dad-rock, rvstd.

not sure why i've been posting diligently on the parent blog and mostly ignoring this site since i've been home; it's not like i don't still think about music constantly. don't feel like i'm supposed to be writing as casually here, even though i could (should?)

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mused the other day about why i'm so much less interested in making music these days than i used to be; not just that my overwhelming focus on other people's music, in a general sense, both distracts me or controls so much of my attention and also leaves me uninspired to create my own (being so cognizant of the greatness and sheer volume of music that's already been/being made) - but also more specifically that i'm not as interested in the kinds of music i spent my first 20+ years learning how to make (mostly classical, jazz, and rock.) not that i don't still like those, but i'm much more interested at this point in soul, electronica, and pop - a shift that i was of course aware of, but whose full extent it's difficult to determine precisely. by pop i really do mean as broad a category as imaginable, which envelops a lot of soul (pop) and also co-opts a fair amount rock. mom protests such breadth makes the word meaningless, but actually that expansiveness is a lot of the point.

doesn't completely answer the charge, since there's plenty pop i could feasibly create myself, and of course could learn new tricks and branch out further, and anyway one doesn't necessarily have to or even want to be making the kind of music they want to listen to. (maybe the contrapositive.) (and i really need to cut my fingernails if i'm gonna keep at these bach inventions.) creativity-wise, i probably want to aim myself somewhere between night ripper and the fabulous new dj-kicks by henrik schwarz. let me meditate on that and get back to you.

next question: does my focal shift popwards - which is a shift in addition to a mere broadening of scope - mean that my musical taste is getting worse? obviously that's not a question i would phrase (taste ain't a question of good and bad), but objectively as-it-were, i do feel like i've drifted away from caring about certain things in a way that renders me out of line with any given critical consensus. like, used to be i was more or less down with the pitchfork agenda, and it's not so much that i'd rail against it now as i'm not so sure i care. things have gotten too complex to be neatly contained. the more interesting way to ask that, i think, is am i less useful for other people as a barometer/reference for musical opinions than i used to be? i think maybe so. to be blunt about it, dance-pop and electronica are not very popular.
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and now, as promised: dad rock, revisited. since the term does such a bad job of meaning what it means, which i also want to talk about (q.v. the second half of this post which should have really been two posts)...i think i want "dad rock" to mean the rock that my dad listens to. which just so happens to includes spoon and the new pornographers and liz phair. on dad's desk when i got home were unopened copies of the new albums by bob dylan, paul simon, and los lobos. which is a good reminder that this kind of dad-rock also means the music that at least used to be my favorite favorite, that was back when i was living with my dad.

well these guys are way past old enough to be dads, obv, and worth now taking a look not just trying to account for a "mature" audience demo, but also how check they're navigating the contradictory currents of maturity and rock-and-roll for themselves; forging territory as fresh in its way as rock itself was thirty or forty years ago.

it's probably not supposed to be a surprise that modern times is really good. but i was, kind of giddily, take me by surprise how enjoyable, and manifestly of-quality, on first listen. thing is i didn't really like love and theft, though maybe i just didn't want to give it the necessary attention - something hard-to-articulate annoying about the songs themselves, somehow. did love time out of mind but that was ages ago (and isn't it really quite different?)

anyway, kind of cagey of b.d.(world gone wrong and good as i been to you - faves of my pops' - notwithstanding) to pull this "oh yeah, that's right, he's a folk musician" schtick, as if all those years as a capital-r rock god were just dabbling or moonlighting. (i remember being naively confused when dylan unplugged came out - "doesn't he usually play acoustic anyway?" - well, i was twelve.) but i ain't complaining - this is certainly the best blues album i've heard in a long time (not that that's saying anything), and he sounds like he's earned it. (whereas last album, maybe, it didn't feel quite so convincing.)

the credits say "ALL SONGS WRITTEN BY BOB DYLAN," which is rather amusing. (still not complaining.) and there are a lot of funny jokes in the lyrics too. ("i can't go back to paradise/i killed a man back there" is just the first to stick in my mind.) i'm not sure whether the title is a mediocre joke or just a lazy title. likewise the alicia keys ref. anyway it's clear that bob dylan can age as smoothly as he wants just by doing what he's always done, especially now that we're enough decades into rock history that one really can do anything one wants. (which is also not a complaint about street legal.) okay, i feel about as unqualified to talk about dylanology as about art history. fun album anyway.

