2011: A Year In Which I Listened To Music (And Will Now Tell You About It)

Everyone does year-end lists, and some music and music fans live and die by these lists. Bands and record labels time their strongest releases for late summer and early fall to reach the optimum time frame to make in onto these lists. If you don't believe that, take a second and try and remember if King Of Limbs came out this year or late last year. Me too. I completely forgot that that record came out this year. Do you know what I bought next to it, in the same transaction? Adele's 21, that's what.

The point I'm trying to make is that no one will prosper or perish based on my list, but it's fun to put together every year, and I hope it's fun for others to read.

As a musician, people tend to ask me about music I listen to. As a musician, I am moved to answer them whether they've asked that question or not. As a musician, I feel that I am both incredibly qualified and also grossly not qualified to answer that question. What on earth do I know that you don't? The answer: nothing. Music is and will forever be at its root a personal, individualized experience. From Lady Gaga to The Decemberists, from Florence and the Machine to Lou Reed and Metallica; if it's your jam, then jam on. Maybe not the Lou Reed/Metallica fiasco, though. More on that later.

The Sleeper: Panda Bear's Tomboy

Upon first listen, this album didn't jump out at me. I shouldn't have been surprised, no Animal Collective or related album has ever jumped out at me at first. The key is to dig deeply into the record and become washed away in its waves of sheer sound. First and foremost, I am a sound-oriented person. Lyrics, image and even genre seem to be runners-up in what grabs my attention. Tomboy is a gigantic collage of sound, some of it familiar, some of it exciting and new, all of it entrancing and engaging.

The "Welcome Back": The Jayhawks' Mockingbird Time

The sad part about the 90s and its tidal wave of "regional artists getting national notice" is that so many of them fell apart at the height of their creative power. When Mark Olson left the band in '95, and Karen Grotberg left in 2000, it was a sad farewell to greatness. In 2011, the original members reunited to make "the best Jayhawks album that has ever been done" (their words). They succeeded.

This record was such a return to the college radio, rootsy rock n' roll that I loved when I was younger. The songs on this one are some of the best I've ever heard them do, particularly the single "She Walks In So Many Ways". This record made me so unbelievably happy this year, and has been in constant rotation since September.

The Worst Thing I Heard This Year: Lou Reed and Metallica's Lulu

Anyone who has heard me say anything about music this fall has

heard me drag this one over red-hot coals multiple times. And to those who may actually have enjoyed it (please never tell me who you are, I would hate to ruin a current/future friendship), let me say this: this record represents everything that can go wrong in a collaborative project amongst icons. You've got the ego of Lou Reed, clearly coasting on fumes as he has not put out any new material worth a damn in years (I exclude the live album of Berlin that came out last year, but that album was originally released in 1973). You've got pretty much the same situation with Metallica (their Some Kind Of Monster documentary did not rejuvenate them, but rather made us all see them for the megalomaniacs they are). You put them in an expensive studio together, you hire expensive Bob Rock and team of engineers and you get... trash. Nothing even worth admitting to its own existence, much less being released. You pretty much take a few hundred thousand and set it on fire. And then release the ashes.

The worst part of all of this is that no one comes out of this record looking good. Lou's lyrics are trite when they're not downright racist and offensive. Metallica sounds like they're playing themselves in Gu

itar Hero. And yet, I imagine the amount of high-fives, back-slaps and honest-to-God weeping that probably went on during the recording of this... thing. They probably thought they were making something good, even great. The fact that no one involved in this record had a second thought as to its quality is the hugest crime.

How Do They Keep Getting Better?!: Low's C'Mon

Low has never been a flashy band, a hook-filled band or even a very heard-of band. They're name kind of says it all. But when I was introduced to them in college, I immediately connected with them. Their

April release quickly became one of my favorites for the year, from the first chords of "Try To Sleep", the album's opener. This album contains so much power and energy without ever going quicker than a fast crawl. It also provided for one of my personal concert highlights this year, which was seeing them in the sanctuary at the First Unitarian Church. They soared that night, echoing amongst the vaulted ceilings with sustained guitars and steady, almost orchestral percussion. This album still gets me going every time I put it on.

The Nepotism Picks: Tallahassee's Jealous Hands and Katie Barbato's The Millay Tapes

These picks get their own category because I personally know the musicians involved, and some would say that that would make me biased. And it does. If you can't trumpet the talent of your friends to all who will listen, who's going to do it for you when your time comes?

I watched the process of Jealous Hands from the sidelines, anxiously awaiting its completion. It's true that I knew every song that would be on there, but I wanted so badly to here them presented at their best. And the boys of Tallahassee came through in fine color. This album is one of my favorite collections of music I have heard all year, and I would say that even if I had never heard of them before. It is a record of such simple beauty and honest moments. It is both entirely original and pleasantly familiar. It embraces its folk roots without being trendy or derivative, and it highlights all of their musical muscles: the soft and mournful ("Jealous Hands"), the brooding and explosive ("Front Teeth") and the raucous and wild ("Heaven Ain't For Me").

Katie Barbato's record was a fascinating project when she first told me about it. She was in the process of getting the rights to poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a New England poet from the early 20th century. Her plan was to make a record of songs with the poems as the lyrics. I was expecting an interesting record, but she knocked it out of the park.

Each one of these songs not only builds itself using the poems as the words, but builds on the very themes of each poem. Set to amazing alt-country arrangements, swirling with harmonies and powerful lead vocals, this record knocked me back when I first listened to it in its entirety. "Alms" starts as a simple acoustic number, but turns into a stomp-and-clap sing-along before you even know it. My favorite cut off the album is hands-down the haunting "The Curse", with its rich melody and harmonies and a cello performance that gave me shivers.

Both these records were made by friends. Both these records stand up to anything else out there, and in many cases, kick the crap out of a lot of music that came out this year. Check them both out. Ending shameless plugs now.

Before I get to my top pick of the year, there's a handful of things that will suffice in list form:

Worst Cover: Nick Cave and Neko Case- She's Not There (The Zombies) from True Blood season premiere

Best Cover: The Decemberists- Begin The Begin (REM) from this video I saw on YouTube. (My apologies for the quality, it is literally the only recording of this.)

