The Top 40 Albums of the Decade

A follow-on to my films post, on the other topic (music) that obsesses me most from a list-making standpoint. This one is arranged in alphabetical order, rather than chronological. Links will take you to the Wikipedia pages for each album, and from there it’s easy to hit the artists’ main pages or other reviews, if you want to learn more.

For the record, and to preclude the usual carping that comes whenever I make a list like this: yes, of course, this is all subjective. All music criticism is subjective. If there was an objective standard for judging music, then we wouldn’t need music critics, and we wouldn’t need record labels, and we wouldn’t need press flacks: corporations would just put out a very small number of records that met the objective standard for “good music” and everyone would buy and listen to the same small number of things. It’s subjectivity, both in terms of artists’ aspirations and talents and critical and commercial response to them, that makes music exciting. You can’t have a happy train wreck or an inspired mistake in a world ruled by objectivity.

And, yes, of course this is also just my opinion, and it’s based on what I listen to, which (unfortunately) does not include every bit of music made in the world, commercial or otherwise. But, then, this is my blog, isn’t it? Why would I fill my blog with somebody else’s opinion, or include things that I actually didn’t like or listen to, just to look “cool” in the eyes of the sorts of folks who take comfort in their own obscurantism? If you want to know what Kurt Loder or Dave Marsh or Greil Marcus or the editorial staff of Pitchfork think about the best albums of the decade, then go read their blogs.

So with that as preamble, here’s what I come up with after an extensive review of my annual lists, buffed up by some commercial and critical scans of other items from the era:

…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Source Tags & Codes (2002)
Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock & Roll (2005)
Bjork, Vespertine (2001)
British Sea Power, Do You Like Rock Music? (2008)
Caribou, Andorra (2007)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (2008)
The Chap, Mega Breakfast (2008)
Clutch, Robot Hive/Exodus (2005)
Department of Eagles, The Cold Nose (2007)
Edan, Beauty and the Beat (2005)

Max Eider, Hotel Figueroa (2002)
Electric Six, Fire (2003)
The Fall, The Real New Fall LP…Formerly Country On the Click (2004)
Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight (2008)
Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere (2006)

Gorillaz, Gorillaz (2001)
Cee-Lo Green, Cee-Lo Green . . . Is the Soul Machine (2004)
Japanther, Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt (2009)
King Crimson, The Power to Believe (2003)
Konono No. 1, Congotronics (2005)

Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full (2007)
M.I.A., Kala (2007)
Mindless Self Indulgence, You’ll Rebel to Anything (2005)
Mos Def, The Ecstatic (2009)
Napalm Death, Time Waits for No Slave (2009)

The National, Boxer (2007)
Outkast, Stankonia (2000)
Pere Ubu, Long Live Pere Ubu! (2009)
The Residents, Demons Dance Alone (2002)
The Residents, Animal Lover (2005)

Santogold, Santogold (2008)
Steely Dan, Everything Must Go (2003)
System of a Down, Toxicity (2001)
Ween, Quebec (2003)
Ween, Shinola, Vol. I (2005)

Why?, Alopecia (2008)
Wire, Send (2003)
The White Stripes, Icky Thump (2007)
Xiu Xiu, Fabulous Muscles (2004)
Warren Zevon, Life’ll Kill Ya (2000)

The Best Films of the 2000s

From my perspective anyway, in chronological order, with links to the appropriate IMDB pages if you care to explore.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Talk to Her (2000)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Donnie Darko (2001)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
Lantana (2001)

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
City of God (2002)
The Piano Teacher (2002)

The Fellowship of the Ring /The Two Towers /The Return of the King (2001-2003)
Lost in Translation (2003)

The Proposition (2005)
A History of Violence (2005)

The Fountain (2006)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Children of Men (2006)
The Lives of Others (2006)
Volver (2006)
SherryBaby (2006)

No Country for Old Men (2007)
Nightwatching /Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (2007)
Bug (2007)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
The Visitor (2008)
Man on Wire (2008)
WALL-E (2008)
Let the Right One In (2008)

The Limits of Control (2009)
Up (2009)
In the Loop (2009)

Morning Mutterings

Family Affairs: Me making a nine-hour round-trip from Latham to Geneseo yesterday has brought The Girl home for the holidays. Which is good, because it really hadn’t been feeling a lot like Christmas to me yet, despite the blast of Arctic chill that’s descended upon us this week. I do have to note that I’m good with it staying this cold for the next nine days, because then our week in Key West around New Year’s weekend will really feel like a get-warm vacation, which wouldn’t have been the case had November’s balm extended into December. Then when we get back, it can go back into the 50s and 60s here again and stay there until May. Please.

