Not Really a Review of the New Bob Dylan Album (Mostly an Excuse to Praise Tom Waits Effusively)

Why is this not really a review of Bob Dylan’s new album, Together Through Life? Because I’ve listened to that album several times now and I cannot connect it to any of the things that I associate with Bob Dylan. It almost seems unfair to review Together Through Life because album reviews tend to compare the new stuff to the old stuff and, in Bob Dylan’s case, that’s a trap you’d chew your leg off to escape. Can you really imagine pitting Together Through Life against Highway 61 Revisited and comparing notes? It’d be a musical Tiananmen Square where Highway is the tank and Together is the lone dude bravely facing down said tank. But this time, everyone is kind of embarrassed by the lone dude and will be (only somewhat) secretly thrilled when he’s reduced to a gooey paste beneath the tracks (pun!) of the mighty tank (album).

Bob Dylan apparently won’t cop to it (this is rumor only, because I’m too lazy to read his book), but there was a time when he was not only capable of getting down to the real shit, he was the real shit. He didn’t have to cut right down to the bone because he lived there, carved his home out of the marrow, and used the shavings to build his songs. That’s how you become the voice of your generation (not by giving yourself the job, Kanye West). Blonde On Blonde, Blood On the Tracks, and Highway 61 Revisited are still killer albums, resonating as clearly with me today as they ever did with anyone who heard them when they were new. Those albums still shake people to the core because Dylan was so utterly on top of his game when he recorded them.

But if we’re being honest with ourselves, really laying it all out there for everyone to see (is that what Dylan used to do? Sometimes yes and sometimes no), we have to admit that the artist formerly known as Robert Zimmerman has fallen far from the top of his game and has not aged gracefully at all. I know Modern Times got good marks from the critics, but they were ignoring the fact that it was largely a cringe-inducing, corny affair. Love and Theft was pretty all right, but that was more than 10 years ago and still doesn’t hold a candle to his earlier work.

There is an art to aging gracefully, especially in rock ‘n’ roll. Tom Waits has mastered it, but he started early (about the time he realized that being a boozed-up lounge singer was a dead end). Waits turned his music inside out and when that wasn’t enough, he ground it in the dirt with his boot heel, mixed it with some other dust and blood, and sculpted an entirely new beast out of it. I’m not just saying this to plug my favorite musician – Waits and Dylan have a lot more in common than you might think. They’re both (at their best) unrivaled songwriter/poets with a unique view of the American experience and a (formerly, in Dylan’s case) unique way of presenting it. I’m not just talking about their supposedly “bad” voices either. But if we wanna talk voices, I’ll take Tom Waits or Bob Dylan over Josh Groban any day of the week – sure, Groban can hit all the pretty notes but his music doesn’t tell you a goddamn thing about life, love, or where to buy pornographic playing cards in Singapore. In other words, Josh Groban doesn’t tell you anything you need to know. On the other hand, if you listen carefully to Tom Waits, he will tell you everything you need to know. I feel the same way about Blood on the Tracks, which makes it really hard to listen to Together Through Life.  And, in case you couldn’t tell, it makes it hard to stay on task when merely discussing this album.

The whole album consists of songs I’ll classify as Clean White Blues* (not a compliment), which might almost – almost – be bearable if the lyrics sounded like they came from Bob Dylan. But I refuse to believe that the same guy who wrote “Desolation Row” penned the godawful “It’s All Good” that closes Together Through Life. There’s just no way. Dylan’s legacy is so solid right now, he could literally do anything he wanted. I’m not saying he has to starting aping Tom Waits, but he could take a page  from the Waits playbook and try to push his sound beyond its limits. Instead, Dylan has crafted what might as well be a Jimmy Buffet record with fewer laughs (it hurt me more to write that, Bob Dylan, than it will hurt you to never read it). The instrumentation is almost always the same (Clean White Blues standards – soft drums, maybe an accordion and/or piano, and clean – always clean – electric guitar) on every song which, again, might be bearable if Dylan were saying anything worth repeating.

Dylan has certainly earned the right to record whatever kind of album he wants (he’s also earned the right to legally murder My Chemical Romance for their blasphemous cover of “Desolation Row” that showed up on the Watchmen soundtrack earlier this year) and, if Together Through Life is what he wants to be doing right now, bully for him. But I don’t want to hear it. Dylan used to be strident and funny and obnoxious and whimsical and weird,  but Together Through Life is dull and predictable and lifeless and, because it is those three things, also depressing as hell. To cope, I’m pretending Bob Dylan died in 1978 and will henceforth refer to him as the late Bob Dylan.

*What do I mean by Clean White Blues? This might hurt some people’s feelings, but – in the immortal words of George Carlin – fuck ‘em. Clean White Blues is what tends to pass for regular blues today. Its main purveyors are Eric Clapton, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, John Mayer, and B.B. King. That’s not a joke. For the last few years, King has been playing some serious CWB. Now, “Clean White Blues” is merely a descriptor – I’m not saying you have to be black to play the blues well (although, being a form of music born out of slavery, it does kinda help). There has never been a moment in Rock ‘n’ Roll’s lifetime where it wasn’t borrowing something from the blues (to quote George Carlin again, “All music is the blues”), but somewhere in there, probably toward the end of the 1970s, people (mostly white people) started exhibiting a disturbing tendency to clean up their blues, to water it down, to scrub the dirt, grime, sweat, blood, and sex right off of it (if you doubt the heavy element of sex in all great blues, listen to the way Elmore James played slide guitar and tell me he wasn’t thinking about fucking with every note he picked). This paved the way for people like Jonny Lang and other would-be blues guys (and gals – looking at you, Susan Tedeschi) who could play the notes but were otherwise soulless. The blues is an endangered beast nowadays, and we’re running out of people to whom we can turn to save it. Tom Waits has probably done it the best of late; he tucks little bits of the blues into the dark spaces of his songs, as if he’s trying to smuggle them to safety, like a crafty Alexandrian librarian stashing scrolls away from the fiery wrath of Theophilus. Waits mutated the blues to save it, a trick he’s also turned with folk music. Some time after the late Bob Dylan vacated his home down amongst the marrow, Tom Waits moved in. He knocked down all the walls, blew the roof off the joint, and found a way to go deeper than anyone else dared.

Portugal. The Man Makes Crappy. The Album

Okay. There’s no point beating around the bush here. I really don’t like Portugal. The Man. I hate the pretentious period in their name, which would be a stupid name without the superfluous punctuation. I hate their stupid, redundant album title, The Satanic Satanist. And I hate the fact that words like “lovers” and “golden” appear roughly 90,000 times in the space of 11 songs. I don’t really have anything nice to say about The Satanic Satanist and I know you’re inclined to suggest that I say nothing at all because of that. But that cliche imperative could use a 21st century update and that is this: if you don’t have anything nice to say, post it on the internet.

I don’t honestly even remember how I got this album. I read that Stupid. The Band Name was from Portland (which is only partly true – they’re originally from Wasilla, Alaska, a place from whence, thankfully, no other unbearably stupid people have emerged) and I think that prompted me to check them out. I have a great deal of pride in the music that my old hometown is cranking out these days (and no small amount of pride in the fact that my beloved Oregon Ducks just handed the USC Trojans the worst ass whoopin’ of Pete Carroll’s tenure there. I don’t want to rub USC’s noses in it too hard, though – they’ve given Oregon so much already. Like 613 yards of offense. 386 of which came from our tiny, spry quarterback) and so I’m usually willing to check out a Portland band. But Portugal. The Pretentious is giving me reason to revise this strategy.

