Lee Ranaldo picks a few gems... (Sonic Youth)

As part of the all-consuming "best of the decade" (and "worst of the decade") fever currently afflicting every media outlet going these days, FNX has been asking some of their favorite bands and artists about their favorites of the decade. Last Friday, for instance, Metric's favorite was actually The Stroke's- Is This It? (I've noticed a lot of blogs have picked The Strokes! ahaha)

Here's an interview with Lee Ranaldo about his favorites -

FLETCHER: With Sonic Nurse's crazy acclaim, great reviews always, that seems to be the record that the critics say is your masterpiece for the 2000s. But you, Lee, what's the album from Sonic Youth you think is pivotal to this decade?

LEE: To this decade?

FLETCHER: To this decade. To the aughts.

LEE: The aughts. I was wondering if you were going to use that expression.

FLETCHER: Should I not use aughts?

LEE: I think it's fine. In a way it's preferable . . . I would say for this decade, it's The Eternal, the most recent one. Because in a way I think it really - it's so cool at the end of this decade when we've been playing together for so long to be really energized about the most recent music you've made. The aughts started for us with Murray Street, made in New York City in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and all that. Sonic Nurse we made with Jim O'Rourke, and then we made another record, Rather Ripped, on our own, and then we hooked up with Mark, Mark Ibold on bass, and made this one, and it bodes well for the future that we're having a lot of fun with this one.

-- snip --

FLETCHER: We want to get some of your picks from the 2000s, what would be in there?

LEE: I've got three for you. One from early, one from the middle, and one from recently.

FLETCHER: Let's go through them chronologically.

LEE: First one would be Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft", 2001.

FLETCHER: Released on 9/11, 2001.

LEE: I bought it that day, in lower Manhattan. It felt very perverse going out to the record store while all this crazy stuff was happening. It was really kind of wild. We were at Kim and Thurston's, actually, at that point.

FLETCHER: Was there some sort of comfort in making that purchase that day?

LEE: I don't know. It was the only moment of normalcy in an otherwise totally crazy day, in a sense. But I just think, that record, for someone like him . . . I love that record, but it's just to put him in this top three, really. As long as he's been making records, he still inspires me almost as much as any artist just in terms of his output and what he does.

Number two: I don't remember when this record [came out], but Cat Power, You Are Free. Must be somewhere in the middle. I love that record to death. I think that Chan is amazing, and I still think to my mind it's her most perfect record. I listen to that record and I think of it the way . . . when I listen back to Leonard Cohen's early records, they have this really special quality in the way they sound, and they have this really special emotional quality, and I listen to that record on the same level. I think that record could go up with Songs of Love and Hate or Blue or any of those records from that period. I think it's an absolutely beautiful record.

The completion one is a little bit more left-field: this guy who's gone for many years called Smog, Bill Callahan. He just released his first record under his own name, Bill Callahan. He's been making Smog records for fifteen years or more. They started out experimental and they've gotten more country-western, very beautiful, super dry, deep, Johnny Cash-style voice. I think what he does is great. And his record from last year was called - it's got a screwy title, I Wish We Were An Eagle. I think that's what it's called. It's an amazing record, I've listened to it a lot this year. It's just voice and super-stripped-down bass drums and guitar, and some cellos. It's really good. (FNX)

The Monkees: HEAD

"HEAD" is a sound collage created by a large group of artists, collectively known as The Monkees. Although the original four mop-top television actors spearheaded the project as a way out of the anti-art pigeon hole the group worked so hard to establish, musicians and actors from Frank Zappa to Neil Young, Jack Nicholson to Dennis Hopper contributed to create one of THE most adventurous concept records ever achieved. This was around the time of Sgt. Pepper, Their Satanic Majesties Request, and Pet Sounds. All worthy contenders, but looking back decades later, do any of those records come close to experimenting as far out as HEAD? What were The Beatles, The Stones or The Beach Boys actually conceptualizing about? A fantasy marching band, a blend of Hippy nostalgia and the Devil, a psychedelic collection of Beach songs? All of these groups tried to incorporate what was happening around 1966-67, but scattered thematically behind blown up egos and million dollar pay checks. The Monkees would be no different, if it weren't for the fact that they were on their way down the ladder of success and in the camera's eye as talentless actors portraying mediocre musicians. The Monkees TV show had been canceled, due to the fact that their core audience were growing up quicker than their rise to celebrity stardom. Coincidentally, Michael Nesmith, who played the smarter of the four on the show, took to "life imitating art" by actually putting up a fight to get HEAD made, before they were pushed under the rug like so many other 60's acts with few hit singles. HEAD was not confusing as to what it was conceptually about. It is a psychological drama, a greek tragedy if you will, only the greek tragedy is their career. The story goes through all of the character's talents and facades, their autobiographical climb to Hollywood, and tragically exploring the end of media-mania the way they saw it, from the perspective of the group locked in a box with no way out. Every mini-drama they had experienced was incorporated into the film's plot. The soundtrack would work as a backdrop, just the way The Who's “Tommy” did, except this would be where The Monkees would really shine. Most of the material was composed by the four, utilizing the best musicians on the west coast as back up players, and more importantly, the film's schizophrenic theme would examine the invention of Stereophonic sound. The Beatles, The Stones and The Beach Boys would throw an orchestra in the left speaker, and the multi-part harmonies in the right, but The Monkees had an advantage, having worked and directed their own show for two years, they incorporated Shakespearian odysseys with LSD induced machinery technology on top of the invention of surround sound Stereo panning. There are moments on the record where you'll here spoken word, eastern philosophy emerging out of the left, while delayed tape loops circling out of the right. They truly composed from a film director's angle, instead of a songwriters. If you were to strip the Rolling Stones of their instruments, would they be able to write a rock and roll record? That's the difference... though The Monkees really did play instruments to an extent, they were four actors given %100 freedom to make a rock and roll record, and jet-setters that they were, they brought along the finest musicians in the country to come on board.

