PlaybackSTL: Best of 2008

Craziest Things I've Seen All Year

1. Kid next to me in the Toadies mosh pit getting a concussion from a stage diver

Since the demise of Mississippi Nights and the Creepy Crawl, it's gotten slightly harder lately to get caught in a mosh. The last place I expected to find one was at the Pageant, but damned if the Toadies didn't make it happen. During their sold out show in late July, the room reached a delicious fever pitch that threatened to erupt at any moment. I was perched against the gate at the front of the pit, screaming Todd Lewis's lyrics back into his face while being violated from behind by a surging mass of humanity, when some random goon launched himself from the stage and landed smack into the face of the kid on my right. There was a crack as the kid's head met the floor, and then he was pulled to his feet by his friends and shuffled away by security. Rumor has it that there was an ambulance idling out front during the show; I'd like to think that it wasn't even for him.

2. Heath Ledger performing a magic trick

Technically, his first screen appearance came during the opening bank robbery, but to those of us assembled at the Moolah for the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight, the Joker didn't really make an entrance until he came strolling into a mob meeting a few minutes later. After months of feverish anticipation of Heath Ledger's already legendary performance, the crowd was amped to respond to even the most simple onscreen affectation, but nothing could have prepared us for his dispatchment of a grunt who happened onto the wrong end of a pencil. To say that the place exploded would be an understatement -- it was the equivalent of Clark Gable's revealing the bare chest beneath his shirt while dropping the bomb on Nagasaki. In that one moment, Heath exceeded all of his own hype, and in the process set a new standard for cinematic malevolence that has kept us little fanboys in thrall ever since.

3. Fatal hit-and-run bike accident in Colorado Springs

The single greatest night of my southwest road trip this summer took place in the least likely place imaginable: Colorado Springs, an epicenter of evangelism located an hour south of Denver. After reuniting with a friend of mine who moved out there two years ago, my companion and I were treated to the spectacle of the New Life Church, the famed congregation from which Ted Haggard was deposed in 2006 for being a meth-smoking hypocrite. I was familiar with the Rocky Mountain megachurch from the documentary-cum-horror flick Jesus Camp, but I still found myself in awe of the sheer magnitude of the place. After nosing through its various auditoriums and atria, we decided to scoot after witnessing the end of a Christian rock concert, and thus headed up to the mountains to find an overlook of the city.

The path to the overlook was almost absurdly labyrinthine, winding through dimly lit off-roads and indistinguishable clumps of suburbia. As we traversed the narrow side streets leading up the hill, we began to notice road blocks and flashing lights. It was mere seconds before we happened across an intersection that was cordoned off by police, where through the red and blue we could make out the figure of a body on the ground covered by a sheet, with a mangled bicycle lying nearby. The scene was obviously fresh: We could still see the remnants of the accident all around. I had never seen a recent death in such close proximity, and the image seared itself into my memory. We quickly turned and found an alternate route, remarking upon the odd circumstances that had brought us to such a scene. The overlook proved well worth the trouble, providing a beautiful view of a small burg nestled under looming mountains and a starry sky, but its majesty was tainted by the bizarre events that had preceded it. I found out later that the accident had actually involved two cyclists, both of whom were killed by an elderly woman driving under the influence of barbituates and morphine. The destruction she had wrought had provided me with one of the strangest and most ineffable sights of my entire year.

4. Sidewalk party in front of Macro Sun, complete with llama and burro

Working in the Loop provides one with the opportunity to witness all manner of unusual things. During my brief stint at the Tivoli in 2002, I learned that there was no better place to people-watch than from inside the box office, where on Saturday nights one could be treated to the sights and sounds of the Hare Krishna hootenanny outside the Foot Locker. Similarly, my six-month tenure at Subterranean Books exposed me to all sorts of situations to which I might not have been privy otherwise. The greatest took place during the transition from spring to summer, when the street was filled with people and the energy was palpable. Our friends at Macro Sun decided to throw a sidewalk party to drum up business, and in doing so they pulled out all the stops. Just when I had started to tune out the sound of the belly dancer's finger cymbals, I heard the low bleating of what sounded like a goat. I poked my head outside and discovered a llama prancing about on a leash, followed closely by a burro. The confusion on my face was mirrored by the confusion on theirs, and I was left with a host of unanswered questions and a husky odor that permeated the store. The animals were tied to the tree on the sidewalk so that onlookers might be encouraged to come forth and gawk, and there they stayed for an hour or so -- never once fitting in with their environment, and yet somehow assimilating perfectly.

5. Black man being elected President

I wish I had stuck around Meshuggah for the party. Supposedly, Delmar exploded when the election was called. Instead, I spent the evening at my mom's house in Dogtown, where my pithy noisemakers were the only sound on the whole street.

