Deep Album Cuts Vol. 238: ZZ Top

Friday, July 30, 2021




I've always admired how long ZZ Top kept going with the trio that started performing together in 1970, after guitarist Billy Gibbons founded the band in 1969 and tried out a few different rhythm section players before finding that magic combination. They kept the same lineup for over 50 years, Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard, when the path to longevity in rock'n'roll usually involves a few changes in personnel. So it was particularly sad to see that run end this week with Dusty Hill's death. It's already been announced that it was Hill's wishes that the band could continue with the band's longtime guitar tech Elwood Francis on bass, so the band isn't over, but it's definitely the end of an era.  

ZZ Top deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Brown Sugar
2. Bedroom Thang
3. Just Got Paid
4. Down Brownie
5. Waitin' For The Bus
6. Jesus Just Left Chicago
7. Master Of Sparks
8. Blue Jean Blues
9. Balinese
10. Ten Dollar Man
11. Manic Mechanic
12. Party On The Patio
13. I Got The Six
14. Thug
15. Bad Girl
16. Woke Up With Wood
17. Burger Man
18. Deal Goin' Down
19. Black Fly
20. Trippin'
21. Stackin' Paper
22. Chartreuse

Tracks 1 and 2 from ZZ Top's First Album (1971)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Rio Grande Mud (1972)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from Tres Hombres (1973)
Tracks 8 and 9 from Fandango! (1975)
Track 10 from Tejas (1976)
Track 11 from Deguello (1979)
Track 12 from El Loco (1981)
Tracks 13, 14, and 15 from Eliminator (1983)
Track 16 from Afterburner (1985)
Track 17 from Recycler (1990)
Track 18 from Antenna (1994)
Track 19 from Rhythmeen (1996)
Track 20 from XXX (1999)
Track 21 from Mescalero (2003)
Track 22 from La Futura (2012)

It's funny to think that the members of ZZ Top were all 33 years old when they released Eliminator. But the long beards that Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill grew during a long 2-year break after 1976's Tejas made them seem like grizzled old prospectors in their iconic Eliminator era videos that were ubiquitous when I was a kid. I don't think I ever would've guessed at the time that they were the same age as Bruce Springsteen, who became clean-shaven and donned tight jeans to adapt to MTV era superstardom. By contrast, ZZ Top became these whimsical, mysterious characters with furry, spinning guitars who'd appear in a classic car and help a young guy meet women. 

But even before MTV and the drum machines, ZZ Top never took themselves too seriously. They were proud of their Texas roots and their musical influences, but they were always playful and irreverent about it, and traded in bawdy double entendres more than just about any band on the charts before AC/DC. I've always been amused that they could get away with songs like "Pearl Necklace" on the radio, and some of their album tracks like "Burger Man," "Woke Up With Wood," and "I Got The Six" are just hilariously sleazy. And even in the '70s they played around with technology and current sounds in interesting ways, like the early vocal pitch manipulation on "Manic Mechanic," but you always primarily heard those three guys playing together in a room. I adore some of the beats Frank Beard is laying down, especially on "Bedroom Thang." 

Billy Gibbons sang lead on most ZZ Top songs, but Dusty Hill sang lead on the band's first top 40 hit, "Tush" and a handful of later singles, ("Can't Stop Rockin'," "Delirious" and "Piece") and at least a song or two on most of the studio albums. On this playlist Hill sings lead on "Balinese," "Ten Dollar Man," "Party On The Patio," "I Got The Six," "Bad Girl," and "Deal Goin' Down."

ZZ Top only had a few albums and a handful of hits when they released their first greatest hits record, The Best of ZZ Top, in 1977, and that compilation actually included a number of album tracks over singles. But the comp went double platinum and helped make some live staples that were never singles like "Waitin' For The Bus," "Jesus Just Left Chicago," "Blue Jean Blues," and "Just Got Paid" into some of their most popular songs. 

I'm always curious to find albums by major acts that are missing from streaming services, and the absence of ZZ Top's albums Deguello and El Loco is one of the more puzzling ones I've seen. They were the band's first two albums for Warner Bros., which also released Eliminator, and they sold well and spun off several rock radio staples ("Cheap Sunglasses," "I Thank You," "Pearl Necklace," and "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide"). Most of the songs from those albums are on Spotify via compilations, although some of them are only available in the form of the 1987 box set The Six Pack, which controversially remixed the band's earlier albums to sound more like Eliminator and Afterburner. 

ZZ Top stayed with their lucrative '80s aesthetic for a while beyond the '80s, but eventually they got back to letting the band's killer rhythm section hold it down without any drum machines or sequencers. The last album ZZ Top made with Dusty Hill, La Futura, was one of my favorite albums of 2012, really a great-sounding record. I'm skeptical of aging acts making critically praised 'back to basics' albums with Rick Rubin, but that's one that I really dug. Apparently ZZ Top did record some new material during the pandemic lockdown, so hopefully we'll hear a little more from Dusty Hill at some point, but in the meantime, La Futura was a great record to go out on. 

11:18 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 237: Run-DMC

Wednesday, July 28, 2021




I've been on kind of a big '80s rap kick lately, maybe party because of Biz Markie's death or partly from working on my '80s lists lately. So I decided to finish up this playlist that I started last year when I worked on the Spin feature that named Run-DMC one of the 10 most influential acts of the last 35 years. 

Run-DMC deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Hit It Run
2. Beats To The Rhyme
3. Darryl And Joe (Krush-Groove 3)
4. Dumb Girl
5. Jay's Game
6. Come On Everybody featuring Q-Tip
7. Proud To Be Black
8. Word Is Born
9. How'd Ya Do It Dee
10. You're Blind
11. Ay Papi featuring Fat Joe and Bo Skaggs Nitty
12. Radio Station
13. Not Just Another Groove
14. Raising Hell
15. It's Not Funny
16. Big Willie featuring Tom Morello
17. Roots, Rap, Reggae
18. Wake Up
19. Son Of Byford
20. Tougher Than Leather

Tracks 5 and 18 from Run-DMC (1984)
Tracks 3, 10, 15 and 17 from King Of Rock (1985)
Tracks 1, 4, 7, 14 and 19 from Raising Hell (1986)
Tracks 2, 9, 12 and 20 from Tougher Than Leather (1988)
Tracks 8 and 13 from Back From Hell (1990)
Tracks 6 and 16 from Down With The King (1993)
Track 11 from Crown Royal (2001)

It's kind of crazy that "Beats To The Rhyme" wasn't one of the four charting singles from Tougher Than Leather, it's really the masterpiece of that record and the first (I think?) of several 1988 classics that sampled "Nautilus" by Bob James (including Eric B. & Rakim's "Follow The Leader" and Slick Rick's "Children's Story"). "Dumb Girl" has become kind of a significant record thanks to samples -- the "dumb" hook was looped for E-40's "Tell Me When To Go," and Run's voice was sampled on Jay-Z's "Jockin' Jay-Z." And "Proud To Be Black" was parodied memorably in CB4. 