In many ways, The Redundant Album Title is a prototypical Album I’m Not Going to Like At All. Among its many offenses, it strives to revive the 1970s, or some TV dream of the 1970s, in much the same way Amazing Baby tried to do earlier this year (you’ll remember that I despised them as well). They come off as the kind of people who will futilely argue with me that the Bee Gees were fun and that “Stayin’ Alive” is “catchy.” I don’t care; fuck the Bee Gees. On top of that, Portugal Period The Man traffics in that annoying white-bread funk that was made more popular by Maroon 5. There are several reasons that this is a crime against music and possibly humanity. I’ll just list the first few that come to mind: 1) George Clinton 2) Curtis Mayfield 3) early Stevie wonder 4) As a rule, you should never do anything that Maroon 5 beat you to the punch on.  Do you really want to be accused of riding those coattails?

And that’s just off the top of my head.

Also, the best bits on The Satanist (fixed that for you, Portugal. The Repetitive) are sue-ably close in melody and sound to the best bits of MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular, an album I appreciate more and more after hearing shitty bands like Amazing Baby and Portugal The Seriously, I’m Not Putting A Fucking Period After the First Word of Your Stupid Band Name. If Joe Satriani could get a nice settlement from Coldplay over whatever stupid song of theirs (allegedly) ripped off a stupid song of his, MGMT could probably fund their next three albums and tours with the money owed them by PTM. If I had the technology, I’d do a mash-up of PTM’s “The Sun” and MGMT’s “Weekend Wars” that would be particularly instructive. And, what PTM isn’t taking from MGMT’s songbook, they’re taking from Curtis Mayfield’s playbook (you know, the guy who supplied the “People Get Ready” part to Bob Marley’s “One Love/ People Get Ready”. Also, the guy who wrote fucking “Superfly”). If Mayfield were alive today, I imagine “music” like he’d find on The Satanic Satanist would kill him.

Which brings me to perhaps the biggest crime committed by PTM on The Satanic Scientologist (see, that’s at least funny. Did you know Scientologists hate gay people? That’s why the guy who directed Crash left their flock.) is one of prioritizing style over substance to a harmful degree. Now, I’m not saying that substance is better than style – good bands (and artists like the aforementioned Curtis Mayfield) have both. The Clash, a.k.a. the best band ever, welded the two together in a way few bands have been able to manage since. But it seems like, at least lately, a lot of bands are coming out aping their favorite old records without actually saying anything. PTM, for instance, offers this line in the annoyingly repetitive song “Lovers in Love”: “Lovers loving love just like these lovers are loving in love.” Unless you have some odd combination of Autism and Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder, that’s just plain lazy and you should either be kicked in the crotch or forced to watch Suzanne Somers blather on about how bad vaccines are for you (I thought about linking to some of that, but that would be cruel). And every other song on this pastiche-and-shit sandwich has that same, lumbering, white-bread funk beat and an annoying, Scissor Sisters-esque falsetto, courtesy of singer John Baldwin Gourley. I propose a new rule, kids: if you use a white-funk falsetto, your song has to be at least as awesome as Beck’s “Debra.” If it isn’t, you’re instantly classifying yourself as a douchebag.

Douche. The Bag’s defenders (assuming they have any) will probably accuse me of taking the band too seriously and say, “They’re just fun, man!” That’s fine. People think that about Jack Johnson, Jason Mraz, Maroon 5, and Jimmy Buffet too. That doesn’t mean I have to like any of that shit (and, in case you missed where I’m going with this, I don’t). One man’s fun is another man’s torture (not to beat a dead Trojan horse here, but I’m guessing Jeremiah Masoli’s fun last Saturday was not fun for a USC defense that had, until they met the Ducks, allowed just under 80 rushing yards a game) and you’re well within your rights to have “fun” listening to Period. The Used Incorrectly. If you do, however, pray that you never encounter the music of Curtis Mayfield; the experience will illuminate your folly with such blinding clarity that you’ll set fire to your house to get rid of your copy of The Satanic Satanist and the stench that it left there.

12 Songs of Desire

Anyone who has heard one Eels song should not be surprised that Mark Everett (known as E to his fans) gave his new album, Hombre Lobo, the subtitle 12 Songs of Desire. Pretty much every Eels song you can think of is a song of desire: desire for love, desire for good times, desire for E’s loved ones to not be dead (this is not a joke – dude found his dad dead in bed in 1982, his sister died in 1996, and his mom died of lung cancer in 1998. If there’s a dude who’s entitled to some musical grieving, it’s Mark Oliver Everett). In that respect, then, Hombre Lobo’s subtitle isn’t setting a bar too high for E to reach.

The last few Eels records haven’t done much for me – I’m still living in the past with Daisies of the Galaxy, the stellar Eels release from way back in 2000. And I’ve gotta be honest with you: the thing that gave me a lot of hope for Hombre Lobo is the fact that Pitchfork rated it a 4.6. First off, you need to know that their numbering system is 1) pretentious, 2) lame, and 3) completely fucking arbitrary (you can put those in the order that suits you).  But you also need to know that, on many occasions, an album that rates between about a 4 and a 7 on Pitchfork’s little scale has a good chance of being loved by me. Once you get above 7, there is an increasing chance that I will loathe whatever it is they love (although they are smart enough to routinely score Tom Waits above an 8. Even Pitchfork isn’t all stupid all the time). So, by at least one metric, I was ready and willing to love Hombre Lobo.

And I don’t not like Hombre Lobo, but I’m starting to realize something about every Eels album I’ve heard since Daisies (with the exception of the Live with Strings album, which is fucking gorgeous): I’m no longer listening to Eels primarily because I like their music. I’m listening to them now to see how Mark Everett is doing. I want him to be okay and I check in with him every so often to ensure that he is. He seems to be doing all right on Hombre Lobo, although he’s still better than a lot of people at doing the heart-on-sleeve-loneliness thing (especially since he does it without sounding unbearably emo). And Hombre starts with some real life to it, opening with one of its best tunes, “Prizefighter.” Three of the first four tracks are, in fact, actually good. And the rest are, well, only mediocre, but that’s not the point. I’m not here to listen to quality songs. I’m on the Mark Everett Suicide Watch and I’m happy to report that, for a guy who had 12 whole songs of desire in him, the guy seems to be coping pretty well with life. Good on you, Mr. Everett. You are still on the list of people I would totally buy a beer.

Eels diehards will possible take issue with my characterization of Everett as a mopey loner who tends to do the same thing musically at every outing, but I would remind them that this didn’t used to be the case. Though I stopped caring about the music after 2000, the albums that precede Daisies of the Galaxy are all deeply enjoyable (“Last Stop, This Town” is amazing and I wish he would do more things like that), but the ones that follow it range from mediocre to bad, although Everett manages to craft at least one real gem per album. Most of Hombre Lobo is a cut above mediocre (there are maybe 5 or 6 gems on this one, but I’m still not going to give the guy a pretentious, arbitrary number score) and I’ll probably keep this album around because I like half of it so much.

I think what Mr. E really needs is a good collaborator. His music is deeply personal (if I didn’t like the guy, I’d accuse him of crawling up his own ass and building a house there, but I do like the guy and, as I’ve said, he’s been through some shit) and it usually has the feel of being made by a dude in his basement studio, surrounded by instruments. What made his live album so enchanting, in part, was the sense I got that he was finally getting out of the house. Also, the arrangements for the live album were robust and beautiful – they showed E’s musical chops. So maybe Everett should phone up Danger Mouse, make an album with him, and then let EMI refuse to put it out. Or he could work with the Flaming Lips or someone else who’s lively and weird. Really, he just needs someone who will inspire him out of his comfort zone (notice I didn’t say “rut” – because I like Eels, remember) and let him explore his everydude loneliness in new and creative ways.

