Between 1991 and 2001 I had gotten through high school, most of college, a couple trips to a mental hospital, an intense long-term but disastrous relationship, learning jazz improv, some recordings of experimental music, drinking, a few drugs, listening to a lot of trip-hop, jungle, noise, a period of involvement with a certain performance art/UFO cult, started an artistic collective that no one would join, stupid hair tricks, cut myself and pierced my ears with safety pins, grew out and painted my nails, tore aluminum cans in half with my teeth, saw a lot of shows, worked a job I probably should have stuck with but probably couldn’t have stuck with, moved out of South Jersey, learned very little Japanese, and there was a stint as a drummer in what I’m going to call a “basement rock” band. The band ended after about half a dozen shows in the middle of nowhere because of the fame. I was medicated but sober, living with some friends who were all trying to figure out what a fuck they were doing since they had all quit their jobs to live in a house together and play in a band since there was now no band. I began working a series of retail jobs.

At first I got work near the house. I hated it. It just seemed like it was pointless and would never get better. (Which was true.) I tried to get jobs that I would like more, arts-related. The commute didn’t matter, I told myself. Just anything that is less stupid. I “succeeded”.

It’s hard to pick which commute was worse. It was by foot, bike or train. Usually a combination. I had a CD Walkman but used an old cassette one I still had if I was biking because I hated having the thing skip. Don’t let mp3 haters fool you, kids: they never perfected skip-proofing. And those things were relatively kinda big and heavy for about an hours worth of music tops. There was logistics involved. Just saying.

I’ve cut the list in half because the year divided pretty cleanly between two jobs I had then.
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So I thought this list would be fun, I had a pretty good idea what most of the list would be and I just had to add a little intro making fun of people who act like they are above small details like the chronology of their own life. But I almost did the same thing. Gone through several rewrites. I was reading articles all year about the 20th anniversary of Nevermind and thinking about when I first heard it as a freshman in high school and I’ve gotten so over-plugged in that I started thinking that year was actually 91. I was only entering 8th grade when Nevermind was released. This has been an interesting experiment in my own jumbled memories (a real thing that only I have access to) vs. whatever narrative I’m trying construct about myself (possibly bullshit) vs. what narrative I would want to present to people (edited bullshit) vs. real facts that can be looked up (“objective reality”).

I start writing it and I start with the bullshit, and it goes off track, I decide the whole thing is stupid, etc. Then I’m looking at it and then, unexpectedly, my brain starts working. And that’s what this is about. Maybe in the future I could be a music writer. Whatever I do, it’s going to require a consistently functioning brain. I used to have one of these, and I think I’m almost back up to speed. I’m not sure when things started to go wrong exactly, but I recall shifting my role models to individuals who were able to produce while being severely malfunctioning in every other way. Why fix the problem? The work is all that matters. Then things went a little more wrong than I anticipated. My brain didn’t handle it so well. I figured, why don’t I just shut this thing off for while? So I did. That works for a lot of people too. It’s the best state to make friends in. It’s nice to have friends, in real life. But circumstances have given me some alone time, and the situation is a lot like when things were working out between me and Mr. B. We had some problems, but we worked them out together. What if this could work again? Easier rhetorically setup than done. But things are at the point now where I can look at a year and accurately tell you what grade I was in.

What I’m trying to do here…I don’t know if I could ever do this full-time, but music is the biggest constant in my life. I’ve gone years sometimes without seeing a movie, watching tv, or reading a book. Stupid but true. I’m fine with being the outsider-y type, but my life stopped making sense even to myself. I’m trying to make the bullshit less bullshit. Using music writing to do this is the best way for me to go about it, and it’s something other people can get something out of. Otherwise I just sound like a teenage goth girl or a self-help book. And no one wants to read that (or the wrong people want to read that, and it’s not teenage goth girls, who I have total respect for—I’m just not of you…physically. I need to be less one of you. That time is over. But it’s nothing to ashamed of. It’s a fine thing to be. The best? Sure, maybe.).

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Sonic Youth is 30. They are celebrating with a live gig on the Williamsburg Waterfront with Wild Flag opening. I am not there. This is pretty much the show to see this summer. Still kinda mad at myself for missing WF at Johnny Brenda’s but figured I could make this one but I’m just too broke. Coincidentally, Shonen Knife is also 30 this year but we’re not talking about Shonen Knife right now. Let’s focus. I don’t need to tell you any more about Sonic Youth, it’s just an excuse for a quickie list post.

