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Personals
I spent the first few months of 2004 recovering from a car accident that nearly ended my life. I had never really thought about how important a part of my life music was. While I was housebound, I reacquainted myself with a lot of records I had forgotten, and made friends with some new ones. We all have soundtracks to our lives, the songs that play in our heads as we walk to work, ride the subway, do our boring day jobs, kiss our first boy. I'll never forget the song that was playing on my iPod when I was hit by that car. It was the Clash's "Pressure Drop." I took me over eight months to be able to listen to it again. Some of the records on my top 10 helped me through many hours of painful and arduous physical therapy. Some were made by people I am friends with. Some just made me happy when I was blue. Some just are. They became part of my soundtrack, and I hope they stay there for a long time. I'm glad I'm still around to have a relationship with music, since there are plenty of people who didn't survive 2004 who will have a much bigger impact than I ever will. Most of them aren't famous, or even musicians. I bet they all hand a soundtrack too. Jodi Shapiro
I thank Franz Ferdinand from the bottom of my heart for writing a song that I can love with my name in the title. Mike Cimicata
Age: 42
Dave Segal
My age, gender, race, nationality, and sexual orientation are all very uncool. Please stop pretending that you care about them. J.R. Taylor
Straight white American male, 27, married, really work as a trainer at Borders bookstore and organist/choir director at a Lutheran church. Josh Langhoff
I'm a 26-year-old Caucasian who'd love it if other homo critics would email me so we can compare notes. As a fag, I felt a helluva lot lonelier writing about music in 2004 than past years. Jimmy Draper
I just turned 35 years old. The baby arrives in early March. We have a house now. Domesticity is fun. I live in a purple state, and so do you. Douglas Wolk
Married, five kids.
Kandia Crazy Horse
Female
Stacy Meyn
52
Ron Wynn
Age: mid-twenties
Christian Hoard
Age: 45.
Dan Aloi
I turned 29 this year. It was the worst year of my life. Lost my job, got dumped, moved back home, watched my father die. I lived through a Merle Haggard nightmare. Made my gig as a rock critic seem pointless for a while. I didn't even listen to music for most of four months. But then I regenerated. Listened to a lot of classic rock. Listened to an old Cake record and a Ravi Shankar compilation. I listened to shit I thought was great before I knew what good music was supposed to resemble, like second-rate Southern rock. I'm now rebuilding my editorial self. I've wanted to be a star writer my whole life. After the experience of 2004, I see myself now as an everyday guy with the talent to shove my verbal point in your face. I'm not hot shit anymore. Chris O'Connor
26-yr-old sorta you know serious student of ethnomusicology (anthro of music, yes they pay me to do this) at Columbia where I study disco-polo, Czech rock, mass pop, upwardly mobile hiphop, disdainful youth subcultural formations, and the self-fulfilling stardom of art school dropouts. Daphne Carr
Studying history, mainly, and don't let any stuck-up musicology professor ever tell you that "some people think they can be academics just because they're critics" because some people think that just cause they're academics they know how to write. Sterling Clover
Often times lately, I feel like I'm living in a dream—if only due to the surreality of dwelling in Green County, Mizzou, saturated with all sorts of hillbillies claiming native blood and yet mere miles from a major Klan headquarters, and its close proximity to Branson, where rhinestone cornpone showbiz reigns supreme-Queen Dolly Parton leading the charge with Dixie Stampede, even as she allegedly kowtows to the dread Simpsonia Regency by professing to need to lip-synch through her elaborate productions because she can no longer rise to the demands of live performance. Kandia Crazy Horse
