P&J Comments that Didn't Make It

Pink pulled a smart move too and submarined in Family
Portrait as her last single, a song downright
embarrassing to listen to, even to her from a radio
interview I heard. But embarrassing good, like that
majority of broken-home kids who now constitute the
target demo can identify and there's no frontin' and
no valorization and no moral-majority speechifyin' but
just a couple hail marys and a
there-but-for-the-grace. All this should theoretically
blast the "shemo" (thanks Todd Burns) wave of Vanessa
Branch Lavigne out of the water, but really doesn't.
One year and Pink goes from pop-upstart to elder
mother and does anyone remember Alanis coz it took her
maybe 10 years to shake it off. "A Thousand Miles" was
a truly great single because now girls can be all
moody and dreamy again without getting accused of
drawing pictures of Justin Timberlake in their
notebooks. But they should be drawing pictures of him
anyway because the whole album is like a pop-gloss on
this pervertalicious maniac who's been lurking as a
cleancut boyband boy all the better to STEAL YOUR
DAUGHTER.

Brit-pop from The Sugababes to Craig David to every
other failed crossover prospect this year had a
similar (heh, heh) Flava -- precise, like Destiny's
Child if they never went for the gold or fell from the
peaks. like the music a tightlipped 80 year old rich
widow would listen to and just barely not cry. And
speaking of the UK garage underwent a Species-like
mutation from come-hither ladieez friendly dancefloor
filler for sophisticated recreational coke users to
somethin' street and harder than Swizz Beats even.
Jamaica by way of the laptop (turntables are so
pre-9/11) not bashment but blipment and another reason
the world just got uglier. All of this leaves The
Streets:UK Garage :: The Talking Heads:Punk. But watch
for Roll Deep crew and especially Dizzy Rascal in the
'03 cause he's obsessed with broken hearts and writes
200 wpm pop-songs where nobody wins, and
over-interrogation of emotion stops being emo and
becomes punk over a certain speed. And emo turns
power-pop with a certain level of technical capacity,
which is why Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle" was
another pleasant single this year. And are the Foo
Fighters ripping Jimmy Eat World off? Blasphemy! But
their best single in years too.

Eminem is the new David Bowie cause he knew how to
ride shady to the bitter end with The Eminem Show
where the gag wasn't quite Saturday Night Live stale
yet but disturbingly close, then he just threw it all
away and became Rabbit for the 8 Mile Soundtrack where
he overtakes Dre as a producer and brings Detroit's
solid clanking sound mainstream. If Shady Records
heralds the glam revival, then I guess that makes 50
Cent The Sweet, which "Wanksta" bears out -- all hook
and no handle.

And by the way, "Work It" isn't the second coming but
its promotion is -- "custom" mixes for like every
"urban" station in the wide nation with fresh verses
on each about how "them other stations all is
worthless/don't know how to work it" and even better,
thanks to Clearchannel, they're all the same station
anyway! But the people get what they want, and they
get Missy tellin' em how right they is, and I'd call
her a hypocrite but my rap heroes this year are the
ones above the battle -- too many petty penny-ante
throwdowns and the winner usually is the one with the
fake-authentic "one with the microphone" child of the
Pharaoh cop. But that's only coz these things are
judged by foax like Benzino. Eminem gets major props
for throwing down scandal-exposin' whistle-blowin'
knowledge on him and The Source in the only battle
that mattered this year.

And while hearts got harder and whines got more nasal
there was one touch of elegance which made it all go
away. In his groundbreaking sociological study,
Frazier examined a "black bourgiouse" cut off from
white culture and forced to invent a caricature of
class. He made it sound like a bad thing, and it
mainly is, I guess. But not so with steppin' and not
so with the greatest steppin' anthem ever produced
which has all the race politics of Jamie Principle's
"Baby Wants To Ride" sublimated into a vocal so pure
in tone it hurts -- R. Kelly, "In The Name Of Love".

2002 was also the year R&B almost died but didn't.
There was nothing happening through June but then
thank Naughty By Nature for two image-makeover collabs
with Pink and 3LW which ruled my summer and thank 3LW
for bringin' back R&B in the fall. No props to Ashanti
who still doesn't have a personality or to Jill Scott
who still has a terrible one or to Erykah Badu for
reinvigorating Common's career (or did he reinvigorate
hers? Either way, bad move). Nivea with late breaking
greatness for "Don't Mess With My Man" and the
oft-delated album which is a nostalgia-blast of circa
2001 shiny darkchild mecha-pop which holds up fine
against Brandy's wanna-glitch and the "authentic"
dregs of Angie Stone. But the wumpa-wumpa helicopter
swing beneath Brandy's "Full Moon" (Doomnight, but
with a TUNE!) also showed up in latest B2K single and
could be the start of something good.

Watch Cash Money for Jazzie Pha their new
master-producer in waiting cause southern bounce is
gonna come back good and he even made the Nappy Roots
sound fresh. Slip 'N Slide didn't have "Take It To The
House" this year but it did have Trina's "Diamond
Princess" which between the choice of guests (Missy to
Luda to etc.) and producers and "empowered"
affirmation of a miserable life had everything which
makes the moment good. Like Eve, but HUNGRY, y'know?

Christina probably fooled foax with "Dirrty" (all
about beggin' for anal play to send her to orgasm, if
you haven't figured it out) cause her album's much
more demure, full of Linda Perry penned Pink
self-esteem castoffs but with a voice that delivers on
them. Like if you threw the first and second halves of
"Survivor" in a blender. Excuse the multiple Destiny's
Child references, but I can't bear their "break"
despite Nelly & Kelly and Jay-Z & Beyonce cementing
them in pop-royalty anyway. All we need now is Kid
Rock & Michelle.

Finally, a word on the Mekons: Their album title has
an exclamation point and is full of punchy
faux-americana grit, like the amps are at 11 and
they're shorting out on despair. Basically Shania
Twain's Up! except it uses more styles. And Shania
even has that way-cool Zareeka multiple-CD gimmick.
Which goes to show that sometimes execution matters
more than concept. Sometimes.

Microhouse/glitch house/click house whatever you want to call it: even drawing attention to it seems, well, vulgar. Likewise expecting any sort of great culture convulsions to come out of it, even though it lends itself to such writing. Enjoying it as much as I did this year is a bit like spending twelve months infatuated with wind chimes, but it was a stressful year, so fuck off.

Radio Rock is still spinning its wheels in the twin ditches of nth generation grunge and nerf-rap. Hardly its lowest ebb, but still few signs of life. Most rock bands are still seemingly incapable of dealing with rhythm, outside of plodding third-hand breakbeats. I’ve always been loathe to use “rhythm” as a code word for “black people music”, but here we are. And endless variations on a scrimmage between Marley Marl and Corrosion of Conformity don’t fill me with much hope for the near future. (Speaking of cul de sacs, there’s always Andrew WK, who at least has the shock of the new, since if anyone in 2001 had told me I’d be digging on the love child of Little Richard and Napalm Death, I’d have thought them quite deranged.) Power-Pop-Punk ebbs and flows like the tides, coming back to us this year scruffy (uh, Good Charlotte) and shiny (Avril, mostly.) Same problems its always had: no rhythm, white as fuck, not enough metal, too much metal as a substitute for hooks, lack of charismatic front people and/or real life goofuses (aka the Cheap Trick Syndrome.) Avril probably has the edge since she’s got that real raccoon-in-the-headlights quality a real teenage girl has when she’s on stage for the first time. (Either that or she was afflicted with Eddie Vedder disease in her pre-teens.)

Speaking of pre-teens, Avril’s a rather obvious manifestation of teen-pop reneging on some of its (unspoken) original promises, probably beginning with “Genie In A Bottle” back in 1999. Mainly: yes, we all loved those huge Abba drums that Max Martin fetishized, but wasn’t it exciting hearing all those tumbling offbeats in “Genie” or say that Jordan Knight comeback single the first time in the context of All-The-Hits-None-Of-The-Rap radio? The original teen-pop generation might as well be hip-hop at this point (you know the playlist as well as I do), and hip-hop/R&B has never been more “pop” while still being 2black2strong. But white teenagers are still white teenagers, and so we’ve seen that inevitable shift to upful ballad-tempo rhythmically constricted stuff: Michelle, Vanessa, etc. I will admit to digging on the Vanessa Carlton single simply because it seems to be such an apex of post-Carpenters shlock: those strings!, those 8th grade band piano chops!, those teenage girl stabs as being “stately”!

As for Rock: Non-Radio Division, there was Wilco, at best a pastiche of 70s radio at its most turgid and unmemorable, a triumph of marketing over content sadly masquerading as the inverse. Sigur Ros don’t seem to understand that a Kitaro album sung in sub-Esperanto gibberish is still a Kitaro album. Tom Waits – VH1’s version of Ozzy – made his Use Your Illusions, sadly lacking sex, Slash, and Get In The Ring. Don’t know quite what it says about “underground rock” (or rock in general) when Wire, a bunch of 50something men now doing their best Robert Palmer impression, make the best rock record of the year. Not far behind (in both age and quality) is Sonic Youth, who surprise the other way (what could be more surprising for Wire at this point then playing with the feigned venom of a Tallahassee death metal band?), by making an album that reminds me equally of America (as in “A Horse With No Name”) and the ISDN crackle of glitch labels like Mego. Deduct all points for Jim O’Rourke’s studied and ridiculous fashion sense. The old guard: - Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Guided By Voices, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: why? Most bands traded “jangle” for “post-punk” this year which simply means unlearning all those chiming Byrds/REM chords for “angular” riffs and Chic-bass. The best of the lot were probably Outhud who did New Order instrumental b-sides played upside down, underwater. But tis a strange world when a great album can be derived from The Edge’s guitar playing and Jean-Jacques Perry (at least when DJ Premier isn’t involved.)

