R.I.P. Captain Beefheart

Don Van Vliet succumbs to multiple sclerosis at 69. A strange life, but a great musical legacy, to say the least.

A Single Random Musical Observation, or "What I Would Do if I Could Time-Travel"

There are many shows in history that I would love to see if I could time-travel. Some predate my being born, such as the Who's live shows in 1971 (when they were using live shows to work on the material for Who's Next, the greatest straight-up rock'n'roll album ever, something others agree with); others, like Sonic Youth's 1988 Daydream Nation tour, occurred before I was old enough to go to shows (or even buy many cassettes, and those I could afford, well....the tastes of an 8-year-old are not the most refined). I'm sure we all have shows like that, that we wish we could warp the space-time continuum to witness live.

However, if there's one show I could probably go back and see, it would be when I was about to graduate high school. As I was taking my final exams for graduation, and Toronto was a 9-hour drive from where I lived, there was absolutely no way I could make it to see Spiritualize play live. At the time, they were riding high on what is unquestionably their best album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, and the live album from that time period demonstrates that actually seeing them live would have constituted a major religious experience. I absolutely adored (and still adore) that album. It was the second-most-frequently played album I listened to at that time. The only one I was listening to more was OK Computer.

The kicker? Spiritualized, on the Ladies and Gentlemen tour, was the opening band of that concert back in spring 1998. The main act?

Radiohead. On the OK Computer tour.

If there were a time-machine, forget about going back and killing Hitler, or talking Johnson out of getting involved in Vietnam, or anything else. I'm going to that show in Toronto in April 1998.

Mr. Trend's Top 50 Albums of the 2000s

Here are my top 50 albums of the 2000s, with random comments. This was actually a really hard list to make, and I limited myself mostly to the rock-ish genre (with a couple exceptions). I could do an entire other lists of best re-issues, best non-Western music, and best "things I 'discovered' in the 2000s" but I probably won't. Basically, there was a lot of great music, old and new, that came out last decade, and so I limited myself to the genre I'm most familiar with/capable of talking about here. And while I feel fairly safe about #s 21-50, I think that, excepting my top choice, #s 2-19 could really shift around on any given day.

