Through the end of the year, I will be posting my top 50 albums of the past decade. This is just as much of an exercise in journal writing for me as it is critical cultural deconstruction. Basically, it's a chance for me to reminisce about who I've been the past 3,500-some days. That journey always includes music, so this is a way for me to ground autobiography with great moments of artistic impression. And hopefully this will give me amusement in 2019 when I do it again.
Logistically, I've divided up the count into 10 easily digestible posts that will come about every few days. Here's #1 of those 10.
50. Thirteen Tales Of Urban Bohemia - The Dandy WarholsThe last album to sneak on my top 50 list even surprised me. The band is 'love em or hate em'. I happen to love them. The dry wit and 'I don't care' attitude that lies underneath fit my mood in 2001 when I was listening to them all the time. "Bohemian Like You" is still one of my favorite songs since it captures both the free spirited lifestyle I so desperately wanted to live while in Chicago, but it also has great lines that show just how being Bohemian can be a dead end joke.
The most amazing thing about this album is what the first couple of songs became to me after 9/11. Godless still gives me chills with it's flyover guitar at the beginning. The three song Godless/Mohammad/Nietzie suite can still bring back the anger and confusion of those next few months.
The underlying darkness of Get Off always remends me of 3am in Chicago bars, even if it is clearly about drugs. And Big Indian pulls you through to redemption on the other side. What else do you want from an album?
49. Beauty And The Beat - Edan
Hip hop. Early Brit pop. Two of my favorite things come together in Beauty. It's such a strange combination, and makes for a quirky record. There were a few songs in the early 90s that sampled the Brits (Like Definition Of Sound and De La Soul). But no one has put it together so seamlessly as Edan.
It's a trip. Like droping acid in a Brox club. The songs flow in and out as you take a journey. Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme is my favorite encyclopedic hip hop track ever. When Caleb comes to me and asks about the music I grew up with, I'll send him to the artists this song name checks.
Beauty is a complete work, meant for the headphones, not the club.
While so many classic hip hop sonic mind benders take you to the future, this one takes you to the past. It's not nosalgic. It's weighty.
48. The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast - Badly Drawn Boy
It was December, and it was fucking freezing in Chicago. The condo I lived in didn't keep the heat in very well, and the baement was just a rediculious place to hang out because what little heat the place had rose up to the second floor. But the big TV was downstairs, so that's where I was most of the time.
So I can remember shivering under a blanket the first time I heard The Shining in a Christmas Gap commercial. It sounded like the gift of snow, and the promise of spring. Way back then kiddies, you couldn't just pull out your phone and Shazam a song in a comercial. You had to hunt. I don't know how I found out this delicate song was by Badly Drawn Boy, but somehow I got it from thin air to my CD player.
For the rest of the winter, this album was in my CD player every night making the shit drive from the burbs to downtown. On especially horrid nights, I slid around the Slushy Chicago side streets, looking for a mythical short cut while using this great disc to bring my blood pressure down with songs like Pissing In The Wind, Once Around The Block, and the rest. Their hopeful message in the face of dispare got me through that winter.
That, and 5 blankets in the basement.
A small tangent. I saw Badly Drawn Boy the next fall, and was part of one of the most amazing kumbya moments I've ever experienced. Early in the show, Damen pulled out a picture of his little 2 year old boy who was back in England while he was on the road. Clearly missing him, he passed that little picture to the crowed to share his joy. I held it for a few seconds like everyone else at The Metro. After a few songs, the picture made it back up to the front where Damen hapily retrieved it with much grattitude. Now that I am a father, I completely understand the mixed feelings of being away from your son. You look for any excuse to brag. Even if it is to your captive concert crowed.
47. Uneasy Listening - DJ Z-Trip
What's the best party you ever went to? What was the music like? The best party for me was on the rooftop deck at Dan and Doug's Division apartment on a beautiful Chicago summer night. And the music was awesome. I remember this because I DJed. All night. Until sunrise.
What it fealt like was this record. An illegal mixtape before mixtapes. A DJ mashup set before mashups. DJ Z-Trip became my hero the second I popped this disc in my work computer after receiving it in the mail from some illegal web site. Just a year later, and I would have pulled it down from Napster. But this was before our current reality.
When I DJed that night, it didn't sound this good. I'm solid on the digital 1s and 2s, but Trip is on a whole other level. What I love about this mix is it sounds live and organic. It was clearly done on real vinyl. You hear the pops and warn-out grooves. But that is part of the charm. It makes it more like the most epic rooftop party of your young adult life. And with wisecracks like a b-boy version of Rhinestone Cowboy and weaving in Star Wars tracks, it feels like fuel for one fun drunken night.
NOTE: Not available on LaLa
46. Operation: Doomsday - MF Doom
Hip hop had a crazy decade in the '00s. It started out as the dominant radio ready music and ended on a respirator with it's top talent struggling to stay relevant in a young man's game. What I love about Operation Doomsday is it doesn't sound like it's from this decade. It sounds like it was made in a project closet in the late 80s. And it's grime makes it shine.
First, you have to assume Doom rhymes through his mask even in the studio because his delivery sounds muted almost like he's got a mouth full of marbles. And somehow it works because it builds the persona of a true Hip Hop anti hero, bringing the stream of conscious heat song after song. Some young punk will write his thesis on the crazy spit all over this some day much like they do for Joyce now.
NOTE: Not available on LaLa
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