UMMM...AHHH...KARL ROVE SUCKS...

So much going on I don't know where to start...

Well, first of all I'll try using the new "BloggerImage" service...

I've dropped off on my intended "Songs of 05" tidbits that I planned on dropping here and there all through the year so that when it came time to make my Top 10 list of songs and albums in December, I would have an easy way to compile it. But anyhoo, if you like indie rock that slavishly imitates Pavement but yet that is somehow refreshingly its own beast (and quite inventive, tuneful, and catchy), get the album by Hockey Night pictured here...













It's definitely a contender for my 2005 Top 10. Not that I sit around and make music lists all the time, but I was thinking today about the musical acts that are most important to me, most influential to me. So here is a short, ever-evolving list off the top o' me head:

1. U2 (every album through "Achtung Baby")

2. Beatles (everything they ever did, but especially Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper)

3. Police (every album is great, even Zenyatta Mondatta)

4. Steely Dan (every album up to Gaucho is sheer genius--melodically, harmonically, etc.)

5. Bob Dylan (a student of my father's made me a cassette copy of the whole Biograph box set when I was in high school and I couldn't get enough of it)

6. R.E.M. (through Automatic For The People they could do no wrong--what a perfectly subversive combo of strangeness and accessibility--something I always try to achieve)

7. Firehose/Minutemen (don't make me choose--they're both Mike Watt and George Hurley playing with a singer/guitarist. Firehose is awesome because of the melodic sense of Ed Crawford, while the politics and chemistry of D. and Watt is unparalleled and irreplaceable)

8. Zappa (my favorite is One Size Fits All, but have a soft spot for Best Band You Never Heard...because it was the one that got me into his music)

9. Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby are complete reinventions of rock & roll that not many have even heard and even fewer "get"...I didn't get it until I listened to it over and over while playing Super Mario 3 in my apartment in 1995...I had bought it long before that and was turned off every time I tried to listen to it)

10. Joni Mitchell (brilliant lyrics, crystalline voice, inventive guitar tunings--there are bright spots on all her albums, but Court and Spark and Blue are peerless works of art)

11. The Rolling Stones (their stuff is so familiar now that I thought about leaving them off just because they seem so obvious, but damn they have a ton of kickass tunes and that ragged sound is so...right)

12. Jimi Hendrix (again, this one seems to go without saying, but what a great lyricist he was, not to mention his guitar playing and his band...a lot of his solos were really good and memorable, but a lot of them not so much...but his songs and his feel and his spirit were/are unprecedented and his rhythm playing was always stellar)

Others that I just can't justify putting on the list, but that might appear on it at any time in the future...King Crimson, Sonic Youth, The Church, The Cure, and so forth.

Well, that was fun...I'll leave this as a music-only post and get back to politics tomorrow...