It begins with a fade in, a ceremony about to begin, but disrupted by the group committing suicide. A striking enough intro for ya? This would obviously be a metaphor for their own career suicide, as they knew their teenybopper fans would hate this. It would lead into the opening track- “Porpoise Song”, sang by Mickey Dolenz with harmonies by Davy Jones. The lyrics are surreal, like a Salvador Dali painting, chanting "The Porpoise is waving goodbye" as in the big whale of commercial success has come and gone. Without a second of silence, an anti-war parade is spliced in, but with sarcasm as a way of opposing the Vietnam War like a football game gone amok. As the crowd cheers W-A-R, Nesmith's "Circle Sky" kicks in, a song protesting Vietnam in its lyrics, while rumbling drum fills float underneath. This track ends with a gun shot moving into a blatant drug song entitled- "Can you dig it?", a fuck-you to the war, an original written by Peter Tork about smoking dope and adolescent insignificance. This was the way of the draft dodgers. Marijuana was an act of rebellion as much a way of passing the time. Here's where Tork, who was more about the music than anything else, worked his instrument talents into the mix. Not only is he playing Moogs and Theremins, but works in odd-time signatures dabbling in what would later become Progressive Rock elements. Peter would eventually quit the band after the making of this album, being that he was solely about the music, and didn't want to continue making television appearances as a Pop star. "Can you dig it?" would close side one.

Side Two opens with another track to use unusual time changes, predominantly 5/4 on this one, but a light, much softer ballad called- "As we go along". The title speaks for itself. The song's about the improvisation of the material, like an actor without a script, "we'll make up our story as we go along" Dolenz sings over beautiful Neil Young guitar lines jamming away to Ry Cooder's acoustic strumming. Snippets from the film are used as segue-ways like someone flipping through radio stations to get to "Daddy's Song", Davy Jones' centerpiece written by Harry Nilsson, an upbeat Show-tune which showcases Davy's penchant for Broadway, and his Manchester tone vibrato accentuating as only he can in the band. Again, this is the idea behind HEAD, to show The Monkees for what they truly were, not a mod-rock band, but their true talents.

We end with another original by Tork- "Do I have to do this all over again?"- a garage rocker with lyrics pertaining to the way they were treated on the set of the television show. But as the song erupts, it's a slap in the face to the TV producers, being that we near the end of the album, as the song blends into The Maharishi philosophizing about beliefs and conditioning, the inner workings of the Monkee-machine on the youth of America. It's almost like they're trying to admit to a fallacy they played out, but offering they're point of view, having sincerity and integrity to the fact that it's all entertainment in the end. Whether it's the Mamas and the Papas or The Velvet Underground, this is entertainment, and it's sincere and ridiculous at the same time. The final encore is the fade in of all of the tracks, all at once, while a monotonous voice repeats- "Head... Head..." like you're coming out of a bad acid trip, clarity breaks through with a tongue in cheek String section plucking away, without seeing the film, the listener imagines closing credits.

