dispatch from cape cod

Ah, so glad to have a mindless activity with which to put off finding a job… not that this is mindless; it's just that I can do it while simultaneously watching the home run derby, which is lovely.

I'm trying to toe the line here between my personal picks and influential/mass-appeal albums. These are all albums I love, and I also think everyone should have to listen to before they can graduate from high school.

Here are my picks:

NaS- Illmatic
Paul Simon- Graceland
Weezer- Blue Album
Nirvana- Nevermind
Pearl Jam- Ten
Tribe- Low End Theory
Wu-Tang Clan—Enter the Wu-Tang—36 Chambers
Beastie Boys—Licensed to Ill
Outkast—Southernplayalisticadillakfunkymuzik
RJD2—Deadringer
The Joshua Tree—U2
Bjork—Post
Lauryn Hill—The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
50 Cent—The Massacre
Green Day—Dookie
NIN—The Downward Spiral
Nick of Time—Bonnie Raitt
Madonna—Like a Prayer
Fiona Apple- Tidal
Janet Jackson—Rhythm Nation 1814
TLC- CrazySexyCool
DMB—Under the Table and Dreaming
Coldplay—Parachutes

And, of course, Jeremy Smith's the S.S. Calorie. I listen to it every night and touch myself. Still.

Some notes:

1.) I know 50's Massacre is very new. But I can't get enough of it. Dude's a beat master, very much Dre's most eligible successor. So he's a complete thug with little to offer along the lines of poetry, but straight hip-hop isn't really about the poetry. It's about how many times you've been shot.

2.) I will refrain from use of the term "bone guzzling cum dumpsters." As tempted as I am.

3.) Aden, if you plan on attending Thanksgiving dinner at the Ramey Household (yes, we capitalize), you'll need to bring three lambs for sacrifice and grow a mustache. I know what dorm my sister's been assigned to, and I'll tell you its name for a hundred grand. And then I'll lie to you. And your choice of Tigerlily for this list clearly proves your gayness, which I don't think my family will appreciate. We don't breed with your kind.

J Ramey

Sharin' in the groove

I'm not sure I understand what this list is. In Mikey's original posting, this is what he said:

"I'm not saying these 20 are the best or the most influential or that they speak to a movement or some shit. I'm just saying that when I put them in my CD player they sound the nicest, in one way or another."

If that is what the list is about, then how can you argue? These are personal selections. I enjoyed Null's smack talk, but I think he missed Mikey's point, which was: here's some good music that you people might enjoy. Then it seemed as though Mikey forgot his orignial point by replying to Null's list and defending his own.

Anyways, I'm gonna write down some albums that I love. That means that when I hear the first few notes of the first song, I smile because it sounds so fucking good to my ears. Maybe it's the memories involved, or the thoughts and concepts that the music brings to my head, or the way the beat makes me want to shake my groove thang. I can't describe what I love about music via the written word. This is just music that I love.

Dexter Gordon-GO
Miles Davis- Kind of Blue
Phish-A Live One, disc one
Phink Floyd-Division Bell
Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Donovan Frankenrieter-Donovan Frankenrieter
Jack Johnson-On and On
Counting Crows-August & Everything After
Dire Straits-Brothers In Arms
Sublime-Sublime
Railroad Earth-The Good Life
The Band-Music From Big Pink
Cream-Disraeli Gears
Beatles-Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Joshua Redman-Wish
G. Love & Special Sauce-Electric Mile
David Bowie-Ziggy Stardust
Steve Miller-Greatest Hits, 1974-1978
CCR-Chronicles One
Dave Mattews-Under the Table
The Who-Tommy
Led Zeppelin- I
Little Feat-Waiting for Columbus
Paul Simon-Graceland
Paul Simon-Negotaitions and Love Songs
Without a Fridge-Without a Fridge
The Company CD
John Coltrane-Blue Train
Two burned discs of Okie that Paul made for the last &Pub party where I came out of the bathroom after smoking weed for half an hour to see 30 Mexicans dancing in the middle room, with the stereo playing Los Extermadoras in the room next to them.
Los Extermadoras-Los Extermadoras
Warren Zevon-Excitable Boy
Bad Company-10 from 6
Dave's Big Deluxe-Songs from the Cradenza
Strig Cheese Incident-String Cheese Incident
Ray Charles- Greatest Hits 1 & 2
Ween-Chocolate and Cheese
Bod Dylan-Blood on the Tracks
Jeremy Smith-The S.S. Calorie. Including the record breaking hits: Aden's Nipple, Port Plumb, Lite Rail, Blowjob Alley, Mustach Rider and much much more.