1. Daydream Nation
   Kinda wanna not give it the top spot because I will rarely put it on now because it’s so played out and so long. But it really is that good.

2. Evol
   Oh man, this is one to get next. You could totally go wrong after Daydream and get put off the band. Probably happens to a lot of people. Am I really talking like this? No, it’s just a blog. Take it easy.

3. Confusion Is Sex
   NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE. So dark. The darkest. Actually scary. No sentence is short enough to annoyingly describe it. Destroys.

4. Sister
   Most people would probably put Sister over EVOL. They seem to always play a lot of Sister songs live. Some clunkers lyrically. Actually, fuck it, I had this at 3, it’s going down a notch. Something about it tho.

5. Experimental Jet Set Trash & No Star
   Probably higher in the list than it should be for overall quality but it was the first one I got. Which makes no sense but that’s how it happened.

6. Washing Machine
   I could say a lot about this one but it has a great opener and great closer. It’s a summer album. Except wiki says it came out in late September. Becuz just sounds great blasting out of a window. It’s how summers feel to me.

7. Bad Moon Rising
   Very soundtracky, some moods just call for this album. Maybe hard to justify at #8, but it has the unbelievably epic Death Valley 69. Just noticed Dirty did not make this list, but believe it or not I never owed Dirty. It has some of my favorite songs but I only have a dub tape which cuts out several songs. (You could probably guess.) Sorry, Dirty. I just don’t think of you that way.

8. Goo
   Has it’s share of cringe moments, but they’re only moments, or are the lyrics to the title track. Probably the best overall production, if you like music to sound good. Like the breakdown part in Tunic. And Mote is maybe my favorite. Lee songs are epic (and I hate to use epic twice so close together but it’s 30 years of music here). Goddamnit, Wish Fulfillment is on Dirty, that’s another one. Turns out I do feel that way about Dirty, but it just didn’t work out. Fuck. Plus the metalheads from 9th grade are going to find me now and shoot me with their paintball guns, which I had avoided at the time by only listening to the first 3 Metallica albums until they graduated. And somehow a lot of The Doors. Weird bunch. How did ska fit into this? Man that 9th-10th grade summer was a weird one. I digress.

9. SYR 2: Slaapkamers Met Slagroom
   Might seem weird to count this, but it’s got the best parts from A Thousand Leaves which was a crushing disappointment of an album after the heavily played Washing Machine. Late 90s for me was mostly this, trip-hop, and shibuya-kei. Then I joined a rockabilly band. In retrospect…no it makes total sense. You had to be there. This record also has the benefit of being the best looking record I own so it tended to stay on the turntable for long periods. I miss my old setup but what can you do.

10. The Eternal
    Got to give them credit for pulling this one out after several records which were exactly half good. (Although I think Murray Street is probably better but I don’t really own that one either so I haven’t given it a fair shot.) This is the last CD was playing in my car a lot before the player broke. Only 2 years ago but seems like longer…shit really seemed like it was going to work out way back then. Maybe it will but time crawls with only shoddy radio reception and high gas prices. (Much better reception is North Jersey.) It’s literally a summer album but feels like it could be wintery. Not really I’m just being a jerk. It’s non-season specific. Long and zero hits but solid.

Closing thoughts: I need to stop fucking around and get some kind of actual income so I can go to more shows. This is awful. Just kidding. No I really need to move. Sonic Youth, everybody.

[edit: Yes, I added Amazon links.]

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Weird year. It was kinda like this. But also this.

It might have turned out like this or even this. But it didn’t. And 2011 and beyond will likely bring… dead links.

Wow this is getting off to a…some kind of start.

If only I would write more instead of just pointing, gooing and gaaing. That might be a better idea. What am I saying here? I’d like to think I’m more introverted than autistic this past year. Who knows. But enough of this sentence-paragraph bullshit for right now, we need a list. Here’s a list of them:

1: Stereogum’s Top 50

A list of best albums with one song from each streaming. They should have made medley-mashup mix for each. C’mon, guys! Oh, wait I’m not doing that. That would have really raised the bar. But that bar’s just fine where it is for right now. Leave that bar alone. Let’s talk about this list and why it’s my favorite. It’s the emotion. Most lists are simply an intellectual challenge. This one really went for the gut. First, panic. I simply haven’t been paying that much attention to this general area of indie music lately. A year end list used to filled with names I recognized and didn’t really care for too much. Now over half are completely out of nowhere. Thank gob for those streams. I went through the entire page in a sitting, frantically tetrising to ease the terror of oncoming senility. Soon, I felt relief and vindication. My year of ignoring this stuff was well spent. Most of it does nothing for me. The stuff I like I already knew about and the stuff I knew I didn’t like kept doing that thing I don’t like. (Maybe I would like the Arcade Fire, for example, if they stopped trying to make me feel like I’m driving away from the school I just graduated from in the car I just bought with the girl I’m not really sure if it’s going to work with but, damnit, we’re going to try…to love. No! We’re not. Done it.)

