In the Cellar

I asked Alive! what his 5 favorite albums were. He responded.

I will answer the question myself. Then it’s his turn to ask. I answer; he answers. Then it’s my turn. You get the drill.

So now it’s my turn to answer my question. When I posed the question, I’d completely forgotten about the obvious nod to *High Fidelity*. I guess I watched that movie so many times as a teenager that it’s burning into my cerebral cortex and bubbles up without me even knowing about it.

Now that the barrel of the gun is aimed at me, I realize what a hard question this is. Well, sort of. My top 3 have been safe for several years now. It’s everything else. Picking #4 and #5 meant leaving out many, many favorites. So here, in rapid succession, is a brief (and probably incomplete) rundown of the Honorable Mentions.

~Jeff Buckley, Grace (Such a phenomenal album. He sounds like a rebel angel. This barely missed the cut.)

~Sigur Ros, ( ) (So beautiful and dark and wandering. Music to listen to alone at night as you think about things. For some reason, the first track will make me randomly weep from time to time. Something about the sound structure of the song–particularly in the few moments where the music bursts forth–taps into a feeling of nostalgia for childhood and thus a stark knowledge of mortality.)

~Guns N Roses, Appetite for Destruction (This was the first album I ever bought, I’m proud to say. Still kicks so much ass after all these years. They never put out another album nearly as good or complete.)

~Miles Davis, In a Silent Way and Sketches of Spain (I like these both so much I don’t know how to choose between them. I’d pick Bitches Brew but I am going to leave it off both out of respect for Alive!–who loves, loves, loves it–and to protest that inexplicably dumb choice to leave “Recollections,” one of my favorite songs ever, off the final album.)

~The Beatles, The White Album (I might have listened to this album more than any other. It has a little bit of everything. I’m not sure why I left it off. Get rid of the pretentious Revolution #9 and maybe it’s in.)

~Bach’s Cello Suites, performed by Pablo Casals (These are old recordings from the first half of the 20th c. Yo-Yo Ma has our a version of these glorious pieces that is beautiful yet somehow sterile. All technical perfection without any passion. Pablo Casals, on the other hand, probably isn’t as good as Yo-Yo Ma–not that I’d really know how to judge this–but he infuses the music with an immense amount of feeling.)

~Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run and The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (I love the Boss. More on this later.)

~Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St. (My favorite album by them–although this is hardly an unusual feeling. A lovely mixture of rock n roll, blues, sex, drugs, and moxie. The opening song is my favorite by them, and it features what is probably my all-time favorite rock n roll line, “The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.”)

~U2, The Unforgettable Fire (Such a good album. This was back when U2 was so very good that they built up a reputation on which they’re still coasting today. “MLK” is one of my favorite songs.)

~Tom Waits, Rain Dogs (I could put a bunch of Tom Waits albums on here. But I think this one is my favorite. The hoarse, rueful cries on “Anywhere I Lay My Head” give me goosebumps every time.)

~Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks (Leaving this one off–my favorite Bob Dylan album featuring my favorite DB song, “Tangled Up in Blue”–rather hurt.)

I could go on. But these are some I wanted to recognize some big-time favorites. And now for the main attraction.

#5: Radiohead, OK Computer. This album is a monster. Every single some kicks ass–well, I’m partial to “Fitter Happier,” but I know some people who dislike it–and a few of them are remarkable. I’m thinking of “Airbag,” “Paranoid Android,” “Exit Music (For a Film),” “Karma Police,” “Climbing Up the Walls,” and “No Surprises.” That’s half the album! I can recall the first time I heard it and how I thought, with that first listen, that this album was astonishing. It captured paranoia, disaffection, and alienation and made it beautiful, stirring. It’s been out for over a decade now. I will admit that I’m a big fan of Kid A and In Rainbows, but they haven’t done anything close to this.

#4: Joni Mitchell, Blue. A friend of mine from high school would be pleased with this selection, as she was a big Joni fan, and I was a big Rolling Stones fan and scoffed at her. But I hadn’t listened to the music. Then I did, and I quickly started singing another tune. I will admit that her quivering voices gets a touch too maudlin once or twice, and that few of her lyrics clomp along (“But when he’s gone / Me and them lonesome blues collide. / The bed’s too big, / The frying pan’s too wide”) or (“I’ll go see some folks I dig, / I’ll even kiss a sunset pig.”), but those are easily corralled into the larger wonder of the album: its raw–and perhaps even honest–representation of love, caring, heartbreak, and so on. I can permit a few blemishes, given the thorny subject matter. “All I Want” is the best song ever written about love–period, end of story, next question; I don’t even want to debate this. “Carey” is a lovely song about sweet things that tucks its sadness into the edges of the song (“You’re a mean old daddy but I like you”). The line “I could drink a case of you / A still be on my feet” is about the sexist line I’ve ever heard. The way her voice trails off at the end of “River” will kill me for as long as I live. It’s a beautiful album. I admire several of her albums–particularly Ladies of the Canyon, and Court and Spark–but neither get to me like this. Everybody hurts; everybody goes through hard times. Very rarely does anyone turn them into something this marvelous.