1. Joanna Newsom, Ys - I just keep coming back to this album, and every time, it blows me away. So much I could say, but I'll limit myself to saying it's the first album I've ever heard where lyrics felt like their own instrument, and I get goosebumps everytime I hit the 14-minute mark of "Only Skin" (along with several other moments throughout).
2. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam/Merriweather Post Pavilion - Don't ask me to pick one. I can't (not with conviction, at least). I fully and strenuously disagree with Erik, and think that from Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished to Merriweather, AC has been the most interesting band of the decade.
3. Liars, Drum's Not Dead
4. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
5. Sleater-Kinney, The Woods - The best album from the most consistently great band of the late-90s. I hope they return someday, but if they don't, they went out on the top of their game.
6. Los Campesinos, Hold On Now, Youngster.../We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed -Music rarely has any right to be this energetic, thrilling, and complicated and mature at the same time; that it comes from a bunch of young 20-somethings is all the more remarkable.
7. Interpol, Turn On the Bright Lights - When a friend first played this for me and asked what I thought, my retort was, "I liked Joy Division better the first time around." However, that was pretty unfair in retrospect - Ian Curtis et al did not invent moodiness, and this was some of the best moody ambient-yet-rocking stuff of the decade.
8. Beck, Sea Change - I'm one of those "lyric people" Erik complained about. Still, this album hits heartbreak about as well as anything from the decade.
9. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois - Many complain it's too long, but I don't know what you get rid of; the full songs are essential, and if you take out the little interludes, you still have a 70-minute album (plus, the little interludes perfectly separate the bigger pieces, and are beautiful themselves, save for the 8-second bit before "Chicago," but again - does taking out 8 whole seconds make the album feel "shorter"?)
10. Radiohead, In Rainbows - Kid A may have been more of a watershed, more of an awakening, for many (though I was into Autechre and Aphex Twin before Kid A came out), but I just like In Rainbows a little more.
11. Panda Bear, Person Pitch
12. TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
13. Arcade Fire, Funeral
14. Silver Mt. Zion, 13 Blues for 13 Moons - A live-in-studio sound + all the build up and bombast of Godspeed You Black Emperor + Earnest emotional and political lyrics = one of the most unappreciated albums of the decade.
15. Sigur Ros, Agaetis Byrjun
16. John Adams, On the Transmigration of Souls - For all the talk of Springsteen's The Rising as "the" 9/11 album, it's nowhere near as good, heartbreaking, beautiful, or daring across its 70 minutes as Adams' 28-minute composition is.
17. Cat Power, You Are Free
18. Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica
19. Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun - Still the best "wake up and get going" album.
20. White Stripes, Elephant - White Blood Cells is great, but this is the one that had all the rocking potential on full display.
21. Burial, Untrue
22. Bat for Lashes, Two Suns
23. Black Angels, Directions to See a Ghost
24. Tom Waits, Real Gone - In the "early stuff/crazy old-man-growling stuff" debate over Tom Waits, I firmly fall in the latter category.
25. Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - Erik and I will disagree on her until the day we die.
26. Menomena, Friend and Foe - A few stickout songs ("Boyscout'n"), but really, it's best as a top-to-bottom album, and more and more interesting with every listen.
27. Bjork, Vespertine - She's always interesting, but this is her best album ever.
28. Gorillaz, Demon Days
29. Libertines, Up the Bracket - They burned out quickly, and the new bands aren't very interesting or good. But for one album, they captured lightning in a bottle.
30. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
31. Atlas Sound, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel
32. Flying Lotus, Los Angeles - Steven Ellison somehow combined hip-hop beats, funky rhythms, and Aphex Twin-like ambience into a coherent sound.
33. The Besnard Lakes, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
34. DJ/Rupture, Uproot
35. PJ Harvey, White Chalk - Every album is different, but her piano-ballads-with-fragile-soprano album is her most haunting and one of her best, with an emotional core that rivals 4-Track Demos.
36. Vivian Girls, Everything Goes Wrong - The unfortunate backlash against Williamsburg diminished how great and dark this album is. Time will vindicate it.
37. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver - Each album has a couple songs I could do without, but when you write things like "All My Friends," it's hard to go wrong.
38. The Black Keys, Rubber Factory - Akron's finest's finest album (so far).
39. Crystal Stilts, Alight of Night
40. The Knife, Silent Shout
41. M.I.A., Kala
42. Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse - A very, very solid album, and their best of the decade.
43. Walkmen, Bows + Arrows
44. Deerhunter, Microcastle/Weird Era Continued
45. Portishead, Third - Forget Chinese Democracy (you already did? Oh, sorry) - this was the "comeback" album of the 2000s.
46. Alela Diane, To Be Still
47. Gillian Welch, Time the Revelator
48. Sun Kil Moon, Tiny Cities - Probably the best covers album of the decade, gives a new haunting sadness and beauty to Modest Mouse's songs.
49. CSS, Cansei de Ser Sexy - Yes, the lyrics can be silly, but A) English isn't their first language, and B) when your tunes are that grooving and catchy, who cares?
50. Bruce Springsteen, The Seeger Sessions - Another great covers album, but with a very un-Springsteen sound. You can tell it was just recorded live in a home in a few days, and that's a very good thing.

A Single Random Musical Observation

I've been working on a "best-of-the-decade" list of music for an upcoming post for a while, a feat that I originally thought wouldn't take too long. Yet the more I get into it, the harder it gets, and the difficulty's origin is simple: I underestimated the "oughts." I don't know why I'm surprised, but there was a lot of excellent music made over the past 10 years. To quote Ron Burgundy: "This is hard!" Stay tuned.

Album Review - Fuck Buttons, "Tarot Sport"

It's been way too long since I've done one of these, and I've heard plenty of albums that merited reviews (both good and bad). But last week, I got two albums I'd been highly anticipating, and both are so good as to merit the revival of reviews (though the other will wait a little bit).

At the beginning of this year, I sang high praises for Fuck Buttons' debut album Street Horrrsing, which I now consider one of the two best albums of last year. As I'd put it in January, Street Horrrsing wasn't just amazing; it was that rare breed of album "that you didn't even realize you'd been waiting forever to have until it came out." The original template was simple, yet amazing - danceable electronics, deep bass, beautiful glockenspiel-like chimes, and Come to Daddy style screams. It was one of the more visceral things I've heard in 10 years, and it was, for all appearances, perfect. The fact that iTunes tells me I've listened to it 47 times in the past year (and that doesn't count the times I listened to it in CD format) says plenty.