Best Comebacks

1. Idealism

I have long lamented the complacency that defines my generation. Having grown up in the sunlight of the Clinton administration, when the economy reached unprecedented highs and pop culture was defined by irony and apathy, kids my age never seemed to have a defining issue around which to convene, let alone any impetus to rebel. During the long slog that was the Bush regime, there were some brief flashes of discontent, but even these settled down once it became clear that the war wasn't going to end just because a few protestors camped out in Crawford. It took an unapologetically liberal, half-African senator from Illinois to finally galvanize the youth base, and in doing so, he rejuvenated the electorate as a whole. The presidential election of 2008 often resembled a bad sitcom, with every week providing more absurd late night material, but Barack Obama's relentless adherence to his message of hope remained a stalwart rallying point for millions of disillusioned Americans. His epic sweep into the history books proved definitively that times had changed, and that the morning in America which Reagan had promised might finally come to pass.

2. Portishead

After eleven long years, Geoff Barrow and company finally released their third excursion into the depths of trip-hop. Bearing influences as diverse as Edith Piaf and Silver Apples, the album (simply titled Third) did its best to make sense of an electronic landscape that had been transformed by the likes of DJ Shadow and Radiohead. Its crackling industrial moments bore little similarity to the lethargic Portishead of old, but the band's trademark gloomy romanticism (courtesy of lyricist/siren Beth Gibbons) remained prominent. Portishead's return to the fray may have met some expectations while dashing others, but after such a long absence, a completely satisfactory product might well have been impossible. When all was said and done, it was nice just to have them back.

3. Robert Downey, Jr.

In 2008, having spent the better part of the decade making up for his five-year lost weekend, Robert Downey, Jr. finally reclaimed his rightful place at the top tier of the Hollywood gentry with a trio of hit movies. When he ushered in the summer blockbuster season with the spectacular Iron Man, it seemed only fitting that the fallen wunderkind should portray a boy genius forced to fight his way back to his former glory. His subsequent roles in Charlie Bartlett and Tropic Thunder were met with less acclaim, but the die had already been cast: Chaplin was back, and he was all out of bubblegum.

4. Futurama

In the pantheon of great shows cancelled before their time, only a select few garner exhibition in the main hall: My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development...and Futurama. Matt Groening's paean to the grand clichés of science fiction elicited instant adoration from a minute but devoted audience, but its brilliance and significance were lost on studio execs expecting another out-of-the-box smash like The Simpsons. 20th Century Fox pulled the plug after four exceptional seasons, but the success of the rejuvenated Family Guy and the tireless appeals of the Futurama fanbase resulted in a trio of straight-to-DVD feature films released sequentially. The show's writers took advantage of the lack of constraints imposed by the 22-minute episodic format, crafting epic stories that dealt with everything from Fry's millennium-long love for Leela to a rip in the very fabric of the universe, but the show's diehard fans still bayed at the door for its return to TV. Who knows? Maybe they'll win. It worked for Stewie.

5. Thermoreactive clothing

During the convergence of glitz and grunge that occurred as the ‘80s gave way to the ‘90s, there was a special brand of cool that could only be attained by having someone leave their handprint on your shirt. Hypercolor tees were the textile equivalent of the Swatch: An oddball confluence of high concept and mass appeal, with enough of an edge to play just as well on MTV as in Peoria. Alas, like their eye-gouging cousin the snap bracelet, Hypercolor clothes were doomed to obsolescence. Following a class-action lawsuit filed by Japanese consumers who were left with irreparable changes to their skin tone on account of thermochromatic underwear, Hypercolor manufacturer Generra was forced out of business in 1993, leaving behind a legacy of miscolored clothing that never quite looked right but was nonetheless cooler than tie-dye.

Fifteen years later, with the ‘90s revival beginning to bloom, thermoreactive wear is making its way back into public consciousness. In classic ironic fashion, however, it's now being touted as haute couture, with designers such as Henry Holland charging hundreds of dollars for the privilege of dressing up like a mood ring. American Apparel has released a more economy-aware variant of the classic Hypercolor shirt, which in all likelihood will never attain the iconic status of its predecessor; nevertheless, the mere fact that you can once again ruin your clothes forever by simply ironing them should be cause for celebration.

Most Overrated Pop Culture Phenomena

1. Twilight

As if the 'tween market weren't grating enough, Gen X alumnus Stephanie Meyer saw fit to unleash a florid melodrama that wed the gothic window dressing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the vacuous intrigue of The O.C. Released just as the core Harry Potter acolytes began to deal with hormones and acne, the Twilight series took middle academia by storm, selling millions of copies worldwide and providing a new unattainable ideal for lovelorn teen girls everywhere. In a definitive usurpation of Hollywood's reliable 14- to-19-year-old male demographic, the Twilight movie dominated box office receipts upon its release in November; suddenly, vampire kids were everywhere, "stupid lamb" had entered the national lexicon, and Robert Pattison had become an overnight sex god. And everyone who wasn't in love with Edward Cullen found themselves wishing they could drive a stake right through his heart.