The aforementioned Eels diehards (and they do exist, and I’m glad they do) will probably like Hombre Lobo just fine, just as they like every Eels record just fine. If you’re new to them, you’re still better off with Daisies of the Galaxy. And, if that album rocks your world entirely, you could do lots worse than following it up with the purchase of Hombre Lobo.

Let’s Talk About Us

Sometimes, I review an album just to take the piss out of it – like Chris Cornell’s Scream or like I intend to do with the forthcoming Creed reunion record. It’s fun and easy and allows me to vent a lot of frustration in a short amount of time (usually while drinking quality brews). A friend recently asked me why I don’t do similar take-downs of, say, 50 Cent albums. I pointed out to him that I usually play the fish-in-a-barrel game with rock albums because a lot of people seem to understand that there is a wide variety of rock music (I’m including indie here as well because, generally, “indie” just means “rock music that the radio is too dumb to play” – and it doesn’t always even mean that) that is good and that I’m just poking fun at its most egregious offenders. I don’t do that with hip-hop artists because I’ve met too many people who immediately dismiss that genre as completely worthless, full of misogyny and violence. So when it comes to hip-hop, I like to focus my energy on showing people the really awesome performers who are out there waiting to blow your mind.

So let’s talk about Brother Ali, shall we? Based on his voice, some have compared him to Pharaohe Monch. I can kinda see the comparison, in that both artists are aggressively awesome, but I think Ali sounds more like Lyrics Born back when he was still doing rap (New Rule for Hip-Hop: if you’re an awesome MC, that doesn’t mean you’re going to make a good soul/pop record), if he sounds like anyone. The more I listen to Us, his recent masterpiece, the more I hear Brother Ali’s distinctive voice and the happier I am about it.

For those of you who value such ephemeral concepts as “cred,” Us starts with a sermon by a true hip-hop luminary: Public Enemy’s Chuck D. Of course, Chuck D’s endorsement is meaningless if Brother Ali doesn’t earn it, but he does so almost immediately, launching into “The Preacher,” with relish, working the beat like I imagine Muhammad Ali worked a punching bag back in the day (you thought I was going to make a Parkinson’s Disease joke there, didn’t you? I’m not quite that tasteless, although I did just remind myself to listen to the new Shaky Hands album).

Part of the reason mainstream hip-hop blows is that there is a long list of sins that rappers commit. One of the biggest is piling song after song about how awesome they are on their albums. We get it – you have healthy self-esteem. Shut the fuck up. (DOOM, formerly known as MF Doom, is one of the very few rappers who self-deprecates as much as he self-aggrandizes. Also, he did song about how Batman and Robin are gay which gives him a free pass on a lot of stuff.) Now Us does have songs about how awesome Brother Ali is but it also has songs about how grateful he is to have the life he has (“Fresh Air”), a song that calls out society for hating on homosexuals (Brother Ali gets it. Fucking Iowa gets it. Why doesn’t California get it?), a song about slavery (“The Travelers”), and songs about how he was hated on by white kids for being an albino (as such, I’d like to point out, Brother Ali is a pretty awesome “post-racial” rapper. He’s so good at it that the press used to think he was black. I’m not gonna rip on ‘em for it, though, because I thought he was the first time I heard him too. Take that, assumptions!). Ali is, in fact, brimming with a positivity and gratitude that a lot of rappers like. Rather than pulling a Kanye and saying God chose him to be the voice of his generation, Brother Ali is working ass off and being happy about where it gets him. Kinda reminds me of some certain other Minnesota musicians I can think of right now (*cough* Hold Steady *cough*)…

In fact, I’m just gonna spend a paragraph here handing some props to Minnesota. They have the best radio station on earth, America’s best freshman senator, they’re the birth place of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and they’ve given us the Hold Steady, Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Bob Dylan and Prince. So thank you, Minnesota. Now can you get rid of that crazy bitch Michele Bachmann?

Rap, historically, is a political beast (I know you wouldn’t know it from listening to 50 Cent or Eminem, but it’s true. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, perhaps the best hip-hop album ever recorded, is largely not about how great money and bitches are) and Brother Ali’s stuff addresses the political through the prism of the personal, spinning tales of deep human complexity while not letting the listener (or himself, for that matter) off the hook fortheir part in a bloody history. In very few lines of “Tight Rope,” he, among many topics, manages a substantive discussion of homosexual equality in just one verse ( featuring the couplet “there ain’t no flame that can blaze enough/ to trump being hated for the way you love”) in a way that has a lot less to do with the left/right stuff of American politics than it does with simple empathy. Ali’s gift is his ability to identify with the people in his songs (some of whom are probably people who listen to his albums and come to his shows) and the best tracks on Us are the ones that tackle the thorniest subject matter.

Given that subject matter, you might get the idea that Us is a total downer, but it’s not. It’s actually exceedingly uplifting, which you can credit both to Ali’s unsurpassed delivery and Ant’s (you might know him as the other half of Atmosphere) stellar production. At 16 tracks, Us avoids being unwieldy and ends up feeling like a party album for people who are more likely to discuss*, rather than run from, the world’s problems while they’re throwing back drinks and hanging out.

* A discussion is this thing rational people can have where they may politely disagree about things but are interested in hearing and respecting the other person’s viewpoint. Scientists think the discussion will actually become extinct sometime near primary season in 2012.

Ask A Musical Pathologist: Steel Panther and Genre Exceptionalism

Earlier this year, I brought Dr. Rebecca Mellor (no relation) on as part of the Bollocks! team to answer your questions regarding music and your mental health. Dr. Mellor is a well-established and respected musical pathologist and she’s helped me a lot over the last year and a half or so. Recently, we received the comment and accompanying video you can see here (update: I guess Universal Music Group posted the video to You Tube and doesn’t want it embedded here; if you click the video anyway, it’ll take you to You Tube and you can watch it in all its “butt metal” glory) about the band Steel Panther.Will asks us, “How much long term damage to my brain am I doing by listening to Steel Panther?” Well, Will, I ran your question and the video by Dr. Mellor, and she wrote the following response:

“Hello Will. Let me congratulate you on being the first submitter to the Bollocks! ‘Ask a Musical Pathologist’ page. Though I’m very busy with my normal work, I’m always happy to stop by and help my friend Chorpenning with his musical issues (or those of his 10 to 14 – on average – readers). It’s much easier to do this on a volunteer basis than it is to have him call or – much worse -barge into my house at three in the morning.

“In trying to determine how much long-term damage you’re doing to your brain by listening to Steel Panther, we must first determine both your reasons for listening to them and, in the case of the video for ‘Death to All but Metal’, the extent to which you agree with the sentiments expressed in the song.

