Track 3: Cath. . . .

Artist: Death Cab for Cutie

Song: "Cath. . . ."

Album: Narrow Stairs

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/deathcabforcutie

Death Cab and Tim Duncan.

Even casual sports fans are familiar with Tim Duncan. Four-time NBA champion. Two-time MVP. By any reasonable measure the greatest power forward in basketball history. Despite his historical greatness, he's been somewhat overshadowed during this era. During his career he's rarely been mentioned as the best player in basketball, despite winning as many championships as anyone (Shaq has tied him with four). Duncan's problem is that he's boring. He's so spectacularly un-flashy that his nickname is the Big Fundamental. In an era of emotional, demonstrative sports stars, Duncan is the man in the iron mask. He's never gotten suspended or arrested or choked his coach or gotten into a feud with his teammates. Good grief; the guy only has two tattoos! All he offers is season after season of relentless excellence and winning basketball.

Death Cab for Cutie is the Tim Duncan of indie rock. They don't do any one thing better than anybody else, but they're as reliable, dependable and trustworthy as any band in music. Ben Gibbard doesn't have the best voice, they don't play flaming guitar solos or riffs, and they don't turn their amps up to eleven. They even look nerdy. Moreover, their career has been remarkably consistent. It's nearly impossible to choose a best album or best song from their catalogue; they've produced a nonstop procession of quality music for a decade now and don't show any signs of slowing down.

Though it's not flashy or attention-grabbing, I appreciate and admire Death Cab's consistency. One of the disappointments that any audiophile has experienced repeatedly is getting to know a band and to come to love one of their albums only to be disappointed by the next release. This usually happens either because the band releases essentially the same album back to back, or, trying to avoid this, they release an album with an entirely different sound from their last album, with the main difference being that they've replaced a good sound with a different, sucky sound.

Not so Death Cab. They've managed to craft a distinctive sound so that you instantly know a Death Cab song when you hear it, yet each song is unique and memorable in its own right. They are that rarest of commodities: a trustworthy rock and roll band.

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You remember The Graduate? You know, Dustin Hoffman, Simon and Garfunkel, Ann Bancroft being sexy and creepy all at once? Anyway, in the iconic scene at the end of that movie, Dustin Hoffman's character Ben Braddock shows up at the wedding of the Ann Bancroft's daughter and screams, "Elaine, Elaine," and runs off with her to elope. "Cath . . ." is the song that Ben Braddock would have written if he had to watch Elaine go through with the wedding. Well, he would have written it if they were both a little older and Ben wasn't, you know, sleeping with Elaine's mom.

Track 2: How the Day Sounds

Artist: Greg Laswell

Song: "How the Day sounds"

Album: Three Flights from Alto Nido

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/greglaswell

So, how does the playlist come together every year, you may wonder? Around the beginning of November, I'll look through the list of songs I've heard that year. This year, there were about 1,600 songs to sort through. Some of them I know I like, some I know I don't like, some I don't have an opinion on, so I'll listen to all or part of those songs. From these songs, I'll make a first cut of about 150 or so songs, and I'll listen through this playlist once. I'll pare this list down to a second cut of about 50 songs, and I'll listen to these at least twice more. Then comes the final cut to the playlist of 20 or so songs.

Before I start, I usually have a pretty good idea of what songs I think will make the cut, but, as I go through the process there are always songs that I thought would make it that don't hold up, and other hidden gems that surprise me. "How the Day Sounds" was one of the hidden gems this year. It wasn't on my radar at all when I began the process, but now it's one of my favorite songs from the year.

This, to me, shows the benefits of having a well thought-out process and sticking to it when making decisions. At the beginning of the day, you may have a pretty good idea what you will end up doing when you've completed the process, but you may turn over a hidden gem or find a new perspective on something along the way. I've found this to be invaluable in the practice of law; inevitably I'll have a problem or issue that seems unsolvable (or insoluble, if you prefer) at first, but, when I examine the documents or pleadings or what have you a step at a time, I usually find a viable solution or response. It works for important things like lawsuits and really important things like playlist assembly.
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This is Greg Laswell's second appearance on the annual cd compilation, after "Sing Theresa Says" from a few years ago. Sadly, I haven't actually bought an album from Mr. Laswell yet; he's fallen into a sort of grey area in which I like his songs, but I haven't felt compelled to buy his albums yet. What is it that makes the difference between a merely enjoyable song and one that gets you to take the extra step of checking out the rest of the album?