2. The Olympics

From the moment Chinese officials decreed a change in the toilet facilities throughout the Olympic village to accommodate Westerners who didn't want to stoop over the can, it was clear that the 2008 Summer Olympics would be an entirely different animal. The games provided China with a chance to air out the stink of their deplorable human rights record by hosting emissaries from all over the world in the name of unity, and they made it clear during the opening ceremonies that they weren't messing around. But their nationalistic spotlight was hogged by an amphibious Baltimorean named Michael Phelps, who dominated the swimming events, broke every Olympic record in existence, and managed to cure cancer in between laps. For the better part of the summer, the national dialogue consisted almost solely of Phelps' flawless physique and superhuman caloric intake, and he quickly found his way onto Wheaties boxes and SNL. But to those who couldn't care less about athletics, the Olympics were just another minor diversion from China's ongoing dismissal of international law.

3. "Pay What You Want"

Downloading media content for free has been the national pastime since the advent of Napster in 2000. The rise in peer-to-peer programs opened a Pandora's Box of illegal delights which the RIAA, MPAA and FBI have tried desperately ever since to extinguish, but as the trend grew more ubiquitous and media conglomerates more out of touch with the times, the artistic community learned to utilize the online network for their own ends. The underground success and mainstream assimilation of such flagrantly illegal musicians as Danger Mouse and Girl Talk proved that the market had changed since the litigation-happy days of John Oswald and Negativland, when the record industry still had the clout to squelch even the slightest affront to its Draconian system of copyright law. With a perfect storm brewing, it was only a matter of time before the major players took part.

Radiohead found themselves in a unique position in mid-2007. They had just completed their seventh studio album, In Rainbows, but their contract with Capitol had been allowed to expire. Thus, they were offered the option of signing to another label for the album's distribution, or doing it the old-fashioned way and putting it out themselves. When Wilco was faced with this decision in 2004, they chose the former. Radiohead chose the latter. Their official website became a portal for their new music, allowing fans the chance to download it directly from the band; the gimmick, however, was that they offered a business model in which those who partook of the music could pay whatever they wanted for it. To an outraged record industry, still reeling from Prince's free distribution of his most recent album, Planet Earth, it was tantamount to treason. But for Radiohead fans, long familiar with the band's interactive online experiments, it was a natural progression. The band also offered a box set with bonus goodies for those willing to cough up real cash, but the main event took place online. The album was only available for a short while before being removed from the servers in preparation for an official release, but the damage had already been done. Subsequent releases by Nine Inch Nails and others further impacted the potato Radiohead had stuck up the RIAA's tailpipe, but it was In Rainbows that made the press. Alas, everyone who had benefited from the peer-to-peer revolution knew that this day had been a long time coming.

4. Sarah Palin

Not since Dan Quayle had a vice-presidential candidate provided such sublime late night fodder. With her Marge Gunderson drawl and supreme telegenicity, Sarah Palin sashayed her way into the annals of political serendipity with unprecedented hubris and panache. The press went wild for Caribou Barbie, but the truth was that there was nothing of substance beneath the bouffant. Her disastrous interview with Katie Couric and subsequent embarrassment at the VP debate validated suspicions that she was nothing more than a cynical ploy by the Republican party to snap up the female voters they supposed had been disenfranchised by Hillary Clinton's defeat to Barack Obama, and her utter annihilation at the hands of Tina Fey destroyed any chance of her being taken seriously as a politician.

There were a few scary weeks in which the spectacle of her evangelical convictions governing world policy seemed all too possible, but the election results made it clear that the majority was no longer going to be swayed by the Republicans' usual tactics. If she doesn't succeed in furthering her political career, then hopefully Palin will retreat to her outpost in Wasilla, where she can keep an eye out for Russian bombers while teaching little Tripp Easton how to shoot them down.

Mark Oliver Everett - Things the Grandchildren Should Know

Mark Everett is one of those fortunate individuals who is capable of transforming personal tragedy into a grand universal statement. Equal parts Beck Hansen, Wayne Coyne, and Elliott Smith, Everett was one of the key musicians who offered a refuge from the pop miasma of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The very essence of art as therapy, Everett’s music is unflinching in its honesty and unapologetic in its ambition, the perfect antidote to the counterfeit emotion and anemic production that typify much of mainstream music.