“There is a certain amount of ironic enjoyment to be had from listening to bands like Steel Panther because, much like the fictional band Spinal Tap, they remind us how flagrantly silly and musically unbearable the 1980s were. Now, there are many high-functioning American adults who listen to the broad genre known as ‘Metal’ music, but Steel Panther quite clearly traffic in what some pejoratively refer to as ‘Hair Metal’ or ‘cock rock’ (my friend Mr. Chorpenning calls it ‘alcoholic stepdad music’ which tells you more about Chorpenning’s sordid past than it does about the music itself). This style is not the same as, say, the darker, more aggressive musical stylings of Mastodon or Disfear or even early Black Sabbath. ‘Hair Metal’ is more melodic (‘radio-friendly’ is a term that comes to mind, though it’s less applicable today than it was in the ‘Hair Metal’ heyday of the Reagan era) and the subject matter tends to be about one of two things: women (particularly their breasts) and/or how awesome metal is. All this is to suggest, Will, that rational human beings would not form strong attachments to the music of a Steel Panther when vastly superior forms of that kind of metal exist (Chorpenning will even grudgingly allow that the first Guns ‘n’ Roses record, Appetite for Destruction, is not only an iconic ‘Hair Metal’ album, but it actually contains some pretty good songs). Let me give you an analogy that might clear things up: some people believe that playing violent video games causes kids to become violent. People blame games like Grand Theft Auto for school shootings, often in a misguided attempt to blame somebody for a situation that is hard to comprehend on its own. In reality, video games can only inspire violent behavior in people who are already of unsound mind and have trouble distinguishing the real world from the video game world that allows them free reign to destabilize society to their heart’s content. Many of the most peaceful, nonviolent people I know play exceedingly violent video games and have no trouble functioning in society. So listening to Steel Panther, for someone who cannot recognize how clearly absurd their music is (that is,  someone of unsound mind – and, as perhaps the only articulate Guns ‘n’ Roses fan to respond to Chorpenning’s review of Chinese Democracy, Will, it is my professional opinion that you can count yourself of very sound mind indeed), could lead to long-term brain damage. But the upshot is, if you’re not brain-damaged to begin with, you can listen to Steel Panther as much as you’d like. After viewing their video for ‘Community Property,’ I was quickly able to ascertain that Steel Panther is not a band that takes itself too seriously. Therefore, we’d be doing them a disservice if we took them too seriously ourselves.

“I do have some concern, however, regarding the sentiments expressed in the video for ‘Death to All But Metal’. Any musical pathologist worth their salt must keep their mind open to the positive possibilities in any musical genre. There is even hope (though little evidence, in my opinion. And not to brag, but I am one of the most highly regarded musical pathologists in the United States, if not in the entire world) in the musical pathologist community that, one day, a ‘good’ emo song will appear and become the exception that proves the rule of that otherwise insipid genre. Steel Panther’s assertion (I’m paraphrasing here, so bear with me) that every non-metal genre is worthless, if treated as some sort of moral imperative, could cause severe damage to your psyche in the long run. Our minds like variety and truly healthy human beings allow their assumptions to be challenged. It’s easy to hate mainstream hip-hop (we in the musical pathology world have long treated President Obama’s off-the-cuff remark that Kanye West is a jackass as an objective medical fact), but mainstream hip-hop is not representative of all that hip-hop has to offer. As I write this, I have the new Brother Ali album playing on my stereo and it is very satisfying indeed. Again, though, this has to do with the state of the listener’s mind when they hear the song. If you’re a generally open-minded music fan, you can listen to ‘Death to All But Metal’ all day long without treating its main thesis as some kind of gospel. However, an already brain-damaged individual could hear this song and think that metal is the only decent genre of music.

“The belief that there is only one right genre of music and that all other genres are inferior and/or completely worthless is a disorder I call Genre Exceptionalism. It amounts to musical tunnel vision and stems directly from the same sort of utterly failed logic and probable insanity that led Adolf Hitler to articulate his theory of the Aryan ‘Master Race’. In effect, if you truly believe that one and only one genre of music is good and all others are bad, you are behaving like a musical Hitler. And no rational person would want that. Now, there are some interesting clues to me within the song ‘Death to All But Metal’; primarily, I’m fascinated by the musical performers that Steel Panther chose to call out by name. They list the Goo Goo Dolls, Blink-182, Papa Roach, Eminem, and Mariah Carey among the musicians who should die or, as I believe the singer points out, ‘can lick a sack.’ While explicitly decreeing death to all but metal, the band only really names some of the worst offenders in modern music. Your mental health will suffer much more from listening to Mariah Carey than it will from Steel Panther, regardless of the content. And, some in the musical pathology field even blame the rise of ‘pop-punk’ bands like Blink-182 for the death of Joe Strummer (I cannot entirely embrace this rather extreme theory, yet I cannot entirely dismiss it either).

“So at the end of the day, Will, Steel Panther is not the worst thing you can do for your musical mental health. It is far worse to close you mind to the wide variety of music available today than it is to listen to a hair metal band that clearly has fun doing what they’re doing and obviously does not take themselves very seriously.”

That’s the word from Dr. Mellor, Will. I think it’s pretty good advice. If anyone else out there has a question for the good doctor, you can email her at askdoctormellor@gmail.com

A Camp, Compromise Albums, and Why Many Musicals are Pants-On-Head Retarded

I bet I can guess what you think of when I bring up the Cardigans. You think of a one-hit wonder band from Sweden (Switzerland? No, Sweden) who did that song from Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (the film for Shakespeare fans with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). But if that’s all you think of when I mention the Cardigans, I’d humbly ask you to think again. Consider, perhaps, 2003’s Long Gone Before Daylight, the Cardigans’ best album (it’s wonderfully devoid of “Lovefool,” a song that was used to hilarious effect in the Edgar Wright film Hot Fuzz). Long Gone Before Daylight is their best album largely because of Nina Persson’s voice, which usually falls somewhere between “enchanting” and “amazing.”

Persson’s voice is reason enough to listen to any one of her projects (she is one of the many stellar collaborators on the doomed Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse opus Dark Night of the Soul), and it’s the reason I chose to check out her latest solo effort, Colonia. Colonia was released under the band name A Camp, for reasons that I’m too lazy to look up.  I’ve had this album for months (in fact, I feel like I’ve had it for most of the year) and my feelings about it vacillate between “this is pretty good” to “these songs are outtakes from some campy musical and I sort of resent myself for liking them.”

Colonia starts off really strong, with the one-two punch of “The Crowning” (a great tune about the crowning of someone’s “useless/ruthless” head. Could be about recent American leaders or current Iranian ones) and “Stronger than Jesus”, which does the whole “love is a battlefield” thing with a healthier dose of snark. The album never quite gets back to the heights it reaches on its first two tracks, but – on a good day – I think it never sinks far below them either, not counting the last forty seconds or so of “Here are Many Wild Animals” – those forty seconds make that track one of the worst on Colonia.

My feeling that Colonia consists of songs from some lost Broadway show is bolstered by the theatrical presentation of the material. The album is littered with swelling horn parts and lilting strings and harmonized “Oo-ee-oo” vocals. Like many musicals, there’s no discernible plot to Colonia (sorry, kids, but more happens in Waiting for Godot than in Phantom of the Opera and it’s taken me years to realize this, but Rent doesn’t tell you anything that you can’t hear better on the Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.), other than some loose thematic unity regarding the difficulties of romance. Persson is well-qualified to sing dirges to dead love (one of her best songs with the Cardigans is “And Then You Kissed Me”, a tale of love and domestic violence) and Colonia is pretty appealing when she does, with the exception of the too-campy “I Signed the Line”, which is about getting a divorce. Now that I think about it, however, “I Signed the Line” is too campy for a pop album but just campy enough for your average Broadway show.*

Overall, Colonia is one of many middle of the road, pleasant-enough releases that have come out this year, the kind of thing no one will complain about if you put it on at a party. But no one will get excited about it either. To be honest, not much of it excites me at all beyond it’s first two tracks. After that, Colonia is a compromise album that both my fiance and I can put up with (she actually likes it a lot more than I do) when trying to find something to listen to that doesn’t annoy the crap out of one of us (we’ve recently discovered that she likes Lou Barlow’s Emoh record, and that makes me very happy indeed). If you’re in a relationship where you and your girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever have drastically different taste in music, chances are, Nina Persson’s latest solo album will provide you with something listenable and keep you from dissing each other’s favorite bands (my fiance hates two of my favorite bands, namely the Clash and the Hold Steady. You may wonder how I can marry someone who bears two of the best bands ever such antipathy, but think about it: dating or marrying someone based merely on what they like is not only a dick move, it’s a shallow dick move. And before you go droppin’ High Fidelity quotes on me, the whole point of that book and movie is that the main character is shallow and immature. That’s why both book and film end with him making his girl a mix tape of shit that she likes).