Then there’s the stuff that’s so good I can’t even deal with it: Swans. Joanna Newsom. Maybe Flying Lotus. Janelle Monae is another level of good. All music for moods I don’t find myself in the mood to digest lately.

And I did buy the new Kanye but it’s like voting for Obama.

2: Decibel Top 40

Yes, I’m linking to Stereogum again for the list. I also like their metal list. You might even say it’s got 10 more. You would be correct. But Decibel is a magazine, so they had room to give reasons for their choices. (Why do websites have less room for text than magazines? Answer in 3 or more paragraphs. Include the question in your answer.) I don’t like the two list system. Why are guitar-bass-keys-drums indie rock bands in a list (THE list) with pop-rappers and electronic one-man acts, but if guitar-bass-keys-drums bands who turn up a little louder or play faster (or much slower) that’s a whole other list? It’s not like every one of these bands is about nun-raping or whatever. Nun-rapists…maybe you would want that not in your main list. And wtf is Salem, for real? Why was I ever mad at Chris Weingarten, cause he gets paid? He deserves it.

[What I'm saying is, I like a publication with focus.]

3: Free Music Archive: Live@WFMU

You know who doesn’t deserve it? No, the FMA is a cool idea. There’s just…sooo muccchhhh. Found some cool stuff there but haven’t found a way to mentally prioritize it. When I do I’ll make some new podcasts. If you are not hip to the concept at all or have no idea where to dive into this mess, a great place to start would be the live FMU sessions. More likely some known names in there. And all these sessions are archived on FMU, but it’s now in a convenient format chopped out of the shows which of course are still great themselves but sometimes you can’t play Tetris for 3 hours or whatever you people do. You sure can’t write a blog post and listen to someone talk at the same time. So, that’s me. Put these in yr iDoodad whatchamawalkmans.

4: Hot 97 Top 10 Best Rappers of 2010

Four guys I never heard of that know more about rap than me, via Fusion Culture
.

5: More Metal lists

Fenriz should get his own listing but I want to keep some more lists together for reference. One of the few Myspace blogs ever worth reading, he makes some good general points about lists. I’m not as against modern metal as he is of course, but he picks out good stuff. (The Trapped Under Vice series is a must if you like the old school stuff. Vol. III was my favorite mixtape overall this year.

So we’ve also got:

About.com
Brooklyn Vegan
Noisecreep

…and Diane Kamikaze’s best of show, which is not all metal, but whatever. Like Decibel or Fenriz she hits that whole punk/metal-relevant area. The good stuff.

6: Village Voice: Top 10 NSFW Videos

The Voice had many epic lists, but here’s a good cross section of stuff that includes Behemoth which doesn’t happen too often. And Stereogum tried to outdo them too and maybe they did but also I can’t think of a reason to just post Sweatshirt Earl.

Somehow they both missed Cephalic Carnage’s Ohrwurm, which, without counting their lists was only the third most disturbing video I saw this year. The second was for some black metal band that involved nun rape, then got worse. (Google “communion wafer scat”, I guess. Once was enough for me.) Then there was…I can’t.

Let’s forget.

[good year for that guy with the thyroid condition]

7: Deciblog’s Random Number of Random Things

While I’m throwing Stereogum so many links, the Deciblog should get one as they tend to get fucking snubbed. Maybe they should post their lists there, but maybe some people just buy the magazine to reprint their list. I don’t know.

Obvious(?) co-sign on Slint’s Spiderland and the 33 1/3 series. Lotta good stuff.

8: Beyond the Sea: J-Albums

Here’s another whole category I haven’t been keeping up with but I’m glad someone is. It’s the more-or-less singer-songwriters of J-pop. Utada bailed this year but there’s other stuff.