Things the Grandchildren Should Know, Everett’s first foray into print, relates the story of his fractured upbringing and his hard-earned success in the music industry. In the vein of such recent memoirs as Running With Scissors and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Everett spins a tale of severe familial dysfunction with the gallows wit of one who has spent a lifetime in the trenches. The son of an emotionally impenetrable quantum mechanic father and an extremely unstable mother, Everett spent his childhood in search of a solid foundation upon which to ground himself, finding instead only the laissez-faire attitude of his parents and his beloved but equally damaged older sister, Liz. His teen years were thus spent in turmoil, as he struggled to define himself against the machinations of the school system and the redneck quagmire of northern Virginia, finding solace only in writing off-kilter pop songs about his experiences. He finally escaped to California in his mid-twenties, but his arrival in Hollywood during the height of hair metal proved to be ill-timed, precipitating years of recording alone in a series of dingy apartments, volleying between menial jobs and the occasional glimpse of label interest, until he finally broke big with his band the Eels in 1996.

It is here that the story hits its stride, and Everett’s life became a relentless barrage of extremes. Just as he was enjoying his long-awaited success with the Eels’ debut album Beautiful Freak, his sister finally succeeded in ending her life, mere months before their mother succumbed to a prolonged and dehumanizing bout with cancer. Almost overnight, Everett found himself the sole surviving member of his family, and was forced to decide between continuing down his chosen path or ending everything. His solution was to channel his personal holocaust into his music, resulting in the Eels’ 1998 masterpiece Electro-shock Blues, one of the most glorious and life-affirming testimonials ever recorded. Having cemented his mission to stay alive in order to create, Everett spent the next ten years learning to appreciate both the highs and the lows, finding solace in the fleeting moments and producing some excellent tunes along the way.

In the same manner as his lyrics, Everett’s prose unloads his emotional baggage in direct but clever language. (A typical single-sentence paragraph: “One day the man with the big Charles Manson beard punched Liz in the face and she moved back in with us.”) He makes it clear from the outset that he has no interest in “flowery shit”, sparing the reader from having to slog through a tale that needs no overselling. This makes for a quick and entertaining read, interspersed with tributes to his crazy ex-girlfriends and an abundance of choice one-liners. Like the music of the Eels, Things the Grandchildren Should Know is highly inspirational without ever being maudlin. Everett closes the book with a glance toward the future he once never allowed himself to contemplate, coming to terms with the knowledge that he has no idea what lies ahead.

Inglourious Basterds: Motion Picture Soundtrack

The hipster intelligentsia who make up Tarantino’s core audience have always risen to the challenge that his wildly eclectic soundtracks have posed. These releases are treated as an event in themselves, often as illuminating as the films they are meant to promote, and have served as a crash course in esoterica for both his loyal fan base and pop culture at large (the enormous cultural capital and subsequent career revival afforded to Dick Dale being the most prominent example). In a sense, he has achieved the greatest ambition of every mix tape aficionado: to have his tastes celebrated by and disseminated among a mass audience.

His most recent film, Inglourious Basterds, marks a sharp departure from his previous work, and its accompanying compilation follows suit. The sequencing of the album reflects the chronology of the film, its fourteen tracks serving as a mirror of the storyline. Thankfully, like a hip-hop producer excising skits for the sake of concision, Tarantino refrains from including the sound bite bumpers that have bogged down his previous releases. Rather than providing context for the music, these ham-handed segues seemed instead to indulge a poorly hidden infatuation with his own dialogue (the primary exception being Steven Wright’s droning radio banter in Reservoir Dogs). However, the pacing of Inglourious Basterds benefits only marginally from this cohesion; the music exhibits a more languid and less diverse side of Tarantino than usual, a consequence of its accompanying his most mature and understated film to date. Those who thrilled to the super sounds of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill might well be disappointed by such restraint.

Inglourious Basterds sees Tarantino finally giving free rein to his adoration of Morricone, at which he had previously only hinted; here, four epic tracks receive glowing treatment within the film, each used to bolster a defining sequence. The rest of the instrumental pieces harken back to the Spaghetti Westerns and grindhouse features that have informed all of his films to date, anachronism be damned. Of the five tracks to feature vocals, three of them are period-appropriate pieces sung in French or German. The two exceptions are Billy Preston’s “Slaughter”, used as a sly instrumental cue for the character of Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, and David Bowie’s high camp “Putting Out the Fire”, used to accompany Shoshanna’s preparation for the inferno at the Nazi premiere. Tarantino’s exhumation of the latter two tracks--the themes to Jack Starrett’s blaxpoitation revenge flick of the same name and Paul Schrader’s regrettable remake of Cat People, respectively--provides a jarring counterpoint to the bucolic feel of the rest of the score, as if to assure the audience that the director of Death Proof hasn’t strayed too far from his base.