So Nina Persson seems to have proven that you don’t have to be exciting to be good. Or at least she doesn’t have to be exciting to be good – we can’t go extending this theory to all musicians equally. After all, Kenny G is still unexciting and terrible. The problem is, though, when compared to the last two Cardigans records, Colonia, apart from its two opening tracks, feels kind of unnecessary. Long Gone Before Daylight and Super Extra Gravity don’t rock out with their genitals out, but they both provide genuinely exciting (and genuinely beautiful) moments that Colonia mostly lacks. At the end of the day, I guess, whether or not you like Colonia depends largely on how much you’ll forgive Nina Persson’s duller digressions. And that, for me anyway, rests largely on how much I like her voice, which means I’m pretty much damning Colonia with faint praise. But really, you can take this whole review as a lukewarm recommendation of Colonia and an earnest reminder to check out the more recent – and vastly superior – Cardigans albums.

*Lest I be accused of musical-bashing, I’d like to clarify that I don’t hate all musicals. I hate most musicals and that’s mostly because they’re mostly the same. Mostly, they’re love stories wrapped around convoluted (yet flimsy!) plots featuring characters who never really develop beyond the songs they sing, which means they end up being sort of musical character archetypes. And nowadays, musicals are mostly based on movie versions of old musicals. Which means they then spawn new movies of the new musical based on the old movie of the old musical (see The Producers for examples of this). Some of my favorite musicals, in no particular order: Avenue Q, Assassins, Urinetown, Caroline or Change, and the Woody Allen movie Everyone Says I Love You.

The Songs of Rocktober 10 to 1

Oh fuck yes, boys and girls. Today is the day of the bestest ‘Fest. Let us not delay, then, in getting to the ten most kickass songs of this most kickass month of Rocktober.

10. Dead Kennedys – “California Uber Alles” – If there’s only one person the Dead Kennedys didn’t like in the 1980s, that person was probably California governor Jerry Brown (or maybe Twinkie defense asshole Dan White). If there’s two people they didn’t like, they were Jerry Brown and everybody. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables is probably one of the best American punk albums ever, and “California Uber Alles” is especially awesome for imagining a new-age fascist America headed up by Jerry Brown and patrolled by the Suede-Denim Secret Police. Better lock up your uncool niece.

9. Queens of the Stone Age – “No One Knows” – The Queens of the Stone Age fooled the radio into playing songs from Songs for the Deaf and the world was all the better for it. Still one of the heaviest songs (of the not-sucky variety; I’ll allow that Metallica might have a heavier sound, but I don’t find the sound of heavy turds pleasant) to creep onto the FM dial, “No One Knows” features some of Dave Grohl’s best drumming, recorded just as he lost his battle with lameness and slipped forever out of the Land of Awesome. It also features typical (meaning “badass”) QOTSA guitars and Josh Homme talk about how we get these rules to follow and pills to swallow and all that good stuff.

8. Elvis Costello – “Radio, Radio” – To prove he was not fucking around when he sang “I wanna bite the hand that feeds me” on “Radio, Radio,” Elvis Costello stopped the Attractions mid-performance on Saturday Night Live (I think they were doing “Less Than Zero”) and counted them into this song, thus guaranteeing that Lorne Michaels would pitch a fit and ban Elvis from the show. This did not stop Michaels from later saying that Costello’s performance was this iconic event for SNL. That’s because Lorne Michaels is a giant douche. “Radio, Radio,” however, is a prescient song, written in the late 70s about how shitty radio was in general, with some allusions to crazy right-wing talk radio thrown in for good measure. There was a time, apparently, when Elvis Costello knew fucking everything.

7. The Clash – “White Riot” – You gotta love Joe Strummer watching black people riot in the U.K. in 1977 and thinking, “Why don’t white people do that? What’s wrong with us?” “White Riot” is Strummer’s attempt to get the Caucasians in the mood to bust shit up. It ultimately failed, of course, but his efforts did result in two of the finest minutes in punk history.  And who doesn’t want a riot of their own?

6. The Hold Steady – “Constructive Summer” – While I’m spreading the Strummer love here, I might as well point out that “Constructive Summer,” by the Hold Steady, is as passionate and fitting a tribute to the man as you could want. Over positively (see what I did there?) pounding drums, Franz Nicolay’s persistent rock piano, and Tad Kubler’s cranked guitar, Craig Finn orders us to “Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer.” Why should we do that, Craig? “I think he might’ve been our only decent teacher.” You know, Craig Finn, you might be on to something there.

5. The Stooges – “Search and Destroy” – Raw Power is one of the all-time greatest rock albums ever recorded and “Search and Destroy” is the track that gets that particular party started with a bang (or whatever sound napalm makes). Back in 1973, there were no Sex Pistols and no Clash, but the punk spirit was living large in the person of Iggy Pop (a.k.a. Iggy Stooge at that time) and his band of miscreants. Iggy was (and still is) actually a pretty good singer and he employs full-on vocal pyrotechnics, singing “Somebody save my soul/ baby, penetrate my mind.” That’s a dude asking you to mindfuck him and when Iggy asks, you answer.

4. The Ramones – “Blitzkrieg Bop” – I will argue with you or anybody that “Blitzkrieg Bop” is the best Side 1, Song 1 of all time. This was the song that launched The Ramones and, well, the Ramones. They were a band that didn’t have time to write multiple verses, but they did have time to get everyone pulsating to the backbeat. This would be a good lead-off track for your Rocktoberfest play list, what with the tight drum beat and Joey Ramone shouting “Hey/ Ho/ Let’s go” (or, ” ‘ey/ ‘o,” as he sings it). So let’s go, dammit.

3. Jim Carroll Band – “People Who Died” – Jim Carroll just died a few weeks ago, so if you’re ‘Festing to this song, pour one out for the man. Catholic Boy was a magnificent album and its best moment came with “People Who Died” which is exactly what it sounds like: a list of Jim Carroll’s friends who have shuffled loose this mortal coil. That could be morbid business, but the song is upbeat and insistent. Carroll’s buds employed myriad methods for exiting the land of the living, so you’ll never get bored: one guy overdoses on Drano (how much Drano constitutes an overdose? I’m guessing very little), one guy gets leukemia at age 14 (and looks like 65 when he dies), and someone jumps in front of  a train. Apparently, this song became a big hit after John Lennon was shot because it helped people deal with that numbing fact. That might sound kinda fucked up, but there’s catharsis in the irreverent humor of the song. I listened to it about a hundred times on the day Jim Carroll died. He was apparently just sitting at his desk writing. If I’m ever in a band again, I’m gonna rework this tune to include Jim Carroll, Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, and all the other awesome dead musicians. Who’s with me?

