My Favorite CDs of 2011

Like its predecessor, 2011 finds its top ten evenly divided between industry veterans and fresh-faced newbies.

But before I delve into new releases, heaps of archival live albums appeared last year. Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Pearl Jam and the Rolling Stones uncorked vintage shows either as stand-alone releases or to round out expanded and remastered packages.

And there were some important re-issues, as U2, the Kinks, Frankie Miller, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys had landmark material re-visited and re-released.

I’ll attempt to sort-out this mess o’ product and, in the best-case scenario, provide a guide for the year just ended. Displaying the impeccable manners that are the hallmark of this blog, I’ll start with the old stuff first.

Were it not such a widespread and well-known bootleg, the Rolling Stones’ Brussels Affair would be the hands-down favorite of the vintage concert releases. It’s a resounding and unforgettable show. But it’s hard to get newly worked-up over something you’ve been listening to since the Carter administration.

Which is why I’m naming Fairport Convention’s Ebbets Field 1974 as the year’s best. Snobs may decry the absence of Richard Thompson, but only until they hear it. If you’re lucky, songs like “John the Gun” and “Matty Groves” will act as a gateway drug to what could become a full-blown addiction.

Picking the year’s best re-issue is a little more-difficult. The two-disc Kinks’ re-releases were powerful candidates, especially Face to Face and Arthur. But by the slimmest of margins, I’m picking the Frankie Miller box set, if only because his material has been unavailable in the United States for so long.

While not a box set in the traditional sense (there’s only a couple of B-sides and no previously unreleased material, demos or one-off concert recordings), it presents the entirety of his output for Chrysalis in his seventies prime plus an alternate version of High Life.

For all intent and purposes, Miller should’ve been rocking arenas throughout the late-seventies and into the eighties. But commercial success is a nebulous thing, dependent on many things utterly unrelated to music. At least the catalog of one of rock’s great voices has been restored.

Now to 2011.

1. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

This isn’t the howling vocalist of yore, but one that uses marimbas, autoharp and muted brass to sculpt striking songs of war and mortality. The inspired "Call to the Post" sample on "The Glorious Land" suggests war is a horse race, and just as consequential.

Check "The Glorious Land" and "Written on the Forehead".

2. TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light

No one writes intricate melodies (complete with counter melodies) that coalesce into sublimely funky pop overtures the way TV on the Radio does. If Nine Types of Light appears to tail off in the second half, that’s only because four of the album’s first five tracks are absolutely brilliant.

Check "You" and "Killer Crane".

3. Raphael Saadiq – Stone Rollin’

The former Tony! Toni! Tone! front man finds his voice on this towering fusion of rhythm and blues, soul, pop and blues. From the razor-edged strut of the title track to the smooth soul of "Movin’ Down the Line", Stone Rollin’ is all good, all the time.

Check "Go To Hell" and the title track.

4. The Black Keys – El Camino

This is the album I wanted Brothers to be; fuzz-toned stomp that is as habit-forming as Spicy Nacho Doritos. And unlike its forebearer, Messrs. Auerbach and Carney have herewith worked-up eleven indelible and indestructable melodies on El Camino for your listening pleasure.

Check "Dead and Gone" and "Gold on the Ceiling".

5. David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights – Left by Soft

The Clean’s David Kilgour has received much belated recognition for his singular guitar-playing, and it’s duly highlighted on the six-minute epic "Diamond Mine". But it’s Left by Soft’s more-modest pleasures that land the album here.

Check "Pop Song" and "Diamond Mine".

6. Fairport Convention – Ebbets Field 1974

Along with the Move, Fairport Convention were one of the most unjustly ignored (in the U.S., anyway) bands of the late-sixties and early-seventies. This 1974 concert proves that ultimately, the strength of any band is its songs. For even sans RT, they cast a haunting, unforgettable spell.

Check both tracks listed above.

7. Nicki Bluhm – Driftwood

This album really shines when Bluhm and husband Tim pair-up for their plaintive and heartfelt harmonizing. Even when they don’t, its country-ish Americana is fine. But in the tradition of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, it’s best when they do.

Check "Women’s Prison" and "Wall of Early Morning Light".

8. The Feelies – Here Before

Reunion tours and reunion albums usually make me squeamish. But leave it to the Feelies to upend convention. Here Before sounds like a year or two passed since their last, and not a couple of decades. Does this mean the Feelies are timeless? Probably.

Check "Should Be Gone" and "Way Down".

9. James Walbourne – Drugs and Money EP

While his earlier full-length was completely competent, Drugs and Money raises Walbourne’s craft to a whole new level. Be it the weathered Americana of "Drugs and Money" or the highland hoedown that is "Hillbilly Crack", this EP reeks of soul and fire.

Check both of the aforementioned tracks.

