June 2004 Archives

Woody Allen calls them "kamikaze women": women ever on the collision course, always ready to crash their planes--and ready to crash them right into you. Years before the affected wilt of Chan Marshall, Lisa Germano gave a powerful voice to this tempestuous breed--a heart-tugged, empathic mess of addiction, id, and slight despair.

Germano's unlikely musical career began, in all places, as the violinist/fiddle player for John Mellencamp's Lonesome Jubilee band--a roll she happily fulfilled for seven years. After countless hours of session work with a number of high profile (and similarly adult-contemporary) artists, Germano decided, at the age of 30, to begin recording her debut solo record in 1991. On the Way Down From the Moon Palace resulted, a self-released full-length that fits a little too comfortably in line with her past musical associations for my tastes--but was enough to garner the attention (and, more importantly, the pocketbook) of Capitol Records, who soon signed Germano for the release of her next record.

It wasn't until Happiness, her major label debut, that Germano unleashed the beginnings of what was to become the trademark sound--a mix of confused, ethereal wash and rasped, muttered desperation that would see her through the length of her solo career. It's self-deprecation in spades; with depression, self-involvement, cynicism, and ambivalence adding up to a promising (if disjointed) sophomore rebirth. The record sold alright, but Germano wasn't satisfied with the final cut nor her label's meddlings, and in an unprecedented move, jumped ship for celebrated British "indie" 4AD--re-sequencing and expanding the record, and re-releasing it the following year.

That same year, Germano and 4AD released the record that would come to define Germano's creative peak--the critically-acclaimed, landmark concept record Geek The Girl. Easily among my favorite records of that decade, Geek is a chronicle of one girl's emotional and sexual awakening--a dark and disturbing narrative of willful manipulation, obsession, and, of course, desperate melancholy. the linernotes, however artless describe it as follows: "...a girl who is confused about how to be sexual and cool in the world but finds out she isn't cool and gets constantly taken advantage of sexually, gets kind of sick and enjoys giving up but at the end still tries to believe in something beautiful and dreams of still loving a man in hopes that he can save her from her shit life"). The songs are innocently confused, with awkward, stuttered sentimentality recalling the strains of adolescence--while traversing the weight of adulthood. The record's conceptual linchpin is an autobiographical tale of a stalker's attack called "...a psychopath," which mixes samples of a goose-bumping call to a 911 operator with the lyrics:

a baseball bat beside my bed
a thing of mace
I'll wait around
I hear a noise
well I hear something
you win again
I'm paralyzed

Geek the Girl is sad, sloppy, sort of unhinged--but like the best of her work, a convincingly bittersweet damnation of humanity's greatest curse--the indelible specter of hope.

The records that followed Geek--the convincing rollercoaster of 1996s Excerpts From a Love Circus, and all-to-crystal clear Slide from 1998 failed to really expand upon their predecessor's stark, brilliant vision--though each do contain some fine moments. Between the two albums, Germano took time out to record a record called Slush with the fellows from Giant Sand and Calexico under the name OP8--a record I have unfortunately never heard, despite a number of recommendations.

Following the surely disappointing Slide, Germano retired from solo performance, and was quickly dropped from 4AD. She moved to L.A. in 1999 to become a clerk at a book store--doing occasional session work with David Bowie, Neil Finn, that dog.'s Anna Wornaker, Iggy Pop, Sheryl Crow, and Jewel.

In 2003 she returned with Lullaby For the Liquid Pig, her best work since Geekon ArtistDirect's ineffable label. another concept record, Lullaby focuses on ambivalence in addictions--and ultimately, as always, desperate hope. I'm not sure what the future holds, as I think ArtistDirect has already gone belly up--but with any luck, Germano will continue her current stride. Her music does, admittedly, sometimes teeter on the brink of Adult Contempo--and (painful as it might be to admit) even Tori Amos comparisons aren't particularly far-fetched. but non-the-less, her career of near-relentless misery and self-defeat in face of commercial success could very well earn her the title of Greatest Trainwreck of All Time.

I'm very hard on clothing. I would say my average piece of clothing lasts only 6 to 8 months. They get lost or ripped or fall apart, like I said, I'm very hard on clothing. There is, of course, an exception to the rule, I have had one piece of clothing for 10 whole years (10 WHOLE YEARS!)! That one very special piece of clothing is a Dinosaur Jr. T-Shirt. I think it says a lot about that band and about my relationship with that band that I have somehow held onto this shirt for 10 times as long as I normally keep a piece off clothing. I mean, it's a really cool shirt. That's not to say that I have kept the shirt pristine, it has a whole in the armpit, but it's still looking pretty good. This shirt (you can see an a representation of the shirt to your left) is really cute. It features a boy unknowingly waving while a huge monster sneaks up behind. This is really cute, right?? Well, Dinosaur Jr. straddled a weird balance beam with their visual representations (album covers, T-shirt designs, etc.) throughout the years with the cute and beautiful at one end and the ugly and scary at the other end of the balance beam. While I'm not a big fan of the ugly and scary visual stuff, it is the ugly and scary where Dinosaur Jr. succeeded musically. Dinosaur Jr was a loud screeching mess that was led by the prototypical slacker with a terrible voice that made some important and powerful music.

J. Mascis is that prototypical slacker who led Dinosaur Jr. He is the man with the weird voice and the long stringy hair. He is the infamous loner who loves to shred on his guitar louder than anyone else in the world. Don't get me wrong, others were involved with Dinosaur Jr. Lou Barlow (most known as the man behind Sebadoh) was a huge presence on the first two albums, and when he left it started one of the most infamous feuds in underground rock history. Mascis also worked with a great drummer named Murph and Mike Johnson played bass on a number of albums. When it was necessary, though, Mascis did it all, including playing all the instruments and producing on a few albums.

Mascis is the man who made it okay to rip a guitar solo in underground rock. He did this in the late 80's too when heavy metal wankery was at its heights of popularity. How he did he made it okay to rip a solo, I will never know for sure, but it must have had something to do with him never putting on airs of being anything he wasn't. He always came across as this quiet weird guy who you would catch playing guitar through a tiny amp in his bedroom at 11am. In doing some research for this blog every thing I read actually spoke very negatively of Mascis actual ability on guitar. I don't know. I'm not so smart about that sort of stuff, but I was alaways impressed seeing him play (even when he played solo) and with the sounds he makes on the records. So, I'm saying that J. Mascis is an influential songwriting and one of the most important guitar players of the last 20 years.

The consensus among critics is that the 1987 album You're Living All Over Me is Dinosaur Jr.'s peak, but I personally see 88's Bug and 93's Where You Been as the best moments for Dino. Bug was the first album with Mascis as the lone song writer and it showed how his songwriting was so much better than young Lou Barlow. Bug is the sound of a free man using his voice for the first time. Where You Been is his best set of songs coupled with the best performances and the best production of the entire discography.

Dinosaur Jr. sorted just melted into J. Mascis & The Fog when Mascis felt like he needed to leave the name behind. He still makes music. Mascis is totally weird. Now his long hair is gray. Mascis made Dinosaur Jr. Dinosaur Jr. made The Greatest Band of All Time.

With Greatest Band of All Time's inaugural "theme week" a resounding mess (primarily because of earthly circumstances, me thinks), please allow me to conclude this stretch with an entry that is, by most accounts, an offense to reason and good taste, threatening once again to capsize any relevance this humble blog might've maintained. Please skip this one. Ladies and Gentlemen:

NEVERMIND THE BOLLOCKS--HERE'S THE SEX PISTOLS.

Depending on your stance regarding the offending article, the reactions to calling the Sex Pistols' record the "Greatest Album of All Time" will surely range from "you must be joking" to "I mean, seriously." And of course, you'd be right. And though, through the years, NMTB has been made to feel as honest and sincere as, say, Alvin and the ChiPunks or something, the record simply deserves a better shake. And at the cost of my dignity (and the viability of this blog), i hope to make that case. I will, indeed, fail.

Follow me, if you will, on a journey through your historical subconsciousa nostalgic stroll through the your angled layers of memory, of mental blocks and free associations, of negative connotations so deeply engraved by way too much self-important rock journalism. Forget everything you've ever heard about the Sex Pistols. Forget about Malcolm McLaren. Forget about Bill Grundy. Forget about the Longhorn. Forget The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. Forget Sid and Nancy.Forget Lipstick Traces. Forget Filthy Lucre Live. Forget about it. Wait, wait... just a secondbefore you wipe the slate clean entirely, i want you to focus on one thing: remember what it felt like the first time you heard "Anarchy in the U.K." when you were 12. Before you heard it on a dozen shitty bar jukeboxes. Before you heard Megadeth cover it.

tell me it wasn't important. I defy you. Bullshit.

Say what you will about the Sex Pistolscalculated poseurs, talentless opportunists, puppets, meat-headed loutsfine, I accept your critique. But no argument you'll ever make would ever convince me that Nevermind the Bollocks isn't the Greatest Album of All Time. Hell, I think the Clash were a bunch of bourgeois, pseudo-political phonies, but that doesn't stop my appreciation of London Calling or anything. not too much anyway.

The other day, as I was selling frozen novelties out of a lawn mower, a young man not a day over 11 walked up to me from his sprawling suburban home wearing a "God Save the Queen" T-Shirt. I rushed to get this young man his Chocotaco. I saw in this young man a reflection of myself at roughly his age, buying a copy of Nevermind the Bollocks from out of the discount bin of a record store, and starting a chain of events that would unknowingly lead to years of adolescent confusion. Because, in spite of every peripheral complaint (however accurate) so regularly lobbed at the band, nothing seems to outweigh the fact that this simply great pop record has had enough of a resounding effect to still inspire generations of children to become class-A fuck-ups. Enough to inspire (as that 24 Hour Party People film so masterly reflects) your precious Joy Division and Buzzcocks.