So, I urge you to return to Sgt. Pepper, a band behind a band, and compare it with HEAD- which of the two is more realistic, and which is incoherent drug euphoria? HEAD is a real life backstage pass to a Hollywood movie set, but in song form. Pepper strays too much between mini-vignettes about God knows what, a girl leaving home, an abused wife, a benefit for Mr. Kite? Lucy in the sky with... you get my point. And though The Beatles had the upper hand melodically (nobody could out sing the Beatles), The Monkees were more intelligent thematically. They really reach out to the listener with subjects we can relate to while still freaking us out sonically. I mean, the subjects are themselves. You can't get more biographical than HEAD. Who else had done anything like that at the time? For all the "Paul is dead" clues Pepper had, even the album cover is more cerebral! It's a mirror with the word- HEAD written over your face. Has anyone ever done that before or since? I don't think the world has caught up to it yet. It's like a Godard film in musical composition. And that's literally what they were influenced by at the time. Not only from a creative distance, but personally. Foreign filmmakers, surrealistic painters, junkies and movie stars were the kind of artists The Monkees kept in company with. It really was an accident of genius that HEAD got made... or were they smarter than we gave them credit for? (A)

Terminal 5 w/ Dinosaur Jr. (Sonic Youth)

Nevermind the bollocks, here's The Strokes?? (NME's Top 100 of the Decade)

NME made their list of the Top 100 albums of the decade --->

10- Radiohead "In Rainbows"
09- The Streets "Original Pirate Material"
08- Interpol "Turn on the Bright Lights"
07- The Arcade Fire "Funeral"
06- PJ Harvey "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea"
05- Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Fever to Tell"
04- Arctic Monkeys "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not"
03- Primal Scream "Xtrmntr"
02- The Libertines "Up the Bracket"
01- The Strokes "Is this it?"

The only album I would say is deserving of a top ten spot would be- Primal Scream's "Xtrmntr"

But, I will defend The Strokes' "Is this it?" for the sake of journalistic boredom, and cabin-fever flu-blogging. It seems I tend to read NME whenever I'm home with the flu.

"Is this it?" had a unique sound for something you'd hear on top 40 radio and The Strokes had a peculiar look for a 'change of the millennium' Rock and Roll band. I'll start with the latter of the two- The Look. This was around 2000/2001, when Radiohead was playing with vintage machinery as instruments, and Grunge AND Brit-Pop were pretty much, dead. They were young fashion dudes, caught between the 70's and the 80's image. Half the band dressed like Blondie, and the other half like The Stooges. It was a call to nostalgia during a time when their predecessors were moving toward the future. Whether The Strokes were industry made ala The Monkees, is unimportant to the fact that they stood for old-fashioned Rock and Roll. They weren't so much about the music (I liked it), as they were trying to save a dying genre. Many fell for the schtick- that revived Garage-Rock personae, and many rebelled against them, disproving their credibility for being the band who had been chosen to save Rock and Roll. Did they? Probably not.. which leads me to the music...

"Is this it?" was one hell of a marketing trick played on us, the record-heads. This was a time when "OK Computer" was the blueprint for 'the album'. "OK Computer" was long, overproduced (in a good way!), and conceptual to some confusing degree. The Strokes' debut was incredibly short, about a half-hour mix of quick 2-3 minute jingles, totally underproduced along the lines of their touring comrades- Guided By Voices, and lyrically simplistic as only a bunch of teenagers could write. They were the antitheses of Radiohead, so much that I remember rumors about them not playing their own instruments, or writing their own guitar parts. (Sound familiar? Was Don Kirschner in New York around this time??) Rolling Stone even had a spread about them meeting at a private school in Europe, disproving them to be an actual New York band. I was playing in my own band around this time, and no one I knew had seen or heard of them around the city personally. The Strokes had every element needed to rival the electronic revolution. Most notably, was Julian Casablancas' vocal tone. To this day, no one knows what the hell it is! Is it an effect, or is that his natural voice? No one knows! It's the sound of a peaked-out analog cassette recorder, but the weird thing is, he pulls it off live. Obviously, you'd assume he's singing through an effect pedal, but there's something mysterious about it, that when you do see him live, or hear the band in different settings, you undoubtedly believe that IS his natural voice. So let's put aside the chance that a young kid can sing like an old blues man, and move onto the rest of the group. The drummer- Fabrizio. This was a 70's Rock trick if I ever saw one. The band always put Julian in the back of all photo shoots, and placed the pretty boy drummer who barely kept time in the front. I can't tell you how many people used to say- "The singer is the dude with the afro dating Drew Barrymore." The guy barely had any talent, a novice-level drummer with a lot of personality apparently. This was revolutionary for the time, and maybe the first mega-famous band to do this. Previous bands 'Pete Bested' their crap drummers on the way to fame. This was an obvious nod to The Velvet Underground. What other iconic Rock groups had incompetent time-keepers at the height of their career? I thought it was pretty cool they didn't fire him, but what happened was a disaster of apocalyptic Indie-Rock proportions. They opened the doors to half-talented and in some cases, no-talent Indie bands to achieve radio popularity, and on top of that, made it 'cool' to suck at your instrument. I never liked that part of The Strokes' hype machine, but I see why and how it works.