Notable Concerts of 2011: Portishead @ The Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, October. Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears @ The TLA, Philadelphia, June. Trail Of Dead @ First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia, May. Tallahassee @ The Bug Jar, Rochester NY, September.

Honorable 2011 Mentions: Mastodon's The Hunter (one of the only metal records I acquired this year), St. Vincent's Mercy, Wild Flag's Wild Flag, Battles' Gloss Drop, PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, Chris Isaak's Beyond The Sun (an amazing collection of Sun Records' songs), Cold War Kids' Mine Is Yours, tUnE yArDs' whokIll, Nick Lowe's The Old Magic.

Drum roll....

The Best Damn Record I Heard This Year: TV On The Radio's Nine Types Of Light

This record gets the gold start this year not just for being executed flawlessly and having a perfect ratio of flash to substance. This is the record that finally made me an honest to goodness fan of the band. It took me from a casual listener of the group's music to a hungry beast, devouring every track I could get my hands on. This is one of the very few records in a long time that, when it finishes, I press play again without hesitation.

It's so hard to describe the groups music, but it is a sonic assault of electronic and indie-rock. Such a pairing usually makes me steer the other way, but this record tastefully blends the elements into a whole piece of art that speaks for itself. There are aggressive beats on "Repetition" and "Future Shock", there is a slow build in the arrangement of "Second Song" that delivers so well when it hits the first chorus and "Will Do" is one of those rare modern songs that I can actually imagine being done in a dozen different styles and still keeping its essence. All told, this record blew my socks right off and I'm not scampering around trying to put them back on. It's a mature and truly outstanding piece of work that rewards the repeat listener and gives off enough energy to draw you in on the first listen.

Thanks to all the people who made music this year, from the big guys and gals in the fancy studios to my close friends and fellow Philly artists writing songs amidst our daily grind. Feel free to pass this on, check out any of the music, debate me publicly on my selections and generally enjoy the discourse that music provides us. Have a great holiday season and wonderful New Year!

PS- Shameless self plug: My new band The Way Home will be releasing our new record in early 2012. Check out a promo track on the website and share it with your friends. Spread the word, that's how things get done in this business. Thanks!

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 14, 1993

Playing a bit of catch up tonight, so you all get two entries on the early 90s. This coming weekend is also full of shows and travelling, so I'll be just as behind in no time, don't you worry.

1993 marks the first entry where I will actually write at length about Nirvana. And the reason I waited is because In Utero is the first Nirvana album that I actually experienced right when it happened. The previous year was spent hearing all the hype and buzz and devouring all three records already out. In Utero is the Nirvana record that feels more like mine than the others because I was in middle school, barely a teenager, and this music is pretty much laboratory designed for that exact demographic.

If Nevermind is the commercial, shiny success in their catalog, In Utero is the record that sounds the most like a heavy, pop-oriented loud band. Gritty and rough around the edges, it was a surprise even to me that they could sound this dirty, having only really been aware of them for about a year. At 12 or 13, you really just react to loud music rather than pick it apart to see how it ticks. I know I did. I loved things loud, the louder the better. But also having come from a world of song structure and melody and hooks, Nirvana worked for me because they had all these things. This record contains some of the more out of control, punk-oriented moments ("Scentless Apprentice", "Very Ape", "Tourettes"), but also some of the humbler, toned down moments that offer a glimpse into how good a songwriter Cobain was at the time, and a indication as to his sadly unreached potential. "Pennyroyal Tea" and "All Apologies" are great songs because their roughly-sung melodies and slightly muted sound show that the intenstiy is still there without the screaming, grinding guitars and Grohl going all nuts on the kit.

This will forever be my favorite Nirvana record, as I'm sure it's a lot of other people's as well. It's the one I feel could have been released years later, in a different musical climate, and still done just as well. All the elements are truly starting to come together, and it's bittersweet because even when I listen to it now, I get a little sad that it's the best it will ever be.

As for Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream, there's not much more I can say about the band that I didn't already go into in my bit about Gish on Day 12. This was the last studio album I ever really liked by them, and I know that they broadened their sound and got even huger as time went on, but that doesn't matter to me. I responded well to Siamese Dream, and to really no other Pumpkins since then.

To me, it's that continuation of the "loud-quiet" formula that still gets me. The opening of "Cherub Rock" still gets me every time: it starts pretty mid volume, almost a little jangly and you think, "Oh, good, some mid-tempo guitar rock." Then the rest of the layers of guitar cut in and the drums get all punchy and it erupts into a sonic wall of rock music. Songs like "Rocket", "Geek USA" and "Silverfuck" are great examples of what happens when a band takes the My Bloody Valentine approach to guitar layers and makes it a little more accessible. And songs like "Luna" and "Soma" are delicately hushed songs that show the other side of the Pumpkins, and it's a great side, a side of restraint and control to make something equally as powerful. And while I don't respond to this in quite the same way as I did at 13, I still get a lot of joy out of this record. That fuzzy guitar sound that they defined just never sounds the same played by anyone else.

And keeping in my theme of women in rock that I've touched on in previous entries, we have Liz Phair's first album, Exile In Guyville. I will admit, my biggest attraction to Liz Phair was that she cussed like a sailor and made no apologies about it. It was enticing to hear a young woman adopt what is stereotypically considered a man's role of rock musician, and take part in the great tradition of poetic profanity. She had a filthy mouth, and I loved it. Not even necessarily in a sexual sense, but in a powerful sense, in that she immediately grasped my attention with her music and her wry and matter-of-fact lyrics. She spoke frankly about her own sexuality and lovers, and not in an exploitative way, but in the same way that it gets portrayed by any male singer.

Phair was the beginning of my understanding of feminism in an equality sense. I didn't realize it at the time, and wouldn't really realize how my listening to many powerful women songwriters would shape my general attitude towards women (being raised by a fiercely independent and capable mother had a lot to do with that, too). But the seeds were planted, and I never viewed women in rock as a novelty or a ploy, even though they've been used for that purpose time and time again. It taught me to seek out the truly unique voices, and to take what I could from their stories and songs. I'm not saying I'm better than anyone because I embrace feminism and its ideals, but that powerful music by powerful women has definitely shaped my view not only of music, but of all of culture and society.

