Rating My CD's: That's How Strong My Love Is

50. Otis Redding -- The Very Best of Otis Redding


Otis Redding is awesome. This is known. Those who don't know it haven't really heard the man. Maybe they've heard "Sittin' By the Dock of the Bay," and are off-put by the whistling at the end. But they haven't heard "These Arms of Mine." They haven't heard the original "Respect" (Aretha was an ovarian interloper!). They haven't heard "Mr. Pitiful."

James Brown may be the Godfather of Soul, but Otis is Soul. Which makes no sense, because They were both around at the same time. But while James Brown had funk to spare and could get on the good foot for the big payback, Otis didn't need no purple cape to hold a crowd. Like Howlin' Wolf, Otis was all presence.

Rating My CD's: The Sound of the 90's

49. Radiohead -- The Bends


When the history of 90's rock is written, two bands will dominate it, bookends of the decade. The first band everyone wanted to be, and copied shamelessly. The second band everyone stood in awe of, and dared not imitate. Nirvana was the band that inaugurated the 1990's, and for many fans and musicians defined the sonic landscape of that decade. But by any objective standard, Radiohead owned that landscape, and expressed the zeitgeist for jaded critic and gushing fanboy alike.

For myself, I never much cared about Radiohead. I mean, we all heard "Creep" a hundred thousand million times back in the day, enough so that we began to sing along to it by sheer cultural osmosis. It hit the same sweet spot as "Comfortably Numb," allowing you to wallow in the melancholy that permeates late adolescence/young adulthood like water. But their titanic fin de siecle trilogy of albums -- OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac -- made no dent on my consciousness. To date, I still haven't listened to the last two.

Rating My CD's: There's a Thin Line

48. Pretenders -- The Singles


I vividly remember the day I picked this up. It was late in the fall of 2001, and I was at Potomac Mills or one of those gigantoid malls with my folks. They were shopping for some manner of housewares, and I was shopping for music. I'd just started teaching and finished paid off my credit card debt. I was writing punk rock reviews for a now defunct web site. So I had disposable income and desire; the twin engines of capitalism.

This was back when a good-sized mall had two or three places to buy CD's. I wandered about with great abandon, but didn't find the kind of music I was looking for. CD versions of albums by first-generation punk bands were still kinda hard to come by at stores. But I had read John Lydon's autobiography Rotten, in which Chrissie Hynde figures prominently. So this was deemed an acceptable substitute for L.A.M.F. or Blank Generation.

Rating My CD's: I Never Cared

47. Pink Floyd -- Animals


Between 1976-1978, those bands of the 60's still surviving had to deal with the sudden rise of Punk. Each did so in a different way. Led Zeppelin tried to trade punches with the New Wave on Presence, an album whose very name seems to shout "Hey, we're still here!" The Rolling Stones flipped a contemptuous bird at the kids with Some Girls, a big sloppy drug-crazed funk-rock masterpiece. And Pink Floyd laughed at them from a great height, pinkies extended, with this record, which condemns even as it shrugs its shoulders.

I have long considered this to be among the more boring records Floyd ever put out. Listening to it with great determination over these past weeks has not changed that assessment. I hear a lo-fi acoustic nod to Punk here, but that's all I hear. Dogs, Pigs, Wings, whatever. It all flows together into one aural mush.

Others disagree. Over at Ground and Sky, a handful of Floydians praise it most praisingly. It's described as "a great disc, easily as good as Dark Side and Wish You Were Here," "their descent from the peak of the mountain," "the heaviest and harshest Floyd record." I suppose if Pink Floyd were my favorite band, I'd consider this album heavy and harsh, but they aren't so I don't. To be sure, there's an intensity to this music: that of a dog chasing its tail. If this album didn't have a famously bleak cover and obvious allusions to George Orwell's most famous book (besides 1984), no one would care about it. At best, it prefigures the thematic and musical ideas of The Wall; at worst, it fails badly enough to require the band to revisit those ideas.

Sometimes misery is exactly that.

Grade: C 

Rating My CD's: Remember When You Were Young

47. Pink Floyd -- Wish You Were Here

So, So you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell

Blue Skies from pain

Can you tell a green field

From a cold steel rail

A smile from a veil

Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade

Your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange

A walk-on part in the war

For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish

How I wish you were here

We're just two lost souls swimmin'in a fishbowl

Year after year

Running over the same old ground

What have we found?

The same old fears

Wish you were here

Rating My CD's: I'm Going to Knock You Into Next Week

46. Pink Floyd -- Meddle


I was hipped to this disc by one of my female housemates, when I asked for her favorite Floyd record. I instantaneously liked the fact that it wasnt Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall. At the time, I was only passingly familiar with either of them, but the 22-year-old me wanted very much not to run his plow through fields already well-furrowed. So for a while, this was my favorite Floyd record (before you ask, of course I own Dark Side and The Wall. But they're on vinyl, so I won't be rating them here).