I read a book on this subject called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. He suggests that context, timing, and the influence of remarkable people make the difference between things that catch on and those that fizzle out. Good stuff. Also worth reading by Gladwell is Blink, which examines how decisions made by instinct are oftentimes more accurate than decisions made by a process of logic and reason.

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"How the Day Sounds" is a great pop love song reminiscent of Coldplay's "In My Place." Check out the line "When the lines have all been drawn, I know where I belong, where I belong," which echoes "In My Place": "In my place, in my place were lines that I couldn't trace." Also, at the end of "How the Day Sounds" Laswell pleads "My love won't you sing along?" which recalls "Please, please, please, come back and sing to me" from "In My Place." Both are beautiful, plaintive love songs.

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Update: I have bought Three Flights From Alto Nido since I first wrote this entry, and I am happy to recommend it to one and all. Should please fans of Pete Yorn, Josh Ritter, or, say, David Gray.

Track 1: Glue Girls

Artist: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Song: "Glue Girls"
Album: Pershing

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin ("SSLYBY") sets a new standard in the long and convoluted history of terrible band names. You know your band name is bad when even the acronym for it is unwieldy.

So, what are the worst band names in history? Here are ten awful band names (not necessarily in order) that I've come into contact with:

10. Death Cab for Cutie

More on these guys later.

9. Neutral Milk Hotel

For those who aren't familiar with these guys, they are legendary in Indie circles as sort of the founding fathers of Indie Rock, but that doesn't excuse this horrible name.

8. Joan As Police Woman

Though I very much enjoy her music, I don't very much enjoy her stage name.

7. Dexy's Midnight Runners

Pretty much anything I can envision that combines midnight and running is not good, and most things I can envision end up with someone entering a plea deal. When the most pleasant image your band name evokes is taking a leak, you're not doing to well.

6. Leftover Salmon

Name sounds even worse than the taste of day-old fish.

5. Yams from Outer Space

Jam-bands seem particularly prone to terrible names.

4. Stone Temple Pilots

It hurts me to say it, but, really, when the inspiration for your band name is a motor oil can, your band name pretty much stinks by definition.

3. Incubus

I kind of hope these people didn't realize that they were naming themselves after a male demon that has sex with sleeping women, but I'm more frightened that they did know what they were doing and thought it was cool.

2. Blink 182

They were just the most glaring example of a whole subset of bands who named themselves after choosing a random word and number to smash together.

1. Margot and the Nuclear So-and-So's

Umm. . . yeah.

As there are a nearly infinite number of bands out there, I'm sure most of these guys wouldn't even come close to a true top ten worst band names list. What's interesting about this list to me is that most of the names are just nonsensical. Most good band names are evocative; you can hear them and get a sense of what sort of music they make. If an alien lands on the earth tomorrow, having never rocked out (but of course, being able to speak English like all good movie aliens do), and you ask him what sort of music Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath or The Clash make, he'd get pretty darned close (and, dadgummit, the alien better NOT look like Keanu Reeves; really, how is that guy still making movies?). Bad band names evoke nothing but bewilderment. What sort of sound does a Death Cab for Cutie or Leftover Salmon make? Leaves you cold doesn't it?

Speaking of Death Cab, they raise a different question to me: is Death Cab for Cutie the worst ever band name for a Hall of Fame caliber band? Put a different way, if you assign each band in history a score for musical excellence and a second score for band name atrociousness, would any band in history score higher than Death Cab? My evaluation of this, subjective as it necessarily is, is based on the assumption that Death Cab for Cutie is a historically good band, one of the greatest of its generation, and will, if there is any justice, gain entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame one day. Your mileage may vary.

So, what are the worst names of bands currently in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Here are some less than stellar ones I found:

The Ink Spots

The Soul Stirrers

The Impressions

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers

The Orioles

Gladys Knight and the Pips (I always thought the "Pips" was a dumb name)

The Staple Singers

Lovin' Spoonful

The Moonglows

The Flamingos

Elvis Costello and the Attractions

The Dells

Lynrd Skynrd

Nothing on this list is even close to as terrible as Death Cab for Cutie. I guess The Moonglows would be the worst, but it's really not all that bad. In fact, most of the names from old bands were pretty great. They tend to be simple and straightforward, such as The Who, The Rolling Stones, Cream, or . . . The Band. More recent inductees tend to be a little more fanciful, such as AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, or ZZ Top, but by and large Hall of Fame bands tend to have Hall of Fame-quality band names.