Alright, so the album: sure, it has its problemsmost of the best moments on the album come from the band's original singles ("anarchy in the UK," "God Save the Queen," "Pretty Vacant," and "Holiday In the Sun"), with the filler largely just offensive for offense's sake ("New York"'s oddly conceived attack on admitted inspirations the New York Dolls, "Bodies"'s creepily rightwing politicking). But in spite of it all, the record delivers what's promised: the wart-ridden, artful artifice of what was almost the most culturally significant band of 1970s Britain. Almost. Stop me before i get all Greil Marcus.

Today it's difficult to reconcile the music of the Sex Pistols with the two years of cultural revolution that they caused in Britainall paltry pop numbers over blues guitar riffsand I'm not about to argue that the attention their classic myth has garnered is at all warranted. All I'm saying is, "Anarchy in the U.K." is still a great song. Timeless, even. So is "God Save the Queen" with it's "flowers in the dust bin." and "Pretty Vacant." and "EMI." and "Holidays in the Sun." I still get excited every time I hear them. Because if you wash away all of the circumstance, a simple British twist goes a long way.

Nevermind the Bollocks. What was I thinking, right? Oh, rightGreatest Album of All Time.

Money Mark, huh? I mean, really? Money Mark?? The keyboardist dude from Beastie Boys?? Seriously? Completely. "Money" Mark Ramos Nishita is like an old dude. Like, I think he is even older than those Beastie Boy dudes or at least the same age. I know, deep, right?? Dude was just a cool dude who laid down some keyboards for The Dust Brothers every once in a while, was a carpenter/handyman, fixed some keyboards, and gave some piano/keyboard lessons. Totally just a dude living his life, right? So the dude fixes the fence at the Beastie Boys house in LA. Beastie Dudes thought he was a righteous handyman so they had him start building a crazy studio for them, which became the studio they recorded the majority of Check Your Head and Ill Communication in. Well, building a studio takes a long time, so Mark hangs with the Beasties quite a bit and they get along famously and have tons in common. Mark ends up providing a lot of keyboards for both Check Your Head and Ill Communication and actually has writing credits for about half the songs on both of those albums and he is also a touring member of the band for about five years.

So old Money Mark makes a record in 1994, called Mark's Keyboard Repair, and it's released on a tiny album as three 10"s. James Lavelle, the dude who ran Mo'Wax records and also the dude who makes that band UNKLE, gets the record and is super in, and Mo Wax reissue's the album. Mark's Keyboard Repair is 30 short mostly instrumental tracks heavy on dimestore funk. The album features a vast array of sounds and it makes for an interesting album but ultimately more of a novelty than engaging. Money Mark takes an interesting turn here, though, it takes a couple years (3 years since the release of Mark's Keyboard Repair), but Money Mark hit back with a record (Push The Button) that expanded his vibe incredibly.

Push the Button came out in May of 1998. It took the instrumental funk of Mark's Keyboard Repair fleshed it out and also added some heavy pop songs. Mark is a suprisingly adept pop song writer. The combination of the pop songs with the instrumental songs really really works for me. I've always liked an album that gave me some words and voice and melody for me to think about for awhile, but then gave me some space with none of those things (words, voice, melody) and this album does it so well. The album is really well produced by Mark and by Mario Caldato Jr. (who is a Beastie contributor and producer). The album is a bit depressing in lyrical tone, and that really feels right on this record. Some of the standout songs are the xylophone laden "Too Like You," the latin instrumental "Crowns," the Costello-y "Tommorow Will Be Like Today," and the soulful jams "All The People in the World" and "I Don't Play Piano."

Push The Button was such an important album for me in the summer of 98. I was livin in a house with six other people (on my own and not in a dorm for the first time). I was working at a bowling alley as a short order cook. It was a special time for me. It was also a special time for Money Mark. He was the opening band for The Beastie Boys on their gigantic Hello Nasty tour. That summer Money Mark played for hundreds of thousands. That summer I learned how to make some killer nachos.

Money Mark put out another album in late 2001 called Change Is Coming. It was a another full instrumental album. Sorta a letdown. This man, this Money Mark man, writes a good song, and the only place where that is really displayed is on Push The Button, aka The Greatest Album Of All Time.

Music Journalism's Urban Outfitters presented their Top 100 of the 70's this week. They described the 97th best album, the soundtrack to the Jamaican move The Harder They Come, as "one of the saddest albums of the decade" and take to patronizing and pitying Jamaicans, which comes across pretty yucky. This soundtrack is full of powerful and uplifting beautiful music. It does hold some sadness but it is the sort of sadness that comes with complex depth. Oh man, I admit it, I guess I agree with the pitchfork man, the music is totally sad, but also happy and hopeful. It is very reminiscent of American gospel music and blues. The Jamaicans of the early 70's or today are not to be patronized or pitied. The Harder They Come is a beautiful collection of songs and a wonderful introduction to Jamaican music in the early 1970's.

Jimmy Cliff plays the lead character, Ivan, in the movie and he also dominates the soundtrack with half of the songs (counting two which are repeated at the end). I really no nothing of Jimmy Cliff's career beyong this album but his songs on here are amazing. The album kicks off with Jimmy Cliff singing "You Can get It If You Really Want," an upbeat song explaining the vibe of a youthful Ivan (the character in the film) coming to Kingston from the countryside with the goal of making it big being a reggae star. Prepared to face hardships and tribulations but believing if you try hard that you will get what you want is the message. Ivan finds it harder than that, though. After living in poverty for quite some time he finally is able to record some songs in a studio, but the producer refuses to allow the song to be played on the radio unless Ivan signs away all rights. Ivan turns to selling ganga. Which works out pretty well for awhile, but he is then set up by his supplier and gets in a terrible situation and he kills a policeman. He becomes a heavily wanted man and goes on a killing spree. He quickly becomes the most famous man in Jamaica and his song becomes a hit on the radio. Ivan finally has the fame he desired, but there is no escaping the police. He goes mad and his madness lends too sloppiness in evading the police and he is gunned down by the police. It is a well told tragic tale, that amazingly is also based on a true story.


The second song by DJ Scotty, "Draw Your Brakes" is a great example of the version principal in Jamaicaan as it is the rhythm from a song called "Stop That Train" by Keith & Rex which was actually a cover of an earlier Spanishtonians hit. "Draw Your Brakes" lets you into the complexity of Ivan's character. He continues down the path but he knows that's it's not the right thing he wishes to stop the train and get off. Tracks 3 & 4 take you to such a deep gospel place with The Melodians bringing "Rivers of Babylon," which is one of my favorite songs of all time, and can sound good in almost any setting and performed by anyone, but this is the definitive version and it sounds spectacular here. Something about "Rivers of Babylon" just gets me, makes me feel so reverent, so open, so spiritual, so hand holding awesome. Check out these truly wicked lyrics: "By the rivers of babylon/Where he sat down/And there he went/When he remebered zion.//For the wicked, carry us away/Captivity require from us a song/How can we sing king alpha’s song in a strange land?//So let the words of our mouth/And the meditations of our hearts/Be acceptable in thy sight/Over i." MMMM. Are you feeling it?? FEEL IT! Then it is straight into Jimmy Cliff's version of the hymnal "Many Rivers to Cross." It's Cliff wailing sorrowfully over a church organ for the first verse and then a very tasteful guitar and light drums come in low in the mix. It sorta feels like D'angelo but more churchy than sexy, but churchy in such an awesome way. Track 5, "Sweet & Dandy" is the first of two Toots & Maytals tracks on the album and is a really fun bouncy song. Jimmy Cliff is back with the title track ("The Harder They Come") at track number 6. "The Harder They Come" is a representation of the thought process of Ivan late in the movie when he is killing cops and running from cops and near the end of his life: "And I keep on fighting for the things I want/Though I know that when you're dead you can't/But I'd rather be a free man in my grave/Than living as a puppet or a slave."
Track 7 and 8 are by The Slickers and (legendary)Desmond Decker respectively and both interesting songs. The Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad" talks about respect for a classic western style outlaw, and Decker's "007 (Shanty Town)" speaks of the shanty towns of Kingston. Toots & the Maytals bring it back with "Pressure Drop" on the next track. One of the greatest vocal performances ever on "Pressure Drop" by the always exciting Toots, who is still rocking it so hard, as evidenced by their exciting performance on Saturday Night Live this year. "Pressure Drop" is a song about an overwhelming and powerful love that fills you with so much excitement that you are almost speaking in tongues. Jimmy Cliff's "Sitting in Limbo" follows and is by far the most contemperary american pop music influenced song on the album by far. It sounds like it could be like a Carole King song or something, with a prominent flute. The album closes with "You Can Get It If You Really Want" and "The Harder They Come" again, they are ever so slightly different versions ("The Harder They Come" has a really mellow nice violin on the second version). The songs are really rad and don't grow old and so important to the story that a second appearance of these songs is welcome.

The songs are raw, ragged, and gorgeous. They sound like 1971 Kingston Jamaica in tone, texture, and lyric. They speak of struggle, and hardship, but maintain hope. The movie is a classic and the soundtrack turns out to actually be not the saddest music, but The Greatest Album Of All Time.

As a person much more inspired by the recorded medium than by live music, the idea of the self-contained, definitive statement is really intriguing to me, thus accounting for my somewhat irrational obsession with the self-indulgent "concept record." All of my favorite records are anchored by some divining force, narrative or otherwise, adding a certain level of depth missing from just a random song cycle.

Which brings us, however clunkily (I'm really writing this in a hurry today, friends), to Lou Reed's solo masterpiece, Berlin. Apparently it's sad sap concept records week here at GBoAT. Though I disagree slightly with age old suggestion that the album, a narrative about the desperate affairs of drug-addled Germans, is the most depressing album of all time (I mean, a record with that many bitchin' licks could hardly beat out somebody like Joy Division or Codeine in the Emo department), I will admit that there are few records I reach for more quickly when I want to wallow in self-pity. Which says something, considering my record collection.

