My Favorite CDs of 2013

With my fiftieth year as a pop music consumer just completed and access to my blog regained, I shall henceforth set about naming my ten favorite albums of 2013 forthwith.

But first, a brief review.

Albums continued their sales decline, as our attention and time-challenged societies made singles their preferred mode of consumption. Retrospectives and archival live albums aimed at baby boomers continued to constitute an increasing percentage of album-length releases.

Ditto box sets and "re-imagined" re-issues, which at times seemed to endlessly recycle period albums into multi-disc extravaganzas costing hundreds of dollars.

But not all were wanton cash grabs.

My favorite box set was Fisherman’s Box, a six-disc chronicle of the protracted recording sessions which yielded the Waterboy’s 1988 LP Fisherman’s Blues. The band moves effortlessly from folk to blues to the sixties-inspired pop that Karl Wallinger specialized in after he left to form World Party.

A reviewer on Amazon called this the ‘Irish Basement Tapes’ and he wasn’t far off.

Given the magnificence of this music, you could be forgiven for wondering why the remainder of the Waterboy’s oeuvre isn’t more familiar. The vagaries of public taste, radio play and record company politics are the likely culprits (at least here in the U.S.), but whatever the Waterboy’s unfulfilled potential, Fisherman’s Box captures—however briefly—promise wildly and exuberantly fulfilled.

A tip of the hat goes to the multiple-disc edition of Bob Dylan's Self-Portrait, which shows this period to have been far-richer than some combination of Dylan and Columbia let on.

Robin Trower enjoyed a stellar solo career after leaving Procol Harum, plying Hendrix-inspired epics to rock audiences eager to continue that six-stringed ride.

State to State: Live Across America 1974 – 1980 offers an appealing cross section of live performances, including an exceptional 1974 show in Philadelphia. The inclusion of a fiery 1975 London show would make this just about perfect, but I’m not complaining.

And neither will you. It's the archival live album of the year.

In an era given to hip hop, rockified country and featherweight pop, rock refuses to die.

The following list reflects rock in all its current variants, along with examples of the rhythm and blues (admittedly of the blue-eyed variety) and country and western which flavored it along the way.

Time constraints forbid me from offering the capsule descriptions seen in years past. But I promise that all are worthy of your time and attention.


1. Big Scary – Not Art

2. White Denim – Corsicana Lemonade

3. Richard Thompson – Electric

4. Mogwai – Les Revenants Original Soundtrack

5. The Bamboos – Fever in the Road

6. Los Lobos – Disconnected in New York City

7. Waxahatchee – Cerulean Salt

8. The Veils – Time Stays, We Go

9. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – Old Yellow Moon

10. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories


Honorable Mention:

My Darling Clementine - The Reconciliation?

My Chicago Bulls Christmas Wish

One of the things sport taught me is the meaning of words like ephemeral and ethereal. Life is fragile. And short. And that no matter how indomitable something may appear, it is often little more than smoke curling through air. It takes only a faint breeze to disturb and redirect its trajectory.

In the spring of 2011, the Chicago Bulls were a young team on the rise. They had lucked into that elusive thing called chemistry, with talented, heady players who bought into a charismatic coach’s vision of how the game should be played. All of this was cemented by the skills of a nascent superstar named Derrick Rose.

Yes, the view from northeast Illinois was mighty sweet. The Miami Heat might be the team of today, but it was very hard to believe the Bulls weren’t the team of tomorrow. Yet two and-a-half years later, the team of tomorrow looks like the woulda shoulda coulda team of yesterday.

Derrick Rose’s future as an NBA point guard is very much in doubt after successive anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus injuries. It’s hard to look at him and not see Anfernee Hardaway or Grant Hill.

Small forward Luol Deng has already expressed his intent to explore free agency, following public questioning of his toughness and commitment. Power forward Carlos Boozer, signed to an enormous contract following the Bulls failed attempts to land either LeBron James or Dwyane Wade in the summer of 2010, will likely remain, but is untradeable and on the downside of a productive career.

Gritty point guard Kirk Hinrich is feeling the effects of multiple seasons spent sacrificing his body in the name of defense, leaving center Joakim Noah and reserve forward Taj Gibson as the Bulls’ sole long-term assets.

The window of opportunity that magically opens for certain combinations of players and coaches has silently and immutably closed. Run ragged by an unceasing succession of injuries, the formerly resilient Bulls are now exhausted and overwhelmed. It is a good thing it’s Christmas.