Hip-hop terribly uninvolving, but still, their weak beats your year. Kinda wondering what I was affirming, if anything, voting Nelly’s Kool & The Gang/Benny Hill pastiche the best song of the year, as we teeter like Weebils on the edge of mutually assured destruction. Clipse tried for the hip-hop Superfly and ended up with the hip-hop I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Minus the banana. Hated “Grindin” all summer, came around in the fall, and still not convinced its even Music, per se, but hey, neither is PiL’s “Theme.” Still expect at least two dozen Jamaican 7”s featuring its rhythm by next year. (“Grindin” that is, not “Theme”, although that’d be interesting too.) Jay-Z: EDITING IS YOUR FRIEND. At least in terms of tightness of focus, he proves how last years genius is this years jester. Eminem, don’t pull that thing you, unless you plan to bang. “Cleanin Out My Closet” possibly the WORST song of the year, but “Without Me” certainly one of the bests, so he’s 50/50. With “Lose Yourself” batting clean-up, he’s still in the black, but we’re watching you Marshall. None of the eastern flavored hip-hop I heard this year was as WEIRD as the bhangra-hop I heard towards the end: chopping up Bollywood goofiness with Biggie’s “Juicy” or ladling polyrhythmic warbling overtop of “Ride Wit Me” or “Can I Get A?”. Probably all the more exciting since it rarely congeals, more often like pouring curry powder or Shiriachi hot sauce on your ice cream cone. As for underground hip-hop, El-P okay nice doomy Throbbing Gristle hamburgler muzak though someone needs to sew his mouth shut. RJD2 went some way to redeeming his label boss by dropping a slab of wrenching heartbreak in the form of “Here’s What’s Left,” ripping off Pete Rock to great effect and otherwise triggering lame nostalgia buttons in hip-hop guys that make us like “this sort of thing” more than we should. After this a whole album seemed redundant. Ditto DJ Shadow. The rest of undie rap seems poised somewhere between caustic acrostic gnosticism designed to throw non-adepts off the scent or to provide uplift party snoozak to facilitate the sales of Gap jeans across the English speaking world. (Cf. Jurassic 5, Blackalicious.)

UK garage did “Grindin” one better in the this-ain’t-music-mate stakes by building a whole * culture * out of sounds even more tossed off, serrated, dunderheaded and thrilling. Top tune was probably Dizzy Rascal’s “I Love You” coming over somewhere between Schooly D, Nausenblauten, and Gary Numan. Dizzy himself is a real interesting cat, as if Olivier had suddenly possessed the body of Ludacris. All about the MCs, since the music is as often just background beat-paper. Top tune (from a number-of-times-I-heard-this perspective) is “Pulse X” by Musical Mobb, purportedly made on a Playstation and sounds like it. The dry as hell technical term for the stuff is “8-bar” because, duh!, the backing changes every 8-bars. Hardly listenable on its own, it’s a tool for MCs to freestyle over, which they did, the sheer number of words pouring off pirate radio this year kind of numbing. American hip-hop’s cloth eared jingoism means this stuff doesn’t have a prayer over here, but it’s our loss.

Electroclash is a cheesy cash in genre in the best Nuggets tradition, but it’s kind of sad that the public face of it is Fisherspooner, who come off like Beck covering Blue Monday, repeatedly. I do wonder why everyone is so insistent on thinking this is some sort of get rich quick scheme – a musical time-share - for Williamsburg art fags, since no one I know is buying it, you can’t hear it on the radio, and the guy who changes my mothers oil probably doesn’t know I-f from Inna Gadda Da Vida. Speaking of getting rich quick, DJ Sammy is my hero but he’s also as likely to Save Music As We Know It as a pack of Gyuto monks. “Heaven” was the only piece of music to make me cry this year, but that’s probably because I was drunk, depressed, and forcibly 2900 miles from my girlfriend, so fuck off. Besides, a world of nothing but endlessly-on-up Eurotrance would be like being Charlie living in the Chocolate Factory: sure it’s good for a while, but at what eventual cost? Someone also told me that house, techno, and drum & bass are all still going. Imagine that. (DJ Marky’s “LK” – apparently a reworking of a 60s Brazilian pop song – was possibly the first drum & bass tune in five years to do a goddamn thing for me, but even then it was jaunty little guitar figure and ridiculously pleasant vibe rather than any mashed up James Brown-ian groove motion.)

WORST year for albums in recent memory. Literally dozens of bands release albums that are Bs or B+s at best, hardly any to real grab me by the short and curlies. Mussolini-like reissue programs and the ease of the mp3 make me feel as if I’m drowning in the totality of recorded music. Great year for compilations (about the only good thing in long-players this year), but I made just as many great mixtapes, for only a buck fifty a pop. Rising CD costs make it harder than ever to keep up (attn. promo list people), at least until I break down and get cable internet (attn. editors who determine my pay scale.) Too many good SONGS to count this year. My Pazz & Jop top ten could have easily stretched into the hundreds. Often exhausted, occasionally bored. Never felt more engaged. Love it.

...

In the harsh light of "one year later," bootlegs seem like the aural
equivalent of wearing an "E.T.: The Video Game" t-shirt. Exceptions: "We Don't Give a Damn About Our Friends"/"Freak Like Me" (sorry, Sugababes; even though you hired away an Atomic Kitten, America will never understand your sullen ways. But I still love you, even when I consider the Sting-sampling.); "Magnificent Romeo"; and, um, I can't really remember any others aside from "A Stroke of Genie-us" and the Destiny's Child/Nirvana track.

...

I spent half the summer thinking that Daniel Bedingfield was Melanie C; the pitch-shifting on some radio versions of "Gotta Get Through This" sweetened his high notes just a little too much for me to even think that it might be sung by an adult male. But learning that the ornamental female on "Dilemma" was not Ashanti, but in fact Kelly Rowland, did nothing to dampen my distaste for it.

...

The overarching message I got from the collected weight of so much of the music I heard this year -- even a lot of the records I liked! -- was "If you can't look hot while you're dancing to our beats, you can't be part of our revolution." And, seriously, fuck that noise.

I am cold and I am shamed, lying naked on the floor...and dirrrrty: Christina A.

50 Cent's lazy-ass drawl stumbling over an ice cream-jingle hook and a bass line that sounds like Dr. Dre running a Casio keyboard through a blown subwoofer are the unlikely heroes of "Wanksta." And while playing the authenticity card is a tired fool's game, 50 Cent, with a bullet once imbedded in his loose jowls, has earned the right to undress poseurs.

The Rapture, having taken stock of the New York scene and joining up with the beat-heavy DFA collective, substituted firmer beats for noisy dissonance (which, in theory, is lamentable, but works wonderfully here) in "House of Jealous Lovers," eyeing "I Love a Man In a Uniform"-era Gang of Four rather than, say, "Damaged Goods." The bait and switch made an obvious killing on hipster dance floors and, surprisingly, in indie-rock corners as well, where a legion of like-minded bands has given audiences the go-sign to wiggle their asses as much as they please (which is very little, of course). That the song is only available as a 12" would seem to doom its popularity, but the catchy melody has conquered the format constraint (finally, a use for that old turntable!) in grand form. The song of the year for a million different reasons, it certainly isn't a new sound, but it's rare to see nostalgic and contemporary tastes intersect so opportunely.

Great year for superstars making great music and pushing themselves into my consciousness and making me care: Eminem, Natalie Maines, Missy Elliott, Trina. And I'm not going to say anything about them, since LeAnn and Celine made better music, despite neither's having a personal relationship with me. LeAnn Rimes "No Way Out": smoldering, slow beat; a little girl embedded in it raises her voice to break free; the sound around her is massive, and the whispers within her insist that she can't get away, though she lifts her voice once again and tries. Rocket From the Tombs "30 Seconds Over Tokyo": Intellectual dragon, locked in time. Lifter Puller "Secret Santa Cruz": voluble, not to mention voluminous (at any rate, it's a two-fer), not to mention volume (as in loud). Serial Rhyme Killers "Something About Mary": Does nothing change? It's the same Mary that the Association were singing about 36 years ago. N.O.R.E. "Nothing": Yes, this "Nothing" is a change, as are many other things, and one of the advantages of my getting old is that it gives me a continual sense of wonder. Put me in the passenger seat, in charge of the car radio, and I'm constantly gushing, "Listen to this, how in hip-hop they'll take any sound and make a record out of it." Yeah, Frank, we know, they've been doing that for 20 years. "But they weren't always doing it, not when I was a kid." [Pause for breath.] "LISTEN TO THIS! Listen to this cute little sound! It keeps repeating" - so are you, Frank - "It's this gentle little - this repeating little... The voices act tough but they're spinning around this... what is it?... [intones] 'They're playing tough but to the tender sounds of a recorder.' Or a pan pipe or an ocarina or something." Frank, the Troggs played tough to an ocarina back in 1966. "Yes, but that was just a solo; they didn't construct the whole damn carousel around it." Mirrors "Everything Near Me" (in which they explain why their hands are in their pockets): "It's about masturbation, which none of us do, ... [pause]... except for... um... our bass player, who is so horny that I won't even say 'hello' to him anymore." Tweet "Oops (Oh My)": featuring Missy Elliott, on bass or something. The Gore Gore Girls featuring Trina "Tell Me (I'm Your True Love)": reviewing the girly gores' first album I'd asked, "Can unreconstructed retro-punk brats actually move their sub-sub-sub-microworld off its duff?" Their drummer emailed me to declare: "We don't have duffs, we have big, cute butts!" Tony Touch featuring Fat Joe, Natalie Maines, and Stevie Nicks, "Your Pretty Butt Is Going to Hell": Originally titled "Hard to Beat." (Speaking of Eminem, isn't he a bit unclear on the concept: "Am I the only one who's fuckin' normal anymore?" ["Fuckin'" here is both an adjective and a verb.]) Celine Dion featuring Anastacia "You Shook Me All Night Long": Despite what those snide, snickering ass-kissers at Rolling Stone say (hell, not "despite"; how about "especially because those sniggy, snide, snickering ass-lickers at Rolling Stone tried to jerk off their readers by making stupid cheap comments about someone they could count on the readers to dislike"), this is a fine performance. To my surprise, loud-voiced Celine doesn't try to dominate the song like Brian Johnson but instead wiggles along with it, inserting side comments and froth and riding the music's tidal wave, while letting her Romanoff sidekick shatter the windows. Celine (unclear on the tense) to Anastacia: "Come on girlfriend, shook me. Ahhh!" Northern State "Rewind": "Northern State, we sound so tight/Our rhymes so fat they got cellulite. Right?" Speaking of Trina, notice how in the radio version of "B R Right" she changes "I want my ass smacked" to "I got my money right." (I suppose that makes her an ass-changer rather than a money-changer.) Speaking of Northern State again, I know this has been said many times, but it bears repeating: "Keep choice legal, your wardrobe regal/Chekhov wrote The Seagull and Snoopy is a beagle." Ian Van Dahl "Castles in the Sky": Dahling, you're such a dahl.