#3: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. I don’t think I have to say too much about this one. What a line up of musicians! What a collection of songs! I could listen to it again and again and again and again and again and again. It’s an obvious choice–but that doesn’t make it wrong! It’s not its fault it’s great!

#2: Bruce Springsteen, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Born to Run was Boss’ third album. It was super-famous: the band went international; he became the first person who wasn’t a world leader to appear on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same cycle; he single-handedly killed disco, some say. Born to Run yielded several hits, and its a juggernaut of an album in its own right. But what some people don’t realize is that Boss and the E Street Band released two albums before Born to Run–and both of them are fucking fantastic. The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, their second album, teems with joy, sensuality, and youthful vigor. Seriously, listen to “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” and tell me that’s not a wonderful, exuberant song; only a young man at the beginning of his career could get away with a song like that, and Boss pulls it off with an easy grin. But the real gem, in my mind, is Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.–the cover is a postcard, hence the title–which is the Boss’ first album. First track: Blinded by the Light, made famous in a heavily cut version by Manfred Mann. Boss’ version is even better. Songs like “Growing Up” and “For You” are youthful songs, but the green comes out with the rush of words and spontaneity. Old Boss has become a master of sparse, haunting lyrics; young Boss is like Bob Dylan on acid. Some of the lines don’t make any sense but they sure do sound nice. Here, for example, are the first two lines of “Blinded by the Light”: “Madmen drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat / In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat.” “Growing Up” captures the spirit of defiant teenage rebellion about as well as anything I’ve heard. “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” has no chorus–or really any sense of narrative–but remains an enthralling rush of words and images. “Spirit in the Night” begins with one of my favorite opening images: “Crazy Janey and her mission man were back in the alley tradin’ hands / Along came Wild Billy and his friend G-man all duded up for Saturday night / Billy slammed on his coaster brakes and said anybody wanna go on up to greasy lake / It’s about a mile down on the dark side of route 88 / I got a bottle of Rose so let’s try it.” Boss knows how to write a song. But my favorite track is the last, “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.” If you’ve never heard it, give it a shot. It’s an excellent and highly underrated album. 

#1: Van Morrison, Astral Weeks. This has been my favorite album since high school, when a kindly teacher lent it to me and it took the top off my head. The scales fell from my eyes. And so forth. I’d never heard anything like it. To this day, I’ve never heard anything like it. Van’s put out some excellent albums–his early stuff is his best stuff, I think, but he’s an astonishingly long and productive career, much like Boss, Neil Young, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, etc.–but this is a cut above the rest. Every song is brilliant; every song is appreciably different and intriguing. Lyrically, this album is top-notch. Here’s the opening snippet of the first song: “If I ventured in the slipstream / Between the viaducts of your dream / Where immobile steel rims crack / And the ditch in the back roads stop / Could you find me? Woudl you kiss-a my eyes? / Lay me down / In silence easy / To be born again.” It sets the tone—the album has often been thought of as a musical form of impressionism–and already we can see Van’s lyrical chops. This is his first solo album; he means to impress. Van’s voice has a harsh cadence that I realize can be off-putting to some, but here it can soar to ecstasy (listen to the lift-off of “And you’re high on your high-flyin’ cloud” in “Beside You”) or dip to a plaintive growl (the devastating last lines of “Slim Slow Slider,” which is certainly on my shortlist of all-time favorite songs); or, in other words, the harsh cadence is used to achieve certain emotive ends. The album is full of unexpected musical touches: the hoo-boy! humming guitar lick at the end of “Astral Weeks; the bass-line in “The Way Young Lovers Do” that just a touch too fast and thus of sync, creating an underlayer of uncertainty and confusion; the wistful flute in “Slim Slow Slider.” But, above all, I adore how Van uses his voice in unusual ways. The grunts, the murmurs, the chortles, the sighs–they happen frequently (especially in live performances) and always contribute. He lets loose this concealed laugh–the kind of light laugh one lets out when thinking about something very sad–in “Slim Slow Slider” that just slays me every single time I hear it. The way he repeats “eye” in “Madame George.” The way his voice quivers with anticipation in “Cyprus Avenue.” I love this album to pieces. I cannot foresee something knocking if off the podium. If you haven’t heard it–or even if you haven’t heard in awhile–give it a listen; it has my highest possible recommendation. 

