The Parrot's Lamppost

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 12:00:00 +0000

The Flaming Lips performed a sold out show at the ornate, restored King's Theatre in Brooklyn Thursday night, a tremendous former Loew's palace that now hosts everything from rock concerts to ballets. It's a glorious venue to step into, even more overwhelming than Manhattan's storied Beacon Theater in its breadth and glamor.

Kings Theatre. Brooklyn NY

The Flaming Lips, for their part, offered a phantasmagoria of lights, images, props and confetti in support of a tour that celebrates the 20th anniversary of their popular album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. (Actually the album came out in 2002; the pandemic has pushed back a lot of anniversaries.)

Attack of the Pink Robots

Did I say "popular"? The most well-worn track on the album, "Do You Realize?" has just under 80 million streams on Spotify. That number is the dream of many an artist, but a drop in the bucket for today's most popular acts. Neo-psychedelic latecomer Tame Impala has topped a billion with "The Less I Know the Better" and drawn 100-500 million listens numerous times. Even the Lips' sort-of-iconic "Race For the Prize", from their 1999 album The Soft Bulletin, has drawn under 25 million streams. Another Australian neo-psych band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which bears comparison to the Lips in a number of ways, has beaten that number several times. All of which is to say that for their 20 or so studio albums (depending on what you count), numerous EP's, compilations and collaborations, the Flaming Lips remain something of a niche band.

Perhaps they could also be called an acquired taste. There is nothing difficult to like about the Flaming Lips' music; what may need to be acquired is an attachment to their culture. How to describe that? Pictures, of course, are worth a lot of verbiage, and you can see from the ones here that "excess" is part of their DNA. Consider the fact that nearly every song was accompanied by at least several types of visual cues competing for one's attention, including -

1. Constantly moving, multicolored background patterns

2. Laser lights in complex, layered beams trained on the audience

3. Bright white flashing lights

4. Inflatable props of various types

5. The lyrics flashed word by word on the backdrop screen

6. Fog, confetti, rubber balls and other additional props

7. A bubble enclosing the lead singer

Sensory overload is a key component of a Flaming Lips concert

The music, presumably the main point of the show, is similarly layered and consuming, bathing the large auditorium in sound that ranges from a keyboard-emphasized booming bass to the extreme highs of polyphonic synthesizers, with guitars and vocal harmonies filling out the middle. Two drummers (presumably Matt Kirksey and Nicholas Ley, though no musicians were introduced) provided rhythm in most songs, neither of them shy about making a lot of noise.

The voice of Wayne Coyne, the lead singer and personality of the group, soars above the mix with high and sometimes scratchy intensity, a kind of cross between Jon Anderson and Neil Young. To those who know the songs, who have caught enough of a whiff of Lips culture to know what to expect, he is the child at the heart of the Flaming Lips world, the glue that makes the slime gel. He is also the only original member of the band, though Steven Drozd, who plays guitar and other instruments, has been with them for more than 30 years.

His inter-song banter also accounts for a good deal of the band's character. He can be effusive, gentle, funny and gratuitously foul-mouthed, as if trying to cover all emotional bases at once. You have to be a certain kind of person, I think, to enjoy the monologues, and I plead guilty to not being that kind of person, exactly. One of Coyne's primary forms of audience interaction is to instruct the audience to "Scream" and "Keep screaming!". The impression that he was asking people to pretend they were more excited than they really were never quite left, even after he explained, a couple of hours into the show, that his purpose was to lift up any audience members who might be out of sorts. It did not strike me as a very effective bit of pop psychology and therefore rang a bit hollow.