What about more recent bands that will or could get in the Hall of Fame? Though this requires rank speculation on our part, rank speculation is all kinds of fun, so let's take a crack at it. The Hall of Fame inducts five bands a year, and bands aren't eligible until 25 years after their first album, so we're looking at people who debuted in the mid-80's or later, and a total of about 100 bands or so. Bands debuting in the 2000's (the zeros? the naughts? what are we calling this decade anyway?) are a little too speculative, even for me, so we've probably got a pool of about 80 bands that debuted in the late '80s or '90s. I'm not going to try to identify all of them, but that at least gives us an idea of what size pool we have. Of course it may be less or more as any given year the Hall may induct some holdover candidates from previous years, but let's say about 80 bands from that era.


I'm not going to list all 80 bands I think might get in. . . . Okay, look here if you want to see a list of about 70 or so possibilities. While the names get a little crazier, we're still talking about solid-to-great band names for the most part. Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Oasis, etc. are all pretty good. There are a few bad ones we should take a look at, and some may look familiar. Like J. Evans Pritchett, PhD, we'll give each band a score for both historical significance and name goofiness, each from 1 (not goofy or significant) to 50 (goofiest or most significant imaginable). Then, we'll add for a final historical goofiness score out of 100.

Matchbox 20

Pretty marginal hall of fame candidacy; I hesitated to even include them. Conceivably they've had enough big songs to get a look, but I think they're closer to Journey than Fleetwood Mac. Also, while the name is goofy, it's not historically awful. Name goofiness: 28; Historical significance: 18; Historical goofiness: 46.

Stone Temple Pilots

Very strong hall of fame candidates; one of the iconic figures of the grunge era. Their historical significance takes a slight hit for their early reputation as a Pearl Jam knock-off. So, I had always heard they got their name from looking at an STP oil can, but apparently that's not right. However, as this is a family blog, I'll let you do your own wikipedia research if you want to know the true origins. The name is pretty goofy and arbitrary; I mean what is a stone temple pilot anyway? Name goofiness: 38; Historical significance: 40; Historical goofiness: 78.

Neutral Milk Hotel

It's hard to explain Neutral Milk Hotel to someone who hasn't heard of them. How exactly is an unknown band with a whiny-voiced lead singer and prominent use of the hurdy-gurdy one of the most important bands of the 90's? Well, do a brief search of people talking about them or their album "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," and you'll get an idea of the reverence they are held in and their influence over contemporary indie rock bands. And the name. My word, the name! Apparently, no explanation has been given for the name, but it's truly awful. What, are there good and evil milk hotels as well? Are their neutral milk motels and rv parks? Neutral cheese motels? Chaotic evil sour cream bed and breakfasts? Name goofiness: 48; Historical significance: 45; Historical goofiness: 93.

Death Cab for Cutie

Death Cab for Cutie gets its name from a song by the legendary Bonzo Dog Dooda Band which appeared in the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour movie. Apparently Ben Gibbard chose it because no other band was likely to name themselves that. Well, he was right on that account. I'd say Death Cab is a marginally better name than Neutral Milk Hotel based on the alliteration and the added weight from the connotations of a "death cab." Historical significance is a push. Neutral Milk was more powerfully original band and more influential, while Death Cab is more prolific and popular. Name goofiness: 46; Historical significance: 45; Historical goofiness: 91.

So, what has this long and meaningless exercise taught us? Death Cab for Cutie is indeed as bad a name for a great band as you can find, surpassed only perhaps by Neutral Milk Hotel. Well . . . I'm glad that's settled. Thank you for humoring me, but these are the kinds of things that I think about.

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Of course, it's not only band names that have become increasingly bizarre in recent years. A google search of celebrity baby names will show you that. Is there something behind this phenomenon of strange christenings? Maybe it has something to do with the need to stand out or feel unique, which has become increasingly harder in a world with a population that is both inconceivably huge and amazingly interconnected. When you can instantly connect to anyone around the globe or go to any band's myspace page and check out their catalog; when everyone and their dog has a blog or a website, how do you make your mark or get attention or get enough fans to sign a record deal? Well, one easy way is to give yourself (or your baby) a name that sticks in the memory.