2. The Pixies – “Debaser” – Inspired by Luis Bunuel’s fucked up 1929 film Un Chien Andalou, (the bit in “Debaser” about slicing up eyeballs? They slice up a cow’s eye in this movie. I want you to know) “Debaser” is the best Pixies song. Period. (You don’t really think “Where is My Mind?” is their best song, do you? Why? Because it was in Fight Club?). Frank Black tears into the verse, exclaiming, “Got me a movie, I want you to know.” And certainly no Frenchman could declare “I am un” anything as assertively as Black declares “I am un/ chien!/ andalusia!” (Of course, the French dude would know to say “Je suis un” whatever, but I’ll let Black Francis slide on this one.) This is another breaking shit, bouncing around the room kind of song and I will never, ever (ever!) get tired of it. In fact, I’m gonna listen to it again right now.

1. The Clash – “Death or Glory” – If aliens landed here on Earth and pointed their lasers at my face, demanding to know, in four minutes or less, what rock ‘n’ roll was (we’re talking quintessence here – Platonic ideal shit), I’d play them “Death or Glory” by the Clash. This song has it all: an awesome guitar part, melodic bass lines, Topper Headon’s brilliantly textured drums, and some of Joe Strummer’s finest lyrics. The second verse is particularly instructive: “Every gimmick-hungry yob/ digging gold from rock ‘n’ roll/ grabs the mic to tell us/ he’ll die before he’s sold/ but I believe in this/ and it’s been tested by research/ he who fucks nuns/ will later join the church.” Nothing rocks like this song rocks. Nothing.

That’s it. Get out there and rock, revelers. Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer! And another toast to St. Jim Carroll and one to St. Joey Ramone. While you’re at it, raise a toast to Jello Biafra and Karen O. and every other awesome musician who is gracing your Rocktoberfest play list. And remember the wisdom of Mr. James Murphy: “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life.”

To sum up: These songs kick ass. These songs kick slightly more ass. These songs kick still more ass. These songs songs kick more ass than that. These songs kick ass and Henry Rollins is awesome. These songs kick ass but are just a minor threat. These songs kick ass and have pianos filled with flames. These songs, much like the Flaming Lips, kick ass. And Tom Waits is awesome.

The Songs of Rocktober 20-11

Can you see that picture up there? Good. Now, let’s talk about the disadvantages of the rock ‘n’ roll suicide, shall we? A big one (apart from the whole being dead thing) is this: if your widow is, well, a whore, she can sign away your gloomy visage so that video gamers can use an avatar of you to perform Bon Jovi tunes. But cheer up, Zombie Kurt Cobain. Rocktoberfest is coming! Smells like ten more kickass songs*…

20. Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – I know someone out there right now is doing this: “Cough! Obvious! Cough!” Fine. Maybe it is obvious. But “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is still a great song and Nevermind is still a great album. Lest we forget, this is the song that slayed the vicious (and – let’s face it – retarded) hair metal dragon. More importantly, under all the crunch and Dave Grohl’s pounding drums (remember when he was awesome?), this is pretty much a pop tune that wants to set shit on fire. So yeah, maybe I could’ve gone all “obscure Nirvana” (I definitely could have, in fact) on you, but I’m choosing to respect the first Nirvana tune I heard. Rocktoberfest is not the season for shitting on people for liking good songs, no matter how many times you’ve heard ‘em.

19. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Black Tongue” – Oh man. Karen O is one of my favorite singers. She can croon stuff like this year’s “Skeletons” and then blow the roof off the joint with stuff like “Black Tongue,” a big, fun, stupid song with buzz-saw guitars and bopping drums. How stupid is this song? “Boy, you’re just a stupid bitch and girl, you’re just a no good dick.” How much ass do you have to kick to overcome that? Exactly as much ass as “Black Tongue” kicks.

18. Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock” – Like the Breeders’ “Cannonball”, “Cherub Rock” is printed, note for note, on the inside of my skull. It’s hard to start an album better than this song started Siamese Dream. This song is so good, so heavy, it’s guitar sound so mind-blowingly, cock-hardeningly (I’m secure enough in my sexuality to admit that the guitar tone on this song gives me a boner**) great that not even the considerable amount of douchebaggery in which Billy Corgan has engaged this decade can erase it. “Cherub Rock” is nothing short of a fucking triumph. Enough said.

17. Tom Waits – “The Return of Jackie and Judy” – Tom Waits, my personal musical hero, covered this song for We’re a Happy Family, the mostly-pathetic (and often infuriating) Ramones tribute album that surfaced sometime early in the 2000s. It’s easily the best track on that album (you can find it on Waits’s Orphans collection, surrounded by more awesome Tom Waits songs), featuring Casey Waits on the drums and his dad, good ol’  Tom, shouting and wailing and generally showing the other posers on that sad-sack tribute album (Rob Zombie murdered “Blitzkrieg Bop” on that album and the fact that Kiss was even allowed to perform on a Ramones tribute album is insulting. Why not have Miley Fucking Cyrus perform on a Clash tribute? Assholes) what being a punk was all about. This song proves that Tom Waits can do anything, and he probably will.

16. The Hold Steady – “Ask Her for Adderall” – This song started showing up in the Hold Steady’s live sets back in 2006 and crept onto last year’s stellar Stay Positive as a bonus track. In the interest of full disclosure, the Hold Steady is probably my favorite band right now. “Ask Her for Adderall” is their catchiest song, with one of Craig Finn’s more melodic vocal performances while Franz Nicolay pounds an awesome rock organ thing in the background. It’s a song about being on the road with your band, not wanting to talk to your girl, but wanting her to send drugs. “If she happens to suggest/ a love based on trust and respect/ tell her I’ve been wasted since last week.” Sounds like a healthy relationship, especially when Finn later sings, “If she asks/ just tell her that/ we’re too far gone to deal/ she should know exactly how that feels.” I think Finn was imagining Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love’s romance as a sitcom.

15. Pulp – “Common People” – This is definitely a pop song, but it kicks so much ass that it warrants inclusion in your Rocktoberfest. Jarvis Cocker, perhaps the world’s greatest (and youngest) capital-C Curmudgeon, was but a twenty-something lad when he wrote this lovely little anthem. It’s all about the lyrics and the delivery of those lyrics, and Cocker is full of the righteous fury when he bellows, “If you called your dad/ he could stop it all.”

14. The Libertines – “Time for Heroes” – This song makes me sad that Pete Doherty couldn’t keep his shit together long enough to keep this band going. The Libertines’ bread and butter was shambolic, guitar-driven rock that owed more than a tiny debt to the Clash (Mick Jones even produced Up the Bracket, the album on which “Time for Heroes” appears). Doherty, when not being arrested for being a high-profile junkie, could turn a good phrase now and then. Like “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot?” and “There’s few more distressing sites than that / of an Englishman in a baseball cap.” (Confused Americans could change the line to “there’s few more distressing sights than that/ of an Indian in a cowboy hat” and get the gist) This is the finest hour for the Libertines, who might’ve lived to top it if Doherty wasn’t such an asshat.

13. Social Distortion – “Ball and Chain” – I owned Social Distortion’s self-titled first album on cassette. I was like eleven. But I’d heard “Ball and Chain” on the radio and thought it was the greatest song in the world. It’s slipped a few places in my personal pantheon, but it’s still awesome (and that album still rocks). With a country-rock inflection, Mike Ness and Social Distortion chronicle a downward spiral worthy of a Johnny Cash tune: “It’s been 10 years/ and a thousand tears/ and look at the mess I’m in/ a broken nose and a broken heart/ an empty bottle of gin.” I could be mad at Social Distortion for inspiring some of today’s shitty bands, but then I listen to their music and I forgive them.