We'll close tonight with The Juliet Letters, an absolutely stellar record from Elvis Costello, backed up by the Brodsky Quartet, an honest-to-God string quartet. I didn't discover this record until early college, after I had digested a huge amount of Costello's catalog. It was so fresh and new to hear him writing songs not backed up by a rock band but by "classical" instrumentation. The songs rose and fell with a different kind of energy and flow then anything else I had heard him do. And rather than writing lyrics and melody in a classical style, you could hear how any one of the songs on the record could be performed in a rock setting. I really got to focus on his lyrics and attention to melody and arrangement in ways that often got overshadowed on his rock records by the band and the pop nature of it all.

And it's fantastic. It's very dramatic sounding, and Costello works with the new ensemble in a way that doesn't just seem like his way of trying to sell some records to a different genre audience, but because he truly loves the quartet and wants to work with them. I almost never think of this record when I compile a favorites list of Costello, but I always think of it when I think of an artist truly stepping into new territory and not trying to simply increase his profile. Instead, Costello strives to make a record separate from his Attractions persona, and he succeeds beautifully.

Whew. Two entries back to back in tiring, but I hope we're on our way to getting back on schedule.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 13, 1992

I've realized upon looking at a couple of past entries that I've come off as pretty negative about the major music industry in general. I don't know if I need to backpedal and explain the more specific conundrum I have about music as a business, or to just let it roll. To put it simply, I despise the practices while loving the end result. Some of my favorite records are carefully fine-tuned to sound the way they do, with a lot of non-musician input to make the record a "hit". Would they sound as good if the band was just left to its own devices with an engineer in a studio? Probably not. It's something to think about: every bit of commercial music you've ever listened to has been carefully crafted to sound the way it does, sometime sby the artists and sometimes by execs who want whatever sound will make money immediately. And the 90s are an excellent place to explore that, as bands that never would have been signed in the past suddenly have access to a lot of label money, but the label wants results and return, hence why it's called the "music business" and not the "music partnership of good vibes and grooves, man".

But I digress. 1992 was the year that a lot of alternative music was really breaking into the public consciousness. Basically, if I heard it in 1992, it was already known and praised and on its way to being a hit (if it wasn't one already). I don't know anyone my age who can claim with a straight face that they were listening to Nirvana's Bleach the year it came out in 1989. It just seems highly unlikely.

However, 1992 marks a year where I can unequivocally state that some of the records I did hear right when they came out. Like this first one:

Barenaked Ladies' Gordon was something I definitely remember listening to in 1992. One of my camp counselors made a tape for me (Remember taping things for people?) and I loved it to pieces. They were both incredibly funny and incredibly good at the same time, and my predilection towards things like Weird Al definitely put me in the right place. Gordon was a culmination of a very talented live band finally getting to put down a real record. It helped that they were Canadian, and the Canadian government does subsidize a lot of popular music with grants (for no real gain other than to showcase great Canadian music). They still do it to this day.

Gordon was just a pop-rock masterpiece to me. All its songs were listened to intently and pored over, it was one of the first times I ever really did that with a record. While BNL definitely portrays a relaxed, humorous attitude, their songs are very deep and very poignant at times. "The Flag" and "What A Good Boy" are the types of songs that should have been written by a band much older than them, but there you go. Even in their lighter songs, like "Enid" (a song about having a relationship with an older girl while still a teenager), there's a remarkable amount of intelligence as it reaches the last lines about how you could grow up and be all these grown-up things for the older girl (get a job, pay the phone bill, cut the lawn, cut your hair, cut out your cholesterol), but Steven Page simply ends the verse with "I could do it all for you /But I don't want to". Aside from it being a great sort of "fuck-you" line which appealed to the pre-teen me, it's also a great line because it's about that selfish time of life where you could be all these great, grown-up, mature things, but you'd rather not. You'd rather just young and keep trying to dodge all the expectations.

A quick little mention needs to be made about the album Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, her first full-length. To be honest, I haven't listened to it in almost ten years, and if I did, it probably wouldn't mean the same thing. But Tori Amos, like Kate Bush, was one of the first powerful female songwriters in my life. I still remember where I was the first time I heard "Silent All These Years": in the furnished basement of a family friend with my brothers, watching MTV (which was a rare luxury for us, as we did not grow up with cable). I don't know what it was about that song that struck me, it couldn't have been the lyrical content and themes. It would be years before I started to decipher those. It was her voice, soaring like Kate Bush's, and the piano arrangement and all these elements together to make me stop and think, "Wow. This is a great song. It needs nothing else than to simply be a great song. I don't have to know where it came from, and it doesn't have to scream for my attention through loud guitars and a rebellious attitude. This song is just simply gorgeous and I am for a moment moved by it." I probably didn't think it in those terms, but I think that was probably the core of it. I went out and got it as soon as I could, and it remained one of my well-kept secret records to the outside world. It was hard enough being a skinny kid who wasn't very good at sports and other guy things, being a Tori Amos fan would probably have just made things worse. In high school, however, I met girls who loved Tori, and quite a few guys who had also hidden their love of her music. It was a great common ground between us, and began to etch on my brain that it was okay to like what you like, as long as it speaks to you.

Another quick mention needs to be made to Phish's A Picture Of Nectar, which was the real jump start to my love affair with the band. My best friend James lent me his copy sometime in early high school to try and convert me (at the time, I associated Phish with the athletic guys who used to wail on me, mostly because of my big mouth and inability to run fast enough). It worked. This album has everything: bluegrass, jazz, 70s style heavy rock, Latin, everything. Not only did I probably not give it back, I subsequently lost it, forcing me to buy another copy before 18. I still don't recall if I bought him a new one. James, if I didn't, I am truly sorry to deprive you of one of our favorite records, and I'll gladly burn you my copy. Which is hardly a substitute, I

know.

The thing that struck me so heavily about this record was that i felt like I was seeing through the outer layer of Phish, from the party, Dead-like touring atmosphere with its drug culture, and into the actual musicianship of the band, which has sustained my love for them ever since. Let the jocks get drunk and stoned to this, I'm sure I thought. I'm going to enjoy it because it is truly great, and requires no additional anything to receive full enjoyment. It's been my philosophy on music and drugs ever since.

