there are a couple of songs on that generally disliked album that are some of my favorite Air tracks, such as “How Does It Make You Feel” and “Vagabond.” But this record is definitely more cohesive and sets a great mood for being drunk/high/tired, so we’re going with this one. And for the record, it is WAY beter than 2007′s Pocket Symphony.
While this is not officially an album you can buy, since Danger Mouse never got the rights to any of the Beatles or Jay-Z tracks he used to make this groundbreaking album (which, for anyone living in a musical cave for the past ten years, is a mash-up of The Beatles’ “White Album” and Jay-Z’s “Black Album”), I would be remiss not to include it on this list. For better or worse, DM started the massive wave of mash-ups with this effort, and also got himself a pretty good paying gig as half of Gnarls Barkley. Plus, this shit just kicks. Whoda thunk it?
I believe that, along with Death Cab, Dashboard Confessional, Bright Eyes and My Chemical Romance, My Morning Jacket helped create and nurture the wimpy mid-Aughts juggernaut that was known as Emo. But unlike Dashboard and Bright Eyes, they don’t totally suck. This is one of my favorite albums of all time. So, cheer up, Emo kid.
Mark Everett is the frontman of EELS (or eels), and is probably, when I really consider it, the person I most relate to as far as “getting” exactly what he is talking about with the majority of his songs. This double album has songs on it that I absolutely hate (such as the co-penned with one of the guys from R.E.M. “Hey Man”), but since there are over 20 songs on offer here, there is definitely at least a full album’s worth of incredible compositions. My favorite memory associated with this record is painting my daughter’s bedroom in preparation for us to move into our first owned home. Tears me up just thinking about it.
Fave Tracks: In the Yard Behind the Church, I’m Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart
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2006:
neko case—fox confessor brings the flood
Second Neko album on the list, and arguably her best ever. Her voice reminds me so much of Patsy Cline’s. She is a true artist, with seemingly little care about her “image” as far as whether or not she fits into the sterotypical chanteuse mold. She’s all about the voice. Example: her album “Blacklisted” was supposedly named that because while performing at Nasvhille’s famous Grand Ole Opry, she took off her shirt (I never heard if she was completely topless or just offended the genteel southern sensibility with her bra alone) and was banned for life. Totally punk, and what puts the “alt” in her country stylings, I can only suppose.
Fave Tracks: Star Witness, Dirty Knife
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decemberists—the crane wife
Along the Flaming Lips album that follows, this was the last album that my wife and I shared. Every time I hear the 3-part Crane Wife song the album is named after, it destroys me. In a good way. I’ll leave it there. Don’t want to make a complete fool out of myself, after all. Not drunk enough for that anyway. Give me a few hours. Perhaps that dragon will rear its head in the comments.
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beck—the information
This album is the epitome of cool. And one of about 45 albums that Beck released in the Aughts. I’m still not sure if I’m being impartial enough regarding choosing this album over, say, Guero or Modern Guilt, but whatever. These year/decade-end lists are always subjective and come down to much more about what effected the listener personally more than something like whether the songs held complexity in their structures. This album came with a DVD of every song being lip-synched by Beck and his friends, and I would often put it in the DVD player and hit repeat on it over and over again. It was like having a bunch of tripping acid-freaks to keep me company through surely some of the strangest times in a lifetime of strange times.
Fave Tracks: Cellphone’s Dead, No Complaints
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the flaming lips—at war with the mystics
They played a free show in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park on May 21, 2006 in support of this album. It was amazing.
As I said earlier in this post, this is probably the most easily listened to Radiohead album (which is most likely why it won or was nominated for more Grammys than any other from their amazing catalog, most notably OK Computer, which is (not so) arguably one of the greatest albums ever recorded). But this one is definitely right up there, and if nothing else serves to cement Radiohead’s place among the greatest bands to ever record together.Plus, they gave it away for free on the internet, and that’s totally kickass.
Fave Tracks: Nude, All I Need
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amy winehouse—back to black
Fuck this album. I can’t even remember why I have it on here, and it was easier to write this sentence than to screw up the formatting on this post by erasing it.
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2008:
MGMT—oracular spectacular
When I finally got up to NYC to meet my agent and publishing house handlers in January of this year, MGMT was still all the rage, and I therefore felt much less of a cultural disconnect than I had originally feared, ’cause I’d been on this bandwagon for a long time, based mainly on the fact that two hippie guys made up the band and had lyrics like, “I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and fuck with the stars/ You’ll man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars,” which totally runs contrary to their hippie guy image. Plus many of the songs on here an infinitely hummable, as my 9 yr. old daughter will happily testify.
Fave Tracks: Time To Pretend, Kids
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fleet foxes—fleet foxes
I first heard Fleet Foxes when they appeared on SNL in January. They are from Seattle (how cliche…1991 called, it wants its premiere underground music scene back), but sound like they are Straight Outta Appalachia. Which is kind of disturbing to me, since this means that the two most well-known Appalachian-sounding artists are from the west coast (the other being Los Angeles’ Gillian Welch). But no matter. Listen to this record and know that what you are hearing is authentic bluegrass-tinged. Every time I hear it makes me yearn to go back to Kentucky, if Kentucky weren’t so littered with ignorant rednecks and memories of unbridled happiness that make everything now pale in comparison. And you just can’t live like that.
Fave Tracks: White Winter Hymnal, Blue Ridge Mountains
I’ll be the first to admit that my exposure to much new music has been severely hampered this year, so it’s pretty anemic of me to only have one album listed for 2009, and to have the one album listed be by an artist that already has 2 other albums on this list. But this record is my favorite of Neko Case’s so far, and her insightful lyrics never cease to amaze me along with her incredible voice. Plus almost all the songs are about love (a first time for her), and the album ends with 28 minutes of frogs and crickets making night noises, which is a perfect way to fall asleep. So there’s that, too.
Fave Tracks: The Next Time You Say “Forever”, The Pharoahs
ARTIST OF THE DECADE:
I decided on this designation based solely on who had the most presence on the list. Radiohead, Flaming Lips and Beck came close, with two albums each on here, but in the end it wasn’t enough. Thanksfully I didn’t have to think much on it, since only one artist had three albums on my list, and that was, of course,
NEKO CASE
She’s incredible. Have I mentioned that yet? Watch this video, buy her albums, thank me later.
neko case—middle cyclone
