ho'seven

Looking down at a bookstore the other day, I saw a button that said a date, and under it read "The last day of of George Bush".
Thinking for a second, I realized "fuck, I hate all those people that wore their politics on their sleeves".
Meaning it in a very literal sense. Then a second passed, and my cynical side quited down.
This year is leaving in a few days, and for the first time I might actually be going into a new set of numbers on the old Gregorian.
As the pin back claimed, W. will be out almost a year from now. The way things look, maybe, MAYBE people might be paying attention, and looking to fix things.
Oh, and the 2nd Ave. Deli opened back up.
Of course closing the year with a good ol' political assassination is a bit unsettling.
HOWEVER.
In light of that shitty news, 2008, I welcome you with open arms.
Oh, and the music that came out this year, pretty, pretty good.

So. My list. In no particular order. A few things I really loved this year.

Grinderman
Nick Cave, and some Bad Seeds put out an album that makes you wonder "what if The Birthday Party had never broken up?"
Ah, what a wonderful, wicked world it is to think such thoughts.
Alas! Not on the warmest of spring days did a friend begin to play a track of something I thought I knew.
"Ive got to get up to get down to start all over again. Head on down to the basement and shout KICK THOSE WHITE MICE AND BLACK DOGS OUT, KICK THOSE WHITE MICE AND BABOONS OUT, KICK THOSE BABOONS AND MOTHERFUCKERS OUT and....GET IT ON..."
Huh? I knew not of this.
No Pussy Blues? This song I knew nothing of either. These are men of Australia. The Scientists influence leaks all over this double shot of the Bad Seeds love.
Oh fuck-fuck-fuckity fuckwad! "Record of the year! Record of the year!"
I ran all over Bleeker Street screaming it.
Months later it stood. Record of the year. What the hell? Who would have thunk it?

Thurston Moore
I was only 15 or so when Sir Thurston put out his first solo album Psychic Hearts. A classic piece of scuzzy rock that FINALLY got re-issued a year or so ago.

10+ years later, Mr. guywhotaughtmeeverythingaboutmusic puts out another solo piece called Trees Outside the Academy.
A piece of brilliance, and beauty. Mr. Moore does some Sonic Youth doing Fahey stuff on this one, and out pops this all glowing and pretty.
Oh, and check out the personal on this album. Amazing.


Panda Bear
I thought the Animal Collective guys had run out of tricks. I figured it to be all over. Free show at South Street Sea Port, was just drunken good times and a chance for me to be a biiter, jaded motherfucker the way mama nature intended me to be, outside, and not paying.
Sitting next to a 16 year old smoking a joint, I festered in my shallow dislike of youth.
"How old are you kid? Should you be smoking that?"
He took a hit. Exhaling he replied "should anybody be smoking this?"
As smoke billowed out of his mouth, he began to laugh.
He asked me what my problem was. I told him to give me a hit of that joint and I'd tell him.
After fifteen minutes of rambling on about anything but what had bothered me, my ears picked up on the sounds of Animal Collective in the distance.
I looked at my junior. Everything could have been worse, but that is what drugs are for?
"What do you think of this band?"
The pot had weakened my shell. I remembered back to Sung Tongs and the Prospect Hummer EP. Classics.
The kid rolled another joint, and didn't look at me.
"Animal Collective? Oh, I like them. Panda Bears solo album that came out is better."
Already a few months old, Person Pitch was buried among a whole bunch of other stuff I wanted to listen to, but had no time for.
The next day, alone on a Bushwick rooftop, continuing my stoned summer, I blasted the CDR I had gotten from a friend in the "industry" (whatever one that is, I don't know) and remembered what blew me away about Panda Bear and his friends once a long time ago.
There is one song, Bros. if you know this album, you know the song.
It's maybe one of the greatest things ever.
Like the 13th Floor Elevators Slide Machine as done by a girl group with a male lead singer.
Magic? Fucking MAGIK!!!
What a beautiful life it is!


LCD Soundsystem
James Murphy you bastard!!! Why do I want to hate you so bad?
Why do you put out such great music? New York I love you, but you're bringing me down and North American Scum are instant classics.
It's sick how good you are at this.
Whore.

Okkervil River
Am/was I bothered when I looked at the wikipedia article that called the band "an emo rock band from Austin Texas?"
Nope. I'm a man. I can take that.
Why? Well, because I'm getting older, and those little tags mean little to me.
Also, Will Sheff is a songwriting genius. Every song an anthem for me leaving the city I love, coming weeks before my departure.
I don't know, but John Allyn Smith Sails being about John Berryman, and the Sloop John B. re-doing towards the song, is maybe the greatest piece of poetry I have heard in years.
I get chills. Serious, real chills from it.
Hands down, the song of the year.


Marissa Nadler
This year I put on a festival. Its a huge source of pride, and I loved every second of it.
Every stressful second.
Marissa Nadler was highlight number one. She is a woman of beauty I can't sum up in words, and won't try.
I was high on pot brownies listening to her cover Famous Blue Raincoat in a church basement and realized how important this moment was, and how amazing the artist covering the classic is.


Black Lips
A few years back, during the "garage revival" it never would have dawned on me after watching this band incite a mini-riot inside a club in Miami that one day in the future they would put out an album like this on Vice records.
Quite possibly the most vital band on the planet?


Angels of Light
So, Thurston Moore and Nick Cave, children of the noisy early 80's put out amazing albums, why should Michael Gira, once of Swans sit by and not do the same?
He puts out what I will say is easily the best under his newer moniker, Angels of Light.
Black River Song opens the record and has Mr. Gira playing the menacing crooner he has grown up to be, with haunting back up vocals, it leads off to a dark rainbow of music.
In a statement that came with the record, Mr. Gira stated that he is packing up his home in New York and setting up shop in a more secluded area somewhere else.
If I am hearing right, the song The Man we left Behind, might be his goodbye letter?
Of course this is Gira we are talking about...

Uhhh...

There is more, but I don't want to type. Mostly Diamond Days. What an experience. I was blown away to be able to take part in such a large event.
Plastic Crimewave, Tournament, Titan, Golden Triangle, all fucking rad.
M.I.A. is as good as everybody says. Sitting outside McCaren Pool and hearing Cat Power as my friends and I ate at Enids in Brooklyn was magic.
Missed The Clean re-union, but oh well.
The EP by Grizzly Bear, Friends is stunning. The CSS remix I could have done without. Dragons of Zynth, Yacht, No Age, Blues Control, VietNam, Liars, White Rainbow, Oakley Hall, Deerhunter, Devendra, 1990s, Lightning Dust, Beirut, Clorox Girls, ugh ugh. So Many bands and records. Michael Yonkers was in Vice magazine?
Cold Chicago winter is fun. Arthur Magazine returns. No Country For Old Men was amazing, and I loved Grindhouse. Fuck the haters.
The Source, about Father Yod and his crew is rad. Oh, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union was my book of the year.
2007. sweet. So much writing.