I should stop. That's probably over 40. Sorry. I have a lot of music that I love. How about this people. Let's share all this love for music. Whoever would like to participate is welcome. Step one: Burn a copy of however many discs of music that you feel like sharing. Step two: Send them in the mail.

Jeremy Smith
5311 Latona Ave NE
Seattle, WA 98105

Step three: With your return address, I either send you music that I think you will like based on your music taste (the music you send me or the list that you post), or you tell me what music you want, and I send it to you.

Step four: Listen to the music.

That's it. Thats all there is to it. I can't make it any simpler. Reading the lists that have been posted thus far, I can see music that I haven't heard that I want to. Null, Ridley, Jones- whoever else is out there- you love this music so much then let's hear it. Get a fucking stamp, burn the fucking discs, and that's it. I get music that you love, you get music that I love and we're all happy.

J

No Spin Zone: 20 For 20

As a 20th anniversary issue thing, Spin just dished out its 100 Greatest Albums since 1985. Besides parroting Rolling Stone's intractable Listmania twitch (isn't it like once a month that they put out the "50 Greatest Rock Songs Ever" cover?), the list is full of predictably sensible choices: OK Computer gets number one; you've got a Nirvana in the top five; etc etc. It's in that sort of Music Writer Credibility mold, like having a Clash button on your denim jacket or jocking the Roots, pre-Things Fall Apart.

Anyhow, making lists is fun. So here's my top 20 of the last 20 years, in no particular order. No live albums, no greatest hits cheating, limit one per customer. An emphasis on broad quality across the course of a complete album (even as the MP3 continues to eat away at that concept), which leaves out exceptional groups like The Smiths with their incremental brilliance.

I'm not saying these 20 are the best or the most influential or that they speak to a movement or some shit. I'm just saying that when I put them in my CD player they sound the nicest, in one way or another. Which was, at one point, the most important thing about music. (Ergo, the occasionally respectable is sprinkled in here among wide, deep cesspools of shameless pleasure.)

1985 is actually a curious starting point. It's half the '80s (the lesser half), the '90s hodgepodge and whatever the hell the last five years have been. It's roughly the duration of our musical lives. (1986 is the first year I actually can remember.) It forces one to parse personal phases of musical taste: a touch of hip-hop, a bit of rock and so on. At any rate, were I to be sent to a desert island, with room for 20, here's what would come along:

Counting Crows "August and Everything After"
Daft Punk "Discovery"
Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms"
RJD2 "Deadringer"
Moby "18"
Dr. Dre "2001"
Bruce Springsteen "The Rising"
Sublime "Sublime"
U2 "The Joshua Tree"
Morcheeba "Big Calm"
Dave Matthews "Before These Crowded Streets"
Elliot Smith "XO"
Eminem "The Slim Shady LP"
Postal Service "Give Up"
Jeff Buckley "Grace"
Jurassic Five "Quality Control"
Dido "No Angel"
Kruder and Dorfmeister "The K & D Sessions"
Aimee Mann "Magnolia"
Paul Oakenfold "Another World"
Rage Against the Machine "Battle for Los Angeles"
Wyclef Jean "The Carnival"
A Tribe Called Quest "The Low End Theory"
Cake "Prolonging the Magic"
Thievery Corporation "The Cosmic Game"

Well, I guess that's 25. Fuck it. Whaddya got?
- DJ Glock

The Resurgence of Plumb Labs

Slut Monkeys,

Perhaps I will have the professional photos celebrating the half-assed union between one Sinuon Meng and Aden Acklin available for public viewing for the five of us who bother to contribute to this esteemed beacon of literary brillance. I will of course attach a conditional clause dictating that said pictures do not float haphazardly throughout cyberspace. I plan on having Thanksgiving dinner in Boston as the guest of one Katherine Ramey and nothing, lest I repeat, nothing shall avert the gaze of both Katherine and myself from that distant dream.