Thanks to the vagaries of Amazon, I didn't have Tarot Sport, the Buttons' follow-up, until this past Friday, in spite of ordering it before it was released 10 days previous. While I held out from listening to it online, I couldn't help but read some of the reviews. All seemed to like it, but all also said the same thing: "like Street Horrrsing, only different." They particularly highlighted that some of the deep rumbling bass and screams were gone. Given that that was what originally drew me in, I was...not skeptical, but wondering if I'd like Tarot Sport as much. So, do I?

I don't know yet - it's still too soon (47+ listens vs. 6 listens isn't exactly a fair comparison). But it's really, really, really fucking close. It's true - the screams-on-beauty-on-chest-rumbling-bass-line is gone. But it's still a pretty powerful wallop, and it's perhaps more consistent. That's not to say Street Horrrsing is inconsistent - far from it - but personally, the beauty and ferocity of track opener "Sweet Love for Planet Earth," followed by the tribal-ish drums and haunted screams of "Ribs Out" were always so amazing, haunting, stunning, to me, that the rest of the album felt less....I don't know. Fuck Buttons' second album, though, while lacking that "letdown" (though that's hardly a fair or adequate term for their debut), doesn't have that so-called "letdown". In part, it's because nothing is quite as amazing (or, better yet, amazing in the same way) as the opening of Street Horrrsing, but that makes the rest of Tarot Sport that much better.

As for the "the same, only different," aspect, that's also a fair assessment. "The Lisbon Maru" reaches "Sweet Love for Planet Earth's" pulsing, throbbing feel, but with a sense of depth and layering lacking on the opening track of the debut, even while also lacking the screams that gave the debut's opener such a punch. And tracks like "Olympians" and "Flight of the Feathered Serpent" are more dance-able than anything on Street Horrrsing, even while maintaining the simultaneous absolute beauty and sheer aural assault of the first album.

And that's really where the difference between the two albums rest. It's not that Andrew Hung and John Power have gotten lazy, or rested on their laurels, or even fallen into a holding pattern or a sophomore slump. Tarot Sport is worthy of its predecessor, even while changing the soudn somewhat. Where Fuck Buttons' first album made you want to weep at its sheer beauty and ugly force, the second makes you want to nod your head for 60 minutes. In fact, with Tarot Sport, Fuck Buttons have managed to achieve what we often hope so many bands will do with their second album, but what so few manage to do: hold on to everything that made us love the first album, even while transforming and refining the sound so that it's simultaneously familiar and amazingly different. The expectations I had for Hung's and Power's second album were unfair after becoming familiar with Street Horrrsing; the quality of Tarot Sport is so remarkable, my expectations for their third album, while perhaps unfair, are out of this galaxy.

It's just that good.

Thank You, Tom Waits

Dear Tom,

Awhile back, I wrote you, asking for a new album. Apparently, those words were not idle, and while it's not an album of all-new material, a bonus disc composed strictly of your stage banter is more than acceptable. I can't wait to hear this.

Thanks so much. And I still can't wait to see you as the devil.

Gratefully,

Mr. Trend

PS: And you're offering the first 8 of 17 tracks for free download at your site? You truly are the coolest man alive.

In Defense of Grizzly Bear

I don't really know that Grizzly Bear or their new album need much defending - it's brilliant, and they're excellent, too. Still, for those who think it's just the latest hipster fad, listen to "Foreground" performed live here. Ed Droste's voice should take care of any convincing that remains.

On the Beatles

With the release of the (finally) remastered Beatles catalog, as well the Beatles Rock Band game, there has obviously been a lot of nostalgia about the band and its music, some of it sincere, some of it hollow. Just this week, I had somebody ask me if I were a Beatles fan, something I probably hadn't been asked since about 2000 (and only then because I was meeting new friends-to-be who were total Anglophiles). My opinion of the Beatles has always been that they were one of the greatest bands ever, no question, but that their greatness has been simplified and overstated as time has gone on, ignoring all the other kinds of great (and often non-pop/rock) music out there. As for their music, I respect what came before Revolver, but, barring a few singles (hello, "Hard Day's Night"), I only really like on an emotional level the stuff they started to do with Revolver, and consider Revolver and especially Abbey Road to be two of the greatest albums ever. However, there's so much great jazz, avant-garde, blues, hip-hop, electronic music, etc. out there, that I always felt the "cult of Beatles" was, shall we say, limited, though I certainly never held that against people of my parents' generations. I mean, think about it - they went from having groups like the Everly Brothers and cheesy third-rate doo-wop knockoffs as the representation of popular music, to the Beatles. I think I'd be nostalgic about how the Beatles "saved my life" too, if I had been in those circumstances.