The film’s pseudo-historical air permeates every aspect of the soundtrack, from the “Vitaphonic High Fidelity” label on the sleeve to the faux water damage throughout the liner notes. Most notably, several of the album’s tracks were lifted straight from vinyl, and retain their original cracks and pops; such a self-conscious device serves the dual function of contributing to the film’s historical context while showing off Tarantino’s considerable record collection. Alas, not even this elbow nudge can be taken at face value: “The Man With the Big Sombrero”, despite carrying all the earmarks of a classic 78, is in fact a cover of a June Havoc tune by American composer Michael Andrew and vocalist Samantha Shelton, the former best known for his reworking of Tears For Fears’s “Mad World” for Donnie Darko. It is this aural sleight of hand which best encapsulates the Tarantino aesthetic: an affectionate tribute executed so faithfully as to be indistinguishable from the real thing to all but the most attentive. Tarantino has built his entire career upon the conceit that great artists steal, and Inglourious Basterds is his definitive salute to the best of the best. B

RIYL: Ennio Morricone, Hugo Montenegro

Come Get Bonked!

(Note: The following three entries were composed for the Subterranean Books blog while I was still on their payroll.)

I’ve been a big fan of Mary Roach ever since having read Stiff, her brilliant and hilarious study of the business of human preservation. Roach is that rare talent whose impeccable journalistic techniques are bolstered by a conversational style and an unparalleled sense of humor, making each revolting factoid that much easier to swallow. After breaking big with her debut, Roach tackled the afterlife with Spook, which put ghost hunters and professional psychics under the microscope. Now, having wrestled with the dead, Mary Roach is ready to go to work on the living.

Bonk (Norton, $24.95) delves into the long and sordid history of sexual physiology, covering ground cleared by everyone from Leonardo da Vinci (an alleged cold fish who regarded human coitus as “awkward and disgusting”) to Alfred Kinsey (whose illuminating experiments were often carried out in the attic of his home). The phrase “too much information” has no bearing on these exposés of everything from animal insemination to penile implantation: Does clitoral placement dictate the propensity for female orgasm? Will paralysis spell the end for one’s sex life? Could masturbation serve as a cure for the hiccups? Roach delves into each avenue with characteristic fervor, occasionally transforming herself and her long-suffering husband into guinea pigs for the researchers she investigates. (Her tale of kinky sex inside an MRI machine is likely to resonate the next time you go in for a CAT scan.)

This book is sure to appeal to anyone with a healthy curiosity about sex, and serve as a guilty diversion for everyone else. Equally awe-inspiring and side-splitting, it marks another high point in Ms. Roach’s already stellar career. Best of all, you won’t look creepy reading it on the bus.

Let's Talk About Criticism (The Good Kind)

As stated previously, we recently received an enormous shipment of 33 1/3, the Continuum imprint that caters to the cut of listener who yearns to dig beyond the liner notes. Now, I have always been of the mind that music critics, like their filmic counterparts, occupy a completely superfluous role in society; nonetheless, I have been addicted to these books since their inception, thanks both to their almost invariably insightful commentary and to their brilliant design scheme, and I’m not ashamed to say that I felt downright giddy poring through the myriad titles that now grace our shelves. In the hopes of transmitting that excitement to others, I’ve made a list of some of my favorite entries in the series thus far. Hopefully they’ll still be here when you come around.

# 52 Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

Without a doubt, this is the best entry I’ve read, and one which I imagine will be hard to top. The beauty of it lies in its seeming absurdity: Who would write a serious critical analysis of Céline Dion, the chest-pounding scourge of the hipster elite? It is under this guise that Carl Wilson delivers a devastating dissertation about the hollow and arbitrary nature of taste, and its function as a propagator of the stereotypes proliferated by the upper echelon of society. He reaches the ultimate conclusion that taste is wholly subjective and completely ungoverned by objective standards, which—whaddaya know!—has long been my opinion, too. I only hope that he follows this masterpiece with a rundown of Now That’s What I Call Music!

# 17 by Erik Davis

Serving as the crystallization of Jimmy Page’s obsession with the occult, Led Zeppelin’s unpronounceable fourth album has attained a well-deserved status as the most mysterious platter in the entire rock canon. Erik Davis, clearly up to the challenge, attacks said behemoth with a vigor worthy of its crushing heft and epic scope: The genesis of each legendary track is dissected in full detail, from the fireside epiphany of “Stairway To Heaven” to the actual stairway that gave birth to “When The Levee Breaks”, and the mystical runes and rampant symbolism which run through the album’s lyrics and artwork are scrutinized with a passion that borders on obsession. Davis does an excellent job in unraveling the secrets of one of the most popular albums ever made, a tract which—despite the disadvantages of time and ever-growing familiarity—continues to deny a full disclosure of its mystical nature.

