My Life In Records

My brother returned from his first year of college bearing gifts: The Lonesome Crowded West (which I didn't take to until I was recently mad and caught in traffic) and this album on CD. It's so great. Wherein a sterling intellect tries to write its way out of self-destruct mode and finds itself in the heartland. Don’t miss ‘Transylvania Blues’, the most listenable of all Silver Jews’ mostly useless instrumental tracks.

I was eleven years old when Weezer released Pinkerton. Who could have known that three years later I’d have a hair on my chin and a hard-on for the big, glowing W? By sixteen my birthday present was a limo ride to the Weezer concert (Green Album tour—bummer). I even got the glasses. Long live Goat Punishment!

I'm cheating, I know. I spent a lot of my life listening to New York’s 101.1 CBS-FM, which was rare in that its deejays included hits from the early ‘60s and earlier. Novelty-driven songs like ‘Lollipop’ and that ‘Itsy Bitsy...Bikini’ song were played alongside Motown’s finest. In that spirit, I filed away ‘most all oldies as jokes. It wasn’t until Hip-O Select anthologized the complete Motown singles that I realized that Motown—especially Smokey Robinson and The Temptations—was the only town for me.

Robert Christgau writes of this record that “Jonathan should realize that maybe Van Gogh deserved to be called an asshole”, and I think Christgau really screwed the pooch. True, this largely unsung Jonathan Richman recording is probably my favorite because it was my first; but while the ‘Pablo Picasso’ of an earlier JR had the swagger, ‘Vincent van Gogh’ was the unfogged window to Jonathan’s true soul. For my money, I’ll take the sad Jonathan in the museum any day.

Few young people seem to be knowledgeable about Randy Newman, and it’s a shame. Randy sets the benchmark for compositional rigour in pop. Today’s youth, obsessed as they are with pure aesthetics, would be well-served to snuff out their weed-smoking devices and listen to this record. Or smoke the joint. What do I care?

With Nelson Riddle’s arrangements and Sinatra’s delivery, this compilation won’t leave you wanting for any of the things that make good music good. My parents found this CD in a rental car in Florida, and it virtually never left the family stereo. And now it never leaves mine! Best served with a beautiful woman.

Part of the allure is the mystique with this gospel singer. The liner notes from a Mississippi Records reissue say that little is known about Phillips, but that he played on an instrument that may or may not have been a dolceola. No matter—each song here is a haunting treasure.

Another of these window-to-the soul kind of records. Michael invented words like “sweedeedee” to express emotions that otherwise might’ve gone unexpressed. Another indispensable treat reissued by the good people at Mississippi Records.

It took this record—the Feelies’ penultimate—to learn my Neutral Milk Hotel-loving soul that distortion ≠ intensity. What these New Jersey dudes lost in twitch on Only Life they gained in pure execution. It’s good driving music, but be careful when Stan Demeski speeds up on ‘For Awhile’!

 
This kind of poorly-titled, really long album bit me in the jugular during the most impressionable phase of my life. The feedback of Weezer, the candid auteurism of Michael Hurley, Jonathan Richman and David Berman, the coolheaded intensity of the Feelies, the timelessness of Randy Newman and Sinatra—all were married on this amazing record, my favourite of all time. YLT’s present-day attempts to restage the emotional intensity of “We’re An American Band” and “Sugarcube” fall flat. But that may just be because I’m old now.