surprise (whose title is clearly a lame joke and a lame title) is also a fairly pleasant one, if not so unambiguously. it's sounding better on repeated listenings - and markedly better on even this busted hi-fi than on computer speakers upstairs, so i bet it's fun in 'phones. i'm not quite convinced about the union of paul's steez with eno's bleepiness, at least it doesn't have the preternatural naturalness of the brazilian and african collabos (which are all the more impressive when you stop to think about them.) which doesn't mean it's not fun - i especially like the part (in "once upon a time there was an ocean") where it sounds like it's going to break into "a higher state of consciousness" - though predictably it's too tasteful to really be fun.

basically, paul doesn't make many if any concessions in his writing for this potentially sorta unique circumstance, which is to say electronica-nuanced, er, "textured" singer/songwriter music. certainly he doesn't embrace it in the unabashed manner of davids bowie and byrne (see earthlings and feelings though maybe heathen is a better template for how this might have worked), though it's obv. better integrated than yr standard sticking a drum-loop under any given late-90s AC artist. on the plus side as far as that goes, these are "complexly" structured songs, linear and fluid and fairly far from VCV, which allows for nicely delineated 'sections', texturally. on the minus side, paul doesn't give brian a lot of melodic or rhythmic content to play off of; there's a lot of him pontificating poetically on top of the music without completely engaging with it.

all of which is to say that the songwriting style hasn't changed that much since you're the one, which itself was an extension of his approach on rhythm of the saints. simon used to be quite a respectable pop writer (way more than dylan ever was, for sure), as well as a poet - even hearts and bones had "cars are cars" - but it's been twenty years since graceland, and i assume he doesn't want me talking about the capeman (which might be pastiche pop anyway. oh wait that's all he ever does. oknvrmind.) the contender here would be "outrageous," which is genuinely funky/funny, but when you get down to it never quite manages to deliver a hook.

anyway i guess i could stop being disappointed that, experiments with form aside, simon isn't very interested in melody anymore. otherwise there's not too much to be disappointed by on this album. the lyrics are classic simon, thoughtful and sweet and clever, if at times too much so for their own good. hard to say whether i'd forgive it more after repeated listens; you're the one just sort of made me resent it, but this one seems more personable. it's not like paul simon hasn't been pretty lame for thirty-plus years anyway (graceland an obvious fluke.) from dylan, too, one can't exactly hope for rawk.

los lobos on the other hand. well, they probably haven't rawked as hard as their debut since (and even that just barely felt like it belonged on a label called "slash.") but still i (foolishly?) cling to the 'america's best rock'n'roll band' tag, in hopes that they'll forget "rock'n'roll" itself is nothing if not respectable these days. anyhoo, the town and the city turns out to be as tame and tepid and MOR in affect as their last three-four albs. wouldn't have expected anything different, except the reviews suggested that maybe i could. so no great shakes. (still...9th best reviewed album of the year?)

for the record lobos did rock, indeed rawk, with a vicious grit, on for example parts of kiko and colossal head, their mid-90s career-pinnacle duumvirate. but not since, that i've heard (live doesn't count), and not here either. neither is this anything like the captivating experimental sonic playground of those froom records, even if it is "textured" (that word again) in more interesting ways than the last few. that'd all be fine enough, but it just feels like they've been remaking the same album over and over lately. there's so little inspiration in the songwriting here. i guess there's one or two half-decent melodies (the clock-watching "if you were only here tonight"?), but really nothing stands out. except for the latin cuts, which stick out like sore thumbs - they're tokenistic rather than integrated into the record as a whole (as fr'instance on kiko) - does the obligatory cumbia really have to be labelled as such? (the one on the strokes album isn't!)

i'll buy that this is a little step up from the ride and aztlan and this time (for which i do have a soft spot even though i recognize it's fairly weak.) the loose concept - these songs are more or less about lives of ordinary people living in the titular communities - works out nicely, but i can't help feeling like they're using the premise of glorifying the common man as an excuse to make some pretty pedestrian music. (i haven't heard chavez ravine, for instance, but i'll bet it finds way more interesting ways to explore its similar themes.) would i have liked this if it came out in 1999? probably so - then again it would have had less to make up for.