My two cents is free: *The Eminem Show is very uneven -- I love maybe five or six tracks ("Square Dance" is still the best War Against Terrorism protest that nobody seems to have noticed), but the rest gets really clunky, and is mostly a chore to sit through. As for "Lose Yourself" and his other *Eight Mile songs, they're absolutely expert and skillful and all, but it perplexes me that so many people seem to think they're the best things he's ever done. What mainly sets them apart from Eminem's earlier stuff, near as I can see, is that they've got so little of his *personality in them. Which is to say so little Slim Shady. Supposedly he told the *Detroit Free Press that he's trading in drug intake for daily workouts in 2003. And it will of course be interesting to watch him mature. But if Slim Shady is in retirement, I doubt I'll care all that much.

Please don't infer anything about my stance on foreign policy (or capital punishment, for that matter -- I'm not like those Southern prosecutors with pictures of nooses on their neckties) from the fact that I voted for Toby Keith. Though, since the argument could easily be made that Toby was music's *real Slim Shady this year, if you want to infer someting about my stance on sanctimonious Wilco and Springsteen tedium from the fact that I voted for Toby Keith, I guess that's fine.

Please also don't infer anything about my stance on the state of present-day music from the fact that two of my favorite albums (by Rocket from the Tombs and the Styrenes) were recorded a quarter-century ago in Cleveland (or that two *more albums I considered voting for, by the Mirrors and Electric Eels, were recorded a quarter-century ago in Cleveland as well.) I actually think, as I seem to say *every year lately, that I heard more good albums in 2002 than in any year before. *Hundreds, at least. Which of course doesn't necessarily mean that music is getting better so much as it's a byproduct of more music is being recorded in *total now than at any other time in history. (So I almost definitely hear more *bad records every new year, too. But that doesn't really bother me.) I think it's incredibly cool how computer whatsis now enables audiences to hear demo CDs only days after bands record them. The whole idea of "release dates" seems like a dead issue, almost. And one thing that's so great about those old Cleveland bands (or the Spizz Energi/Cabaret Voltaire/ Theoretical Girls/Destroy All Monsters CDs I heard this year, and the old '80s Flaming Lips stuff that blows everything they've done in the past decade out of the water, and the '90s Lifter Puller I voted for) is that they *don't sound any older, really, than demo discs just recorded yesterday. Which might mean music kinda sucks now after all, who knows.

Rock's in a strange place. I mean, in general, stuff that comes out on indie labels sounds markedly better than what was coming out on indies during the supposed high indie era. At least stoner-rock, garage-rock, gothic metal, Williamsburg neo-punk-funk, etc., generally don't feel *timid, which is to say they've got rock'n'roll's rhythmic throb in there and often dare to sound *big (or at least *not tiny*). They don't assume that lack of energy or hooks is a virtue. But too much of this music, especially the more metal stuff, rarely rises above being excellent sonic architecture. And while no way do I buy Greg Tate's line that rock can't be its own reward (at least as much as funk can), what's missing from vote-getters like Isis and Opeth and Soundtrack of Our Lives and Queens of the Stone Age and Oneida and High on Fire (all of whom I enjoy, and I'm extremely grateful for), one thing makes them not as good as Zep or Nazareth or Rose Tattoo were, is that their songs (okay, tracks) don't quite add up to a discernable *personality. What most of these bands have retained from '90s indie is a reluctance to be dominated by their lead singers, which while understandable as a show of democracy still somehow manages to limit them. Vagueness isn't the end of the world, and the musical center doesn't always *have to hold -- Lots of jazz and techno CDs I liked this year sounded even more amorphous. But rock can be so much *more than that.

All that said, I'm still really excited these days about the outer edges of "heavy metal" -- the definition of which, if you look at a magazine like *Terrorizer, is widening to encompass everything and the Cannibal Ox sink. More than any time I can remember, metal is looking toward the future, and experimenting with ways to get there. Ignore the genre at your own peril--and if you call yourself a rock critic, at the risk of your credibility. Compared to Neurosis or Tiamat or Lacuna Coil, Wilco and Flaming Lips sound scared of life, and (more surprisingly) scared of beauty, too. Metal is truly learning how to embrace grace and space -- to the point, in fact, that it's sometimes hard to figure out what you're supposed to do with it if you're not reading a book with it in on the background. It's art music. At concerts, venues should provide *chairs to sit on.

"Hate to Say I Told You So" isn't "96 Tears" or "Talk Talk" or "Double Shot (of My Baby's Love)" -- it's not even close. And the Hives aren't even the best garage-revival band to come out of Sweden, which has been reviving Sonics and Stooges riffs at least since the Nomads and Leather Nun back in the mid '80s. But as somebody who once threatened to take Rhino's *Frat Rock compilation to his desert island, you still won't hear me complain when I see the Hives' snazzy matching suits on MTV. You might, though, hear me complain about how so many subsequent plural-one-syllable-noun bands sound more like half-assed grunge or powerpop or Paul Westerberg wannabees than something off of *Nuggets.

You know what's *really annoying, though? How lazy critics in their early '30s (always an iffy age in this profession -- I remember!), still refusing to admit they've entered middle age and still pretending other human beings give a shit about Generation X, won't let their hasbeen heroes -- the Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Weezer, Audioslave -- slip gracefully into the irrelevance they've all mastered as surely as Tom Petty and Elvis Costello by now. Ted Nugent and Robert Plant made more exciting albums than any of them this year (and so did Cecil Taylor). Most aggravating of all: The free ride eternally granted (by radio, too) to the Foo Fighters, who've *never been anything more than dime-a-dozen pop-rock hacks, way less interesting than, say, Third Eye Blind or Counting Crows or Crazytown. Not that I care much about Cobain's corpse (his diary proves pretty conclusively that he was a really creepy guy, anyway), and not that I'd accuse Ms. Love of anything like moral integrity, but Dave Grohl's leeched off Curt way more than Courtney has this past decade.

Commercial hip-hop, rap, r&b, whatever it's called these days, is just so fucking *weird. In a good way, mostly. "Work It" is as insane and hilarious and avant-garde as "I Am the Walrus," and the Bollywood/Middle East-sampling stuff like the Truth Hurts single isn't unconnected to what the Yardbirds and Velvet Underground used to do. And the beats in "Oops (Oh My)" are so skeletal to be barely even there, and it'll be months before I figure out that one Brandy hit. So what I don't get is, do casual listeners of r&b stations *think of this stuff as strange? Do backward hooks and so on freak them out, make them change the station, call up DJs and complain? Or do they just take it for granted--which might be even cooler?

In Nashville country, there are producers (Mutt Lange, most obviously) as enamored of middle-eastern modes as Timbaland is, and other boundaries are being exploded left and right. Faith Hill and Toby Keith are singing what amounts to soul music, and Montgomery Gentry are rocking as hard as any garage-revival band in Detroit, and LeAnn Rimes is making full-fledged disco albums, and Brooks and Dunn are collaborating on stage with Sheila E. Most rock critics can't hear any of it, of course, but they still think Wilco are brave for tip-toeing outside of alt-country, which may well be the blandest, most conservative, most whitebread-anal-compulsive sub-genre in rock history. How come when alt-country bores stretch a little it's considered godhead, but when Nashville types, who've been doing it unabashedly for years, do it, it's considered the essence of cheese? How come rock critics never fully embraced the Dixie Chicks, who I often love (the album rocks fine until it slows down halfway in), until they retreated back into acoustic *O Brother* bluegrass? I considered voting for "Long Time Gone" as a single, but its stupid pandering line about Haggard and Cash pisses me off. You don't hear rock people whining in their songs about how modern rock music doesn't sound like Elvis and Chuck Berry, do you?

Oh yeah, I disqualified from my ballot all the bootleg/mashup singles I heard for not being as good as "Pump up the Volume" (or "Work It," for that matter), and all bootleg albums for not being as good as the DJ-P and Z-Trip one i voted for two years ago. Plus, it bothers me how they almost never improve on Christina Aguillera or the Stooges like everybody says. And I still don't get what's "new" or "subversive" about them; they're just collages, which can be fun. But collages have been around since Buchanon and Goodman, if not since Charley Patton. Though I'll definitely take 2 Many DJs over the Avalanches, who still feel humorless to me -- like run-of-the-mill house music.

I am, by the way, Cordelia's dad, in the sense that I have a daughter named Cordelia. But my number two single of the year was by a band *called Cordelia's Dad, and yes they are in fact a real band. And while I doubt I'd complain if Cordelia's Dad mailed me a T-shirt with their name on it, that still doesn't explain why I was so deeply affected by their combining the riff from "Jane's Says" by Jane's Addiction with a singer far more expressive and intriguing than Perry Farrel ever was and making it into the most mysterious guitared song I heard all year (apparently about dead sharks on the beach, and buying firecrackers in Chinatown, and the smell of dirtbikes and wild geraniums, and not wanting Camile Paglia to beat you up again though you like the way she holds a pellet gun. Or something like that.) I'm not even sure it's a single, but it sure sounded like one to me -- actually, what happened with the Cordelia's Dad, Paulina Rubio, and Faith Hill songs I voted for is that I convinced myself they were "airplay tracks" via constantly listening at work to *Village Voice radio, which I happen to pick out songs for. (Not sure if that's legal, but what the hell.) As for my number one single, the Ty Herndon song (delivered in the voice of a ghost who dies during a bank robbery in New England in October 1999, and reminiscent of nothing so much as Greil Marcus's favorite Gordon Lightfoot song "If You Could Read My Mind" -- I swear I'm not making this up), I actually heard it on commercial country radio in Philadelphia last spring, though it may have never officially come out. The album it was supposed to be on *definitely never came out; Ty's label put out a best-of CD instead, and "Heather's Wall" isn't on there even though it's the only song he's ever done that I have any memory of. (Also not available on his best-of: Any mention of Ty being arrested for propositioning a male cop for a blowjob in a Nashville park a couple years ago, which I *swear I remember reading about back then. Though it's possible I just dreamt it.)

