I didn’t buy many albums that came out in 2010, but that didn’t mean I didn’t get 40+ new CDs in 2010.  Here are my best of and worst of lists.  Listen to my suggestions, they’re awesome.

BEST ALBUMS

7.  The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Open Up: Whatcha Gonna Do for the Rest of Your Life: This was a random purchase for $.50 at Grassroots.  It’s some good Louisiana blues arranged and played by local musicians (as far as I can tell.)  I holds up better if you hear a few songs on random than if you just plug through the whole album, but it’s got some really interesting tunes.

6.  Various Artists – Bluegrass Roots: I purchased this album online because it was the only inexpensive way I could find to purchase the version of “I’ll Fly Away” that’s actually featured in O Brother Where Art Thou? (as opposed to the one that comes on the soundtrack.)  The inclusion of other Kossoy Sisters songs is what makes this album so good – many of the other tracks seem like instrumental fillers, but it’s worth the purchase if it can be found cheap.

5.  Jellyfish – Spilt Milk: This band has apparently been labelled power pop, but I don’t know that I agree with it.  In the first track, it harkens to Imogen Heap, the second to Queen, and the third to Beach Boys, though it’s from ~1993.  The band didn’t last long, having only put out one other album, but this one is fun enough to get you by.  Good upbeat melodies, fun harmonies, and songs that won’t make you think too hard.

4. Glenn Miller Orchestra – In the Christmas Mood, Vol. 1: Every year, I try to get more Christmas music so that we have an alternative to stores which only seem to have 7 different Christmas songs.  Combining it with my love of big band music and this album is a no-brainer.  The worst song on the album is probably the “original” song, In the Christmas Mood.  Some of their renditions of classics are themselves classics.

3.  The Nevada Bachelors – Hello Jupiter: I found this band by accident in 2009 and found several of their melodies and chord progressions to be quite revolutionary.  I purchased this, their other album, and it is much of the same.  For anyone who likes music that you can’t predict the melody on each track, pick it up.

2.  Joe Henry – Scar:  It’s hard to quantify what type of music Joe Henry plays.  He’s listed as country in a few places, and his earlier stuff have some country roots.  But by the time Scar came out, at least, he had moved over to a very swanky, jazzy, bluesy sound.  His voice isn’t the greatest, but I listen to him for the vibe that I get from listening to his music.  It seems like I need to sit in a room with a few candles lit and just stare at something.  And not in a bad way.

1.  Tripod – Entire collection: Okay, I’m cheating.  I managed to grab basically all of this Australian comedy trios music this year, mainly because I found a place that actually offered it all.  Being from Australia, their music is hard to come by.  I like alot of comedy music, but much of it finds a funny concept then writes a song about it.  What sets Tripod apart (particularly live) is that often it IS the composition of the song itself that makes it funny.  After all, this is the same band that has written dozens of songs as challenges in an hour.  Definitely worth a buy if you can find them.

WORST ALBUMS

5.  Various Artists – Timeless Christmas Classics: I suppose I can’t fault this album for it’s title, or at least the descriptor ‘timeless’.  That’s because nearly every version of these famous Christmas songs is either much too fast or much too slow.  Believe me, I like Silent Night done slowly as much as the next guy, but I also like it to finish the first verse before I have to shave again.

4.  Various Artists – Guitar Heroes: Ash had seen this as a special at Best Buy and we hopped right on it, figuring it was songs from the video game.  It wasn’t.  That was a strike against it.  But then I saw that it was labelled as new versions of classics recorded by the original artists.  Okay, that should be a decent substitute.  Problem is they are nearly all live recordings, and many of them not of high quality.  We both feel bamboozled by this cheap ploy to make money.  (edit: I just noticed that one of the songs they included, Sentimental Avenue by Night Ranger, has no guitar – in fact, no other instruments besides piano and voice – awesome.)

