Music stuff first:
So it’s a little less than three months from (!) the end of the ’00s, a time when all good obsessive list-makers start thinking about their best of the decade. I’ve already had a few people share their top 15 lists with me, and though I’m not sure why they did top 15s rather than top 10s (maybe 10 is too few for a whole decade?), I’m going to go with that number too. I already know what my favorite of the decade is (and my list will be my favorites, which may or may not be the ones I think are objectively the best), and I’m pretty sure I know what will be in my #2 and 3 slots, but after that, things get really, really tricky. So I’m going to try out a bunch of versions of the list here—that’s the main reason I was contemplating reviving the blog before the C25K thing actually pushed me to do so—before committing to anything like a final one.
Not tonight, though. This is just my official statement that I’m contemplating the contemplation of my list. Because so far, I’m seriously stuck on what #4 is going to be, and I can’t go any further with the list until I figure that out. Will it be “The Hardest Part” by Allison Moorer, which was my slam-dunk #1 for the first few years of the decade but which I don’t listen to much anymore, so that putting it at #4 seems more like a concession to its previous supremacy than to its actual current place in my heart? Is it Patty Griffin’s “Impossible Dream,” a record that I don’t love start to finish but which contains three of my favorite songs of the decade, including one (“Useless Desires”) that I count among my favorite songs of all time? Is it “Okemah and the Melody of Riot,” because I think there should be a Jay Farrar-related record in my list and I can’t include “The Slaughter Rule” because it’s a soundtrack, even though it might be my favorite Farrar record of the decade? Is it a Sam Phillips record, and if so, which one? Or wait—honestly, if I’m going by the records that have given me the most pleasure during this decade, it really has to be “Couples in Trouble,” even though I’ve lost some of my enthusiasm for Robbie Fulks in recent times. Okay, so that’s #4 nailed down; but you can see why I need to work this list out in blog form before I can even think about talking about it anywhere else.
So, the list so far, then:
1.The Clientele, “Strange Geometry” (2005). I’d be lying if I said any record released this decade had given me more pleasure than this one.
2. Dolly Varden, “The Dumbest Magnets” (2000). But if any record had given me more pleasure than #1, it would be this one. I have to admit, though, that I feel ever so slightly weird about putting it ahead of the artist represented in #3, because he’s pretty much been my artist of the decade, one of the few artists who…okay, I can’t think of any way to phrase this that won’t make certain people tease me, so let’s just move on to #3:
3. Scott Miller, “Thus Always to Tyrants” (2001). And if I decide not to be a stickler for precision, this spot will actually be occupied by an imaginary double record that includes “Thus Always” and “Are You With Me?”, but for now, I’ll stick to records that actually exist.
4. Robbie Fulks, “Couples in Trouble” (2001). This is one spot where the distinction between “best” and “favorite” needs to be reiterated, because I definitely don’t think this is Robbie’s best record. It’s not even his best record of the decade—”Georgia Hard” is, objectively, a much better record. But fuck objectivity; this is my list. And I love this record. Not every single second of it (hi there, “Brenda’s New Stepfather”), but most of it, and more of it, I think, than a lot of other Robbie fans do.
Gah. Stupid sieve-like brain. I wrote all of that, and then I watched some TV and took a shower, and as I was getting out of the shower I thought, “Oh, wait. The Delgados.” And now everything other than the Clientele record is up in the air, because I can’t even decide whether “Universal Audio” (and it will be that record, not “Hate” or “The Great Eastern”) is going to bump Dolly Varden and Scott Miller, or just Scott Miller, or neither. I’m thinking it’s going to be at #3, but it might sneak up to #2, I don’t know. How am I supposed to decide? It’s like asking me which of my cats I love more.
Okay, that’s the list thus far. I’m thinking Patty Griffin is going to be at #5, but I’ve made enough decisions for one night. And now, on to the boring C25K stuff:
Day 2 is done and dusted. Yay.