Certainly, Meddle has a subtlety that the other records lack. Pink Floyd may or may not have been the proggiest of prog-rock bands, but at their noodliest they clung lived to a Go-Big-Or-Go-Home aesthetic. So the very non-operatic nature of a lot of these songs, the un-thematic-cycle of them, can throw listeners for a loop. Compared to Wish You Were Here, this is just a collection of songs. And not a mind-blowing collection of songs, at that. But there's a strange spirit to them all, that oddly binds them together without any lyrical or structural commonality (such as I have noticed).

Rating My CD's: Lime and Limpid Green

45. Pink Floyd -- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn


What I know about Syd Barrett can be summed up as follows: 1) he was Floyd's frontman in the making of this record, their first; 2) he went out of his mind, somewhat due to the copious amounts of acid he was dropping during the making of this record, their first; 3) he ceased being the front man soon after, and although the band never forgot him, he ceased to have any major part of the band after this record, their first.

So I'm not going to write about Barret. Yes, his story is sad, and yes, it can be argued that some kind of rock'n'roll genius was lost forever. So what? The greats burning out or fading away is an old tired script at this point. It's not interesting; it's not enlightening. It's just sad, and I'm not going to bother with it.

Because I also know that this record is one of the most self-consciously, determinedly, gloriously pretentious slabs of noise to escape from 1967. And that's saying something. This is the year of Moby Grape, of the Doors first record, of Sgt. Goddamn Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And Floyd out-weirds them all, without even trying. Amid whatever was going on, this band threw everything but the kitchen sink out, and slipped halfway through, and somehow, even 40+ years removed from it's time and place, it still works.

Crazy Diamonds are Invited to Shine On

Today is the thirty-sixth anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were, and so a fitting day to begin The Week of Floyd at Genre Confusion. In which, I shall do the following:

• Ponder the Insane Stupid Bloated Hippie Music that is Piper at the Gates of Dawn
• Pat myself on the back for owning Meddle
• Fulsomely Praise Wish You Were Here
• Scratch my head about Animals

For the nonce, enjoy this:

Rating My CD's: Grrrl Blues

44. Liz Phair -- Exile in Guyville


I don't have many female artists in my collection. I don't know why. I'm not conscious of any particular animus against female singers or songwriters. I like the way women sing. My wife sings beautifully at church, and she's not even in the choir.

But when it comes to women in pop music, I usually find myself underwhelmed to actively irritated. Bjork? Dork. Madonna? Don't wanna. Fiona Apple? Old Crabapple. And I can keep doing that.

Nor did the Riot Grrrl movement ever do anything for me. I'm sorry, but listening to ladies screech their victimhood while pretending to parody rock's macho stud postures is nowhere near as clever or transgressive as everyone seems to have thought.

Rating My CD's: Angular Boredom

43. Modest Mouse -- We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank


Sometimes, when I review a CD, I'm stuck for something to say about it. I'm not really in the mood to listen to it, and repeated listenings to get myself in the mood inspire nothing in me. When that happens, blogging lulls occur. I start buying mp3's on iTunes, vinyl at record stores, anything to pump up my energy for a task whereof the taste has left me.

Today, I say the hell with it. This CD is not very good. I can tell because I'm bored with the very process of discussing it.

And I'm surprised this time. Sure, even I knew I was in for a labor writing about Ilad and The Good, The Bad, and the Queen. But back when I first bought this CD, I actually kind of liked it. I've had albums that I disliked at first, only to have them grow on me. I can't recall another occasion where I liked something well enough to say that it was "pretty damn good" only to be sick of it eighteen months later.

This music is too ponderous for me, too cleverly heavy, too "angular." In short, it commits all the sins of Good News for People Who Like Bad News while retaining none of that album's graces. The result is that this album feels like work, and if I wanted to work at music writing, I wouldn't be keeping a volume of unedited snark about all my possible employers out here on teh Intertubes where everyone can see it.

So begone, Modest Mouse. Your name describes your output too accurately to warrant further consideration.

Grade: C

Rating My CD's: We Worked Harder Than This

42. Modest Mouse -- Good News For People Who Love Bad News


Modest Mouse has a certain aesthetic, and I'm not sure if it's an aesthetic I share. These guys clearly take what they do seriously, try to write new and different hooks, intelligent and decipherable lyrics, and labor (as you must labor) to keep it loose. But something about this record just screams "2004" to me, as though that were a time long ago that I've walled off.