10. Tune-Yards – Whokill

The jagged jump-cut musicality of Whokill can be as startling as it is fractured, but when it works, it’s as bracing a breath of fresh air as was heard in 2011. And the buoyant undercurrent of Afro-Pop that holds it all together is just a bonus.

Check "My Country" and "Powa".

Honorable Mentions:

Admiral Fallow - Boots Met My Face
The Bats – Free All the Monsters
REM – Collapse Into Now
Neil Young – A Treasure

To the Unemployed...

...who understand that fifty is the new seventy.

...who understand deeply and resolutely that, yes, it can happen to you.

...who, just for a change, would like to hear the phrase ‘stay positive’ from someone who is actually unemployed.

...who are able to withstand being judged by that supreme arbitrator of worth known as Corporate America.

...who understand that America’s labor force consists of just two groups: the unemployed and hostages.

...who understand that ‘unemployed' means in 2012 what 'colored' did a hundred years earlier.

...who understand the purpose of the question "Are you currently employed?" and answer 'yes' with the specific intent of accomplishing what the question was expressly created to avoid, which is the wasting of an employer’s valuable time on an unemployed candidate.

(Don’t you feel horrible?)

May you always possess the faith of Mother Teresa and the persistence of Sisyphus.

You are my heroes.

An Appreciation of the X-Files

TV is an easy target for a social critic like me. Too easy, which is why I usually refrain from writing about it here.

But every once in a while, something goes wrong. The lowest common denominator formulas that usually guard against this sort of thing fail, and we the people end up with something fresh and different.

For four seasons and most of a fifth, The X-Files provided some of the most-compelling television of the twentieth century. Episodes stuffed with government conspiracies and unspeakable monsters terrorized our imaginations when its wry, left-of-center humor wasn't provoking double takes.

It was new and unique and reliably disturbing.

Not so unique were the problems that eventually plagued it; the spiraling demands of newly-famous actors, writers, producers and directors and a dearth of fresh storylines.

Tired of the weekly commute between his home in Los Angeles and the show’s set in Vancouver, David Duchovny successfully lobbied for filming to be moved to L.A.

While not always sufficiently camouflaged to resemble Iowa or New Jersey, British Columbia nevertheless provided X-Files with just the backdrop its scripts demanded. The moody, dank clime was ideal for spawning Fluke Man or the crazed victim of one too many alien abductions.

The shadowy light acted as a metaphor, underscoring the morally-ambivalent world Scully and Mulder inhabited. Sunny SoCal just wasn’t the same.

And it was probably inevitable that one day the show would begin to run out of ideas. If producing a quality script for a movie is difficult, imagine what cranking out two-dozen per season for a TV series is like.

Season five revealed the first signs of full-blown fatigue, where a reliance on soap opera-styled plot conventions reared its ugly head.

Scully is abducted. Scully has cancer. Scully can’t have babies. While the first two of these developments actually came to light near the end of the fourth season, they are taken to their melodramatic extremes in season five.

One has only to watch the insufferable two-parter Christmas Carol and Emily to see the depths to which X-Files could sink.

But I come to praise X-Files, not bury it.

The X-Files was Moonlighting and Night Gallery and CSI all rolled into one. No other series had ever fused such disparate genres so successfully.

Sure, some of the conspiracy plots were more labyrinthine than The Big Sleep. And Scully's skepticism was occasionally a little nonsensical and a little too reflexive. But it scared us and challenged us and made us laugh.

It was habit-forming.

And if that moment in Unruhe when Scully realizes she is face-to-face with the perpetrator of several gruesome murders while alone in a gutted building undergoing rehab isn’t the most chilling in television history, I don’t know what is.

These days, X-Files would air on a premium cable channel, not network TV. Only those with hundreds of dollars to spend on TV each month would be privileged-enough to enjoy its addictive scripts, distinctive look and appealing cast. I am forever grateful it was not.

What follows is a highly-subjective list of my favorite episodes. They appear in order of broadcast because attempting to order them any other way would make my hair fall out.

Not surprisingly, they skew heavily to the first four seasons, since those had first crack at my imagination.

Comments welcome.

Top Ten:

Beyond the Sea
Irresistible
Dod Calm
Humbug
Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
Grotesque
Pusher
Wetwired
Unruhe
Small Potatoes

Honorable Mentions:

Miracle Man
Duane Barry/Ascension
Excelsis Dei
Aubrey
Die Hand Die Verletzt
War of the Coprophages
Syzygy
Hell Money
Quagmire
Bad Blood

Giving It Away

Silly me. I thought my employer paid me because I enhanced their profitability. By providing a skill, I enabled them to bring a product or service to market better or faster or more-efficiently.

Now I find that business is actually performing a public service by employing me. Who knew employment was a charitable act, done to protect America's labor force from the horrors of daytime TV?

