It’s past bedtime (why did I stay up to watch the most boring finale of “Project Runway” in the history of the show?), but I started thinking of bands for the best-of-the-decade list while I was in the shower, and I’m afraid that if I don’t write them down, I’ll forget them when I make my actual list. So, not in numerical order:
- The Libertines, Up the Bracket
- Dolorean, Violence in the Snowy Fields
- The Model Rockets, Tell the Kids the Cops Are Here
I can’t say with absolute certainty that the latter two will make the list, but they’re strong contenders. (The Libertines will unquestionably be there.)
And then some more obvious choices came to mind, so I should capture them here just in case:
- Patty Griffin, Impossible Dream
- Robbie Fulks, Couples in Trouble
- Sam Phillips, Fan Dance
- Patty Loveless, Mountain Soul
- Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, 100 Days and 100 Nights (or maybe Naturally, or for that matter, Dap-Dippin’…can’t decide)
- Richard Thompson, The Old Kit Bag (this one isn’t a certainty, but I can’t really imagine leaving it out)
- John Doyle, Evening Comes Early (I was so happy when I checked the release date and found that this wonderful record was indeed released this decade)
- Reigning Sound, Time Bomb High School (I’m missing Reigning Sound at Maxwell’s even as I type this–couldn’t get the day off work tomorrow, and schlepping to Hoboken by myself on a school night just wasn’t going to happen. I have no one but myself to blame, but I’m still disappointed.)
Plus a few maybes:
- Wussy, Left for Dead
- Caitlin Cary, While You Weren’t Looking
- Sunny Sweeney, Heartbreaker’s Hall of Fame
If I add all of these to the six I’ve already put on the list, I’m only a little bit over 15, so I’m not doing too badly. Of course, there’s all the other records I’m forgetting…
*Is “scratch paper” a regionalism? Seems to me that I used to call it “scrap paper,” but then in high school it became “scratch paper,” maybe because everyone else said it that way, or maybe I picked it up somewhere else. (Sometimes I have trouble distinguishing between regionalisms, generational usage, and stuff-I-picked-up-somewhere-isms.) What do you call paper on which you make notes or work out your math problems or whatever?