Wikicreepia: I had posted some photos on Wikipedia of Beaufort National Cemetery, so when I log in to look at my account there, it gives me a summary of what’s changed on that page. Since the last time I’d looked at it, the following addition to the page was made, then quickly deleted: “Sometimes if you live behind the cemtery some times you can see goast.” I know what’s behind that cemetery. And I feel pretty confident that whoever wrote that actually meant what they said. Plus I love the cadence and cascade of the way the sentence is structured. I plan to pilfer it for a story. Thank you, anonymous ghost-spotter from the backside of Beaufort.

Big Eleven Plus One: So the Big Ten (which has eleven teams) is looking for a twelfth team in a year or two so that they can qualify to have a post-season conference championship game. They offered a spot to the Odious Irish of Notre Dame a decade or so ago, and the pundits are all atwitter about what a natural fit that would be. It’s not going to happen, though, as Notre Dame’s name gets them better TV contracts and sponsorship deals as an Independent than they would get as one of twelve members of a conference, despite their increasingly lackluster performance and disconnection from their glory days of old. I’m guessing that the Big Ten will go after Pittsburgh from the Big East instead. Big East basketball is already too bloated, so there won’t be any need to replace them from that standpoint. Football-wise, however, the Big East is already the smallest of the BCS leagues, so they’ll need to back fill for the Panthers if they depart. I propose they take back Miami and Boston College from the ACC, as I have proposed before. Then, they should split their basketball conference into football and non-football schools, which would leave a great league of classic old Catholic colleges in one, and a bunch of big state schools in the other. The total pool of teams making the basketball post-season in such a scenario from the current Big East would likely increase, as the NCAA has shown an unwillingness to allow more than eight from the Big East. As for the ACC, if they couldn’t get Army, Navy or a couple of Carolina I-AA powerhouses to step up to I-A, then I’d like to see them just go back to being a 10-team league again. (Note: I refuse to use the terms FBS and FCS to refer to divisions that have long been known as I-A and I-AA, at least until the NCAA changes D-II and D-III titles to something equally stupid, which they won’t, because they’re not trying to peddle the Bowl Series there, so I won’t either). The ACC football championship game has never really meant anything, anyway, and this way you don’t have to come up with a bunch of contrived explanations as to how Miami is in the same class academically as Wake Forest, UNC-Chapel Hill or Virginia.

No Bowling: In the NCAA Division I-AA Football Championship Game yesterday, Villanova (14-1) came back from a 14-9 deficit at the half to pull off the upset win for their first title over perennial powerhouse Montana (also 14-1) by a score 23-21. The game was the culmination of a 16 team post-season tournament, and it’s all over and done before Christmastime. Today, the Division I-A Bowl season kicks off with the New Mexico Bowl (6-6 Wyoming vs. 8-4 Fresno State) and the St. Petersburg Bowl (8-4 Rutgers vs. 8-4 Central Florida). There will be 32 more bowl games over the month ahead, a lot of them featuring teams with 6-6 or 7-5 records (often including victories over I-AA or D-II schools), none of them leading to anywhere and anything meaningful, most especially the hollow “national championship game” of Texas vs. Alabama. I’m declaring the match-up of also-undefeated Texas Christian and Boise State from the Red Headed Stepson Conference to be national championship. In the absence of a meaningful postseason system, my claim is just as good as the Bowl Championship Series’ claim is. It’s just worth less money.

Camberwell Now: I don’t know how I missed it when ReR Megacorp remastered and re-released the completed works of Camberwell Now for the digital age a few years ago, but I’m sure glad I stumbled across it on eMusic last week. I had their sole album on vinyl while at the Naval Academy, but sold, lent, or lost it somewhere along the line, and have pined for it ever since. Drummer-songwriter-vocalist Charles Hayward is best known for his work with This Heat, who were also spectacular, innovative and influential,  but I think some of his greatest work came with Camberwell Now, whose material sounds as forward-looking and wonderful now as it did when I first heard it in the early 1980s. Highly recommended for those interested in challenging your own musical expectations.

Classy Vs. Tacky

Classy: Navy beat a somewhat resurgent Army team yesterday in a relatively tight football game, extending Navy’s current streak as the most successful team in the history of the service academies’ rivalry (including Air Force) in terms of consecutive Commander in Chief’s Trophies won and games without a loss to a service rival. After the game, Navy QB Ricky Dobbs said “That was one of the hardest teams we faced all year.” Coach Ken Niumatalolo added “For us to say we’re going to come and blow out Army would be disrespecting them.” And that’s something that classy teams care about: respecting their opponents, even though you want to beat them on the gridiron. I’m delighted Navy won yesterday, and I’m also glad to see Army turning their program around. I would love to see a pair of 11-0 or 10-1 teams meeting in an Army-Navy game soon. Well played, young men, on both sides of the ball.

