Filed under: gay, hookers, lists, movies, music, not hot, people from rhode island | Tags: abortion, amber rhea, bloc party, blogs, geneology, hiv, hoaxes, mcsweeney's, michelle rhee, movies, porn, the 700 club, the gays, timbaland
Former Rhode Island senator/current gubernatorial candidate Lincoln Chafee came out in support of gay marriage this week, with an editorial in New England gay rag Bay Windows.
Speaking of Rhode Island, our ridiculous governor made an appearance on The 700 Club the other day.
The Washington Post had a pretty fascinating report on Michelle Rhee, who heads the DC school system. (Not particularly relevant to this blog, but worth the five-page read nonetheless.) The most disturbing part of the story, I think, is the part about how lots of kids can’t graduate each year because bureaucratic nonsense prevents them from getting the credits they need.
Audacia Ray guest-posted on Feministing about the HIV scare in the porn world.
Amber Rhea is done, uh, being.
Timbaland’s getting sued for unauthorized sampling.
McSweeney’s is looking for new columnists.
Bloc Party just announced a new non-album single, which will be out in August.
Al Capone’s possibly-grandson has a website that came across my path last week. I don’t even remember how.
Anti-abortion website April’s Mom was, it turns out, a hoax. Allegedly created by a woman pregnant with a terminally ill child, social worker Becca Beushausen eventually birthed a doll. In a fit of crazy, Beushausen says that the had originally created the site only for a few of her friends. Because, I don’t know, who doesn’t think it’s a lot of fun when their friends make websites devoted to their imaginary terminally ill fetuses?
Unreality came out with a list of the ten most polarizing movies of the last decade. The list is all Hollywood, so Demonlover and Irreversible aren’t on there. I’m pro-Eyes Wide Shut and anti-Moulin Rouge, for what it’s worth.
David Archuleta’s dad was caught up in a sting at the Queens of Reiki massage parlor in Utah this past January.
Finally, if you’re looking for something else to follow on Tumblr, I really like Nashville Needs More Metaphors.
Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2001, lists, mary j blige
#5. Mary J Blige, Family Affair
The second half of 2001 was kind of a downer for me; I left college at the end of my freshman year, thinking I’d be returning in the fall, only to have my financial aid revoked at the last minute. So I enrolled at the local state school, signing up for whatever classes were open (Latin! Philosophy! The Indian novel!) and hoped for the best. Which is not what I got that semester. I had four very bad professors that semester, and everybody else there was acting like they were still in high school, complaining about school work and talking to each other about their stupid drunken parties all the time. Worse, because I had moved back home, a lot of these people actually were from my high school.
The upside was that, since this was a commuter school, I spent a lot of time in the car, alone. And at the time I was listening to a lot of hip-hop radio, because it was one of those cycles when hip-hop radio was really likable. And nothing was more likable than the first single off Mary J’s No More Drama album. (more…)
I had trouble sleeping last night, and I ended up blogging about Mpho again (this time on my other blog, where I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning her yet.) That led me to Wikipedia Martha and the Muffins’ Echo Beach again, because I couldn’t remember what year that song came out, and that in turn led me to this, a 2005 list of the 50 most essential pieces of Canadian music. The list was chosen by industry types and then ranked by listeners. And oh my God, if #2 isn’t, um, a big pile of #2.
1. Ian and Sylvia, “Four Strong Winds”
2. Barenaked Ladies, “If I Had $1000000″
3. Neil Young, “Heart of Gold”
4. Stan Rogers, “Northwest Passage”
5. The Guess Who, “American Woman” (more…)
Filed under: lists, music, shameless self-promotion | Tags: bsr, radio, the pop chart
The year’s 25% over already, which is nuts. Here’s the 40 biggest-charting singles of the year so far on The Pop Chart, my Sunday morning top 40 countdown show. Not surprisingly, the #1 song is by the only group to have made topped the chart for more than one week since the countdown started mid-January. And almost half the songs are still on the countdown, which means that there could be big changes in the order by the time December rolls around…
1. Metro Station, Seventeen Forever
2. Franz Ferdinand, Ulysses
3. Kelly Clarkson, My Life Would Suck Without You
4. A Camp, Stronger Than Jesus
5. Miley Cyrus, Fly On The Wall
6. Keri Hilson, Turnin Me On
7. Saint Etienne, Method of Modern Love
8. Vistoso Bosses, Delirious
9. Marmaduke Duke, Kid Gloves
10. Telepathe, So Fine
(more…)
Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2001, design of a decade, lists, low
9. Low, Dinosaur Act
Socially, there were few highlights during my freshman year of college. I lunched weekly with the French professors and helped organize the film festival and that’s about it; I didn’t go to parties and didn’t really talk to anybody and lived in a very elaborately constructed closet where I made up a girlfriend just for something to do.