I've ended up flipping a coin to decided the last record for 1992. And heads says it's Broken, Nine Inch Nails' EP with big flaming "N" on the cover. This record literally blew my freakin' ears off, it was so loud and primal and powerful and full of heavy guitars and masculinity. It's only five tracks (not counting the two hidden ones), and it is like being in a fistfight, except you don't get hurt and you actually feel a hell of a lot better at the end.

I could write paragraphs on the song "Wish", not for its lyrics, which are kind of awful despite being some of Reznor's better (the man can sing, the man can write arrangements and manipulate synths and drums like no one else, but the man write lyrics like teenage girl poetry), but for the sheer brutality of its sound. I could write a good paragraph on each of the subsequent songs as well. But I won't. Unlike Pretty Hate Machine, I don't cringe with embarrassment when I hear Broken now, at nearly 30. It is such a kick to listen to, and to be pummeled in the ears with sound of it all. It still sounds freakin' great, despite having been made on technology from almost twenty years ago. My suggestion for any fan of heavy music who has never heard Broken is to do so immediately. Labeled as "industrial" music, it transcends any label you can throw at it and just simply rocks loud and hard. And it's short, which is good, because it's hard to sustain that level of "being-pumped" for much longer.

I've been noticing my blog traffic has increased immensely since starting this series, and that makes me happy, because while I am definitely writing this for me, I am also writing it for others who lived through the music I lived through. Feel free to share your own stories and anecdotes about music that still means a great deal to you. Art can be a bonding point between people, and I'd love to hear from others about growing up in the 90s and music and life and all things in general.

Incidentally, a few records got left out here, most importantly REM's Automatic For The People, The Gin Blossom's New Miserable Experience, They Might Be Giants' Apollo 18 (their first record with a full band), and a special shout-out to Dr. Dre's The Chronic, which every white kid growing up in the 'burbs in the early 90s heard unless they had their ears stuffed full of some kind of dense material. And even still, the bass probably rattle through and you felt it. This was the record that showed the rest of the country that rap music was for everyone young, regardless of race, and it's a grand and wonderful place we live in after it.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 12, 1991

1991 can be categorized not necessarily as the best year of alternative music, but definitely the year where the commercial potential was truly grasped and subsequently cashed in on. All this meant nothing to me, of course, because at the age of 11 I was truly beginning to hear music as my own thing. It was becoming less of a background track to life and moving quickly into the foreground. A Walkman and headphones were almost always in my possession, I was constantly listening to music. Really, anything I could get my hands on would do, but the great breakthrough albums of 1991 were seeping in there as well.

Nevermind, Out Of Time, Bloodsugarsexmagik, Badmotorfinger and Achtung Baby were in heavy rotation over the next few years, and these are very important albums, not only in a public way but also to me in a personal way. But there are a few other gems of the year that I listened to voraciously, and they have definitely inspired me as a listener to diversify what I listened to. There would always be something to be found, often in unexpected places.

Take, for instance, the massively successful debut album from the Spin Doctors, Pocketful Of Kryptonite. First and foremost, being a comic book nerd, I was immediately drawn to the title. It was the first time I ever saw something from my peer-ridiculed world coincide with rock music: the oblique pop-culture reference. In truth, they were probably the first "jam-band" I ever listened to, a good few years before I would ever hear Phish. They were bluesy, funky and very up-tempo. Their songs were not dirges of depression and darkness, but straight-ahead rock, inspired by their forefathers (people like the Stones and Curtis Mayfield) and not at all apologetic about being a little out-of-date. I think that may be one of my favorite things about the 90s: in a rush to find the "next big thing", bands that were simply putting their spin on the classic-rock era were picked up as well and gave the otherwise bleak world of grunge and punk a little 60s and 70s shot in the arm.

In 1992, when this album was really making its impression on everybody, I can remember listening to the cassette constantly. "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" were a fantastic revelation to me of how music can be incredibly fun and good-spirited, and that wallowing in your own angst and maladjustment was all fine and good, but a person needed to be happy some of the time. 1992 was definitely the summer of "Two Princes", and I will always associate the song with a summer by a lake in Western New York at camp and the first time I ever kissed a girl for real. Everyone's got their summer where they started finding themselves a bit (only to reinvent it time and time again over the next several years), and mine was the summer of the Spin Doctors.

The Smashing Pumpkins will forever be remembered by me as one of my largest disappointments in music ever (1995's Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness). They will also be remembered as one of my absolute favorite bands from 1993 until then. And I first heard Gish about the same time I heard Siamese Dream in 1993. I will definitely go into more on the latter when the time comes, but Gish deserves its own reflection as well.

Like My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins were a wall of fuzzy guitar noise sculpted into coherence with pop hooks. More so with the Pumpkins, actually. What I love about Gish is that it sets the scene for the following album in terms of the "quiet-loud-quiet-louder" formula that would define their early work. And it's track listing is amazing: "I Am One" and "Siva", the first two tracks, were huge for me, mixing wildly chaotic guitar feedback with heavy blues riffs and some of the most bombastic drumming I've ever heard (Jimmy Chamberlin still remains one of my all-time favorite drummers). And the band just looked so darn cool: long hair, pale-skinned female bassist, Asian guitarist. They would be the very essence of cool for me for the next few years.

But one of the other big albums for me from 1991 was not released by a young, up-and-coming band, eagerly scooped up by a major label trying to find the next Nirvana. It was by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, already well established in my father's generation. The album Into The Great Wide Open is by no means their best album (although it was their first for Warner Brothers after their split with MCA), but it is my favorite mostly because of my dad. He played that record all the time, in the house, in the car, everywhere. He even used to do (I gotta be honest) a very poor impersonation of Petty, particularly on the title track. However, as a testament of genetics or upbringing or both, I also do that same sub-par impression myself. I have gotten a lot of things from my father (height, build, most of my face, my work ethic), but it's truly apparent to me that I am my father's son whenever I impersonate Tom Petty (or Neil Young, for that matter).

And to its credit, the record has some awesome songs on it. "Learning To Fly", "Into The Great Wide Open", "Too Good To Be True" and "Makin' Some Noise" are all great rockers. And the title track has one of my favorite "gotta-make-this-rhyme" verses:

"His leather jacket had chains that went jingle

They both met movie stars, partied and mingled

Their A and R man said 'I don't hear a single.'

The sky was the limit."