#30 Paul’s Boutique by Dan Le Roy

This, this monumental smorgasbord of funk, soul, psychedelia, bluegrass, and classic rock, was the album that changed my direction, that made me a hopeless lifelong devotee of hip-hop, that transformed me from an art-rock-lovin’ antisocialite into what the editors of The Source refer to as a “head”. My mind was completely and irrevocably blown upon my first listen, Mike D and Adams Yauch and Horovitz dropping science from the beloved old boombox in the kitchen of our house, the windows open and a summer breeze painting the air around me, poetry in motion around my head, cultural touchstones whizzing by in a parade of flawless diction, the perfect timing making up for the imperfect grammar. Hearing familiar sound bites ripped free of their mooring and thrown into alien surroundings, my brain scrambled to keep up, and the result was a giddy euphoria unlike anything I’d experienced outside of local anaethesia.

Dan Le Roy apparently had much the same reaction, and this loving tribute to what remains one of my favorite hip-hop albums ever covers all the bases an adoring fan could desire: illuminating commentary by the practitioners involved, salacious recountals of artistic risks and career near-disasters, and a track-by-track breakdown that accomplishes the rare feat of initiating the newly converted and offering genuine food for thought to the long-faithful. A fresh perspective is guaranteed to even the most obsessive B-Boy fan, including the one writing this review.

#11 The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

The Velvet Underground is so thoroughly steeped in the lore of alternative culture that it’s hard to imagine the music world bereft of their towering influence. Their debut album remains, four decades after its release, the touchstone by which all other alt rock releases must pass mettle; alas, their achievement was so resoundingly original and the circumstances of the album’s creation so unique that most attempts at emulating their formula prove futile. One of the few people to have pulled it off successfully is Jonathan Richman, the ex-Modern Lover whose coming of age on the Lower East Side coincided with the VU’s rise to infamy. His anecdotal remembrances of Lou Reed and company make up the bulk of this text, accentuated by technical details laid out by co-producer Norman Dolph. The result is a humanizing snapshot of a time and place which have been romanticized to epic proportions.

#44 Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier

Beefheart’s magnum opus deserves its status as the watershed album of antimusic; as a primer for the endurance required of voyagers into the realm of ugly sounds, it remains unparalleled. Composed under truly psychotic conditions by a hair-trigger Svengali and his band of merry pranksters, Trout Mask dispensed completely with the rigmarole of pop music, ignoring the zeitgeist of late ’60s psychedelia in favor of scorched-earth Delta blues and extraterrestrial skronk. The result was an artifact from another reality, a reality which Kevin Courrier goes to great lengths to bring into clarity. Interviews with Magic Band members who jumped ship to avoid being ground under the wheels of the uncompromising Don Van Vliet help to shed light on the genetics of this mutant creation, and a detailed postscript examines the way that Beefheart’s baby has sunk its phalanges into the underbelly of pop culture in the decades since it escaped from its cage. One hopes that the Good Captain is aware of the reverence that his legacy elicits today, in spite of a mainstream culture which glorifies conformity just as unabashedly as it did in 1969.

#24 Endtroducing… by Eliot Wilder

1996 was a transitional year for hip-hop, wavering between the high of the Fugees’ The Score and Outkast’s ATLiens and the low of Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core. In Josh Davis’s eyes, though, hip-hop had been perverted by an all-consuming quest to get paid and a deification of the MC to the detriment of the DJ. In short, ‘96 just plain sucked. Thus he took it upon himself to reeducate the masses, to summon the spirits of Bambaataa and Steinski and continue the lessons they had begun over a decade before. From his perch above Dan the Automator’s bedroom, he cobbled together the God moments he’d found hidden in the labyrinthine stacks beneath Records in his hometown of Davis, CA, and gave birth to a doctrine of vinyl so transcendent in its goal to unite all factions of the listening public that genre classifications were not only redundant but inapplicable.

Eliot Wilder’s evaluation of Shadow’s career is based on several lengthy interviews he conducted by phone with the DJ savior himself. Covering everything from his middle class upbringing in Davis to his first encounter with Mo’ Wax’s James Lavelle to the critical adoration that greeted Endtroducing… practically from the moment of its release, this comprehensive recollection does a good job of filling in the blanks posed by that most mysterious of trip-hop virtuosos (Geoff Barrow notwithstanding).