It's fun to put together some songs that show Run-DMC's whole musical range, not just the guitar-heavy rap/rock stuff that they're best known for. They nod to all sorts of genres including songs like "Roots, Rap, Reggae" (although the less said about "Ragtime" the better). There was a point when DMC was probably the best rapper on earth, I love his voice so much. One thing that surprised me about Run-DMC's catalog is that while the first two albums are arguably their most important, they're a little thinner outside the singles, the albums that followed were longer and more consistent. Jam Master Jay actually rapped on two songs on the surprisingly solid 1990 flop Back From Hell, including "Not Just Another Groove," he was by no means a master MC but it's cool to hear his voice and he had a decent flow. 

Run-DMC's last two albums were full of guests helping them stay current, for better and for worse. Down With The King has aged pretty well, although I wish Tom Morello's guitar was mixed louder on "Big Willie." Crown Royal came out at a time when the rap/rock fusion that Run-DMC helped invent was at its commercial peak, so it's full of guys like Kid Rock, Fred Durst, and Everlast, but I would say a bigger problem with the album is that DMC is barely on it, "Ay Papi" is one of only a couple songs where he has a verse. And when Jam Master Jay was murdered a year later, the group disbanded, so that's probably gonna remain the last Run-DMC album, but they have a hell of a legacy regardless of 

9:34 AM

TV Diary

Friday, July 23, 2021





a) "The White Lotus"
This HBO miniseries from "Enlightened" creator Mike White is pitched as a 'satire' and it's about mostly wealthy people on vacation in Hawaii. But it's not quite a mean funny "Succession" thing, there's a little more empathy and gray areas in how the characters are depicted, with great performances from Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Natasha Rothwell, and Steve Zahn. But I think the standout of the cast is Australian actor Murray Bartlett, who I'd never seen before. There's an ominous scene in the first episode that implies that one of the main characters will die, so I'm not sure what this is all building to, but the first two episodes are fantastic. 

b) "Schmigadoon!"
"Schmigadoon!" has sort of a Pleasantville via "The Good Place" premise where an affluent modern couple on a hike walk into a town that's basically a 1950s musical. It's a funny idea and there are a lot of funny people in it (Cicely Strong, Keegan-Michael Key, Kristin Chenoweth, etc.) but it's a little slow going, it took me until the second episode to really get some laughs out of it, but I feel like it could really go somewhere if they continue to escalate the heightened reality or have some kind of explanation for what's going on. 

c) "The Beast Must Die"
This British series is about a woman seeking revenge after her son is killed in a hit-and-run, it's well made but obviously the tone is quite dark and I'm finding it a little dour and difficult to get into. 

d) "Wellington Paranormal"
The first TV spinoff of What We Do In The Shadows is one of the funniest shows on TV, so I'm happy to have another one, about the dumb cops from the movie investigating other supernatural phenomena. One of the novel things about this franchise is the pretty impressive special effects and gore being inserted into a dry mockumentary context where you don't usually see them, but it's all kind of window dressing to make the droll performances funnier. 

I think I only watched a few episodes of the original "Gossip Girl" when it started, but I was always kind of bitter towards The CW for canceling "Veronica Mars" and then premiering a show a few months later with Kristen Bell doing voiceover. If the dialogue on the original was too clever by half, the 2021 "Gossip Girl" is just doing backflips to impress you with of-the-moment references. The twist to make the show partly from the perspective of the teachers works, though, and I'm amused by the meta aspect of one of the teachers being Tavi Gevinson, who was an avatar of precociously cosmopolitan late 2000s teens as much as "Gossip Girl" was. It's weird that she's 25 and one of her students is played by a 27-year-old, though. 

I've always found "American Horror Story" to be a really frustrating show that never lives up to its potential, often because the most promising stories kind of fall apart once they're stretched out to a full season of television. So I was intrigued by "American Horror Stories," a spinoff where each episode is a self-contained story, and then annoyed again when the series opened with a 2-part episode that continues the first season 'Murder House' story. But the third episode was a decent new story and gave me a little more hope for the series. 

g) "Titans"
My primary frame of reference for these characters is Cartoon Network's wonderfully goofy "Teen Titans Go!" so I was just kind of curious to see this much more serious and grown up live action series that started on DC Universe a couple years ago and just started airing on TNT. I thought the first episode had some good stuff aside from the infamous scene where Robin says "fuck Batman," but doesn't really seem worth keeping up with to me. 

h) "The Cook Of Castamar"
This Netflix show from Spain takes place in the 18th century is kind of a period piece romance story, but there's a lot of sort of ugly gross (but probably historically accurate) stuff in the first couple episodes that makes me wonder if it's not really supposed to be very romantic at all. 

i) "The War Next-Door"
This Mexican sitcom on Netflix is pretty good, it's driven by a lot of broad old-fashioned humor about neighbors hating each other but it's also a pretty class conscious show about a struggling lower class family winning a contest and moving into a mansion and getting looked down on by their rich neighbors. 

This Netflix coming-of-age comedy's first season last year was really enjoyable, glad to have it back, the first new episode kind of took things in an unexpected direction but in a good way that feels like they're going to let Devi grow up and change a bit from the first season. 

I loved the first season of "This Way Up" way back in 2019 but it's easy to kind of forget a lot of shows from before the pandemic ever existed so it was nice to be reminded, I wasn't sure if this would get a second season. The first season worked well with Aisling Bea being this big personality and Sharon Horgan being her straight man, so one thing I don't love about the second season is they have a lot more separate A and B storylines, it's more like a show with two parallel protagonists now. But it's still a really funny and at turns poignant show. 

The third season of "In The Dark" kind of makes me feel like the second season of "Search Party" where these likable characters have been pulled so far into so many dangerous situations that the show has kind of become more stressful and depressing to watch than anything else. "Search Party eventually rebounded from that and found its comedic voice, though, so I hope "In The Dark" will too. 