It's also one of my favorite Petty songs because it is a song about being a nobody, then being a somebody, and staying pretty optimistic about all of it. 1991 would bring us a lot of hope and hype of great young bands who careened onto the music scene with reckless abandon. And many of these bands would quickly become jaded and bitter and it would show in their attitude and their subsequent material. My favorite thing about Tom Petty (and I have a lot of them) is that he gained success while still keeping his wits and sticking to his guns about how he wanted to do things. He is honest, principled, hard-working, funny and has miles of integrity. Kind of like my dad, actually.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 11, 1990

Whoooo!!! We made it to a new decade, and more importantly, the decade of my musical taste really being formed. While I don't like to ally myself with any particular decade/genre, I cannot deny that the 90s were the decade where I heard a lot of music at the time it was actually coming out, so there were no preconceived notions or history or nostalgia to get in the way. And I really hold to the idea that that is the best way to hear things for the first time.

Upon making my preliminary list of records that have had a hand in defining my musical world-view, I realized that 1990 had way more records than any other year yet, and paring them down was going to be difficult. So there are quite a few omissions, and I'll just put them up here so you can have an idea of what I had to cut: Robyn Hitchcock's Eye, They Might Be Giants' Flood, Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting, Fugazi's Repeater, Jane's Addiction's Ritual De Lo Habitual, The Pixies' Bossanova, Galaxie 500's This Is Our Music and countless others. So what did I leave in?

Why, Primus' classic debut album, Frizzle Fry, for starters! There is a certain subset of dudes from the 90s who responded very well to the music of Primus, and I am definitely one of them. Someone played this record at summer camp when I was in 8th grade, and it changed the way I looked at music, especially bass playing in music, forever. I hadn't even picked up a bass yet, and wouldn't for at least a few years, and even when I did I never cited Les Claypool as an influence on my playing, but rather as a huge influence on my listening in general.

Basically, the bass guitar up this point had always been a background instrument to me. None of the bands I was really into yet were bass-heavy bands. With the exception of John Entwhistle and John Paul Jones, I couldn't even name you another bass player until Les. All of a sudden, there was this very high-to-mid ranged instrument that was insanely percussive and insanely melodic, and I had never heard anything like it before.

On Frizzle Fry, not only was the bass new and different, but Les' lyrics and delivery (sort of a Texan hipster-shitkicker type vibe, even though Les hails from California) were new. He sang about the weirdest things: fishing, puppies, wind-up toys, pudding, cereal, groundhogs, etc. Up to this point, songs were either about how great girls were, or how not great not being with girls was. The irreverent wit and monster chops of Primus was right up my early-teen alley, despite having no chops of my own or even the knowledge about how to gain said chops. The guitar playing was also out-of-this-world to me: Larry Lalonde always sounded like they never gave him the right backing track to play over in terms of his solos, he was just out there and it all worked and blended together in this harmonious, cartoon-like mess. As a lot of people get older, the grow out of their Primus phase, but luckily for me, I never did.

And speaking of insane chops: Phish. And speaking of people who want to hate on Phish: shut up. Phish's Lawn Boy is probably my most listened-to Phish album, I have distinct memories of some holiday trip to Lake George where the tape just repeated itself over and over in my headphones the whole time. There is so much to hear on this record, I used to focus on a different instrument with every listen, and then just repeat the process again.

I owe a huge debt to this band because it took me out of the idea that good music had to be written down ahead of time. This is where you start to lose people; the idea of "jamming" is usually pretty foreign to most people who don't play in a band, and often the core concepts of jamming are lost on those who do. It's not simply one guy soloing really well over the rest of the band laying down changes, it can be a constantly changing and shifting musical piece where everybody feeds off what everyone else is doing. I don't mean to sound so "hippie" about it, but that's what jamming is to me.

Songs like "Bathtub Gin" and "Reba" play like finely composed acid jazz, and lay the groundwork for when the band takes of on them live. Songs like "Oh Kee Pa Ceremony" and "My Sweet One" are short little moments of energy, also finely composed (Page's piano solo on the studio cut of "My Sweet One" is killer). And then there's a song like "Bouncing Round The Room", which is a perfect example of all that musical knowledge and skill being harnessed into a really great four-minute single, where everything fits perfectly, and nothing is too "out-there". The whole record is the sound of a band who is really discovering what they can do, and realizing that the possibilities stretch out a lot farther than they might have anticipated. It delves more into the improvisation that would make them legends, and paves the way for more records of equal parts spontaneity and painstaking composition.

To round out 1990, I bring up my first "Best of" record (or two records, actually). Both Devo's Greatest Hits and Greatest Misses continue to rock my world. I heard their cover of the Stones' "Satisfaction" on the radio, and it just floored me. They took a classic rock anthem and just didn't give a damn that they stood it on it's head. I had to hear more, but the band had a large number of albums by the early 90s, and I had not a large amount of spending money in the early 90s. Hence, the two compilations were purchased together, and I've never owned another Devo record since.

Devo was my introduction to a more synth based rock. The sugar that helped the medicine go down was their anti-establishment image and their unique melodies (both Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh had a very quirky singing style which I loved). They were from the middle of nowhere Ohio, and rather than wait for a scene to come to them, they built their own around songs about cavemen, homicidal radio DJs and de-evolution (the idea that we are actually regressing rather than progressing). It was, at its core, the most anti-jock thing I'd ever heard. Having spent much of my middle school years getting the crap kicked out of me by members of the athletic establishment (I was a late bloomer with a big mouth and a sense of fearlessness until the hitting commenced), I felt I was wired to like this.

I definitely like Greatest Hits as an album more than Greatest Misses, although the latter contains some favorites ("Clockout", "Mongoloid", "Timing X/Space Junk"). Songs like "Satisfaction", "Big Mess", "Through Being Cool" and "Jocko Homo": these were anthems about being a nerd and that being okay (not dissimilar to They Might Be Giants' effect on me). And it definitely warmed me up toward synth music and electronic instruments, which I dismissed through a lot of my early-teen years for not being "real". It's what a diet of Zeppelin, Sabbath and The Who will do to you. I'm so grateful for that eye-opener, as it's led me toward some great music I might not have given a chance otherwise.