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Oh yeah, the song. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is an exciting young band that sounds the way Ben Kweller should. They have a very fresh and upbeat sound; the kind of music a fabric softener sheet would listen to. They have a great sense of melody and the harmonies on the chorus can't be beat. I'm a total sucker for good harmonies. This song is about a boy who can't win the girl of his fancy because she's too close to her sister. He describes the girl as the kind who can "make your tongue stick to the sun." I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Maybe you should try that with your next date, tell her she makes your tongue stick to the sun. Sounds painful. Still, great tune.

By the way, apparently SSLYBY's terrible name apparently was made up on the spot by their singer trying to make someone laugh.

Me, Myself, and Music.

A Big Sister and Rooster Hair.

Whence my love of music, and more specifically my love of the many varieties and derivations thereofrock and roll? Looking back, two figures stand out to me in making me the music-loving fool that I am today. I think the main credit (or blame) must be assigned to my sister, Danna. Danna is nine years older than me, and so, for the portion of my childhood she spent at our house, our interactions were largely limited to me being tickled by her, me telling her to stop tickling me, or me running away from her to avoid being tickled. Those were simpler times. Though I did not know at that time as I do now that she was an entirely wonderful person, I did realize that she was cool, and was up to various cool activities and exercises in her room. This coolness largely consisted in listening to music that my parents didn't like, but which was loud and had drums and grown men singing in unnaturally high caterwauls. In short, it was awesome. There was Van Halen and REO Speedwagon and Journey, but the greatest of these was Zep. Led Zeppelin. The great high priests of rock themselves. And so, my foundation was laid for a future of appreciating great rock and roll music.

After Danna went to college, dark days descended. I wandered in the wilderness for some time. I had a babysitter that listened to Kiss albums, which resulted in the first music of my own that I owned were Kiss albums. Danna tried to warn me that, just because they had guitars and drums didn't mean they were good, but, being young and foolish, I didn't listen. Then, in middle school I began buying albums from Mariah Carey and Paula Abdul and C & C Music Factory. Don't even ask.

I had nearly passed beyond all hope, when fate intervened in the form of a skater-dude named Mike. My friendship with Mike was an unusual one; I was a nerdy kid who competed on the academic team, Mike smoked and had a hairdo that made him look like Rock-a-Doodle, the rock-and-rolling Disney cartoon rooster. However, despite the rock-a-doodle haircut, he still did remarkably well with the ladies.

While I never learned rock-a-doodle's ladykilling secrets, he did introduce me to some music that nearly melted my tenth grade brain. Grunge was just breaking out, and he gave me some tapes with Stone Temple Pilots' Core and, most importantly, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream on them.

It was as though a door had opened. Suddenly, there was a new world full of interesting, powerful and mind-blowing music to explore that I had no idea existed before. Music that seemed to flow from the artists' honest feelings and not a music company executive's ideas about what would sell well. Music that I connected with on an emotional and instinctive level, that in some way reflected the raw, confused, self-absorbed feelings that, being a good adolescent, I was going through at the time.

By far, Siamese Dream was the album that had the greatest impact on me as I was entering this new world. It absorbed me to the point that I could close my eyes and the only thing in the universe was the sound of layered guitars and pounding drums and Billy Corgan's acid voice alternatively crying plaintively and screaming with rage. Also, it was the first album I had heard that was truly an album and not just a collection of songs, and it carried me along with its flow as it swelled to mighty crescendos and diminished to quiet whispers. Above all, it connected to a certain melancholy side to my temperament as nothing before ever had.

From there, my musical exploration expanded out into the other grunge titans, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, et. al., through Weezer and Beck and eventually into the newer "Indie-rock" sound that I'm into these days. Like all audiophiles, along the way I "discovered" the classics like the Beatles and Hendrix, and re-discovered why my sister loved Zeppelin so much. I'm happy to say that also, along the way, I grew out of a lot of the "angst" and shoe-gazing that dominated most of what I listened to in high school and college and started to appreciate some more joyful sounds.