#29 In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper

Where would collegiate music aficionados be without Jeff Mangum? Would the smothering aesthetic of irony that infiltrated every aspect of pop culture in the late ’90s still be in full effect had it not been for the reprieve of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea? Best not to ponder such things. Better simply to thank one’s higher power of choice for delivering such a colossally life-affirming forty minutes of grace upon our pointed little heads, for having shown us that world was in fact a beautiful place, no matter what evidence may exist to the contrary. The very definition of a word-of-mouth record, Aeroplane remains commercially insignificant, but its influence is immeasurable: practically every musician these days who eschews pretense in favor of naked emotion owes a debt to Mangum and his crew. Going straight to the source, Kim Cooper delves into the sleepy southern gothic roots of the Elephant 6 collective which birthed Neutral Milk Hotel and learns that the myth of Mangum isn’t too far removed from the truth. Yes, he really did compose his songs without a written record; yes, he really did drop out of the spotlight due to disinterest in being a rock star. But when faced with the fates of Messrs. Cobain and Smith, perhaps the latter wasn’t such a bad idea. Having been denied the resolution of a followup record, Aeroplane stands as the definitive testament of Mangum’s singular vision and voice, the heart-adorned sleeve of a dusty vintage jacket worn by a troubadour who felt everything so strongly that he had no choice but to lay himself bare in the hopes that he could redeem us all.

#34 In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar

Nirvana took a major gamble with their final album, on which Kurt Cobain decided that the audience he’d acquired by writing flawless, scabrous pop songs was ready for the true measure of abrasion which festered inside his head. He solicited the production acumen of Big Black alum Steve Albini, the absolute last choice of the suits at DGC, and proceeded to churn out the rawest music of his career, the sound he’d been searching for from the moment he first picked up a guitar. When it was decided that the resulting tapes were too forbidding for mass consumption, R.E.M. stalwart Scott Litt was brought in to salvage what little radio-friendliness could be had, and the final product was a compromise for everyone involved. Here, Gillian Gaar exposes the intralabel strife that almost aborted In Utero before it could hit the market, from the fights over artistic control and songwriting credit to the compromising position in which Cobain found himself after siring one of the most lucrative rock releases of the early ’90s. In spite of (or because of) the antagonism of which it was borne, In Utero may well be Nirvana’s greatest legacy, a punishing treatise on the true cost of success.

#31 Doolittle by Ben Sisario

Somewhere in the West Hills surrounding Portland, OR lives a balding, cherub-faced imp with the unassuming moniker of Charles Thompson. The utter innocuity of his homestead belies his former identity as a screaming firebrand named Black Francis, the main creative force of the Pixies, arguably the most celebrated indie band of the late ’80s. Ben Sisario pays a friendly visit to Mr. Thompson’s neighborhood, and the two men reminisce upon past glories while tootling around the surrounding burgs. When they go to a local music retailer to purchase a copy of Doolittle, the Pixies’ magnum opus, Thompson seems unsurprised when the clerk doesn’t recognize him as one of the authors of the very CD she’s holding; despite a successful solo career as the rechristened Frank Black, he has maintained a fairly low profile, both in the local community and in the pop world at large. Thompson’s candor regarding his turbulent relationship with Pixies bassist Kim Deal and the circumstances surrounding the band’s dissolution and eventual rebirth does well to sweep up the debris that his massive persona has left in its wake. Without him, there’s no telling whether the alternative movement of the ’90s would have gone underway, but Thompson is past letting it go to his head. For now, he seems content to just relax in the woods.

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Stuff White People Like: Criticism

In the early summer of 2008, Stuff White People Like hosted a contest to see who knew the most about white people, and who, by extension, was most deserving of a signed copy of their new book, released July 1st. The contest closed on June 20th, with winners being announced on June 23rd. (I didn't place.) Entries had to be fewer than 350 words. I submitted the following.

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Criticism

As a way to preserve their status among the cultural elite, white people are fiercely defensive of their tastes in music, film, and literature. As such, they love to read and debate criticism of said media in order to validate their own opinions. However, it is considered gauche to simply parrot the opinions of others, so white people are forced to pick and choose which critics with whom to align themselves so as to appear neither pretentious nor uninformed. Chuck Klosterman is a popular choice among the demographic of hip, collegiate whites aged 16 to 35, as his everyman persona, conversational style, and ironically journalistic devotion to pop culture ephemera have made him a hero to the generation weaned on Saved by the Bell. Movie buffs of a populist bent favor the musings of Peter Travers, chief film critic for Rolling Stone, while whites (generally male) who would consider professional criticism as a career idolize Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Roger Ebert, and Pauline Kael, the leading propagators of a style which posits subjective estimation as objective fact. It is important to white people that their opinions are both seen as unique and appreciated for their insight, and they take great pride in the time and effort required to formulate their individual points of view. As a result, they often take personal offense at viewpoints which conflict with their own, and will go to great lengths to ensure that their opinions are seen as correct.

