Best of 2001: How to Cop Out and Buy In: A Lemming's Guide

“Hey pops, what’re you listening to?”
“It’s the Manchester Happening.”
“The who? Or what?”
“The Manchester Happening.”
“Uh, hey pops, forgive my ignorance, but who the hell is the Manchester Happening?”
“Well sonny, I’m glad you asked. The Manchester Happening were three young skiffle players from the late 50’s and the early 60’s. They weren’t all that famous, but this here record, The Neat Beat Goes On, was supposedly one of my favorite records in 1960. In fact, I think it was the one I called the ‘record of the year’.”
“The Manchester Happening huh? Well are they any good? Do you still listen to the record much?”
“Nah, this is probably the first time I’ve heard the damn thing since 1960. And it’s really a pretty awful fucking record. Christamighty, what was I thinking?”
“Heh, so much for record of the year huh old man?”
“Yep, it just goes to show you, you can never trust a critic’s end of the year best of list…they’re filled with messy stabs at hipness, credibility seeking mumbo jumbo, and a serious dose of blowhard ego. And it’s that last word - that little three-lettered one - that usually makes these list things a huge provincial mess. One-upsmanship of the most obscene order.”
“Like the Manchester Happening, eh pops?”
“Yeah, like the Manchester Happening. Good God, just listen to this shit will you?”
“Oh, I hear it old man…I hear it.”
“It’s so awful. Someone should have stopped me. They really should have done whatever it would have taken to shame me straight because this shit is downright embarrassing.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure you picked some winners that year too pops.”
“Not many kid, not many…at all…ever”

The List: 2001

Everyone wants my list. It’s not only my list that they want - they are asking the deed of others also - but I always feel a little funny when someone wants mine. What the hell do I know about what’s supposed to be good, or conventionally hip? Not much, that’s what - at least when we’re speaking in terms of apparent mass critical appeal. But hey, who am I to grind away at the handbrakes of progress? So, although it seems that most rockwrite types will, at some point or another, proclaim a disdain for this sort of exercise (a statement that approximates something like this has accompanied nearly every solicitation for this years list: It’s that time of year again! Although we here at ______________ don’t care much for year-end ranking of records, the readers demand it. So please, fill out the enclosed form by listing your top ten record -the records you consider the best - for the year 2001, in order of preference ranked from 1 to 10. Feel free to include a short write-up on each selection) the truth of the matter is that we all eventually drop the phony piousness and get around to making our year end “best of” lists because, after all, if we are to be honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that it’s a fucking mongo-charge to present your selections, your proclamations of grandeur, to the hungry masses - as though the list you make is some kind hidden nourishment. The key to post-cultural enlightenment! As if the self-proclaimed ten or fifteen lousy ‘best’ or ‘favorite’ records of some Godforsaken soon-to-be-long-forgotten critic and annum would matter to every - or anyone - else. Unequivocally! Of course!

That said the annual ‘best of’ list has become a rock writer’s signature of sorts. It’s a chance to lay it - and yourself - out there. A chance to brood over a years worth of music and to craft a list filled with overbearing blowhard pomposity in a fruitless and pointless reach for some kind of hip credentials and/or credibility. It is the spotlight baby! And it’s the moment of any given year that a - gulp - critic can use to define and shape (or redefine and reshape) his very own celebrity aura.

Or, maybe it’s just a realistic chance to be honest with folks and tell them what you listened to all year.
Naaah! You gotta go for the gusto!

Your List: an exercise in honest futility, or, how to cop out and buy in.

This is your BIG chance kiddies, so listen to this old man closely. If you wanna be cool, if you wanna be hip, and if you wanna be part of an elite club of fast-living and hard-partying rockroll dweebs then the ‘best of’ list is the grand opportunity to display (and, if need be, invent) all of the rockroll savvy that you’ll need in order to get by in this wicked rockroll world for the next twelve months AND gain the nodding approval of your fellow rock scribes.

Just remember - your list is your ticket to acceptance! What you have here, with your year-end “best of” list, is a swell opening, an unbelievable chance to stack your tastes up against the giants of the music crit industry! So don’t blow it with a worthless list of records you’d actually listened to all year! Grab the bull by the horns on this one, do some research and find out what’s hip! Discover what music had all of the more famous and influential critics going ga-ga, and then get your little amateur hands on those records, buy yourself a few gallons of beer (which you may need desperately considering recent years critical faves - Kid A? come on, that’s a six pack in and of itself), and then struggle your miserable way through each and every one of them. When you’re through and you can honestly say you’ve actually heard these records in question you too can get on with your list!

But don’t go out and find the consensus top ten and just duplicate it. No, no, no! What you have to do, and this is where it gets a little tricky boys and girls, what you have to do is figure out which four are five are the absolute favorites of the cognoscenti. Sometimes this is easy because the year in question may dwell strictly on one distinct record. 2001 seems to be one of those fortunate years. And while I don’t want to give it away (I’d like for you kids to have to do something for yourselves) I’ll tell you that it’s a band which has a name that starts with an “Str” and ends with an “okes”. And while the temptation may be to place this record at the top of your list and then proceed with a few of your own selections, this is neither an appropriate nor savvy move.

The best way to approach a season in which there is one clear-cut “best” record is to follow the lead of the more notable and esteemed critics out there and use three or four (or maybe even five if you’re not comfortable with, or are perhaps embarrassed by, any of your choices) of the other consensus picks (there are usually at least four of them out there - such is the singular mind of the critical body) to beef your own meager tastes up. Toss the obvious singular and critically much-hyped sucker smack dab into its proper slot at the very top of your list (the #1 spot), pepper the remainder of your list with the three or four other records that you and your rockcrit buddies have reached an astonishing critical concurrence about, and then round it out nicely by tossing a few eccentric and quite possibly one (and only 1!) of the records that you’d actually liked and listened to over the past twelve months. Viola! You’re a rockwrite year-end top ten expert!

But what about those “other” choices - those eccentric ones you’d mentioned? Won’t those make or break me? Won’t the give me away? Aren’t those going to need to be acceptable in some small way? And the answer to this is - YES! On all fronts. What you’ve asked could happen (although most of the folks who read your list will be other rockwrite types who will most likely scan your list for the comfort of those familiar few records - the ones they “loved” too!), and I would rather it not happen to a student of mine. So…I have here a final little lesson, one that will put you fully into the elite class of critical top ten list creators. Listen to me closely now little ones.

What you have here with those precious opening slots in your list is a splendid opportunity to reach way down into the depths of obscurity for a few titles that will just boggle your peers, not to mention your newly acquired admirers, minds (and probably your own too!). If you carefully follow this bit of advice you’ll be displaying an uncanny critic’s willingness to try new music and a dedicated wherewithal to dig into the most sub subterranean underground for sounds unknown to most. A very hip move indeed!

You can also exploit one of your ranking slots as a king hell opportunity to show some startlingly impressive range and diversity. Try placing some semi-hip, cult, avant-jazz record, or something akin to the hypnotic and repetitive drone of “world music” on your list. The more obscure and repressed the artist, the better you’ll look (try mining for some kind of Afghan folk-politic tunes this year). Or, and this can be a very dangerous move if not done with the appropriate tact, you can demonstrate real hip tolerance with the kids of today by reaching into big money pop culture for a slab of multi-platinum acceptability (this is accomplished by digging around for some way to claim that, say, In Sync’s Celebrity was not really the vacuous bore it seemed, but rather was actually a pretty good record that had some significant musical moments and displayed real growth).

Your list can also be a great opportunity to bend your guilty pleasure for some aged rock outfit that you’d loved as a kid into a sort of critical adoration gone amuck - even though said band may be, in all honesty, washed up, pointless, and far, far gone into the rockroll netherworlds (think Aerosmith: for some reason it’s actually safe in some quarters to approve of the sewage-pop they pour out these days - and I’d bet you can trace it all back to some crit’s savvy ‘best of’ somewhere).

Oh! There are so many moves to be made; there is so much posturing to be had, and so many reputations to build! With a year-end top ten anything is possible!

Possibly improbable: a trip back to Reality

Possible? Yes, but surely and sadly improbable. Because in the realm of so many possibilities, in a world with so much music and so many different people writing on and about it all, these rites of passage, these moments spent in the bright shining rockwrite sun, these shots at critical immortality known as the year-end best-of list always inevitably end up collapsing on themselves in an sad exercise of mass critical exaltation.

