You know another good book that continues to seep into my thoughts is Don DeLillo's "Underworld." It's a grand alternate history of American life during the Cold War (seems quaint, don't it?) while plumbing the vast depths of the secrets both personal and institutional that sustain our very identity. Heavy shit. It's well worth a look.

In honor of Don, an alternate top 25 album list:

1) "After the Gold Rush," Neil Young
2) "A Hard Day's Night," The Beatles
3) "Paul's Boutique,' Beastie Boys
4) "Between the Buttons," The Rolling Stones
5) "Life's Rich Pagent," REM
6) "Hot Buttered Soul," Issac Hayes
7) "Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space," Spiritualized
8) "Nothing's Shocking," Jane's Addiction
9) "Live at Albert Hall, 1966,"Bob Dylan
10) "Young Americans," David Bowie
11) "Loaded," The Velvet Underground
12) "Loveless," My Bloody Valentine
13) "His 'n' Hers," Pulp
14) "Suede," Suede
15) "Shoot out the Lights," Richard & Linda Thompson
16) "Stankonia," Outkast
17) "Never Mind the Bollocks," Sex Pistols
18) "Moondance," Van Morrison
19) "Kid A," Radiohead
20) "Something Else," The Kinks
21) "Somgs for the Deaf," Queens of the Stone Age
22) "13," Lee Hazlewood
23) "De Stijl," The White Stripes
24) "Rings Around the World," Super Furry Animals
25) "Van Lear Rose," Loretta Lynn

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File under: Oh, the humanity!

It is senior week at my school (great invention, New Zealand) and rather do something useful like lesson planning, or marking the Sears Tower of student work that is growing on my desk by the nanosecond, I read most of Paul Feig's "Kick Me" today. Feig is the creator of the late and lamented "Freaks and Geeks" and his book shows where he got his "inspiration" from. I don't think too many people survive that much humiliation in one lifetime without becoming sideshow freaks, or going into advertising. I should think that being forced to stay alive by eating the flesh of your recently living Grandpa after a plane crash in the Andes would only be *slightly* more demoralising than many of the stories Feig relates in his memoir about growing up in the seventies. This book is obviously brilliant, so check it out. Once again, thanks to Lawrence, a fellow F & G lover, for hooking us up with this little treasure.

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The sun it out, it's beautiful and so are you, deeeeeeeear procrastination! Hello, fellow travelers. I come to you today minus four of my teeth, my innocence and a great deal of pride. I wish I could say these losses were related (what a story that would be...hey, that sounds like a contest!), but innocence and pride have been long gone. Neither hockey, nor honky tonkin' were involved, let's put it that way. The teeth left me on Friday at the dental surgeon in the usual (if cosmically painful) way. Anyway, I needed something to jumpstart the flicker of enthusiasm for life that I have left with another pointless list. This is important, though. As of now, here are my top 25 albums of all time!

Let me give a couple of guidelines and explanations- since I am not counting boxsets, a lot of my favourite music is out the window. For example, I would rank the Philly Sound, Stax and Burt Bacharach boxsets in my top 10 easily, but since few of us not on blow listen to music in four hour blocks, they are out. They are also compilations and I like the idea of one working group of people and set of ideas per album. I know, it's arbitrary bullshit, but so are lists, generally. Also, only one album per artist. That's just the way it is.

My list is informed by a couple of strong beliefs: The metasphysical certitude that the Beatles and James Brown are the alpha and omega of modern pop music. I don't need a burning bush, a trip to Mecca, or a third eye to find my Gods (see how nicely I resisted the Temptations to use a lot of lame music puns). My Gods are easily in reach and bring me the same level comfort and meaning about the universe as any religion *you* may follow without all of that messy doctrine, blood and history. Ok, maybe there is all of that in my religion (lest we forget James Brown's unfortunate relationships with the lay-dees), too, but I can *prove* mine. Can you?