That said, for all the nostalgia-mongering and reminiscing of late, I think Pitchfork's review of Abbey Road really hammers home just how impressive the Beatles' production was, by reminding us of something we've really lost sight of over the years as the Beatles myth has grown. When the Beatles broke up,

George was 26 years old, Paul was 27, John was 28, and Ringo was 29. The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, had come out almost exactly six and a half years earlier. So if Abbey Road had been released today, Please Please Me would date to March 2003. So think about that for a sec: Twelve studio albums and a couple of dozen singles, with a sound that went from earnest interpreters of Everly Brothers and Motown hits to mind-bending sonic explorers and with so many detours along the way-- all of it happened in that brief stretch of time. That's a weight to carry.

Six and a half years. That's more than remarkable; that's a hell of an accomplishment, one I think it's safe to say popular music and/or rock music will never see again. Of course, so much more happened, and that kind of statement can help add to the mythology. Still, if anything is going to add to the myth-making of the Beatles' status, I can't think of a better accomplishment to enter music Valhalla than to go from Please Please Me to Abbey Road in six and a half years.

Random Music Observations, the Tenth

-Of all the crazy things that are mandatory reading in schools, the craziest thing ever is Dee Snider being mandatory reading. In Russia.

-I think I'd enjoy Drive-By Truckers more if there were fewer ballads.

-The Black Angels should get more attention, not for being relatively new, but for being objectively really good.

-There aren't a lot of reggae songs I enjoy, much less reggae albums. However, I could listen to the Congos' Heart of the Congos and Mikey Dread's World War III every day for a year and still not get tired of them.

-In terms of rocking, dirty, absolutely-terrifying-yet-strangely-compelling, nobody beats Junior Kimbrough.

Around Latin America

-Ever since the War of the Pacific, Bolivia has been without direct access to the ocean, joining Paraguay as the only two landlocked countries in the Americas (out of 44 globally). However, aid may be coming soon, as Uruguay is seriously considering offering access to the sea to Bolivia.

-Are individuals in the FBI contributing directly to the drug violence plaguing Mexico?

-Augusto Montanaro, the Minister of the Interior for over 20 years during the dictatorial regime of Alfredo Stroessner, returned to Paraguay this week after 20 years in exile. This is major news because Montanaro was one of the key figures in the tortures and disappearances during Stroessner's 35-year reign: "as interior minister from 1966 to the end of the Stroessner regime, Montanaro was instrumental in the abduction, torture and mu rder of government opponents and he faces numerous criminal charges in Paraguay." Upon his return, he was medically examined and then sent off to the national prison, where hopefully he will serve his remaining days; however, his "senility" and Parkinson's disease make it seem likely he may end up with house arrest (though I'm not familiar with the particulars of Paraguayan prison law in terms of the ailing).

-For all the talk and mention one hears about UNICEF, it's rare that anybody knows exactly how the organization is effecting change in the world. Well, it would appear that, among other things, it's helping trobuled youths in Guyana get a second chance and seeking genuine reforms that rehabilitate rather than punish juveniles in that country.

-Human rights organizations are asking for the protection of a Chilean journalist after he received death threats from right-wing apologists groups. Francisco Herreros, head of the communist El Siglo, received the threats from right-wing terrorists after the newspaper published "a series of declassified CIA documents that involve Chilean right wing organizations and persons in crimes, fraud and other violations," providing just one more reminder that, while Pinochet and his regime have been largely discredited within Chile and abroad, there are still extremists who feel that those who disagree with them should be killed.