while i'm on the subject, this is probably a good place to bring up a river in reverse, another, more successful, return to form/my good graces effort from a fallen-off fogey. (the information could probably count here too, 'cept i'm not sure it's actually that good, plus my dad isn't into beck.) if i'd thought it through, i needn't have been too fearful, even though i was mightily underwhelmed by elvis' first album this year my flame burns blue: it's crucial to realize that flame was a jazz album while river is a soul/blues album, and though one might be inclined to blur the distinctions between those genres when the same bloke trades in both in a single year, especially since they both have horns and such, it's clear that "jazz" (and especially "jazz orchestra") is shorthand for "high-falutin' faux-sophisticated dilletantish nonsense" whereas "soul" (a.k.a. r'n'b) signifies "low-down rootsy funky rock'n'roll goodness." besides, after all, allen toussaint is co-credited, and you know he's not gonna lead our man astray.

i know i'm biased, because it came out just before the height of my elvis-fandom-mania, but all this useless beauty marks a clear endpoint after which el's career proceeded in a markedly different fashion. not only did he no longer release only unambiguously great albums (gcw, shhhh), he no longer released "normal" just plain elvis costello albums. starting with 1998's fine but overrated and samey, my god, bacharach collabo, everything had a gimmick, everything felt, on some level like an exercise; everything was the kind of album it was first and foremost, and a collection of songs only after that. even when i was cruel, the "return to rock" album, was "the return to rock album." and see, the so-called "follow-up," the delivery man (easily el's best since atub, btw) wasn't just that but also "the rootsy album."

building on the strengths of that strong release, this is yet again the closest he's ever come to an album of straight-up funky soul, a genre he's been making his love for amply evident ever since get happy!! and it's pretty damn close, thanks to the crack band of actual soul musicians and a half-album's worth of actual classic soul songs (as well as oodles of heart-searing piano playing) by mr. allen toussaint. so i really should stop talking about this like it's an elvis costello album. (and i should also take the reminder that his soulfullest previous cut could only have been the toussaint-assisted "deep dark truthful mirror.") actually, part of what makes this album work so well is that elvis only wrote one and five-halves of the songs, enough that his familiarly arch, trenchant wordplay is plainly evident ("an uncivil war divides the nation" grabs my ear every time) but not so much that it becomes distracting or overbearing, a huge potential pitfall in purely costello soul. (it's hard to be too soulful if you're focused on conveying every half-witty pun and snarky turn of phrase.) which isn't to suggest that toussaint's writerly contributions aren't equally smart - to the contrary, they more than hold their own, and his voice is unmistakable throughout even if he only actually sings an occasional harmony vocal.

i would describe this as a beautifully balanced record, not just in terms of the two principal collaborators' contributions, but also for how well the lusciously soulful musical performances and arrangements complement costello's strong vocal work, and vice versa - all sides attracting deserved attention without detracting or distracting from the effect of the whole. elvis has stumbled into his fair share of stiff mannerism lately in the name of good taste - but there's nothing clinical or stuffy about this record, proof that sometimes pedigrees count for something and good taste can taste just as good. i'd say this is easily the best of the bunch i've been discussing here, but i know you'd just accuse me of favoritism.

artist : track

these mixes have been up here for a while, but i wanted to make them more accessible, so they're in the sidebar now (though i'm having some trouble with the code for that - let me know if the 'sidebar' is not actually on the side of the page for you, but rather at the bottom) and here are the track listings.

i still like them. we had fun dancing to them last weekend. look forward to more once i regain the capacity. (not sure exactly when that will be.) in the meantime, ross of love live @ mascher space on december 2nd.

rainbow styling
four tet - pockets
the knife - forest families
losoul - hit in home position
ultramagnetic mcs - traveling at the speed of thought
the strokes - you only live once
ladytron - playgirl
the rapture - house of jealous lovers (morgan geist version)
christina aguilera - ain't no other man
lindstrøm - i feel space
the similou - all this love
yellow magic orchestra - computer game
the roots - boom!
justin timberlake (feat. t.i.) - my love
les rhythmes digitales - music makes you lose control
missy elliott (feat. ciara and fatman scoop) - lose control
the faint - the conductor (thin white duke remix)
!!! - take ecstasy with me
the magnetic fields - fido, your leash is too long

soul vs. dance-pop, round 1 (previously known as electrosoulpoptopia)
the budos band - sing a simple song
snoop dogg (feat. pharrell) - drop it like it's hot
jean knight - mr. big stuff
rachel stevens - secret garden
willie hightower - walk a mile in my shoes
james hunter - talking about my love
sugababes - freak like me
sway - products
amy diamond - what's in it for me?
thelma houston - don't leave me this way
ciara (feat. missy elliott) - 1, 2 step
carla thomas - b.a.b.y.
talking heads - stay up late
britney spears - i'm a slave 4 u
erlend øye - the talk
rufus thomas - do the funky chicken
kelley polar - ashamed of myself
robyn - crash and burn girl
paris hilton - not leaving without you