3.  John Cale – Walking on Locusts: I had had a Cale song or two on my computer from various compilations, and thought they were decent, so when I found this one for $1, I picked it up.  It is not decent.  It is pretty personalityless.  Maybe it’s all in the lyrics, but the music (and to a lesser extent his voice) won’t permit me to listen to the album long enough to find out.

2.  Grateful Dead – Infrared Roses: I think I am more mad at myself for this album and not the Dead, per se.   I vaguely remember hearing that my brothers didn’t like this album, but seeing it for $.50, I couldn’t pass up to get a Dead album I didn’t have.  I forgot (and didn’t bother to read) that this wasn’t an album of tunes, but the “best of” their live jams Drums & Space.  Saying these are the best is sorta like being the tallest midget, no?

1.  The Phylum Chordata – A Sequential Proportion of Line and Mass Intended Mostly for My Muse: If you’re like me, you’d look at this album and think it is something nerdy and pretty cool.  You, like me, would have been very wrong.  This makes last year’s worst album, The Flaming Lips Embryonic, sound like Vivaldi.  These “songs” are more experiments with synthesizes and voice modulators.  It’s not often that I delete an album from my computer, but this will be one of the first to go.

Just like last year, I’ll give you my picks for music (and books) that I have bought/listened to/read this year.  These weren’t necessarily RELEASED in 2010, but I got them this year.  Let’s start with books.  I’ll do CDs in another post.

BOOKS

It was pretty surprising to realize I read around 20 new books this year (as well as rereading some old ones), and have another 10 or so in the queue.  Not that I don’t like reading, I just usually don’t set aside the time to do it.  Finding Grassroots Books, the best used bookstore EVER, has helped, as most of the books I bought didn’t cost me more than $3.  More surprising is that only two (three?) of the best books I read this year were fiction.  I’m getting old.  So here we go.

BEST BOOKS I READ THIS YEAR

6.  A Lion’s Tale – Chris Jericho: This is a wrestling book about one of the most entertaining figures in the business.  Even though there is a ghost writer, this feels like Mick Foley’s books in that it seems like it is Jericho himself writing.  The stories are a amusing, and he sets himself up for a second book (which is due to come out next year.)  Light enjoyable read.  (paid $3 at Grassroots for it)

5.  A Man on the Moon – Andrew Chaikin: This book was the inspiration for the HBO miniseries, From Earth to the Moon. The book version is very very long and can get a bit repetitious, but it was extremely informative.  Outside of Apollo 11 and 13, I didn’t know an awful lot about the missions.  This tells you all you’d want to know, and more.  You need to be interested in space travel/astronomy to get through it.  (got for free from Grassroots)

4.  Bringing Down the House – Ben Mezrich: This was the inspiration for the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey, but don’t watch the movie – it’s a overglorified adaptation.  I read the book in a few hours one night, and it really is quite a story.  The fact that it was true is even more mind-boggling.  And unlike the movie, they don’t make unnecessary conflict – the story stands on its own merit. (paid $2 at Grassroots for it)

3.  The Peace War/Marooned in Realtime – Verner Vinge – 2010 marked my return to loving sci-fi.  I was recommended these books from the owner of Grassroots, and I tried them.  They’re very intelligent sci-fi, and both books have a distinctly different feel for being sequels.  There really is an awful lot of great ideas packed into these two books.  Read if you have time.  (TPW for ~$14 from Grassroots, MIR for ~$8 from Amazon used)

2.  The Foreclosure of America – Adam Michaelson: Who know I would like topical non-fiction?  This is the story of Countrywide and the burst of the housing bubble from a higher-up at Countrywide.  While I feel he too often paints himself as a saint within a corrupt company, this is a tell-all look at the problem that has been way too politicized since 2007.  If you think only one side was at fault, either side, I encourage you to read this.  ($1 at Grassroots warehouse sale)