Probably because this is all still new (and because I was having a crappy day at work…a crappy week at work), I looked forward to it all day. I’d been a little apprehensive that it was going to be harder than day 1, but it wasn’t; if anything, it was a little easier. I mean, it wasn’t easy, but there were intervals where I wanted to jog faster and/or longer and felt capable of doing so. I didn’t, because the program stresses that the big mistake beginning joggers/runners make is to go too fast too quickly, and I want to be careful of my tendency with any exercise program to push too hard at first and then burn out really fast. (Not to mention that I want to be nice to my knees). But I feel good for having done it, and I feel optimistic about being able to move on to week 2 next week.
But first, on to day 3! I’m not sure if I’ll do that tomorrow night or wait till Sunday (Saturday would be best, but I know myself well enough to know that exercise + Saturday = not going to happen), but I’d like to press on and do it tomorrow night. I just need to make sure to get going shortly after I get home; otherwise, the urge for a Friday night nap will win out over good intentions.
I’m still working on my rankings, because that’s more important than doing the thing I’m being paid for, but here’s the (I think) final 15:
The Dirtbombs, ULTRAGLIDE IN BLACK
The Frames, FOR THE BIRDS
Grand Champeen, DIAL “T” FOR THIS
Guided By Voices, UNIVERSAL TRUTHS AND CYCLES
The Long Winters, WHEN I PRETEND TO FALL
Lou Ford, ALAN FREED’S RADIO
Morphine, THE NIGHT
Neko Case And Her Boyfriends, FURNACE ROOM LULLABY
Old 97′s, SATELLITE RIDES
Pernice Brothers, THE WORLD WON’T END
Ryan Adams, HEARTBREAKER
Scott Miller And The Commonwealth, THUS ALWAYS TO TYRANTS
Slobberbone, EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT WAS RIGHT WAS WRONG TODAY
The White Stripes, DE STIJL
The Black Keys, THICKFREAKNESS
Crap. I forgot about Grant-Lee Phillips’ LADIES LOVE ORACLE. Figures.
And as you wrote before the strikethrough edit about “Couples In Trouble”, this is my list, and it may not be the best of an artist’s work, but I have intense and personal relationships with all of those records.
See, this is where my tendency to be confused about what happened when really becomes a problem, ’cause I’m looking at your list and thinking, “Oh yeah, De Stijl, great record, but didn’t that come out in the ’90s?” And of course it didn’t.
You’re wise to do an unordered list. I think I’m committed to a top 5, but after that, it may be an undifferentiated mass of about 20 records, all tied for 6th place.
I think “Furnace Room Lullaby” is the oldest eligible album on my list, because it came out February 22, 2000, but yeah, “De Stijl” made it, too, even though I thought the same thing.
Based on how much I’ve listened to it and how well it fits me, the Lou Ford record would be an easy #1, but the rest of them are just too hard to rank. Morphine would be up there, as would the Old 97′s and Scott Miller. Ranking is silly when everything is good.
But wait, is it cheating for you to include Morphine, given that Mark Sandman wasn’t alive when the decade began? Okay, maybe not.
And yeah, now I’m thinking that maybe it’s going to be a top 1 and then an undifferentiated clump, because trying to choose between Thus Always and Universal Audio is making my head hurt. And what about the Libertines?! Don’t they belong in my top 5? Best band created in the 2000s? Maybe? And why am I ending all these sentences with a question mark?
It’s all too much. I wish I didn’t have to do a list. Of course, I don’t have to do a list, not in any objective sense of “have to.” But it’s my nature, as the scorpion said to the frog.
I don’t think it’s cheating per se, because that particular record was mostly finished before Mark died and was created in or around this decade, but it’s still original, never-before-released music. If I didn’t restrict myself to that criterion, my list would be nothing but reissues and Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall and John Coltrane Live At The Half Note.
Yeah, I was just nitpicking for the sake of it, because I’ve been doing the same thing with my own list. For example, is it wrong/dishonest to restrict myself to one album per artist if more than one of the artist’s albums ranks among my faves of the decade? I just don’t know.