The studio follow-up to Transformer, Reed's ultra-successful, Bowie-produced glam comeback record, Berlin was a hard pill to swallow--with critical and commercial responses resoundingly negative upon it's initial release. Using the Berlin wall as a metaphor for the emotional barriers men and women raise between one another, Berlin is in no way a concept in the Pink Floyd sense; its narrative escaping the grandiose with simplicity and humanity. Themes include: drug abuse, child neglect, physical abuse, and eventually suicide.

It's unlike any of Reed's other works, and still stands as the pinnacle of his post-Velvet's career--aided largely by the re-workings of three then-unreleased Velvet Underground-era songs ("Stephanie Says" becomes "Caroline Says II," "Oh Gin" is engulfed into "Oh Jim," and "Sad Song" is expanded to an orchestral giant)--though all of the songs arguably better in their pre-Berlin forms. And that's another odd thing about Berlin--although the concept works strictly on a narrative sense, four of its ten songs were written independently several years before the record was conceived (with the title track appearing on Reed's oft-forgotten first solo record). Still, the record works with surprising consistency.

another fun fact that i just learned this morning: there is a "lost" instrumental track, a segue between the first and second songs on the album, that only appears on the 8-track version of Berlin. Very awkward format. Weird call, Lou.

Though perhaps not living up to its hype as the Most Depressing Album of All Time, Berlin has no trouble maintaining its crown as the Greatest Album of All Time.

The major label debut is such a tough thing. If your sound changes at all the fans you have will say you have sold out. If you don't sound more commercial or polished the label will be dissapointed and most likely drop you. It's a catch 22. Having never read that book I don't really understand where that phrase comes from but I know what it means (so weird knowing what a phrase means and using that phrase but not understanding why it means that). Wait, I take it back, I think it is possible to make a major label debut that is successful enough to please fans and to at least placate the label for one or two more albums. Built to Spill seemed to do it with Perfect From Now On. But for every Built to Spill you seem to have two Liz Phair's (whose Liz Phair album was a complete abandoning of her credibility). Anywho, this whole major label debut topic is started to feel incredibly cliched.

Shudder to Think was a DC band, I mean, they were on Dischord (Ian Mackaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi's amazingly influential DC label) for Pete's sake. They were like totally weird hard rocking band with this guy who sang totally weird lyrics dramatically in and out of a falsetto. None of their Dischord albums were that interesting, with their last one for Dishord 1992's Get Your Goatbeing the most relevant with the band finding it's unique voice more than their previous albums. Shudder to Think started to become known for their powerful live shows after Get Your Goat when they added two new members Nathan Larson on guitar and Adam Wade on drums to the groups already existing members Craig Wedren, guitar player and songwriter, and Stuart Hill, on bass.

Based off of one moderately good album (Get Your Goat) and a strong live show (and the major labels insane desire to sign anything alternative or weird in 1993 and 1994) Shudder To Think signed with Sony and produced their finest moment, ponyexpressrecord. They really shined in the studio with a fancy producer (Ted Nicely) and a super fancy dude mixing the record (Andy Wallace, who mixed Nevermind and produced Run-DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" and Jeff Buckley's Grace). Shudder to Think pushed their angular art rock learnings further with ponyexpressrecord pushing strange start and stop rhythms, weird chords, surreal lyrics, and a strong use of silence and space. Craig Wedren, the band's singer and primary songwriter, was aided by Nathan Larson, guitarist and new member of the band, who extended the band's songwriting abilities by writing five songs for the album, including an amazing interpolation of Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me." "X-French Tee Shirt" turns one chord and a chorus and makes it into one of the more powerful and triumphant songs to come from "alternative rock." The album does a beautiful job of juxtaposing loud brash guitars with this strange powerful voice that is at the same time representing vulnerability. The album ends appropriately after 50 minutes of disorienting weirdness with "Full Body Anchor," a short and soft number featuring the only use of acoustic guitar on the entire album.

Shortly after finishing their touring for ponyexpressrecord Craig Werdern was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. After spending a couple years dealing with his illness Shudder to Think released 50,000 BC a much more straight ahead rock record that failed to garner the band much more attention. It was Shudder to Think's final proper release. Shudder to Think did work on the score and soundtrack for the film First Love, Last Rites but did it mostly without Craig Wedren, as hee was still dealing with illness, and so they had alt. rock heavyweights, like Billy Corgan, Liz Phair, and Jeff Buckley, do the vocals. Craig Wedren has since gone on to work on the score's for films like School of Rock and Wet Hot American Summer and produce stuff for Cake Like and Cex and also has a new band called Baby. Shudder to Think's ponyexpressrecord is the perfect way to make a major label debut. They used the greater resources to bolster what made them special. ponyexpressrecord is The Greatest Album Of All Time.

This week, Greatest Band of All Time ventures in to slightly more narrow territory than is usual, with an appraisal not of an artist's sprawling career, but of a single snapshot moment--the Greatest Album of All Time. As per usual, the means of measure as a little hazy: records that are perhaps overlooked, under-appreciated, poorly judged, or simply spec-tack.

It's 1968. That year probably sounds sort of familiar, right? Social climate aside, it was sort of a year of panic for the recording industry--the bar raised dramatically by another one of those Beatles records. Suddenly, everyone was rushing into the studio to record their singular definitive statements--the mixed results of which mostly sounding a good deal like Sgt. Pepper's.

Simon and Garfunkel had just come off of their mixed success with the whole Graduate debacle, and with heads roundly inflated, decided to record their next album as co-producers (along with longtime producer Roy Halee). The resulting work would go on to become the definitive appraisal of adult alienation in a decade of heaping competition.

One of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel stories, though a little hazy on facts, is something like the following: sometime in the mid- to late-60s, the misguided student programing department of an institute of higher learning scheduled the then up-and-coming band The Doors to open for Simon and Garfunkel. The Doors performed their usual schtick, Morrison flailing around like a drunken lout. Within twenty minutes, the band was literally laughed off of the stage. The significance being that this story is a clear indicator of S&G's audience at the time--immediately piercing the Lizard King's tired tower of bullshit. That's what makes Bookends, the group's fourth record, so remarkable for it's time--an incredibly successful album that saw through the deep, confounding bullshit of it's contemporaries.

Skipping the party-line at the time of dripping psychedelic and youthful upheaval, Bookends is instead a dour vision of loss and aging. A seamless masterpiece tracing time's ravages through youthful alienation to elderly regret, Paul Simon's plaintive discontent was never more clearly felt than in its simple songs. Beginning with the opening track, the quiet, 32 second instrumental "Bookends Theme," which quickly segues into the screaming moog intro of "Save the Life of My Child"--a funny, beautiful narrative about a boy committing suicide that samples soaring gospel voices amidst a brilliantly placed, self-referential recycling of "Sounds of Silence." It's the production peak of the record, flowing subtly into what is arguably the narrative peak, a personal postcard of innocence and emptiness in the form of a road trip called "America." "America" is a beautiful juxtaposition--a light-hearted, subtle love song is complicated but listless alienation, with a simple introduction of a sweet love affair transitioning into lyrics like "'Kathy, I'm lost' I said/though I knew she was sleeping/I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."

"Overs" follows, one of the more subtle, self-contained songs in the cycle, about the slow disintegration of a loveless relationship (a song which, I might add, has passed my depressingly deep sleep repetition test). Next is the inventive Art Garfunkel field recordings composition (the only thing he ever authored for the group) "Voices of Old People"--a sad collection of blurbs collected from elderly people in assisted living recollecting their lives--that introduces "Old Friends," a dismal vision of the future when Paul and Art meet silently on a park bench at 70.

"Bookends Theme" is again revisited, this time concreting the narrative lyrically:

"Time it was
and what a time it was
it was...
A time of innocence,
A time of confidences.

Long ago... it must be...
I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories;
They're all that's left you."

The album begins a slight decline with the still more than functional "Fakin' It" (an attempt at a more literal "Day In the Life" rip), and the silly "Punky's Dilemma" (which is vaguely reminiscent of some Beach Boys Smile recordings of the same era), but is immediately restored with the reappearance of "Mrs. Robinson," and the most Rock n Roll composition of their career, forbodding "Hazy Shade Of Winter." The record is rounded out by the fine but forgettable "At the Zoo," a cheekily Orwellian conclusion.

The record is a production marvel, especially considering the limited sonic exploration of S&G's previous records. From the classically cold Richard Avedon cover photo--Paul starring solemnly--to the sweeping soundscape within, Bookends is nearly a perfect album. No, scratch that. Bookends is a perfect record. Bleak enough to compare to albums like the Velvet Underground's Loaded, the true brilliance of Bookends can only be truly understood when you realize that the album was number 1 on the Billboard albums chart for 7 weeks--meaning that this deeply depressing meditation ended up on the turntables of thousands and thousands of American listeners at one of the most volatile periods of the nation's history. Bookends offered little in means of escapism--something that motivated so much of the musical climate at the time. It was a black, bleak, shimmering tome of fear, dread, and loss. and it is the Greatest Album of All Time.

Okay, I don't want this to sound epic, but while creating 10 albums between 1982 and 2000, Tracy Thorne (12/06/62) and Ben Watt (09/26/62) of Everything But The Girl (EBTG) thoroughly confused their fans. They accomplished what many musicians could only dream: selling hundreds of thousands of albums, but somehow doing it in a way that challenged their listeners to journey with them through decades of inconsistency.