music is my radar

blip blip blip:

the new pornographers.
because i listened, although actually not until this morning, to my election mix from two years ago - the famously titled get out the fuck - which still makes for a thrilling, adrenaline-pumping listen (b/c that was the original point.) to these ears anyway, "rapture rapes" and especially the bleeding[-heart] masterpiece "rebellion (lies)", though no longer the hott new jamzz they were back then, regain a lot of their slightly time-faded brilliance in this context. and "the laws have changed" sounds defiantly triumphant kicking it off. (not sure if i registered at the time the appropriateness of "pharoah on the microphone" given pharoah monche song later in the mix.) anyway, took the mass romantic for my discman ride on the r3 today, and what a blooming onion. best rock pop of the 00s? (took some time realize it, but especially the opening half-to-third.)

funny, what should i see when i get to swatmo but posters advertising the nps appearance on campus (large-scale event, baybee - does that sound right to you?) this friday. (using, i might add, the cover image from electric version to a much more satisfying graphic effect than the actual cover.) whoo. w/ the brakes - whozzat? anyway. that happens to be the night the sun destroyers (that's my flatmate's band) are playing at tritone. so any other day but today this would not have created a conflict of interest, especially considering that i've seen the nps now (count 'em) six times. (and i doubt neko will be there, and my <3<3 for katherine "niece of newman" caldwell notwithstanding.) and i'll go see/support gabe, of course. but it would be sweet to see the new pornographers again, and in lpac. oh well.

cassie
(the album.) obv. "me&u" (that's the way it's spelled on the cd, so i'm going with it) is a modern classic, or will be soon. but i like follow-up single/track "long way 2 go" just as much if not more. it has an equally contagious similarly skeletal synth figure, a funkier 1,2 step beat, and a more elaborated melody (which isn't saying much.) and the lyric is fun (especially the q+a back-and-forths) and better suited to cassie's deadpan delivery. it has something of an oxymoronic m.o. for the album in the brilliantly slant-rhymed couplet: "if you really want to know me first of all/you should never try to get too personal."

but the rest of the album sounds pretty sweet too. "ditto", a whole song built on simple looped four-chord descending progression (which would typically be the resolution of a more extended progression), is way catchier than it deserves to be with such a transparent device. fun keyb sounds too, funky clipped swing, and a preposterously simple-minded lyrical conceit that plays perfectly with her dispassionate persona. ("he said he had fallen so in love with me/and i said ditto") "just one nite" has a sweet harp figure and pretty funny response rap from ryan leslie (who produced the whole record.) "kiss me," with some very nice vocal flourishes, is a likable slow jam on an album where the average bpm is already markedly low.

i have an idea about this album, that it is reminiscent of minimal electro(nica) not just in its icy affect and bleepy bloopy sound palette (and, er, minimality) but also in the formal structure of its compositions. which is to say that the songs are less significantly song-like in framework (even though they do mostly have verses and choruses) than they are groove-based pieces built around interchangeable, recurring elements. have to listen and think about that more, since i just got this. will be happy to do that though.

m2m/the beatles
listened to the big room and sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band alternating-song style (i feel like that should be called "song/reverse song"), the former because i just got it the other day, and the latter because i just had a strange desire to hear it (i am on a minor beatles kick lately.) sgt. pepper's definitely did sound great today, which is not to say m2m made it that way or it made them sound bad. actually, both albums seemed to benefit from the juxtaposition, though i'm not really sure why that would be. i'd think the contrast in production style would make sgt. p's sound flat and dull. but instead it seemed unusually vibrant for an album i often think of as sort of fussy and clinical - especially the title track which i sometimes think of as a throwaway. that's what revisiting something familiar after a while will do, maybe. (and digital mastering? i only got it on cd pretty recently.) not much to say about the m2m album yet - some nice things stood out. in general, it sounds pretty similar to shades of purple, not quite as sweet, but probably just as many clunky lyrics. i like the bigger and more varied sound (kinda countryish in places) - hints of the future direction of the 2 ms, i guess (is that the standard take?)