I'm used to TV spinoffs of Disney and Pixar movies being these sort of iffy scaled-down things where the animation doesn't look as good as it did in the feature and some of the voices are different. So Disney+'s "Monsters At Work" is refreshing because they got Billy Crystal and John Goodman and other actors from Monsters, Inc., and the TV budget animation looks about the same quality as the feature budget animation looked 20 years ago thanks to technology advances. It's also cool because Monsters University was a prequel so this is finally a continuation of where the original movie left off. It's sort of a workplace sitcom with Ben Feldman voicing the awkward, overeducated new guy, so in a way it feels like an animated "Superstore." 

Loren Bouchard's Apple+ series "Central Park" feels like an attempt to make a "Bob's Burgers" that's not "Bob's Burgers," with a slightly heavier focus on music and characters breaking into song. It's a good show, but it does have that uncanny valley quality where the funniest parts are the ones that feel the most like "Bob's Burgers" (Cole is basically Eugene if he was voiced by Titus Burgess, which is great). There was a mild controversy over Kristen Bell voicing a black character, and they recast the role for the 2nd season, which is fine, but I do miss Bell's comic timing a little and her casting was sort of consistent within a show where two white women are voiced by Daveed Diggs and Stanley Tucci. 

o) "Record Of Ragnarok"
A very weird but entertaining anime series on Netflix about all the gods of the different religions getting together and deciding to hold a battle royale with human to decide whether they'll eradicate mankind. 

p) "McCartney 3, 2, 1"
This Hulu miniseries is just 6 half hour episodes of Paul McCartney and Rick Rubin talking about music and songwriting, mostly Beatles records and the occasional solo or Wings track. And it's really just a really wonderful opportunity to hear stories straight from McCartney, as they lean over a mixing board and isolate instruments and talk about performances and choices and even hear things from the session that were cut out of the final song. The love of music and creating is so palpable in this and it's just so inspiring to soak in, I loved every minute. I also liked the directorial choice to have the McCartney/Rubin scenes in black & white while all the archival footage of the Beatles and other musicians is in color, kind of a nice reversal of the way past and present are usually visually presented in a documentary. 

q) "History of the Sitcom"
A couple months ago CNN aired "The Story of Late Night," a miniseries that was really entertaining despite the fact that very few of the dozen or so late night hosts that it was primarily about participated in the interviews. So the follow-up "History of the Sitcom" benefits from the fact that it's about a lot more shows with much bigger casts so there's usually a cast member from just about every major sitcom of the past 50 years that was game to talk about it, although the structure of the show is more topical than chronological in terms of what each episode is about. 

r) "Cat People"
This Netflix show, or at least the first couple episodes I watch, is not so much about people who own cats as it is about people who've turned their cats into a career, including a guy who raps about his cats and moved from Baltimore to Portland, where he feels more understood. Some of the profiles are charming but I dunno, to me cats are just chill companions to hang out at home with, I can't really relate to this people. 

s) "Naomi Osaka"
This Netflix docuseries kind of follows Naomi Osaka during and after that point that she became super famous very fast, and you really see what kind of toll that takes on a young athlete. It's a very empathetic portrait, and it comes at a good time when she's going through weird stuff like assholes like Megyn Kelly attacking her. 

t) "Behind The Attraction"
"Behind The Attraction" is a Disney+ show about the history of various rides and attractions at Disney parks, so obviously it's sort of a puff piece about corporate IP. But some of the stories are pretty interesting and I just went to Disney World last year. The show is narrated by Paget Brewster, who kind of puts on the kind of sarcastic, brassy personality she often plays in sitcoms, which is a surprising choice, but it gives a little flavor to a show that could easily be too bland. 

u) "Heist"
This Netflix series about famous crimes is one of those weird shows that mixes documentary with extensive scripted reenactments, so you've got one of the real people doing talking head narration while an actor plays them in a dramatization of the events. I can never really get into these kinds of shows, it makes me wish they stuck to one approach or the other. 

v) "Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon A Crime"
This Netflix show features extensive interviews with a woman in Brazil who shot and dismembered her husband. I guess convicted murderers don't often get a chance to tell their side of the story and I don't know if I would say they shouldn't, but it's a pretty uncomfortable watch, I'm not sure how I feel about it. 

w) "Catch And Kill: The Podcast Tapes"
So many TV shows are adaptations or extensions of podcasts now that it seems dumb to put the ungaingly "the podcast tapes" subheading on such a snappy title. But obviously Ronan Farrow's coverage of Harvey Weinstein was a huge deal and it's interesting to go back to the victims and other journalists that wrote about this story and look at how it all unfurled and why it took so many years for Weinstein to experience consequences. 

x) "Luxe Listings Sydney"
This Amazon show is interesting only in that there are dozens of these kinds of reality shows about conceited careerist rich people in America and it's a little novel to see one that takes place in Australia and see what that culture is like in Sydney. 

y) "My Unorthodox Life"
This Netflix series is about the family of the CEO of a modeling agency who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community. So some of the time it's just a run of the mill reality show about an affluent New York family while at other times it's very pointedly about some unique culture clashes. 

z) "How To Become A Tyrant"
This Netflix show lost me right in the first episode when Andrew Sullivan showed up as one of their interviewees. I don't know how you expect to credibly tell stories about people like Adolf Hitler when one of your talking heads is the most prominent mainstream proponent of race science, get the fuck out of here with that shit. 

11:49 AM

Monthly Report: July 2021 Singles

Monday, July 19, 2021







1. Ayron Jones - "Mercy"
The first #1 by a black solo artist on Billboard's mainstream rock chart since Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" and a total banger. Ayron Jones is from Seattle and was actually discovered by Sir Mix-A-Lot, hell of a singer and I like the tempo change in the last minute. Here is the 2021 singles Spotify playlist I add 10 songs to every month. 

2. Olivia Rodrigo - "Good 4 U"
I've already written two pieces that were partly inspired by the success of "Good 4 U" but I haven't written much about the song itself. It totally kicks ass, though, at first I thought it was maybe just kind of a smart gesture to put out a song before the album that felt like a 180 from "Drivers License," but I didn't really expect it to hit #1 in its own right and work so well in the context of pop radio. 

3. Wizkid f/ Tems - "Essence"
A handful of Afrobeats or Afrobeats-adjacent songs have broken through in the U.S. in the last few years -- "Drogba (Joanna)" by Afro B, "Fall" by Davido, "Don't Rush" by Young T & Bugsey -- but it's always felt like there was some really big crossover moment coming. And "Essence," which was released on Wizkid's album last fall but has exploded into summer jam ubiquity in just the last few weeks, seems like that moment, just an incredibly smooth and addictive song. 