Initially releasing a smattering of albums consisting of what many consider to be "folksy-acoustic" but what I think to be "acid-jazz / light-jazz / female lead / adult contemporary," EBTG transitioned ungracefully at the end of their career toward female lead drum n' bass electronic with heavy house and ambient influences. It was in 1994 when the English duo released Amplified Heart and they garnered their first listen by many soon-to-be-fans, including myself. However, it wasn't until 1996 and their release of Walking Wounded that EBTG would thoroughly confound their following . . . and the WORLD. Influenced heavily by Massive Attack, Thorne was quoted as saying, "Even we got a bit bored with what we were doing [previous to Walking Wounded]. We felt, for the time being, we'd gone as far as we possibly could doing what we were doing. With this new material, it is like hearing a new group."

Indeed, Tracy, it is. Walking Wounded: totally a gateway album. Watt, on the brink of death due to a rare intestine disease, programmed beats and organized much of the science-music production of the album. Thorne added her classic vocals to the electronic mix in a less-ben-gibbard/more-mia-doi-todd fashion and Walking Wounded was in the can. However, it didn't sell compared to the previous outings of easy listening that the couple had bequeathed to the public.

Yet, the faux inaccessibility thought harrowing and scandalous by many proved breathtakingly necessary by at-the-time novice electronic music listeners like me. To this day I listen to this album several times per week. I have secret friends whom I identify with in relation to this album, this band.

Ben Watt is still alive. He only has three feet of intestine left. Everything But The Girl produced one follow-up to Walking Wounded called Tempremental, after which the group decided - amicably - to work on other projects. Watt co-founded the West London night club, Lazy Dog, where he was rumored to DJ on a regular rotation. He now runs a record label called Buzzin' Fly Records, which seems to focus on saxophone-based electronica. The group, graciously, has left their amazingly vintage website online.

When I started listening to EBTG, I had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Somehow listening to this band in my headphones in hospital rooms and reading Ben Watt's book about his fight with disease helped me think of music in a new way. Indeed, it helped me get more into experimentation in music. EBTG brought a mildly-progressive approach to electronic vocalist music that deserves recognition of being The Greatest Band of All Time.

The year is 1995. I'm 17 years old and going to see my favorite ska band The Skeletones at The Troubadour in West Hollywood. Primed and ready to get my skank on I am met with three dour looking dudes walking to their instruments. These three dudes then proceed to spend the next half an hour making super loud freak out psychedelic music juxtaposed with really interesting gorgeous ambient style, slightly kraut-style passages. Me, being a dude who likes a lot a music but doesn't know about all the different kinds, am blown away. I grab a drumstick that the one guitar dude totally thrashed on his guitar, and proceed to keep it for many years as a representation of being open to surprises and crazy music. I talk to the dudes about how crazy it is they are playing on this ska show. They are totally nice to a young Hawaiian shirt wearing 17 year old dude and tell me they are on tour and their real show got cancelled and had to the opportunity to hop on this show and figured why not. The ska fans were pleasant to them, and one (me) even bought a CD.

The dudes that blew my mind were Space Needle. Jud Ehrbar, the band's main songwriter, started the band as his four track project. Ehrbar and Jeff Gatland created the band's 1995 debut album Voyager a inspiring album of rumbling lo fi noise, strong melodies, and deep experimentation. Brushing up against the edges of shoegazer, prog rock, lo fi, drone, and free (jazz) music Voyager created it's own place and sound. Space Needle added guitarist Anders Parker (from the more famous Varnaline) for touring and he became a official member for the recording of their second album The Moray Eels Eats The Space Needle(the name a direct rip from Holy Modal Rounders' 1968 album The Moral Eels Eats The Holy Modal Rounders also featuring awesome artwork from Roger Dean the man who created Yes' artwork). The second album was a much cleaner affair. It was recorded in a fancy studio with the man (Chris Lasus) who produced Helium's The Dirt of Luck. The album is much more segmented, meaning it seperates all of the diffferent aspects of the band's different sounds. There are the wild free jazzy songs, there are the kraut style songs, and there are the quiet pop songs, as to where on Voyager those vibes came together on songs. While they do all things well, it doesn't translate to making the band or this specific album better.

Space Needle broke up shortly after the release of The Moral Eels Eat The Space Needle with Parker focusing on Varnaline and Ehrbar focusing more on a solo ambient project called Resevoir. Space Needle didn't last long but to a 17 year old at a ska show they were certainly The Greatest Band Of All Time.

Alright friends, It's skeleton in the closet time. Today I've decided to bestow upon myself a dubious distinction--an action that could forever alter the course of GBoAT history. I have decided today to author the first ever Greatest Novelty Band of All-Time. And I'm sorry if you loose respect for me forever.

Growing up in my stilted hometown of Everett, Washington, decent employment options limited, which is why it's all the more amazing that I was able to somehow weasel my way into the rarest of rare commodities: the coveted used record store job. And with this power, they say, came great responsibility. I had roughly eight hours a day to use the vast library before my to expand my limited knowledge, appreciation, and understanding of things spinning and circular. I took this responsibility very seriously, despite the fact that the selection in a used record store in a no-name Washingtonian city is of a little less depth than one would hope.

Despite my employer's eccentricities (he once infamously shot three "warning shots" at a shoplifting assailant in the middle of the city's populous downtown for the price of three Pink Floyd CDs), we got along famously--a mutual understanding that can be summarized in a short list of shared favorites: They Might Be Giants, Oingo Boingo, and Mojo Nixon. There was always a din of excitement whenever the rare record by any of these artists found its way into the store--a ceremonial pause as we both listened from beginning to end. and while his have probably had the shortest of shelf-lives of the three (most of the jokes long dated by the time I ever heard them), the albums of Mojo Nixon still hold a closeted place in my heart.

Beginning his career in San Diego in 1983, Mojo Nixon (born Neill Kirby McMillan, Jr.) and long-time collaborator Skid Roper signed to American indie Enigma in 1985, which began a recording legacy of college radio novelty hits that combined a roots-rock framework with Mojo's ridiculous backwoods persona--a mixture sophomoric sexual obsession and less-than-subtle liberal pseudo-politics. The song titles really speak for themselves: "Jesus at McDonald's," Stuffin' Martha's Muffin" (a tribute to MTV VJ Martha Quinn), "Burn Down the Malls," "I Hate Banks," "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child," "Bring Me the Head Of David Geffen," and probably his most notable hit "Elvis Is Everywhere."

Nixon developed something of a cult following in the late '80s with a string of minor hits, enough to land him a part-time gig on MTV (later severed when the network refused to air the video for "Debbie Gibson...," which featured Winona Ryder in the titular role), and a number of--as he puts it--"Shitty movie roles" (including the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great Balls of Fire!, The Super Mario Bros., Car 54, Where Are You?, and Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever); all while releasing the most notable works of his career (1986's Frenzy and Get Out of My Way, '87's Bo-Day-Shus!!!, '89's Root Hog or Die). Splitting with Skid Roper in 1990 in pursuit of a full band, Nixon's career began to deteriorate-- both artistically and financially. Enigma went bankrupt, and Nixon began (as so many artists do when they have worn out their social welcome) releasing material on any random label willing put out poorly designed products for the discount bin. Outside of a few memorable moments (his collaboration with fellow living cartoon Jello Biafra, and his cover of the Smiths' "Girlfriend in a Coma," come to mind), Mojo wound down the tail-end of his career in cult obscurity, finally officially retiring earlier this year with the statement "I have nothing more to say. Not only am I empty, but obviously nobody gives a rat's ass about the things I have been saying for twenty years." He's now an afternoon drive DJ in San Diego.

He once starred as the Ghost of Rock n Roll in a movie starring Cory Feldman. What more does it take to be the Greatest Band of All Time?

BOO YO! The Greatest Band Of All Time is proud to present our first animated gif! This first animated gif is a beaut featuring digital representations of the three members of Figurine along with some floating hearts. This animated gif is the first, but I can solemnly promise you, it will not be the last.

Figurine, as a band, apparently, has never been photgraphed together, which is quite fishy since the members were high school friends. That just doesn't make sense, I have pictures of myself with my high school friends. I have some nice pictures from before prom wearing my cool alternative plaid tuxedo, which surprisingly still looks pretty awesome. I have pictures of us hamming it up, doing bad stuff, being cool dudes, your regular high school tom foolery. Well, Figurine didn't start as a band till all three members (Meredith Figurine, James Figurine, and David Figurine) were away at different colleges and they would get together on breaks from school and dream about being Depeche Mode. Couldn't they have taken some pictures then?!?!?! I understand that the project has mostly occurred over email and the internet with the three members of the group sending their parts and collaborating from their residences in LA, SF, and Cambridge.

I guess having no actual pictures of the band only digital representations makes sense with Figurine's vibe. Their albums focus on technology, the future, and the combining of those with human emotion and love. So, maybe there are pictures of the three members of Figurine but they have intentionally kept these pictures under wraps. These digital images of the members of Figurine first appeared on the album cover to their 1999 LP Transportation + Communication = Love, a great debut album showing a focus in their conceptual themes and a knack for writing great simple pop songs using really enjoyable male/female call and response style vocals mixed with slightly kitschy electronic backing with thin in the best way beats and well used noises like the sounds of a 28k modem and an Apple Computer turning on. With many stand out tracks Transportation + Communication = Love features more mixtape fodder than most band's whole careers.

In 2001 Figurine displayed those digital faces again on the cover for the LP The Heartfelt. This second full length for Figurine shows the band leaving behind some of the kitsch from the great first album, but they don't leave behind the fun. The instrumentation is expanded a little bit with an occasional guitar and the electronics become a little more complex, atmospheric, and experimental. The Heartfelt is a growth, but this doesn't mean it is superior to Transportation + Communication = Love. The Heartfelt is probably equally as solid, but there is something to be said for the goofy focus of their debut.