I can trace a line of influence from Louis Armstrong to Missy Elliott, if you like, but I say that the Beatles and James Brown are the big two. Here's why: production and relentless innovation. That is all that seperates the Before and After. Big Mama Thorton, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Woody Guthrie and Screaming Jay Hawkins sang about the whole catalogue of human emotions in every conceivable guise in pop music long before the Beatles and James Brown came on the scene. There is as much world weary pain in Sinatra's "Only the Lonely" as anything Lou Reed ever wrote, for example. Gwar and the Butthole Surfers on mescaline are not any weirder than Screaming Jay Hawkings. Little Kim didn't moan over a beat any more suggestively than Big Mama, and so on. Pop Music became modern (and artistically dominant over jazz and blues) with the Beatles and James Brown.

Both James Brown and the Beatles changed how we hear music and what is expected of the artist. I am sorry to sound like a special edition of Mojo Magazine celebrating the 39th Anniversary of George Martin's Last Bowel Movement at Abbey Road, but I don't think you can underestimate how influential the Beatles were in their approach to the studio and album making process. They set the template of pop music and pop groups being evolving entities that would, by necessity, constantly change their music and force their audience to go along with them. Or leave them to the Monkees. After the Beatles, pop music listeners (no matter the genre- from heavy metal to hip hop) *expect* the best artists to evolve or perish. I don't think this was an expectation, concern, or even a flicker of a thought in Tony Bennett's hey day (1997). In two years, *two,* the Beatles went from "I'll Follow the Sun" to "Tommorrow Never Knows." Nowdays it takes Radiohead, or Outkast two years to get the trio of Swedish groupies removed their dicks before they make a new record (well, make that just Outkast...Radiohead are never removed from the orifices of the Continent ; ). It is telling that when the Beatles decided to Get Back to where they once belonged sonically, The End was nigh (sorry). Their reason for existence, in essence, "bring on the new shit," was over and so were they. They at least had the common decency to get out while the getting was still not so bad with Abbey Road.

You can't say the same thing about James Brown, but he's probably more important than the Beatles (and, thus most other beings, or ideas in world history), so who cares? I don't think James Brown gets nearly enough credit for his musical innovations. Hip hop, *the* most dominant and popular music on earth right now and for the foreseeable future, gets most of its rhythmic complexity, humour and social consciousness from James Brown. There is no hip-hop without James Brown. There, I said it. I am not talking about the millions of samples using James Brown, I am talking about the working example that James Brown embodies for hip hop to this day. More than any other artist of his times, James Brown changed his sound ruthlessly and this spirit of change-change-change is best exemplified in hip hop (which basically says that "What is cool in 1994 seems a thousand years old in 1997" and so on). Unlike rock and roll, there is no history in hip hop and James Brown started that. Brown took an incredibly powerful musical revue that featured everything from on-his-knees-please-please-please ballads to the musical testifyin' and turbocharged r&B into an another realm- soul music. He then transformed soul into funk, which is has all of the essentials of hip hop. Sex, beats and space.

Wait, the Gospel of James has already been wrote, so I had better resume the list. I don't think I made my case very well, but I am not trying to convert anybody to my religion, afterall. Indulge me people (my life motto). Still, it's not a good sign when the introduction is five times as long as the story, is it? Anyway, my current Top 25 of All Time (thanks to Lawrence for jump starting many of these ideas : ):

1) Rumours, Fleetwood Mac.



Just Kidding.


1) "The Beatles," The Beatles
2) "Pet Sounds" The Beach Boys
3) "Bringing it All Back Home" Bob Dylan
4) "Superfly" Curtis Mayfield
5) "Imperial Bedroom" Elvis Costello
6) "Diamond Dogs" David Bowie
7) "Let it Bleed" Rolling Stones
8) "Dusty in Memphis" Dusty Springfield
9) "#1 Record/Radio City" Big Star
10) "Parklife" Blur
11) "Let's Stay Together" Al Green
12) "Houses of the Holy" Led Zeppelin
13) "Doolittle" The Pixies
14) "Rocket to Russia" The Ramones
15) "Switched On, Volume 1" Stereolab
16) "Chips from the Chocolate Fireball" The Dukes of Stratosphere
17) "In Utero" Nirvana
18) "Live from Folsom County Prison" Johnny Cash
19) "The Payback" James Brown
20) "In It For the Money" Supergrass
21) "The Who Sell Out" The Who
22) "Village Green Preservation Society" The Kinks
23) "Rain Dogs" Tom Waits
24) "Music from Big Pink" The Band
25) "Supa Dupa Fly" Missy Elliott

Nothing special.

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