I moved back to Nashville in late 2003 after having been to Memphis, out west, and back east for 15 years, and I brought with me a prejudice against modern country music—too close to home, too reactionary, not enough of the rhythm I'd come to prize down in the Bluff City. Then I switched my car radio to WSM-AM, the venerable Nashville country station, and began thinking about what I was hearing, which sure as hell wasn't all old stuff, and which I found myself enjoying in spite of myself. For better or worse, country music distills something profound about this country that no other form does right now. I'm comfortable not being comfortable with it, and I'm going to keep on preferring my Red Hook ESB to Budweiser, thank you. However, this still doesn't mean I prefer Jack White's Loretta Lynn to Loretta's Loretta, and I'm looking forward to listening to more Connie Smith and Kitty Wells next year. Maybe it's time to switch from Maker's Mark to George Dickel? Edd Hurt
46-year-old recovering daily pop critic living free in Park Slope, the Land of Soy Milk and Honey, where I've somehow missed most of the year's blog-approved musical phenomena. At least now I know what to tell people to get me for my birthday. Still, if I'm honest about what I spent the most time listening to, it's there in boldface: Jazz Geek, with a side of Country Ham. Steve Dollar
It's impossible to get promotional copies if you're tough with people and aren't installed as a staffer with a physical address someone wishes to shovel product into. I commend those franklins who are properly obliging so as not to be taken off lists or thought ill of by someone better. George Smith
A word to music writers thinking of quitting: Once you've had freebie, you can't go back—don't even try. You'll wind up paying $20 per CD to some teenage record store clerk who thinks studded belts from Mervyn's are a political statement. Chris Baldwin
I heard fewer of the buzz albums this year than I've done in past years. Promos just don't pass around the way they used to do, and money is tighter than it once was. At Vintage Vinyl, we have year-end lists from most of the staff. Browsing through them, I realized that I'm surrounded by people who are passionate about stuff I don't even recognize as having existed. Steve Pick
Since the debate surrounding music and technology in 2004 was as important—if not more important—than the music itself, I thought I'd break down my ballot in terms of the medium in which I first heard each album or song.
So piracy wins, narrowly defeating industry schmoozing. But wait-the picture becomes a bit blurrier when I factor in the second time I heard everything. I bought two of the illegally downloaded albums (Arcade Fire and Joanna Newsom) and the Streets, Modest Mouse, and the Killers eventually came in the mail. I ended up illegally downloading Snoop Dogg, Ciara, Eamon, and Josh Turner, and everything not released by a major label was eventually uploaded onto SLSK for others to enjoy. God bless SLSK. And Fluxblog and Stereogum and Cocaine Blunts and Douglas Wolk and all the other MP3 bloggs out there, not to mention Pitchfork, Tiny Mix Tapes, Stylus, and Pop Matters. In 2004, I don't think I encountered one new artist or band in a print magazine or newspaper that I hadn't already been exposed to online. (The major exception being the Voice: who the fuck else would have covered Big & Rich and Bathtub Shitter???) Amy Phillips
By day, I am a receptionist at a record store on the corner of Stupid and Crazy (i.e. social worker, psychiatrist, babysitter, and concierge). By night, I book bands at stinky rock clubs, as one half of the no-profit booking agency. I also dress up and act like a freak with a drag/improv group, portraying bimbos, psychos, teenage Russian lesbians, Beavis and Butthead-obsessed mental patients, and obscene old ladies. Sara Sherr
I got my first real job ever this year, and I have to say that in the strict work-tasks sense, it's much easier than writing. With writing, you're always, like, wracking your brain for things to say. And listening sessions in midtown-don't get me started on listening sessions in midtown. But with the real job, you just have to show up, do shit until a certain hour, then go home. Simple. If I weren't still writing, I'd say my brain would probably atrophy completely in one-two months, and I'd be a happy human being who wouldn't have to force total mind eradication with bong hits and Grey Goose every night. In 2005, I hope to make more money by churning out a few extra reviews. Nick Catucci