What could and should be a substantial discourse on the varied sounds of our day winds up as a blowhard cozying of likeminded (or wanting to be likeminded) hipsters and “tastemakers”. It’s all lemmings meeting the lemmings when these lists start to appear; an endless parade of supposed musical minds stumbling over each other’s opinions only to wind up in comfortable concurrence, ultimately finding a weird, tiresome, and wholly phony consensus.
Anything is possible - but again, with the way things are, highly improbable.

My List (you know it’s what you came here for)

Working from a master list of this past year’s discs, I’ve been churning out years end ‘top ten’ after ‘top ten’ lists since Thanksgiving for a variety of friends and foes at such an alarming pace that I figured I could’ve only be faking it. But I do it anyways, feeling every bit the phony I’ve just described. Sure, I have reasons - my reasons - that these selections are on my list and they may be many both good and bad, but I can only hope that the best, most important of those is the fact that these are the records I have listened to the most this past year. These are the discs that gave me a honest-to-goodness enough of something that I’d found myself returning to them long after their initial highs had long worn away.

Music is funny that way, and it is a particularly peculiar entity in the processing of it for reportage. It’s a potent aphrodisiac that can burn with the captivating brilliance of the brightest and fastest of falling stars - and can fade and be forgotten just as quickly. Today’s favorite becomes tomorrow’s forgotten. It’s as much the rule of the rockroll jungle as it is the rule of the bubblegum pop, hip-hop, and the cozy top forty pop worlds. It is the hard fast rule that always holds true. The top ten of today, the best of this year, and the favorites and the fads of our moment all become the ether of rock and roll’s tomorrow.

Sounds pretty bleak and downright negative doesn’t it? Like this whole rockroll thing is just one great big whatsthepoint bummer? No! It is absolutely not - or at least it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have to be. Because, you see, the fun in this all is found when the ones that got away are found once more, and when the ones that can hold their own prove themselves again and again over time. The true sport of this chase is in the finding out which ones those are.

So here we are at that time of year where the trivial hopes of a rockroll junky should be boiling over, the time of year that every other rock and roll freak will, in theory, slap together his or her list of favorite/best of records for the previous twelve months and share them with the world. All of the stuff never heard, the sounds unknown, the picks and pans of so many other music nuts that one could spend the next twelve months exploring their options. Oh joy!

No, no joy. Because you and I both know that this annual end of the year list-making exercise delivers nary a crumb of what it promises. In fact the whole ordeal usually tends toward such a coronation of one-mindedness that each and every list that I see starts to sour me on the whole rockroll hegemony ideal. Oh there are those that do the work they are supposed to do, but on the whole these things have become monotonously predictable and slanted heavily toward the ultra-hip concurrences of a few influential bozos.

So, with that in mind, we can already deduce that the mindless masses will, for reasons still entirely perplexing to myself, lean heavily on a record like, say, well, take the yawn inducing Strokes record for instance - because it obviously is, without question, the critical rock and roll event of the year. God forbid you miss this bandwagon buddy. There are the others; some will jump on the White Stripes, a terrific band to be sure, one record too late, and you’ll still find a healthy crowd out there waving the Radiohead banner (of which I dare anyone to admit to having listened to Amnesiac more than a half dozen times this year without the mind-numbing assistance of an illicit prescription medication). It is all so hopelessly predictable, very nearly unbelievable, and sadder than either.

But move on we must. And if all of the others are going to release their concurrent chorus of hallelujah’s and amen’s - for whatever their reason’s may be - then the rest of us will have to try the more useful approach - honesty. That is what we have here in my collection of records that really got me going at some time or another this year - a hopefully honest listing of records that I actually listened to more than just a few times. These are the ones that sounded damn good, that made me feel good, the ones that gave me pleasure and often left a smile on my face. This is the music that I actually liked. Not the stuff that I think I should have liked, nor the stuff that I think will make others like me because I liked it, but the stuff that, damn critical hipness to hell, I actually wanted to hear most of the time this year.

