Rumours (1977)

It's 30 years later and this album still resides comfortably in the top 20 list of all-time album sellers, reason enough for many (in fairness, myself included with some cases, e.g., Celine Dion, Dirty Dancing, Alanis Morissette, Boston, Garth Brooks, Boyz II Men, etc., etc.) to dismiss it. But this is the primary vault of Fleetwood Mac hits—"Go Your Own Way," "Dreams," "Don't Stop," "You Make Loving Fun"—and if you don't like at least one of them, well, all right. This is also where Lindsey Buckingham's pop production smarts/sensibility, not to mention an impressively squealing guitar in the sundry breaks, really start to step out. Stevie Nicks contributes another knockout punch in "Dreams." And that rhythm section is still kicking ass all over London and southern California. All respect to lovers of Brit blues, but comparing this to Peter Green's projects is like comparing Saturday Night Fever to Odessa, or Nevermind to Bleach. Things change; sales happen. It doesn't necessarily mean it's for the worse. I know what you say.

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Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)

My introduction to this came via the Glenn Close/John Malkovich Hollywood vehicle of 1988, which I enjoyed. (I understand the Milos Forman-directed version that came out a year later, Valmont, is even better, but I haven't seen it.) But only recently did I read the novel they were based on, by 18th-century France one hit wonder Choderlos de Laclos, having turned it up at a garage sale. I'm never too excited by 18th-century European novels, even less so when I discovered the epistolary nature of this one—a bunch of letters written to one another by (in my expectation) a cast of overdressed, funny talking, wooden figure characters. Once into it, however, I was pleasantly surprised by the brisk and canny plotting and by the pithy, elegant language (1961 translation by P.W.K. Stone). By the time I was halfway in I was convinced it had to be an elaborate hoax published closer to 1982 than 1782. It is heartless, sexy, unpleasant, sweeping, gorgeous, and as believable as it is deeply cynical about human nature. The Publisher's Note, Editor's Preface, and scattered footnotes throughout provide meta-meditations on the "veracity" of the unfolding events and are probably what made me think it belongs more properly to postmodern Western civ than pre-Revolutionary France. More fool me. This is a good one.

In case it's not at the library.

Fleetwood Mac (1975)

Peter Gabriel named his first four solo albums Peter Gabriel. Royal Trux named their first and third albums Royal Trux. So if this is the second Fleetwood Mac album named Fleetwood Mac (the first, in the era of Peter Green, was their first; this one is their 10th or so) it's not as if that isn't without precedent. Self-title also turned out to be perhaps more appropriate than anyone would have guessed, as it ushered in the era of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who arguably overhauled the band more than any other pair of players passing through, and brought the world more or less a whole new Fleetwood Mac. This is a stone goodie, bearing some of their best-known, and best, hits: "Over My Head," "Say You Love Me," and the redoubtable "Rhiannon," one of the greatest of all '70s pop songs and which heralded the unmistakable sound—often repeated, rarely matched—of the gauzy Stevie Nicks. Not to mention "Warm Ways," a Bob Welchesque throwback by Christine McVie (my favorite Fleetwood Mac—who is yours?). Oh, and the rhythm section is solid too.

(Special thanks to RE-UPPED!)

Back at the Chicken Shack (1960)

Admittedly, most of the stuff I post here I am long familiar with, and it is old. This is a slightly different case—old, but relatively new to me. In fact, there are large swaths of jazz unknown to me. This, from Blue Note, with Smith playing Hammond B-3 organ, Kenny Burrell guitar, and Stanley Turrentine tenor sax, is a whole new kind of all-day jazz to me—the kind that doesn't focus practically exclusively on saxophone and/or Miles Davis. It's a pure delight, warm and deceptively laidback and full of nice moments and little surprises. As for once again offering old music, I can only repeat a version of what Bob Dylan said once on his radio show. I don't have anything against new music, but there's a lot more old music than new. P.S. I want that dog on the cover.

Imperial Bedroom (1982)

At which point all agreement about Elvis Costello came to an end. Those inclined to label him with figures they perceived that he intended to ape (Buddy Holly for My Aim Is True, Bob Dylan for This Year's Model, so on and so forth) claimed Cole Porter, George Gershwin, even no less than all of Tin Pin Alley for this. Dean Robert Christgau flew in the face of the consensus of the time that this was not only good, but great, pooh-poohing that it "shores up my impression that he can be precious lyrically, vocally, and musically, and gnomic for no reason at all--in short, pretentious." Well, the rest of us liked it pretty well, although I admit this was the beginning of Elvis Costello albums that required, at least for me, a certain attitude and approach of practically reverent study. Typically, little makes sense for the first several listens, then various melodies, lyrical phrases, breaks and other kicks begin to emerge and cohere, until finally, 15 or so listens in, the gorgeous wide-screen tapestry is evident in all its splendor. For me, this experience has been fairly consistent across most of the body of his work that followed, which puts even the work I most enthusiastically endorse squarely in the camp of music I am most suspicious of – the kind you "have to listen to a few times" before their genius discloses. In other words, self-fulfilling prophecy. Even so, that's my thumb pointing straight to heaven on this one.

The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Perhaps one of the more interesting and telling points about the critical reception of William Faulkner is the wide variation and lack of consensus found in assessing any single "masterpiece"—this one gets the nod frequently, perhaps even most, but close behind it are Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; and Light in August, not to mention the rest of the oeuvre, including a fat tome of stories, all well worth looking into. But this remains my favorite, in spite of all the effort and patience required to make it through the first of the four sections, the one that develops the "tale told by an idiot" part of the Shakespeare quote that engendered the title. As opaque as it generally is, it contains information essential to what follows, as the inevitable second reading of the whole really proves. In the sections that follow I find inspired sources and foreshadowings of J.D. Salinger, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy, respectively. Sure, it's all a bit melodramatic (strike that "bit"), but Faulkner plunges joyfully in language, meaning, and mood like a dog in a lake on a hot summer day; the pleasures and associations unfold and unfold and unfold.

In case it's not at the library.

Get Happy!! (1980)

"Love for Tender" With this semi-alleged (and semi-denied) gesture of quasi-apology, exhaustion in Elvis Costello from the furious pace of the previous two or three years was arguably beginning to show. That was evidenced most painfully by the unduly famous 1979 encounter in a Columbus, Ohio, bar between Costello, on the one hand, and Bonnie Bramlett and Stephen Stills on the other. In the conversation, Costello reportedly referred to James Brown and Ray Charles with a nasty name that starts with "N." Bramlett and Stills ran to the press with it. Me, I never doubted that Elvis meant it only as a blow-off gesture to two sorry figures of the '60s on the downslope of their careers incapable of understanding punk-rock and all that it engendered. He was probably tired and didn't feel like talking to them. They probably didn't get the hint. So goes my take. Unfortunately the rock establishment of the time—who held Bramlett and Stills in higher esteem than Costello (looking at you, Rolling Stone)—went ahead and set the whole thing up as a public cage match between hippies and punks, too busy expressing their disdain for one another to see how much they have in common. They should have brought in Allen Ginsberg to fight for the beats and been done with it. The damage was severe. Three years later and beyond Costello, no racist, was still apologizing for it. He's probably still apologizing for it even today. This album was part and parcel of all that, intentionally or otherwise, with its many paeans to Motown, Stax, and all points soul. It's also one of his best albums, as rich and generous as anything he had released yet. Go ahead and live with it for a month or two. You won't regret.

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Visit motel de moka
As Herr K. of Totally Fuzzy once expressed it, sometimes nothing but the hand-picked, well-chosen single mp3 audio track will do. When that is the case, this site is worth making your first stop. Contributors, from a staff of a dozen or so, offer (as the spirit moves) a mix of a dozen or so tracks, each of which may be downloaded individually. Selections typically run toward the ambient, lengthy, and/or dance-inflected, but very nice pop and even oldies offerings show up as well. Tracks available for a limited time.

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Armed Forces (1979)

Oh, I just don't know where to begin. With this, Elvis Costello's third release in less than a year and a half, each one equally fully packed and with barely a shred of filler, the dimensions of his talent were starting to come clear. On vinyl, either side constituted a complete experience, and—not to go all cliché on you—it was like taking a roller coaster ride that followed each set of sudden dips, turns, and shrieks with, not a braking cruise back to the starting point, but another climb to greater heights. He pulled rabbits out of hats and then he pulled hats out of rabbits. Depths of reference peeled back to reveal more depths of reference, and repeated listening was rewarded with sustained and increasing pleasure. This could get to be a daily habit that lasted weeks, even months. He wasn't Buddy Holly. He wasn't Bob Dylan. Lord knows he wasn't ABBA. But he could have been all of them, parading around inside the skin of a wonky nebbish. It was impossible to guess how he was doing it. Best just to shut up and listen.

This Year's Model (1978)

You hear a lot of talk about sophomore curses, but Elvis Costello (& the Attractions) blew that to smithereens with this stunning follow-up to his promising debut, My Aim Is True. Every move of brash confidence is made good (for example, the titles; it was, and this is). It's tempting to make the comparison with Neil Young re: Crazy Horse and the Attractions. Herr Costello is simply better with his house band as the ferocious attack here first amply demonstrated. But this also exhibited songwriting chops on the first step of a stairway to heaven that would last at least another four years—and, arguably, more than ten. He lived and breathed rock 'n' roll history (the musical references to the Stones, Bob Dylan, and many more come fast and furious here), he was genuinely pissed off (about everything), and by all evidence he never slept. Just cranked out one knotty, brilliant number after the next. Get on board. This is where the fun starts.