What else to think after seeing so many of Illinois’ corporate citizens approach our bankrupt state government and request tax relief and deferments and subsidies? To hear them tell it, the employment they offer is a radiant act of selflessness equal to anything Mother Teresa ever did in India.

Employees aren’t the drop of oil or bit of grease that expedites the profit-making machinery. No. Employees are the ungrateful beneficiaries of really nice guys just trying to do the right thing.

According to our newly emboldened business class, they should be subsidized because they employ people. And pay them. And because they pay people, they themselves should be paid—even though they already are.

Confused? Me, too. But not to worry. This makes perfect sense in executive suites and in the GOP national headquarters.

If gigantic multi-national corporations aren’t our biggest parasites, who is? Is there anyone who finds something even a little objectionable about billion-dollar corporations extorting bankrupt state governments for whatever spare change might be lying around?

Do the words entitlement or leech spring to mind? Rape? How about necrophilia?

They should.

Struggling telecommunications giant Motorola got $100 million from the state of Illinois for not leaving. Struggling retail giant Sears yesterday received $150 million in tax credits and will receive another $125 million in property tax relief for, again, not leaving.

The CME Group, which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Board of Trade has also received welfare, the exact nature of which is unknown. CME also threatened to leave.

Sniff.

And those are just the most-recent cases. My manners would be showing if I neglected to mention Navistar, Chrysler, Continental Tire and U.S. Cellular.

As consumers, our options are limited. The governor is also in a spot. Call the guilty parties out in public and you risk ruffling their feathers and having these Vito Corleone wanna-bes make good on their threats.

Pay the scumbags and you outrage the public, especially when cuts to public transit, health care and education are deep and widespread. And don't forget, the public still votes.

The best response is a public boycott. Let consumer-dependent companies like Motorola and Sears know how the tax-paying public feels about extortion. Especially for entities that have received the bounty of government largesse these corporations have.

While we’re sensitive to the fact it costs a lot of money to make a lot of money, it’s not all gravy, all the time. In other words, the one-hundred percent profit margin will remain a fantasy—at least until the next Republican president signs the slave labor mandate.

Besides, whatever happened to the small government ideal, anyway? Oh that’s right—that’s unless it can shovel a mountain of public cash into your sweaty, clutching hands. Got it.

It’s Christmas, folks. Companies like Motorola and Sears are never more vulnerable than now. We should strenuously and obstreperously not be okay with this.

Ever.

Ron Santo

I’m sorry, but I can’t see the belated election of Ron Santo to baseball’s Hall of Fame as anything but borderline cruel. Perhaps I’m afflicted with an undiagnosed case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe it’s the crass capitalism of Christmas.

Or maybe it’s the smug and exclusionary politics that kept an earnest, deserving ballplayer from the Hall for decades as he battled the diabetes that would eventually kill him.

None other than baseball-obsessive Bill James named Santo as one of the ten-best third basemen ever. Not of the 60s. Not of the modern era. Ever. How is it that someone so good remained excluded for so long?

There are a dearth of third basemen in the Hall. According to Baseball Almanac, just eleven. Only the position of catcher (thirteen) even comes close. Yet Ron Santo, nine-time All-Star, five-time Gold Glove winner, breaker of a sixty-year-old league assist record at the position somehow wasn’t good enough.

Third base is an extraordinarily difficult position to play. It is physically demanding, and as such, makes long-term success as a hitter (the primary criteria for entrance to the Hall of Fame) unlikely. Despite their often powerful builds, only two third basemen have ever surpassed 400 home runs. None have 3,000 hits.

Third base is a meat grinder. It devours baseball players.

There are only a few obvious choices at the position. Mike Schmidt. Brooks Robinson. Eddie Mathews. Pie Traynor.

While admittedly a shade below their stature, Santo was nevertheless the premier National League third basemen of his era, second only to Robinson in all of Major League Baseball. He was clearly and obviously a rare talent.

And coupled with his private struggle with diabetes, his success at one of sport’s most-difficult positions was remarkable. Ron Santo was given a life expectancy of twenty-five years. Think diabetes is a tough battle now? What do you think it was in 1964?

More than any of his quantifiable athletic gifts, Santo’s greatest asset was his heart. It was a relentless and powerful one.

Admittance to any type of club is invariably political. It is often no more than a popularity contest. And for inexplicable and unfathomable reasons, it was one Santo had to die to win.

Having spent fourteen of his fifteen years in baseball as a Chicago Cub, it is an irony Ron Santo no doubt appreciates.

Quit Happens

Good evening, Square Peggers.

And how are you? I hope this finds you in the very best of spirits. Fine of fettle and robust of mettle.

Yes, I am positively overflowing with good wishes this fine eve. And it is my wish to distribute this newfound treasure—my joy—to each and every one of you!