That’s what the FBI agent says to Ray Liotta after he’s busted in *Goodfellas*. And that’s what I want to say to my former–oh happy day!–governor, Rod R. Blagojevich. The Illinois Senate voted to impeach him, 59-0. And then they held a vote that asked “Should he be banned from serving as an elected representative in Illinois?” I heard some of the roll-call on NPR. It went like this: “Yes. Yes. Yes. Certainly. Yes. ABSOLUTELY. Yes. Yes.” (Seriously, bless that one guy. It was both indignant and funny.) 

Blago was so corrupt I don’t even know where to start. Suffice it to say I figured his days were numbered before the Senate-fer-sale controversy came up. When I saw him in cuffs, I figured they nabbed him for something else. He’s a rotten politician. And, uh, he’s got some fairly serious mental issues. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a bizarre display over an extended time in the public eye. The guy claims he’s innocent, that they have no evidence. Well, geez, they have you on tape saying that you don’t just give away a Senate seat–among other choice phrases. Says this is like his “Pearl Harbor” (whatever the fuck that means). Says he’s like an old Jimmy Stewart film where it’s a good guy versus the establishment. Says it’s all a plot cooked up by Pat Quinn (the new governor, thankfully) and his cabal to raise taxes–yes, you read that correctly. Skipped the beginning of his impeachment trial to go gallivant all over the morning talk shows. Goodbye and good riddance, you piece of shit. 

Oh, and here’s a quick parting gift for those of you that don’t like in Illinois and thus might have missed this charming lil nugget of information: Blago had this thing called “the football” and became VERY angry if some staffer did not have it on-hand at all times. Blago’s “football” was a hairbrush, something he’d use to coif that ungodly hair helmet. Serious hissy-fits. The real “the football,” by the bye, is the shortlist of nuclear bomb codes, and someone has it on-hand at all times in case the President needs to use them in an emergency. Bub-bye, dickhead.

I’m gonna get out ahead of the crowd here and make a Super Bowl prediction: Steelers 33, Cardinals 20. 

I want the Cardinals to win–sort of. They are the supreme underdogs that slowly dismantled opponent after opponent in the playoffs, and each of whom was supposed to clobber those puckish high-scorin’ Redbirds from Arizona. Here are the scores:

1st round (Wild Card): Arizona 30, Atlanta 24

2nd round (Divisional): Arizona 33, Carolina 13

3rd round (Conference): Arizona 32, Philadelphia 25

 

That first round game was rather close. Then they beat the living shit out of the Panthers in Carolina (nice work, Jake Delhomme, you crapped out one of the worst performances I’ve ever witnessed), and then they came from behind to beat a scrappy and experienced Philly team. Things look good. They’ve been, as it were, misunderestimated by their opponents. 

I think these shenanigans will stop once they run into the Steelers. Or, rather, when the Steelers run into them. The Pittsburgh D is cruel and clever and very, very good. I think that they will pressure Kurt Warner, jam Larry Fitzgerald, stop the Edge in his tracks (not that that’s very hard), and, well, we all know that Troy Polamalu will make at least one big play. If he picks off a ball there’s a good chance he’ll run it in; his field vision is incredible. (Why doesn’t he run back punts, again?) 

The Steelers D will keep the Cards O in check. (Larry Fitzgerald might just decide to man-up and take over the entire goddamn game. If that happens all bets are off. He’s that good.) The Cards D will probably not stop the Steelers grind-grind-grind-occasional pass-grind game. That’s the sort of offense that’s not all that susceptible to Super Bowl pressure and all the fucking up that can come with it. Running the ball up the middle for 4 yards again and again is a rather safe bet. If it works–and it probably will work again the Cards. And you have to figure that Ben Roethlisberger will play better than he did in the last Steelers SB win, when they won basically in spite of him. (His best play in that game–the only memorable pass, really–was a chuck-n-pray that Hines Ward hauled in. It was an easy interception and a poor throw, but Ward made a helluva good read on it.)