THE FAVE’S: Records, songs, and whatnot’s

Uptown Sinclair - Uptown Sinclair (d-Text): This one pretty much took the whole damn cake for me this year - in part because, sure, I know the guys personally (although I didn’t before hearing the disc) and partly because they’re amiable as hell hometown boys. But this is music, not politics or sex (although songwriter Dave Hill’s songs effectively mimic the very groove and idea - the essence so to speak - of sex), so I mostly listened to this set of tunes more than any other because this record, to put it mildly, is so goddamn good. I truly can’t recall a platter that pulled so many smiles from my undesirable mug so many different times. It’s as smart, witty, and terrific a sounding rockroll record - all painted up in anxious pop colors - as I’ve heard in many a year.

The Bigger Lovers - How I Learned to Stop Worrying (Black Dog): Hard to peg why but this record sounded even better for me after seeing the band do the songs live. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a striking listen right off - because it was. But after the live gig I think I finally “got it” - all of it (the record is a production of colliding collage pop, the live show a roar) - and I never put the record away for the rest of the year. Oh, and sure, once again, I met, sorta know, and like these guys. Is it a rockroll crit crime to like the people who make the music?

Mark Mulcahy - Smilesunset (Mezzotint): Every time I listen to this, and I have listened to it many, many, many times, I shake my head in disbelief…or is it awe? Whatever. This is a wonderful, wonderful, spectacular record and Mulcahy’s voice is the absolute miracle of our musical times.

The GC5 - Horseshoes and Handgrenades (Leprock): They’re local (Ohio) to me (I don’t know them and am not even sure if they’re still around the area) but all-world on this fortunate return of punk from it recent mainlining pop slumming to its real rock and R&B (not meaning the “real” R&B - but that spirit: rhythm and blues) smarts. What pulled me in was the “Bastards of Young” cover, what kept me there was their contagious left-leaning working man’s stance, that and the utter realness of these guys and this oh-so welcome soul-punk sound.

Steve Wynn - Here Come the Miracles (Blue Rose/Down There) - I’d spent a fair ammount of time in Orange County, California as a kid. Had some family friends we used to stay with out in Fullerton and when I was in my early teens we went there to spend a summer finding my oldest brother a job and place to live. I spent my time there reading music zines, looking for a girl who’d look back at me, and riding the bus to Huntington Beach and back - just to have something to do. I first heard Dream Syndicate that summer, and coincidentally wound up living in Southern California myself from 1984-87. It was in fits and spurts, but eventually I’d discovered the California that Wynn sings about on this record. So, aside from the mutual adoration for Mott the Hoople, Lou Reed, and rugged guitar noisecapes that Wynn and I apparently share, he has a similar place in his heart for the mysterious California as I, Raymond Chandler, Nathanael West, and so many others have over the years.

Ken Stringfellow - Touched (Manifesto): I unabashedly adore the Posies Dear23, and it usually winds up on any list I ever make of my so-called “all-time favorites”. And while I always got a kick from the other Posies records, this Stringfellow record (as did Auer’s 6 ½ ) feels more like Dear23’s heir than anything else done by these twin talents.

Nick Lowe - The Convincer (Yep Roc): I’d always figured that Nick Lowe would be the one who got to aging gracefully in rock and roll first, and he certainly has. That this implausibly soulful record doesn’t come across as mind-blowing astonishment is the truest testament to Nick Lowe’s talents - after all, he’s been making the impossible and improbable sound ridiculously easy for thirty plus years now.

(song) The Walkmen - “We’ve Been Had”: It may be the smartest song I’ve heard this season. They’ve sold and sold and sold to us, and to what end? It’s in the realization that you’re only being trend-fucked at every marketable turn that you’ll finally jump out of the game and go your own way. You just have to get there first. Probably the only song I truly wish that I’d written.

The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (Sympathy for the Record Industry): I’m a fan - a big, big, big, big fan (once drank from Meg’s Jack Daniels bottle - God bless the girl!) and what’s wrong with that? This one is not their best in my book - last year’s De Stijl was, is, and always will be the immortal Stripes to me - but Blood Cells is pretty goddamn terrific nonetheless. And the only way to know, really know the Stripes is to catch them playing live, that’s where Blood Cells thrives.

