Losing My Edge

Losing My Edge - LCD Soundsyst...

I wish I was an extra in Slacker, that I was seeing the Replacements in '84 in Minneapolis and that it was 1905 in Peoria, that Wire was the biggest band from the '70s and Starship never existed. I wish Danger Mouse would stop trying to collaborate with all my favorite bands and that James Mercer would reform the Shins. I wish it was a Thursday night in 2004 and I was heading to Andiamos, that I was a freshman in college and that I was forming a post-pop electro/alt-dancewave punkcore proto-disco seminalchill band before sharing a cigarette with Jim Jarmusch at some crap diner in NY. I wish hip-hop maintained its DIY ethos and that Clear Channel was bought by an independently wealthy businessman and burned to the ground. I wish vintage analogue synthesizers weren't out of my price range and that I had the time and energy to read. I wish the Dormitory's jukebox was free and that "This is Happening" was out today and it didn't have "Drunk Girls" on it. I wish Yeasayer could write more than 5 good songs for an album, that nearly every good record this year wasn't completely front-loaded and that (often meaningless) NSFW music videos would stop getting such easy publicity for (what's now) standard-practice titties and gore [I'm looking you M.I.A., Flaming Lips, Yeasayer, Girls, Erykah Badu, No Age, Matt and Kim, Massive Attack, The Kills, etc (dammit they just won again)] I wish there was a performance venue in town to draw indie acts, that my hipster mailman would stop taking my issue of Paste every month that I then have to call for a replacement copy of (which has also disappeared once). I wish I was hearing Elvis Costello's "My Aim is True," Otis Redding's "Otis Blue," Tom Waits "Heart of Saturday Night," Pixies "Doolittle," Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain," Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," and Beck's "Odelay" for the first time again. I wish I wasn't nostalgic.

Scavenging

Here's all the best stuff I found on Stereogum and other places today:

1. This benefit album is pretty sick: the cover artists are mostly covering the seminal acts they are always compared to Beck singing Dylan, Hold Steady singing the Boss, etc

http://www.warchild.org.uk/heroes/tracklist

2. Unreleased Arcade Fire track:
http://stereogum.com/archives/new-arcade-fire-lenin_049202.html

3. New My Morning Jacket track here:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/148858-new-music-my-morning-jacket-el-caporal-stream

4. I'm not a big fan of Scarlett Johansson's baritone, or her Tom Waits cover CD, but here is her covering some Jeff Buckley song. Looking at that picture posted of her while listening to the song makes it a little bit, um, more enjoyable.

http://stereogum.com/archives/scarlett-johansson-covers-jeff-buckley_048421.html

Me, middle school again

I dusted off my copy of Cake's platinum-selling, yet still under-appreciated 1996 album "Fashion Nugget." It brought me back to getting off the school bus, zoned in on the tunes squirting out the Walkman into my ear drums through some big-ass headphones as I walked down the hallway extra slow, sneering at my classmates with an undeserved sense of cultural superiority. Nostalgia's a bitch, and I felt like making the playlist I would have at that age if I had a CD burner.

1) Cake - Nugget
2) Cake - Italion Leather Sofa
3) Beck - Devil's haircut
4) Beck - Where It's At
5) Rage Against the Machine - No Shelter
6) Rage Against the Machine - Bulls on Parade
7) Eels - Mr. E's Beautiful Blues
8) Eels - Grace Kelly Blues
9) Pearl Jam - Daughter
10) Ben Folds Five - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
11) Ben Folds Five - Battle of Who Could Care Less
12) Nirvana - Man Who Sold the World
13) Green Day - Hitchin' A Ride
14) Green Day - Long View
15) Blink 182 - Dammit
16) Dave Matthews Band - So Much to Say
17) Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band - Blue on Black
18) Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
19) Led Zeppelin - Black Dog
20) Nirvana - In Bloom

An Album for Every Year

This is an interesting excercise that has been making the blog circles. Pick the best album from every year you have been alive. The 2000s and '90s were easy.
But my '80s music knowledge is pretty spotty. I know the albums by my favorite groups and the pop and new wave singles, but as for what was then called "College rock" I don't know more than few songs by The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cure, Smiths, Pogues, Nick Cave, Pixies, Husker Du, etc. Same goes with some of the critically acclaimed pop artists like Prince and Paul Simon, who supposedly have solid albums to back up the singles. I only have two ears, and it takes plenty of energy keeping up with all the new stuff, let alone continue to educate my self on the '80s.
If only I could write this list going back to the 70s and 60s, I could have a more informed selection.
The next installment will be an album for every year before I was born.


1985 Talking Heads - Little Creatures

1986 Beastie Boys - License to Ill

1987 REM - Document

1988 N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton

1989 Black Crowes - Shake your money Maker
Close Second - Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
Honorable Mention - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mother's Milk

1990 A Tribe Called Quest - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

1991 Nirvana - Nevermind
Close Second - Pearl Jam - Ten (of course)

1992 R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
Close Second - Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
Honorable Mention - Eric Clapton - Unplugged

1993 Wu Tang Clan - Enter the 36 Chambers
Close Second - Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Honorable Mentions - Nirvana - In Utero
Pearl Jam - Vs.
Snoop Doggy Dog - Doggystyle

1994 Weezer - (Blue Album)
Close Second - Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Honorable Mention - Beck - Mellow Gold

1995 Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Close Second - Radiohead - the Bends
Honorable Mention - Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five

1996 Beck - Odeley
Close Second - Eels - Beautiful Freak
Honorable Mentions - Cake - Fashion Nugget
Wilco - Being There
Weezer - Pinkerton
Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire

1997 Radiohead - OK Computer

1998 Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Honorable Mentions - Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Beck - Mutations

1999 Wilco - Summerteeth

2000 Deltron - Deltron 3030
Honorable Mention - Radiohead - Kid A

2001 Spoon - Girls Can Tell
Honorable Mention - Ryan Adams - Gold

2002 Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Close Second - People under the Stairs - O.S.T.
Honorable Mention - White Stripes - White Blood Cells
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Black Keys - Big Come Up
Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow

2003 White Stripes - Elephant
Close Second - The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Honorable Mention - Kings of Leon - Youth & Young Manhood

2004 Black Keys - Rubber Factory
Close Second - Wilco - A Ghost is Born

2005 My Morning Jacket - Z
Honorable Mentions - Kings of leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak

2006 Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Honorable Mentions - The Black Angels - Passover
Tapes n Tapes - The Loon
Decemberists - The Crane Wife

2007 Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Honorable Mentions - Radiohead - In Rainbows
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Okkervil River - The Stage Names
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
Panda Bear - Person Pitch
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

2008 Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes