#56 - Elvis Presley's "Elvis Presley" (1956)

The following is an excerpt from an early draft of Cameron Crowe's screenplay for Almost Famous:

Ext. Downtown San Diego Radio Station - Day

A slovenly, hyperkinetic man is darting from shelf to shelf, dishing out quick and gutting reviews of the station's record library.  This is the legendary critic, Lester Bangs.  Expounding on the greatness of The Guess Who and Iggy Pop, he delivers a brief, erratic soliloquy on the mystical origins of rock 'n' roll.

"Here's a theory for you to disregard...completely.  Music, you know - true music - not just rock 'n' roll - it chooses you.  It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones - you know, with the vast, scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain.  It's a place apart...from the vast, benign...lap of America.  Take Elvis.  Elvis Presley!  You think that man ripped off Little Richard?  No!  He was an emissary, the go-between, a numbers runner.  You know, here he is, this young, truck-driving whelp, out of Tupelo-thank-you-ma'am-backwater-Mississippi - young and hungry, mind you - and he's living, I mean living, at these black clubs in Memphis, man.  Soaking it up... and on the radio, too.  Hell, the south was so segregated you weren't supposed to listen to a black station.  And that's what nobody gets - people think it was T.V. - that T.V. made the music.  Well, T.V. might have been the midwife, but it was radio knocked the country up.  Got everyone nice and cozy at the petting party.  All those waves in the night, just towers knocking down walls...Elvis was a Branch Rickey.  And Jackie, yeah, Jackie in that Brooklyn blue, he had the talent, but Branch Rickey saw the window and jumped.  Just listen - listen to that first album, those Sun sides, man, and it's there...no more Amos 'n' Andy, they were gone with the wind, because the kids were on board and the PTA couldn't say 'no' - not for long - not to a clean-cut army boy no matter which way his hips flipped..."

 Grade: A 

#53 - Beck's "Sea Change" (2002)

Like fellow genre-hoppers David Bowie and Prince, it isn't always clear where Beck's soul calls home.  Is he a mad dabbler, the jack of all trades and master of none?  Or is he a genuine polymath with no clear allegiances to any specific style or substance?  Such questions make it easy to commit one of two errors when listening to Sea Change.  The first would be to consider it a one-off, with no more of the man himself in it than he put into the tongue-in-cheek lounge sleaze of Midnite Vultures' "Debra."  But, if this album only means to send up or approximate sadness rather than convey the real thing, then Beck needs to quit his day job and start acting full-time.  The second misstep would be to think of Sea Change as a skeleton key to the one true Beck, a portal offering a fleeting glimpse into his psyche.  The latter path is probably the more perilous considering how many critics who thought Blood on the Tracks was the best breakup album of all time were stunned when Bob Dylan claimed the songs were instead based on the short stories of Anton Chekhov.  To me, more compelling than debates about the album's literal truth is the question of how its sound came to be.  Nigel Godrich's production is lush and soft, almost like it belongs on 70s AM radio.  Beck's voice is forlorn, even on tracks like "Sunday Sun" that hint at memories (or premonitions) of a life less hard.  To sustain this type of minor-chord melancholy without becoming morose requires a whole lot of talent and even more discretion.  Most remarkable, perhaps, is the extent to which the music is unclassifiable yet wholly "Beck," while still employing familiar structures and hinting at clear influences.  Just as there's something very punk rock about the three-chord strum and in-your-face morality of Woody Guthrie, so too is Sea Change a country album in spirit, if not sound.  One obvious historical touchstone for this type of full commitment would be The Velvet Underground's Loaded, which found Lou Reed creating polished pop rock mostly just to prove he could be commercially appealing if he really wanted to be.  With songs as strong as "The Golden Age," "Lost Cause," and "Lonesome Tears," the burden of proof has to be on this album's detractors.  If "country-tinged balladeer" is just one of the many hats Beck can wear, then it's an awfully good fit.  Grade: A

#52 - Little Richard's "Here's Little Richard" (1957)

Like other singers of his stripe, Little Richard is in desperate need of some historical revision.  For a variety of reasons, the earliest generation of rock 'n' rollers were cut down in their prime as if they were cursed.  Whether it was scandal (Jerry Lee Lewis), drugs (Johnny Cash), legal trouble (Chuck Berry), accidents (Carl Perkins) or military service (Elvis Presley), all of these young men ran afoul of fate.  "Little Richard" Penniman opted out of touring for a healthier reason - he got religion - but the havoc it wreaked on his recording career was much the same as that which ravaged his peers.  Of course there's nothing to be done about decisions made in the past, but curating one's legacy is another matter altogether.  Lewis generated some buzz with last year's Mean Old Man.  Cash, through a curious combination of stark honesty in his autobiography and the Hollywood romanticism of Walk the Line, has cemented his place in the musical firmament.  Berry's still plugging away once or twice a month in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill, but has yet to receive the accolades, acclaim, or accounting treatments commensurate with his genius.  Perkins has profited from a renewed interest in the Million Dollar Quartet, but will likely continue to be overshadowed by his more famous counterparts.  And Elvis, well, his fame is great and growing.  If you believe musicians' memoirs, Little Richard was the reason for more high school talent show entrants, rowdy garage bands, piano lessons and guitar sales than any of his contemporaries.  Listening to Here's Little Richard, it's not hard to see why.  This is youth-oriented party music.  Over the course of twelve tracks he doesn't exhibit many different moods, but then who wants to be maudlin while dancing?  The vocals throughout are gleeful and raspy, finding Little Richard's voice in various states of frantic disrepair (likely having sung his lungs out the night before).  And if his singing is expressive and exclamatory on songs like "Tutti Frutti" and "Rip It Up" then his piano work is downright explosive on "Slippin' and Slidin'" and "Long Tall Sally."  Those keys wait for no man.  For the closer, "She's Got It," he delivers the lyrics so fast, it almost sounds like Ray Charles on a broken record player.  If there's any real criticism to be found, it's either that the scattered recording sessions yielded varying degrees of sound quality or else the years have been kinder to some masters than they have to others.  It might also be possible to say that Little Richard isn't well-rounded, that his music lacks nuance.  Well, if he's a one-trick pony, then it's worth remembering that this is a pretty damn good trick.  Grade: B+

#51 - Jeff Buckley's "Grace" (1994)

Drunk or not, swimming in the Mississippi with clothes on was a stupid move.  And not just because it's a physical feat that would bedevil a seasoned swimmer.  No, it was stupid because it was a waste of real, raw talent.  In fact, it was as stupid as Grace is brilliant.  Jeff Buckley's debut album is an eclectic masterpiece that showcases mind-boggling versatility, restless creativity, and a voice that should've been on the federally protected species list.  It positively sprawls.  And not in the sense of The Suburbs, where "sprawling" means the purposeful march to annex more of the same.  There's nothing quite so systematic here.  Rather, at turns, this album fitfully and listlessly spreads out a wide open musical landscape and then settles it with unsettling valleys, peaks, and plains.  On the title track, it lopes.  On "Lilac Wine," it drapes.  On "Mojo Pin," it lingers (and malingers).  Buckley wails and croons, moans and cajoles.  And like any good Renaissance man, he does all of them well.  His range is dizzying.  "Lover You Should've Come Over" is about as romantic as songs can get (even if it likely launched a thousand John Mayers).  It being 1994, a few of the tracks are weighed down by a leaden grungy crunch, but most of the arrangements are tasteful and invigorating.  Particularly, the cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - a song that seems to have been sung more than "Happy Birthday" - is a perfect compromise between restraint and exultation.  It begins with Buckley letting out a weary, sighing exhalation and then, over the tones of a lone chiming guitar, he moves between sweet, whispered lows and heart-breaking, hollered highs.  Here and elsewhere ("Corpus Christi Carol") he exhibits a gift for sometimes formal, sometimes jazzy enunciation that calls to mind his famous father or more modern singers like Antony.  The riverboat hustlers of the Mississippi probably robbed millions of dollars from rubes and dupes over the years, but those crimes are petty next to what Big Muddy stole from music when Jeff Buckley waded in for that fateful midnight swim.  Grade: A- 

#50 - Deep Purple's "Machine Head" (1972)

If there are rules to reviewing, the cardinal of these must be:  "don't criticize something for not being what you'd prefer it to be; judge it on its own terms."  Not only is it the only honest way to go about comparing apples and oranges, it also mitigates against the biases we all carry with us.  Simply put, if you're listening to a rock album from the 1950s and you think that what it's really missing is extended organ solos, then maybe you're not being a fair arbiter.  And while it might not be realistic to believe you have the imagination to put yourself in the time and place when and where your subject was produced, you nonetheless have to try.  Machine Head is one of the marker stones for the journey that blues-inflected rock 'n' roll took on its way to heavy metal.  On a purely historical level, Deep Purple is an utterly fascinating outfit.  They are pioneering architects of sound.  The music on this album, however, is of inconsistent quality.  "Highway Star" explodes out of the gate with almost as much insistence as "Black Dog."  From there, the band dials it back on "Maybe I'm a Leo."  Maybe too much.  I understand not wanting to blow your wad all at once, but for an album that comes in at a little over 37 minutes, you really don't have any room for weak tracks and this snoozer looks back to Led Zeppelin more than it looks ahead to anything fresh.  "Pictures of Home" starts to turn things around before "Never Before" pulls the full 180.  It is likely the best song on the album with its slow, funky start giving way to some seriously hard-rocking verses and a killer bridge melody that would make Alex Chilton proud.  Then comes the radio staple "Smoke on the Water," with its autobiographical lyrics detailing the band's trials and tribulations in Montreaux.  Unfortunately, the song's ubiquity tends to work against it here.  In 1972, the listener would have likely considered it the high point, a centerpiece.  Now its omnipresence surrounds it with a "been-there-done-that" aura rendering a once-powerful song tepid and tired.  The penultimate "Lazy" is anything but as most of the band's experimentalism is consolidated within its seven-minute span, but album closer "Space Truckin'" does seem a little half-assed.  The song is a disappointment if only because its music & words forge an uneasy truce between bleating R&B and semi-serious sci-fi.  It is no less dignified than Robert Plant's Tolkien-inspired flights of lyrical fancy, but somehow sillier because it comes off as a half-measure.  Had Ian Gillan gone all in with the theme - instead of occupying a kind of fatuous middle distance between ramblin' blues rumble and Lost in Space-level lyrics - it might have been far more successful.  Plenty of prog-rock bands at that time were exploring the outer reaches of the universe, so it doesn't strike me as unreasonable to take Deep Purple to task for goofing about.  Think about it:  when you're in China, eating the local cuisine, you no longer call it "Chinese food."  And when you're a real space trucker, you'd probably drop the adjectival qualifier on that phrase, too, wouldn't you?  Grade: B

#46 - Elliott Smith's "Either/Or" (1997)

I love Bill Bryson.  Whether writing about the Appalachian Trail, the English language, or the sum total of our scientific discoveries to date, he has a real flare for making dry topics exciting.  More accurately, he specializes in framing a subject in such a manner as to make that which is most exciting in it reveal itself.  I also like his modesty as an author.  He knows when he's licked.  If there is content - like quantum theory or the boredom of arduous hiking - that by its very nature is either too vague or too tedious to be compelling, he doesn't force it.  Rather, the writing becomes a meditation on the difficulty of describing the indescribable or the nondescript.  And, because he's intelligent and funny, this works in a pinch to draw the reader back in.  I wish Bryson could ghost-write this review of Elliott Smith's Either/Or because I can't for the life of me find a single interesting thing to say about it.  It's not that it's bad exactly.  "Bad" can still provoke a response.  This is just bland, boring, by-the-numbers indie rock.  What Jack Black's character from High Fidelity might call "sad bastard music."  On the song "Rose Parade," when Smith sings, "They say it's a sight that's quite worth seeing / It's just that everyone's interest is stronger than mine / When they clean the streets, I'll be the only shit that's left behind," all I can think is "Oh, somebody just give this guy a hug and get him to shut the fuck up already."  Of course, Bill Bryson would've put it in a much wittier way.  I know Bill Bryson.  Bill Bryson is a fave of mine.  I am no Bill Bryson.  Grade: C-

#39 - Björk's "Debut" (1993)

björk  noun  \bē-'ork, byawrk\

1 : any of a variety of Icelandic songbirds celebrated for their distinctive tonal quality, yodel-like trills, ability to live in symbiosis with swans, and talent for mimicking human beings.  The björk sang at my windowsill, content mostly to observe "Human Behaviour," while occasionally imitating its mannerisms.  

2 : a liqueur distilled from refined Sugarcubes and treasured for its pleasantly intoxicating effects, which include mild hallucinations and an absolute freedom from stylistic inhibitions.  After downing a carafe of björk, I envisioned "Venus as a Boy" and became "Violently Happy."

3 : a clinical diagnostic term referring to a patient suffering from the rare psychological stresses associated with first being a child prodigy, going on to achieve consistent - yet unremarkable - success, and finally coming into one's own as a late-blooming Debutante.  By the time she was 29, many critics had written the björk off, wrongly assuming her best days were behind her.

Grade: B 

#38 - Guided By Voices' "Bee Thousand" (1994)

Crises in Non-Conformity, a Partial Timeline

1845 - Henry Thoreau, having lived at Walden less than a week, notices he has worn a path from his "door to the pond-side," and reflects, "how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves."

1975 - Writers for Lorne Michaels' Saturday Night Live, while attempting to create a show that subverts time-honored television standards & practices, come to find that the hardest thing to do when developing a skit that "breaks all the rules" is figuring out a way to end it.

1992 - Bob Dylan, ever the upstart, scorns modern recording technology and creates Good As I Been To You, an entire album of traditional folk song covers, in his garage.  Sometimes to move forward, you have to go back.