If "Work It" had been my number one single instead of my number three single, 2002 would have been the second year in a row that my singles list was topped by a bizarre minimalist Timbaland-and-Missy novelty followed by a spaciously spooky pop-country ballad by a singer I otherwise have no opinion about whatsoever. (Last year, if you're taking notes, that would have been Trace Adkins.) So I thought I should avoid the rut.

Speaking of ruts, did I mention that I think Sleater-Kinney have been in one for, oh, about four albums by now? Which isn't to say that they don't still make okay records; I got through *One Beat three whole times, at least, which is more than I can say for Wilco or Beck. But frankly, the most interesting thing about Sleater-Kinney this year is how so many lesser-known grrrlish groups -- Ultrababyfat, the Kills, Kirby Grips, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Qui*xo*tic if they count - put out CDs that showed directions Sleater-Kinney could head in if they were as adventurous as their fan club pretends.

I also didn't vote for "Oops (Oh My)," even though it was a big topic of conversation all year. Here are my excuses: (1) The song completely embarrasses my two younger kids, who'll see my list, and who don't seem bothered at all when people take off clothes in Nelly songs, and who've both heard more than their pre-teen share of raunchy gangsta rap; "Oops" is the only song I can ever remember neither of them *letting* me play when it comes on the car radio. Which strikes me as a little odd, since songs about masturbation aren't all *that* rare in the post-Green-Day age, assuming they ever were. Scott Woods's theory is that it's the record's *sound* that's disturbing, which might make sense. But maybe the sound just makes the words more audible, or more blatant or something. (2) One woman friend of mine insists that "Oops" depicts a male *fantasy of female masturbation, that (unlike, say, thematic predecessors by Cyndi Lauper and Christina Amphlett) has nothing to do with how women actually get themselves off. I wouldn't know, of course. But I can see how the whole idea of one's own hands roaming all one's own naked body as if said hands had minds of their own might well irk somebody. (Seems kinda hot to me, but nonetheless...) (3) I actually think "Oops" would've been way more subversive if Tweet had come home drunk at three o'clock in the morning and then *went to bed without brushing her teeth.* Talk about breaking *real* taboos! But of course, you're not allowed to sing about not brushing teeth on pop radio, are you?

Also, what kind of name is "Tweet" anyway? (It reminds me of how one of my kids saw an Onyx video on TV ten years ago, and thought their name was pronounced "Oinks.") Though I guess it's not as weird a name as "Truth Hurts," whose single I *did vote for. I mean, it's strange enough that bands like And You Know Us By the Trail of the Dead have entire sentences for their names. But with a solo artist, makes no sense at all. It's just plain *wrong, no way around it.

The lifting-up-her-skirt song is "Oops (Oh My)," the
one number on SOUTHERN HUMMINGBIRD that instantly
startles; within about 15 seconds I thought it was the
strangest thing I'd heard in a long time. If I was
nine or 10 years old, "Oops" would probably frighten
me to death in bed at night the way "Papa Was a
Rolling Stone" actually DID frighten me to death when
I was nine or 10 (nothing to do with subject matter,
it was the sound that gave me the creeps). Timbaland's
hammering-nails-into-a-coffin rhythm plays off against
those ghostly vocal samples in a manner that's every
bit as disconcerting as the repeating 3-note bass
pattern that holds down "Papa." (And I'm sure if I was
nine or 10 and cared to pay attention to the words,
I'd find Tweet's late-night sexuality play even MORE
threatening than Strong and Whitfield's broken-home
epic.)

For pure aural weirdness, nothing else on SOUTHERN
HUMMINGBIRD quite approaches "Oops," though there are
a couple very good trys. I'll take the Bhangra-hop of
"Call Me" (Timbaland and Missy again) over "Get Ur
Freak On," and "Drunk" is the groggy flipside of
"Oops"--what happens when you can't even remember how
you got home, never mind what you did with yourself in
front of the mirror when you got there.

*"INTRO-INTROSPECTION"
Featuring snippets from (among dozens of others) Tom
Jones, Boney M, Aqua, Berlin, the Sex Pistols, and
Bonnie Tyler, Osymyso's 12-minute
"Intro-Introspection" is a mind-boggling symphony of
segues and a mini-album all its own: The Best Wedding
and Office Party Album in
the World Ever, which of course no DJ in their right
mind would ever dare play at a wedding or office
party. It's got 101 good beats and you can't dance to
it, but it's still the coolest collage since "Pump Up
the Volume" if not "Adventures on the Wheels of Steel"
if not "The Flying Saucer Part 1," if not "The
Wasteland" or Jive Bunny. "Intro-Introspection" is
weirder and more sonically satisfying (with more
gasps-per-minute; i.e., how'd he do that?) than all of
the above, and has there even been a mega-mix so
completely enamored with hair? Call it The Aesthetics
of Pop.

*BOOTLEGS VS. CRITICS
I agree with people who say that MP3 bootleg mixes
don't necessarily improve on their sources, but I
don't see why this is really an issue as it certainly
didn't preclude my enjoyment of a number of great
tracks in 2002. Such pairings as Stooges vs.
Salt-n-Pepa or Whitney vs. Kraftwerk or Christina
Aguilera vs. the
Strokes don't necessarily transcend any of the
original recordings (can a primordial beast like "No
Fun" truly be transcended?), but they place all of
them in unusual contexts and cast intriguing
(sometimes ridiculous) rhythmic or harmonic collisions
in the process. Bootlegs aren't taking over or
anything like that, but at their best (and I'm of the
opinion that there is no "worst" as I find all of them
interesting for at least one listen), they add
something vital to the dialogue of pop music; they're
like little critiques for the kids.

"DREADLOCK CHILD"*
On the other hand, this is what can happen when you
take two so-so tracks, force them to dance with one
another, and watch in amazement as sparks fly and they
start surprising you with moves as graceful as Astaire
& Rogers. "Independent Women Part 1" always was a
decent song in need of the proper mix, I just never
would have guessed that a) reggae was the way to go,
or that b) 10cc would be the ones providing the, um,
medicine.

*"WHAT'S LUV"
To tell you the truth, I haven't listened really
closely to this song, a fact that dawned on me just
the other day when I caught a few seconds of it in a
store and actually realized, "Oh, I guess that's the
Fat Joe section." Surely, this makes its inclusion in
my Top 10 nothing short of scandalous. I mean, for all
I know, Joe could be singing "Fuck you, Diddy!" or
"Nobody listens to Fat Joe!" but need I make my way
past Ashanti's wispy vocal hook or that stuttering
piano riff in order to find out? (This is more or less
in line with my Theory of Ja Rule: Listen to
everything happening in his songs except him and it's
all good.)

++++++

Is “Lose Yourself” actually “Street Fighting Man 02” or “The Theme from Rocky 7 (Rabbit vs. Black Orpheus)”? Discuss.

++++++

Dear Allah,
Dag, My Father, shit is mad real up in here! It’s your boy Osama, and fools are bringing me heat every day like Fed Ex. It’s cool—I did the mixtape thing for a while, but somebody fucked up my live hack into Koppel’s Nightline. Talk about a freestyle! So I dipped and got with a plastic surgeon in Morocco and I asked him to remake me as the one guy in America nobody would dare criticize, someone who could hide in plain sight. When it was over, two days later, I had a headache that made me want to drop a jihad on this fucker, and was black and blue. (I had to kill him—he was old anyway!) Now I’ve got very short blond hair, a cleft chin and I have to use all this unclean, barbarous slang and babysit this young heathen girl, but it is actually working. Nobody gives me shit, no matter what I do. I wish I had a more high and holy name than Marshall, but what can you do? Gotta go—the exploding pop rocks thing is falling behind schedule.
Keep it real, your most holy of holies
OBL, the Real Slim Shady
PS Nobody even notices how wack my beats are!
PPS I told you about those Catholic devils!

++++

Production Alert One: “Apache”: The Incredible Bongo band’s 1973 masterpiece, and one of hip-hop’s irrefutable foundation bricks, sounds good at all speeds: Salaam Remi slowed it down and chopped it for Nas’s “Made You Look” and Questlove swiped the center cut for The Roots’ “Thought @ Work,” which revealed that Black Thought can rhyme his ass off. History is back!

Production Alert 2: Nonsense: “I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it” is what Missy is “saying” when she’s going backwards, not “It’s your frippery, my mong hong.” In “React,” Erick Sermon reacts to the sample of a female Bollwyood singer with “Whatever she said, then I’m that,” and Las Ketchup went globally platinum with a chorus of Latinate refrigerator magnet poetry. How tightly this tracks the political trend to support things without understanding them could make you queasy, but it’s fun to hear language do some deep kneebends.

Production Alert 3: Chipmunks: The sped up vocals on Cam’ron’s “Oh Boy,” Styles’ ”Good Times” and Jay-Z’s “People Talking” show you how brilliant laziness can be. The producer can’t get the sample in time unless he speeds the whole thing up, and the vocals end up getting chipmunked in the process. Then everybody decides it sounds better that way.

++++++

W.G. Sebald is dead, but DJ Shadow is alive and working his turf. (Call it Hamlet’s bedroom or Saturn’s backyard.) Watch them wander its perimeter, measuring out their memories, in need of a hot drink, prone to put the kettle on and forget about it, use other people’s voices, talk to strangers, bury the plot, nest the references, pay off the narrator, disappear inside the beat.

++++

CHART OF ROCK DRUMMERS
Dude in the Hives: Scandalous!
Dude in the Neptunes: Crack Masterson!
Dude in Oneida: Relentlessly rocktacular!
Dude in Queens of the Stone Age: Tubthumpaphonic!
Dude in Interpol: Foot-pumpin’ and body-lockin’!
Dude in The Roots: Time-bending and funktacular!
Dude in Spoon: Backbeating and sweetspotting!
Dude in the Strokes: Almost as bad as the guy in the Hives.
Dude in the Hives: Almost as bad as the second guy in Pavement, but not quite.