Beyond the Sea was a blog I liked a couple years ago that got shut down for having downloads. Found a “beyondthesea” folder with some decent stuff on an old harddrive, looked them up and there it is. Hope they continue with writing this stuff up cause a lot of people gave up even commenting.

9: Matador’s List of Many More Lists

Haven’t even dug through this all yet. In here would be the better indie stuff. New Fall is great. New Bottomless Pit. Don’t have either yet. Yeah I guess Bottomless Pit sounds kinda 90s, unlike the fresh new sounds of… Ariel Pink? Those wacky retro novelty acts like Bottomless Pit and The Fall still putting out these novelty throwback records, quite good, believe it or not. Most people choosing ‘not’. Astonishing.

Anyway,

10: Records Paid For, Listened To and Enjoyed

1. Sigh | Scenes From Hell [The End]
2. Momus | Hypnoprism [American Patchwork]
3. LITE | Illuminate [Transduction]
4. Shonen Knife | Free Time [Good Charamel]
5. 0.8秒と衝撃。| エスノファンキードフトエフスキーカムカムクラブ EP [actwise]
6. white white sisters | euphoriaofeuphobia [real future]
7. Marnie Stern | S/T [Kill Rock Stars]
8. Torche / Boris | Chapter Ahead Being Fake [Hydra Head]
9. Early Graves | Goner [Metal Blade]
10. Ski Beatz / V/A | 24 Karate School Japan [R-RATED]

[I will of course get anything HALCALI puts out, but haven't got to it yet.]

Honorable Overall Mention: Show of the Year – Melvis/Isis@the TLA

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Original post (from April):

In the old blog I promised a traditional, focused top 10 for J-albums, but I killed the blog. If I don’t stick to it, I’m going to just drive around listening to the new Mastodon cause that shit is great.

But I figure I will add to list list as I go, committing to buy at least ten new albums from Japan this year. (I’m really being an asshole about it and not counting the new Utada.) If I get more, stuff gets squeezed out. I’m not trying to find albums that are merely “good”, but that threaten to take over your life. It’s always been my opinion that ten of such albums never come out in any given year, but blahblah, etc.

Mono | Hymn to the Immortal Wind
Morning Musume | Platinum 9
Ha.

It’s August. Fuck it. I’m not a critic, or even a consistent opinion-giver. Nobody cares about my year-end list, not even me. I thought it would be a good challenge for me to fill in the format for once with something meaningful to me. But it’s a bad challenge, or I fail the challenge, or the format fails me. I think sticking to my new format of strictly random reviews of records I own is a better challenge, but I have to get this one out of the way.

If you didn’t notice I decided adding to the list as I went was a terrible idea. I did drive around listening to only Mastodon and Momusu for a couple months. (Mono does not work as driving music for me, or you.) Then my CD player broke. This sucked but turned out to be good as it increased my gas mileage and decreased the amount of rocks thrown at my car considerably. It also got me listening to the radio, reminding me why I got into blogging about bands I originally discovered on YouTube. Sure there’s some good stations or individual DJs still out there, but I find myself on the edge of reception most of the time at best. Even the college stations, when the shows focus on current American indie, which used to be full of bands mind-blowingly good or fascinatingly bad—-it just seems “ok” to me. Everybody else seems to only care about putting the minimum amount of imagination into stuff you can dance to or seeming “dangerous” in some way. None of it really pushes anywhere. Few exceptions, but I’m tired of rhetoric, which is only part of the problem. Here’s my stupid list:

(btw, I started buying records alphabetically and did not get far before my credit card company cut the absurd limit they gave me a couple years ago in half, to just about what I owe them. Could be worse.)

Best of Records That I Could Afford Released in Japan in the First 8 Months of 2009 by Artists that Start with “M” Somehow

1. Muramasa☆ | BEST [Limited]
2. Mono | Hymn to the Immortal Wind [Human Highway]
3. Morning Musume. | Platinum 9 [UP-FRONT WORKS/zetima]
4. Marty Friedman | Tokyo Jukebox [avex]
5. MEG | Beautiful [Universal J]
6. MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS | World Is Yours [Avocado]
7. mudy on the Sakuban | Kidnie [zankyo]
8. Mari Yaguchi x AIRBAND | Seishun Boku/Seishun Ore [UP-FRONT WORKS/hachama]
9. mouse on the keys | An Anxious Object [MachuPicchu INDUSTRIAS]
10. m-flo | inside -Works Best III- [Rhythm Zone]

[edit: these get actual reviews as they come up randomly, which could take several years.]

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