My Christmas wish for the Bulls begins with David Robinson’s foot.

You see, David Robinson was an elite professional basketball player. He was fast, strong and agile. He was a seven-foot center who could move with the speed and quickness of a much smaller man. He single-handedly turned the San Antonio Spurs into contenders, and quickly became one of the NBA’s most dominant players.

His greatest weakness was that he possessed the physiology of a human being.

On December 23rd, 1996, while playing in just his sixth game after recovering from an off-season back injury, Robinson suffered a broken foot. This not only ended his season, but effectively ended the Spurs’ as well. Without their stellar center and small forward Sean Elliot, they nose-dived to an NBA-worst 20 and 62 record.

But with Robinson’s injury and the Spurs’ dismal 1996/97 season came a blessing: the number-one pick in the 1997 NBA draft. And with it, the Spurs chose Tim Duncan, beginning a run of sixteen straight winning seasons which includes four NBA championships.

So as this scarred and ravaged edition of the Chicago Bulls picks its way through the schedule, the prospect of a high draft pick in next year’s draft might be the silver lining in what has become a very dark cloud. I’m not advocating tanking here; just holding out a carrot amid the wreckage of what was once a contender.

Merry Christmas.

The Vampires in Brooks Brothers Suits

In December of 2011, I posted a piece called Giving It Away. It was about corporate welfare in Illinois. In the seven-hundred days since, nothing has changed.

The state’s finances remain in ruins, critical legislation has not been passed, and the blood-sucking ghouls who inhabit our executive suites continue to approach the state for hand-outs.

With Christmas just under a month away, I thought it would be appropriate to post about the Illinois state legislature’s ongoing efforts at playing Santa:

In 2010, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling. Part of the fallout from the infamous Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision was that corporations possessed the same rights as individuals insofar as political advocacy is concerned.

And three years later, I agree. Corporations are people. So let’s start treating them as such.

In year-six of the Great Recession, U.S. corporations continue to approach state governments for hand-outs. An executive has only to play a few rounds of golf with officials from another state or municipality before legislators are scurrying to round-up a fresh batch of write-offs, deferments, loopholes and (nudge-nudge) “incentives”.

Yet conservatives continue to sputter and rage over the alleged over-taxation and over-regulation of these same corporations. The fact that corporate tax rates are a mere shadow of their nineteen-fifties selves, or that the corporate tax code is riddled with loopholes is irrelevant.

Where were they when Apple CEO Tim Cook testified that Apple’s tax rate on recent income of seventy-four billion dollars was two-percent? Exactly how is it that a corporation maintaining a post office box in some exotic tax haven (thereby exempting it from U.S. taxes) qualifies it as over-regulated?

Much less over-taxed?

While our elected representation pays requisite lip service to the vanishing middle-class and the mounting struggles of the working man every campaign cycle, they reliably enable corporations to duck tens of millions of dollars in taxes.

Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) provides a textbook example.

The food-processing and commodities-trading monolith is a glowing corporate success. They ranked twenty-seventh on the 2013 edition of Fortune magazine’s Fortune 500 list, with revenue of eighty-nine billion dollars.

Less-impressive is the fact they could teach Vito Corleone a thing or two about extortion.

ADM approached the state of Illinois—even as it lay emaciated and shrunken on its deathbed—and coyly curling a strand of hair around its fingers, intimated it might want to move. But they’re not sure where. It could be Dallas or St. Louis or even Chicago.

There are just so many places!

The Illinois General Assembly obediently responded. Its latest offer, while a reduction from the forty-million dollars ADM originally sought, is a big, fat giveaway to a company making a mountain of money even a professional athlete couldn’t imagine.

ADM feels it should be compensated for remaining in the intolerable backwater of Decatur, Illinois. Ask yourself: where are the well-heeled executive wives even supposed to shop?

From my vantage point, Archer Daniels Midland appears to be doing just fine. It’s a little tough to see that they need to be paid for anything apart from the services they render their customers. Their employees are doing a bang-up job, and I think ADM’s towering revenue is reward-enough for their judicious hiring.

(But if ADM truly feels unappreciated, I’d be happy to drop in and give their execs a hearty pat on the back.)

With a mountain of unpaid bills, an unfunded pension crisis that is the worst in the nation and bond ratings that are falling like interest in the Jonas Brothers, doesn’t Illinois have enough drama without yielding to the demands of a blood-sucking corporate parasite?