One important thing I have not told you yet about Figurine is that "James Figurine," is actually Jimmy Tamborello of The Postal Service, Dntel, and Strictly Ballroom or at least it is that's what we are told, but without any actual photographs I guess we will never know. It is this humble reporters opinion that Figurine is the better of Tamborello's two band by mail (snail/e). Unfotunately, Figurine doesn't get a whole lot of attention, and I don't think they have ever toured as a band. They have released two great albums, a very good remix album (Reconfigurine), a couple of solid eps. Clearly, any band into animated gifs, love songs about e-mail and instant messaging have to be The Greatest Band Of All Time, even if they refuse to have a band photo.

The first time I saw Young People will probably always be the most memorable. I had been hearing some rumblings about the band from a handful of friends (whose word on such matters was hit-or-miss at best), all of which thought that I would be interested in this "minimal, country-punk" band--a description that, under just about any circumstances, just sounded dreadful. Xiu Xiu was in town at the time--back when Cory and Lauren were in the band, back before Jamie lived in Seattle--and as they and some other friends all seemed to be caravanning down to Olympia for the show (my imagined "home-away-from-home" at the time), I decided to follow along.

we arrived at the Voyeur roughly an hour early, as the main attraction of the evening--Sleetmute Nightmute--was slated to play first. They played a pretty decent set (I think Alder was MIA at the time?), enough to validate the hours drive South, and so I decided to take a break as Growing began their set. I got back just in time to watch Young People set up. I immediately recognized Katie Eastburn as an impressive member of her former dance troupe, Janet Pants Dans Theeatre (who, incidentally, "borrowed" and capped a more-than-healthy dose of a whiskey bottle we had smuggled into a show we played with them)--but was preparing for the worst. It took roughly 17 seconds to be converted.

It had been so long since I had witnessed a band paint so much with so little. Maybe I never had. Young People make such a beautiful, thoughtful, reserved noise--a cleverly restrained construction that is just so volatily sparse, responding in perfect compliment to Katie's meandering vocal melodies--just long, endless phrases. The way they played their instruments with such simple precision... Young People were instantly everything I was missing in modern music. it felt so genuine. So amateurish. So totally inspiring. Now, while I might regularly toss around phrases like "Greatest Band of All Time" with reckless abandon--the word "inspiration" holds a much closer place in my heart. and Young People were Inspiring. Little did I know at the time that Young People--featuring Jeff Rosenburg, ex-Pink and Brown--were far from amateurs. But they just played TOO WELL to know what they were doing!

the Gossip followed YP with what was probably the best show I had ever seen them play, and in a sweaty heap, we all went home. On the way back, I shared my feelings on the evening's performance, and was met with some serious surprise from my companions. "They were just so Off tonight," cried the previously initiated. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. until I saw them play again. After my second Young People experience, I talked to Jeff briefly about my epiphany those several months before, and was met with the same surprise, "Oh God, that was a terrible show." But I was sold.

Young People came close to reviving my interest in live music--a feat that, in itself, suggests that they just might be the Greatest Band Of All Time.

The Red Headed Stranger. The Original Outlaw. Willie Nelson. An American Legend. Can I really say that and be serious? Most assuredly so. A small meek man who has given us some of the greatest songs in country music's history and some of the greatest songs of American history! Grand, huh? Well, let's lay off the superlatives for a minute and just say that Willie Nelson writes beautiful proud music that is stuffed to the brim with emotion and honesty.

Willie, born in 1933 in Texas, was raised mostly by grandparents after his father died and his mother ran away. He had one sister, Bobbie, who has been super close to him his whole life. They were heavily encourged by their grandparents to play music, and so they did, Willie started in with the guitar and Bobbie with the piano. Willie started writing songs at age 7, and was fronting a band all through high school. After a failed stint in the Air Force, Willie started DJ'ing and he recorded his first song in 1956 (in Vancouver, WA!). He sold his first song (as is common in country music), "Family Bible", in 1959, and in 1960 it became a hit (for Claude Gray). Willie moved to Nashville to try to sell more songs and to become a recording artist on his own. Willie was rejected time and time again in regards to his own recordings. He found luck selling songs and penned many huge country hits of the early 60's such as "Hello Walls," "Funny How Time Slips Away," and the ubiquitous "Crazy" made famous by Patsy Cline. Willie was given a recording contract and had a few modest hit singles, but his success faded, and by the early 70's he decided to quit making music all together. Willie moved back to Texas and tried his hand at farming. While the farming didn't work out, Willie became inspired by the farming, the hard working Texan, and the rock'n'roll vibe. Realizing that he was disillusioned with the glitz and sheen and obtrusiveness of the Nashville system and scene, and not with music itself, he went back to work but this time his way. He released a string of albums that he took creative control of, and they showed what a great producer and performer Willie could be in addition to an already recognized songwriter. Yesterday's Wine, Shotgun Willie, and Phases & Stages are all great albums with loose concepts that tie them together. In 1975, Willie released Red Headed Stranger a brilliant album that tells a great tale of lost love, revenge, being on the run, and what you can find if you stop running. A very spare production consisting mainly of Willie's guitar and sister Bobbie's piano. Nineteen mostly short songs tell a story deserving of a movie version, which they made a few years with Willie in the lead role. Red Headed Stranger was Willie's most succeful album to date and greated with wide critical acclaim. It really cemented him as a performer. He continued having success in the late 70's and early 80's with "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys," "On The Road Again," and the pop crossover hit version of Elvis Presley's "Always on My Mind." Also appearing in a number of films in the late 70s/early 80s (Willie's peak of commercial success) he became an icon for the outlaw country phenomenon (along with Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, etc.). "Honeysuckle Rose" a film which appears to be fairly autobiographical about Willie is really enjoyable and feature Willie and his band at their most rocking.

Willie ran into some trouble with the IRS in the late 80's, and they repossessed the majority of his holdings (homes, studios, farms, etc.) and he even put out a double album to raise money to pay of the IRS called The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories. The 80's and 90's also saw Willie focusing on his Farm Aid charity concerts, which earned millions and millions for America's struggling farmers.

Consistently putting out albums up till today, Willie has lost some of his chart power, but he still continues to challenge himself and his audience with every release. The 1996 release, Spirit, is a hauntingly sad album about coming to grips with being alone. Spirit is also another spare affair, where Willie's songs and talents seem to shine brightest, focusing on Willie's excellent guitar playing in a more spanish style and it is easily one of the best of his career.

Willie Nelson is an American icon and legend. His face is probably one of the most recognizable. He has a likable way about him (as shown in those very funny tax ads in this years Super Bowl) and has had a wonderful career over the last 45 years. Most importantly, Willie Nelson has given us songs of beautiful sorrow, amazing relief, obscure wisdom, and jubilee. Willie Nelson is The Greatest Band Of All Time.

I've heard this story at least a half a dozen different ways, so please don't quote me on any of this, for the record, I've never ever meant to suggest that the fifth-hand accounts of The Greatest Band of All Time are beacons of any kind of accuracy I, for one, haven't even heard of three-fourths of the bands we've written about.

Anyway, back to the story: It's been about a year since Jim Osterberg began playing music with the street thug Asheton brothers. Besides changing his name to "Pop", not much had really happened for Osterberg in that time just like nothing had ever really happened for him in Detroit, but for his friends in the local powerhouse MC5, things were really beginning to look up. Shows at the Local Grande Ballroom were selling out. People were starting to pay attention. Some hipster talent scout named Danny Fields from Elektra Records was even calling them--I mean, this label was putting out Doors records, for godssakes--this was the big time!

So this New York dilettante Fields shows up fresh from hob-knobbing with the Warhol set to check out the MC5's scene (a family that deserves their own GBoAT, to be sure)--and is, of course, blown away. So when the MC5 suggests that Fields check out their "little brother" band while he's in town, the guy listens. Now, despite being something of an effete New York prick, Danny Fields has impeccable taste, and leaves the student union building of the University of Michigan with a clear mission: Elektra signs the MC5, Elektra signs the Stooges. the next night, in the kitchen of the MC5's sprawling commune, he makes the call to the label heads back in New York to break the news. "See if you can get the big group for twenty grand and the little group for five." And the Stooges went to make a record.

Iggy Pop, Dave Alexander, and Scott & Ron Asheton arrived in New York at the end of the year to record their debut with John Cale (former of Velvet Underground, then Elektra staff producer). Meeting with label heads, the band assured them that they had enough material for a full-length, in reality only having about three actual songs. Ron Asheton got scared, and after the meeting, went back to his hotel room, writing three new songs in the span of an hour.

Through a difficult time in the studio (in which John Cale was unable to convince the band that they actually had to turn down their amps to record), the band produced what is inarguably their definitive statement, their amazing self-titled debut. Redundant, thuggish guitar bliss beneath Iggy's meat-headed drivel ("Ig writes some of the best throwaway lines in rock, meaning some of the best lines in rock," Lester Bangs so famously wrote of the album's lead-off track, "'Now I'm gonna be 22/I say My-my and-a Boo-hoo' that's classic--he couldn'tve picked a better line to complete the rhyme if he'd labored into 1970 and threw the I Ching into the bargain") carries the album through seven admittedly trite compositions--tacking on a 10 minute Cale dirge to fill it out a bit. add a few hand claps, and that's it. And it's still so powerful.

Divorced from its legacy and all other peripherals, the unique article of The Stooges is completely bare of purpose. These weren't the poetry-studied college kids in the Velvet Underground. These weren't the "revolutionaries" in the MC5. These were just some thug creeps with nothing--nothing at all--better to do with their time. Stripped of pretense or intention, the record is, more than any other "proto-punk" album, a framework for the basic tenants of a punk rock ethos. it was bored. it was listless. it was adolescent. it was confused. it didn't know what it wanted, but it was dying for something.