-Also in Chile, around 100 indigenous Mapuches marched on the presidential palace in Santiago, "trying to denounce police repression prevailing in their communities, as well as the implementation of the Anti-terrorist Act," and seeking a meeting with President Michelle Bachelet. Despite the importance of human rights rhetoric and justice in terms of the Pinochet regime, repression and violations of Mapuches' rights continue at a disturbing rate in Chile.

-I'm not quite sure why the South Dakota National Guard might need training in jungle warfare, but the U.S.'s 46th-most populated state has entered into a partnership with Suriname for military training, as well as a "medical readiness exercise."

-Johnny Depp as Pancho Villa? (h/t)

-Apparently, Dominica's Prime Minister has been talking trash about the other islands in the Caribbean. I look forward to responses from Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Lucia, Montserrat, and others. Could this be the first step in an inter-island war in the Caribbean? The world watches with baited breath...

-Finally, one of my favorite "discoveries" last year was a great album of Garifuna music sung by women. For those who are unfamiliar with Garifuna music (the Garinagu people are descendants of indigenous and African peoples in the Caribbean coast of Central America), it's excellent stuff, and (in addition to the samples at Amazon), you can check out some more music and info about it here.

Behold - More Evidence of America's Cultural Death

I didn't see the Super Bowl this year, so I missed this little abomination of crass commercialism until it re-aired during the All-Star game last night.

All I can say is, congratulations, Rod Stewart - now you only have the second worst ripoff of the original version ever. (And seriously - I will always be amazed that he talked his way out of a plagiarism suit on this, given the similarities between this and this. It's not like Stewart had never plagiarized before - you just have to compare the chorus of this to this to hear it.)

(And in one last parenthetical, if anybody is unfamiliar with Jorge Ben, I can't recommend his material from the 1960s and 1970s strongly enough. Some of it has been re-released in the U.S. recently, and is outstanding, as is his 1975 accoustic-jam improv session w/Gilberto Gil.)

Michael Jackson Related Thought of the Day

Sarah J and I were talking the other night about how long we can keep this thread going. This may be the last thing I have to say, but we'll see.

At any rate, I've been a fierce (unironic) defender of Michael Jackson's music for years. That said, there isn't a single one of his albums that I think is amazing from start to finish. Even Thriller has songs I could do without. The man knew how to craft a single, no question, but his "start-to-finish-great-album" skills are greatly overestimated.

In Defense of Jimmie Rodgers

A couple of years back, Erik was indignant at a list of the "greatest country songs," and rightfully so, both in terms of what was/wasn't there and the ordering of songs. While I know relatively little about country music, I pointed out in the comments that I couldn't believe there wasn't a single song by Jimmie Rodgers, the so-called "father of country" and a great bluesman (back when there wasn't a clear distinction between the two). I think if one were to make a list of "most underrated American musical artists of all time," Jimmie Rodgers would have to be high on that list. However, I never could find an eloquent way (or the time to write it) to defend that position on the blog.

Fortunately, the Onion AV Club's Nathan Rabin (a "hip-hop specialist) has begun one of those journalistic series that make me wish I'd opted for music journalism rather than history as a career path: avowedly unfamiliar with country music, he's spending two years exploring the genre and all of its "greats" (or not-so-greats) to get a better sense of the music, and he's getting paid to do this (again, I so wish I'd gone into music journalism right now). This week (week 15 of the series), he finally got to Jimmie Rodgers, and does an excellent job contextualizing Rodgers' music and his importance to country and blues, as well as offering the delightful insights of someone just coming to Rodgers' music for the first time, with an excellent combination of uninformed glee and musical knowledge. It's the post I wish I could have written on Rodgers, and it is well worth checking out, as are his other posts. After all, if not all of us can spend a couple of years learning about country music, at least there are those out there who can let us read about their own experiences.

For the record...

There is no better combo than a cup of coffee and the Boredoms' Vision Creation Newsun to get you going in the morning.

The Best Music of 2009 Thus Far

While all lists are superfluous, I really enjoy the particular superfluity of evaluating what's best when the year is only halfway over. Still, these past 6 months have seen some obscenely excellent releases, and 2009 is shaping up to be an excellent music year. So here are my top ten-plus-one, the best of 2009 so far:

1.) Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion - I understand the backlash, and I hate how hipster I come off looking on this. But the music.....regardless of where you stand on them, I think Animal Collective are one of the decade's most interesting bands, and this may be their highlight. I kind of miss Avery Tare's random, uncontainable screams of joy on this album, but with songs like "Brother Sport," "In the Flowers," "Summertime Clothes," and "Lion in a Coma," I can let go of some yelps.