++++

Ja Rule: What is wrong with black people?
Sigur Ros: What is wrong with white people?

++++

At least Alicia Keys didn’t make a record this year.

+++++

You can use! all the exclamation points! you want, Shania! but that’s a goddamn umlaut! on your album! cover! girl!

+++++

After seeing Sleater-Kinney and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Irving Plaza on October 14, my wife, Deborah Holmes said “Why would any teenage girl sleep with boys now?”

+++++

I think Charli Baltimore has very inappropriate hair for a cat burglar.

++++++

Wouldn’t CNN be better if they displayed a little screen in the upper left hand corner of Barrington Levy going “Bang diddly diddly woah oh oh!” every time Ari Fleischer made a statement?

Which web-form ballot thing said the following, Nate: "We pay a tiny amount for each comment excerpt, so if you send some, include your social security number." It also said where you should SEND comments.

-Who crowned Springsteen 9/11 misery king? I voted for Samuel Barber! Oh that's right,kings aren't elected. They take
their thrones by force in a fiery display of ego and manifest destiny. How did Bruce songs become the Rorschach tests
that help determine the psychic state of our nation in times of crisis? I thought it was agreed upon that our varied and
variegated life stories as a people are best viewed through the many-colored prism that is Flava Flav. I'll take the
wisdom of the crazy uncle in the attic any day over some Hollyweird millionaire in designer distressed jeans who needs
to make one last payment on his jet. Having said that,it should be noted that his HBO special was killer!(He just goes
on forever. He must have the strength of ten men!)

-Wilco? You're kidding.right? This is the masterpiece that is our soundtrack to a world under seige? Lemme see. The
White Album... There's a Riot Goin' On... Never Mind The Bollocks... It'll Take a Nation of Millions...Yankee Foxtrot
Hotel! Um,okay. You're right. We probably deserve it. But if I wanted to listen to music designed for ambitious Dave
Matthews fans wouldn't I just listen to jazz? And why does their album remind me of the time that bands like The
Association started to wear nehru jackets? Alt-frumpery with some goop on top. I'd kick them off my label in a
heartbeat. Who knows. Maybe history will be kinder to the great Sit On Your Lazy Fat Ass Rebellion that Wilco sparked
with their magnum dopus.

-Bright Eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the girls in the front row who have dog-eared copies of Carson
McCullers novels in their backpacks and love in their eyes. When you combine the Violent Femmes and the Langley Schools
Music Project with a hayseed kid whose songwriting is equal parts Robert Smith of the Cure and Bob Dylan and you make
the kid dreamy and the band a multi-member spectacle and have them all come from,where is it again,Omaha?,well,wuddya
get? Beats me. But it's pretty kooky. And,blessedly,it sounds nothing like Wilco.

-I only have one thing to say about the seemingly endless 80's revival electroclash death disco explosion: I liked it
better when it was called "all the music that goth,industrial,and dark metal artists never stopped making to begin
with". How can you revive something that never went away? Were people really waiting for the cool kids to tell them that
it was okay to listen to Ultravox? Did they have to wait for failed emo bands,pretending to be Depeche Mode,play it for
laughs before they could take it seriously? What are those people gonna do with all those stoner rock albums that they
bought the year before? Can I have them?

-Is it possible for Eminem to have one of the biggest movies and two of the biggest albums of the year,be all over the
radio and t.v., and yet somehow fly beneath the radar? I think he did it. He's like Bill Cosby all of a sudden.
Pissed-off,weird,rich,ubiquitous and yet somehow strangely comforting. Bill in his big,dumb sweaters and Em in his cozy
warm-up gear are like angry,tortured teddy bears that tell us jokes.

But wait a sec-what did I loooove and why and enough sour onion faces already: I loved Missy and so does everybody
else so what's she on about re:her anti-hater diatribe? Whatchoo smokin' mang. And I love Timbaland(and I guess I love
Magoo too-what the hell-he never did nothin' to me) cuz he still makes me go huh? wha? hooray! Check out "Indian Carpet"
puleeze and tell me he's your average one man band. And I love the Dixie Chicks for making my summertime cross country
trip with my baby and baby in the belly makes three so memorable. Hearing "Long Time Gone" whilst surrounded by
mountains and remembering why car radios were invented and blessing that vixenish trio for making the great American
single at that exact place and time is what summer will always mean to me from here on out.
A great single should always "own" the space around it. It should take up all the air in the room and leave you
gasping. Interpol's "NYC" did it. Clipse's "Grindin'" did it with creepazoid exactitude. My fave Baltimore DJ Technics
did it with "Downside Up" by turning Diana Ross out and over and never breaking a sweat. Eminem did it on "Lose
Yourself" by being Eminem and by riding what sounds like the music from Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest rap song."One
Night In Bangkok"("I get my kicks above the waistline,sunshine". How Em is that line!).
My fave albums were all about expansion and the obsolescence of terms and definitions. They are what they are. Opeth
are a metal band as much as the Wipers were a punk band. But to call them metal and punk would discount the other 5000
worlds that they contain. Northern State and Dalek are both rap groups. How weird is that? The Doves make what? Pop.
Rock. Pop rock. New Wave. Blue-eyed new wave soul rock. Psych folk rock pop? One three minute Baltimore club track(I
voted for DJ Erik B's Club CD Vol.11-and whaddya mean you missed the first ten!) can incorporate African
pop,Motown,electro,hip hop,house music,Florida bass and southern booty and still leave room for a pussycentric sample
repeated ad infintum till your ears and bells are ringing all night long.
Oh I could go on and on. Which is why I voted for a sampler CD that came with a copy of Canadian metal mag Brave
Words & Bloody Knuckles. From glamcore to slamcore. Blamcore to four on the floorcore. Even the band Origin who are
described as corecore!(either cuz they sound like the earth's core or are rotten to the...I haven't decided.) That one
CD has more ideas,energy,wit,forcefulness and panache than everything that Dreamworks will ever put out.(Not that I even
know what they put out,but you get my drift.)

The point: There is so much friggin' great music out there. And if you have a computer you don't even need to pay
anybody for it anymore(It sounds like shit but that's an argument for another time.). Even the dollar bins are filled
with gold cuz people can't buy it and get rid of it fast enough. You don't need a trend or a prognosis or anyone's
opinion. All you need is a couple of bucks and some ears.

Yup, it did. Didn't actually prompt me in terms of sending them in, admittedly -- d'oh!

(PS: Should I dare asking if you got my second attempt mailing of my writers' portfolio, Chuck?)

It’s not that wearing the Ramones shirt itself was particularly “punk”--you could easily imagine her image consultants gathered round discussing how she could get a bit more street cred in the rock world, now that she’s not particularly a country star anymore. No, it’s got more to do with the reaction that it provoked in a lot of people who had a lot of respect for what punk accomplished: HOW DARE SHE, especially with Dee Dee so recently dead!!? When I first spotted the poster of her wearing the Ramones shirt, I’m sure my jaw dropped, and then I was filled with a righteous anger along just those lines.

That reaction right there was the punk moment, the moment when my attitude invariably needed adjusting; thankfully Mssr. Eddy gave me the perspective I needed, in a reply to my venting about The T-Shirt™: “…aren't punks SUPPOSED to piss people off? And if so, why wouldn't Shania pissing people off be a GOOD thing? And weren't those Dee Dee King records more offensive to the memory of what made him good in the first place, anyway?? Come on!” And, of course, he’s right; no matter what her intention was in wearing that shirt, the reaction it evoked in me was a purer punk moment than anything that Avril did all year, whether that was flashing the devil sign or admitting to not knowing who the Sex Pistols were (which is, admittedly, pretty fuckin’ punk). And sorry, Justin, your MC5 shirt was just a little too late.

2)
Fumbles of the year:
· Not one but TWO Tom Waits albums this year, and really, neither one of them clicked. I’m sure at least one of them will be showing up in a lot of year-end lists, but neither of them seemed to have much heart or musical variety, leaving me with the same empty feeling I got after The Black Rider….coincidence?
· Steve Earle’s Jerusalem should have, at the very least, been interesting. I’ve enjoyed most of what he’s done since he was sprung from the clink, and even when I don’t agree with his views it’s refreshing to hear him voice them without worry about what people thought of him. Post 9/11, not too many artists were willing to stand up and voice any opinions contrary to the government, and a good Steve Earle diatribe would have been a nice thing to see, but this was--like virtually everything else to emerge in the aftermath--strangely muted.
· Realistically, I shouldn’t been expecting so much from Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Apartment Hunting, what with it being a soundtrack and all, but the disjointed nature of it was more heartbreaking than some of the material that was MEANT to be.
· Tom Petty’s The Last DJ had the potential to jar the record industry into some realization that maybe there was still some room left for the music. Ultimately, it ended up sounding more like a cranky old man pining for the good old days, and the fact that the whole thing lost steam after just four tracks is, well…lazy

3)
(note: this originally appeared on ILM but was not otherwise published; it still sums up how I feel on these two albums, though I’ve edited it slightly)
Heathen vs. Camphor: Two new releases from the art-rock Olde Guarde (one slightly older than the other), both on the same day (May 14). Both of them featured slightly larger paper sleeves and a "bonus" disc of material, providing you choose the "limited" edition. Both of them are a jump into the past, in a way: David Bowie's Heathen reunites him with Tony Visconti and while there's certainly a modern element to parts of the record, a lot of it has a really classic Bowie sound, both production-wise and songwriting-wise. (Additionally, the bonus disc features a reworking of a thirty-two year old song.) Camphor, on the other hand, takes a bunch of David Sylvian's archival material and puts a new spin on it...barely. In some cases it means removing the vocals and in other cases just taking instrumental pieces from his other projects like Rain Tree Crow or Sylvian/Czukay. Following hot on the heels of Everything and Nothing, another plundering of the vaults, it begs the question: has Sylvian's well run so dry that he's reduced to repackaging his own material in a slightly more sophisticated way than a K-Tel "Fabulous Hits of Sylvian" type of thing, or is he just getting lazy? And, for that matter, is Bowie any better? I mean, whenever he tries to do something truly new these days, a lot of people just roll their eyes and say "Give it up, granddad" and wait until he reunites with: a) Eno, b) Nile Rodgers, c) Tony Visconti, d) Reeves Gabrels (o ho ho ho).