Though I haven't connected as strongly with any album since my initial Siamese Dream plunge, the joy and excitement of discovering something new and wonderful keeps me buying and listening to a few dozen or so new albums each year. Whether its unearthing old classics like Zeppelin or The Beatles, or discovering a new, little-known artist to enjoy, it's the thrill of finding music with the perfect combination of originality, beauty, and just rocking out that keeps me on the hunt for good tunes year after year.

Another part of the joy of discovering new music has been finding friends who also appreciate the inventive and the mysterious. I would be remiss in not mentioning all my friends, but particularly Travis, Robert, Matt, Ryan, Kim, and, most recently, Zach, for turning me on. . . . to new music, that is.

Also, as a side note, my love for listening to music has certainly been reinforced by my enjoyment of making music, both in singing as part of my faith and in making a more secular noise with the boys in the band back in the day. Nothing helps you realize how hard something is until you try it yourself, and I can certainly appreciate how much work goes into even the simplest song.

What about you? What album was your Siamese Dream (and if you're brave, who was your Mariah Carey or Paula Abdul)? Who was your Danna or Mike that introduced you to a love for music? What artists have endured as your favorites? If music means something to you, why do you think it does?

Glossary of Terms and Index of Awards

It will help if we define a few terms:

Album.



This is the term I will use for what we used to call an LP in the days of vinyl; basically a full-length record or cd. The Grammys have unnecessarily confused the issue, as they have an award for "best album" and "best record," and one of these means "best song," but they couldn't just say "best song" because the Grammys are dumb. I honestly can't tell you whether "album" or "record" means song, but we'll just use "album" to mean "album." I'm sorry we had to have this conversation.



Classic Rock.



Sometimes, I'll refer to a band with a "classic rock" sound, and by that I don't mean a band that gets played on stations that also play Foreigner and Yes, but I mean a band that has a "pure rock" or what we might call a "high rock" sound. The template for this is the Rolling Stones; they are the archetypal classic rock band, with a front man, two guitars, bass and drums. Aerosmith follows suit, also Guns 'n' Roses and The Black Crowes. Classic rock sometimes goes out of vogue, but it never truly dies, and there's always the potential for a great new classic rock band to emerge.



Tunage.



Songs. Tunes. Ditties.



Mysterious.

From time to time, I may refer to a song or an artist being "mysterious." This one is a little hard to explain. It will help if I explain the etymology of the term (that means its word origin, as opposed to entymology, which is the study of insects and completely disgusting). As with many great things, it began with Robert and I staying away until the wee hours of the night. We were in a jolly and reverent mood and were discussing favorite hymns (true party animals, I know!). We got to talking about a beautiful old hymn called "God moves in a mysterious way," when Robert noticed that the lyrics, while beautifully poetic, were a little . . . odd. Specifically, the first verse struck us as peculiar:

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform.
He plants His footsteps on the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Footsteps on the sea! Rides upon the storm! There are a lot of adjectives I could think of to describe the image of God riding upon the storm -- awesome, terrifying, destroyer-of-worlds-like -- but . . . mysterious? Anyway, at about three in the morning, we got to laughing about the image of the Almighty riding upon the storm and looking over to say, "pretty mysterious, don't you think?" This continued to evolve as we tried to think of times during life when someone might feel particularly "mysterious." For example, when Albert Pujols hit that crazy home run off Brad Lidge in the 2005 NLCS, he probably tossed down the bat and said, "pretty mysterious, boys!" Maybe when Shakespeare finished writing Hamlet, he said, "now that's a mysterious play!" Our favorite application was the image of Led Zeppelin playing "When the Levee Breaks," and Robert Plant looking around saying, "Oh my goodness! We are so flipping mysterious!" So, "mysterious" came to mean anything that is awe-inspiring, powerful, or devastating, particularly a rock anthem that just hits the sweet spot. Importantly, this is not synonymous with quality, as many wonderful songs are not at all mysterious and many mysterious songs are not necessarily great works of art.

When it comes to rock and roll, Zeppelin pretty much invented mystery and was the most consistently mysterious band in history. Some of the grunge bands -- Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden -- produced a lot of mysterious tunage. The White Stripes can get pretty mysterious for a contemporary band.