How'd I rig this gig anyway, people always want to know. The implication, of course, is that I only wish I had the nerve to let these people take a look at my W2s. But ultimately, I care too much about the illusion and fantasy (other people's and my own) this gig affords me: a modest dash of rock-crit glamour and the modicum of local celebrity that comes with it. Besides the work, it's the best part of the job. Jonathan Perry
It was hard not to blast The Revolution Starts . . . Now in a somewhat defiant (and let's face it, juvenile) manner at Long Island stoplights. I especially loved the looks I got on Rt. 106 from Hummer drivers who never lost their "Go Home Hillary" bumper stickers. Of course, by November 3, I was blaring American Idiot at those same stoplights. Jim Tremayne
I didn't pick Green Day's American Idiot—it's too long, too reliant on audience agreement at the expense of actual songcraft, too much like my summer of skipped dinners to attend Kerry campaign meetings as recording secretary, evenings typing minutes trying to make sense of complicated but fascinating economic and energy issues. I would have far preferred a Green Day record with a song about impeaching Bush called "Good Riddance, Hope You Had the Time of Your Life" and a very sarcastic "Welcome to Paradise." To all my fellow critics—you guys and girls—a vote for American Idiot is not another vote for Kerry so you don't have to feel obligated to love the CD. Jill Blardinelli
There was music out there with an acutely anti-gay message this year, sure, but none of them got the level of reaction from me that Xiu Xiu's "Support Our Troops Oh! (Godspell Oh!)" did, with its sneering at a soldier that just killed an Iraqi girl-the blind moral certitude of Dubya and his handlers meets its funhouse mirror obverse, shakes hands, goes for a drink together. It made the fabulous muscles in my hands clench up into the shape that normally comes about when people strangle babies. Only the lead guy's GAY (Dennis Cooper likes 'em, the pervert), which means I'm supposed to have feelings of solidarity with him-you know, us against the jocks of the world! OR SOMETHING. Michael Daddino
In December 2001, I met this little brat in my neighborhood named Jason Sellards. Then a go-go boy, he not only fancied himself a music journalist but a bandleader too. He kept telling me to come see his band, called the Scissor Sisters—what a dumb-ass name!—at shitholes like Luxx and Cinema Classics. Jason described their sound as Sylvester meets early Wham!, which only made me think, "Um, as opposed to later Wham!?" I stayed home. He became Jake Shears. Flash forward to December 2004, at the corner of Hudson and Christopher: I'm handing $70 to a single mom from Jersey that I've met on Craig's List. She's handing me two tickets to the Scissor Sisters show at the Manhattan Center. I deserved it. Smith Galtney
Several years ago, I came up with the idea of "Heaven's Jukebox," a collection of songs that were never recorded but should've been and, as such, will play on the jukebox of your favorite bar in heaven. Things like Frank Sinatra Sings Tom Waits, all the Led Zeppelin albums as is except vocalized by Janis Joplin, the Elton John tribute featuring alternative bands of the 80s (standout tracks include the Pixies' "Rocket Man" and the Smiths' "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"), the records Florence Ballard cut at Stax after leaving the Supremes. But this year reminded us again of the quality of entertainment onstage in the lounge-no cover, no minimum-especially now that Ray Charles has joined the house band. Imagine Ray and Johnny Cash doing a medley of "Ring of Fire" and "Drown in My Own Tears," before Patsy Cline steps up for Marvin and Tammi's "Your Precious Love." Down the street, Robert Quine and Dimebag Darrell are taking turns as the fourth Ramone. But don't look for Rick James: he's playing Hell's disco, doing "Give It to Me" backed by a bevy of Manson family dancing girls on a crack rock the size of a 747. Lissa Townsend Rodgers
As if Ronald Reagan needed to do one last horrible thing while dying, he kicked off the same week as Robert Quine. Not that enough folks knew who Quine was, the terrible tonic for so much of the best music of the last 30 years, the skid-marked guitar heart of so many waves of fear. A sad year made yet sadder, and we don't even have one of his jolts of a solo to help us make sense of it. George Yatchisin