But, but but: if the Steelers win I’ll have to start disliking them more. They’ll be too good, a sort of mini-dynasty, and so on. I like their gritty defense, strong run game, zealous fanbase. I like that a Rust Belt city has a team that it’s really proud of. (Did you hear that, Cleveland Browns or Buffalo Bills?) I like Mike Tomlin. But all that goodwill might go out the window if the Steelers win decisively and become the new bullies in town. (If Tom Brady makes a speedy recovery the Pats might be able to slip back into that role like an ermine coat.) I don’t particularly want to dislike the Steelers. I like the idea of an super underdog winning–sort of. 

The Cards are a super underdog because no only were the probably the worst team coming into the playoffs–or so people thought–but they were such a pathetic franchise that no one even knew what backing them might look or feel like. If the Niners were to get good again, for example, popular sentiment could shift toward them easily enough. The Cards? Cripes, they have sucked so hard for so long they might as well be playing in DryVac Stadium. I like the idea of that franchise and their beleaguered fanbase (and the hundreds of thousands of lowly bandwagoneers) finally being rewarded for their decades of helpless futility. But if they win a disturbing trend will have fully fruited: shitty teams can easily win the Super Bowl. 

An overview of the trend:

-The Ravens came in as a Wild Card team after the 2000 season, and then their D marched them to the Super Bowl and they crushed the Giants. 

-The Steelers came in as a Wild Card after the 2005 season and their D marched them to the Super Bowl (with two huge lucky breaks: 1) a series of freak plays prevented the Colts from staging a great comeback; 2) they didn’t have to play the Pats, who almost certainly would have done cruel and unusual things to the Steelers, because they somehow lost to Jake the Snake and the Broncos) where they took out the Seahawks in one of the ugliest, least interesting football games I’ve ever seen. 

-Last year, the Giants came in as a Wild Card and their D marched them to the Super Bowl where they somehow–THANK YOU, JESUS–beat the hitherto undefeated Patriots. We all remember this. (Well, not me so much: I was so forlorn about the inevitable undefeatedness and the Belichek-as-genius orgy and the canonization of Tom Brady as he zips past Joe Montana, my football god, to sit atop the QB pantheon and the fact that they were really, really, REALLY good but they also cheated and this seemed deeply unfair and had maybe, probably gone on for quite some time–all of this kept me from watching the game. It would have done bad things to my psyche. I turned on the game–against my better judgment–about 2 plays before the David Tyree helmet catch. And the rest is history. I remember the end.) 

-The Cardinals came in as a Wild Card after this season and their [insert what you want here] marched them to the Super Bowl. What do we insert? Kurt Warner? Larry Fitzgerald? Their D dining out on Jake Delhomme’s shitball passes that I could have thrown? Absurd luck? Cosmic justice? I mean, it’s a real mystery. The past 3 iffy teams to make the Super Bowl have won, and they won with defense. I just don’t see the Cards doing that. Which means I think they’ll lose. And if they win I’ll be left with some fleeting happiness for their fanbase/wagoneers and the thought that, well, they just didn’t deserve it. Nothing about their season (they got POUNDED by the Pats, Jets, and Eagles and beat enough soft teams in the cesspool that is the NFC West–that’s 6 of their 9 wins, by the way–that they limped in to the playoffs) prepared any of us for their post-season run. They hit their stride, just like the Ravens, the Steelers, the Giants. But any of those previous 3 teams was, in actuality, a pretty good team. No one wanted to play the Ravens that year–awesome D, shit offense. The Steelers had an awesome D and a rookie QB. The Giants came quite close to knocking off the Pats in the final game of the regular season. The Cards? They went 2-4 down the home stretch, getting slapped around in each loss. Their wins were against the Seahawks and the Rams, two teams of such lowly stock (currently) that I think some of the best SEC teams in college football could give them worrisomely close games. I could go on about this, but I think I’ve established my point: nothing could have prepared anyone for any of this. A team limped in to the playoffs, got hot at the right time, and, bang, here they are. But it’s not quite clear what did it, as it was with the previous 3 iffy teams, all of which had great defenses and questionable offenses. 

This is a roundabout way of saying that if the Cards win it would be the equivalent of a 10- or 11-seed team winning March Madness. The highest seed ever to win was a #8, when Villanova somehow beat the fearsome Hoyas in ’85–and they needed to shoot 80% from the field (!!!) to do it. If the Cards win it proves how much parity there is in the NFL. I think that’s a good thing, overall–it makes the league excited–but it somehow depresses me to think that a team that only racked up 1, maybe 2 meaningful wins in the regular season could go “all the way.” (It’s 2 wins if you figure that Miami in week 2 was a “good team.” That’s a stretch, considering how bad they were last year. So their one meaningful win was against a creaky Cowboys team at home. In overtime. [And, no, Buffalo, you don't count. You suck and are very, very disappointing.]) 