Which is not to say the fans weren't excited or screaming enough anyway - the audience was clearly in Coyne's hand, even after he apparently bonked someone waving one of his props around. (I wasn't close enough to see exactly what happened, but it was serious enough that they stopped the song and issued profuse apologies.) He tends to thank the audience multiple times after every song, but the streams of "thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou..." became predictable and left me wondering if Coyne is uncomfortable with more spontaneous engagement. On the other hand, a few monologues, including one about searching for a lost toy airplane in a warehouse, were entertaining and didn't seem all that rehearsed. But when he started waxing philosophical the ideas came off as a collage of new age platitudes.

This is what I feel to some extent about their lyrics, too. They sometimes captivate you with surprising turns, but they also sport a mix of optimistic naïveté that conjures up Rod McKuen, and puerile space fantasies that conjure up too many post-psychedelic bands to name. Probably their best set of lyrics is the whimsical and humorous "She Don't Use Jelly", one of their few radio hits, while "Do You Realize?", from the Yoshimi album, demonstrates just how shameless their clichés can run:

Do you realize

you have the most beautiful face?

Do you realize

we're floating in space?

Do you realize

that happiness makes you cry?

Do you realize

that everyone you know will someday die?

The band projects the lyrics to every song in real-time

The song ends with another cliché about "the world spinning 'round" (re-used from Paul McCartney's "The Fool on the Hill", which at least is not a gallery of clichés).

There is an important nuance to mention about this song and other Flaming Lips lyrics - they tend to write about death from the optimistic point of view that it "won't defeat us", or something along those lines. In more sophisticated hands some deep insights can emerge from this idea (for instance, in Laura Nyro's "And When I Die" or Hugh Prestwood's song "Bristlecone Pine") but the Lips' lyrics leave us mostly in the realm of kitsch, dead or alive, on earth or beyond.

I have to acknowledge, though, that the kitsch seems a bit calculated, and I'd surmise that the aura of childlike innocence is one of the things that appeal to Flaming Lips fans. That might be true of Rod McKuen's poetry too, but in that case it seems like a pseudo-art product for those not prepared for the challenges of serious poetry. What's going on here feels different; more like a consciously naïve point of view that is not yet clouded by the complexities of the adult world. That, in any case, is the best case I can make for it.

But I still found the projection of the lyrics distracting, both because words draw attention away from everything else and because I had the distinct feeling that I would prefer not to know what they were saying. I generally assign lyrics a relatively low degree of importance in rock music anyway; when they are particularly original, poetic or thought-provoking they definitely add to the value of the song, but when they are not the music can stand well enough on its own, so long as the lyrics are not outright objectionable. I don't find their lyrics objectionable, just not worthy of making constant demands on my attention.

Were it not for the ear-candy appeal of their music it is hard to believe Coyne's lyrics would be taken seriously. (I call them his because he does lead vocal duties; on the albums all songs are credited to the entire band.) But ear candy it is, in a way that has been compared to the Beach Boys, not without justice, but also reminds one of the melodic and Mellotron-rich sound of the Moody Blues, or the synth-heavy sonic spread of Yes, with rich vocal harmonies too. Because the mix is so complex it is not always easy to hear the what guitar is doing, and I missed, to some extent, the guitar-forward songs of those prog-rock bands, as well as the Lips' own guitar-heavy sound prior to The Soft Bulletin. They seem to be in roughly the sonic mode of Genesis these days. But they are so diverse and unpredictable over the course of their career that any category or comparison risks being outdated by the next album.

Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips

The first few Flaming Lips albums, recorded for an indie label in the late 1980's, have more than a bit of the punk rock aesthetic, though with a twist here and there that tends to undermine the "post-punk" label. (In this they resemble another Aussie band that ended up in neo-psychedelic territory, The Church.) Their transition to a more noticeably neo-psych or neo-prog sound came after they moved to Warner Bros. in 1991. If the first couple of tracks on the 1992 album Hit to Death in the Future Head leave the impression that nothing much had changed, the rest of the album cannot be mistaken for post-punk except in the chronological sense. The following year Steve Drozd took up duties as drummer, initially, but he plays just about every instrument they use, and sings as well. By the time they recorded The Soft Bulletin in 1999 their mature sound had taken shape; the album brought them awards and critical acclaim, after which Yoshimi cemented their reputation. (For a thorough review of Flaming Lips recordings through 2010 please see this Trouser Press page.)