I do realize I'm still behind a bit after the weekend's travels, and we'll get up to speed real soon before the following weekend's travels (Hartford and Boston this time). Writing about 90s seemed really easy to me at first, but it is proving to be more difficult because so much happened to me and to music. And there are tons of great things being left out. For example, "Groove Is In The Heart" by Dee-Lite came out in 1990, and that one tops my list of favorite party songs. So my thanks for everyone bearing with me, and thanks for reading and sharing your comments with me.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 10, 1989

I'll have to figure out a better way to keep writing this thing throughout the month while I go play shows on the weekends. I was on the road in New Jersey all weekend, and was just pressed to find the means and time to write. I'll come up with something.

1989 is truly the year that music starts to make the swing over towards what we would call "alternative rock" in the 90s. Debut releases from Nirvana, The Offspring and growing acclaim for bands like Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, The Pixies and the like are starting to turn heads on the major-label scene, and guys in suits start running around figuring out how to make money off it (God forbid we give it to the bands).

But my favorite records released in 1989 are, for the most part, not quite in the "alternative" spectrum yet.

I start with Lou Reed's New York, which is one of the finest solo albums he's ever released (also in the running are Transformer and Berlin, but they were released in the 70s). It's interesting that it came out in 1989 as the tide was starting to turn in music, because it is one of his most straightforward rock records ever. It's also his most cohesive concept records as well (both Berlin and The Raven fall a little short), because his theme is something so large and full of material: New York City. At the time I heard this record, I had never been to NYC (I think I was 13 or so) and everything I new about the city came from people like Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega and the early records of Bob Dylan. Reed not only pegs some topical issues, like the rise of Rudy Giuliani, but gets at the very core of living in New York as it is trying to reinvent itself and shed the dirty, dangerous and crime-ridden images of the 70s. He hearkens back to the New York of the 60s and 70s, but does not dwell in it as the best times ever. He acknowledges its faults in songs like "Dirty Blvd" and "Busload Of Faith", and I've always liked that about this record: it's reflective without being nostalgic. I've always found nostalgia to pretty much be the death of any forward progress, and Reed would definitely progress and make many more records (though none of them quite as good as this one).

To continue in a non-grunge vein, I also have a huge spot in my heart for Chris Isaak's Heart Shaped World album. I came to Chris Isaak in a big way while in college, looking for good country music and things styled after it. Isaak has a voice as big as Roy Orbison, and his guitar

playing is a cross between slick LA studio work and the twangy honky-tonks that inspired it. People always remember "Wicked Game" from this record, as well as the resulting music video. And that's a good place to start, because it's a killer song. But the rest of the album is equally excellent, with songs like "Don't Make Me Dream About You", "Forever Young" and "Wrong To Love You" being some of my particular favorites.

Isaak's record marks to me a sort of changing of the guard in terms of popular music. 1989, and to a point 1990, are the last years where pop music that was inspired by what many consider the core of rock music (country, blues, rockabilly, etc.). From 1991 on, the main inspirations seem to come from hard 70s rock, punk from the UK and America from the late 70s to the 80s, and the heavy electronic club music from the UK in the 80s. There are a lot of statements you can make about this: music isn't as good now because we've "lost out roots", or conversely, music got much better once the blatant ties to the classic era were shed and mainstream music got more experimental and aggressive. I don't really come down on one side or the other, and I think that to do so is extremely limiting. I love classic era rock n' roll, but I came of age during the "alternative" revolution of popular music, so that music will forever be in my psyche as music made for me in particular.

As the "thing that is not the like the others", The Pixies' Doolittle is on the top of the pile as a favorite record made in my lifetime. I must have been in 8th grade the first time I heard The Pixies (I came to them via The Breeders, who were fronted by Pixies' bassist Kim Deal, and whom I would nurture a major crush on for most of my teenage years). From the first track, "Debaser", this was a record that was both intelligent and experimental, while also being loud as

all hell and frantic. Frank Black's screaming vocals mixed with Deal's high monotone are a wonderful match, and Joey Santiago's approach to lead guitar work is a major building block in my playing. This was a record that was different because, among many other things, there were no real guitar solos. Santiago would just kind of riff through heavy distortion and effects, making no attempts at a traditional rock solo. As a fledgling guitar player, this was good: I could learn this, I could do this, I didn't have to study scales for hours and hours. You could let the sonic landscape dictate your sound, and not have to be entirely reliant on your technical skill. I hold this idea to heart to this day.

Doolittle just screamed for your attention. The songs were short and catchy, but not really ties in anything you'd ever heard before. There are elements of Mexican imagery, references to surrealist art, all over a screaming grind of guitars and a steady as a rock rhythm section (someone had to hold the bottom end down). "Here Comes Your Man", "Wave Of Mutilation", "Monkey Gone To Heaven": these are the more accessible tracks. For the lunatic ramblings and out-of-left-field guitar work, you have "No. 13 Baby", "Tame", "Crackity Jones" and "I Bleed". A lot of my peers remember the beginnings of the "alternative" rock movement in terms of Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice In Chains. I think it started more accurately with The Pixies.

The entries are gonna get more and more rambling as we move into the 90s, it was my Woodstock, my Altamont, my Isle of Wight, all those classic music moments that the older generations talk about, except for me. I invite all who read to wax reflective about the 90s, and think about the records you heard as a teen and how they shaped you as a listener as well as a person in general. But no nostalgia, please. Things were great in the 90s for music, and things are still pretty great now, with countless bands of extreme talent having arisen in the beginning of the 21st century. Where do you think they heard the music that inspired them?

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 9, 1988

We're almost there. Almost to the years where I actually started experiencing records the year they came out. Which really lends them no more or less validity than the other records I've already written about, but definitely gives me a lot more personal history to draw from. Still, 1988 had a slew of great releases, too numerous to get to all of them. But here are a few.

Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine. I have one word to say about MBV and that word is SKRREEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWW, WHICH IS OF COURSE THE SOUND OF KEVIN SHIELDS' GUITAR. Sorry, but you pretty much always need to shout to make yourself heard over the sound of Shields' guitar. My Bloody Valentine are one of those bands that has influenced me so heavily that it's hard for me to imagine a time where the music wasn't already part of my brain. Isn't Anything doesn't break up for me in terms of songs or sides of an album, it's really just one huge noise symphony. And on Isn't Anything, it's the kind of noise that's lulling more than it is shocking or abrasive, which is something I highly enjoy. Any jackass with some overdrive and a Marshall 4x12 can make noise. It takes a certain kind of musician to "tame" the noise, and by tame, I mean adapt to its chaotic nature. So much of this record is guitar sounds that seem like at any moment they could just turn absolutely awful. But Shields' harnesses the power of his sound and lets it run around loose for a second before reining it back in and starting again. This coupled with Blinda Butcher's just-rolled-out-0f-bed vocal style, it's a juxtaposition made in heaven. I used to fall asleep to this record in high school (if you put it on just quiet enough, it's like one of those white noise machines, but melodic), and I often put it on when in transit for a long time to just zone out and forget where I am for a while.

I did get to the following record only maybe four years after it came out. Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction was the first record I ever bought that felt like I had just bought porn. Highly sexual in nature, and with a rather shocking cover to boot, this was one I felt I had to hide from my parents and brothers because maybe this time I had pushed the envelope too far. There are songs about serial killers and sex, showering and sex, summer and sex, pigs and sex, etc. The refrain from one of the standout tracks (about Ted Bundy, "Ted... Just Admit It") is "Sex is violent!" repeated over and over amidst the squeal of Navarro's guitar, wailed in that almost-cracked high register that was Perry Farrell.

The album was also full of phenomenal playing, which even I appreciated at age 12. The bass line to "Pigs In Zen" is still one of the first things I play when I pick up an electric bass, and "Jane Says" is the most singable portrait of a heroin addict you'll ever hear. There was just so much power and rhythm in the album, it was funky without really having a discernible pocket. It was punk without being repetitive and mindless. It was sexual while being deranged and quite violent at times. If Violent Femmes was my album of sexual frustration, Nothing's Shocking was my album that showed me what could very possibly occur afterwards. But rather than being erotic or even stimulating to me, it was a gloriously raw and aggressive sound that just rocked out hard, and at 12, that was probably for the better. Who knows what I would have thought if I had understood most of that record?

A quick shout-out is due for a few things. First, to REM's Green, which was one of the first albums I ever bought on CD. It contains an excellent mix of mandolin and acoustic led songs along with the up-tempo rockers that would come to encapsulate the band. Second, to Living Colour's Vivid, one of the first times my little suburban dwelling, WASP-ish ears ever encountered an African American singing anything that wasn't hip-hop, soul, jazz or blues. Vivid continues to blow my mind by combining really heavy monster metal riffage with super tight funk grooves. Seriously, find me one decent person who doesn't dig "Cult Of Personality", and i will run them over with a car. It also contains the finest Talking Heads cover I've ever heard ("Memories Can Wait").

And third, and lastly, the soundtrack to the film Cocktail. Yes, the Tom Cruise bar tending movie. To this day, I have never seen much more than ten minutes of that movie at a time, but I loved the living hell out of the soundtrack. Having already digested a pretty stead Beach Boys diet, I was so incredibly excited when my older cousin Suzy bought it for me when I was about 8 or 9. It had a Beach Boys song I had never heard! It also contained heavily produced bluesy bands like Georgia Satellites, Ry Cooder and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. It all sounded so catchy and grown up, who was I to resist it? I played that tape until it broke. I never bought another, because you're only nine years old for so long, and I probably moved on. Still, there is a spot in my heart with the Cocktail logo tattooed on it in giant neon letters, just like the album cover.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 8, 1987

I'm going to be real: 1987 was a rough year to find material from. Aside from the huge hullabaloo of both Madonna and Michael Jackson launching two of the biggest tours the world had ever seen, not a lot really came out that had a huge effect on me. So I have drummed up a couple of choices that, while being huge in my personal shaping, are pretty darn obvious. And here they are.

The Joshua Tree by U2. I feel my friend and fellow picker-of-musical-bones John would probably stop speaking to me if I didn't include this, and it works out, because I would probably stop speaking to me if I didn't include this, too.

I had The Joshua Tree on cassette at about age 11. I proceeded to wear it out and buy another one, which I also wore out. I would then buy it on CD at least three times in my lifetime, losing each copy to lending out or to the void where most things you lost as a teenager end up. If something were to happen to my current copy today, I would most definitely buy another copy tomorrow, despite having not listened to it for some time. Now that's importance.

As for the meat of the record, the why and the wherefore, I have to simply default to what most people have already said about the record. It soared. And so did I. It was also a much easier record to wrap my head around. The songs were much simpler, inspired by roots music rather than trying to recreate their own 70s punk and rock influences. The politics were less heavy. Or maybe they just seemed less heavy because the songs were about a lot of things that rang true to being an America: songs about the landscape, its leaders, hope and dreaming of better things. I will not for a minute claim that I had my finger on the American dream in 1991 when I first heard the record, but all the mythos and history of growing up native born in America definitely put you in the right mindset to relate with the record.

It's also the record where The Edge's guitar playing become less of a trick, dictated by limited musicality, and becomes his Thing with a capital "T". As I've stated before, I still base most of my playing on The Edge in some way. His guitar playing always seemed so powerful and beyond me at a young age. As I grew older, and particularly as I picked apart the elements of The Joshua Tree as a musician, I realized how darn simple it all was. But none of that diminished its power or hold on me, leading me toward the path that simple, done well and done interestingly, was all you really needed.

In a blatant case of repeating an artist two days in a row, I offer up Document by REM, released just one year after Life's Rich Pageant, which I spoke of yesterday. I don't know what it is about this era of REM that affects me more than others. Both these albums are my go-to albums when

I'm in an REM kind of mood. It was a time where their sound was expanding immensely, going beyond the muted jangle-pop of Murmur and Reckoning and starting to sound like, well, an honest to God rock band. All the elements that had been building up in their arsenal (Stipe's lyrics and trademark wail, Mills' excellently executed harmonies, Buck's romp-stomping Rickenbacker riffs, Berry's simple yet powerful beats) seem to really come alive on Document. It's fitting that it's their last release on an independent label: REM had outgrown college radio.