Tacky: “The unbeaten Cincinnati Bearcats are heading into the biggest bowl game in school history with anger, uncertainty and an interim head coach who may not be around much longer. It’s time to move on. In many ways, the Bearcats have to move on from coach Brian Kelly before they can move on to the Sugar Bowl, their reward for finishing third in the BCS rankings. The game took on a whole different mood when Kelly left for Notre Dame on Friday, leaving the Big East champions shocked and unsure what comes next.” (AP Report)

How sad and pathetic is it that (a) the deplorable Notre Dame athletic department felt the need to destroy the ending of Cincinnati’s magical season to the betterment of their increasingly marginal and meaningless program, and (b) Brian Kelly agreed to do it, and let down his team at the worst moment possible. All the quotes around Notre Dame’s pilfering of Kelly referred to him as a proven winner, but his behavior here (and Notre Dame’s facilitation thereof) scream “loser” in the loudest, clearest terms possible. So here’s wishing him three 6-5 seasons with the Irish before they fire him, maybe with a trip to the GMAC Bowl mixed in there somewhere, where I hope they would lose to a non-BCS school like Troy or Central Florida or Louisiana Tech, except that they’re generally too cowardly to play such teams in the the post-season. The adults who run Notre Dame’s athletic department deserve to suffer through all that, though, sadly, it’s their student athletes who will pay the price for their greedy short-sightedness.

Alkulukuja Paskova Karhu

Tell me: do you have to be a math geek (like me) to find this website endlessly amusing? (Make sure you have your speakers on before visiting).

In other news: I submitted my last paper for the semester last night. 13 credit hours and 131 pages worth of papers done. Too many ahead to count without getting depressed. So we will focus on the successes.

Now, let us party for 30 days! Huttah!

The Ever So Strange Animal Almanac

I don’t often post or wax enthusiastic about other websites or blogs (though I do regularly read the ones linked below, at right, and endorse them all), but I stumbled across one today that’s simply brilliant, and had to be shared: The Ever So Strange Animal Almanac. I’d love it simply as a collection of wittily captioned photos of bizarre living things (think of it as LOLTongueEatingLouses)(and brace yourself before clicking that link)(oops! too late!), but the very clever writer moves into a whole ‘nother realm of whimsical good fun by writing as though he was a 19th Century gentleman explorer, flush with having just read Charlie Darwin for the first time, which sounds stupid and silly, but is actually funny and sublime. I’ve only made it back through about half of his back catalog, but I look forward to reading the rest soon. Well played, Sir Pilkington-Smyth! Huttah!

Top 20 Albums of 2009

I always do my Top 20 Album List on or around December 1 each year, since I think I have to listen to something for at least 30 days before declaring it best of anything. This year, I didn’t have to think very hard about the top of the pile, as my album of the year dominated the family iTunes account for months, and is still winning regular, repeat spins. So hats off to Mos Def. The Ecstatic makes me what it’s called. After putting it on the top of the heap, I then list the four runners up that could have been contenders in a year without Mos Def playing at the top of his game, and then the 15 other albums that most rocked my world this year, in alphabetic order. As always, links are provided to help you explore. Happy listening!

Album of the Year, 2009: Mos Def, The Ecstatic

First Runner Up: Pere Ubu, Long Live Pere Ubu!

Second Runner Up: Napalm Death, Time Waits for No Slave

Third Runner Up: Niwel Tsumbu, Song of the Nations

Fourth Runner Up: The Clean, Mister Pop

The Other Fifteen:

The Beatles Never Broke Up, Everyday Chemistry

The Big Pink, A Brief History of Love

Black Moth Super Rainbow, Eating Us

Clutch, Strange Cousins from the West

Cymbals Eat Guitars, Why Are There Mountains?

DM Stith, Heavy Ghosts

Gay Tastee, Songs for the Sodomites

Girls, Album

Gong, 2032

Japanther, Tut Tut Now Shake Ya Butt

Matt and Kim, Grand

Skyscape, Zetacarnosa

Super Furry Animals, Dark Days/Light Years

Various Artists, Analog Africa No.5, Legends of Benin

The Veils, Sun Gangs

CLT

Marcia and I flew into Charlotte (CLT) direct from Albany (ALB) yesterday morning, where we met Katelin, fresh off her flight from Rochester (ROC), reuniting our Party of Three for the first time since Columbus Day. Yay! Togetherness!

We then headed over to my mother’s new home in Charlotte, and met my new Stepdaddy Dennis, who is a great guy who tells excellent stories and takes great care of my Mom while making her (and us) laugh a lot, which is a grand thing by all accounts. I’m very glad to have him as part of our family, or for me to be part of his, whichever way that works.