1.  Contact – Carl Sagan: Sagan’s a smart guy, I always knew that.  And I had seen the end of the Jodie Foster adaptation of this book, but still had wanted to read it.  What he does exceptionally well is compliment fascinating sci-fi with elements of religious contemplation, gender roles, and probably a little Freudian psychology.  This book kinda jump-started my sci-fi/astronomy train I’m on which accounted for nearly half of the books I bought this year.  ($1 at Grassroots)

WORST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

(note, I didn’t really read anything terrible this year, but here’s my best effort)

6.  Dumbheart – Darb Conley: It pains me to put any Get Fuzzy book on this list, but this strip isn’t the consistently laugh-inducing strip it was 5 years ago.  I’d say ever third day has a good chuckle in it, but when you compared it to the days when each BOX had a laugh in it, it’s a letdown.  (~$6 from Amazon used)

5.  Sputnik: the Shock of the Century – Paul Dickson: This book would probably have been higher, but the final chapter or two about the lingering affects of Sputnik were so insightful that it nearly redeemed it.  However, it seemed like the book was written 20 years too early, as it still seemed like there was some info that was not being told (or not known yet.)  ($2 from Grassroots)

4.  Naked Pictures of Famous People  - Jon Stewart: I’ve been a fan of Stewart since You Wrote it You Watch it and his ill-fated late night talk show on Channel 9.  However, I think I’ve been changed by his current run with the Daily Show and his current sense of humor/sensibilities that I was disappointed by this “older” book.  I also hadn’t realized it would be a series of short skits.  It wasn’t bad, just not what I had expected.  ($2 from Grassroots)

3.  Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium – Dave Barry: In high school, the Dave Barry column I would look forward more than any other would be his end-of-the-year recap.  Now, reading this compilation (which only goes from 2000-2004, and he didn’t do one in 2001) seems like a shabby cash cow for a publisher.  Plus, I don’t find him as funny as I used to.  That makes me sad.  ($3 from Grassroots)

2.  39 Years of Short Term Memory Loss – Tom Davis: I’m still actually in the middle of this book, but have put it away.  Even though I’m not a SNL fan by any means (even of the early days), this book interested me because those early years were pretty momentous for TV.  I figured the stories would be great, and maybe they will be, but his writing style is so all-over-the-place it’s nearly unreadable.  In a single paragraph he’ll leap through three stories and cover two years, then go back to something that happened before that paragraph.  Maybe it gets better.  We’ll see.  ($1 at Grassroots warehouse sale)

1.  Builders of the Ancient World – National Geographic: Yeah, I bought a National Geographic book all about the architectural feats throughout time.  I’m not even through the introduction and I’ve put it to the back of my queue.  The writer seems to mention himself as much as the buildings, and there is no rhyme or reason to the chronology he uses to discuss the architecture.  In one page he’ll talk about The Great Pyramids (for maybe 3 paragraphs) then move to his time in the Mayan ruins, then we’re up to North America where he talks uninterestingly about something else.  If I manage to drain my queue before buying more books, I’ll try to finish this and get to the chapters where he properly organizes things.  ($1 from Grassroots warehouse sale)

For each day in 2010 (give or take) I’ll be showing a picture from somewhere in my life with a little explanation as to what it is.  Enjoy the trip down memory lane.  (CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE ARCHIVES!)

5 Second Pose
Date: November, 2004
Location: Ridgewood, NJ

Description: In honor of Bryan Fenkart’s birthday, I will post a picture that doesn’t involve him at all, at least not directly.  He single-handedly got me back into wrestling during the Attitude Era of the late 90′s.  As such, I’ve met a number of wrestlers in my day and begrudgingly gotten autographs (I have never understood the importance of someone’s signature) – one of the best memories was having Edge sign my book “Sodas Rule” and comment that he hadn’t ever heard anyone ask him to do it.  I also got him to pose in a silly manner for our picture.  It started me on a quest to find celebrities and convince them to take ridiculous photos.  So far my tally is up to one.

