Nor have I paid any attention to hot singles, or scanned ratings thoroughly enough to judge anything over or underrated. Most of the music I listened to this year was either made by my friends or recorded before the year 1970. I worked at a college radio station for half of the year and this “modern rock” sensibility managed to evade me.
And a lot of it you may have learned a long time ago. But just to make sure you don’t make any of the same mistakes or overlooks I did, I’m going to share it with you. In descending order, just like any self-respecting top-whatever list.
And then I’m going to give you a of music that I appreciated in 2006. Top ten nothing. 4) That one kind of bad Nirvana song was a David Bowie song first.
And thank heavens for that. It is always nice to realize that behind the whines and the grunge guitar hides a song that is brilliant and fantastic! I listened to of David Bowie in 2006, and every time I hear his voice, I remember why I believe in God.
I think he should be sainted. He is also aging remarkably well, and is an admirable patron of contemporary rockers. 3) Not all concerts are created equal.
And more often than not, it has nothing to do with the musicians giving the concert. Sometimes bands that are wonderful when pressed are a snooze on stage – an Electric Six show in Madison, Wisconsin, which should’ve been wildly uplifting, felt canned, and was attended by the most annoying crowd of any show I have ever attended. But beyond mere showmanship, there is something untouchable and atmospheric.
I anticipated Andrew Bird’s performance at Summerfest more than I anticipated pretty much anything in my life except maybe growing up. And it was a total let-down, probably because it was outdoors, under a highway overpass, and I was surrounded by drunk people who were waiting for Wilco to start. Wilco’s set might as well have been a stadium show.
I would rather listen to Wilco in my living room. Live music should be a blow-your-ears-out tent-revival basement-barroom beer-and-sweat experience – an experience that big outdoor shows just can’t deliver. See my review of Pitchfork (August 2006) for more exposition on this issue.
I have danced in the streets in my day. I saw Cake in a parking lot. But not in 2006.
2) There is no ailment that soul music cannot cure. I’m talking soul music in the broadest sense of the term. One Kiss Can Lead to Another box set of forgotten 60s girl pop (released in 2005) carried me through one winter malaise after another, and Alan Lomax field recordings of dusty Southern gospel calmed me deeply during my panic-stricken spring.
New music is nice and all. It is good that new music is being made. Exciting things are happening in the world of rock and roll.
But like a well-planned one-pot vegetarian diet, I am a recent convert to the belief that a musical menu that includes nothing but Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, the Jackson Five, and the dearly departed James Brown is nonetheless complete. At boring concerts this year, I kept thinking about who I would rather be seeing. The answer was always Otis Redding.
Too bad he’s dead. 1) It’s not so hard to like hip-hop. True post-rockists have known this for a long time, and good hip-hop has long been the brightest spot in popular music.
This year’s best-of lists are full of high-profile hip-hoppers: Ghostface, Lupe Fiasco, Clipse. By some standards, hip-hop is what is happening in music today. Still, there is a pervasive and tenacious belief that hip-hop is all about guns, drugs, and hos in bikinis, that tendency to profess one’s love of “everything but country and rap.
” And while I have always been theoretically to liking hip-hop, having enjoyed ridiculous hits like “Gold Digger” and “Roll Out” and whatever Chris Ludacris Bridges graces us with, I have also always been cautious. I have always assumed that there is a context I am lacking, an instruction manual I need to read to really get it. Luckily, I made friends with a nice approachable guy who turned out to love hip-hop thoroughly, passionately, all-consumingly.
This guy basically raps in his sleep. Little by little, I learned not only to hip-hop, the way one likes or does not like, say, brussel sprouts, but to develop a for it, to detect its myriad hints and spices. I like the nerdiness of A Tribe Called Quest, the defiant silliness of Ol Dirty Bastard, the raw Wu-Tang sound.
I like the Napoleonic pomposity of Cee-Lo Green and Kanye’s charismatic sincerity. The undiluted bravura of Outkast’s “Morris Brown” positively sweeps me off my pretty little hipster-white-girl feet. I’m not faking it!
I am not kidding! This wasn’t hard at all! I went back to the Trick-Trick/Eminem single “Welcome to Detroit” and found it impossibly, intolerably low-brow.
Mere months and the barest of introductions, and I had developed a palatte. I had become Nor have I paid any attention to hot singles, or scanned ratings thoroughly enough to judge anything over or underrated.
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