Katelin stayed over with my Mom and Dennis last night while Marcia and I crashed at the Hilton nearby, but I texted Katelin early this morning while Marcia still slept to see if she would join me for a mandatory Carolina ritual: breakfast at Waffle House. Katelin was game, so I retrieved her and we headed out to the little yellow box on South Street in CLT and each had a bowl of grits and a pecan waffle and a cup of coffee to start Thanksgiving Day in high style. All for $12, including a nice tip.

I should note that a Waffle House waffle, for those who haven’t ever experienced them, is a true treat, a different flavor of food beast, diametrically opposed to the Belgian sorts of Waffles that they serve in Upstate Yankonia. I mean, Belgium? Really? Who put you in charge of waffles? Luxembourg?

It certainly wasn’t me, that’s for sure, because if I was appointed Secretary of Waffles in Washingtontown, I would decree Waffle House as the National Standard, and the people from sea to shining sea would enjoy crisp, thin, crunchy waffles, no greater than 0.5 inches tall, with grids no greater than 0.25 inches square, that require so much syrup and butter to fill them all that you aren’t given any of those annoying little syrup packs, but rather have to have your own bottle of the stuff to fill them up. And the syrup would be warm, the way that God and Waffle House intended it to be. Amen.

With waffles as preamble, we adjourned to Mom and Dennis’ house for the proper Thanksgiving feast, with turkey and ham and macaroni and cheese and beans and taters and gravy and pecan pie and assorted beaks and talons and carbohydrate nightmares and other parts of the cow and suchlike. It was a lovely dinner, as my sister and her family, and Dennis’ sister and daughter joined us for the largest extended family feast we’ve had with the Smith-Waters side of the family in a long, long, long, long time.

And tomorrow? I love the smell of leftovers in the morning. It smells like . . . victory!

A Pig and a Horse and a Prince

While looking at land in central Rensselaer County this past weekend, Marcia and I saw an amorous pig vigorously making love to the rear leg of a bored-looking draft horse.

“Mauve,” said the horse, as we passed. “I think I will paint the stall mauve.”

But that’s not really what I wanted to post about. What I really wanted to post about is what we might build if we did indeed buy some land out there in Passionate Pig Pastures.

Were it up to me and me alone, I would build a stone tower. I would be very happy to sit in my tower dropping rocks on unsuspecting passersby and generally making a community nuisance of myself.

It would look something like the picture at left, with me on top. This has been an image that I’ve carried deeply and resonantly since early childhood. I got it from a book called Jerome, by Phillip Ressner, and illustrated by Jerome Snyder.

Jerome is a prince who does princely deeds. You can see him standing at the base of the tower, if you look closely. He would be the frog.

I sincerely, without a shred of hyperbole, believe this to be the greatest children’s picture story book ever written. Or drawn.

The character at the top of the tower is a wizard. I think I identified with him because he had “yellow eyes and mean ears.” My eyes are actually green, but the ears fit, and I wear them. Meanly.

If you’d like to read and see and marvel at the rest of Jerome, you can find a complete scan of it over at the bottom of the page at Cold Fusion Video, here. The colors, language, and overall design are incredibly delicious.

We actually found a potentially viable 13-acre lot with a great creek running through it after we passed Horny Ham Acres, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to work looking for some tower designs. Watch your head.

Chalk

I have a whiteboard in my office. I use a variety of colorful, plastic, whiteboard pens on it, which are labeled “nontoxic,” but produce volatile, organic aromas that can lead to headaches if you work with them long enough. On average, I find that only one of three whiteboard markers I pick up will actually write on the whiteboard in a way that allows readers in my office to read the marks. There appears to be no rhyme or reason as to which ones will work and which ones won’t.

When I need to clean my whiteboard, I use a plastic spray bottle of “Extra Strength Marker Board Cleaner,” which contains trisodium phosphate, may be harmful if swallowed, is an eye irritant, and must be kept out of the reach of children. Once I spray this chemical on, I have to wipe it off with either a rag (which must then be washed, consuming water and electricity), or with paper towels (which go into the trash, and then into a landfill somewhere). The longer the material on the whiteboard stays there, the harder it is to scrub off, and the more rags and paper towels are required, and the greater the likelihood that my work clothes, desk or papers will be stained by the residue I am removing.

Once I clean the board, it takes some time for it to dry, and if I try to write something on it before it does, 100% of the whiteboard markers I pick up will leave no readable marks (as opposed to the normal 66%), but will instead sort of skid over the glossy, wet surface of the board, requiring more paper towels or rags to remedy the situation. This makes real-time use of the board in meeting or teaching situations messy and difficult.

So can someone please tell me why this is a better, cleaner, safer, cheaper, or healthier system than a good old natural green slate chalkboard with a stick of chalk and a felt eraser?