I have pondered the glaring differences between the international versus domestic rules of professional basketball. Granted, the only rule I'm cognizant of is that the key itself is shaped differently to prevent unstoppable hunks of chocolate thunder like Shaq from taking "high percentage shots". Unless a shot behind the arc somehow counts for four in international play, I can't say I'm terribly familiar with the differences. However, it is fairly obvious that the long-haired dandies from the Eastern Bloc are far better shooters than the street tough, penetrate-and-dish-for-the-easy-dunk, inner city gangbangers that we produce. Ok, I was just think of Allen Iverson, I don't know what I'm talking about.

So...how 'bout those Astros? Null, your synopsis of a "typical" season for the Astros is hauntingly accurate. They've got their bats working and they're going to make a run for the wild card spot and, more than likely, drop the last four games of the season to the likes of the Brewers and miss the post season by a hair's breath.

In other news the temperature has remained at around 100 degrees, thus Dave and I absolutely refuse to leave the condo unless there is an uninterrupted shade pattern to at least one of our automobiles. Fortunately around 6:00 this evening just such an event ocurred thus allowing us to comission the first study attributable to the new right-wing think-tank, The Placklin Group (Plumb-Acklin). While meandering aimlessly through the local area mall we noticed it had been recently refurbished. We concluded that the (approx.) 30% rise in underage T-loc (Tucson Locals) hoochies at the mall was directly relately to the new esoteric qualities of the somewhat recent renovation. Further studies are still pending, and we encourage a group brainstorm to present new ideas worthy of future research. For those of you keeping score at home, yes, The Placklin Group is the political arm of Plumb Labs, which is still a subsidiary of Conhugeco.

Beyond that, I offer only what can be found on the door of my fridge assembled from the hokie Onion word-bite montage. Do what you will with it:

1)Developmentally controversial bacon under fire for reports of terrible asshole bleeding tradgedy.
2) President Bush cracks down on "Goddamn Claymation Porn". Halts production of inflatable McGyver puppet.
3) Surgeon General recommends tastier secretary breasts.
4) Girlfriend abandons pathetic assistant manager for Islamic man.
5) Mom drug use "Totally IMP", boring area stoner applauds heroic woman's nightmarish high.
-Aden

Do we know who's playing the fat German kid?

"mmm Choc-o-late"

"Augustus! Noooo!"

I'm gonna save any judgement on the flick until after I see it, but I'm gonna have to agree with Null on this one. That boat scene makes the movie. It's going to be hard to pull it off without looking like they're trying to pull it off.

And of course comparisons are going to be the basis for how good the movie is, which is kind of shitty in a way. Depp isn't going to be playing the same part as Wilder was. He'll probably be a cross between Thompson, Captian Sparrow, and Scissorhands. I can already see his hands flying around and his eyes doing that drugged out thing that they do.

I'm also pretty excited about the Oompa Loompa's. I mean, what kind of Chocolate Factory would it be without crazy little Loompa people suddenly dropping what they are doing and singing about Siamese Cats and doing funny little midget dances? It would be a much less joyful place, I'll tell you that much.

And what about that fact that this is a Burton/Elfman collaboration, or are we not fans? Need I point out Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow... These are all good times.

I suppose there are a few thousand ways to watch the movie: A Depp film, A Burton/Elfman film, a remake, a adaptation from a 1960's novel (where oh where is the BFG?), a Hollywood snuff film? a movie about drugs, chocolate and flying elevators? I guess the question to Mikey, since he brought it up, is what expectations are you holding against the movie? Is it trying to be the book, or the movie, or neither? We obviously can't ask Burton or anyone involved, so we've got to figure it out for ourselves.

Sorry for the long-winded response. I just had my coffee, and am waiting for the ride to show up for weekend camping fun. How about this to chew on over the weekend: What should we hold Chocolate Factory up to? Can it stand as it's own movie, or is it inevitably contrasted with the older version.

A good example is the Batman series. "The second two were shitty compared to the first one". Yeah, that's true, but they weren't TRYING to be like the first one. The only thing they had in common was characters. Everything else about it was in a different vein of storytelling.

Or am I way off here? I gotta go. Have a good 4th, and remember how proud we all are to be Americans in such a shining and untroubled part of history.

J


-to Ben, I'm not ignoring your basketball question, I'm just not an NBA fan. I'm a college hoops guy, which has different rules than NBA, which I don't really care about.