But at least I had a radio show, albeit one at a station run by indie fascists. DJs were continually reprimanted for playing too much Radiohead and not enough Pedro the Lion. When Low’s Things We Lost In The Fire was released they told us it was the second coming. Immediately I resented it, especially after it was the #1 album at the station for three months straight.
Then, of course, I actually heard it. There’s bleak music, and then there’s bleak music when you’re stuck on top of a snowy hill outside of Utica. It really was like the second coming! Low even played at our school, and Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker were cute and funny and charming. Sadly, though, almost nobody from my school actually went to that show; it was full of people I never saw before or since, cute boys with matted-down side parts and Rivers Cuomo glasses.
Low were less preachy than fellow Mormon Pedro the Lion, with whom they were touring. But they were no less dour. I often think it’s lame to talk about bands in the context of what city they’re from, but I have a feeling Things We Lost In The Fire really is the sound of Duluth.
Dinosaur Act is, I guess, the closest the album has to single material; it’s slow and plodding and kind of loud. But it’s god a hook, dreary though it may be, and it’s the standout track the first bunch of times you listen to it.
As much as I like Low, though, Things We Lost In The Fire; is their only album I can really get behind. Their earlier stuff sounds a little weaker to me, and I got really annoyed by the production on their later albums. (I highly recommend their b-sides box set, though. It’s totally worth whatever you have to pay for it.)
Low, Dinosaur Act
Bonus Tracks:
Low, Medicine Magazines
Low, Like A Forest
Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: 2001, a newfound interest in massachusetts, design of a decade, helicopter helicopter
[Sorry it took me so long to get to posting this; I'm dumb. Now on with the top 10 of 2001!]
10. Helicopter Helicopter, Bottom Of The Ocean
I’m really glad I started doing this project, because it gave me a chance to rediscover Boston quartet Helicopter Helicopter’s awesome 2001 album By Starlight. It’s so good!
I came across Helicopter Helicopter’s music in the local bin at Newbury Comics; I picked up their Squids and Other Fishes (1999) on a whim when I was going to Boston a lot and thought it was important to support the locals. (Funny that at the time I thought Boston was local, whereas now I go there maybe twice a year.) The group excelled at slackery indie-pop, singing about boredom and drugs but coating them with infectious melodies you’d get stuck in your head and starting singing aloud ad inopportune moments. But for all that I liked Squids and Other Fishes–and I did, quite a bit–By Starlight was miles better. Full of melodies that would make a Weezer enthusiast swoon, the songs explored adulthood in a way that seemed remarkable to me. (Mind you at the time I was twenty; in college, but relatively friendless and living with my parents and not old enough to drink my cares away.*) Bottom of the Ocean is By Starlight’s best song, and it’s sort of a culmination of all the dirty slackerdom that the group encompassed. You can’t not bop around to it, even as singer Chris Zerby sings jollily about bugs dying from apathy. In many senses, this was the last hurrah for Boston’s alternative movement. It wasn’t a hit or anything, but it came out on the local Lunch Records and it wouldn’t be wrong to lump By Starlight in with the girl-centric rock hits of the previous decade, from alternative groups like Letters To Cleo and Fuzzy to slightly weirder cult faves like Morphine and Jen Trynin.
Helicopter Helicopter, Bottom Of The Ocean
Bonus Tracks:
Helicopter Helicopter, Moveable
Helicopter Helicopter, Unfortunate
2001 was a crummy year for me, mostly; I parted ways with dreary Hamilton College and moved back home with my parents. I started taking classes at a state school, which I thought was a sign that I was a miserable failure. (It didn’t help that I signed up for boring classes full of freshmen who didn’t realize that college wasn’t high school. I also happened to get two really awful professors that year, and a schedule that kept me at school for 12 hours a day.)