Exactly what should four-thousand jobs (the number of ADM employees in Decatur) cost—if anything? Furthermore, why pay ADM for hiring people who are already making vast amounts of money for them? Is there any conclusive proof that paying companies to stay outweighs the giveaways and tax forfeitures?

Furthermore, this legislation allows ADM to keep their employee’s income tax withholding, reason being that since there are years in which they have no tax obligation to the state, they are unable to take advantage of certain incentives.

Which is like asking Macy’s to compensate you because you weren’t able to use all their coupons.

Ostensibly, the bill will require ADM to create jobs, as well as maintain its current staffing levels. But despite living in the age of (ahem) over-regulated businesses, I have yet to see a government tell a corporation it couldn’t lay-off its employees. Or insist that it hire.

And neither have you.

When asked if he could guarantee that ADM would remain in Illinois after catching a glimpse of its early Christmas present, Greg Webb, their vice-president of government relations, could only issue a tepid “I don’t know about the guarantee part.”

Fuck you too, Greg.

This sucks for everyone—except Archer Daniels Midland. Taxpayers should never, ever be a corporate revenue stream.

Congress slashed unemployment benefits in August. Now we have the six-percent cut in food stamp (SNAP) benefits. Middle-class wages are flat. Benefits are disappearing—along with full-time jobs.

Tens of millions of people remain un—or under—employed as a result of the corporate-induced Great Recession, which I think we can all agree is just great.

Our Supreme Court declared that corporations are people, too. What I want to know is when do we start treating them like one?

My (Kind of) Hi-Tech Adventure

In the context of 2013, buying and installing a new printer is the technological equivalent of blowing your nose. Grab a tissue. Honk. Toss.

Simple.

So when my decade-old Lexmark printer ceased functioning, I assumed that replacing it would be routine.

But my inner cynic was not so easily swayed.

“Are you fucking serious? This is a computer. The concept of simple does not exist. Your computer was outdated by the time Bush began his second term. You’re up the creek without a paddle, pal.”

Shaken, I soldiered on. After all, my tech needs were very basic. All I needed was something that could faithfully duplicate whatever I had committed to Microsoft Word. I wouldn’t be demanding professional quality photo prints by remote from Angkor Wat with my iPhone.

My first choice was the HP Envy 4500. It seemed like the perfect fit between the limited abilities of my 2002 Dell Dimension 8200 and whatever I might be getting in the future. Plus, the chart on the outside of the box confirmed it was compatible with Windows XP.

But as Abbott and Costello once observed, the big print giveth, the small print taketh away.

Long story short, my computer refused to recognize the Envy 4500. This despite CD-ROMs, manufacturer web sites, downloads, workarounds and user forums. I even went under the hood and disabled things I never knew existed. All to no avail.

Of course, this warning didn’t exactly fuel my determination:

Continuing your installation of this software may impair or destabilize the correct operation of your system either immediately or in the future. Microsoft strongly recommends that you stop this installation now and contact the hardware vendor for software that has passed Windows logo testing.

So this was about logos? Couldn’t I just hire a graphics designer and have them develop one that was mutually appealing to HP and Microsoft?

I sighed. This was another item for the Does Not Compute list. A list of things that, while virtually incomprehensible to me, were facts of life in the senseless regions outside my brain.

Calls to HP’s 24/7 help desk netted only 24/7 messages that all available agents were busy, but that my call was very important to them. Of course, it wasn’t important-enough to adequately staff their call center, but that’s another story for another day.

As a HP spokesperson no doubt would have told me, it was this very lack of support that had made my HP printer so affordable. Having learned that when I push my luck it frequently pushes back, I abandoned the installation.

On returning the Envy, the twenty-somethings at the local big box store took one look at the gray in my hair and assumed the worst. They clearly took me for a moron. Or a technophobe.

Couldn’t they see I was the bastard offspring of Wozniak, Gates and Jobs? What was wrong with them? Besides, if I was a moron, would I have refused their suggestion that a tech install it for just $29.95?

Once my credit card (and my thinking) had been adjusted, I determined it must’ve been the wireless capacity that was subverting the installation. Like my computer, I needed something simpler.

My next victim was the HP 2512. It had great reviews, and looked like the Luddite-approved printer my computer was insisting upon. But after another day-off disappeared, a thought broke through the stony incomprehension of my ignorance: I needed to try another brand.