For what it's worth, I actually like the new Bowie album quite a bit while recognizing that's it's far short of earth-shattering. I think I like it so much because it's a fairly comfortable fit and I still like it far more than a lot of the other stuff that passes for NU music these days (yeah yeah I guess I'm getting old or somefin'). And as I've said elsewhere, I love the fact that he covered the Pixies' "Cactus".

Sylvian, on the other hand, is about to go on my ignore list. I was already feeling pretty burned/ripped off/disappointed when I finally got my hands on Dead Bees on a Cake after months of anticipation, but then this wholesale regurgitation of the catalogue since that point has just added to the disillusionment. I took only a really cursory glance at the tracklist before I picked up Camphor I think if I'd looked harder, I would have left it on the shelf.

4)
Oh great, another format war. Just as CD has finally finished off cassettes, we’re now getting both DVD Audio and SACD (Super Audio CD) shoved down our throats as the newer “better” format, and of course both of them are at a price premium over the already overpriced CD. It’s probably telling that neither of these formats are particularly new--both of them got their start in 1999 with the introductions of the DVD (both formats are apparently based on DVD) and during the past three years have somehow only managed to amass a list of about 300 titles apiece, mostly consisting of audiophile yuppie poop. Probably the only reason we’re talking about SACD all over again is the decision to re-release all of the early Stones albums in the hybrid format that’s backward-compatible with standard CD players. Thankfully I’ve already damaged my eardrums enough that I can’t hear any difference with either of these new formats, which means I won’t have to start replacing the ol’ collection again. Not until the records companies force me to, anyhow.
(If you want any more tech data on this, I can dredge it up. Boooooooring, though.)

5)
In other news, Mark Knopfler releases another solo album. Millions show their support by raising an eyebrow and thinking “Well, I’ll be!”

a lot of people = Alex In NYC (did ANYONE see ANY comments at all about the Shania t-shirt outside of ILM?)

Oh, and I know that paragraph actually made it in, but I included the whole unedited rant just for the record.

HOWDY

Michael Daddino here. I'd like to thank you guys once again for giving me a chance to vote in this thing. Not only does this fuflill a childhood dream (first P&J read at age fourteen), it makes me feel like a real critic and bestows a little validity on my somewhat insular rockwrite pursuits.

These be my comments. Note: my vote info has already been entered via online; I just thought adding my votes might be good for reference, or context or whatever.

DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Wouldn't it be *funny* to present this stuff in the style of a singles ad? Ha! No. I am single and looking, but every ad I'd ever placed in the Village Voice has been an embarrassing failure. (Ad #1: Three serious responses, and it turned out A was also dating B, and B was really good friends with C. Ad #2: No responses at all.) I'd rather go back to the bars. Hey, where are all the gay bars for rockcrits anyway?

Name: Michael Daddino
Code Name: The Flâneur.
Place of Residence: Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York
Age: 31
Race: Caucasian
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Gay. (Not "queer" because it's such an insufferably pretentious term, a state of affairs for which the Voice is partly to blame. [Hello Richard Goldstein!] Truth be told, I'd love it if you guys could do a breakdown the P&J results by sexual orientation. I'm insanely curious to know what my gay brethren are voting for these days, since we're not on speaking terms anymore.)
Position Within the Rock Critic Universe: Proud member of the Freaky Trigger/ILx cabal, and father of two blogs.
Social Security Number: XXXXXXXXXX

THE BALLOT: ALBUMS

2 Many DJ's: As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 (Pias) 26
2 Many DJ's: As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 1 (Waxedsoul) 18
2 Many DJ's: As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 3 (Waxedsoul) 17
Boards of Canada: Geogaddi (Warp) 7
Philip Jeck: Stoke (Touch) 6
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.: In C (Squealer) 6
Kaffe Matthews/Andrea Neumann/Sachiko M: In Case of Fire Take The Stairs (Improvised Music From Japan) 5
Otomo Yoshihide: Ensemble Cathode (Improvised Music From Japan) 5
Merzbow: Amlux (Important) 5
Palestine/Coulter/Mathoul: Maximin (Young God) 5

THE BALLOT: SINGLES

Freelance Hellraiser: "A Stroke of Genius" (n/a)
Osymyso: "Intro-Introspection" (Radar)
Conway: "Lisa's Got Hives" (n/a)
LCD Soundsystem: "Losing My Edge" (DFA)
Underworld, "Two Months Off" (Junior Boy's Own)
Dixie Chicks: "Landslide (Sheryl Crow Remix)" (Sony)
Goo Goo Dolls: "Here Is Gone" (Warner Brothers)
Sugababes: "Freak Like Me" (Island)
Archigram: "Carnaval" (Crydamoure)
Lady Dana: "Ladies First" (The Third Movement)

MICHAEL DADDINO'S TOP TEN MUSICAL MOMENTS OF 2002:

1. 14:42-15:01 of the Avalanches' 2001 Ibiza show on Radio 1.

2. The morning of September 11th on a train headed to Montauk, getting sniffly with Steve Reich, *MTV Party to Go '98* and *Radio Disney Jams Vol. 3* on my headphones.

3. Charlemagne Palestine's *Four Manifestations on Six Elements*, while walking on the beach that afternoon.

4. Minutes later, being knocked down by a floating log riding the tide, falling on my ass, submerging me and my CD player, which plays Charlemagne Palestine for just a second or two more before crapping out for good. I thought it was pretty funny, actually. I still have the scar on my ankle.

5. Listening to New Order's "Temptation" in my head, riding a taxi home through midtown on the first really nice day of the year.

6. Realizing that the Strokes song wasn't supposed to have female vocals on it.

7. Howling along with the ILx Terrastock crew in the immediate communal realization that the track on a bar jukebox was indeed "Hard to Explain" and not "A Stroke of Genius."

8. Terrastock again: squealing with gurgly joussaint glee at Sonic Youth going into communal guitar mind-meld.

9. Spending a frozen moment for a half an hour with the last track of Merzbow's *Dharma*.

10. Obnoxiously loud early eighties synthpop at The Abbey while chatting up an ex-boyfriend-to-be.

GO ON. YOU'VE GOT FIVE SECONDS. SAY SOMETHING OUTRAGEOUS!

Every album I list is *Wire*-approved. Sickening! And in spite of Lady Dana's comely supasonic gabba, my top ten singles are all post-disco/bootlegs/rockist top 40 with a token 'electroclash' comedy record thrown in -- it all lacks The Rock in some way, makes me wonder what I'm avoiding and why. Well, maybe next year. I still haven't fully absorbed 2002, and I'll spend all 2003 trying to absord 2002 and realizing I understand it about as much as I do 2001 or 1983 or 1971. Fine, if that's the way it has to be -- fine. I don't want to be late for the party, but I'm in no rush.

As I write this, there's been a whole spate of year-end surveys managed to tie up the year with neat little pink bows, thereby ensuring the continued survival of certain creaky world-historical cliches. Recent history is once again told using the same old self-serving rock narrative templates about superduperstars who unify and revolutions that annihilate what came before. Or we find that recent history shows that in fact there have been no superduperstars and no movements lately, and that this state of affairs is totally iron age and we're all a bunch of hopeless decadents. I can't feel this zeitgeist thing they're talking about, and that's possibly because the ways I listen to music possibly prevents me from saying something sufficiently zeitgeisty. (Unless no-zeitgeist is the new zeitgeist.) For one, I'm not the kind of critic who gets records in the mail. I almost never listen to the radio or go to concerts (I'm not exactly proud of this, actually), and rarely pay attention to MTV or VH1. What I DO do is download fuckloads of stuff from my file-sharing program of choice, getting all the music I want but at several removes from the spectacle that usually comes with it.

Actually, I do buy CDs, and about as much I've ever done since I've been an adult (nothing can match my teenage years, 12-18, when I bought two LPs a week on a twenty dollar allowance). But I'd sooner download a song than dig out the relevant CD only four or five feet behind me. Compared to the immediacy of MP3s, CDs are too pokey. MP3 culture is like: oooh, I just want to hear an UP song (click-click) something I can just half-listen to while writing (click-click) this is boring (click-click) THAT MAKES ME SO MAD (click-click). Much of CD purchases are done out of guilt-reflex more than anything else: I still take the quasi-puritanical position that if you find an MP3 you really, *really* like you should make some kind of compensatory purchase. But when I do this, the CD itself becomes a pain in the ass to listen to, something to ignore, a mere commemoration of pleasure, and I wind up playing the MP3 anyway. So all of my most 'engaged' (well, 'conscious,' really) listening occurs via MP3; CDs are something to play in the background. Or to fall asleep to. Since I discovered the wonders of *Music for Airports* and *Four Manifestations on Six Elements* a few years ago, I've really become keen on listening to music in a twilight state of blank vistas with futzy details in the corner of my soul. In fact, my albums list is 70% falling-asleep material -- I don't think even I've listened to the entirety of the Palestine/Coulter/Mathoul or Acid Mothers CDs while fully conscious. It's great, I love it, but it's at the expense of enjoying other virtues of the album-qua-album. As CDs get more and more costly, I've become less willing to experiment and buy blind. Based on what I've heard of them (I never download entire albums if I can just buy them -- it's like making a meal out of free supermarket food), I suspect that I'd love the Clipse, Spoon, Saint Etienne and Pantytec CDs, maybe even *Original Pirate Material* might overcome the nascent ehness I feel for Mike Skinner-the-musician (Mike Skinner-the-hottie being another issue). But I've lately I've become less willing to buy albums I know through thanks MP3 taste-testing is even slightly flawed (and even after the era of the Great Album was ushered in, seems to me most albums ALWAYS WERE and STILL ARE filled to the gills with songs having no reason to exist) so I just wind up buying some quiet improv I know has utilitarian sleep-inducing qualities. The music world is either now sleep or singles, or rather quasi-singles because that's what MP3s are.