And then there was the whole 9/11 and war with Afghanistan thing, which was scary and sad and very irritating on a conversational level. At the time I tended to ignore people, choosing instead to listen to Vespertine and Aaliyah’s last album between classes instead.
Here’s my favorite songs of the year, which I did as a top 69 for some Stephin Merritt-related reason (even though 69 Love Songs came out in ‘99 and I got it over Christmas that year.) Feel free to laugh at the relative positions of, say, #66 and #22.
Filed under: design of a decade, lists, mixtape, music | Tags: design of a decade, mixtapes, the year 2000
At the end of every top 10 recap I’ll be posting a mix with highlights from that year. Here’s the 2000 mix. In retrospect, I think I’m A Cucumber is probably a better song than I Like Hubcaps, but I’m not sure if I realized that at the time. (And how is that shit still funny after nine years?) Also, I switched one song out at the end so now it’s only 58.8 minutes, according to itunes. Sorry for being skimpy.
(Also, sorry that FileDen makes you click twice now. Sometimes. That’s an annoying new development, isn’t it?)
As always, I’d like to remind you that if you like the songs you ought to buy them. Preferably from a real store, because real music stores are on the decline and we should treasure them while we can.
Side A (zip)
1. Macy Gray, Why Didn’t You Call Me
2. Stereolab, Barock – Plastik
3. Yo La Tengo, Madeline
4. Stone Temple Pilots, Sour Girl
5. Aimee Mann, The Fall of the World’s Own Optimist
6. Fountains of Wayne, Baby One More Time
7. Hefner, The Hymn For The Things We Didn’t Do
8. Sleater-Kinney, All Hands On The Bad One
9. Cat Power, Sea Of Love
Side B (zip)
10. Clem Snide, I Love The Unknown
11. Catherine Wheel, Sparks Are Gonna Fly
12. Elastica, Mad Dog God Dam
13. Sinead O’Connor, No Man’s Woman
14. Catatonia, She’s A Millionaire
15. The Essex Green, Mrs. Bean
16. Dandy Warhols, Bohemian Like You
17. Babybird, The F-Word
18. Brak, I Like Hubcaps
[photo via the BBC]
1. Cat Power, Sea of Love
1. Cat Power, Sea Of Love
Louisiana musician Phil Batiste wrote and released the original version of Sea of Love under the name Phil Phillips in 1959. Like many great love songs, Sea Of Love is known just as much for a terrible schmaltzy cover (in this case, an early-eighties version by the Honeydrippers) as it is for the original. But the original is wonderful, because it’s so lyrically simple. One metaphor, and it’s in the title, and only a few words rhyme. When Cat Power recorded the song in 2000 she stripped it down even further, getting rid of the backing singers and the fifties arrangement and not replacing them with anything.
I bought The Covers Record when the InSound bus made a stop at Brown University, which was where I worked and not where I went; I didn’t know of Cat Power previously (though I remember pretending I had, once, to impress some girls in line at Store 24) but the indie-snob InSound dudes were really adamant that I get this, for some reason I don’t recall, in addition to the Lucksmiths 10” that I was purchasing.
Filed under: design of a decade, lists, music | Tags: belle and sebastian, design of a decade, the year 2000
2. Belle And Sebastian, Family Tree
A lot of folks are down on Belle and Sebastian’s Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant album, and not just because of its lengthy title. I’m not really sure why, though. It’s not as cohesive as Tigermilk or If You’re Feeling Sinister, but it’s a heck of a lot better than the awkward (and even more awkwardly-titled) The Boy With The Arab Strap. Even in 1998, possibly at the height of my B&S fandom, I traded that album after a few weeks for a European-only Suzanne Vega best-of.
FYHC,YWLAP isn’t a perfect album by any means; The Chalet Lines is ugly, and not in a good way, and it took me about eight years before grumpily resigning myself to the fact that I Fought In A War is sort of okay. But, despite that, there’s a lot of great tracks on the album. Songs like The Model, one of Stuart Murdoch’s better numbers about Christianity and somebody named Lisa.
But what makes FYHC,YWLAP better than its predecessor is the vastly improved songwriting on the songs Murdoch didn’t write. Stevie Jackson’s lovely Chickfactor was probably my favorite song on TBWTAS, but he outdid himself by following it up with The Wrong Girl. And Isobel Campbell went from writing one album’s most grating song (Is It Wicked Not To Care?) to writing possibly its best one.