4. Regard, Troye Sivan, and Tate McRae - "You" 
Three mid-level Top 40 acts that have each had a big hit or two but are hardly a sure thing, getting together and making a jam where everything sort of falls together nicely and feels like a new calling card for all of them. 

5. Lil Baby & Kirk Franklin - "We Win"
Lil Baby ascended to huge multiplatinum success last year without really leaving his comfort zone or making any strained crossover moves, so 2021 is kind of the ongoing test of how well he can navigate all these new lanes that have opened up for him. And teaming up with Kirk Franklin and Just Blaze for the new Space Jam movie seems like a big opportunity for embarrassment, but the song holds together really nicely, in contrast to pretty much every other song on the Space Jam soundtrack album. 

6. Rod Wave - "Tombstone" 
Two rap trends that don't go well together are producer tags and songs with multiple producers. "Tombstone" is a really sad, moving song that Rod Wave fills with poignant little details ("seven missed calls, I know it's bad news"). But before he says anything, 2 of the song's 3 producers tack on their obnoixous: "damn, this muthafucka too crazy, Saucii!" and "let that shit ride, Eighty 8!"

7. Luke Combs - "Forever After All" 
I like to joke about how compulsively regimented country radio is, but it's really kind of hilarious how there's such an orderly queue to make sure every big artist gets a week at #1 with almost every single. One of the people who's benefited the most from that system is Luke Combs, the only artist who's hit #1 on country radio with all of his first 11 singles. So when "Forever After All" debuted at #2 on the Hot 100 last fall, another historic achievement, country radio still made sure it waited in the wings for a few months while another Combs single, "Better Together," got its turn at #1. It eventually got it, thoguh, and "Forever After All" just spent 6 weeks at #1 -- only the 3rd song in the past decade to stay at #1 on country radio for more than 5 weeks (naturally, one of the other songs was another Luke Combs track, "Beautiful Crazy"). 

8. Robin Thicke - "Look Easy" 
Happy to see On Earth And In Heaven doing well on R&B radio, "Look Easy" kind of has that gentle Spanish guitar sound that served Thicke so well back in the "Lost Without You" era. 

9. HD4President - "Touch Down 2 Cause Hell"
Touch Down 2 Cause Hell was the title of Boosie Badazz's excellent 2015 comeback album after 4 years in prison, but new school Baton Rouge rapper HD4President is definitely more interested in evoking Boosie's scrappy early days in this song that really hits that mid-2000s Trill Ent. vibe perfectly. 

10. Cynthia Erivo - "The Good"
A couple weeks ago I worked at Wolf Trap's 50th anniversary event, and it was sort of the first concert I'd been to in over a year. It was a fun night and part of my job was running the lyric prompter for Cynthia Erivo's performance where she was backed by the National Symphony Orchestra. She mostly did standards and Aretha covers, but she closed with her current single, which I hadn't heard before, and it really got stuck in my head after the rehearsals and the performance. 
 
The Worst Single of the Month: Tai Verdes - "A-O-K"
This song is currently creeping up the lower reaches of both pop radio and alternative radio playlists, and I'm bracing myself for this to become as inescapable as all the insufferable songs it reminds me of like Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" or Afroman's "Because I Got High."

6:00 AM

Movie Diary

Friday, July 16, 2021





a) No Sudden Move
No Sudden Move is a Steven Soderbergh movie about a group of criminals who come together to pull off a job, and it takes place in the '50s, but it's otherwise pretty far from a jaunty Ocean's heist flick or anything with any kind of retro glamour. Instead, Benicio Del Toro leads the cast in a more Usual Suspects-style tale where nobody's exactly sure what the job is or who's pulling the strings, as one double cross begets another and another. So it's not quite as fun as I hoped it would be, but the plot kept me guessing and two unbilled heavyweights who aren't introduced until the second half get some great scenes and keep it all from getting dull. Pretty impressive for screenwriter Ed Solomon, a vet of lighter fare like the Bill & Ted, Men In Black, and Now You See Me movies who readily sinks his teeth into something darker and more hard boiled. And I know people are just crazy about Julia Fox, but she really painfully deflates every scene she's in here. 

b) Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
This is as great as everyone says it is, although given the dozens of hours of Harlem Cultural Festival that ?uestlove had at his disposal, I would've been just as happy if not happier to watch a film of just the performances without all the extra context provided by interviews and research (hopefully there'll be an extended cut for a bonus-loaded DVD at some point). The Nina Simone and Sly Stone footage was great, but what I really wanted more of was a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder, playing drum and keyboard solos and just going off. 

c) Fear Street: Part One - 1994
I never read the R.L. Stine books, but I thought I'd check out the first movie in this Netflix trilogy based on them. And it was just okay, I don't think I really liked it enough to check out the other 2 movies, the opening vignette with Maya Hawke was way better than the main storyline. Also, it drove me nuts how they had a soundtrack full of alternative rock from the era but a bunch of the songs didn't come out until 1995, 1996, or even 1997. 

d) The Tomorrow War
It probably sounds weird to say that I feel let down by the director of The Lego Batman Movie, but that's one of my favorite animated movies of the last few years, and Chris McKay's first big budget live action feature is a bloated, clumsy sci-fi movie. I kind of respect the sheer shamelessness to do an alien invasion movie, a time travel movie, and a war movie all at once, and there are some clever aspects to the execution, but it really feels like the premise collapses as soon as you think about it at all. All the scenes with J.K. Simmons are gold, though, having him around to dispense some quips really saves the third act. Betty Gilpin is wasted by this movie, though, which is unforgivable. 

e) In The Heights
I have a healthy skepticism of all things Lin-Manuel Miranda, but this was a pretty enjoyable movie. Anthony Ramos is incredibly talented, I've been rooting for Melissa Barrera since "Vida" and was pleasantly surprised by her singing, and Jon M. Chu brought a lot of imagination to translating the musical from the stage to the screen, keeping the focus on the songs and performances but throwing in some flashy movie magic so it didn't feel like a straight adaptation (the scene where people draw animated figures in the air, the dancing on the side of the building, etc.).

f) Blindspotting
Blindspotting is sort of Lin-Manuel Miranda adjacent -- two of its leads were in Hamilton and there's a bit of rapped dialogue, including a scene in the last 15 minutes that completely derails the movie and brings the whole thing down one or two star ratings. Up until that point, though, it's a really enjoyable and fairly original movie that depicts Oakland really lovingly, I'm glad I checked it out on the way to washing the spinoff series on Starz. 