Yeah, that was it.

Armed with the kind of optimism only the truly naive can harbor, I returned to the big box store where I had purchased the 2512. I was determined to find a really basic printer.

And by basic, I mean one that only recently had been configured to work with electricity. Was there any chance Gutenberg had entered the computer printer game?

Fate led me to the Canon MG2520. It sat forlorn, a $29.95 misfit on a shelf full of machines that could do everything except your laundry. I scanned its box carefully, making sure it was a printer without ambition.

Copy, scan, print. Nothing more. Nothing less. Perfect.

I rode a wave of happy ignorance home, confident I had finally found the right printer. The third time is always the charm.

Isn’t it?

On opening the box, this seemed to be the case. For starters, the Canon didn’t require that a man with man-sized hands reach into a tiny space better-suited for a ten-year-old's to remove packing tape from pieces that, even without said tape, had all the mobility of a death row felon.

Secondly, the requisite pan-cultural sheet with illustrations depicting the actions required for set-up actually used drawings that resembled my purchase.

Even with a pool nowhere in sight, this was going swimmingly!

On and on it went, my confidence (or relief) zooming like a rocket. Any higher and I would need an oxygen mask.

I needn’t have worried.

At the point where I was to install the drivers, my computer displayed the same poor manners it had shown the two HP printers. It refused to acknowledge them. No matter how I attempted the install, it resembled an international feud at the UN.

"I beg of you. Will the secretary general please recognize the drivers from Canon?"

"No."

In a spasm of desperation no one installing a printer should ever feel, I attempted to defy Microsoft and their skull-and-crossbones message. “You want unstable? I’ll show you unstable!” I muttered as I clicked the button marked ‘Continue Anyway’.

Despite the promise of gleeful insurrection, clicking the button only returned me to the original screen and a second chance to make the “right” decision. This was a twisted and infuriating re-run of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

I could practically hear Regis Philbin. “Is that your final answer? Are you sure?”

With the discovery that Canon’s help desk was only open Monday through Friday, a household project I had been putting off suddenly seemed very appealing. As would crucifixion.

On Monday morning, a weary male voice greeted me. It wordlessly intoned “What do you want?”

After outlining my experiences to the rep, I obediently inserted the CD-ROM into the disc drive and initiated the install. “Same old thing” I smugly informed him.

In direct opposition to the manufacturer’s instructions, he had me do things. Ignore things. Defy Microsoft. Confident I could pursue legal action if my hard drive crashed, I consented.

Only this time, the rebellion was a success. The drivers had not only been installed, but my computer was acknowledging them like an honors student at a Miss Manners academy.

But I had questions. Why, despite my computer meeting the detailed system requirements listed on each of the three printers, had it been such a headache getting them to work?

The rep responded. “Sometimes, an operating system like XP will confibulate the central processing unit, causing retrofluxes in the random access memory which prevents, ugh, secondary collateral processes from initiating a world takeover.”

Or something like that.

“I see” I lied and thanked him for his time.

Twelve car trips, nine days, three models from two manufacturers and one USB cable later, I finally had a functional printer.

My streamlined and supercharged information age existence could now continue.

Riffing on the Movies

It’s a bit odd that I don’t post more often about movies, considering their profound impact on me. So many of the most fulfilling moments of my life have been spent in darkened theaters, given over to an absorbing story line playing out on a giant silver screen.

How could I forget the nights of my youth, taking in the cinematic wonders of the thirties, forties and fifties flickering for free on late night TV? Or seeing The Godfather, Raging Bull, The Last Emperor and The Painted Veil in a theater? They looked like beautiful gems on a black velvet pillow.

Like you, I have my favorites. In addition to the above, there’s Out of the Past, Vertigo, Picnic at Hanging Rock, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Last Picture Show, The Wrestler, La Strada, Network, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Casablanca. And Fargo, The Hustler, A Streetcar Named Desire and Ikiru. And Rashomon and Citizen Kane and Mulholland Drive.

Can I really ignore Lawrence of Arabia, Chinatown, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or 12 Angry Men? Or Mr. Roberts, The Shawshank Redemption and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

Hell no.

Just to make it an even thirty, let’s throw in His Girl Friday and My Cousin Vinny. (I don’t broadcast the fact, but yes—I like to laugh. Sometimes.)

Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski are geniuses. John Huston, Werner Herzog, Steven Spielberg, Federico Fellini, Sidney Lumet and Peter Weir aren’t far behind.

Which leaves out Sydney Pollack, the Coen brothers, Stanley Kubrick, Bryan Forbes, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, John Schlesinger, Robert Altman and Anthony Minghella!

Crap. No wonder I don’t post more about film.

As best I can, I reckon I have seen approximately 1,057 movies in their entirety. The decade most often represented is the eighties, which makes sense since a.) I was young, and b.) had disposable income.

I have seen more of Hitchcock's films than any other director’s, and find it very appropriate that, given the extravagant imagery of his films, Fellini died on Halloween.

In a really peculiar bit of coincidence, the countries which produce my favorite cars are also the country of origin for my favorite foreign-language films (Japan, Italy and Germany).

I tend to like movies featuring conflicted and troubled individuals. Individuals facing dilemmas, moral and otherwise.

That said, I love film noir. It is, without a doubt, my favorite genre. And for my money, Out of the Past is the ne plus ultra of the species. Razor-sharp dialogue, great cinematography and one of the best performances of Robert Mitchum’s career.

Not surprisingly, the female lead--Jane Greer--is my femme fatale of all-time. Her Kathie Moffat has a heart colder than a stripper’s smile. To borrow a line from the Gene Hackman movie Heist, she could talk her way out of a sunburn.

This is also one of Kirk Douglas’ earliest films, and for an actor lampooned for his over-the-top performances, he turns in a taut, no-frills one here, conveying a violent menace barely contained by a cool exterior.

OK. That's the end of this post. If you’re of a mind to, leave your favorites in the comments section. I am nothing if not curious.

A Tale of Two Cities

No one in St. Louis expected to be celebrating the Cardinals so soon after the free-agent departure of Albert Pujols. The loss of the Lou Gehrig clone was expected to impact the team for years, especially combined with the retirement of manager slash savant Tony LaRussa.

But in the two years since, all the Cardinals have done is located another brilliant manager (Mike Matheny), successfully replaced perhaps the most dominant player of the oughts and won.

In their first PP (post-Pujols) season, the Cardinals won a very respectable 88 games. Using a modest wild card slot as a launching pad, they took the eventual-champion San Francisco Giants all the way to a seventh game in the 2012 NLCS. (This after defeating the team with the best record in major league baseball in the second round.)

They took no chances this year, winning more games (97) than any team in the National League and tying the surprising Boston Red Sox for the major-league lead. After dispatching the Pittsburgh Pirates, they stand just one victory away from their fourth World Series in ten years.

In the meantime, the once-invincible Pujols looks decidedly human in an Angels uniform, having hit just .275 over the past two seasons with a .485 slugging percentage. By comparison, his eleven seasons in St. Louis netted a batting average of .328 and a slugging percentage of .617.

Worse, the Angels are stuck with Pujols through 2021 (when he turns 41), at a cost of $240 million. Given these two very different outcomes, you could be forgiven for thinking the most popular joke in St. Louis goes like this:

Moe: Knock knock.

Joe: Who’s there?

Moe: Albert.

Joe: Albert who?

Seeing the Light

Some combination of you and me and us are going about this all wrong. There should be no more grieving faces. No more makeshift memorials. No more eulogies. No more somber testimonials.

The next time a dozen people have the gall to get in the way of a constitutionally-protected individual exercising their second amendment rights, we need to seize it as an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade.

We need to expose the silver lining lurking in this cloud. We need to rejoice.

This isn’t a tragedy. It’s an expression of constitutional strength. Our second amendment is alive and kicking—even if twelve innocent people aren't.

As America’s BFF (NRA head Wayne LaPierre) put it yesterday, this isn’t a case of wanton gun violence further cheapening life in what many of us pretend is the greatest country in the world; it’s a tragic example of the urgent need for better security.

Which is kind of like saying it wasn’t the overflowing toilet that ruined your wooden floor, it was the fact the water happened to be wet.

(Wayne is the Super Fly of semantics. He splits hairs with the facile ease that Enrico Fermi once split atoms.)

So. Freed of our burdens and imbued with the knowledge that in Wayne's world, we need only fear not having enough guns, let us sing. Let us clap our hands and raise our voices in celebration.

The second amendment has never been more potent. Let us lift the world off its axis with our newfound joy. No more tears. No more regret.

We possess the means to kill, and kill we shall.