The Track List

1. Noah & The Whale - Five Years Time
2. Go! Team - Bottle Rocket
3. The Owls - Air
4. Apples in Stereo - Same Old Drag
5. Texas Governor - Faith, Hope, Love & Jesus
6. American Analog Set - The Postman
7. Rose Melberg - Cast Away the Clouds
8. Kissing Book - Selfish
9. Tullycraft - Twee
10. Zero 7 - In the Waiting Line
11. Rachels - Last Things Last
12. Sufjan Stevens - Chicago
13. Postal Service - DC Sleeps Alone Tonight
14. Pants Yell! - The City Life
15. Some Girls - Necessito
16. Magnetic Fields - Stray With Me
17. OK Go - This Will Be Our Year
18. Yo La Tengo - Black Flowers
19. A.C. Newman - On the Table
20. The Clean - Stars
21. Happy Bullets - The Disquieting Letter
22. Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers - Better Days Coming Now
23. Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham - Ginger Snaps
24. Aislers Set - Fire Engines
25. Peter, Bjorn and John - Young Folks
26. New Pornographers - The Laws Have Changed
27. Regina Spektor - Us
28. Shumai - The Lonely Passion of Joey Heatherton
29. Tom Waits - Hoist That Rag
30. Coconut Records - West Coast
31. Boy Crazy - Bad Things
32. Radio Dept. - Pulling Our Weight
33. Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism
34. Mountain Goats - Dance Music
35. Yann Tiersen - La Valse d'Amelie
36. We Are Jeneric - Sir Charles the II
37. Eels - Bus Stop Boxer
38. Telegraph Melts - Septembrist
39. Edwin Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - Home
40. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Under the Hedge

On with the countdown!

#20 to 1

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My top 40 songs of the decade (with commentary)

Inspired by my friend Dave, who preceded me as music director at our college radio station in the 1980s and who just published a list of his top 300 songs of the decade (!), I assembled a more modest top 40.

These are songs, not artists (indeed, there are a few artists here for whom I only own one song), but I did decide not to repeat any artists.

My original thought was to do this as an old-fashioned mix tape (except on cd) - but with 20 recipients at 3 cds each that was going to be a lot of postage and plastic (I couldn't get it down to two cds - somewhere along the way I started liking a lot of 6 minute songs) . So then I thought podcast, but after a few hours I felt like I had less understanding of the concept than when I started. So here are two formats I was able to figure out: a single big audio file you can download or stream.

Songs 40 to 21:
download (about 75 MB)
stream

Check back in a few days for 20 to 1.

The Gazetteers

We've decided to release our new album, We Are Here, online, for free, two songs at a time, as if they were singles. Go to it already!

Henry the Eighth I Am!

At Busch Gardens in Tampa a few months ago, I noticed that Herman's Hermits were playing. More precisely, Herman's Hermits Starring Peter Noone, the sort of band name that screams of interminable lawsuits. But since Peter Noone had been the singer in the original band, I figured this should at least be an above-average version of Herman's Hermits.

No one in my extended family was interested, so I left them at the queue for the Rhino Rally ride. I was able to walk halfway across the park, catch the show, walk back, and rejoin the family about 3/4 of the way through the line.

I expected the show to be either maudlin and/or boring. In fact, it was quite good, despite the fact that they played few of their own hits, instead relying on others from bands similar to themselves. Even the ten-minute version of "Henry the Eighth" (which was their biggest hit, but actually a cover of a song from 1911 or so) was entertaining. I guess this proves again how even the most fabricated music from 1967 beats almost everything that has come since. Why this is, I'm not completely sure, since the 58-year old women in the audience have displayed a lifetime of bad taste ever since.

Anyway, the city of Albany just announced its free summer concert series and the top headliner is none other than Herman's Hermits Starring Peter Noone! (Granted, others would argue this distinction should go to Dennis DeYoung: The Music of Styx). This time I'm going to bring Keenan.

Recurring themes

Keenan told me that a kid was belittling him for not knowing who the Backstreet Boys were, or any other hip hop or rap groups. (The Backstreet Boys fit into neither of these categories and peaked when he was 2, so he gets major points for not even being able to come up with a proper example of what he is accused of not knowing).

Conveniently, I was able to point him to this song from my forthcoming album.

The Gazetteers

Over the weekend, the Gazetteers recorded their third album. Our previous release, Landlocked!, was issued by the Salt in Wound "collective". This one features "Trapped Inside a Skill Crane", once performed at John and Bernie's wedding.