1994 - Guided By Voices releases Bee Thousand, a twenty-track album of hissy pop rock fragments, quite likely a necessary foil to the slick, bedizened production currently ruling FM radio.  Most bands who record in lo-fi do so for one of three reasons:

(1) it's all they can afford

(2) they enjoy the tinny, mashed-together sound

(3) they are being deliberately non-commercial

At one point or another in the career of Guided By Voices they subscribed to this scrappy aesthetic for all of these reasons.  The problem is that much of its effect derives from the way in which it purposefully alienates itself from its audience's expectations.  In other words, the novelty of a song that cuts out mid-lyric is entirely contingent on the belief that music should have recognizable structures with firmly delineated boundaries.  Likewise, by cultivating this contrarian perspective, you run the risk of substituting one kind of fundamentalist rigidity for another.  Once you don that rebel apparel, the mainstream garb becomes a bad fit and a worse look.  Ultimately, I think this album is a noble exercise in devil's advocacy, a gadfly to keep the music community honest.  There are funny lines and catchy hooks galore, even if they're embedded in texturally homogeneous songs that don't last long enough to imprint themselves on your memory.  I'm not sure if sticking to your indie principles is a goal worth continually sabotaging such promising ideas for, but GBV didn't ask me.  Grade: B-

#37 - Steve Earle's "Guitar Town" (1986)

I have a few questions.

Who

Who did Steve Earle think he was putting out a debut album this self-assured, sounding like a more rural Bruce Springsteen or a cooler John Mellencamp?  Who were the A&R geniuses over the years who decided this guy wasn't a marketable artist? 

What

What else does a body have to do to be successful besides write songs as insightful as "Goodbye's All We Got Left" and as pretty as "My Old Friend the Blues"?  What was going through the producer's mind when he included that tinkling synthesizer nonsense on the lullaby "Little Rock 'n' Roller," taking an acceptably sentimental song and killing it with cuteness?

Where

Where does that same producer get off neutering the best material, like "Fearless Heart," by keeping that solid backing band chained up on the porch?  Where do you suppose Crazy Heart drew inspiration for Jeff Bridges' character - other than Waylon Jennings - if not this rambling force of nature?

When

When exactly did the drugs change Earle's voice, helping the "nasal" part of his nasal twang win out over the rest? 

How

How can I believe in justice in a world where Steve Earle struggles in relative obscurity and Justin Bieber is on the cover of Vanity Fair?

Why

Why are you still reading this review when you could be listening to this album?  Grade: B+

#36 - Dr. John's "Dr. John's Gumbo" (1972)

Remind me again why the pianos and saxophones were made to surrender their seat at rock 'n roll's round table?  I know, I know.  In the 1960s, as amplification technology improved, most bands deep-sixed their keyboardists and horn sections thinking they might sound too retro.  "Electric guitars are the future," they thought, not realizing it was a self-fulfilling prophecy as they knocked down the pillars of rockabilly in the name of renovation.  What they didn't grasp was that the piano and the horns hadn't just added volume.  They added a robust, full-bodied wholeness to the mixture, the presence of which makes the entire ensemble sound richer.  Dr. John got his start as a musician in the 1950s and on Dr. John's Gumbo you can hear his memories of that era come alive.  To be sure, he had a psychedelic phase like everyone else in the late 60s.  But you wouldn't be able to tell that here.  For this album, he's largely jettisoned those influences, preferring instead to return to a classic rock 'n' roll sound by way of his favorite New Orleans r&b and jazz musicians like Huey "Piano" Smith and Professor Longhair.  This is joyful, Saturday night music, the type of tunes that draw customers into Bourbon Street bars.  Listening to the organ intro to "Big Chief," backed by that buoyant bass line and those shuffling drums, I thought, "Wow, someone should sample that!"  Then I realized someone already had as Lily Allen's "Knock 'Em Out" started playing in my head.  If you like "feel-good" music, I recommend Dr. John's Gumbo, with gusto.  It'll stick to your ribs.  Grade: B+

#35 - Cream's "Disraeli Gears" (1967)