For your convenience, I've prepared a Mohs Scale of Mystery. This, of course, is based on the Mohs Scale of Hardness, which is used to measure the hardness of materials. The original Mohs scale goes from 1 (Talc, the softest material) to 10 (Diamond, the hardest). The Mohs Scale of Mystery works the same way, with 10 being the most mysterious song and 1 being the least mysterious song imaginable.

10. "When the Levee Breaks," Led Zeppelin

Seriously, I think if Indiana Jones really did open the Ark of the Covenant, this song would start playing, and, instead of the Nazis dying from their faces melting, they would die from blunt force trauma to the chest due to the sound of John Bonham's kick drum.

9. "Killing in the Name," Rage Against the Machine

See also "Bulls on Parade" and "Testify" from these innovators who broadened the borders of mystery.

8. "Seven Nation Army," The White Stripes

Jack White is pretty much single-handedly carrying the banner of mystery these days.

7. "The Day I Tried to Live," Soundgarden

Not their most mysterious track, but pretty strong.

6. "Say It Ain't So," Weezer

Would score higher on the Mohs scale of Excellence; Good illustration of the difference between excellence and mystery. Though a better (more awesome) song than "Killing in the Name," not nearly as mysterious.

5. "Angel of Harlem," U2

Perfectly neutral song; neither mysterious nor non-mysterious.

4. "The Day the Music Died," Don McLean

All-time classic song, but not mysterious.

3. "Land Down Under," Men At Work

Vegamite sandwiches are not mysterious.

2. "Always," Atlantic Starr

Great harmonies. No mystery.

1. "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?," Culture Club

You get the idea.

The Mohs Scale is designed to give you an idea of how mysterious a song is, so if, say, a given song is a 7.5 on the Mohs Scale of Mystery you'll have an idea how mysterious it is.

Awards

The Zeppelin IV Magnum Opus Award.

Sometimes, it all comes together for a band, and they realize their potential in a flawless or nearly-flawless masterpiece. Most bands, even those with great potential, never deliver on their promise, so a Magnum Opus is always a very satisfying experience. A recent example of a Magnum Opus was The Decemberists' The Crane Wife, which was really a better album than anyone could reasonably expect from them. Named for the most perfect album of Zeppelin's astounding catalogue.

The Revolver Fountainhead Award.

The Beatles' Revolverchanged the course of rock history, expanding the field of what a rock band could accomplish and providing a template for countless future bands to follow. Sometimes an album comes along with such a different sound, such a vibe of endless possibilities, that you can envision it inspiring the sound of future bands. Of course, such an award is speculative, but I'll go out on that limb anyway.

The Frank Zappa Outlier Award.

Okay, I confess that I've never knowingly listened to a Frank Zappa song, but from what I understand it's pretty weird stuff. And one thing you don't see too often is a band that credits Frank Zappa as a major influence. This award is given to an album that is unique and makes an impression, but you can't necessarily envision it spawning a series of copycat artists. Again, speculative, but fun!

The U2 Elevation Award for Best Live Performance.

I've seen U2 in concert three times, and they've delivered two of the best five shows I've seen. The best was the Elevation tour concert I saw shortly after 9-11 (More on that later). This award goes to the concert during the year that comes closest to that mountaintop experience.

The Jimmy Page Guitar Hero Award.

Self-explanatory. May be awarded for a great solo, particularly mysterious riff, or other guitar exploits.

The Adam Duritz Memorial Songwriting Award.

Yes, I realize that Adam Duritz is not dead, but his songwriting died several albums ago. This award is dedicated to the days when he was the most promising young songwriter in rock and roll, before he decided performing duets with Vanessa Carlton was a good career move. Awarded for a particularly memorable turn of phrase in song.

The Everclear "Haven't I Heard That Before?" Award.

Remember Everclear? They had a run of popularity in the mid-90's with a series of remarkably-similar sounding songs built around an arrangement of three choppy bar chords. They perfected the formula with their first single, "Santa Monica," then essentially re-mixed "Santa Monica" numerous times with either increasingly choppy chords ("Father of Mine") or less choppy chords ("I Will Buy You a New Life") or some other permutation. Awarded to an artist's song or album that seems strangely familiar.

The Roy Oswalt Rookie of the Year Award.

Awarded for best debut album. Named in honor of Roy Oswalt, who had a historically good rookie year, but had the misfortune to be a rookie the same year as Albert Pujols, who has nothing but historically good years. Since Roy never got a ROY of his own, this award is dedicated in his honor.