hilary duff - "getaway"
i listened to most wanted the other day, and it clicked for me in a way it never really had before. (s/rs'd it with this year's model for a while too, which was fun.) can't quite say why, but it was much more exciting and engaging than i'd found it on earlier listens. "come clean" and "mr. james dean" (which i always liked anyway, though i think it's pretty silly that she's singing about him), but in particular this song stuck out for me. (the latter half of the disc is definitely not as strong.) but "getaway" - seems like this is hil's version of the "soarus" meme (q.v. "subg"/"4eva" et. al.), unless there's something else i'm missing. and the rest of the melody is just as strong. i wish the arrangements on the verses were more forceful, even though the contrast is nice. and the spoken bit is kind of cheap - she could just as easily have sung those lines, and it would have been less distracting. but that chorus! and the bridge too! (with that crucial revelatory lyric twist.) really the most striking thing though (and probably the song's only truly remarkable feature) is the lyric. not only does it deploy its extended metaphor in a marvelously deft and understated fashion (compare it with the way "chemicals react" incorporates its science terminology in an essentially fortuitous and meaningless way), it navigates several levels of potential meaning, allowing for both partly-literal and wholly-metaphorical readings (is she really in a car stopped at a light, as the first verse suggests, or are we meant to take all of the 'driving' references as coded language for the relationship?) won't go too much further with that, but it is a very neat little bit of writing. [sidenote: cddb has the genre for this cd listed as "children's music." pah!]

gay dad - "my son mystic"
randomly. had a fragment of this song stuck in my head today (the chorus - "tell me about my life/just the basic details/we could talk all night" bit) and i don't think i would have been able to figure out what it was (not for a long time anyway) without the internet. i had myself convinced it was by this band the control group who were friends with my uncle i think, and when i got home i looked through my refuse cd stacks to try to find their album. then i realized it was on the shelf with my "proper" cd collection, filed right properly in the contempo rock area (in between clinic and the dandy warhols, which is atypically alphabetical, if nothing else.) the fact that i didn't think it was there strongly suggests that maybe it doesn't deserve to be there, but that's an issue for next time i reorganize (which sort of needs to happen.) anyway, the song isn't by them, it's by gay dad. who i'd forgotten had more than one song i liked. i quite like this song, especially the chorus (obviously.) mostly i just like how song fragments can pop up in your head years after the fact, and even if you've never consciously thought about the song itself (which i probably never had - i certainly couldn't tell you anything else about the songs on the album beyond track one or two.)

and that's one of the joys of having a huge record library. (even better than the p2p-sphere of the 'web in this regard.) because i listened to leisure noise this evening for the first time in well over a year. also a good reason why i keep so many cds around rather than getting rid of the ones i rarely listen to. it's also the reason why i ought to buy the longpigs album that i once borrowed from aijung for quite a while, hideos artwork notwithstanding. i like the title though, it's one of those vaguely aphoristic and benignly banal complete-sentence titles which are sort of dumb as titles but fun as phrases. and one of the better ones: the sun is often out. the week never starts around here. one day i'll be on time. it was hot we stayed in the water. everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. everything will never be ok. everyone else is doing it so why can't we? millions now living will never die. those who tell the truth will die, those who tell the truth will live forever. there is nothing wrong with love. there is nothing left to lose. etc. (what else?)

there's nothing i can't stand as much as good modern art.

tomorrow night i'm djing for (the first half of) the opening of an art show. looking forward to it but it's a funny mixture of probably going to fun and also not really that big a deal. trying to figure out what to play/how to approach it. want if possible to somehow use it to promote my deejaybizness, to which end i'm making some copies of those two mixes i posted here recently.

anyway, i've been playing around with records all morning. part of me wants to do a relatively straight (well, and relatively obscure) soul and '60s pop set, at least for a while, but then we'll see, because i'm just as liable to veer off into oh, frinstance, abdullah ibrahim, ada, john lennon, daedelus, steve reich, why?, the aluminum group, gary lucas, nat king cole, mahjongg, ry cooder, schneider tm, the jimmy castor bunch, camera obscura, asa chang and junray, enoch light, bill frisell, moreno+2, matmos, ashlee simpson. i'm planning to pack a wide enough range of records to allow for some fortuitous fluctuation. (though it may well end up being exactly those artists.)



in the meantime, here's something that's actually not very relevant there, but is in keeping with the (original) brief of this website. it's a mixtape i made last summer for laura for her birthday, with all songs about art. i'll explain the title. it's called "the eyes the ears", which is the english translation of "les yeux les oreilles" which is what the parisian music listings publication lylo stands for (as laura told me.) t.e.t.e. of course is the french word for head. so there's yr rather duchampian pun. (fitting cuz one of the songs is about duchamp.)