Sense memory is a powerful thing.  Once you've associated a perfume with an old girlfriend, it's hard not to remember the relationship when you catch the scent of her brand while walking past a stranger in the mall.  Or try drinking ginger ale and seeing how long you can go before your mind conjures up images of staying home from school with a stomach bug, watching The Price Is Right.  Music is subject to the same phenomenon.  Whenever I hear Cream, I think back to being nine years old and seeing the commercial for Freedom Rock, a collection of songs from the '60s and '70s.  In the ad, which my neighborhood friends and I quoted ad infinitum, a couple of pre-fab hippies are lounging next to their VW Minibus.  The familiar opening strains of "Layla" erupt from their stereo prompting one to ask the other, "Hey, man, is that Freedom Rock?"  It's a fun, silly, cheap commercial.  The kind that used to insist on "No CODs."  Cream's contribution to the set was "White Room," which doesn't appear on Disraeli Gears, but "Sunshine of Your Love" does.  That unmistakable opening riff - on par with those that kick off "Satisfaction" or "Smoke on the Water" - links this album inextricably to 1967.  Being able to capture the zeitgeist in just a few bars is impressive, but it's also a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, you've created a monolith for the ages.  Current and future generations yearning to learn about nascent acid rock will find Disraeli Gears to be required listening.  On the other hand, your monument is a tribute to Ozymandias, a statue that began its long, slow, crumbling decline the moment it was erected.  But it's not all doom and gloom and several of these songs hold up very well.  Cream sound great when they're not trying to filter their beloved blues through too many layers of psychedelia.  Or when they're not trying to commune too closely with the muses as they do on "Tales of Brave Ulysses," which sounds like their Homeric homage to Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)."  They explore a variety of guitar textures as the songs warble, peal, drone, and jag.  However, some of the other instruments - particularly the keyboards - get buried too deep in the mix and render them irrelevant.  Likewise, many of the vocals suffer from an almost polite formality (read:  British) that sublimates their power and contrasts sharply with the imagination of the lyrics.  You can get away with lines like "Outside my window is a tree / There only for me" from "World of Pain," but only if you loosen it up a little.  And, in general, though it will tip my hand and betray my preferences to say so, they're at their rootsy best at the beginning and the end, with "Strange Brew" and "Take It Back," respectively.  These songs have a loose, earthy quality truly deserving of the name "freedom rock."  "Well, turn it up, man!" Grade: B-

#34 - The Stone Roses' "The Stone Roses" (1989)

When it comes to certain forms of pop music, orthodoxy has a way of setting in so gradually, so agreeably that almost no one questions it until an artist comes along and pulls the curtains down all at once.  More often than not said artist will be vilified as much as she is celebrated depending, of course, on just how desperately the masses cling to their cherished expectations of what a particular music should be.  The obvious historical example is Bob Dylan in the mid-60s turning the folk world on its ear by knocking the golden calves of American music off their pedestals and reassembling them in his own image.  But pop music has had to weather similar storms on other occasions as well.  If I'm allowed to paint in broad strokes, then in my opinion, by 1989, the conventional approach to popular pop music had become so ossified, so staid, that it no longer had any danger or aspiration to greatness.  Furthermore, it was excruciatingly uncool.  The revolutionaries had abandoned ship for hip hop, new wave, punk rock and all the other proto-indie movements that arose during the 70s and 80s.  Pop music was in a bad way.  Rock 'n' roll was even worse.  Rock, for most of its tenure as a popular art form, had been dance music.  It had strong beats and addictive melodies that had people out of their seats before they knew what they were doing.  But as music fractured into genres and subgenres, "dance music" came to mean a lot of different things (house, techno, club, rave, disco, trip-hop, trance) and none of them even remotely resembled rock.  Rock 'n' roll wasn't dead, but - when it came to dancing - it had been locked up in a home for convalescents.  Within this climate, The Stone Roses' debut was a breath of fresh air to an audience that hadn't realized it was oxygen-deprived.  This is brazen, tough, unimpeachably cool pop.  There's jangle and hooks for days, but there's also a good deal of swagger from a band who knows just how good they are.  To some extent their messianic fervor - the rock-band-as-savior motif they half play for laughs - can be off-putting.  But, then, any band willing to name an 8-minute freak-out "I Am the Resurrection" and their sophomore album "Second Coming" can't be taking their own hype all that seriously.  Besides, rock music has always been in love with its own mythology, with guitar players cutting their teeth down at the crossroads.  But why hone your chops when you're good from the get-go?  As lead singer Ian Brown sings on the opener, "I don't need to sell my soul / he's already in me."  Now all they want is to be adored.  With music this expertly played, this consistently catchy, this well-supported by such a danceable backbeat, that has held up this well over the past twenty years, adoration shouldn't be a problem.  Grade: A

#31 - Buddy Holly's "The 'Chirping' Crickets" (1957)

The first time I saw Casablanca, I was a 21-year-old college student living abroad in England.  My "flatmates" and I decided it was a good idea to take advantage of some of the £1 theaters around town that trafficked in classic films.  I remember watching much of the movie with my mouth agape as line after line of that canonic dialogue hit me as if I'd never heard anything like it before.  Of course, as a self-taught aficionado of pop culture, I had heard it before.  Everywhere.  A similar feeling developed as I listened to the opening tracks of "The 'Chirping' Crickets," Buddy Holly's first and last long player under the band moniker, The Crickets.  And while "long player" may be a misnomer, with its twelve tracks coming in at just about 26 minutes, the comparison to Casablanca is perfectly appropriate.  The riffs, the beats, the rough-edged vocals trading off with that lover's croon and those country yelps all add up to something very special and deservedly influential.  In addition to the well-known highlights - the emphatic drum on the last "when... you... make... me... cry-y" of "That'll Be the Day" - there are plenty of other lesser-known treasures.  For example, listen to the roiling introduction to "Rock Me My Baby" and you can hear a prophecy of rock to come.  Of course, a considerable part of what makes Buddy Holly so compelling is the degree to which his career is shrouded in the mystique and mystery of what might have been.  Hearing all of that talent and potential in one sitting, it is hard not to feel the empty hole his untimely death left behind.  Here's looking at you, kid.  Grade: A-       

#30 - Camper Van Beethoven's "Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart" (1988)

As far as its descriptive utility is concerned, the term "college rock" answers the question "when" much better than it answers the question "what." In the 1980s, before the rise of "alternative" radio stations, "college rock" basically referred to any band that neither fit neatly into a corner of the previously charted musical universe nor could stop being "weird" long enough to get serious mainstream radio airplay.  With the exception of isolated acts like The Long Ryders or single-serving morsels like REM's "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville," it was almost as if every youthful band of the decade was allergic to Americana.  I blame Reagan.  At any rate, Camper Van Beethoven was tackling roots rock well in advance of the No Depression/alt-country movement founded by Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks, and other 90s indie heavyweights.  On the one hand, you have to give them credit.  On album opener, "Eye of Fatima, Pt. 1," David Lowery announces "we're driving like hell / to get some cowboys some acid," which is as good a description as any of what this music is all about.  It looks back to traditional styles, but it does so with a view to making them new.  Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that CVB is engaged in irreverent worship.  The approach is not 100% successful.  Early on they take a stab at folk standard "O Death" and ramp up the tempo just slightly, but the results are a mixed bag.  On some songs their warped sense of humor serves them well.  On others - most notably the appropriately named "The Fool" - they end up shooting themselves in the foot, coming off more parodic than melodic.  Lyrically it's a positive feature, but when the snark bleeds into the performances themselves, count me out.  They commit their worst offense, in my opinion, during "She Divines Water," easily the prettiest song in the bunch.  Just as the harmonies are about to soar one last time, the whole thing gets mired in a needless fit of noise and disjuncture, as if they feel compelled to sabotage something empirically good to prove their avant-garde bona fides.  Or maybe it's just an anti-corporate/anti-commercial "fuck you."  Either way, it's infuriating.  Again, I blame Reagan.  There is an unfortunate pattern in music criticism for quality bands to be held responsible for the mediocre copycats they beget; the father is blamed for the sins of the children.  In the case of Camper Van Beethoven, I think they get overshadowed by the acts that came after who did what they were doing, only better.  Grade: C+

#29 - Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" (1982)

The Ring is my favorite horror movie.  I think what makes it so effective is its off-putting tonality.  The whole film - and I mean every scene - is bathed in an eerie, unnatural light.  If you've ever seen the sky before a tornado or been alone in a room lit only by a dim fluorescent bulb, you know what I mean.  Consequently, without having to resort to using crutches like the seemingly ubiquitous mirror scare, The Ring subverts the all-too familiar rhythm of other films in the genre:  introduction of characters, upsetting event, calm, upsetting event #2, comic relief, uneasy calm, and then the climax.  And because The Ring looks somehow off, every moment is pregnant with the potential for terror.  It establishes an atmosphere of dread that never lets up until the credits roll.  Combine that with what, for me, is an inherently terrifying concept - a child born evil, who lives only to sow suffering and malevolence - and you end up with a powerful and disturbing film.  Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska begins with the title cut written from the perspective of Charles Starkweather as he awaits execution by electric chair.  It is a chilling song mostly because it provides no consolatory wisdom, no satisfying explanation of the killer's motivations for his spree.  The final line, delivered in the matter-of-fact manner of the classic American murder ballad, simply says, "there's just a meanness in this world."  It's an idea that pervades the rest of the album.  Over the course of nine originals and a cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe," through songs about innocence and guilt, good and evil, on both sides of the law, Springsteen maintains taut dramatic tension.  Tragedy could - and often does - strike around every corner.  There is no refuge, not in the "Mansion on the Hill," not in "My Father's House."  Competing notions of the good arrive and collide to confound and confuse.  Expect no justice from the "Highway Patrolman" or the "State Trooper."  They are merely men, with the same conflicting loyalties that would tug and pull at anyone's conscience.  There is nonetheless beauty to be heard here:  plaintive harmonica runs, intimate vocals, and even the odd mistake that lends the whole endeavor - which is, after all, a set of unpolished demos - an unrehearsed aura that complements the lyrics just so.  Indeed, the poverty of the production values belies the richness of the material and that's a good thing.  Perfectly imperfect little couplets like, "Now the neighbors come from near and far / as we pull up in our brand new used car" could get lost in or overpowered by more ornate arrangements.  Accordingly, Nebraska should serve as a warning to those producers who would prefer to get paid per knob turned.  Studio tinkering is nearly irrelevant when songs like these are played in the right emotional key.  Grade: A+

#28 - Yo La Tengo's "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One" (1997)