For when joy finds us, is it not our solemn duty to break off a piece and let everyone have a sip?

Perhaps I have mixed my metaphors. But let us not allow mere semantics to stand in the way of this joyous tsunami! Tarry not! For the moment must be flavored!

The source of this great (but by no means uncharacteristic) joy is the recent announcement that Herman Cain is dismantling his campaign and will not seek the office of president.

Oh great, good fortune! To whom, to what do I owe this wondrous occurrence of divine intervention? Hallelujah! Huzzah!

Strawberry-scented hand sanitizer and Sans-A-Belt slacks for everyone!

Let us take a look back. The Hermanator once spoke thusly:

"Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!"

La Piazza Gancio now speaks thisly:

“Don’t blame the media, don’t blame the other candidates. If you don’t have a campaign and you’re not the president, blame yourself!”

Of course, Herman has not done this. Nor is he ever likely to.

But by all means I should blame myself for the gutting of our economy by unimaginably wealthy Americans who have yet to face a single consequence for their indefensible actions.

Hypocrisy and the royal 'we' are alive and well. In fact, they have never been more alive or more well. I want to thank Herman for being the arrogant embodiment of entitlement that he is. I'll always remember him as the 'hands on' candidate.

And finally, a tip of the hat to Ms. Potts, curator of the Angry Historian, who correctly predicted on October 14th that Herman Cain wasn’t going anywhere near the presidency. She was right.

The Many Roads to 'No'

No one will ever confuse me with Leif Erickson or Juan Pizzaro. Not Vasco da Gama, Hernan Cortes or Christopher Columbus. And yet I too have discovered something. A place only rumored to exist. I have discovered hell.

How else to feel with days that begin like this?


La Piazza Gancio,


Thank you for your interest in ____'s Department Stores. We appreciate the time you took to consider us for employment at our store locations.

We have given your background and qualifications careful consideration in relation to the opportunity for which you've expressed interest and have determined that we are unable to match your qualifications to a position at this time. We would encourage you to continue to check snagajob.com for future opportunities.

Thank you again for your interest in ____'s and please accept our best wishes for success in your future career endeavors.


Best Regards,

Human Resources


At least it didn’t open with ‘Dear’.

It is unclear exactly what aspect of my background renders me ineligible for even seasonal, part-time employment. Yet knowing the Van Halen-like heights (remember no brown M&Ms?) corporate fickleness has reached, I am likely better off in the darkness of my ignorance.

But as an occasionally-sentient human being, questions persist.

I smile. I make eye contact. I speak in concise, direct sentences that answer the interviewer’s questions. I am nicely dressed. I am enthusiastic. I sit up straight, don’t fidget and even made everyone at a recent group interview belly laugh—twice. I am sober.

You read this blog—do I not ooze personality? Does charisma not spill from me like filling from a buttery, cinnamon-laced apple pie?

What’s not to like? Isn’t my pixie dust sparkly-enough?

How can prospective employers fail to see how I could lighten a customer’s mood, especially when said customer discovers half the items they’re shopping for are either out of stock, the wrong size, style or color? At 11:30 PM on a weeknight with just three shopping days left until Christmas?

I would be a two-legged Mai Tai. A warm mug of spiced cider. A pungent glass of Pinot Noir. No tipping required.

Perhaps I've been branded a flight risk. Since the majority of my employment has (thankfully) been for wages higher than what seasonal positions offer, this means I will vacate the position at first opportunity—as if there were any.

Then there is my college degree, which conveniently confirms to any would-be employer that I will be bored. This somehow differentiates me from the sullen, texting palm zombies already hired.

Bail is set at extended unemployment

Could it be that I fail to sufficiently impress the young women I am invariably interviewed by?

When asked why I want to work at the ________ store, perhaps I don’t become starry-eyed enough as I relate how working from midnight to eight AM the day after Thanksgiving for what can’t even be described as a living wage has been a dream of mine since I was a little boy.

Which presents yet-another another problem: I have a penis.

This provokes in me the unsettling feeling that to these women, drunk on some vague notion of girl-power, regard me as their enemy. Middle-aged white guys stand in the way of everything they want to be, and always have. Isn't this their chance for payback?

Just for a change, I’d like to receive a wan smile, a limp handshake and the complete avoidance of eye contact from a middle-aged white guy after an interview.

But the hideousness doesn’t end there.

That would be when friends, acquaintances and overheard conversations confirm that many of those deemed fit for seasonal slavery don’t even show up for their first day on the job, nor possess the integrity to even call employer number-one and inform them that they have accepted employment with employer number-two.

Were circumstances not so bleak, I would laugh and spit that these corporate shitheads get exactly what they deserve.

But money is oxygen, and I am suffocating.