g) Good On Paper
I enjoy Iliza Shlesinger's standup and the Netflix movie she wrote and starred in is a pretty solid translation of her storytelling style into a feature film. Since it's clearly autobiographical and she got married a few years ago, I went into it assuming it was a rom com about her current relationship, which was a good way to watch it because I didn't see the twist coming and it was entertaining how that unfolded. It was also funny to see Ryan Hansen play against type since he usually plays himbos, but it was a little funny that they basically put glasses on him and used a chubbier body double for a shirtless scene to really make the character seem less attractive. 

h) Mary J. Blige's My Life
My Life is my favorite Mary album and it's cool to see a whole feature-length documentary dedicated to one of the cornerstones of '90s R&B. That said, I think Mary J. Blige deserves a doc of the same caliber as the one Tina Turner got, Tina, earlier this year, and this movie isn't quite it -- despite the focus on one album they don't really get into specific songs as much as I'd like, although the stuff with Chucky Thompson is great, he's really the unsung hero of the album and I'm glad he got his moment in the spotlight. 

i) The Boss Baby: Family Business
The Boss Baby was rightfully the object of a lot of derision but it was actually pretty good as far as kids' movies go. And I figured they'd go the easy route of more of the same for the sequel, but instead they jump forward so the kids from the first movie are adults (Alec Baldwin reprises his role but Tobey Maguire got outta there and is replaced by James Marsden) and one of them has his own baby, a female boss baby voiced by Amy Sedaris. I don't think all this stuff works remotely as well as the first movie, but my kids didn't seem to mind. 

9:15 AM

Saturday, July 10, 2021

 



I released two new Western Blot songs this week, "XING PED" and "Golden West Bleat." This is the third single I've released this year, after "Avoiding You" and "Valeria," and as with those, Mat Leffler-Schulman mastered them and Deadman Jay did the cover art. 

A few years ago I played drums in the band Golden Beat, and after we broke up I compiled the 5 songs we'd recorded as an EP. But there were 2 other songs that we played at our shows, our fastest song "Stray" and our slowest song "Simple Dude," that never got recorded. At one point while the band was winding down and I was recording solo stuff with Doug Bartholomew, I made drum tracks for those songs, hoping I could possibly get the other members of Golden Beat to finish recording them. That idea never came together, so I took those drum tracks and wrote new songs over them with my own lyrics and melodies that were somewhat derivative of the band's original arrangements. So "Stray" became "XING PED" and "Simple Dude" became "Golden West Bleat," and I credited the other members of the  band for songwriting. 

2:30 PM

Monthly Report: June 2021 Albums

Friday, July 09, 2021






1. Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend
I'm not someone who especially pines for alternative rock bands to 'matter' like they used to, but it's kind of nice to know the rock hype machine is still pretty strong in England and can support a band like Wolf Alice, who just topped the UK charts after two albums that hit #2 on the charts. Over here in America, I heard Wolf Alice on the radio a few times in 2015 and the the new album didn't even chart on the Billboard 200. But Blue Weekend feels like a big creative step forward that has been noticed, and it's currently the 2nd highest non-reissue album of 2021 on Metacritic. I love the way the first 3 songs slowly build this tension, feeling like there's a climactic explosion always lurking around the corner, before they finally crank up the amps on "Smile," and then go straight into an acoustic track. Like their Dirty Hit labelmates The 1975 and Beabadoobee, Wolf Alice are well versed in big '90s guitar tones and quiet-loud dynamics, but there's an intimate bedroom pop sensibility in there too. All these records are in my 2021 Spotify albums playlist. 

2. Leisure Sport - Title Card EP
Leisure Sport are a Baltimore band that I share a practice space with, I've been excited to hear more of their music since their 2-song demo a couple years ago, and their debut EP produced by Chris Freeland is a big step up from that. Michael's a really inventive drummer, love the patterns he plays on "Lost And Found," and I really dig the songs where the singer/guitarists Dana and Kyle share lead vocals and harmonize like "Stones" and "Zero Sum." 

3. Crowded House - Dreamers Are Waiting
Making my Crowded House and Split Enz playlists recently gave me a renewed appreciation for just what an amazing songwriter Neil Finn is, and even in his 60s his voice has held up remarkably well, I love when he first hits that little bit of falsetto in "Playing With Fire." And it's cool that his son Liam and Elroy Finn are now members of Crowded House, as is longtime producer Mitchell Froom. It was very entertaining to listen to this album for the first time, and get to track 11 and suddenly hear the familiar melody of the Tetris theme song in "Love Isn't Hard At All," which seems to cleverly tie into the song's poignant lyrics ("A man works hard to find his shape, knowing where he stands and how much of this he can take"). 

4. Lil Durk & Lil Baby - The Voice of the Heroes
I'm amused that Lil Durk is "the voice" here because I've long regarded him as having one of the worst voices in mainstream rap, one of these guys who uses AutoTune constantly even though it doesn't flatter him and he doesn't seem to know what to do with it. Durk has inarguably worked his way to the top, though, that Drake feature helped put him over but it feels like the past year he just figured out how to really make national hits and great features. Still, Baby is one of the best rappers in the world right now and he easily carries this album, even if the chemistry isn't quite as natural a fit as it was with Gunna on Drip Harder. "Still Runnin'" with Meek Mill is definitely my favorite, glad to finally get the full song after the snippets a few months ago. "That's Facts" is good, too, Durk snapped on that one. 

5. Foushee - Time Machine
Foushee's debut album isn't quite what I expected. It runs under 30 minutes, a quarter of which is a long jammy duet with Steve Lacy, and it doesn't include some of her best post-"Deep End' singles, "Single AF" and "Gold Fronts," but does include interpretations of Depeche Mode and Carole King classics. But it's a cool record, the left turns work and keep her difficult to pigeonhole. 

6. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Butterfly 3000
The downside to King Gizzard releasing good albums every few months is that some of them start to blur together. Butterfly 3000 isn't too different from the last few, but I think there's a tendency towards squonky analog synth tones and steady pulsing rhythms that gives it a distinct texture from their more psych rock-leaning albums. As usual they do some great stuff with the 5/4 time signature, if I ever do another 5/4 DJ set I'll probably include "Black Hot Soup." And "Catching Smoke" is a real standout banger with a cool vocal cadence, I don't think they'll ever come out of leftfield with a big pop hit but I'd love to see that happen. 

7. Tyler, The Creator - Call Me If You Get Lost
I never thought much of Tyler as a rap, and rolled my eyes at his 'return to rap' coming complete with DJ Drama ad libs (especially considering that Childish Gambino already did the 'artisinal blog rap album with DJ Drama shoutouts' thing, to say nothing of Kid Capri on the Kendrick album working better than either of those). But I'll give him credit, this is a solid album, "Wilshire" and "Massa" are really compelling pieces of writing.