ONE MORE SHOT! ONE MORE SHOT!

By all rights the gimmickness of bootleg-form should grow stale and tired quickly but this has not happened. The immediate comparison would be my deep fondness of MST3K (you know, all that appropriation jazz), and it took me years to realize that what made MST3K so hilarious wasn't what everyone said it was -- the humor wasn't based on making-fun-of-bad-movies or all the zingy cultural refs (you know, all that appropriation jazz) -- even though I'm not quite sure what it *is* based on, so I'm left thinking the process that renders bootlegs so seductive is probably just as mysterious. Suck on this: I didn't hear the components of "Lisa's Got Hives" until months after I had grooved on the bootleg, so the Hives and Left Eye songs have always seemed bizarrely incomplete to me. As for "A Stroke of Genius," I was forgetful enough of both of its sources that it took me the chorus before I realized what exactly was occuring: for a minute there I was confused because I didn't think the Strokes had a girl singer. It sounded (and still sounds) really seamless to me, but I'm a guy who needed a full decade to discover that the missed cue in "Louie Louie" wasn't intentional so what could I know?

I really wanted to vote for *Boom Selection_Issue 01* in tribute to its cultural example (Peter Stempfel: "If God were a DJ, he'd be Harry Smith." MP3 CD-Rs threaten to turn everyone into God.) but I still have not recieved my copy and this was ordered back in August! I can't even tell if I've been ripped off or not: is this my karmic retribution for downloading all that stuff?

To all those folx who bitch and moan about teenpop surface, you clearly haven't seen the ads for Time-Life's *60's AM Gold* series, the ones with Davy Jones' terrifying rictus and a succession of stunningly ugly mugs on the Ed Sullivan show, robotically chomping their gaptoothed smiles out of time with the music. Based on that alone, without question, WE HAVE EVOLVED PEOPLE, huzzah.

I bought *The Rising* to see if I'd feel anything about it other than apathy, and yeah, some of it was grand and moving -- Bruce turns the sacrifice up to 11 -- but the only things I remember about it very acutely is how irritating those duddish tracks in the middle were, and that one line about Bruce tasting the seed in his beloved's mouth. I still want to know: was it Bruce's seed, or some other guy's? Either way, eww, though one is more eww than the other. I hoped more music would be released this year that would complement that post-9/11 feeling, but I kept returning to Disco Inferno and the Dead C like I did last year. At least two singles and one album I've voted for count, but I'm not saying which ones. They'd seem so, arrggh, obvious, examples of me illegimately attaching my own meanings to a craw-stuck phrase in a thirst for That Big Statement. In any case, none of this stuff actually makes me want to go out an march against a war (or wars) which I think will be obscene, confusing and inevitable but I'd never say that music distracts me from the world, because nothing has the power to do that. Music *does* keep me from falling into bad faith with glints of the sublime, the unconditional, draws out emotions I can't bear to let myself feel on an everyday basis, and this is good.

My actual favorite albums this year were mostly mix CD-Rs that friends burned for me. The best commercially available compilations sound like they might've started that way, too--_Rough Trade Rock & Roll 1_ has no place/time mandate except R.O.C.K., and it serves its listeners more than its artists.

I promise I will start liking Bright Eyes again when Conor Oberst agrees to drop the wounded-bunny schtick and sing about shaving his cho-cha. Ditto for Beck, who will probably do it.

There's this bonus DVD that comes with a bunch of albums I've bought lately, a sneak preview of something called _Gulf War 2: The Gift and the Curse_. It's supposed to drop around the second week of March, although they might push it forward a little if it shows up on KaZaA. I think there are billboards for it now too.

Andrew W.K. meant it so hard it didn’t matter that he didn’t mean it: At a packed Bowery Ballroom CD-release deal he kickboxed through entire verses while his keyboard player balanced a 50-pound Casio on his neck, and at dinner a couple months before that he wouldn’t let me leave until I sampled his lemon sorbet. The man wants you to want him, insists that you party hard, demands that you love New York City. And if you don’t, well, that’s cool, too.

Which is weirder: How you can’t get “Can’t Get You out of My Head” out of your head, how hot it was in many of the places you’d hear “Hot in Herre,” how “Made You Look” made you look, or how, underneath it all, “Underneath It All” just could not be about Gavin Rossdale?

Anyone offended by Eminem’s depiction of working-class inertia in 8 Mile should really find a way to pirate a copy of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun.” Over a calorie-rich rush of studio-dude guitars and drums that sound like diamonds on the soles of her Manolo Blahniks the slack Crow complains about not having enough bones to afford them digital cable shows, luxuriating in the liberating possibilities of free time as only the highly liquid can. Cleaning out her closet must take the help hours.

Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” actually sort of is, but the rest of Stripped left me with the same icky expression Greg Kinnear wears throughout Auto Focus. That’s why “A Stroke of Genius” felt so right: All kids with personality crises should get to play the Mercury Lounge on a regular basis, and who knows about living in a bottle better than the Strokes? Though the Freelance Hellraiser is probably some old-ass Papa John’s-chomping slob, his song was the freshest, cleanest exegesis of twentysomething moral ataxia I heard last year. It feels like renting Sabrina on DVD and keeping it an extra night.

A friend who listens pretty exclusively to Enya and the Misfits finally got into Eminem in 2002. I wasn’t all that shocked.

Who did more for foreign relations in 2002 than Shania Twain? “I’m Gonna Getcha Good!” is like Peter Gabriel’s entire career reduced to a single hysterical gesture: Arabian guitars snake around a vocal line Jeff Lynne wishes he’d sold to Volkswagen, pinprick banjos peck at a chintzy Swiss disco fabric, Tuvan throat-singers prop up Ibrahim Ferrer’s guest spot. (Just kidding about the Tuvan throat singers.) The tune’s even sold to non-Americans in an alternate “worldbeat” mix, but what in the world’s the point? The patented Twain/Lange enthusiasm is a lingua franca more powerful than any number of ProTooled tablas or multitracked sitars. Girl just found her thrill on Solsbury Hill.

What’s lasting and true about Title TK is how unbothered it sounds, how totally and terrifically it wallows in its own obstinate stoner-art drift. I mean, Kim Deal won’t shut up about Buffy the damn Vampire Slayer, yet get all up in her songs’ business and yap about the marketplace and they’ll just blow smoke in your face. Whatever, dude. The great news for those of us who loved the record is how few of us there were; given the right marketplace, the woman could keep going forever.

I wore my backpack last year in honor of Blackalicious and not Jurassic 5 mostly because Blackalicious hooked up some Harry Nilsson on Blazing Arrow and Jurassic 5 didn’t, but also because when I rode around with Chief Xcel and the Gift of Gab in a rented Town Car and asked them questions they went ahead and had the dude driving drop me off at home when we were done. I suspect Jurassic 5 would’ve suggested the subway.

Why in the world is Jennifer Lopez still worried that we think she’s gone bling? Could it be more of a non-issue? That is, who that cares about that sort of thing actually buys Lopez’s records, or will chomp Twizzlers through Maid in Manhattan, or gives a shit about Ben Affleck’s taste in big-ass engagement rings? A whole lot of times during “Jenny from the Block,” the lead single from This Is Me ... Then (when? While shooting Enough?), J.Dough?No! reminds us that despite the new digs she remembers where she’s from — “the Bronx,” she specifies. But she does it in such a tiny voice, a grade-school yelp that you’ve really got to listen for between all the champagne-flute flutes and multitracked chorus vocals and sparkly synthesizer filigree, that it sounds like the place is just an icky memory, one she’s but a single Tom Hanks picture from filing away forever, tucked next to her old dance shoes and first-communion dress. Which definitely is not a prima facie problem: Pop is built for forgetting, especially for those with forgetting to do; Lopez, who has two divorces and Angel Eyes to work through, has more than most. And modern R&B’s done nothing if not give its doers more storage space, so that even Tatyana Ali can hire Chico DeBarge and start anew. The problem is that Lopez can’t resign herself to the forgetting, so she keeps making these paranoid records that insist on a credibility only she’s concerned with, perpetually derailing on the 6 train between home and the Hollywood Hills. If you’re bling, Jenny, bling. If you’re not, get out the way.

"What lifts "Fever" above Kylie's previous stabs at sexy dance-pop is how determinedly she ignores her status as a cheeky camp icon: these songs cycle through buzzy desire, ecstatic abandon and the first flush of new love with a devotion and intensity that is touching, and the rueful smiles we arrive with cannot help but become wistful instead. The great grooves help, of course."

2001 was too high-concept for me, on the whole. I’m glad I could go back to being my normal old self in 2002, and not feeling guilty for it. Aspirations narcotized, worldview patronized, sense of decorum vandalized, emotional problems sanitized, deep-seeded apathy deified, sexual desires personified and eardrums pulverized by what’s REALLY important in the world: pop music!

First, let me celebrate some of 2002’s personal milestones:
-I finally met a woman who is as stylish a drunk as I am. Not only that, but she enjoys a mid-morning (and often hungoer) sesh of the old in/out to ghetto-tech. Is this a waking dream? Can I give my homegirl a Whitman-style shoutout? A thousand hallelujahs for Vanessa! We’re on a Bonnie and Clyde ride! I only have to "sing the song of myself" about once in a blue moon anymore. Let’s sound our barbaric yawps ASAP, boo!
-I inched that much closer to my ultimate ambition of being the stepchild of Robot A. Hull and Don Rickles by starting to write for Vice.
-We managed to put out one of our best issues of Hit It Or Quit It ever, with El-P on the cover. Unfortunately, that was the only issue we put out this year because a) we are very lazy b) music stinks c) we couldn’t figure decide which wigger to put on the cover next d) the editorial board went blind en masse from masturbating to the new Thurston Moore/Kim Gordon sex tapes.
-Did I mention that Vanessa and I fuck constantly?