The purists might tell you that--much like Bowie's later mistreatment of the band's Raw Power record--John Cale screwed it all up. That he added viola and and made it all too weak and listenable. but that's just another amazing element of The Stooges: unlike a lot of their contemporaries, it really is (for the most part) very accessible. The purists might also tell you that Funhouse, the band's incredibly under-focused sophomore effort, is the real deal. But I defy you to dance to a single song on that record. I rest my case.

It should be said that many people have tried to apply the term "brilliant" to the music of the Stooges--an accolade that acts as something of a disservice to their unique legacy. the greatness of the Stooges has nothing to do with subversive intelligence--in fact, quite the opposite. They were the lowest common denominator. True dregs. and because of this, not in spite of it, they recorded the album of their career right out of the gate; an album that would become that became the Greatest Band of All Time.

Everyday Is Like Sunday. Like today, for example. So here's Scott Goodwin with your weather and traffic:

I don't think the force I felt upon listening to Unwound's Repetition for the first time in my senior year of high school can ever be understated. So relentless was my obsession over ever detail of the album that it seemed a story demanded to be imagined. And I still believe that, if you listen hard enough, you can feel the claustrophobia of the Olympia, WA basement where the songs took shape, simply though the work's brilliance alone. These basements, to my late teenage mind, were places known through the stories of obscure rock bands and youth culture insurrections, a site of modern myth. The album brought to mind the surreal quality of distances - open roads and the numbing effect of touring. In this sense I couldn't help but hear songs like "Last Exit" and "Go to Dallas" and "Take a Left" as encouragements to escape into the open expanses of America proper, which for a student on the cusp of leaving home and starting anew was alluring.

Coincidentally, Unwound was in its early stages at roughly the same time in the lives of Justin Trosper and Vern Rumsey. Raging out of Tumwater High School just in time to latch on to Olympia's burgeoning rock scene, original drummer Brandt Sandeno left shortly after the recording of what would be released years later as the band's "lost" self-titled album. Recruiting Bloomington, IN transplant Sara Lund, formerly of Oly fuck-all Witchypoo, the band found a stable line up that would propel them (at times augmented by Sandeno and the ubiquitous David Scott Stone among others) through seven full length releases, roughly a dozen singles, and a ten year run as one of more innovative acts among the dull, faceless creations of the genre that would become the "indie rock" cash cow.

The band's final album, released months before I would arrive in my new home just north of the band's residence in Olympia, suggested a change in direction through inversion. Leaves Turn Inside You exchanged volume and force for nuance, though the band droned on in its own sprawling way. The tension within this record seemed to pit guitarist Justin Trosper against the other two members of the band. While Lund's precise drumming and Rumsey's familiar bass sought to mark time and make it tangible, the extended guitar phrases and vocal drawl seemed to distort any interval.

Though this album found the idea perfected, this confusion of time had always existed as part of the band. Think about it: nearly every song seems longer than it is. Repetition's rave-up "Murder Movies" is scarcely two minutes but is loaded down with the same textures and passion found in the band's six minute laments. It should also be remembered that in 1991 when Unwound released its first LP, Fake Train, the record included a 13 minute noise-hardcore outburst "Valentine Card/ Kantina/Were, Are, and Was," while West Coast contemporaries like Spazz were writing similarly heavy songs pushing 20 seconds.

As for any criticism leveled at a band that showed continual interest in long form songs, repetitive phrases, and meditative structures, it would seem to be a moot point to claim that all their songs sound the same. What kind of band would name their masterpiece Repetition, if this weren't true? It's between the stolid pulse and explosive arch in Unwound's songs have their best moments. But if trivia will clinch the band's title, so be it: What kind of band inaugurates labels like Kill Rock Stars, Troubleman Unlimited, and Gravity Records with their first releases? Surely, the Greatest Band of All Time.

Second perhaps only to sweatshop labor, the creation of pop music appears to be the most joyless profession this cruel world has to offer. For all of their saccharine sensibilities and sugary harmonies, those pop musicians sure do seem like a dour bunch--or so suggests the ceaseless onslaught of drab, lifeless pop records that so regularly mar the surface of journalists' desks each year. It's enough to make you forget why you loved pop music to begin with. Well, if you please, allow me to offer you a reminder: ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Unicorns--the band that could save it all.

With their second release, last year's Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, the Canadian two-cum-three piece has fallen upon a heap of justifiable critical acclaim--largely attributed to the band's seemingly left-field take on pop craftsmanship. And while theirs is a vision certainly unto itself, the Unicorns' clatter is hardly an innovative one. "So," you ask, "what exactly should I be shitting my pants about?" Shit for the same reason why the Unicorns appear to be confounding most critics. Shit for the new way. Shit because the Unicorns seem to have accomplished a feat long deemed impossible: capturing on tape an urgency that sounds as if it was as much fun to conceive as it is to listen to. And it's a rare achievement that a pop album can still feel this alive.

With hardly an album under their belt, the Montreal trio has managed an incredibly well-conceived indie pop record that somehow tightropes a balance of idiosyncratic composition, unadulterated joy, and clever cheek-tonguing--all while sidestepping the confines of a seemingly inevitable punch line. Though motivated in large part by a relentlessly silly fascination with the morbid, Who Will Cut... is charming enough to avoid toeing joke-rock territory--despite every line being delivered with a certain anxious zeal. It's just the kind amphetamine enthusiasm that reminds a person of what pop music supposed to feel like.

And it's this (reportedly) drug-fueled joie de vivre that doorstops such a charming dichotomy into the Unicorn's character, which is to say that, in living life to the fullest, dudes sure do come off like creeps. I saw them play for the first time earlier this year, and between each saccharine-sweet pop song (played with a shocking virtuosity gracefully subdued on their record) came a barrage of cleverly orchestrated heckling and much to the surprise of the audience, it was all coming from the wrong direction. There was public ridicule, physical assault, and even a report of sneaky on-stage coke use. Who knew these cute little Canadians would remind America what ridiculous rock spectacle was supposed to look like? I'll tell you: The Greatest Band Of All Time, that's who.

My partner in crime, Mr. Zac Pennington, astutely pointed out the obvious last week that the more obscure a band is the harder it is to track down photos of them on the internet for use in this humble music appreciation site. Well, Mr. Pennington, I toast to you, as I have found your theory to be dead on. In my searching for photos of the mid 90s rock back Further, I returned exactly 0 photos of the band. The only image I found (exhausting google image search and all the links in the first ten or so pages in a standard google web search) was the image you see to the left, the cover of their last release (Next Time West Coast). The other album cover you see below was the result of me taking a photo graph of the eight or so year old copy of their first album (Sometimes Chimes).

The insane obscurity of this band is really surprising. The leaders of Further, brothers Brent and Darren Rademaker, had been in Shadowland, a band that had put out two releases on major label (Geffen) in 89 and 90. Shadowland went through a lot of grief with Geffen forcing them to want to make Further so obscure (I am assume that their obscurity was mostly their own decision). The trouble with the major label even seeped into Further's material the first thing you hear on their debut album is a sample of somebody saying "and we got the shaft from the record company," with a song on their second album, Griptape, called "The Death Of An A & R Man." Shadowland was heavily influenced by 60's music, as to where Further was influenced by more contemporary peers like Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh, and Teenage Fanclub. Actually, in most reviews (of the few you can find) they are criticized for emulating these bands too closely. This can be a knock, but I also find it to be a positive for this band. Yes, they do sound like many bands of the day, but I think they combine different aspects of these bands wonderfully. In fact, they had a good sense of humor about being accused of ripping of their contemporaries by naming of their songs "furtherdoh-jr.q" (a reference to Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr, etc.). Not the most original band but Further did make good music.

Further released two full lengths and three eps over their short three or four year career. The Rademaker brothers both went onto bands that were nowhere near obscure as Further, with Brent going on to the wonderful (60's influenced) Beachwood Sparks, and Darren going on to (60's influenced) The Tyde. Chris Gunst, the principal singer and songwriter for Beachwood Sparks played guitar in Further towards the end of Further's lifespan, and I actually read in one article the Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel, The Postal Service, Figurine, Strictly Ballroom, and more was in Further for awhile. All this evidence points to Further being willfully obscure. Further may not be the greatest band in the world when it comes to execution and originality but when it comes to effort that has to be put in to enjoy this band, concept (willful obscurity), and charm Further truly is The Greatest Band Of All Time.

This is beginning to get difficult. Something that I might impress upon you, dear reader, is that however junkstore these here GBoAT entries might come across, they are in each a very serious undertaking. My knowledge on each of these subjects are far from encyclopedic, and as such, it is only through relentless and laborious research that we are able to offer you these daily missives. I'm not looking for thanks--just a little forgiveness.

Weird tangent. Anyway, today's subject is Neu!, a band whose history I have only had a very narrow understanding of until, well, about 20 minutes ago. Birthed from the crab grass seedling of early partnerships with Kraftwerk, drummer Klaus Dinger (who played on the second half of Kraftwerk's self-titled debut) and Michael Rother (a touring guitarist) split from the band in 1971 with creative differences, moving in together to work on a new project. Living at the time with a couple of young German ad executives, the two decided on the name Neu!, the most common word used in advertising, and began the process of recording their first LP.

With Kraftwerk producer Conny Plank on board and an extremely limited recording budget (a problem that would plague them for many years), the duo spent four days improvising in studio. The resulting LP, their self-titled debut (comprised entirely of elements conceived on the final two days of studio time), was in very name a strange sort of Genesis from the rigidly mechanical (or "motorik") drumming to the single-note throbbing bass, guitar washes and white noise. It's been said thousands of times (and, I might add, quite a lot more eloquently than I can possibly muster at present), but Neu! really is just so sprawling in its simplicity: covering enough territory in its six parts to expand the ethos of the then emerging Krautrock (German as they were) altogether; the warm sonic wash that would go on to fuel a thousand warm washes.