8. Danny Elfman - Big Mess
I don't know if I would rate Big Mess over any Oingo Boingo album, but they left behind a great catalog, and I'm still really glad Danny Elfman came back and did a singer/songwriter album for the first time since the band broke up 25 years ago. But it's a cool record, I think "Serious Ground" is my favorite. 

9. Lloyd Banks - The Course of the Inevitable
Banks was always by far the best rapper in G-Unit and I always hoped he'd grow into a nice consistent mid-level career after the 50 Cent hype died down and become a dependable Jadakiss type. It felt like that was starting to happen a decade ago after "Beamer, Benz Or Bentley" and the Kanye collaborations, but then he went quiet again. So I'm happy to see Lloyd Banks back in action, doing an album of no-nonsense boom bap with guests like Roc Marci and Benny The Butcher and Freddie Gibbs, it's a great look for him. 

10. Doja Cat - Planet Her
I have mixed feelings about Doja Cat, she's so clearly one of the most talented pop stars out right now, but it always feels like she's holding her own music at arm's length, and I don't think it's just her internet troll background. Planet Her has some pretty excellent tracks, but I think 2018's Amala, the barely noticed debut she released before "MOOO!" went viral and helped launch her towards the top of the charts, is still her best album, it had a little more of an earnest alt-pop vibe and she wasn't shrieking her rap verses in the Carol Kane voice she does now. 

The Worst Album of the Month: JP Saxe - Dangerous Levels of Introspection
JP Saxe is a pop singer/songwriter whose duet with another moderately well known pop singer/songwriter, "If The World Was Ending" with Julia Michaels, has become a huge sleeper hit with over a billion streams. I never really liked that song but still wanted to give Saxe's album a chance, and nah, I just really don't like his voice or his writing. Dangerous Levels of Introspection is a ridiculous title, but I will admit that the lyrics live up to it, and not in a good way: "I couldn't get it up for you the first time/ Like my body knew it wasn't meant in you/ Or maybe it was just the Adderall." 

2:23 PM

My Top 100 Singles of 1989

Thursday, July 08, 2021




Last week I kicked off my 1980s lists with my favorite 1989 albums, and now here's the singles for the same year. Obviously there's a lot of the same artists, although I think with singles you can get a little more variety of all the stuff that happened that year, plus I go with chart peaks rather than original release for singles lists, so there's lots of later singles from 1987 and 1988 albums on here. Here's the Spotify playlist which, like the other one, has everything on the list except 2 of the 3 De La Soul songs. 

1. Slick Rick - "Children's Story"
2. The B-52s - "Love Shack"
3. Madonna - "Like A Prayer"
4. Public Enemy - "Fight The Power"
5. De La Soul - "Me, Myself & I"
6. Motley Crue - "Kickstart My Heart" 
7. Tom Petty - "I Won't Back Down"
8. Guns N' Roses - "Paradise City" 
9. Bobby Brown - "On Our Own" 
10. Special Ed - "I Got It Made" 
11. U2 - "All I Want Is You"
12. Fine Young Cannibals - "Good Thing"
13. Cowboy Junkies - "Sweet Jane" 
14. Madonna - "Express Yourself" 
15. N.W.A. - "Express Yourself"
16. Janet Jackson - "Rhythm Nation"
17. Metallica - "One" 
18. Tom Petty - "Runnin' Down A Dream"
19. Tears For Fears f/ Oleta Adams - "Woman In Chains"
20. Kate Bush - "This Woman's Work" 
21. Neil Young - "Rockin' In The Free World"
22. MC Lyte - "Cha Cha Cha" 
23. EPMD - "So What Cha Sayin"
24. The Cure - "Lovesong"
25. Madonna - "Cherish"
26. Poison - "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" 
27. Erasure - "A Little Respect"
28. Was (Not Was) - "Walk The Dinosaur" 
29. Young M.C. - "Bust A Move" 
30. Tone-Loc - "Wild Thing"
31. Tom Petty - "Free Fallin'"
32. Soul II Soul - "Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)"
33. Milli Vanilli - "Girl You Know It's True"
34. Janet Jackson - "Miss You Much" 
35. Public Enemy - "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos" 
36. Bobby Brown - "Every Little Step"
37. New Edition - "N.E. Heart Break" 
38. Michael Jackson - "Leave Me Alone" 
39. George Jones - "The King Is Gone (So Are You)"
40. Van Halen - "Feels So Good" 
41. Traveling Wilburys - "End Of The Line" 
42. Jody Watley - "Real Love" 
43. Big Daddy Kane - "Smooth Operator" 
44. Kix - "Don't Close Your Eyes" 
45. Motley Crue - "Dr. Feelgood" 
46. Digital Underground - "Doowutchyalike"
47. Tone-Loc - "Funky Cold Medina" 
48. The Bangles - "The Eternal Flame" 
49. Guns N' Roses - "Patience" 
50. The Ramones - "Pet Sematary" 
51. Tina Turner - "The Best"
52. Bobby Brown - "My Prerogative"
53. R.E.M. - "Pop Song 89"
54. Fabulous Thunderbirds - "Powerful Stuff" 
55. Too $hort - "Life Is...Too Short" 
56. Paula Abdul - "Forever Your Girl" 
57. De La Soul f/ Q-Tip, Phife, Queen Latifah, Monie Love and the Jungle Brothers - "Buddy (Remix)" 
58. The Replacements - "I'll Be You"
59. Fine Young Cannibals - "She Drives Me Crazy"
60. Elvis Costello - "Veronica"
61. LL Cool J - "Big Ole Butt" 
62. Bonnie Raitt - "Thing Called Love" 
63. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Knock Me Down" 
64. The Rolling Stones - "Mixed Emotions" 
65. Donny Osmond - "Soldier Of Love"
66. Roy Orbison - "You Got It" 
67. Todd Rundgren and Bobby Womack - "Want Of A Nail" 
68. Neneh Cherry - "Buffalo Stance" 
69. Aerosmith - "Love In An Elevator"
70. De La Soul - "Eye Know" 
71. Tears For Fears - "Sowing The Seeds Of Love"
72. Beastie Boys - "Hey Ladies"
73. Little Feat - "One Clear Moment" 
74. Belinda Carlisle - "Leave A Light On" 
75. 2 Live Crew - "Me So Horny" 
76. The Ramones - "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)" 
77. Billy Joel - "We Didn't Start The Fire" 
78. Paula Abdul - "Straight Up"
79. Camper Van Beethoven - "Pictures Of Matchstick Men" 
80. Great White - "Once Bitten, Twice Shy"
81. Aerosmith - "Janie's Got A Gun"
82. Prince - "Batdance"  
83. Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians - "What I Am" 
84. Def Leppard - "Rocket" 
85. U2 - "Angel Of Harlem"
86. Queen - "I Want It All" 
87. The D.O.C. - "It's Funky Enough"
88. The B-52's - "Channel Z" 
89. INXS - "Mystify" 
90. Pixies - "Here Comes Your Man"
91. R.E.M. - "Stand" 
92. LL Cool J - "I'm That Type Of Guy"
93. Rod Stewart - "Downtown Train"
94. Aerosmith - "What It Takes"  
95. Prince - "Scandalous!"
96. Mike + The Mechanics - "The Living Years" 
97. Phil Collins - "Two Hearts" 
98. Bette Midler - "Wind Beneath My Wings" 
99. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies"
100. New Kids On The Block - "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" 