This is not a bad thing, to outgrow a humbler kind of fame. It's what bands get into the business to do. To not get there wold reveal more about their shortcomings then any "stick-to-your-guns", "indier than thou" attitude that permeates punk and the indie rock of the 90s would prove that they were still "down to earth". I love that REM sounds bigger and more confident on this record, and that the hit "The One I Love" was such a success. They were due. And if they weren't due at this point, they probably would have gone the way of a lot of other great bands of the 80s college rock renaissance and simply faded into the woodwork, popping up on iconoclasts' "Overlooked Gems of the 80s" lists and whatnot. They simply did not deserve that. Many other bands have broken huge who don't really deserve it, so rather than bemoan our favorite underground acts for grabbing at the brass ring, we should be thankful that amidst the sea of mediocrity that is the popular music canon, a few managed to sneak in who had something to say and a truly unique way to say it.

So maybe 1987, despite not being chock full of material for me, stands tall because it brings up some important ideas of what makes popular music popular, and how the machine of the music industry churns on, pushing bits and things up to the surface for us to "ooh" and "aah" at. And how every so often, it's deserved. U2 definitely took a departure from their fiery Irish politics and began to take on fiery world politics with The Joshua Tree, and many would turn up their noses and cry sell-out. I don't necessarily judge the sentiment, there are plenty of underground faves for me that I've lost interest in once they started having a massive, faceless audience (Modest Mouse and The Shins, to name a couple). But rather than bitch and whine about my favorite bands being unsung and under-appreciated in their lifetime (I could list about fifty off the top of my head right now), I take comfort that some of them managed to crack through to the next level and delight people all over. Because if music and bands can be a bonding point between people, it helps to have more people to bond with.

-Dan

30 Years, 30 Days: Day 7, 1986

You know what I remember about 1986, more than anything? More than the demise of Black Flag and The Dead Kennedy's? More than the death of Cliff Burton? More than the first inductions to the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame? I cared about none of these things in 1986, but do you know what I did care about with every ounce of my six year old self? I'll tell you what: The Monkees.

I know, I know. How can a person who has name checked XTC, Kate Bush, Violent Femmes and many other hip canonical 80s recording so far want to spend any line space at all writing about The Monkees? I'll make what would most likely be classified as an embarrassing confession: I was a Monkees fan for years before I really came to listen to The Beatles. 1986 marked the 20th anniversary of the band, and it was all over the radio (at least where I grew up). My babysitter, Heather, was about 14 and obsessed with The Monkees, so therefore I became obsessed with The Monkees. Here's the thing: you can't control the first bits of pop music you come into contact with. In a perfect world, we'd all discover Sgt Pepper at age 5 and everything would fall into place from there. My earliest pop music memories consist of sitting in the kitchen with Heather making tapes of Monkees' songs from the radio for me. "Last Train To Clarksville", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Daydream Believer": these were my first steps into "rock" music. Every time I hear a Monkees' song, it's takes me back to being six and dancing around the living room like an idiot. I love it.

But in terms of the "serious" albums of 1986, I have to start with REM's Life's Rich Pageant. This is the first REM record to enter the series, and will not be the last. REM was a band I discovered in middle school, right at the height of their major label successes. I loved Michael Stipe's slightly nasal voice and the glitter and jangle of Peter Buck's guitar and the positive nature of their music. As I grew older and began to decipher Stipe's lyrics, I would learn that thematically this wasn't necessarily the case. They were one of the first bands I ever listened to that mixed overtly up-tempo music with very dark themes, sugarcoating them so you would swallow them immediately and let them bloom in your brain as you listened to it more and more.

"Fall On Me" remains in my top five REM songs, and high on the list of all-time favorites. the interplay between Mills and Stipe during the chorus is sublime, and it's one of the many songs that really shows off Stipe's range, from mid-range to high and piercing. "Cuayahoga" would become one of my favorite words long before I knew it was a river in Ohio, and Mills once again compliments Stipe in the chorus perfectly. There are so many things that make REM great, I won't blow them all in their first appearance.

And as long as we're glorifying 80s college rock, we cannot continue any further until we acknowledge the debut album from one of the most creative, pop-oriented bands I've ever heard. They Might Be Giants (or also known as "The Pink Album") is the most anti-rock album to be considered a rock album. It's full of consumer-grade synthesizers, drum machines and an accordion, for God's sake! But it has served as a soundtrack to millions of self-proclaimed freaks, geeks and nerds, and it definitely was for me. While a lot of rock music was busy making you feel not as cool as the guys singing it, one look at John Linnel and John Flansburgh and know that a) they are just as geeky as you and b) you might actually be able to kick their ass.

And lyrically, it's a high-minded nerd fest. Full of wordplay, double meanings, discrete references and the like, it is truly an album for people who spent more time reading books and listening to records than going outside, maybe building up a semblance of athleticism. This is not to discredit the fan base or the Johns, but to simply state that if rock music is truly for everyone, then someone had to make music like this in order to fulfill the promise. And as far as highlights go, this album is full of them: "Don't Let's Start", "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head", "Nothing's Going To Change My Clothes", "Rhythm Section Want Ad", it goes on and on. This was the first record I ever heard that seemed to make it okay to be a nerd, or to have a mind of my own and use it, and to be amused at humor that wasn't at someone's expense or a standard "joke-punchline" format. I would devour everything TMBG put out for years, as they would continue to get better and better as players as well as songwriters. Their "descent" into kids' albums may have seemed like a middle-aged sell-out to many, but I've always seen it as the Johns just trying to inject a little intelligence and dignity into a genre that is pretty much designed to sell toys, when it should be educating while entertaining. Kudos to them.

A couple honorable mentions for today come straight from the "My Parents Played This" file, which while not as thick as other files, contains some really important music. Both Paul Simon's Graceland and Huey Lewis and the News' Fore! were played heavily in the house from 1986 and on, and both shaped me immensely. Graceland showed me a mixture of pop rock melody and world music didn't have to a niche record, it could just be great and catchy and take you out of the usual formulas of rock music. And Fore! showed me that you can be one of the most popular band's of your time, and make music that is both incredibly accessible and incredibly good at the same time. Of course, I did not come to these realizations at six, I just played these albums over and over again until I absorbed everything a six year old can absorb from music not written for them. So I must doff my cap to my folks again for bringing some excellent music to me at a young age. The record player wasn't always spinning in my house, but when it was, it was worth hearing over and over again.

-Dan