Sorry Elliot, no rest for the transcendent. A nation doffs its black stocking cap in numb tribute. As a "goodbye cruel world" statement this one's a frozen hammer to the heart. "A fond farewell to a friend who couldn't get things right." Brrrr. John Chandler
I'm sad Elliot is dead, and angry that a lot of guff went into pretending he was clean. C'mon, you saw him just like I did. But one of the byproducts of his demise was that they released those songs undertweaked and messy. The writing was hit and miss and miss and miss, and that tells me what I already knew about long-term dope effects. But that shit sounded better than any of his major label releases, sounded right for the writing. There are probably 80 artists out there who should seriously consider dying 4/5th of the way through making their records, just for the aesthetic gains-after the vocals are laid down, but before Chris Walken parades into the studio demanding more cowbell. Joshua Clover
Kurt Cobain loved Black Flag. With the Lights Out shines a light on KC's sunshine band in a way that makes the roaches scatter in your kitchen when you walk in after hours looking for a spot of Kool-Aid. The roaches run because they want privacy, and the private moments in this box are damn precious (but not too precious like Kurt's journals . . . I flipped through a few pages and said let my man live and put the thing back down. Shouldn't be reading people's journals anyways, people.) Sacha Jenkins
Courtney, give me a call when you're ready to follow Kurt's path up to the pearly gates. I'll supply the bullets. Fred Mills
Listening to Nashville supergroup the Notorious Cherry Bombs' single "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night (That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long)," it struck me what the rest of 2004 was missing: self-deprecation. It was once Eminem's greatest asset, but Encore was all macho-conscious mea culpas and sputtering social socio-political invective. Likewise, country-rock pranksters the Drive-By Truckers delivered their soberest, most leaden album to date. Heck, even sacred cow slayer Kanye West proved he couldn't really take a joke. It seemed like the only artists still carrying bullshit detectors were women like Courtney Love and Nellie McKay, who were alternately marginalized and ridiculed for their trouble. Josh Love
Toby Keith's "Whiskey Girl" was running neck and neck with Miss B.'s "Bottle Action" for having the more positive message, "I don't argue, I just hit that bitch with a bottle" being more genuinely proud of self and of social group than is the falsely self-affirming "She's my whiskey girl; I like 'em rough." Hey, I can like 'em rough too, given that I have "CODEPENDENT" tattooed across my forehead in bold letters. My problem is that the country genre drenches us in its pride too damn much and too damn often, its self-awareness on dim. Frank Kogan
"My Apartment" is perhaps Ben Kweller's best love song. It's an ode not to a gal, but to his tiny home "away from the darkness outside." It's a glorious song about making do, as best you can, in a city where the sidewalks know your face. It's a happy reminder that as ruthless as things can be in New York, $4 can still buy you a subway pass (well, for now) that takes you anywhere in the city and then back to your bed. Andy Wang
That Death From Above 1979 are on Vice is enough to give one the preemptive irks. You're A Woman, I'm A Machine. Yeah, right. And look at that minimalist album cover. Haircuts. But, of course, the record just wraps around your lizard brain and fuckin' rocks out. Lissa Townsend Rodgers
Sonic Liberation Front is a pretentious name for a group, but it may just be overly literal. Kevin Diehl's idea is actually quite simple: spice up Afro-Cuban (lukumi) folk riddims with screeching free jazz. It's essentially a gimmick, but it's a great one. This is the only record all year I've played as many as three times since I wrote about it-the only one I pull out for guests, who generally love the beats but aren't so sure about the sax. I find it goes down like good bourbon. Tom Hull
Babasonicos' Infame (EMI Latin): This Argentine sextet had already demonstrated it was one of Latin rock's most visionary outfits with 2001's Jessico. Few, however, could have expected a follow-up as gorgeous and subversive as this one—a darkly humorous cross between the glam-rock of Roxy Music and the greasy melodrama of retro Latin popstars such as Sandro and Jose Jose. A defining moment in the history of the rock en espanol movement. Ernesto Lechner
