Subject To Debate

I am excited to announce a new blog that I will be writing with my friend John Bertosa. For as long as I've known him, I've thought of John as my "conservative friend." Not that I only have one conservative friend but, John and I have always been able to have interesting, intelligent conversations about politics without devolving to the usual level of "You're wrong!" "Oh yeah, wel YOU'RE stupid!"

After a recent converstation about the presidential election, John and I decided that it would be fun and interesting to start a blog in which we would debate politics from our respective viewpoints. Check it out if you are so inclined.

http://subjecttodebate.blogspot.com/

My Top 10 Albums of All Time! (yes, I am in fact a geek)

A friend and I recently decided to compile our lists of Top 10 Records of All Time which is, sadly, not even the geekiest thing that I've ever done. Anyway, since I spent the last month listening to tons of music to come up with this list, I thought I'd write about it here.

Before I delve into the list itself, I have to say that this was more difficult than I expected it to be. Like most people, my taste in music covers a very wide range of eras, styles and artists and I found it very difficult to crystallize which records are, in my opinion, the best or most important.

I should also mention that the phrase "Top 10 Records of All Time" is inherently ridiculous. Let's not kid ourselves here, if I made this list once a year for the rest of my life, it would probably be a very different list from year to year. Music sometimes has a tendency to come and go in my life.

After careful consideration and much deliberation, I went with the music that had the most impact on me as a listener, as a musician and just as a person. Once I came up with this parameter, I was able to narrow the list down to my definitive top ten, at least for today.

As you would expect, a lot of this music came on my radar in late high school and early adulthood. I've always thought that this is the period when people are most likely to form their musical identity. Everything we hear after that is shaped by those seminal listening experiences. Having said that, there are a few albums that are more recent and there were a lot of near misses that were released in the past ten years or so.

Okay, without further adieu, here, in order, is my Top 10 Albums of All Time:

1) The Kinks - Muswell Hillbillies (1971)

This one was actually an easy choice. It's one of those records that has always spoken to me. I remember hearing it for the first time, the day my brother brought it home from the store, and thinking that I didn't really need to hear anything else. I could just play this glorious album over and over for the rest of my life. It's combination of blues, country and British rock influences has probably shaped me as a songwriter more than anything else I've ever heard.

2) Muddy Waters - Hard Again (1977)

I was around twelve years old the first time I heard this record and it completely fucked me up. I was at once terrified, confused and inspired. Up to that point, I really had no idea what "The Blues" was. A few months earlier, I had convinced my mother to buy me a harmonica and an instruction book by Tony "Little Sun" Glover called "Blues Harp: An Instruction Method for Playing Blues Harmonica." I'd spent the time in between pouring over the book and trying desperately to figure out what it all meant and who all of these people - Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters - were. Wandering through my local library, I happened to notice a section of the record racks labeled "Blues" and "Hard Again," which was new at the time, was the very first record on the stack. I checked the album out of the library, took it home and proceeded to blow my mind for the next two weeks. People often talk about music or literature or films that changed their lives, this album, more than any other, did that for me. It's the reason I started playing music and in the blues, it gave me the style of music that has always defined me as a performer and songwriter.

3) Bob Dylan - Desire (1976)

For years, my favorite Dylan record was always "Blood On The Tracks" but, at some point this album took over my consciousness. It includes some of Bob's strongest songwriting which, given his incredible track record, is really saying something. "One More Cup of Coffee," "Joey," "Isis" - every song here is a masterpiece. Interestingly, the Bob Dylan album that came the closest to knocking this one off this list was "Modern Times," which is also his most recent work.

4) The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (1972)

I almost didn't include this album on the list because I think it occupies a space that is, sonically speaking, very similar to Muswell Hillbillies. But how could any self respecting fan of rock music not include this album? Mick and Keith and company were firing on all cylinders and the music has a depth of feeling that has rarely been approached by anyone else. I should note that this album is by far best enjoyed in it's original vinyl format. The Stones did an amazing job of arranging each of the double album's four sides as if they were self contained entities. That vibe gets lost a bit when you don't have to pause to flip the record over.

5) Johnny Cash - The Sun Years (recorded as singles in the 1950s)

I don't know whether to rave about the breathtaking quality of songs like "Folsom Prison Blues," "I Walk The Line," "Mean Eyed Cat" and "Big River," or about the guitar playing of Luther Perkins who, along with Carl Perkins (no relation) and Scotty Moore, was among the first true guitar heroes in rock and roll. Yes, I said, rock and roll. Johnny may be primarily known as a country artist, but this music is rock and roll plain and simple. More than fifty years after it's release, it still sounds dark and brooding and, most of all, dangerous. When Johnny says he killed a man "just to watch him die" we not only believe him, there's no guarantee that he might not do it again. No artist has worn his demons on his sleeve more than the great Johnny Cash and these recordings are where it all started.

6) Neil Young - On The Beach (1974)

For some reason, this has never been one of Neil's most famous albums and it never seems to get the credit it deserves. It's dark mix of blues, country and stoned rock is at once comforting and extremely unsettling. "Revolution Blues," "For The Turnstiles," "Vampire Blues" - even the song titles are dark and mysterious. Every time I play this album, which is often, I want to cover a different song from it. I keep wanting use cliches like "dark masterpiece" because I really don't have words to describe how much I love this record.

7) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads (1996)

In the mid 1990s, Johnny Cash made an appearance at the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas and chose Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds as his impromptu backing band for the occasion. This may be all that needs to be said about Nick and his gang of dangerous men and women. I bought this album in the late 90s, after buying, and loving, it's follow up "The Boatman's Call." At that point, I'd been listening to music for over twenty five years and I really didn't think anything could shatter my preconceptions like this album did. If you don't already own it, stop what you're doing right now and go buy this record. Then buy everything else Nick Cave has ever done.

8) The Who - Who's Next (1971)

As a kid I played this album so much that I actually wore out multiple copies of it. Even after hundreds, possibly even thousands of plays, it still hasn't lost it's appeal. I'm listening to it as I type this and it still moves me in new and different ways each and every time I hear it. As much as I love rock music, much of it is nowhere near as important in the scheme of "great art" as we'd all like to believe. "Who's Next" is one of the exceptions. If you needed an album to give to an alien race as an example of just how good rock music of the late 20th century could be, this would be your best choice.

9)Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Last DJ (2002)

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers are the great American rock and roll band and this is quite simply their crowning achievement. Taking aim at the decline and fall of rock radio in particular and the music business in general, Petty conjures the finest songs of his career. The record is nothing short of a bitter sweet masterpiece. Songs like "Dreamville" and "Blue Sunday" are as powerful as any that the genre has ever produced.

10) Bob Marley & The Wailers - The Complete Upsetter Singles (recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s)

While I love all of Bob Marley's music, these sides, which pre-date international stardom by a year or two, are the most powerful music in his considerable cannon. Virtually all of these songs found their way onto later Marley albums but these raw recordings, produced by Jamaican mastermind/crazy person Lee "Scratch" Perry, are his greatest moment. Much like the Elvis Presley records of the 50s, they witness the birth of a new music, in this case reggae. Bob was writing songs constantly and hearing his excitement, passion and joy as this music literally unfolds before his ears is as close to a religious experience as music is probably capable of.

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan

When I heard that the former White House press secretary had written a "tell all" book on his years with the Bush administration, I was interested in much the same way that rush hour drivers are interested in an accident on the other side of the freeway. I knew that McClellan had been press secretary through some of the most harrowing days of the Bush administration and felt a bit sorry for him because I believed that he had been lied to on numerous occasions by the President himself as well as the inner circle of the administration. I didn't expect the book to be enlightening but I found myself wanting to read about the carnage.

It was no surprise that this book was ruthlessly attacked by those within and close to the Bush administration. The book was mostly characterised as an angry response by a bitter former employee. At first, this actually made some sense to me. But then I thought about the interviews that McClellan had given around the time he resigned from his post. At that time, he seemed like a loyal Bushie who had simply reached burnout. So why would he change his tune a year or so later?

The reasoning became more apparent when I read the preface to "What Happened." According to the author, it wasn't until he began the process of reflection that the writing of a memoir requires that he began to formulate the views he chose to include in the book. This felt honest to me so, I decided to plunge in and see what he had to say.

The crux of this book, which I think is being left out of much of the discussion surrounding it, is the concept of the "permanent campaign" and it's negative effects on our government, society and citizens. McClellan recounts his political career prior to the White House and his years in the Bush administration from the perspective that we have gone horribly wrong in our approach to government. By treating every issue as if it were a campaign and making governing decisions entirely based on the way they will play to a particular political base, we have lost sight of the true function of government.

Although his writing isn't always as eloquent as I'd like it to be, I think Scott McClellan makes some very important points in this book. There are a lot of voices shouting for the end of bipartisanship and the removal of money from politics but, McClellan speaks to these issues with a unique inside viewpoint that gives his message and it's ability to add to the dialogue an added resonance. The fact that McClellan is, for the most part, a political conservative, helps to enforce his point that the "permanent campaign" reaches far beyond ideas of liberal or conservative, republican or democrat. It is, to steal a phrase from the Nixon era, a cancer on the heart of our political system.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu

Some of my favorite comic books are the horror anthology comics published by EC Comics in the 1950's. This book focuses on that era of comics and specifically on how a wave of hysteria built up to the point that government forces pushed many of the publishers, writers out of the business for good.

Although the two are probably inextricable, I was more interested in the history of the comics from that era than I was in the story of their downfall. David Hajdu, in a writing style that can best be described as "dry," chooses to emphasise the latter, in exhaustive detail.

While the book was interesting, it was also, at times, a bit tedious and therefore took me a very long time to get through. I found it to be almost textbook like in it's approach. All in all, not a terrible book and possibly of great interest to those looking to learn more about 1950's comic books and their place in our culture. It just wasn't quite the book I set out to read.

Ten Books In Four Months

I don't know if ten books in four months is anything to brag about but, I feel good that I've read that many and actually kept up with writing about them here. You may have noticed that I write about the books in spurts. That's because I tend to read them faster than I can write about them. Well, faster than I am writing about them anyway. If you look at the past few entries, it looks like I've read three books in a week but, in actuality, I've ready three books since the end of March.

Looking back through the books I've read so far, it's interesting to me how much science fiction I've read. I generally read a wider variety of fiction types but, I guess sci fi is just what I'm gravitating towards at the moment. I also think it's interesting that there seems to be a balance between social commentary/politics and fiction. I'm not really sure what that means but, it must mean something I guess.

Anyway, I hope people are enjoying reading about what I'm reading. I'd love to see more comments so, don't be shy. Also, I will be doing more of the other writing that I've done here, particularly the automatic fiction which I find particularly rewarding.