Last year I made a ridiculous mega-meta list that continued into this January. Never again. There’s no way anyone cares about my lists of lists…maybe they do but my opinion of other people’s opinion of my opinion doesn’t seem…like…..it’s not as important to me. And I did do it for myself to refer back to, but I haven’t. I really should. There’s only so much you can do tho. I took some time off reading the entire internet every day to study for the JLPT this year and I’ve got 1000+ unread items. I couldn’t buy most of the albums I wanted this year and haven’t listen to some of the ones I did buy. Missed a lot of shows too. But my system is improving. I’m going to be able to get to this stuff, I’m telling myself. I just gotta stop caring about stuff I don’t care about. So many bands…I don’t understand why so many bands exist. I mean, bands, yes, I love bands but…so many. I’m saying it’s too many. Can we work on making the bands we have better? Let’s maintain our resources is all saying. If you weren’t in a band in 2011, don’t start a new one in 2012. It’s already impossible and it’s getting harder. Even if you’re already famous a guest spot on a Justin Beiber track is your only shot of living without a roomate in 2012. And when that dude goes it’s ALL over. Luckily he’s young. I’m sure he’ll become a totally normal adult with a long life and also the entire world economy and ecosystem will not collapse, destroying everything and everyone but for those who envy the dead.

1. Perfume – JPN

   ~No comment~

2. Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
   

   It is. He did. (What am I doing.)

3. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu – Moshimoshi Harajuku

   Maybe it’s not a full album and not even every song is great. But video of the decade‘s gotta count for something. That’s right, I’m calling it. Everybody, you’ve got 9 years to try to top that. Huh huh!

4. Dream Morning Musume – Dorimusu 1

   The first disc is fans-only. The second disc cannot be argued with. (Literally, I have misplaced the second disc. I don’t really need it, but I would like it. Also, I need it. If you see it around please let me know.) This CD is priced at 3333 Yen. Do you what that comes out to in dollars at the current exchange? (It’s right in the link but) TOO MANY…for any album that could not guarantee 100% satisfaction and emotional closure. Which it did, maybe even before I got it. As soon as I put that order in I could begin to reassemble the scraps of my former life, before I had ever heard of any incarnation of this group. Everything else was sweet, sweet gravy. Thank you, Dream Morning Musume, for making this album.

5. Wild Flag – S/T
   

   This band did everything right with how they handled their business. They wrote some songs, then played live and got people interested based on the strength of their material and performance. (Backstory helped, but look at any failed supergroup.) They then recorded a single that was first a free download OR you could buy the 7″. (Now it’s a paid download.) Then they toured, then they recorded an album. It doesn’t make it a perfect album, but the songs are pretty good, and what it does is it proves the band is worth further attention. Hate to use this as a lecture, but it was such a perfect approach. With all the bullshit going on and so much music coming out, I had it in the back of my mind that I needed to hear this as soon as it came out. And I did. Got a thousand things in the pile here. This did not go into the pile.

6. Mastodon – The Hunter
   

   Got the deluxe but haven’t watched the DVD yet, which makes this a terrible review of that product. But c’mon, it’s only a couple dollars more. If you’re gonna buy the package why not, I figure. Really dug the Crack the Skye one. That album was better of course. I like this one a lot, but they really couldn’t top the concept with anything huger. I think it was a good approach. I like some other extreme influences creeping in more than the prog overload on CTS. You can’t really overdo prog it’s almost the point, but like Blasteroid has a little Converge in it. (Rubbing off from their tour together 09 tour. Yes, I did say “rubbing off”.) Brann sure sings a lot on this one. Only complaint you can say about Mastodon is maybe they should so so much production on the vox. Because they can not always pull off the harmonies live. (No matter how close they get it they can’t sound like multiple versions of themselves.) But that’s not the record’s problem. It’s the system, man. You can put 100 fx on the guitars but the mic needs to be raw or the whole thing’s considered a sham or whatever.

7. Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

   Ok, I’m old now so I don’t really get new rap anymore. I did not start hating black people. But let me tell you something: these guys are older than me. They can still make records. And it sounds like something new. I still like new things. Just not all the time. If there’s someone in a new band from an old band I liked as a young person it helps a lot to ease the fear and confusion I now constantly experience in my early 30s….now I’ve lost track of my own sarcasm. I really like this. It’s not a joke review. Please…just go if you want. You can go.

8. Boris – New Album
   

   I dunno, 3 albums this year I feel like I gotta pick one. Sometimes I feel like Boris is playing an elaborate joke on music critics. But at least they do it better than Lou Reed in that they make something you want to listen to.

9. Motorhead – The World Is Yours CD/DVD Set
   

   Another 2 disc-er. It’s Motorhead. They seem to get more and more consciously retro Rock n’ Roll and less the style that inspired a lot of Metal, which you could just as well call Metal but Lemmy doesn’t and who am to contradict Lemmy? Not to crap on me, but I’m not Lemmy. I think everyone in a rock band or not, should take some time out of each day to remind themselves that they are not Lemmy. A good exercise is to ask yourself in any situation, “What would Lemmy do?” The answer is “Not the thing you are going to do next.” Because you are not Lemmy. Even on a rare occasion where you might do the same thing that Lemmy would have been doing, for example, if you were at a bar with Lemmy and you both tried to walk through a door at the same time because you asked yourself what he might do next and you thought the answer was to walk through that door at that moment, and you were right, you would not only embarrass yourself, and Lemmy—the worse possible occurrence—you would be wrong, because Lemmy did not ask himself if he would walk through that door, he just did it. Or he tried to. So please. You can watch the Live at Wacken DVD instead. It’s Motorhead, you’ll like it. RIP Wurzel. I’m not doing a top 10 saddest deaths, but I like the Wurzel era stuff.

10. Shonen Knife – Osaka Ramones
    

    Couldn’t put this near the top of the list, but it’s way better than it should be. Maybe you remember when The Queers and bunch of bands did straight covers of entire Ramones albums? This is a lot better. Not just sticking to one album helps, they obviously are playing their favorites. There’s the unusual pick of the late-period Scattergun and a weird twist to Chinese Rocks — they just call it Chinese Rock and they seem to have turned a single entendre song about heroin into a metaphor for their music. So you’ve got to think if they’ve done it on purpose or not. “Everybody” knows they’re from Japan, but they get around enough, you don’t think they get called Chinese sometimes when they’re out and about? They’re living on Chinese Rock. If you spend more than a little time on this band, you’ve got to decide if they’re just that dumb and it’s cute or they’re actually really, really smart. I think they got it all figured out.

We’re probably still doomed tho. Happy New Year.%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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