2.) Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest - I realize I probably seem like I'm regurgitating Pitchfork talking points here, but sonofabitch if this isn't almost as good as the Animal Collective album. The first listen or two, I thought it would end up being one of the most overrated albums of the decade, but by about spin #3, it had started working its way into my head, and by the fifth listen, I couldn't stop. Not quite as good as the AC album, simply because there is a song or two that doesn't hit quite as strongly as the rest of the album. Still, it's a beautiful album that really works its way into your head over time.

3.) Rock Plaza Central, At the Moment of Our Most Needing, or If Only They Could Turn Aorund, They Would Know They Weren't Alone - When I hear people describe Bonnie "Prince" Billy, this is what I wish he sounded like.

4.) Japandroids, Post-Nothing - Best rock album of the year, without question (also, one of the better titles in awhile).

5.) Alela Diane, To Be Still - I openly admit a weakness for folksy female singer/songwriters (see: Joanna Newsom, Marissa Nadler, Neko Case, etc.). Diane's album is gorgeous, one of those rare albums that's equally perfect on a lazy sunny Saturday morning or a rainy cold night when you're all alone.

6.) Woods, Songs of Shame - More Brooklyn indie-hipster stuff, but the falsetto singing and the fuzzed-out-yet-accoustic sound are extremely satisfying, and offer a nice, more "organic" take on the "indie" scene that has come out of the Brooklyn area.

7.) Matt & Kim, Grand - A synthesizers-drums combo sounds like a terrible idea. But this is the happiest, funnest, most delightful album I've heard in awhile, a perfect "pop" album. And "Lessons Learned" very well may be the single of the year.

8.) White Rabbits, It's Frightening - One of those albums where you immediately think, "why didn't other bands think of this before?" Simple, straightforward rock, only with a heavy reliance on piano and two drummers (in addition to the guitars) - it could have been a disaster, or it could have been great. Fortunately, it ended up great.

9. ) Rural Alberta Advantage, Hometowns - Nils Edenloff's voice is not for everybody, but the music is infectious, and when his nasally tenor joins with drummer/singer Amy Cole's innocent-sounding voice, it's one of the oddest and most endearingly sweet sounds. And the music is pretty excellent, too.

10.) Lotus Plaza, The Floodlight Collective - Deerhunter member Lockett Pundt releases his solo album a year after Bradford Cox, and it's just as good. It's clear how much Pundt has influenced Cox and Deerhunter since he joined, and when I got Cox's Atlas Sound album last year, I thought, "I wish there were more albums like this." Fortunately, Pundt has provided such an album. Now, if only there were more albums like The Floodlight Collective....

11.) Charles Spearin, The Happiness Project - Hands down the most interesting album of the year. Spearin took interviews with seven people, ranging from children to the elderly, each of whom answered what happiness was to them. The album then takes their answers, with Spearin creating guitar (and keyboard) music lines that echo the vocal intonations of the answers, in what is a delightful concept that joins loops, edits, a particular notion of "music concrete," and guitars to make an album that won't grab you immediately, but that can bring you to tears both through the people's answers and the music built on their voices.

Honorable Mentions: Bat for Lashes, Two Suns; Neko Case, Middle Cyclone; Marissa Nadler, Little Hells; Here We Go Magic, Here We Go Magic

Most overrated album of the year (so far): Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - I just don't get the big deal - it's some of the most sterile "rock" I've heard, yet people seem to be absolutely swooning over this album. Comparisons to Spoon are apt - I definitely don't think either band is worth the fuss.

My Michael Jackson thoughts

I've been reading and passing on MJ eulogies all morning.

But I think Trend captured below what it was like to be a child of the 80s and to grow up with Michael Jackson. My Twitter comment this morning was "I remember a world without the Internet. I don't remember a world without Michael Jackson."

And yet I'm shocked by how gobsmacked I am by this. I expect to be horrifically sad when Madonna dies--I have grown up in the shadow and image of Madonna in a much more obvious way than Michael Jackson. I have grown up a girl who flaunts all her contradictions, who despises sexual hypocrisy and who still, after all these years, loves to dance.