The James Brown Superbad Award.

Awarded to a song that makes me want to dance like James Brown. This takes some doing, as I have no natural rhythm or inclination to dance, but the rare song is just funky or fresh enough to pull it off.

The Prospector's Golden Discovery Award.

Awarded for my favorite musical discovery of the year, be it an album or artist or hairstyle. Often the discovery is not necessarily from the current year.

Also, there will likely be various miscellaneous minor awards that are handed out, but the above awards are those likely to reappear from year to year.

2008 Liner Notes Introduction.

Episode 2008: A New Adventure.



Dear Friends and Family, Loved Ones All:

It's hard to believe it's that time of year again. Time to rush madly between family gatherings, to max out the credit cards buying gifts for people, and to gorge yourself into a diabetic coma. Yes, it truly is the most wonderful time of the year. That means it's also time for a holiday tradition that's older than most Chinese gymnasts, the making and sharing of my annual playlist of songs of my year.



2008 was truly a historic (an historic? what's the rule on that?) year. We elected our first African-American President, the economy suffered more setbacks than the release of Windows Vista, and, most shockingly, Tampa Bay played in the World Series. I hope each of you made it through the year healthy, happy, and employed.



Sadly, it was not such a nhistoric year in music(nhistoric . . . I like the sound of that), at least compared to recent years. For example, if I made a list of my twenty favorite albums from the last two years, only three or four of those albums would come from this year. That being said, I still had about fifty songs that I really loved from this year, so I'm as pleased with this year's playlist as I have been for almost any year so far.



The Cows and Prawns, er, Pros and Cons of This Blog.

So, you may be asking yourself, why the new format? Well, every year, I debate on whether or not this is the year I decide not to make the Christmas cd and just get everyone a fruitcake. The factors weighing against making the cd include:

• The increasingly insane busy-ness of life. (I honestly don't know what we're going to do if and when the Lord blesses us with little time-sucking bundles of joy.) This means not only that I get to listen to less music during the year, but that I also can't listen to the music that I do enjoy as often or in as many different settings as I would like. A good album is like a good friend, and you can't really tell how good your friendship is until you listen to an album in different settings. You may have a friend that's great to hang out with once in a while at a ball game, but who would drive you crazy if you had to spend hours with them on a daily basis. Then, there are other folks who don't make any real impression on you at first, but later come to be great friends. Music is the same way. Some albums you can listen to every day, and every day you would discover new things to love about it. Some albums are great no matter what mood you are in. Some albums sound great in the car, in headphones, or playing out of the awful speakers of your laptops. On the other hand, some albums only sound good on a road trip, or when you are in a certain mood, or when they can wash over you as you lay in your bed listening to headphones. Similarly, some albums make you think they're classics the first week you own it, only to reveal themselves as pedestrian a month later. Or an album either sounds harsh or fails to make an impression at first only to become a favorite after enough listens (for me, this process can take years). All this to say that it takes time to evaluate music, both to listen to a range of music and to give the music you do have repeated listens, and time is one resource I seem to have less and less of.
  
• Lack of avenues to discover good new music. Houston's radio market is a vast and horrifying wasteland such as you would find in a Cormac McCarthy novel. ClearChannel has a strangling hold over the airwaves here. The local "alternative" station thinks Arcade Fire is a strange form of carpal-tunnel syndrome that afflicts video game fans. It's a truly depressing situation. I do have XM Radio through my satellite tv subscription, but usually when I'm watching tv I want to be, I dunno, watching tv. That leaves only my subscription to Paste magazine and word of mouth as about my only two avenues to discover new tunes. I have to say, Paste does a pretty darned good job of keeping me informed, but I still feel like there's a lot going on that I really have no clue about. As a result, I don't really know if anyone else is listening to the music on my playlist in a given year or how much great tunage is slipping through my net.
  
• Too much new music. A combination of technology, a changing music scene, and the incompetence of major-label record companies has resulted in a musical marketplace that's hospitable to smaller, independent labels and to the more ecclectic, experimental bands that they tend to sign. While this is a wonderful development on the whole, it means that there is a flood of new music coming out at any given time, and it's very difficult to filter that flood to find something that might be of interest. Again, my net is pretty small, so I worry that there's just too many tasty fish that swim away most years.