My strongest musical memories of 1989 include "Love Shack," which I like just as much now as I did when I was 7, if not more, and hearing kids on the school bus sing "Paradise City" and assuming it was more of an old limerick than a currently popular rock song. A lot of this stuff is so overplayed and dated in that inevitable late '80s way, but I tried to kind of really think about how I feel about the songs and not just dismiss them the way I would if they came on the radio for the 3rd time in a week. 

9:10 AM

TV Diary

Wednesday, July 07, 2021














The big stylistic flourish of "Kevin Can Fuck Himself," that the show regularly switches between a bright shrill laugh track sitcom and a darker, more realistic drama, might be a little more impressive if "WandaVision" didn't already become one of the most acclaimed shows of the year with a similar trick (and a little more different stuff going on beyond constantly flipping between those two contrasting tones). The performances by both Annie Murphy, as the person who exists in both of these worlds, and Eric Petersen, as the person who only exists in the broad sitcom world, are both really impressive, but I kind of don't know where this show is going or if there's a point to doing this kind of dark satire of a genre that's such an easy target. 

b) "Physical"
I feel like a broken record, but with period shows being really in vogue these days, I feel like I'm always watching something about a fictional trailblazer of some interesting industry and wishing they'd made a fact-based show about whoever really did that stuff. Rose Byrne's character in "Physical" is a well rendered, three-dimensional protagonist, a woman who starts the show broke, in a bad marriage, and suffering from a serious eating disorder but eventually starts an empire of aerobics instruction VHS tapes seen in frequent flash forwards. I don't know if I'm eager to get the origin story out the way and get away from the shitty husband, or if I want them to linger on the goofy surfer couple who helps her get started (Della Saba and Lou Taylor Pucci, who it's a little weird to see as a bearded grownup so long after his various coming-of-age roles in the mid-2000s). 

This 6-episode British series starring New Zealand comedian Rose Matafeo was really funny and charming, kind of an anti-romcom at times that kept driving the characters apart but it had a sweet ending, I'm glad they're getting a second season. What made the whole 'a movie star dates a common person' story work is that she didn't know who he was and he clearly isn't that into show business so it just feels like they're both trying to escape these aspects of his fame that they can't quite get around. One thing I would say is that Minnie Driver's hilarious role was too fleeting, but I suppose the show did just fine without shoehorning her into more episodes. 

The 2018 movie Blindspotting was a good but flawed movie, and this series is sort of a sequel/spinoff that continues the narrative focusing on one of the supporting characters from the movie, Ashley (Jasmine Cephas Jones). There's still some of the sort of heightened reality gags and poetry slam moments that made me roll my eyes in the movie, but it's a pretty engaging, funny show with a strong cast that includes, sort of unexpectedly, Helen Hunt. 

This show on The CW is about some hot people in a small New England town who find a way to declare the town its own country in order to oppose a big corporation's mining operation tearing the place apart. I don't know if the story makes sense but it's a cute little show. 

I feel very pandered to by this show where Sarah Shahi has a lot of gratuitous sex, but I'm not complaining. The voiceover is kind of cheesy, though. 

This series based on a YA novel is definitely one of the first non-Marvel non-Star Wars show on Disney+ that I found genuinely impressive, kind of is in the same niche as A Series of Unfortunate Events but the whole thing feels very witty and twee and influenced by Wes Anderson, which could be terrible but they pull it off well with a cast that includes Tony Hale and Kristen Schaal. The kids in the cast  are great too, particularly Emmy DeOliveira, but I think the person who's really surprisingly perfect in a show like this is Ryan Hurst from "Sons of Anarchy." 

This Italian import on Netflix is pretty promising, features present day characters flashing back to the point in the '90s when the Internet changed their lives and looks at how that's reverberated through time. 

This Netflix import is basically "Gossip Girl" with a Swedish prince, I find it pretty dull. 

j) "Katla" 
This Netflix import is about Icelandic volcanoes with a supernatural twist, pretty cool stuff, need to watch more of it. 

This music docuseries on Netflix is really fun and enjoyable stuff. Even on the topics they cover that I'm already a know-it-all about like Britpop or AutoTune, they get some fresh perspectives in the artist interviews that make them worth watching. And I feel like music critics aren't talking heads in music docs as much as they used to be back when David Fricke was in everything, so it's fun to see some critics of my generation like Chris Molanphy and Julianna Escobedo Shepherd pop up in episodes. 

I kind of wish this TBS game show hosted by Dwyane Wade was exactly like the fictitious game show "The Box" that Matt LeBlanc hosted in "Episodes." It is more or less about as ridiculous, though. 

This Netflix reality show about Canadian loggers is a nice low key thing to watch, although it's kind of hilarious how much cursing they have to bleep, and I snicker immaturely every time the narrator says something about choking a monster log. 

A Peacock docuseries that I put on and then kind of tuned out, I'm kind of tired of hearing about this crap and I don't think they had the scoop on any new information. 

I really respect that Helen Mirren doesn't take herself too seriously and is game to appear in things that might be considered lowbrow for an actor of her stature. But this goofy ABC show where voice actors do comedic riffs on the interior monologues of animals in nature documentary footage is really just beneath her, it's cheesy. 