As per usual, the record didn't find an audience outside of their homeland, but the record did do surprising business in West Germany and following their first (and only) tour, about six shows, the band returned to the studio to record the unsuccessful single "Neuschnee" / "Super", followed by sessions for their sophomore release.

The recording sessions for Neu! 2 were plagued with budget problems, affording the band about enough studio time to record the first side of the record before the money ran out. Broke and under a great deal of pressure from their record company, they could flesh part of the record out with the material from their previous single (about seven minutes), leaving about fourteen minutes of empty space to fill. Their famous response was five additional "compositions": their 45 played at three varying speeds, a recording of a broken version of the single, a song from the already completed sessions as played through a bad tape recorder. WE INVENTED THE REMIX.

After the understandably luke-warm reception to the record, Neu! briefly split, Rother forming the acclaimed (if obscure) Harmonia with the members of lesser Krautrockians Cluster. The band released two records, were called "the world's most important rock group" by Brian Eno, then split. During this time, Neu! reunited to fulfill their contract to Brain Records.

The resulting LP, Neu! 75 (with which I am unfortunately personally pretty unfamiliar), saw the band incorporating more synths into their sound, and at the same time pursuing a more abrasive leaning. More widely acclaimed then the disappointing (though at times stunning) Neu! 2, the record still didn't do any business, and the band (as planned) split.

A year or so later Rother gets a phone call from David Bowie about a project he's working on. He's heard Neu! and Harmonia, and is curious as to whether he'd be interested in working on a new project with Bowie and Eno out in Berlin. Rother declines. Bowie and Eno go on to make Low.

Neu! reunites one last time in 1986 to record the lackluster Neu! 4 (which remained unreleased until the late 90's, and which Dinger released without Rother's blessing), but for the most part, that's where their story as a band ends. That is, if you don't count the sprawling number of Space Rock, Ambient, and Psyche bands that would go on to rip them of (and let's not even get into Stereolab again). which, of course, we don't.

For their part, and for all of the compelling reading I had to the do this morning, Neu! is and will forever be the Greatest Band of All Time.

I think it is obvious that it it unnecessary to write a lot about this band. The pictures speak for themselves in this occassion. These dudes totally rocked it VICTORIAN FUTURISTIC SPACEDUDE style. What more is there to say?? Seriously, these guys were on some whole other thing. They took part of their inspiration from the whole Parliament/Funkadelic spaceship thing, but no one could even come close to the one and only Jonzun Crew.

They were pioneers in the electro funk hip hop world that would be the biggest thing around in 84, 85, 86. They gave the breakers something to keep getting wild too while their culture was being totally over exposed. They had the hottest style of all time. Three brothers originally from the home of all things truly surreal, Florida, moved to Boston and formed The Jonzun Crew in 1981. Two years later they had the first ever album released on the hip hop label that would put out some of the greatest records ever and a giant in the industry, Tommy Boy. The historic LP, Lost in Space, featured three of the greatest electro jams of all time ("We Are The Jonzun Crew," "Space Is The Place," and "Pack Jam"). Long songs allowing for a dark groove to develop featuring minimal wicked robot voices talking mostly about space. Let's just be honest: it may seem goofy and silly in 2004, as it has been copied by dance music for 20 plus years now, but it still feels amazingly cool to listen to The Jonzun Crew.
Michael Johnson (nee Jonzun) continued on in the music industry after The Jonzun Crew stopped putting out hot records. He was behind the careers of New Edition(he wrote and produced their amazing hit single "Candy Girl"), New Kids On The Block, and more. An expert on The Jonzun Crew (with the last name Johnson as well) was telling me that he produced a group (whose name he could not recall) that was like electro with Temptation style vocals. The idea of that freaks me out. Michael Johnson and The Jonzun Crew influenced the direction of music (popular and underground) for years and of course anybody who wears those hot threads are certainly The Greatest Band Of All Time.

Maybe there is something to be said for eclecticism, for diverging from the confines of a static musical formula, approaching every song as a rebirth. Sure. I'll buy that. But I think there's something equally as impressive in a rigid constriction that sieves in its design for a narrower, more laser-focused product with every effort. All of my favorites have always beaten the best ideas into the ground. And it's in this tapered avenue that Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's pop mournfully resides; a simple equation of towered, swap meet keyboards and beats, all set to the sentimental baritone of lone member Owen Ashworth. What sounds like a concept of somewhat limited potential, CFTPA is instead an experiment in the disparity of the consistent--the kind of flawless formula that composes all great pop bands.

In 1998, 22-year-old San Francisco zine author Owen Ashworth (best known at the time for the popular Wyatt Riot, a "fan zine" in tribute to Wyatt Cusack of Trackstar/Aisler's Set) decided--much to the dismissal of most of his peers--to begin playing out with his until then four-track only project, jokingly titled Casiotone For the Painfully Alone. The whole mess was something like a novelty act: a big guy in glasses sweating nervously, shaky hands dwarfing the tiny tinny junkstore keyboards at his fingertips as his graveled voice mutters simple stories under his breath. Song after song after song. But with the release of his debut record, Answering Machine Music (a record that I somehow manage to have three copies of in various formats), on his own short-lived label CassingleUSA, Ashworth made it clear that--in much the same way as previous GBoAT artists the Mountain Goats--repetition is the key to perfection.

Taking clear cues from some of John Darnielle's production ideals (with a dose of early Smog for good measure), Ashworth's recordings are awash in tape-hiss and over-driven treble. It's a sound that's a little difficult to stomach initially--with song after song a relentless onslaught of simple keyboard chords and filthy tape heads--but much like with most things marked by repetition, CFTPA yields a great deal with patience. Sentiment-soaked and deceptively simple--Ashworth chronicles in straightforward vignettes the middling malaise of adult mediocrity with pocket-sized portraits of discontented twentysomethings.

In 2000 Ashworth was approached by respected German electronic label Tomlab, who would soon release Pocket Symphonies For Lonely Subway Cars, Casiotone's sophomore album. Surprisingly more mature than his debut (especially considering that--sonically--it's nearly identical), Pocket Symphonies is themed around a loose concept of travel and escape; a vision that proves a perfect canvas for Ashworth's simple narratives. Twinkle Echo, its follow-up, is perhaps slightly less conceptually realized, but never-the-less features some of Ashworth's best material to date.

Over the years Casiotone For the Painfully Alone has toured extensively with the likes of the Rapture and Xiu Xiu, and have built themselves a modest (really--way too modest) cult nationally. Though Ashworth had initially intended Twinkle Echo to be the band's swansong, he has recently reconsidered his hasty decision with plans to begin working on new material sometime in the near future--though the future of Casiotone For the Painfully Alone still remains uncertain.

ramblerambleramble.

For his stranglehold on my CD player over the last few years, and for being just a damned good friend to me, Casiotone For the Painfully Alone is this morning deservedly crowned the Greatest Band of All Time.

Another Sunday rolls around here at The Greatest Band Of All Time, and with it another guest writer: our friend and yours, Mister Zach Malm.

From what I can tell, the basic outline for a review here stipulates that my concluding line should be something to the effect of, And that is why the Left Banke is the Greatest Band of All Time. If you'll forgive my haste, I would prefer to sidestep convention and begin with the aforementioned declaration. The Left Banke is the Greatest Band of All Time.

Pioneering what critics called Baroque n Roll, the Left Banke's harpsichord rock often draws comparisons to their contemporaries the Zombies and the Kinks. With their first single, "Walk Away Renee," the Left Banke made 1966 the greatest year in pop music (Pet Sounds and Revolver also helped out slightly). Their 1967 album Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina is a remarkably assured and balanced work, filled with hauntingly beautiful melodies, orchestral flourishes, and lush vocal harmonies. The entire album succeeds, with the exception of the misplaced "What do You Know", an oompah-oompah country-style song that I imagine leaves most listeners scratching their heads.

Keyboardist and primary songwriter Michael Brown was 16 when he wrote "Walk Away Renee," about bassist Tom Finn's then-girlfriend Renee Fladen. Brown's infatuation with her was so incapacitating that he reportedly refused to play if she was in the room. "Pretty Ballerina" and "She May Call You Up Tonight," two of the Left Bankes best songs, were also about her.

Now that you're familiar with the band, I'm going to have to alter my original premise. You see, in 1967 Michael Brown, the proverbial brains behind the operation, decided to pull a Brian Wilson, and refused to tour with the rest of the band, staying home to focus on writing instead. Effectively (and correctly) announcing that he was the most important member, this caused a lot of tension. It got so bad that at one point, in a display of his sovereignty, Brown hired studio musicians and recorded the single "Ivy Ivy b/w And Suddenly." Released under the Left Banke moniker, the other members of the group were suitable incensed.

Eventually, Brown departed and started a Left Banke-styled band called Montage, while the rest of the band kept a few of his songs, wrote some new ones, and released an album called Left Banke Too. Neither this nor the first album are available on CD, however, the CD There's Gonna Be a Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966-69 contains both albums in their entirety, plus a few singles.

Although Brown was never an official member of Montage, he played keys on the album, and wrote the vast majority of the material, which, if you ask me, pretty much makes him a member. Montage released one self-titled album in 1969, which is damn-near impossible to find on vinyl, but was finally released on CD in 2001. It is well worth picking up, as it sounds much more like the successor to Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina than the lackluster Left Banke Too does. As well as containing a better version of Desiree than the one on Left Banke Too, Montage features "She's Alone," possibly Michael Brown's single greatest achievement. Akin to "Eleanor Rigby" in its subject matter and use of strings instead of guitars or drums, "She's Alone" is an astounding song, driven by a vocal melody that only Michael Brown could have written.