The Beers - Beers Hotel (self-released): Some cats in the St. Louis area slipped me this thing - a self-burned disc of some of the best return-to-the-80’s indie type rock I’ve heard since indie rock reigned in the 80’s themselves. This thing gets played and played around my place because it’s so nostalgic and fresh and - oh yeah, weird.

(song) Clyde Wrenn - “Sawdust in the Mash”: Wrenn has an otherworldly vocal delivery, sort of the complimentary opposite of the aforementioned Mulcahy’s. The best thing is, he uses it to top off his enormous and dramatic readings of the abstruse and poetic songs that he writes. For me “Sawdust” might be his finest.

Whiskeytown - Pneumonia (Lost Highway): I love this band, and I am bitter with Ryan Adams that it no longer exists (whose fault is it anyway?). So, while Adams’ Gold record is garnering him his just praise, I’m ignoring his solo work and listening to this one over and over. Damn, damn, damn!

Sinomatic - Sinomatic (Atlantic): This one got here because an acquaintance was affiliated with the band and wanted me to listen and let them know what I thought. I listened and found some really terrific songwriting on a pretty damn good mainstream aimed rock record. I met lead singer/songwriter Ken Cooper and told him that I thought the band’s song “Leave Me Tomorrow” was as near a perfect rockroll pop ballad as any I’d ever heard. Even now, stone sober, I still think that.

Ian Hunter - Rant (Fuel2000): I’ve already and often confessed my affection for all things Ian Hunter. Rant is no different - and feeling awful and slighted that Hunter’s last two efforts got so overlooked, this one was bound to be here. That and the fact that it stayed in my car stereo for over a month.

Joe Henry - Scar (Mammoth): Thanks to a friend/writer down in Tennessee I picked this utter gem up on what felt like a challenge. My friend e-mailed me something to the effect of “I know you don’t really dig Joe Henry, but his new one is pretty good”. Ha! Me? Don’t like Joe Henry? It worked - I went right out and bought it. And now all I can say is, what’s not to love? Jazz undertones, 1970’s iconography, a song that sis-in-law Madonna warped into a kinky hit, and a swell Ornette Coleman performance…perfect. Thanks friend.

Jon Auer - 6 ½ (Pattern25): It’s a collection of cover tunes that, as Stringfellow also accomplished this year, sounds much like the best of the Posies. Auer does justice to every thing he touches here - even a Psychedelic Furs smash.

(song) Bob Dylan - “Mississippi”: Even though Love and Theft was an overall bore Dylan still has the occasional jaw-dropper in him. This one not only sounds good, it feels the most honest. I just wish he’d had at least one more like this.

The Bicycle Thief - You Come and Go Like a Pop Song (Artemis): It’s a year old record that I didn’t know about a year ago (and may not have entirely known it was my hero Bob Forrest’s band had I heard of it), but it qualifies because it was picked up and released anew by a bigger label. I can relate to nearly every last word on this one. And if the Thelonious past is any premonition than this one will be played for years to come.

Kevin Salem - Ecstatic (FutureFarmer): Yeah, this is the guy who was in Dumptruck during the for the country era, and being that I still think of Dumptruck as one of the great overlooked bands in recent history I tend to follow the guys who’ve played in the band wherever they go. This time I’m damn glad of my mindless fandom because this thing is razor sharp and the absolute who-woulda-thunk-it record of the year. But when Salem turns down the guitar and turns up the technology he makes the best record I might imagine would ever be in him.

Dumptruck - Lemmings Travel to the Sea (DIW): Essential not only for the new material, but for the live stuff culled from a smoking hot past. Ahh fuck it, see the above again

Nitpickers may say that the following discs have no rightful claim to be on this list…I guess. But, being the whogivesafucker that I am, they are. The year would have sucked a little bit (or more likely a whole lot) more without these songs in my ears.

Re-ish and best-of’s:

Dream Syndicate - Days of Wine and Roses (Rhino): Rhino’s royal treatment of one king-hell guitar record. This is the one that told punks that it was okay to like rock and roll again

Dinosaur Jr. - Ear Bleeding Country: The Best of (Rhino): Oh my - another king-hell guitar record. J. Mascis sure can wail, but if you listen closely, underneath the blare is some of the best pop-rock the 80’s belched out.

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