Last night I had coffee and then dinner with a new friend who grew up in England, and I was trying to explain to him what it was like, being American, being born in 1980 and suddenly, unexpectedly hearing that Michael Jackson is gone. I can't.

I can't explain why I didn't own any Michael Jackson music but this morning I hit iTunes for the songs that I love ("Wanna Be Startin' Something" in my headphones as I type) and am genuinely saddened.

John Nichols wrote a lovely post about Jackson's activism and cultural relevance, and Natalia Antonova wrote like Trend about the impact of Jackson's music. But this piece by Richard Kim goes to a darker place--and made me think.

I've already noted the things that I can say I've drawn from Madonna--it's a clearer image for me. Michael Jackson? Before today I would've said nothing. Yet it's obvious now, as these words spill out of me, that there has been an impact on me, on all of us. It's a complicated one. The face we are left with of Jackson is not a pretty one. It's an intensely problematic one--all the worst aspects of our society reflected back in the face of a celebrity whipping boy.

I write a lot about monsters. Michael Jackson was, in one sense, a monster. He blurred boundaries between black and white, child and adult, masculine and feminine (as Patricia Williams wrote back in 2005), and yesterday, life and death, as the reports from tabloids hit first and many of us didn't want to believe, held out hope that it was just a salacious rumor, until the LA Times confirmed it for us.

People either disavow Michael loudly as a "freak" or choose to remember the music--which is, of course, what I'm doing now, cherrypicking my favorite tunes to play back. But if we really want to remember Michael Jackson, we will look into the dark places that he went, and look at the side of ourselves that wanted to have him as our freak. That didn't want to admit that he was still a lot like us.

And yet. A little while back we did a series of music posts, proclaiming the best rock albums, best country albums, etc. We never did get around to a best pop albums list, largely because I couldn't step away from Madonna and Michael to think of anyone else. This morning, listening to these songs with a new poignancy to every high crack of that voice, I still have to salute the best pop songs any of us have ever heard. The music will live on whether we self-examine or not. And that's perhaps as it should be.

RIP - Michael Jackson

Yesterday, I spent 8 hours driving to see my parents in Ohio. When I got out of the car, I did not expect that the first thing my mother would say would be, "Was Michael Jackson on your list?" I stared at her for a second, and said, "wait - Michael Jackson died? HOW?"

Of course, lots of tributes will come in; some longer, some shorter, most more eloquent than mine. I'll just leave it at the fact that, as someone born at the very beginning of the 80s, Michael Jackson was probably the biggest cultural component of my growing up - moreso than Transformers, than Schwarzenegger movies, than pogo balls and Michael Jordan and Hulk Hogan and anything else from my childhood. Michael Jackson was huge, and great, and the memories have gone from when I was about 3 (I remember the Thriller singles hitting the radio, one by one) to the present.

There was the day, when I was 8 or 9 (and thus, a good 6 years after Thriller), I had spent the night at a friend's house, and his mom was getting ready to take me home and insisted my friend come, but the Thriller video was on. The kid was so angry, he started crying. Over Thriller. Which had been out for 6 years. And I wasn't (and am not) mad - to quote Dave Chapelle, it was "Thriller, man. Thriller."

I remember watching the episode of the Simpsons, just so I could see the debut of the "Black and White" music video. To this day, it is the only Simpsons episode I have seen from start to finish, and I played my Dangerous tape so many times as an 11 year old, it eventually wore out. By the time the allegations broke, I was old enough to be familiar with disillusionment (I was a Cleveland sports fan, after all), but that A) didn't stop the shock and disbelief at the accusations leveled against Michael, and B) stop me from saying, "but the music....".

Last year, when I worked at a Borders books temporarily, it was late on a Friday night, and we were playing the 25th anniversary release of Thriller on the store radio. The security guy called all the staff over to the video camera screen he had on the main floor, and we gathered around, everybody smiling as we saw that, in the children's section, a kid who looked to be 9 or 10 was pulling out all of his dance moves to "Billie Jean." A 9 year old kid. And what was more, he was pulling out Michael Jackson's moves - not the ones from Black and White, or Scream, but the Moonwalk, moves from "Thriller," - old school Michael Jackson. I mean, this kid probably wasn't even born in the 1990s, and he knew old-school Michael Jackson moves. And the moment "Billie Jean" came on, that kid couldn't help himself. And all the Borders staff stood around the camera, in what would have been a voyeuristic and cynical move, if we hadn't all been smiling and wondering at the power of that song, and the joy of that kid, a joy that I think it's safe to say we all kind of shared. It may be cheesy and trite, but that doesn't make it any less true. That made every staff worker's night that night.