I have beaten Final Fantasy II (Japanese IV) for the SNES probably 50 times.  There was one thing I was never able to do – beat the game in under 10 hours.

UNTIL NOW.

I had downloaded FF II for the Wii, determined to finally do this.  In past, I would get to the end guy at about 9:40 and then get thoroughly tromped.  Last night, I started the game at 9:20 and tried fighting the end guy, and I got tromped.  So I tried again, this time doing about 20 minutes of leveling up.  When I got to Zeromus, I slowed the battle speed down, hopefully giving me an edge.  And sure enough (I was timing) at 9:52 of gameplay, I heard the lightning-zaps that signified victory.

What’s next?  Beat it in under 9 hrs?  Or go to my PS and play Final Fantasy IV and finally get the Adamant Armor from those damn pink puffs?  Could go either way, really.

In light of a recent article I read about the composer of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” calling it the worst song ever written, period, I have given some thought to my favorite and least favorite Christmas songs.  And without giving it too much thought, here’s what I came up with.

Worst Christmas Songs (note: there are any number of comedy songs out there that are horrible – I’m excluding them and sticking to songs that were meant to be genuine)

5.  Good King Wenceslas - This probably wouldn’t have made the list except I found out there are like a billion verses.  That song isn’t good short, never mind exceptionally long.

4.  Little Saint Nick – I’m not a fan of the Beach Boys, and them doing their exact same shtick for winter?  Yeah, not any better.

3.  Do They Know It’s Christmas - No, no they don’t.  They often don’t know when their next meal will be.  Even for charity, this is a terrible song, but not the worst of all time (not even on of the worst two Christmas songs.)

2.  Wonderful Christmastime – Sir Paul McCartney, please please please stick to Hey Jude.  I’d rather hear the end of that song on an endless loop than this song.

1. What Made the Baby Cry – Nothing says the celebration of a baby quite like pointing out as frequently as possible that he will die.

Best Christmas Songs (traditional – doesn’t matter the version)

5.  O Come All Ye Faithful – Perhaps it’s the memory of the midnight mass I went to and their timpani player, but this one is still awesome when it’s in full blast mode.

4.  Once in Royal David’s City - A lesser known song, but the melody is soaring.

3.  Let it Snow - I’m not as big a fan of the jaunty songs like Jingle Bells, but this one is good no matter who sings it.

2.  Carol of the Bells - It doesn’t HAVE to be played by a bell choir, but that certainly doesn’t hurt.

1.  Oh Holy Night – This is really the only time I’d prefer a tenor singing a song over anyone else.  Like literally the only time.

Honorable Mentions: Feliz Navidad, Deck the Halls, Hallelujah Chorus, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Best Christmas Songs (specific version)

5.  Twelve Days of Christmas - Bob and Doug McKenzie – Most people know I don’t like the original of this song (because it’s long and repetitious), and I usually like their parodies less.  But this one is funny from start to finish.  Rick Moranis never ceases to amaze.

4.  Baby It’s Cold Outside – Zooey Dachanel & Leon Redbone – Many versions of this song are too fast and chose “whiter” harmonies.  This version is the right combination of swanky and sentimental.

3.  Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24) - Trans-Siberian Orchestra – It’s probably only due to oversaturation that this song isn’t higher.  But seeing one lone guy standing and headbanging to it in concert was a sight I’ll never forget.

2.  Santa Claus – Harry Connick Jr. – The best original Christmas song written in the last 40 years, probably longer.

1.  White Christmas - Bing Crosby – This song, more appropriately this version of this song, IS Christmas.  Much like the Macy’s Day Parade is supposed to usher in the season, my Christmas season doesn’t start until I’ve heard this song.

Honorable Mentions: You’re a Mean One (Mr Grinch) – Rockapella, Christmas Collage – Kathy Mattea, Little Drummer Boy – The Flaming Lips (it contains the lyric: “Baby Jesus, ba rum pa pum pum… is floating somewhere outside, ba rum pa pum pum.”)