In light of all the evidence, I must conclude that Michael Brown, not the Left Banke, is in fact the Greatest... um... Band... of All Time.

In the process of updating this blog day after day, I've consistently run into a difficulty that now presents itself as simple theory: that the amount of reasonable promotional photos of a band that can be found in a Google image search is inversely proportional to that band's relative obscurity. which, of course, makes rational sense. But occasionally it's not totally evident to me exactly how secret a band is until I'm trying to drudge up some vaguely attractive graphic for these entries.

Such was the case with today's Greatest Band of All Time--and my current-most musical obsession--the mysterious post-punk collective known as Family Fodder. One of the most fulfilling musical discoveries to fall into my lap in a great long while, I was really surprised to find so little interest in their somewhat extensive catalog. Anyway.

Though a musical collective in a sprawling sense, Family Fodder evolved primarily from the home recordings of the band's nucleus Alig Pearce. Over the course of the band's initial five-year existence, however, Fodder credits over 20 different musicians as contributors (a membership that includes two-thirds of the seminal Post-Punk band This Heat)--an open-door policy that accounts for the band's bafflingly eclectic discography.

A classically-trained pianist, Pearce spent several years home recording with various friends in the late Seventies before passing a tape around to a few friends--which, in keeping with the fevered climate of late '70s Britain, soon resulted in the release of a couple of 7"s. Pearce attributed the records to two different bands that didn't really exist: Frank Sumatra and the Mob, and the Family Fodder. The Family Fodder release sold better, so the name stuck. (incidentally: The Frank Sumatra record was released by the Small Wonder label in tandem with two other singles, Bauhaus' "Bela Legosi's Dead" and The Cure's debut 7" "Killing An Arab".)

Over the next year, Pearce would continue recording with a random assortment of contributors--most notably singer and then-girlfriend Dominique Levillain--compounding materials that would come to comprise their first full-length, the masterful Monkey Banana Kitchen. These Dominique Levillain-era recordings, easily their most palatable works, are also arguably their most accomplished: combining elements of Dub, tons of tape-manipulation, a subtle sense of humor, and a striking, almost New Wave pop sensibility, these recordings are powered in large part by the French-born chanteuse's bilingual musings (an approach that would have a profound effect on the early recordings of Stereolab). Songs like "Film Music," "Debbie Harry," (one of a number of songs approaching Levillian's bizarre obsession with the Blondie singer) "Love Song," and, most notably the brilliant single "Savoir Faire," highlight the band's magic formula at the time (vocals emulating a driving piano/keyboard melody, thumping, "four-on-the-floor" kick drum), but only touch on the vast possibilities of their output.

After a break-up with Levillian, Pearce trudged on for a few more Family Fodder releases (including the double album All Styles, which attempts to cover just that), but by 1983 he had moved on to new things, and the "band"--still obscure even in there own country--dissolved.

Since that time there have been a few reunions--the most recent of which resulting in 2000's surprising release of new material (the Water Shed LP)--little of which has served to bring any more attention to the band's brilliance (with the exception of a "best of" compilation, none of their original material has seen a proper reissue on CD). But here, in this rambling and poorly constructed blog entry, they finally arrive upon all of the glory they truly deserve as... the GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIME.

Boo Yo! Sorta cliched call, right?? Like avant free hip hop right, very palatable for the white rock'n'roller right? Cool points?? This is totally one of the digs on Antipop Consortium. Whatever. I'm so over it. I'm so over knocking a group for being distinct. These dudes brought everything I loved: super weird beats of their own production, crazy wild vocal styles, super smart lyrics, interesting subject matter. Four distinct dudes bringing their own style to make the raddest rap collective of the early 21st century.

Always more of a consortium of dudes than a true rap group, the Antipop Consortium found each other in 1997 at monthly event called "Rap Meets Poetry." M Sayyid, (High) Priest, Beans, and producer/engineer Earl Blaize were all doing their own thing, but all came together and soon after put out a couple underground singles. Their first LP, Tragic Epilogue, came out in 2000 on Ark 75 (the label responsible for Deltron, other Dan the Automator, and some Prince Paul). The album was a minor key bonanza, and fit in with the Ark 75 vibe as it was reminiscent of Dr. Octagon.

The big shocker hit when the band signed to electronic/idm super label Warp Records (home to Aphex, Squarepusher, Autechre) in 2001. It was was Warp's first move into the Hip Hop World and a bold move for Antipop to break from the underground hip hop mold. They released an EP on Warp in 2001 called The Ends Against The Middle and it definitely brought more of an electronic edge to their sound.

Antipop Consortium reached their pinnacle in 2002 with the release of Arrythmia. Their final proper LP, Arrythmia, was a focused maturation of their already distinct sound. The beats were strange based on blips and things one would never think of like ping pong balls. The songs were unadorned, allowing the raps about soap scum and aliens to be even more present than on previous releases. The had evolved their skills and the voices became instruments used for melodies, and more distinct choruses as well as the usual knowledge drop. The albums beats challenged the listener to move in new directions and get beyond the traditional sounds and beats and realize that you could totally move this style which was both somehow simpler and more complex. It was a near perfect album, which was both a blessing and a bad thing, because, feeling like they had accomplished what they had set out to do as a group, they broke up shortly thereafter to focus on solo projects.

I was fortunate to see Antipop on their final tour in 2002. They brought the most entertaining and varied rap show that I've ever seen. Full of energy and rapping the crap out of their already brilliant songs. In between the raps the dudes would do electro style jams on drum machines, samplers, and synths all playing live and all extremely adept and making awesome jams. It made the show flow so well and brought a whole new Antipop vibe that wasn't really present on the records.

A collaboration with jazz pianist Matthew Shipp was released in 2003, but that will probably be the last Antipop release as though apparently their is some bad blood between the former Consortium. Beans has put out a solo LP and EP that are both really solid. We are still waiting for solo releases from M. Sayyid and Priest with high hopes because both produced some of the best Antipop tracks and have what it takes on the mic. While solo stuff is great we can't help but miss The Greatest Band Of All Time.

If you take one thing away from this entry, let it be this: Camera Obscura sounds like Belle & Sebastian. A lot. and judging from your reaction to that statement, i suggest you might want to skip this one.

My introduction to the band was, admittedly, a dubious one: the album cover (as photographed by Belle & Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch) of their latest effort, Underachievers Please Try Harder, indulges my shameful anglophilia in the face of British women--making (along with the promotional posters for the latest Electrelane album) record store visits in the early part of this year largely embarrassing for me. Confusing the band for a Southern California hardcore band of the same name (of whom I was never particularly fond), the record remained for months merely a curiosity of clever marketing, until I realized my awful mistake.

Camera Obscura formed in Glasgow in 1996, revolving around songwriter and lead vocalist Tracyanne Campbell's distinctly wry wit and delivery. After the release of a few UK singles the band began to blimp, eventually settling on a six piece line up of predictably pasty distinction. In 2001 the band released Biggest Blue Hi-Fi, an understated debut that featured a minor UK hit in the Stuart Murdoch-produced single "Eighties Fan"--a relationship that would prove the deathnail in their eternal Belle & Sebastian association.

Early this year Merge released their sophomore record stateside--the aforementioned Underachieverson the strength of which the band (now a seven piece) has been creating substantial noise. and deservedly. The record is a dramatic maturation of their previous output, with Campbell's literate, deceptively precious lyrics stepping up substantially; a compelling combination of twee sentimentality, isolationism, and sexual frustration. Which is to say, not altogether unlike that other Scottish band.

So, in conclusion--Camera Obscura sounds a lot like Belle & Sebastian. Or at least like their younger siblings. But with Belle & Sebastian hitting the skids for the past few years, it might be time to explore a band still in their active prime--lest we forget why they were great in the first place. For that, and for one of this year's best records, Camera Obscura will today carry the torch as the Greatest Band of All Time.

Insert personal anecdote about band changing life here. I can't remember. This is the problem! I know I loved them in high school, but I never saw them play, and I don't have some really exciting anecdote. I have this vague memory of being pumped in this parking lot of this Vons (SoCal grocery store) and Sav-Ons (drugs store) and Panda Express and just blasting The Descendents and feeling like a cool punk dude in a Nissan. The banality of my Descendents memory is maybe more powerful. Just some dude, just some place, just some Nissan, just some band, but over and over again everywhere. They sorta started something that became ridiculously terrible, bland, and ubiquitous: pop punk. They did it so well, though.

It did not really start with pop punk though. They started as super young high school dudes in 1979 as a three peice. They recorded a single as a three piece, and shortly after that added Milo. They became a popular live band in LA playing every punk bill they could get on. They released their first LP in 1982, Milo Goes To College, and it is my favorite punk record of all time. It is filled with youthful bombast, great songs. It is 22 minutes long with 16 songs, and they are all awesome. The album is about feeling like a lame dude, being different, heartbreak, losing friends to drugs, societal pressures, and feeling burned. The album optimizes what it is like to be a pretty cliched punky outsider dude feeling suburbia around you and it states it in a really awesome way. They weren't writing pop punk yet, but were injecting more melody into their songs than most other punk bands at the time, you could maybe call it melodic hardcore.

The title of the album was true, the band sorta broke up because Milo really was going to college. The thing about Milo is he was torn between punk rock and science. This has been the story for the last twenty years plus. He has traded off going to college, being back in the band, going to grad school, then more band, getting his doctorate, band, working a lab job, band. Milo rejoined the band in 85 and they they made some more music. Their songs branched in two directions, one being the proto-type for pop punk ("Silly Girl" from 1985's I Don't Want To Grow Up and "Clean Sheets" and "Pep talk" from 1987's wildly uneven but brilliant All) and a deeper prog metal style ("Iceman" and "Uranus" from All). They were smart dudes who were into punk but wanted to sing silly songs about food and do juvenile stuff and write really amazing s