And just two weeks ago, a friend and colleague of mine and I were sitting in Rio discussing just how amazing Michael Jackson's music was and still is, and how nobody, but nobody, ever danced like that or will ever dance like that again. The next night, I was flipping channels on MTV Brazil (where they still play videos), and caught the "Smooth Criminal" video, which (together with "Billie Jean") was always my favorite. For four minutes, I was just ear-to-ear smiling, not able to believe my luck that, not only had I caught a music video on MTV, but it was "Smooth Criminal." When somebody gets 80s nostalgia and plays all the horrible, popular songs from when I was growing up, I always cringe at every song - every song that isn't a Michael Jackson song.

I'm not quite sure his death has settled in for me yet - I feel like the loss of what is unquestionably one of my favorite parts of my childhood, and the loss of the biggest celebrity in my lifetime bar none, should feel....I don't know, grander. Right now, all I can think is, "What about his kids?" My deepest sympathies of course go out to them, and to all of his family and friends. I just hope that one day, his kids know that people remember him not for the transformation in appearance, or for the weird charges that were never proven, or for holding one of them over a balcony, but for what was most important and best about Michael Jackson, for what he gave to generations to enjoy forever: his music.

Tempus Fugit - The Soft Bulletin

Apparently, yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the release of the Flaming Lips' otherworldly-good The Soft Bulletin. I don't know why, but that's kind of alarming to me - I guess it's always been so eternal-sounding, it doesn't seem to have a date. It's impossibly difficult to pick between this and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots for me, but I think if someone put a gun to my head, I'd probably say The Soft Bulletin is my favorite.

Time to go give it another listen, just to revel once again in its sheer greatness.

Possibly the Greatest Music Site Ever

New Jersey's WFMU has what is quite possibly one of the best options (legal or otherwise) for discovering new music out there. They recently launched the beta-version of their Free Music Archive. It's pretty simple - music curators from WFMU, KEXP, dublab, KBOO, and others have put up a variety (and that's an understatement) of songs tha have been "pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by outdated copyright law."

And when they say "certain types," they have a ridiculous amount of music. For example, simply clicking on "experimental" lets you peruse all 1294 songs, or you can click on any of the subgenres (in the case of experimental music, those subgenres are "Ambient," "Audio Collage," "Avant-Garde," "Drone," "Electroacoustic," "Field Recordings," "Improv," "Musique Concrete," "Noise," "Sound Collage," "Sound Poetry," and "Unclassifiable;" - and that's just in experimental music). What's more, because of the clearance, the songs are able to be remixed, replayed ad infinitum, anything but re-sold.

It's pretty easy to register, and here's the best part: you can still sponsor the bands/performers whose music you really like. You can see the bios and sites of the artists, and if you like their work, you can use paypal to send your donation directly to the artist(s) you like, thereby helping them be able to continue creating music without having to send any money to corporate 50-somethings who know nothing about music or are interested only in the profits. And if you listen to something you end up hating, well, you don't have to regret having spent money on something you'll listen to once.

It's got some great (and pretty obscure) stuff, and is highly worth checking out. And if you like the artists' works, it won't kill you to send a bit of money to help them continue to produce.

In Which Mr. Trend Demands More Awesome Crazy Music in His Life

Dear Tom Waits,

I know you've always enjoyed acting, and I admit, casting you as the devil is an inspiring decision. You're a strange man, and certainly you've earned the right to do whatever you want, even if it's taking a role in a movie that sounds like a spectacularly ridiculous version of The Road.

However, it's been five years since you released one of your greater and stranger albums, and three years since we got an awesomely-themed strong compilation from you. I know you sometimes take extended breaks from music, but given that you toured just last year (after giving the greatest press conference ever to announce it), I'd really, really appreciate it if you could go back into the studio sometime soon and give us more of your insane, amazing, awesome music.

You're the best.

Trend