12. The Sex Pistols – “Anarchy in the U.K.” – Yes, the Sex Pistols were manufactured by Malcolm McClaren. Yes, Sid Vicious was a terrible bass player (when he played at all). And yes, Nevermind the Bollocks is still a great album. Really, you can pick any song from it for your Rocktoberfest, but “Anarchy in the U.K.” is my favorite. I love Johnny Rotten’s sneering “Don’t know what I want/ but I know how to get it” and I love both mini guitar solos. Also, I am duty-bound to love any song that ends with “I’m getting pissed***/ destroy!”

11. The Pixies – “Gigantic” – My fiance is the first person who played Surfer Rosa for me on a drive back from a camping trip at Crater Lake in 2004. That’s the first time I heard “Gigantic,” one of my favorite songs ever. Kim Deal, who has already done so much for me, carries the verses and Frank Black pitches in absurdly high vocals on the chorus of a song that will burrow its way into your brain and lay eggs. Eggs full of rocking and joy.

* It’s worth noting that kickass Rocktober songs smell like beer, sausage, and victory.

** For our Ohio readers, that’s “Boehner.”

*** Is there someone out there who doesn’t know that this means “drunk” in British? If so, consider yourself enlightened.

It’s Friday. I’m on my way to Eugene, motherfuckers. Tomorrow, you’ll see the ten best songs of Rocktober which may or may not include songs inspired by fucked up 1920s movies, songs with smatterings of German, and/or songs that got nerds kicked off of an increasingly terrible late night program. And the number one song? Well, some of you might be able to guess it (please don’t) and some of you won’t guess but will be completely unsurprised when you see it.

If I could turn back time: The first ten songs. The next ten. And so on. And so on. And so on again. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera.

The Songs of Rocktober 30-21

Do you ever do “thirsty” Thursdays? Who has a job where they can do that? Don’t you have to work Friday morning? Okay, I don’t work until Friday afternoon, but I do work late  Thursday nights. If only there was some other way to celebrate this glorious Thursday. I know… how about ten more songs of Rocktober?

30. Sonic Youth – “Teenage Riot” – Probably Sonic Youth’s best song. It’s got a weird guitar tuning, but it’s a great song about how someone like J. Mascis should rule the world as some sort of guitar-wielding slacker Messiah. “Teenage Riot” is the lead track on 1988’s incredible Daydream Nation (you might notice that both Sonic Youth tracks on this countdown came from that record) and it might be the reason so many older indie types get all gooey over Sonic Youth. It may sound like typical electric indie stuff to the enlightened ears of 2009, but imagine this song hitting in 1988 when the best-known rock bands were complete tossers like Motley Crue, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Warrant, and Skid Row. In that context, Sonic Youth was performing a public service by releasing “Teenage Riot.”

29. Arctic Monkeys – “A Certain Romance” – “Over there, there’s broken bones/ there’s only music so that there’s new ring tones,” sings Alex Turner on the Arctic Monkeys’ best song (this is the one that was my gateway to liking this band). The lilting reggae guitar and jumpy bass line anchor the verses so Turner can focus on what’s really important: spittin’ some melodic vitriol. The Arctic Monkeys were but young pups when they cut this tune, but it is evidence of plenty of fight in those little dogs. It’s also evidence that their first album deserved some of the hype it got.

28. Wolf Parade – “This Heart’s On Fire” – Wolf Parade kinda splits its musical styles between the synth-driven pop of Spencer Krug and the growly, guitar-driven rock of Dan Boeckner. “This Heart’s On Fire” is a Boeckner tune, with chugging guitar, pounding drums, and earnestly howled vocals. I love the way Boeckner yelps “And you’re my favorite thing/ tell it everywhere I go/ I don’t know what to do” because every time I hear it, I realize that I’ve felt that way before. I might still feel that way now. Is a component of true love not knowing what to do with yourself? I think so. But there’s no way in hell I can sneak this song into my wedding play list anywhere. In lieu of that, it would make a good addition to Rocktoberfest (perhaps – perhaps! – a slightly better venue for it).

27. The Flaming Lips – “Be My Head” – I was in a pretty good band (I liked us) this year called Radical Edward. We played exactly one show (drummer moved to NY, bass player joined the Air Force. “And in June reformed without me/ and they got a different name”… just kidding. I hope) and in that show, we covered “Be My Head” by the Flaming Lips. This song, from Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, is tons of fun to play and sing or just listen to at top volume. The guitars are all crazy (nice riff on G in there) and Wayne Coyne is his usual awesome, weird self. Sing with me: “Be my head/ and I’ll be yours.”

26. The Breeders – “Cannonball” – This song is embedded in my brain from growing up a child of the alternative rock 1990s. It wasn’t until much later that I would learn that Kim Deal was from the Pixies (a little-known band who never did anything remarkable) – in the meantime, I had “Cannonball” and the Breeders. This song was all over alternative radio as soon as that existed, with the distorted vocals, the palm mutes, that zig-zaggy clean guitar line on the verse. Every time I listen to it, I just stop and listen and I forget that I was miserable through much of the 90s – I just remember this song (and a handful of others) looming large on my radio, urging me toward a life of rock music geekdom. Thank you, Kim Deal. Thank you.

25. David Bowie – “Queen Bitch” – Another song that Radical Edward covered; I loved blasting out that G-F-C progression and doing the chorus noodles. One of Bowie’s best rock tunes and, naturally, it’s about drag queens. Doesn’t matter though – Bowie was the king of the 70s. If he made an album, it was amazing. If he produced your album, it was amazing. If you travel back in time, go to the 1970s, hang out with David Bowie, and feel your awesomeness increase exponentially. Physicists call this effect the 1970s David Bowie Awesomeness Multiplier (or the 70s D-BAM for short)

24. My Morning Jacket – “Off the Record” – I know the guitar intro sounds like Hawaii Five-O. I know. But this song, the verse of which is sung by Jim James (the awesome bear) in a manner that somewhat channels the ghost of Joe Strummer (this is something most mortals cannot do – you have to be the halfbreed son of Awesome and a bear) and the chorus is skull-fuckingly catchy. This song still makes me want to jump around the room and shout “Off the record!” along with Jim the Bear every time I hear it. And I hear it a lot. For a band that pretty much only traffics in raucous badassery, “Off the Record” is still a crowning achievement.

23. Titus Andronicus – “Titus Andronicus” – Time to get a little bit obnoxious. This New Jersey band is loud, abrasive, and – at times – unlistenable. Underneath all that is something of a melodic sense, which is brought to the forefront in “Titus Andronicus”, their catchiest song by far. The lyrics are dark (there’s even a tossed-off “Fuck everything/ fuh-uck me!” in there) and angry: “There’ll be: no more cigarettes/ no more having sex/ no more drinking ’til you fall on the floor/ no more indie rock/ just a ticking clock/ you’ve no time for that any more” and the chorus is “Your life is over.” It’s mad cathartic. My sister was dying when I first heard this band and I was plenty angry that someone so awesome would only live 31 years. So this is the song I listened to when I wanted to punch everyone and everything right in the fucking face. It still is.

22. Iggy Pop – “Lust for Life” – I’ve already established that David Bowie was awesome in the 70s. Proof? He produced Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life album, the title track of which (despite now being used to shill for cruise companies) is still one of the most badass songs ever. It features an iconic bass line and Mr. Pop talking about how he’s  worth a million in prizes (and how he’s had it in his ear before; you get three guesses as to what “it” is). Though he vows to stop beating his brains with liquor and drugs, you get the feeling that this guy is a more frequent backslider than Pete Doherty (If you don’t know who Pete Doherty is, do not despair. Simply substitute “Amy Winehouse” for “Pete Doherty” to make that joke work).