The rest of the band were carbon copied Classic-Rock figures, and that reminds me of a Spin magazine quote posing the musical question- "Are The Strokes the best band in the world, or another auto-Oasis?" The guitarists never overplayed a single note, never changed up the riffs live, and I'm not sure they changed their costumes, I mean.. outfits for years. Other bands such as Interpol would make caricatures of themselves in the same way for the sake of identification purposes. All in all, it fit their tiny music trend that would quickly pigeon-hole The Strokes, leading to mediocre side-dish solo records, and the inescapable break-up of the band after a mere three ridiculously fleeting short albums.

So getting back to the songs... yeh, they were super catchy to the point of being annoying, and lyrically current, all about cocaine-use or coming of age themes. Nevertheless, people related to it, the band sold millions, and The Strokes were suddenly opening for The Rolling Stones overnight. Magazines backlashed the band with connections to Julian's father, who owns Casablanca Records, and publicizing Albert Hammond's direct nepotism to his father, a successful songwriter in the 70's. They were loved, then quickly attacked, being discredited as a mockery of the Indie Rockers who were consistently touring and working their asses off for a mili-minute of success The Strokes had gotten in less than a year.

So what did they do musically?

They might've been the first Lo-Fi rockers to hit number one all around the world. Even if it was part of the scam to flipside the slickness of Oasis and Radiohead. Their whole sound is anti-success, meaning they never took their songs as seriously as Thom Yorke's weepy-eyed poetic gloom, nor did they go the T-Rex route like Oasis, reaching for Arena Rock party anthems to be sung at a Jukebox near you, and they also intentionally avoided experimenting with soundscapes like the hoards of Coldplay bands trying to be the next David Bowie. Now that I think about it, for a band that got so much attention for three records, they never took themselves seriously at all. Maybe 'cause they weren't that great to begin with (that would be the popular theory amongst the people I know), or maybe that's what the music industry needed at the time, like a colonic enema for a constipated sound-shit-clot. Either way, The Strokes worked. They had their run, and according to NME, who used to be a wonderful music-mag, now a cartoon sunday morning children's show, they made the best album of the last ten years. If only Julian would grow some balls, and use his success to further some sort of mind-expanding reason why I have to read about them in every Top 100 list ('cause they're always somewhere in it, whether it's Pitchfork Media or Time Magazine), then the whole swindle wouldn't seem so controversial.

As I listen to Julian's new solo record while writing this, it grabs me. Whatever he had to achieve, or avoid accomplishing, the kid's got talent! The rich little fuck's got talent dammit, and that's more than I can say about these newer bands that are cashing in and torturing me with their radio singles while I stand in line for my morning coffee missing the soothing sounds of Pink Floyd I was so used to waking up to.

The Fillmore aka Irving Plaza (The Jesus Lizard)

show was insane!

Vinyl, Digital Sales Hit New High Marks

Vinyl and single track download sales set new records last week, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. The two events represent very different trends that were born from the rising popularity of digital music.

As of November 8, four artists broke Rihanna's single-year digital tracks sales record of 9.9 million tracks: Michael Jackson (11.3 million tracks year-to-date), Lady Gaga (11.1 million tracks year-to-date), Black Eyed Peas (10.3 million tracks year-to-date) and Taylor Swift (9.98 million tracks year-to-date). The top three artists have already topped 10 million tracks sold this year and one, Taylor Swift, will surely pass the mark next week. Next week, sales of digital albums should surpass last year's total of 65 million and sales of digital tracks should top the 1 billion mark.

Year-to-date vinyl record sales topped two million units last week, breaking the previous record of 1.9 million units last year. At the same point in time last year, SoundScan had tracked 1.5 million sales of vinyl records.

That's roughly a 37% year-over-year improvement. Vinyl has come a long way from the period in the '90s when it was a format that was almost exclusively used by underground rock bands and DJ-oriented genres. Many years passed when most artists - especially mainstream artists - did not have vinyl releases (many still do not have vinyl releases). Though it gained momentum towards the end of the decade, it wasn't until the mid-2000s when new releases of all stripes were being released on vinyl, when it was seen as a purer way to experience music in an era of near-ubiquitous digital music. Labels started offering MP3 downloads with vinyl purchases, thus creating a great digital-physical combination. Today, consumers can find vinyl in both mass merchants and the usual Independent stores.

The two trends - digital sales on one hand, vinyl records on the other - could not be more different. For all the efficiencies of digital music's distribution and supply chain, vinyl counters with an equally expensive and inefficient process. Yet, the two are on the rise.

There is no doubt digital formats represents the future of recorded music. iTunes is just the beginning. New types of digital services promise to change how consumers acquire and experience music. Yet the concurrent rise of digital and vinyl tells us this: Through their purchases of vinyl, a small yet dedicated group of music fans are showing artists and labels that digital does not fill all their needs. (Billboard)