I was certainly living differently then: unmarried, different part of the state, different car that I was driving to New York on a monthly basis to see my girlfriend. I ate up a lot of miles in that year, and GNFPWLBN still feels like the soundtrack to those road trips. So maybe that's it.

But then again, maybe not.

Rating My CD's: Beg, Steal, or Borrow

41. Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs -- God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise


I wrote a while ago that I wanted to buy this, on packaging alone: Good band name, good album name, good cover art. A real K.I.S.S. operation.

I finally did buy it at Target a few weeks ago, and initially I was disappointed. Somehow, I'd built it up too much, and the actual album didn't quite sound like the album in my head. Or perhaps, I'd been listening to it exclusively in my car, and this maybe isn't a car record.

I'd like to the critic-y thing and put it in it's proper place and context in the Genre of Country, or Country-Rock, or Alt.country, or whatever, but actually I don't want to, because Genres Suck. The only reason I'd want to do that would be to demonstrate to other nerds that I actually know what I'm talking about, but has anyone who reads this blog (I know you're out there; I can see your pageviews) ever been convinced of that? To ask the question is to answer it.

At any rate, on my home stereo, this record sounds good. I still don't know who Ray LaMontagne is, but he has a decent voice (miles better than Jeff Tweedy), and by the standard of this album, a pretty good producer. This album is sweetness and light, mirthy misery, a soft summer shower. It's on right now, as I usually have a record on when I write about it, but right now I want to listen to it more than I want to write about it.

Music is supposed to be evocative, and right now this is evoking something pretty powerful in me. Something sad but determined, bruised but unbroken, stirred but not shaken. Or some such cliche, which is usually the thing you fall to when trying to put the language of the soul into the language of the mouth. Maybe if I reach for my Rock Snob's Dictionary, I can find a word that approximates my reaction to this record. Perhaps "plangent" will do:

Plangent. Stand-by rock-critic used to lend a magical aura to any nonaggressive guitar-based music (even though the word's primary meaning is "loud and resonating"). Stipes' muffled vocals and Buck's charming, plangent guitar made R.E.M.'s Murmur one of the most auspicious debuts of the 80's.

Aren't you glad I don't write like that? I sure am.


Grade: LL 

Rating My CD's: The Lewis Boogie

40. Jerry Lee Lewis -- 18 Original Sun Greatest Hits


Back in 1993, when the Rolling stones were recording Voodoo Lounge in County Kildare, Ireland, they discovered that Jerry Lee Lewis was hiding out from the IRS down the road apiece. Serendipity, right? So they bring the ol' sumbitch into the studio, and jam away. But when Jerry Lee hears the playback, he starts picking the Stones apart, a little "Hey, that drum's a bit slow there; that guitar isn't on point there..." And Keith Richards loses his temper, tells him to back the expletive off, and storms out. Upon which, Jerry Lee turns around and says "Well, it usually works."

I've had this disc forever. I think I either picked it up on Amazon, in the earliest days of same, or it was part of a package I got for joining BMG way the hell back in the summer of 1998. In any case, I got it for the same reason that anyone of my generation ever picked up a Jerry Lee Lewis: that one scene in Top Gun when a wasted Goose howled his way through "Great Balls of Fire" at the piano, and it sequed to Mav on his motorbike with what's-her-name, with the Jerry Lee original in the background. Whatever I thought of that movie as a kid, I loved that song. It was and is perfect, pure boogie, sex and noise and punch.

Rating My CD's: A-Wop-Bop A-Loo-Bop, A Good Goddamn

39. Little Richard -- Georgia Peach

The original lyrics to "Tutti Frutti" were all about butt sex:

Tutti Frutti -- Good Booty
If it fits, don't force it
You can grease it, make it easy
A Wop-Bop A-Loo-Bop, a Good Goddamn

That's according to Jim Miller, author of Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock n' Roll 1947-1977 (see link below), a pretty good cultural history of the classic rock n' roll era. Apparently Richard Penniman had no plan of recording "Tutti Frutti" until a producer convinced him that it would be a hit if he just excised all the naughty lyrics. He did and it was, and the result was one of the great nonsense phrases of Rock. The recorded "Tutti Frutti" isn't about anything but a Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On. Little Richard just howls and shrieks and hits that ecstatic thrill that Rock'n'Roll so often promises but fails to really deliver.

Rating My CD's: A Lot of Rhythm

38. -- Let's Go! That Rockabilly Rhythm


I suppose I should be filing this under "V" for that bestselling tunesmith "Various Artists" but since those words appear nowhere on this disc, I ain't gonna. Compilations is as compilations do, and this one...well.