21. Franz Ferdinand – “Take Me Out” – This song got all the love in the world when it first came out, which (of course) meant that I resisted it with all my might. But no longer. “Take Me Out” is a pop treasure that actually rocks. The jagged rhythm guitars (that are, toward the end of the song, lovingly embraced by snarly little lead noodles), the crisp cymbal crashes, the fatalistic “I know I won’t be leaving here with you” lyrics. It still makes the feet stomp, and it still should.

There are only two days left of this madness. And then the ‘Fest begins. Tomorrow’s set features four of the best songs of the 1990s, a surprising (well, not to me) but raucous cover song, and a guy who banged Courtney Love and then understandably shot himself.

Here’s a lot of linkage if you missed the beginning of this countdown or want to go back and confirm that I have, so far anyway, excluded your favorite band: 100-91 90-81 80-71 70-61 60-51 50-41 40-31

The Songs of Rocktober 40-31

Congratulations on surviving to Wednesday. By the end of today it will be officially “almost the weekend” which, for some of us, means “almost Rocktoberfest.” You know where I’m going with this. Ten more songs of Rocktober below:

40. The National – “Abel” – People who are more familiar with the National’s Boxer album are probably thinking “Lol, wut?” right about now, but I assure you that “Abel,” from 2005’s excellent Alligator, is deserving of your Rocktoberfest attention. One of Matt Berninger’s best vocal offerings (and that is saying something), “Abel” starts with him screaming the chorus (“My mind’s not right”) over and over again. “Abel” has a great guitar lick, awesome drums, and a great line about how “everything has all gone down wrong.” Easily one of my favorite National songs.

39. The Hives – “B” is for “Brutus” – You need some Hives for your Rocktoberfest. You just do. Vying hard with “Dead Quote Olympics” for the best Hives song ever is this lovely little nugget, “B is for ‘Brutus.’” This is the kind of rock song you can break shit to ( “shit” could also mean “yourself” in this context) if you’re not careful. Or if you are careful, depending on how you feel about whatever shit you’re breaking. It’s good to have some space cleared out at your ‘Fest for songs like this, because people are well within their rights to jump around like goons while it is playing.

38. Radiohead – “Just” – This song is possibly the best artifact of what we can call Radiohead’s Guitar Rock phase. It features one of the top five gnarliest guitar solos I’ve ever heard and it’s hard for me to dislike a chorus that says “You do it to yourself/ you do/ and that’s why it really hurts”. If you can show videos at your Rocktoberfest, the video for this song is also unassailably awesome.

37. Rancid – “Ruby Soho” – I’m not a huge Rancid fan, but I know this much is true: “Ruby Soho” could turn Oscar the Grouch into Polly-fucking-Anna (these pop culture references are brought to you by the Betamax videos of my childhood). You will find, while listening to “Ruby Soho”, that you physically cannot be unhappy (unless you’re Ohio’s 8th District Representative John A. Boehner, whose name – I’m told – is pronounced “John, a Boner”). I really don’t know what this song is all about. Something about a destination unknown. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can still sing along with this quintessentially indelible chorus  while slowly (or quickly) descending into alcoholism (at which point you will be unable to coherently utter phrases like “quintessentially indelible”).

36. The Black Lips – “Bad Kids” – I love the Black Lips and not just because they hate Wavves (although that does earn them bonus points). I love them because they are exactly what I think would happen if some Muppets started a punk band. “Bad Kids” should be their unofficial anthem, and it might be one of the catchiest songs of the decade (although, to my knowledge, Pitchfork didn’t think so). This is another song that has a very worth-screening video, featuring a bouncing ball over the lyrics and everything. That’s just how the Black Lips roll.

35. LCD Soundsytem – “Movement” – I only just recently realized how amazing this song is. James Murphy is one of a very small number of people who can simultaneously be a scene and give a scene the finger, and nothing shows it better than “Movement” (as in, “it’s like a movement without the bother of all of the meaning”), a three minute ride that builds from a slight bass/drum beat up to roaring guitars and Murphy screaming about how “you’re history/ and I’m tapped.” When I saw LCD Soundsystem live, they closed their set with this song and it kinda blew everyone’s face off. This song also features a very punk-rock guitar solo, which I won’t try to describe in words. Just listen to it.

34. Neutral Milk Hotel – “Holland, 1945″ – You probably won’t be sitting at a biker bar with AC/DC blasting on the jukebox, talking about how great Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is with a burly, fat biker named Thor (why is it that 99% of the guys on Harleys and similar motorcycles are always disproportionately large?). I mean, you could try it some time, but I’m guessing it’ll get mixed results at best. In any case, “Holland, 1945″ is frantic right out of the gate (distorted acoustic guitar!), features some of the most kickass drumming I’ve ever heard (no, really. Listen to that dude all going crazy on this song), and – as if that’s not enough – it also has a daffy mariachi horn line. Jeff Mangum (whose nasally wailing you’ll either love or hate) yells about the only girl he’s ever loved and how she’s now a little boy in Spain playing pianos filled with flames. This may or may not have something to do with Anne Frank. It doesn’t matter, though. Why? Well,  to recap, this song features: thrashing drums, distorted acoustic guitars, mariachi horns, and fucking fire. “Pianos filled with flames.” If Billy Joel could do that… no, I’d still hate him. As for “Holland, 1945″, the only thing it’s missing is ninjas; otherwise, it pretty much hits all my sweet spots.

33. The Ramones  – “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” – This may be my favorite Ramones song because of just how…well, Ramones it is. There is only one verse, repeated to look like two verses. Your dog could play the drum part. This doesn’t sound complimentary, but how can you not love the Ramones? (Of course, John-a-Boner could not love the Ramones, but you’re not him, are you? Are you?) The hand claps are a nice little textural addition that doesn’t appear in every other Ramones song and this one is about how a nice girl named Sheena just couldn’t go out disco dancing with her friends. And how New York City really has it all. Do you need to know more? I mean, it needs no further explanation.  Look: if you don’t know that the Ramones kick ass, you probably don’t know that the earth orbits the sun.

32. The Thermals – “An Ear for Baby” – Why are the Ramones so great? Because we wouldn’t have a lot of great bands without them (of course, we might not have some shitty bands without them, but I’m gonna go ahead and ignore that fact for now). Portland’s Thermals aren’t really musically close to the Ramones, but they do traffic in the same sort of meat-and-potatoes punk that owes Joey & co. a not-insignificant debt (meaning they’re not not musically close. I guess). This song comes from 2007’s amazing The Body, the Blood, the Machine and has a catchy drum part (those exist) and one of singer/guitarist Hutch Harris’s most melodic guitar solos. Also, it gives the finger to fundamentalist religion, which is always a plus in my book.

31. The White Stripes – “You’re Pretty Good Looking” – I like the specificity of this song. You’re pretty good looking for a girl, but you might make an ugly lamppost. Or hamster. You could be downright beautiful for a bran muffin, but we’ll  never know. For a girl, however, you’re merely pretty good looking. Bully for you. These days, we’ve reached a point of saturation with Jack White and his many bands, but there was a time when he was just a dude with a guitar who so capably synthesized his influences that he could blow your fucking mind in a minute and forty-nine seconds – like he does on this here song.

In thirty more songs, it will be Rocktoberfest. Tomorrow’s set will feature no fewer than two songs that my (sadly now-defunct) band covered at our only gig, one of the coolest motherfuckers of the 1970s, and…um… Shakespeare(?).

Numbers:100-91 90-81 80-71 70-61 60-51 50-41

Damn. That’s a lot of rocking.