Patatoa

Not every album clicks at once. Amongst overwhelming critical and popular acclaim, you are some times left wondering what is wrong with you. What am I not hearing? Why don’t I get it? Sometimes you have to make a concentrated effort in the hopes of earning some sort of reward. Arcade Fire came during a time when I found the music scene confusing and blurry. Burned by the 2001 “rock revival” band’s lackluster follow-ups (for whatever reason, I skipped Elephant. I don’t know. I didn’t believe the press,) I grew weary of bands that came out of nowhere with a hurricane of hype.

After 1999, the one sure fire way for me to keep up with new music was to just wait for the end of year, “best of,” lists. In 2002, I had fallen woefully behind on the scene. To my surprise, every end of year list I could find, Amazon, metacritic, allmusic, had a stunning consensus opinion on what I should have been listening to: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

It wasn’t even two years since that night I bought First Band on the Moon, but my musical sphere had grown exponentially since. Less and less of the music videos shown during the normal hours were appealing to me, and MTV was gradually ceding to the TRL generation -- which offered nothing to me. Sometime in late summer ‘98 I had discovered MTV’s 120 Minutes, a block at midnight Sunday (turning Monday) where they evidently hid all the good music. I would religiously stay up to watch; even if I was lucky to catch more than four videos before succumbing to sleep. One thing was clear, my musical ear was skewing further from Top 40 and more alternative and underground. It must have been the first Sunday of 1999 where 120 Minutes held one of the most memorable episodes ever. They were doing a recap of the best “120 Minutes” videos of 1998. I’ll never forget the first three videos they played, all which still hold a special place in my heart. The first video floored me, “All You Good, Good People” by Embrace, I was already proclaiming it my favorite song ever after one play. Soon after they played “Get Myself Arrested” by Gomez, another awesome song I was excited about! The song they played in between the two I thought was pretty okay too. It was a nice song called “Stolen Car” by some lady named Beth Orton.

Maybe it’s a dubious distinction. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe it is something that looks good on a resume and I enjoy repeating. Maybe it was largely lost on me at the time, or, maybe it is the defining cornerstone to my entire musical world. At the green age of 7, my first music CD was purchased for me at my request. As a devout child of the 90’s, it is only right that my first album was Nirvana’s monolithic Nevermind.

In the airy quiet that follows the opening clatter in my number 6 favorite album, you already know Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana is going to be an interesting listen. It takes all of 36 seconds for the heavy drums and fuzzed bass to crash through the orchestration of the album opener “Shuukyou” before you just might sit up in your chair. And at the 1 minute mark, when the orchestra overwhelms the track once more, you can’t but wonder where else Shiina Ringo’s third album can go; how an artist can stuff this mammoth at the front of an album.

In 1994, a subtle move caused a seismic shift in the trend of popular music. The headline act for the ’94 Lollapalooza festival was set to be Nirvana – easily the biggest and most revered band on the scene. However, due to personnel issues that spring, Nirvana had to back out. The organizers had to promote another act as the headliner, but this decision proved to be more symbolic than it seemed at the time. This wasn’t just about Lollapalooza – this was Nirvana, the band whose album knocked off Michael Jackson on Billboard, the band that subverted rock and killed the hair band, the band that defied commercial expectations even at the great expense that it proved to be. Nirvana had abdicated it’s thrown, and now Lollapalooza was unwittingly dubbing an heir. They turned to the next act on the bill, and one of the hottest acts at the time, the Smashing Pumpkins.

By late 2009, I was a long way from the comfortable rut I had for much the first decade of the new century. I was out of school, I had met my future fiancé (as of the time of this writing), and became adept at cooking my own meals (as in, not using a microwave.) With all these extra duties there was little opportunity for music listening. My musical sphere was as small as it had been in those ten years. Most of the bands I was into, 90’s holdovers, were putting out music that was decidedly “passed their prime.” I was no longer DJ-ing on the radio, and by that time the mainstream long since left me on the banks. About the only time I could “get my freak on” was in 3-5 song bursts in the car. (Is “get your freak on” still a thing?) I was ready for something new – and I had a fail proof plan. My hallowed tomes, the December “best of year” lists were trickling out, and it was only a matter of time for me to strike gold. One December night, I sat down to crawl through the lists, determined to find something to listen to, something new.

People that know me well may have been wondering where the heck was Oasis on my list so far. After all, with the “goes-without-saying” exception of The Beatles, Oasis is pretty much my unquestioned favorite band. Yet, I have not even briefly mentioned the Mancs once in this series. In any one of these “favorite albums” lists I’ve made in the last fifteen years or so, (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory essentially always held the top spot, my absolute favorite album for a very, very long time. So what’s the story? When I sat down to make this list, I knew MG was one of the big elephants in the room. I penciled it at #1 out of habit, but knew to do this right I had to really put it (and the rest of my top 5) under a microscope. But this isn’t an essay on why Morning Glory is inferior to X or Y, it’s a love letter on why I have such strong feelings towards the album and a band that questioning it not being #1 at all is a big deal, and that anyone that immediately writes off such a notion is a chump.

After some consideration, we’re going to just skip talking about #2. Besides after the ecstasy of writing two thousand words on my favorite band, and album that was my favorite for so long last time, I just couldn’t wait. How important is second place anyway? How could I wait to talk about my favoritest band, and most conclusively favorite album? (Spoilers: both of which are The Beatles.) After talking about Oasis, where else can you go but The Beatles? And not just The Beatles, but The Beatles! The Beatles by The Beatles, the huge 1968 double album! (Okay, I’ll stop having fun, The White Album.) Nevermind was the bedrock of my musical world, but The White Album was the earth and the soil. The single album that shaped my musical taste and no matter how “far out” I thought my musical journey had become, the album I could always return to and find the roots of what I was listening to. A truly transcendent album, my favorite.

Neutral Milk Hotel, we really have reached the end of this now haven’t we?