tracklist:


the sides have titles, which are listed on the tape: the eyes first; the ears second. fun to make tapes based on lyrical unifying concepts like this (especially around topics where there just aren't that many songs) 'cause you end up with combinations of songs that never would have come about any other way. in this case, some rather unlikely cuts of high-minded "serious" songwritery stuff which was sorta more my bag several couple years back (dire straits, paul simon, steely dan, xtc, e.c., - not to suggest those aren't most of my favorite bands ever), similarly literate hipster-types (al-group, llamas), scrappy punk nerds (art brut, futureheads, thermals, modern lovers), and the some sneaky inclusion of purely instrumental jazz (byron), d+b (mocean worker) and idm (sybarite, boc, jxb) trax that just happen to be named after artists.

there's a roughly (art historical) chronological sequence to side one, after the 1,2,3 intro punch of ifrb's best ditty, tmbg's indelible start-stop pop classik, and art brut's bludgeoning thesis statement: starting with paleolithic, jumping straight ahead to the 20th-century torch-passing lineage of picasso>duchamp>warhol>basquiat (good a story as any, right?) and then the awesome (and awesomely named) architect renzo piano (on whom i one wrote a paper, the research for which included an unwitting visit to germany.) "rrose selavy" (like "rene m." on side 2) is way too long for it to be included on a normal mixtape; i was only too happy to let it fill up the space here - and it's a nice tune to boot. (one draft also included stereolab's epic and maybe only tangentially relevant "brakhage.") then there's the generic (not art-historical-specific) topicality of "venice" (which i adore) and two tracks ("artists only" and "in the gallery") that i would probably never have put on a mix under other circumstances.

on the second side: "wanted" stands out like a sore thumb as the only hip-hop (actually, the only black artist period unless you count don byron [oh diss, just kidding don]) and also somewhat envelope-pushing in the topic dept (it's about graffiti - does have some interesting things to say about it though.) elsewhere "guernica" breaks the 'only include good music' rule [i like blanket music, but that album and that song in particular are somewhat painful - but it's such a no-brainer topically that i had to include it], "art class" breaks the 'don't reuse songs' rule [i've used it for several mixes, but in particular another mix i'd made for laura - but never mind, it's a total bleeding masterpiece and definitely one of my top x indie rock trax if i had to name], jonathan richman struggles but manages not to break the 'don't repeat artists rule' [if the modlovers and jojo solo can count, surely ifrb and jxb can too, even singing about the same artist - it was a close call not putting jr's "salvador dali" on (but it's not really that good.)] and dar breaks some kind of rule for being a song i'd never even heard, but i just happened to have a random burned copy of the album it's on. meanwhile it's hard to say quite what "no culture icons" is about, except that it roxxx, and i've always had a soft spot for "wrapped in grey" (an unabashedly drippy ballad) and especially the 'your heart is a big box of paints' bit.

so that was that. not too painful rite? i think the tape came out quite well, and it's certainly chock-full of idiosyncrasy. if i'd made it even a few weeks later, steve malkmus' "post-paint boy" would definitely have found a well-deserved spot.

anyway. in real life i've been thinking a lot about the '90s lately. re-read this awesome article/list. started posting in the poptimists livejournal pazz/jop polls, for '95 and '96. i'm contemplating a mix paying homage to my earliest days as a dj, for hi-skool parties and first year or two of college - centered around '99 and a year or two before and after. (so many great fatboy slim and les rhythmes digitales remixes!) so stay tuned for that. a couple insights in the meantime though: the 90s many highlights notwithstanding, the 00s really are such a better decade for music. can i possibly say that objectively? i feel like it's objectively so. (though even i could think of counterarguments. secondly: my pick for single of the decade is third eye blind's "semi-charmed life." i feel quite strongly that, though it may not have been the best song released in the 1990s, it epitomizes the decade for me perfectly, and it is devastatingly great. sadly, it just missed the cutoff for p+j voting for '97 (top 25 yes?) ah well. 1997 was an incredible year for music.

[ooh ooh, just got back from tower records where the latest lovely fruits of the going-out-of-business insanity were copies of the new records by don byron and various productions, just sitting there on the clearance table as if they were waiting for me specifically - for about five bucks apiece. definitely gotta play some o that jawn 2morrow.]