I bought it at Starbucks. Yeah. I'm that guy. If you want to know why Starbucks keeps selling music to the phony hip and the crazy pampered, look no further. Because every now and again I see one of their bizarre choices and decide I have to have it. Because a corporation that earns so much hatred for the vile sin of selling coffee well has to have something going for it. And because, as I've mentioned before, I dig 50's stuff.

Rating My CD's: Physical Exhaustion

37. Led Zeppelin -- Physical Graffiti


When Joey Ramone died in 2001, Bill Wyman at Salon.com summed up the shift that his band had caused in the mid-70's thusly:

When the first Ramones records were released, high school friends and I would sit in one of our rooms, huddled around the stereo. (Parents would yell if we turned it up.) We tried to parse the lyrics, the sounds, the meanings. We didn't know much about pop history, but we could sense the sendups -- "You're Gonna Kill That Girl," the title a slap at the Beatles's "You're Gonna Lose That Girl"; the indolent drawl with which Johnny sang the thing a slap at the indolent Mick Jagger.
Once we figured out the Zen of it, the world looked different. Bands like the Eagles and the Who sounded weak, Pink Floyd sounded mannered, Zeppelin almost flatulent.

When I first read that, I knew exactly what he meant, even though I knew it to be a less-than-just description of Zeppelin's catalogue. But when it comes to Physical Graffiti, the word "flatulent" becomes almost apt.

Rating My CD's: The Universal White-Boy Unconscious

36. Led Zeppelin -- IV/Zoso/Runes/Old Fart With a Bunch of Sticks/The One With "Stairway"/Whatever


I chose to open this Rating My CD's death-march series with a one word review of Back in Black because coming up with something to say about Back in Black that hadn't been said a thousand times already proved insurmountable. Basically, I owned Back in Black because it was a well-loved hard-rock record by a well-loved hard-rock band, and suburban doughboys like myself like them some hard-rock. It may as well have come in the mail with the Pennysaver.

I'm rather tempted to kick the same punt right now. I mean, this is freakin' Zeppelin IV we're talking about here. What the hell am I gonna do, make stupid guesses about what "bustle in your hedgerow" actually means? Thunderously declaim that I will never tire of "Rock and Roll"no matter how many car commercials it appears in? Issue the "One of us! One of us!" chant at Robert Plant on behalf of anyone that's ever played Dungeons & Dragons, for "The Battle for Evermore"? How do you write about something ubiquitous?

Rating My CD's: Alchemy

35. Led Zeppelin -- III


Bands are a product of human alchemy, of a group of individuals offering their talents to make a unified sound. Sometimes, that alchemy mixes individuals who work well together and survive decades of the grind of rehearse-record-tour. The Rolling Stones are still around because Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have an unshakeable chemical bond. In other cases, such as the Sex Pistols, the mixture was inherently unstable, in fact deliberately designed to combust.

Combustion was more or less what Zeppelin was selling on it's first two albums, or more properly combust-a-bility (Bust-a-bility!), as John Adams would put it. Which is why III has always been their head-fake record; their pastoral yawp from the Welsh hill country. They were the biggest band in the world at this point, and they made what's basically an acoustic-electric-folk record. Because they felt like it.

Rating My CD's: British Blues

34. Led Zeppelin -- II


Will Durant once wrote that Christianity did not destroy the ancient pagan world; rather, it was the last great creation of it. To me, Led Zeppelin fulfills a similar dynamic with regard to the mid-to-late 60's British Blues scene that spawned it. So I don't care what Lester Bangs snarked from a fictional future about Zep in the midst of giving praise to the Yardbirds:

The Yardbirds, as I said, were incredible. They came stampeding in and just blew everybody clean off the tracks. They were so fucking good, in fact, that people were still imitating 'em as much as a decade later, and getting rich doing it I might add, because the original band of geniuses didn't last that long. Of course, none of their stepchildren were half as good, and got increasingly pretentious and overblown as time went on until about 1973 a bunch of emaciated fops called Led Zeppelin played their final concert when the lead guitarist was assassinated by an irate strychnine freak in the audience with a zip gun just fifty-eight minutes two-and-a-half-hour virtuoso solo on one bass note.

Behold, For it is Time to Get the Led Out.

I actually thought I could knock out at least one of my CD categories in a year. It's been a year and a half, and I've gotten through 31 albums. But it's okay, as I'm now getting to one of my favorite bands, which happens to be one of everyone's favorite bands.

So this week is Zeppelin Week at Genre Confusion. All posts will be Zeppelin-related. I've got 4 Zep CD's to praise with my spoon-edged wit. You're all going to gorge on Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham until you're ready to puke like you'd done this:

You thought I was going to make a Bonham joke, didn't you?

So strap on your Les Paul, ready your Tolkein references, and get ready to party like it's 1969. Which is to say, like this: