The EMP Pop Conference rejected my presentation proposal, "I Wanna Destroy You: The Prisoner's Dilemma and Conflict Between Multiple Band Leaders." No esoteric, only-half-serious-at-best discussions of game theory for you! Their theme this year involved the effect of pop music on major political conflict, especially relating to Latin American music.

It may sound like sour grapes when I say that I think that pop music has absolutely nothing to do with real political conflict in almost all cases (with a few rare exceptions, such as reggae on Jamaican politics in the late 70s and Fela Kuti on Nigerian politics in the same period). And it may sound like sour grapes when I say that I know almost nothing about Latin American music that hasn't been written to death (because the Latin American music I love is pretty much tropicalia [psychedelic Brazilian pop from the late 60s and 70s], about which I can contribute nothing new). These may sound like sour grapes because they are.

Anyway, I proposed a discussion of the intersection of two topics that I do halfway understand, because I think the essential conflict in pop music is internal, between band members or sometimes within a single songwriter wresting with competing impulses. I think it would have been a fun topic, but that, as they say, is that.

David Simon responds to the Slate Wire Chat Club thing.

Here's the Slate thing.

Me, I think Ep 51 is a killer. These journalist guys complaining about the new story in the Baltimore Sun is a whole lotta hooey, especially at this stage. As people who have watched the Wire in the past should know, you have to give these stories time to develop, rather than leaping to silly conclusions based on an early glance.

You know what's exciting? If you're a nerd, you're probably saying "A year-end best-of list!" Or possibly "Starbuck and Buffy in a frackin' tag-team nude mud-wrestling grudge-match with those chicks from Pushing Daisies!" But don't say that out loud. Anyone within earshot is honor-bound to wedgie you and steal your Dungeon Master's Guide.

Anyway, I can't offer you pictures of the grudge-match (although I hear they'll be featured in next month's issue of The Nation), but I do have a year-end best-of list at the ready. It's about music! Nerdy music! For nerds!

My iTunes tells me that I have more than 50 albums that came out in 2007. This is a lot for me, especially given that my lofty position as co-editor of The High Hat means that I am on no PR radar screens and don't get free albums. So, eMusic is responsible for most of my 2007 albums, although I bought a few from iTunes and Waterloo Records here in Austin. I liked a lot of them, but I didn't love many. There were only a few A+ albums, but a lot of A/A- albums, and sorting through those has been a bit confusing.

So, here's 1 - 25. I like a few other albums that didn't make the list, like Baroness's Red Album or Linda Thompson's Versatile Heart, but I didn't love them enough to hit the A range. Both were B+ albums, easy, though.

Top Ten



1. Akron/Family – Love Is Simple
I've liked both previous Akron/Family albums, but both have had a few too many 90 degree turns around their blend of mannered alt-folk and woolly free jazz. This one integrates their sides with a transcendence that drives their point home. I love it. This is only one of the world-music exploiting bizarro-freaky indie-folk music I seem to have fallen in love with. Other contenders in this genre are Yeasayer, Panda Bear, Animal Collective, and Skeletons And Kings Of All Cities. All four of those albums are pretty great, and I had a hard time deciding where to put them on the list. I think I scored them by how fatigued I felt after repeated listens. All really spoke to me, and I thought each would make the top ten at different points in the year, but I've grown a little more frustrated with each for different reasons. The Animal Collective in particular is disappointing because I've loved their previous two albums so much. But their decision to clarify the vocal lines, increase the role of the loops, and de-emphasize their relationship with real acoustic instruments felt like they'd lost the organic part of their music.


2. Jens Lekman – Night Falls Over Kortedala
This guy's easy to compare to a handful of great - if iconoclastic - singer/songwriters, but he's really his own thing: a clever pop jokester with a devastasting emotional left hook. I've gone gaga over Jonathan Richman and Stephin Merritt at various points in the past, and this guy's the equal of each in some ways.


3. Deerhunter - Cryptograms/Flourescent Grey EP
These albums are two different things, but they manage to be cohesive and complementary even when pursuing vastly different aims. The albums bathes everything in a psychedelic wash, but the pop heart of the songs beats through the haze. The EP is just the opposite, full of hooks that can barely disguise their weirdness.


4. Battles - Mirrored
Squelchy proggish geek-rock. This would be the nerdiest (and yet most groovin') music on the list if not for Dan Deacon.


5. Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
Bird's songwriting continues to grow more resonant and beautiful and weird. He's the aural equivalent of Michel Gondry.


6. Menomena – Friend and Foe
There's a handful of dull songs on here, but the great ones appear frequently and are fun little puzzles that you could spend the better part of a day working out.

7. The National – Boxer
When people talk about U2 or Bruce Springsteen, they talk about inspiring anthemic music that digs in under the skin and refuses to let go. U2 and Springsteen sound nothing like that to me, but this does.



8. British Sea Power - Krankenhaus? EP/Grizzly Bear - "Friend" EP
Two mini-albums of greatness. BSP has always struck me as a great - if overly mannered - band. Their EP of this year was just great. Grizzly Bear reworked a few tracks and shed some of their inhibitions in the process, and this EP sounds drunk in the best way. The cover tracks are pretty lame, though.


9. My Teenage Stride – Ears Like Golden Bats
May putting this album in my top ten be the most conservative thing I do all year. MTS channel The Clean, The Chills, and The Bats like champions. This album sounds like the music I loved when I was 17, and again when I was 25, and again when I was 33, and again now.


10. Nina Nastasia & Jim White – You Follow Me
Two instruments: guitar and drums. One voice. But it sounds like an orchestra of emotion. I expected something more quiet and resigned than this, but this is much better than I could have possibly expected.


The Rest

11. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings - 100 Days, 100 Nights
12. Wooden Shjips - s/t
13. Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals
14. Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
15. Panda Bear – Person Pitch/Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
16. Parts & Labor – Mapmaker
17. Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings
18. The New Pornographers - Challengers
19. Shearwater – Palo Alto
20. Pelican – City of Echoes
21. Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity
22. Mekons - Natural
23. Fiery Furnaces - Widow City
24. St. Vincent - Marry Me
25. Sunset Rubdown – Random Spirit Lover

Probably not too many surprises here. Some artists I've loved in the past didn't get me in quite the same way this year. That's the way it goes, I guess.

Happy New Year! Nine days later.

So, I've updated a few things here. You can click on the image of my forthcoming novella Shoot Out The Lights at the top of the right-hand toolbar and go straight to Amazon to buy it. If you'd rather spend the extra bucks at Powell's, click the link under Shoppin'.

I created a new blog to promote the book. Actually, I created that blog a while back, but I haven't had anything to say, so there you go.

I also consolidated all outward bound links and deleted links to everyone who hadn't updated in 6 months. If you're one of those I deleted and would rather be included, send me an email and I'll add you back in.

Finally, I'm going to attempt to read and review 50 books again this year, so I'll be sure to keep an updated link for any interested parties. I'm working on Pynchon's Against The Day right now, so it may be a while before I have a post.

Online today: High Hat Issue 9.5: the 2007 Year-End Best-Of Supplemental. Go forth and read. Or don't, and spend your life wondering.

I don't know how long it would have taken me to get back to blogging if Mr. Emlyn Lewis had not tagged me with a meme. How could I resist?

I am to tell you several (7? 8?) random facts about myself, potentially tied to brushes with people of fame. I am a sadly boring man, so I'll play up the brushes with fame.

1. Once when I was a child, my parents and grandparents took me after church to a brunch at a fancy hotel in downtown Mobile, Alabama (or, at least, what passed for a fancy hotel in Mobile at the time). Although they were certainly trying to keep me on my best behavior, I must have escaped their clutches at one point, because I remember running around the lobby all willy-nilly like children do. What makes this memorable was that I rounded a corner and ran smack into the crotch of Kenny Rogers. I knew who he was. He'd been on the Muppet Show, and here he was, doubled over in pain, looking at me as if I was less a misbehaving little boy than the horrific demon spawn of some countywide-known coward. I tore-ass out of there as fast as I could, but now, of course, I wish someone had been taping the event. It would have ruled one of those Schadenfreudiest Home Video shows.

2. I met Robbie Fulks at a party. I like his synthesis of ironic detachment with heartfelt country (even if he does get carried away sometimes), and I liked him as a person. Great guy, with a similar geeky love of music esoterica. This was only a few years ago, and this party was less than a week before my wife and I were leaving for a two-week vacation in the Northeast. I had just enough vacation time saved up at work and an early morning the next day, so when Fulks asked if I wanted to go with him to the Continental Club to catch Redd Volkaert's set, instead of saying "hell yes" like a smart or normal person, I said, "Man, I have to work in the morning. I have a real job, y'know." It took me several minutes to realize what a phenomenal placement of foot in mouth that was, as if I'd said Fulks' job, which involves schlupping all of the country to play music for people who will criticize to the skies the slightest hint of a lack of enthusiasm, isn't real work, right? By the time I'd apologized, I'd lost him. He was polite but detached, and instead of being Robbie Fulks' friend today, I'm a distant well-wisher. Do I suck? Yes. Yes, I do.

3. All the other brushes with famous or semi-famous people that I can recall at the moment were not good stories. I shook Robert Jr. Lockwood's hand (he's the son of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson). I passed on a joint from Clarence Gatemouth Brown. Paul Westerburg was a dick to me when I was supposed to interview him for the university paper, but Slim Dunlop was a nice, low-key guy. My friend Sue in North Carolina is married to Mike Dean from Corrosion of Conformity, which was the first hardcore band I ever saw back when I was 15 or so. I met the novelist Larry Brown, who was on a book tour and tired as he could be. I rode in the back of a pickup carrying the poet Michael Harper to a reading. My old friend Jeff played in the underrated Remy Zero, who appeared on Smallville quite a bit, which had something to do with the lead singer's short-lived marriage to Alyssa Milano, I think. I got drunk with the cult musician Col. Bruce Hampton one night, and he read my Tarot cards, but I forgot what he said. Britt Daniel liked my GBV t-shirt in the line to the pisser after a Spoon show in 1996 (where they'd covered "A Good Flying Bird"). I spoke briefly with J. Mascis at a Consonant show. There may be a few others, but I can't think of them.

4. So, random facts. I broke my collarbone in a fight in 9th grade, the last fight I was ever in. The guy was named Chad, and he was being a jerk in the weight room, stealing weights, pushing people around, other jock bullshit. I told him he couldn't treat people that way, and he challenged me to prove it to him. You know how they tell you bullies are all talk? Lies. I managed to bruise his eye and bloody his nose. He broke my damn collarbone. By the time I got the brace off a month later, you couldn't tell he'd been in a fight at any point in his life. I still have a knot of bone near my left shoulder.

5. My bachelor's is a joint degree in philosophy and creative writing from the New College of the University of Alabama, which exists only in a diminished half-life now. People have joked to me about studying philosophy in Alabama (because, I presume, we studied ontological approaches to possum stew or the historical dialectic involved in catfish noodling?), but state schools are state schools. You get out of them what you put in. I was mainly interested in the crossover between quantum mechanics and philosophical systems of being at the time, but now that seems much less important than the grounding I got in history of philosophy. You can really retain that sort of knowledge. At least you can retain enough to fuck you up for the rest of your life.

6. I've been playing in bands since I was 15. I love to play music with other people. I've never had a shared creative experience in any other context that could even compare. True, I've never had a threesome, but the logistics of group sex seem confusing, whereas the roles you play in a band are well-defined and presumably a lot less messy.

7. I finished the manuscript for Shoot Out The Lights about a month ago. According to the 33 1/3 blog, it will be released in April 2008. Despite the description in the promo materials, it is not the definitive Mojo article on the album, but a novella about a man obsessed with the album and its parallels with his life. It will be my first mass-market published work of fiction, although it is only a little bit fictional. All of the hardcore analysis of the album and the context around its creation is nonfiction and fairly heartfelt for me. Immediately after finishing the manuscript, I started writing a novel. If I finish it, it will be the second novel I've written. The first was a piece of shit I wrote as an undergrad. No copies of that novel exist, which is best for everyone. I hope to publish this new novel, though. I hope it is good.

While I was out of town at my parents' farm near Samson, Alabama, the other editors of The High Hat, aka the best damn magazine on the web, managed to pull together Issue No. 9 without any help from yours truly at all. This goes without saying, but I'm going to say it, anyway: they are mindblowingly, forkbendingly, breathtakingly, worldshakingly awesome people, and it's due to their smarts and diligence that every issue of the Hat is better than the last.

This one is dedicated to places, and is chock-full of stand-out articles, including Erika Jahneke on the ghosts of 9/11 in Rescue Me and World Trade Center, Shauna McKenna on Roma and Tokyo-Ga, and tons of brilliance, especially from the extra-prolific Phil Nugent and Steve Hicken.

I contributed a semi-considered article on the films Gerry and Grizzly Man and the tv shows Survivorman and Man Vs. Wild, all of which deal with little people lost in the huge indifference of Nature. Go check it out.

On another note, if you left me a comment asking for an email and haven't received one yet, please let me know. I've tried to answer all the emails, but I've been a bit extra-scattered and smothered and even a little covered lately, what with my book in endgame plus stress of family tragedy and distractions related to our little nuclear family.

My baby brother Michael died yesterday.

He was profoundly retarded. When he was born, the doctors told us it would be a miracle if he lived to be 16. But he did, and then he went on living another 7 years.

Michael was a baby all his life. He didn't walk. He needed to be fed. He wore diapers. He was mostly blind, but he loved to have the sunshine on his face. He loved to hear people talk to him and loved having people fawn over him. He loved music. He hated to be held, but there was no other way to move him around. He may have been my brother, but he was heavy. He hated loud noises. He hated having to wait for his dinner and would make an awful racket.

Michael was lucky that my parents shouldered the burden of taking care of him. My parents chose to sacrifice everything they could to make Michael happy, and they succeeded. Michael was happy almost every day of his life. What more could anyone ask out of this wicked world?

And I miss him terribly. Even though I knew it was going to happen soon. Even though I've been expecting that call for years. It's hard to realize exactly how much you love someone like that until they're gone, and now he's gone, my sweet baby brother Michael.