When white people come together to discuss the relative merits of a piece of pop art, the conversation can get heated in a hurry. Many white people harbor a secret desire to be paid for their opinions - the ultimate validation of their taste - and they will take any opportunity to enact that fantasy. The Internet provides the perfect platform for this endeavor, and message boards and chat rooms devoted to pop culture discussions abound. However, the fundamental truth that taste is wholly subjective and ungoverned by objective standards often goes ignored by those who engage in debate.

Lilo & Stitch (2002)

Having betrayed the reliable commercial viability of their conventional animated features with such runaway hits as The Emperor's New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, it seemed in 2002 that Walt Disney Pictures was poised to cede their financial future to Pixar, whose staggering success with Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. had revealed the vast box office potential of computer-generated animation. In a last-ditch effort to reverse the trend, Disney decided to completely discard their previously winning formula and concoct an entirely different sort of animated feature. The result was Lilo & Stitch, a totally unique entry in the Disney canon and a film which seems just as bizarre and original today as it did in the summer of '02.

The story concerns an orphaned Hawaiian girl named Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase, previously seen in Donnie Darko), whose behavioral problems at school and at home provide a constant headache for her older sister, Nani (Tia Carrere). Their difficult circumstances are compounded by a social worker named Cobra Bubbles (played to the hilt by Ving Rhames), whose suspicions of neglect are increased by Lilo's penchant for sabotaging Nani's attempts at discipline. Enter into this happy picture an extraterrestrial biological experiment (number 626, to be exact), who escapes captivity aboard a spaceship several solar systems away and crash-lands in Hawaii. Though featuring classically cute cartoon features, 626 is nothing less than a perfect killing machine, a genetically designed genius whose sole function is to wreak havoc and not be destroyed. Run over (but hardly injured) by a truck on the highway, he is mistaken for a dog and taken to the pound, where he falls into the loving arms of Lilo the very next day.

On the trail of 626 (coincidentally renamed Stitch by Lilo) are Jumba (David Ogden Stiers), his creator, and Pleakley (Kevin McDonald), the galactic agent assigned to make sure his recovery goes smoothly. The odd-couple dynamic of the pair, along with their complete ineptitude at fitting in on Earth, provides the film with much of its humor. Despite their repeated attempts to capture Stitch and return him to the Galactic Council, Jumba and Pleakley prove to be no match for his tactical cunning. Thus, Lilo is free to train her new companion to speak, play guitar, and appreciate Elvis Presley, blissfully unaware of his true nature. Only after Jumba and Pleakley are fired for their incompetence do they drop any pretense of wanting to keep Stitch alive, propelling the film toward its clever and action-packed conclusion.

In spite of what could be construed as a calculated attempt to make the strangest kids' movie possible, Lilo & Stitch succeeds not only as a lustrous popcorn flick, but also as a genuinely touching fable about the importance of individuality and the fluid nature of family. Just as Lilo and Nani struggle to overcome the loss of their parents, Stitch struggles both to define himself and also to acclimate to his alien environment. As he becomes more self-aware, he realizes that he is a total outsider in his adopted home, an epiphany that leaves him all but despondent. His only solace is found in the unwavering love of Lilo, Nani, and their friend David (Jason Scott Lee). Together, these four face off the invasive presence of the Galactic Council and Social Services and assert their right to define themselves as a family unit. When Stitch rejects his title of "Experiment 626" at the end of the film and embraces the name he was given by Lilo, he validates his own right to belong. It is an important lesson for both the children and the adults in the audience who struggle to find their place in the world.

The fact that a children's movie about space aliens, surfing, and Elvis was not only greenlit but also budgeted at $80 million makes its ultimate success all the more satisfying. Disney obviously knew that they had an oddball on their hands: the teaser trailers for the film featured characters from such past hits as Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast being interrupted by Stitch's rambunctious behavior, and the posters showed Stitch surrounded by a cadre of glowering Disney characters, as if to suggest that he was an unwelcome addition. The tagline: "There's one in every family." But the gamble paid off: in the best underdog tradition, Lilo & Stitch defied expectation and became a hit, grossing over $145 million domestically during its June-to-November run. The good showing may have been aided by the fact that the film's Elvis fixation was perfectly timed, the summer of 2002 having been saturated with Presleymania in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of the King.

Perhaps in an effort to play up its unorthodox nature, Lilo & Stitch was also augmented with several innovative animation techniques. It was the first animated Disney feature since Dumbo to have utilized watercolor backgrounds, and one of the few to have integrated live-action footage. By nature of its galactic and Hawaiian locales, it also marked one of the only times since 1942 that Disney had produced a feature-length animated film without having recycled footage from Bambi. Four years after Lilo's release, Disney closed their last remaining hand-drawn animation studio to focus solely on computer-aided animation. Stitch's adventures on Earth heralded the beginning of the end of an era.