 

 

My friend Jimmy sent me this gem a few days back.

Veet is a company that makes hair removal creams and waxes. The company also seems to have leftist politics (as well as a sense of humor). This is from the Daily Telegraph (Australia).

 

I’m on my way out the door to go to Superdawg’s — a Chicago institution — for the first time. 

 

 

But, before I do that, I wanted to share an appalling little news nugget I just came across. So Obama issued an executive order to close down Guantanamo Bay within a year. As this process before, administration officials began to review the files on the 245 (or thereabouts) detainees. But–oops!–there was a problem: there weren’t really files. No discrete packets of information–you know, FILES–on the detainees. Nothing; nada; zilch. Instead, there are bits and pieces of information, here and there, scattered throughout the executive branch; but the information appears to be disparate and does not add up to a “whole.” So, not only are there detainees held there without express charges, but it turns out that there isn’t even a rigorous informational infrastructure. While I suppose this isn’t all that surprising, the stark knowledge did chill my blood. It’s going to take the Obama team weeks, or even months, to piece together enough information to determine what to do with the various detainees. Thanks for the turd sandwich, Shrub. 

More information on the matter.

Have you yet heard the disgusting story about some baker in the Village who made and sold, quite happily, cookies that he called “Drunken Negro Face cookies.” (He decided to change them to “Obama Cookies” on Inauguration Day, that charmer.) 

Seriously, check this out. Please spread the word and boycott this place forever. I don’t even know where to start on this one, so I’m just going to let the link do the talking. Watch the video at the bottom to see this ignorant, hateful asshole try to defend himself.

Boycott Racist Baker

If Pele scored this goal in the World Cup if might have gone down as the greatest goal of all-time. Instead, he missed–oops. I love the awesome “move” he throws at the goalie. Only someone as terrifying as Pele could probably pull that off. 

Put the ball in the net, Pele!

But maybe not. Maradona scored this gem in the ’86 World Cup against England. Argentina v. England after the Falkland Islands fracas made this match rather spicy. Argentina won the match, 2-1. (Fuck you, England. Stay away from our territory!) Maradona scored both goals. The first was the infamous “Hand of God” goal where there was a ball in the air and the 5’5″ Maradona threw down against the 6’1″ English goalkeeper. Maradona won that battle, but because the ball hit his fist. He told his nearby teammates–who were meandering about, since they saw what happened–to come over and hug him and celebrate or else the refs might reconsider their horrid call. The goal stuck. The first hit of cosmic justice rained down on England. The second–and far more artful–hit of cosmic justice was this ridiculous masterpiece. 

Damn, Maradona.

I’d say that Obama is, right now, a walking myth. (He’s many other things, of course, and he’s certainly not a myth to all nooks and crannies, but he is to the mainstream. He’s larger than life; he’s a place onto which we can pin our hopes, dreams, aspirations–and even fears and uncertainties.) How long could this hold up? Sure, he’ll make mistakes. But will the aura fade away? Perhaps. But what if it stays through, say, two terms? 

 

The last walking myth I’ve seen, for my money, was Michael Jordan back when he played for the Bulls. Tiger comes close, but he remains too opaque, too corporate. Maybe Lance Armstrong. (I can’t even think of a potential candidate in politics!)

The keen mind behind the Alive! blog and I have decided to start an extended back-and-forth conversation. I’ll ask him a question, and he’ll respond on his blog. I’ll then answer the same question on my blog. Then it’s his turn. Repeat. Things may get fun; things may get weird. Either way, as Samuel L Jackson’s character in Jurassic Park would say, hold on to your butts!

 

Question: What are your top 5 albums and why. Explanations!

These are in honor of Bush, Cheney, and their minions. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

 

supercilious (adj.): 1. haughtily contemptuous in character or demeanor; having or marked by an air of contemptuous superiority or disdain.  2. dictatorial, arbitrary, despotic, overbearing, exacting or severe in judgment; censorious.   (According to the OED, both definitions came into the language in the 1500s, with #1–the more typical version–occurring first. But #2 is just so fun in this context!) 

 

in camera (adj.): in secret; privately.         (From Latin, “in the chamber”)

 

inveigh (v): to protest or disapprove vehemently