So, why, you may ask, did I decide to not only forge ahead with making a playlist this year, but to also expand my modest liner notes into this blog? Aside from rank megalomania, there are basically three reasons:

• A way to stay in touch. Sadly, for an increasing number of you, I only get to see you once or twice a year, if that. I've heard from more than one of you that the liner notes are something you look forward to as much or more than the actual cd, so I thought I would expand the liner notes a bit and share a little more of my life with you. Hopefully, it's not too much of a good thing. It also lets you enjoy a bit more of my sense of humor, which, like coffee, is an acquired taste that eventually leads to a crippling addiction. I'm here to feed your addiction.


• A creative outlet. I think it's deep within human nature to want to create, to add some beauty to the world and to share that with others. Well, I don't paint, and I've been mostly frustrated by attempts to write songs or literature in the past. However, I enjoy non-fiction writing, and I'm usually pretty good at it, so this is a natural format for me to let my creative juices flow. While I do more or less write for a living, drafting briefs and motions is a little too constricting to satisfy the urge to create. So, this blog is an attempt to maintain a hold on my humanity after a hard day of billable hours.
  
• Room to spread out. The more expansive blog format will allow me to include some things that would have been impossible in the old liner notes, such as lists, awards and pictures. I'm very excited about the lists! I love lists! See, my mom passed on her mania for list-making mania to both me and my sister. I like to have everything in its place, and I can give you my top five or top ten or "Mount Rushmore" on most any topic at the drop of a hat. And if I can't, I'll think one up, because it gives me a chance to make a list! In a related manner, I like awards. I think everyone should get an award for something periodically just to show that somebody notices what they are doing. Not just boring awards like "Employee of the Month," but also fun and ridiculous awards like, "Employee Who Dresses the Most Like Kramer" or "Employee Who Bears a Freakish Resemblance to Richard Simmons." Travis and I used to give people honorary doctorates in such esteemed fields as Tomfoolery and Being the Studhorse of the Universe. It was great! Basically anything unique or noteworthy you should get an award for. That's my pledge to you.

Speaking of lists, it's about time for one. Here's my top twenty albums of 2007. As I mentioned above, only three or four albums from 2008 would have made this list were they released in 2007:

1. Icky Thump by The White Stripes
2. Neon Bible by Arcade Fire
3. The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
4. In Rainbows by Radiohead
5. Cease to Begin by Band of Horses
6. The Reminder by Feist
7. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon
8. Wincing the Night Away by The Shins
9. Boxer by The National
10. The Ringing Bell by Derek Webb
11. Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird
12. The Con by Tegan and Sarah
13. The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse by The Besnard Lakes
14. Fort Nightly by The White Rabbits
15. We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank by Modest Mouse
16. Our Love to Admire by Interpol
17. The Stage Names by Okkervil River
18. Challengers by The New Pornographers
19. Favourite Worst Nightmare by The Arctic Monkeys
20. Sky Blue Sky by Wilco

So, all that to say, welcome to the new and (hopefully) improved version of commentary to my annual cd. I hope you enjoy.

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Comments, please. Please feel free to comment! The best blogs I've come across work because they are conversational, with give and take from among the poster and the readers. If you see a list or an opinion you disagree with, please offer your take. All I ask is that you keep your comments free from profanity and name calling; that goes for you, too, Mee-Maw!

Wikipedia is your friend. I will make many references and allusions to pop culture, sports, literature, movies, obscure bands and other such things. I apologize if some of them are esoteric, but that adds to the offbeat humor of the thing. If you don't know what in the world I'm talking about, feel free to ask, but it may be more efficient to look it up online.

Patience and kindness, please. So, you may have noticed that the blog is not done. I will try to finish as soon as possible, but, at least this way you don't have to wade through pages and pages in one sitting. Check in from time to time to see if a new post has gone up!
Also, it's very hard to write intelligibly about music. With books and movies, you can describe a scene or explain a character's actions to give a sense of your subject. Music is more abstract than that. You can give some lyrics or say a song is a "guitar-driven ballad," but that doesn't really explain what's magical about it or what makes it worth listening to. So, how do you say something about a song or album that's more useful than, "I liked it" or "I hated it"? Well, I'm not sure but I'll give it a try, but have some understanding if I fall woefully short.

Wishing you and yours a joyful and nhistoric 2009!