Your Pazz & Jop albums ballot was submitted as follows:
1. Andrew W.K. - I Get Wet - Island (15 points)
2. Black Dice - Beaches & Canyons - DFA (10 points)
3. Streets - Original Pirate Material - Vice/Atlantic (10 points)
4. El-P - Fantastic Damage - Definitive Jux (10 points)
5. Richard Buckner - Impasse - Overcoat (10 points)
6. Liars - they threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top - Mute/Blast First (10 points)
7. Rjd2 - Deadringer - Definitive Jux (10 points)
8. Scarface - The Fix - Def Jam South (10 points)
9. 2 Many DJ's - As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 - Pias Recordings (10 points)
10. Spoon - Kill The Moonlight - Merge (5 points)

Your Pazz & Jop singles ballot was submitted as follows:
1. Nelly - "Hot In Herre" - Universal
2. DJ Shadow - "Three Days" - MCA
3. Missy Elliot - "Work It" - Elektra
4. Freelance Hellraiser - "A Stroke of Genius" - n/a
5. Kylie Minogue - "Can't Get You Out of My Head" - Capitol
6. Rapture - "House of Jealous Lovers" - DFA
7. LCD Soundsystem - "Losing My Edge" - DFA
8. Interpol - "PDA" - Matador
9. Streets - "It's Too Late" - Vice/Atlantic
10. Kid 606 - "never underestimate the value of a holler (vipee-pee mix" - Violent Turd

ALL HAIL KING ANDREW
Teenagers are geniuses. I think the teenage me, the infantile and deeply stupid milky suburban baby who resented the entire world and just wanted a pair of Air Revolutions because they were expensive was the best me to ever grace this rotating shit orb of a world. You might disagree, but Andrew W.K. knows this for a fact, and he indulges me by telling me so every single day. He helps me keep my VISION FOCUSED. I’m sure of this because I listen to I Get Wet at least once every two hours one or two days a week, and I’ve done so for months. Like clockwork. Listening to this record over and over again is like blowing your wad or making yr own orange juice popsicles with toothpicks and icecube trays. It feels FUCKING GRADE A CHOICE everytime you do it no matter how many times you indulge, and maybe better the more you do. Sure, these songs all sound the same. Great. Cry me a fucking river. Take a tour through both sides of Back In Black and tell me where, exactly, you can hear ANY lyrics that aren’t about a either woman’s posterior or a car or any song that doesn’t feature Angus Young making an "I’m shitting" face during the mandated three note solo. Back In Black is perfect, and so is I Get Wet.
"Party Hard" is perhaps the All-Time blue collar anthem (if not single of the year; no double dipping between lists!), better than any salt of the earth Springsteen or the Coug have ever sprinkled on wax. Proof: "You/ You work all night (all night)/ and when you work you don’t feel alright/ and we, we can’t stop feeling all right (all right)/ And everything is all right". Who needs another endless short story from the Boss about Jersey studs named "the Magic Rat" riding around Jungleland plying barefoot chicks with sixers of Shlitz and then fingerbanging them on the hoods of cars when you can simply listen to Andrew W.K. and insert your own fantasies? The art that really stays with you means everything and nothing at once, right? The best songs here embody this maxim, and how. Our boy rolls over Osama (without mentioning any geo-political whoo ha) on "I Love NYC", falls in love on "She is Beautiful", and shoots without a gun ("Ready to Die"). I can’t get enough. My good will towards AWK might stem from having figured out early on (back in the Bulb Records era when he was rubbing noses with Wolf Eyes and Max Cloud) that he’s a Frankenstein mix of Dale Carnegie and Joe Elliot. Far beyond pedigree, however, I believe in Andrew W.K. because as corporate product, he’s top notch. He’s a kind of superhero, made equally for wrestling match spectacles and state fairs, equally at ease having Sunday dinner at your Grandma’s house or putting down pipe in porn films. Speaking of state fairs, my country-listening oriented cousin saw him perform at one and she loved it. Can you imagine a full-life sized Andrew W.K. made entirely out of butter? I can. Heck, I don’t even mind that my girlfriend fantasizes about fucking him. SO DO I. I also spent most of 2002 dreaming that someone would put out a record half as fun, swaggering, turbo-charged, blindingly brilliant or timelessly dumb as this, but to no avail.

WIGGER, WHETHER ART THOU
Talk about being no fun: consider our old friend Eminem. 2002 was the 400th year in a row this half-decade that you couldn’t escape his moody ass. Too bad 8 Mile was 4 miles south of anywhere resembling interesting. Much closer to Clambake than Jailhouse Rock and broke down somewhere on Interstate Eyeroll was the consensus in my posse. You was giving people the giggles on Chicago’s south side with that petulant stare, Rabbit. Sure Purple Rain gave peeps the giggles too, but that was out of GLEE. And why not? It had Morris Day and all sorts of hot tracks for that ass. Did he know this? Is that why Detroit’s lion had a look on his keister all year like he ate a plantation of Lemon trees? Does he smile, like, ever? How much longer will we continue to give a damn? If I got some free feel-u-ups from Brittany Murphy’s buffet of supple flesh, I’d be showing off me chompers like Al Jolson doing "My Mammy". Smile, superstar! And don’t forget what happened to Axl Rose, yo. Avoid that humorless path. Keep this up and you might not have to put in crazy hair extensions and a fat suit and invite Buckethead to help you butcher "Welcome to the Jungle" to find out EXACTLY what happened to Rose and his turgid excuse for a career. Don’t go there, white boy. Having no sense of humor is tiresome enough, but when coupled with boring songs, the result is deadly as a Dutch oven.
No matter. 2002 had lots of other wiggers I loved to hate. I mean loved to love! Fuck you, Ice Cube! El Producto, Rjd2 and especially my man Mike Skinner, for inst. The Streets was the real-hop body blow of the year. Why? Cause he’s a white man who raps (barely) and isn’t emotionally crippled? Was it the hooks for days? Was it the most bittersweet heart-tugging love anthem of ’03 ("It’s Too Late")? Maybe it's cause Skinner transmits the type of real young adult blooz you can’t fake by lowering the frames per second in a video. Sure, I hated it the first twenty times or so I listened to it, just like you did. Thought it sounded like Ringo Starr doing a Donald Duck impression for an hour or so on top of bad Craig David demos. Now, it’s all up in my DNA and it ain’t going nowhere soon. You need to get with this guy, friends. Let him introduce you to the punters throwing darts at his neighborhood pub or dropping into K holes on the roofs of those stacked projects he scams around in. It don’t matter what sound your pagers make, geezers, or what hip-hop tongue you speak. He knows your language of boredom and escape. So does Scarface. Of course, he’s been around a lot longer (and has a fancier pager). The Fix was his first LP in years to be as true to the game as the man himself, and for that it should be duly celebrated as testimony to a (hopefully) newfound consistency. Well into some kind of laid back mint julep mode, Scar wasn’t nearly as spittin’ mad as America’s favorite hip-hop shamrock shaker, El-P (If he’s even Irish. I’m not sure, but he’s got red hair, so I’ll let the joke stand). Of course, Scar wasn’t being mouth-fucked unconscious by Nazis, so cut the G some slack. El had no slack to give, apparently, because Fantastic Damage was the year’s most claustrophobic record, undercooked and overbaked by a crazy damn chef, full of blips, dips, runny guitar batter and beats that resembled the cracking spine of a man on a torture rack of his own making. White boys really are all the same.

Other highlights and lowlights of 2002:

-Black Dice finally put out a record as Middle-Earth epic as their live shows. In fact, they’ve applied serious Elfin salves and ointments to their post-hardcore wounds, figured out they need a psychedelic light show like Popeye needs spinach, and decided to resurrect the hidden musical legacy of pre-Risky Business Tangerine Dream. About damn time, too. Beaches and Canyons sounds like 3/4 of the Windham Hill Records house band under the tutelage of Jean-Michael Jarre, ripped to the tits on aquarium rocks and skunkweed, so do yourself a favor and nevermind what’s on the MTV for a hot minute.

-DJ Shadow’s Private Press was a fall-off from past genius overall, except for "Three Days" (the year’s most transcendent anti-war song, all apologies to Steve Earle), but who cares when we had Rjd2? Deadringer was symphony-hop’s best street mobilization in years.

-Mainstream music magazines got worse and worse in 2002 when it appeared that they had nowhere possibly to go but up. Sure, my horny friends and I like to see CA version 2, or Showy Christina, in a thong and garters. Give us a few beers and a break from the girlfriend and we might even beat off to it. But when the WRITING BETWEEN THE COVERS is about as fulfilling as, well, as watching a publicist take a shit or an editor neuter his puppy, why bother even opening the motherfucker once it's all sticky? Profit margins are slitting throats and readers don’t seem to care. Fact is, readers have been abused and misled by the big magazines for so many years that I'm surprised subscribers know their ball sacs from bags of endo. The artists love it, I’m sure, because in what other world would anyone mistake the Foo Fighters or Audioslave or Justin Timberlake or Jay-Z for the distended uninteresting musical corpses they are? I’m no doctor, so I have no cures myself, but I know some sick shit when I see it.

-Speaking of Jay-Z, why aren’t more folks owning up to his new album being the flaccid mess it is? If Eminem is turning into Axl, Jigga is already Jim Morrison, full of pompous self-mythology and bad dick shows. Blueprint 2 is as trying as a 20-minute live version of "When The Music’s Over". Without a doubt it is the Tusk of 2002.

The sweet near misses of 2002:

Singles:
Metro Area "Miura" Environ
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead "How Near How Far" Interscope
Bruce Springsteen "The Rising" Epic/Sony
N*E*R*D "Lapdance" Virgin
Crooked Fingers "When U were Mine" Merge
Sonic Youth "The Empty Page" DGC
Edan "Ultra ’88 (Tribute)" Solid Records/Lewis Recordings

Albums:
Electric Wizard Let Us P:rey The Music Cartel
Reigning Sound Time Bomb High School In The Red
Out Hud Street dad Kranky
Neko Case Blacklisted Bloodshot Records
Metro Area S/T Environ
Kid 606 Action Packed Mentalist Brings You The Fucking Jams Violent Turd
Hot Snakes Suicide Invoice Swami
Playgroup Party-Mix Bootleg

Thanks for reading,
your friend--

J.R. Nelson
Chicago IL
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