Allow me to get metaphysical for a moment. On a memorable episode of Futurama, the on-again, off-again cartoon from Simpsons creator Matt Groening, a robot named Bender is careening aimlessly through space when an entire civilization of miniature, human-like creatures evolves on his metal frame.  They worship him as a god.  But, despite his well-meaning attempts to do right by his tiny, pious payload, all of his intercessions on their behalf end in disaster.  Eventually he drifts near some kind of stellar cloud formation blinking in binary which we come to learn is not just a god, but perhaps the God.  His advice to the beleaguered Bender is to use a "light touch," explaining that "when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."  Listening to the consistent, quiet daring of I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One it's easy to see how someone might overlook just how good Yo La Tengo are at what they do.  The album isn't gimmicky or trendy in the way that so many others with shorter shelf lives are.  In fact, I would have been hard-pressed to locate this album chronologically on a time-line detailing the last 25 years of indie music.  The shoegaze numbers alone could sound at home in the neighborhood of either My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (1991) or The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (2009).  Over the course of its nearly 70-minute span, this album offers up a cohesive and gorgeous pastiche of reverb-heavy rock, noise pop, gently experimental instrumentals, and pulsing space-age jam sessions.  What's more, YLT does all of this with some seriously versatile musical chops without the result coming off like a high-minded exercise in genre tourism.  For more than twenty years, Yo La Tengo have never insisted.  They've cajoled.  And because they've never aimed a moonshot at the spotlight, despite being critical darlings, mainstream recognition eludes them.  It's true:  they may never sell out Madison Square Garden or play the Superbowl halftime show.  Some people might mistake such modest success for a lack of vision or a failure to catch their big break, as if they just can't seem to stop themselves from flying "below the radar."  As for me, I think that when you maintain a low profile, keep your head down, and "do things right," you are actually flying above it.  Grade: A-

#25 - Wanda Jackson's "Rockin' with Wanda!" (1960)

I'll admit it.  Before last week I had never heard of Wanda Jackson.  I'm no stranger to the rockabilly artists she toured with (Elvis Presley) or the country singers she inspired (Dolly Parton) or the girl group sound she influenced (The Chiffons).  Still, for whatever reason, she had never made a blip on my radar.  It would not be hyperbole to suggest that the concept of a female rock-and-roller is as nearly novel to me as it was to the audiences of the mid- to late-50's.  That is not to say I'm surprised there was a woman bold enough to hang with the boys so much as I can't believe I'm only hearing about her now.  But last week a former student of mine, knowing my penchant for Jack White in general and Van Lear Rose in particular, sent me a link to the video below.  Needless to say, I was intrigued and wasted no time going right to the source.  What I found in Rockin' With Wanda! was the long lost missing link between Kitty Wells, Memphis Minnie, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Loretta Lynn.  Released less as an album and more as an LP collection of her hit singles to date, the songs on Rockin' run the gamut from country to rockabilly and - on "I Gotta Know" - you hear both, tempo changes and all.  If there is a theme to be had here, it's that Wanda's more than a match for all the no-good hound dogs and tomcats scratchin' at her door.  She's a firecracker all the way, whether she's singing about her "Mean Mean Man" or chastising another for lacking passion on "Cool Love."  You do get the sense that one of the reasons she ended up firmly on the side of country was that many of her contemporaries had more potential crossover appeal.  The twang she "brangs" on several of the tracks sounds more "hillbilly" than "rock."  Occasionally she does display some versatility:  she is, after all, capable of both sweetness and grit.  And then, out of left field, there's "Don'a Wan'a" and "Fujiyama Mama" and I'm not sure what to make of either.  The former is sung in a cringe-inducing Italian accent reminiscent of the Andrews Sisters' island patois on "Rum & Coca-Cola" and the latter begins, "I've been to Nagasaki / Hiroshima, too / the same thing I did to them, baby, I can do to you."  Wow.  They were simpler times, weren't they?  Grade: B

#24 - Patti Smith's "Horses" (1975)

Horses is a balancing act.  Patti Smith, in the sympathetic hands of producer John Cale, crafts an album that is at once cerebral and mindless, simple and complex, progressive and classicist.  And while you might expect the attempt at corralling and curating these disparate elements into a single, workable composite to sound forced, it ends up resulting in a loose and compelling whole, rolling along to its own hybridized rhythms.  Smith pushes pop music's tolerance of poetic forms to the limit, but she also evokes the ghost of pop songs past, singing bits of Van Morrison's "Gloria" and Fats Domino's "Land of 1000 Dances" when the mood strikes her.  Fittingly, the cover art is a Robert Mapplethorpe photo of Smith looking androgynous.  On songs like "Birdland," her voice ranges everywhere, from a sexy, steady, neo-Beat spoken word, to a low, operatic, manly moan to a pinched, nasal, Yoko Ono yelp.  Cale's experience in co-creating the diverse styles of The Velvet Underground serves Smith well.  The vocals - moving to the meter of her poetry - turn on a dime and require song structures to be fluid and accommodating.  However, it would be glib to think of the instrumentals as merely unobtrusive background noise.  This is not simply poetry with a backbeat and the studio band is no less inventive and dynamic than the lyricist they back.  On "Free Money," which comes in about halfway through, it is difficult to discern whether she is singing to the music or the musicians are playing to her voice.  That kind of delightful ambiguity is a good representation of what this album is all about.  It might be cliché to say that these songs work on several levels, but it wouldn't make it any less true.  If you like your music to be sophisticated, you can listen intently to Smith's lyrics and decode them to whatever extent you are able.  If, however, you prefer to turn on, tune in, and rock out, well, you can do that, too.  Grade: B+