Not too surprising to read that Arthur Russell took his music everywhere, walking through the city with headphones on, seeing how his latest mixes sounded in different (passing) scenes. He's audibly the man from the plains, the wide-open spaces, keening and rolling his oatey notes like the Midwest-rooted Wilson brothers. Don't wanna be fenced in, but walk long enough and you're sweeping through the city, through the veil of illusion and allusion, with your "classical" nice-boy cello, and your get down/ambitious/romantic, yet somehow stoical dance music that's also being messed with even as it comes into existence. Don Allred
Erlend Øye's DJ Kicks is one of the most astounding mix albums I've ever heard, largely for what I'm sure some call his gimmick: he sings over many of the instrumental tracks he spins. And he's not just singing anything, he's singing classics like "Always on My Mind" and "Venus" atop German technoid wonders. Thomas Inskeep
I spent the bulk of my listening time in 2004 hunkered down with big chunks of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony slowed to a crawl. I have to think it made Brian Eno, and every haplessly derivative ambience auteur that floated up in his wake, squirm to discover that every great notion they'd ever had musically was already embedded in a choral symphony written more than a hundred years before their births-it was just played too darn fast. Chuck Berry was righter than he ever knew! Ira Robbins
J Neo Marvin & the Content Providers: Freedom Fried: Yes, I put my own work first here. I am bound to tell my own truth, and for me, this was the album of the year. I would have liked it if it weren't so close to me, too. Freedom Fried incorporated all the things that obsessed me this year: the topical folk song tradition, late 70s punk, Brian Wilson-style layered harmonies, dub, and above all, the criminal cartel that have run rampant with their imaginary mandate and portrayed themselves as the real America. J Neo Marvin
Personals Part II: The only best part of the job is being reminded every once in a while that, buried deep in the suburbs, in neighborhood enclaves and tiny burgs, there are folks who care fiercely about their music. Like John Fisher from West Roxbury, a reader who emailed to thank me one morning for my mere one-line mention of Hendrix disciple Robin Trower in a column I had written about a local hard rock outfit playing some beer and rib joint nearby. Trower, John from Roxbury opined, had been criminally forgotten in the guitar-god pantheon, despite making the monumental "Bridge of Sights" and "Victims of Fury" ("which I sometimes even like better!"-his quote and exclamation point). He then filled me in on what became of Trower's early 70s band; who had fallen by the wayside and who was living in obscurity. John signed off with a "thanx (sic) for keeping his name alive" and assured me that he wasn't just "some old fart" living in the past and, in fact, liked Husker Dü, Mercury Rev, and the Sea and Cake. I've kept that email because, as much as anything I've seen or heard, it's pure rock and roll. Jonathan Perry
Through a series of unlikely events, one night in 1982 I found myself backstage at a Flock Of Seagulls concert smoking hash and drinking Russian vodka with Liverpool's finest until we'd toked/drank ourselves silly. To entertain the lads I "talked Southern," my finest Gomer Pyle accent rendering them red-faced and on the dressing room floor clutching their sides. But I haven't given much thought to my old friends Frank Maudsley, Mike Score, Ali Score and Paul Reynolds—that's the Seagulls to you, pal—in the last 22 years. Nice chaps, all, but their musical well ran dry rather swiftly. I knew they'd split up in the mid 80s after the fourth album flopped and a huge falling out between the Score brothers, and that sometime later Mike Score reformed the band using hired ringers. Still, I recently found myself feeling mildly curious when I learned original foursome would be featured on the new VH1 series Bands Reunited. Turns out this was no celebration of the music. It wasn't even a recreation, like a covers band or a tribute act. It was an exhumation, and a ghoulishly cruel one, given the condition of the corpse. Maudsley and Ali Score are both bald and in dire need of dental attention. The once-boyish Reynolds now resembles a mousy, shell-shocked accountant (hey, that's what a crack-up will do to ya). And Mike Score, well . . . ill-groomed, hair pulled back into a bikerish ponytail and tubbier than a sack of spuds, he could pass for a Grateful Dead roadie. His voice is shot, too. With our collective memory of 80s groups like FOS, the Alarm and Kajagoogoo generally tethered as much to the MTV-fueled visual images of yore-silly attire, aerodynamic hairdos, etc.