Sort of a modern "Schoolhouse Rock" kind of thing exec produced by the Obamas, 10 little animated music videos with popular musicians singing about how the U.S. government works. It's cute, maybe sometime if I'm trying to explain some of this stuff to my kids I'll show one of these to them. 

q) "Evil"
"Evil" was one of my favorite new shows of the 2019-2020 season and pretty much the only show on CBS I care about. So naturally, when it finally came back after a year without new episodes post-COVID, CBS moved it over to Paramount+, the one streaming service I already decided I didn't care about and wouldn't pay for. So I watched the first episode of the 2nd season that was free on Amazon and it was really good, I'm glad they're still leaning into making Michael Emerson as creepy as possible, but now I'm trying to figure out if I like this show enough to take the Paramount+ plunge and I'm really annoyed about it.

The first 8 episodes of this HBO Max show came out back in March and April, and I assumed that was the whole first season and it'd be back next year. But now they've come back a couple months later with 8 more episodes. The two big story arcs that kind of ran their course at the end of the first 8 episodes, the baby and the student who wanted to be with his guidance counselor, were really kind of the most poorly handled storylines in the show, so I'm glad to move on and see this characters in different situations, the cast is pretty charming.

s) "Dave"
I will admit that the Lil Dicky sitcom was surprisingly good in its first season, but now that the surprise has worn off, the second season already feels like a step down from the first. That's partly because his girlfriend helped redeem the character, and since they've been broken up this season, GaTa is really the only likable character in the show sometimes and Dave and his manager Mike are just the most insufferable dickheads and not in a funny way that often. And they definitely shouldn't have opened the season with the Korea episode, that one completely sucked. 

I'm glad this show is a hit in Canada because it's on the 5th season and they're working on the 6th. Doesn't make me laugh as consistently as the early seasons but it's still one of the best sitcoms going. 

I always wonder if "Rick And Morty" is finally gonna write itself into a corner and run out of ways to make this premise funny, but they keep managing to find some pretty creative ways to fill up episodes, I really liked the decoy family episode and the apocalypse bar crawl episode. 

It's fun to see a show come back for a highly anticipated second season after the first one became a gradual word-of-mouth hit. I feel like the second season has more yelling curse words than the first season, but I guess it works, particularly in the haunted house tour sketch. My wife came home last night while I was watching this show and had a very "what the hell is this?" reaction. 

A recent Cartoon Network show about talking mushrooms, my kid likes this show and the animation style is pretty cool-looking. 

A Disney Channel show that got canceled 5 years ago that my 6-year-old randomly discovered and got into. It was created by Craig McCracken of "Powerpuff Girls" and "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends" fame and is a little weird than those shows, but it's good, it's a shame it didn't really find an audience at the time. 

My 6-year-old watches this cartoon on Netflix, and I don't think he really gets the queer subtext of the show, but I'm glad this cute little woke show exists. 

My 6-year-old knows way more about math than what they've taught him in Kindergarten, mostly because he watched the show "Numberblocks" a lot and got obsessed with it and learned all about multiplication, so I'm glad to see more math shows on Netflix, I'm happy to see some of these educational shows actually teach kids something since you never really know sometimes if they work at all. 

9:05 AM

Tuesday, July 06, 2021





The Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East is 50 years old today, and I wrote about the 50 best live albums of the 1970s, and why it's the best of them all, for Spin. 

9:00 AM

My Top 50 Albums of 1989

Friday, July 02, 2021




























About a decade ago, I started working my way back chronologically making lists of my favorite albums and singles of each year. But then I got to 1990 and stopped there for a while, partly because I became a music lover in the '90s and those lists were easier to make, and partly because my deep album cuts series started that year and sort of became my vehicle for listening to and appreciating albums from past decades. But I've been slowly getting my '80s lists together and am happy to finally back into these. Here's a Spotify playlist with one track from nearly all these albums. 

1. De La Soul - 3 Feet High And Rising
2. Janet Jackson - Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
3. Madonna - Like A Prayer
4. Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine
5. The B-52's - Cosmic Thing
6. Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Road To The Riches
7. Michael Penn - March
8. Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
9. MC Lyte - Eyes On This
10. Aerosmith - Pump
11. Babyface - Tender Lover
12. Fugazi - 13 Songs
13. Big Daddy Kane - It's A Big Daddy Thing
14. John Mellencamp - Big Daddy
15. EPMD - Unfinished Business
16. Biz Markie - The Biz Never Sleeps
17. Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
18. Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie
19. The D.O.C. - No One Can Do It Better
20. The Cure - Disintegration
21. Tears For Fears - The Seeds Of Love
22. Pixies - Doolittle
23. Queen Latifah - All Hail The Queen
24. Motley Crue - Dr. Feelgood
25. Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World
26. Kate Bush - The Sensual World
27. The Replacements - Don't Tell A Soul
28. The Geto Boys - Grip It! On That Other Level
29. Neil Young - Freedom
30. Prince - Batman
31. Nirvana - Bleach
32. Soundgarden - Louder Than Love
33. Boogie Down Productions - Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop
34. The Jungle Brothers - Done By The Forces Of Nature
35. Ice-T - The Iceberg / Freedom Of Speech...Just Watch What You Say!
36. The Blue Nile - Hats
37. Gang Starr - No More Mr. Nice Guy
38. "Weird Al" Yankovic - UHF - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff
39. Bonnie Raitt - Nick Of Time
40. Elvis Costello - Spike
41. Lemonheads - Lick
42. The Meat Puppets - Monsters
43. Warren Zevon - Transverse City
44. Todd Rundgren - Nearly Human
45. The Rolling Stones - Steel Wheels
46. LL Cool J - Walking With A Panther
47. Don Henley - The End of the Innocence
48. fIREHOSE - fROMOHIO
49. Eric Clapton - Journeyman
50. Willie Nelson - A Horse Called Music

I was 7 in 1989 so the only albums on here that I actually heard at the time were the ones my parents played around the house: Aerosmith, Todd Rundgren, Rolling Stones, Don Henley, and Eric Clapton. So I have some deeply ingrained affection for the dad rock of that era. The conventional wisdom is that the late '80s were one of the worst times for popular music in the last few decades, and I don't know if I would argue against that -- even some of the very best albums on this list sound a little dated, like all the '80s production trends had sort of culminated to this really overblown sound even on a lot of indie records. But I've come to love that sound. And while there are alt-rock and hip hop albums in 1989 that point the way towards what the 1990s would sound like, there are some sounds that reached their apex in '89, like the sampledelic patchworks of 3 Feet High And Rising and Paul's Boutique that would soon be litigated out of existence (literally -- it's pretty aggravating that you currently can't easily stream or purchase the #1 album on this list). 

1:32 PM

Thursday, July 01, 2021


 








I wrote about Petey Pablo, Maxwell, Jadakiss, and Mystikal in Spin's list of the best songs of 2001. 

9:01 AM