#23 - AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" (1976)

One of several quality albums recorded under Bon Scott's reign as lead singer of this Australian hard rock juggernaut.  I had several preconceived notions about what to expect going in.  It'll be trashy.  And it was, but it was also funny and impeccably performed.  Like the dramatization of a Jerry Springer episode by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  It'll be offensive.  Well, kind of.  Our cultural threshold for shocking lyrics has been moved so many times that it's difficult to know where - if anywhere - the line now exists.  There's a streak of juvenile glee running through the songs here, an adolescent fascination with delinquency and hormonal release of all types.  In that context, the monster guitar crunch of Malcolm & Angus Young doesn't sound so much like a back-to-basics aesthetic solution to the art rock pretensions of the 70's as it does self-medication by way of primal scream therapy.  The formula is a simple one:  loud = good, therefore louder = better.  What I didn't expect was the downright conservatism of songs like "Rocker" and "There's Gonna Be Some Rockin'" which, if they had turned down their amps a bit, are essentially straightforward rockabilly blues.  Or how perilously close they get to Spinal Tap-level self-parody on tracks like "Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round To Be a Millionaire)."  As Chris Rock said about Biggie Smalls' "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems," this has to be one of the most popular songs almost no one can relate to.  I could've done without "Big Balls" - the silly, double-entendre-dependent goof that is equal parts Mad Magazine, Dr. Demento, and Tenacious D - but I understand what it's doing here.  It's not as if it's a black sheep track in an otherwise straight-laced family of songs.  At any rate, all albums have their highs and lows, and I'll gladly forgive "Big Balls" after hearing the surprisingly sweet "Ride On." Scott portrays himself  as a lonely, drunken, womanizing drifter, an "empty head."  It's a sad self-inventory, an honest accounting of the emotional bankruptcy that lies beneath the gleaming, gilded surface of the rock and roll lifestyle, which is just one "red light nightmare" after another.  He knows he should change his "evil ways," but he also knows enough to know that's unlikely.  It is a rare island of super-ego in a vast sea of id.  Grade: B

#20 - New York Dolls' "New York Dolls" (1973)

Even without (consciously) thinking about the transvestism featured on the cover art, my knee-jerk reaction to the vocals on album opener "Personality Crisis" was, "Wow, David Johansen sounds just like Dee Snider of Twisted Sister."  Strike that.  Reverse it.  Thinking Snider begat Johansen is eerily similar to Lloyd Christmas from Dumb & Dumber observing, "Hey, look, The Monkees.  They were a huge influence on The Beatles."  For my second sortie into glam rock territory, I looked to the self-titled debut, New York Dolls.  If the balls-out, winner-take-all abandon with which they approach these arrangements and performances is at all genuine - and since they come from a band that imploded after two albums, I'm inclined to think it is - then these recordings constitute powerful evidentiary support for letting the chips fall where they may.  I'm not sure where you come down on That 70's Show, but let's pretend for a moment that you love it.  New York Dolls are the Michael Kelso of 70's rock:  big, dumb, pretty & proud.  They hammer on their keyboards and wail away on their guitar strings.  On "Lonely Planet Boy," a sloppy saxophone floats in and out of the mix like its player stumbled into the studio spaced out on amyl nitrite.  "Trash" is a catchy, three-minute number of fully-formed punk rock before there was a thing called "punk rock."  It's song as sonic assault; rock as a blunt instrument.  As far as favorite moments, it's a tie between the anarchic singalong to "I've Been Working on the Railroad" at the end of "Subway Train" and the great line in "Bad Girl" when Johansen sings, "I'm beggin' please, little lover, stop this carryin' on / gotta get some lovin' before the planet is gone." Because everybody knows what an aphrodisiac eschatology is.  The hyperbolic urgency is so funny and the phrasing, right down to the use of "little lover," reminds me of a similar moment from Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues," when he sings, "I was down in the sewer with some little lover / when I peeked out from the manhole cover."  Some things never change.  And I'm glad rock stars evoking Armageddon to cop a feel is one of them.  Grade: B+