-as to the actual tunes, viewing one of those bands now isn't a particularly nostalgic experience. I found myself cringing, almost embarrassed for the guys. Here's hoping the lads had some hash and vodka to blot out the entire experience. Here's also hoping that someone will find a way to rid the airwaves of VH1, a once-engaging but now genuinely odious channel whose depths-plunging reached a new low with the Bands Reunited series. Fred Mills
I was in a swank Vegas hotel at 4am, drunk on $12 cocktails, full of four-star steak frites and feeling the rush of having just witnessed Dolly Parton at Caesars Palace from an eighth-row seat. Sitting with one of my best friends, drinking tiny bottles of Jack Daniel's, watching the video for Snow Patrol's stunning "Run" and all the ills of the world, if not forgotten, were temporarily misplaced. Then Velvet Revolver came and reminded us. It wasn't the parade of hacks executing a barrage of cock-rock clichés that bothered me. If I couldn't take that, I wouldn't be doing this. But there was foolish frontman Scott Weiland taking it even further, as he reeled around a rock club in full poseur drag, worshipped by sycophants, doing up his dope and O.D.-ing in the bathroom as his model girlfriend wept on the floor beside him. Oh, the piss-poor imitation of Bauhaus-era Peter Murphy doing "Ziggy Stardust" in Slither was icky enough, but now MTV facilitates this complete fucking offense to taste on every level, from the trivialization and exploitation of death to ugly-ass glam-rock outfits. And then it all came rushing back: George Bush is still president, we're still at war with Iraq, the economy continues tanking, they're dumping even more toxic waste in our state, my boyfriend has gone AWOL yet again and I've had two cats die on me in less than six months. Damn, why couldn't this Weiland asshole have died instead of Layne Bailey? Lissa Townsend Rodgers
Bizarrely (or maybe not) the old video that Montgomery Gentry's "You Do Your Thing" most brings to mine is Laibach's immortal quasi-fascist (though allegedly anti-fascist) "Life Is Life"—especially when Montgomery is standing there singing, with the stars and stripes and Constitution and purple mountain's majesty behind him, just like the alps and elks behind Laibach's brown shirts. The thing gives me chills, and if any music will remind me 20 years from now how fucked up life got in 2004, the MG video will. It totally gets the sickness dead on, from its baloney about liberal elitist hypocrites dining on venison in those fancy restaurants while they look down their snooty urban noses at two redneck buddies and kids returning from the hunting trip on down. Chuck Eddy
One problem is that even trying to fix various problems is likely to, at least in the short term, make them worse. And it's hard not to get blamed for that. A big case is fairly simple: the US is able to run consistent long-term trade deficits, because the world likes dollars, and capitalists around the world find it attractive to reinvest those dollars mostly in the US, mostly because the US is regarded as a safe and lucrative place for capitalist investment. Any effort we make to change tax and regulatory policy will reduce the capital inflows that make up for the trade deficits. If that happens US trade preferences will suffer, and credit status (the US is the world's largest debtor nation) may get hit even worse. These cycles are so deeply embedded that they would crash the US economy. On the other hand surrendering control over public policy to the capitalists causes all sorts of other problems, including long-term impoverishment that will eventually lead to violence and rampant criminality. In the long term those are, I think, bigger problems, but how do you campaign on a program of short-term pain? Tom Hull
Can I vote for ringtones yet? Joshua Clover
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