In spite of this rough summary, they have never been tied to a single type of sound, nor do they disdain almost any kind of experimentation. From time to time they put out more typical, hard-edged rock, only to go on to record long, ambient instrumentals. They have also offered albums of cover material: with or without collaborators, they have recorded complete cover sets of many of the milestones of psychedelic and progressive rock, including Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, In the Court of the Crimson King, Dark Side of the Moon and the first album by The Stone Roses. (Not all of these have been issued as regular commercial releases.) Many other covers and a Christmas album have dropped in one form or another. At this concert they covered "Borderline" - no, not the popular Tame Impala song, as one might have expected for neo-psych creds, but Madonna's hit single.

To say the Flaming Lips are intoxicating in concert is an understatement. Overwhelmed by thundering bass notes, orchestral synths and flashing lights, even sustaining a mild headache, I was nevertheless gripped by the music from the start, and stood for most of the nearly 3-hour concert as they battled pink robots (playing the entire album) and then went on to perform a series of songs, including most of their more popular ones, all of which held their own as concert pieces.

This was somewhat surprising, as most of their recent studio recordings emphasize Coyne's more plaintive tones and the ambience of the synth-driven sound. This led to the impression that a concert might be a kind of lightweight affair. It was anything but - least of all, I suppose, to the mass of standing-room ticketholders at the front of the stage, who swayed and jumped to the music and Coyne's stage antics. I've seen some contemporary bands who are more to my taste on disk (or online) than the Flaming Lips, but are considerably less impressive in concert. Excess, it seems, works pretty well as a wall of sound, even if I could have lost some of the inflatables, lived with fewer lights, and done without projected lyrics. I came away wanting to go back to some of the songs to see if I might have missed something when I listened to the album.

It is worth mentioning that the Lips are known to use a certain amount of pre-recorded material during their concerts. It is simply impossible to duplicate on stage everything that is done in recording studios these days. In fact, long before these days - for example, in the 1970's 10cc performed "I'm Not in Love" and other material live with the help of pre-recorded tracks, because the effects achieved in the studio would have required at least an entire chorus. There's no deception here (it's not lip-synching); even in the classical music world the reliance on electronics and tape loops makes it an academic exercise to say whether the effects were previously recorded and played back or "played" on stage by triggering a programmed sound effect.

The light show was probably the most complex I have seen since the 2003 reunion tour of the 1970's prog-rock group Nektar. (I had seen them several times before that too.) That band, who consider their lighting designer (Mick Brockett) a member, similarly performed in front of an ever-changing backdrop of visual effects that included filmed sequences, patterns and even live footage of the band from previous shows. It was all handled in real-time by Brockett, with a self-designed system of projectors and foot-controls. (In a shocking coincidence, as I'm preparing to post this they are playing a concert in Long Island celebrating the 50th Anniversary of their 1973 album Remember the Future; it will lack the presence of guitar genius Roye Albrighton, who died in 2016, but includes Brockett and 2 other original members.) I would be surprised if the Flaming Lips did not count them as an influence, both musically and visually. Though the projected art is different, the concept is very similar, and it would not be hard to imagine either of them covering the other's music.

One of the moving images that form the backdrop to the Flaming Lips' concerts

It seemed only logical, in fact all but mandatory, to close with their most thrilling number, "Race For the Prize", since playing it earlier might have risked that whatever followed would be anti-climactic. I'd be equally surprised to find Kate Bush doing "Running Up That Hill" in the middle of a show. (Though I'd also be surprised to find her doing a show at all.) Apparently Coyne & co. had the same thought, and there was little need to say they were done when the song ended. Just in case, though, Wayne had informed the audience early on that they would be playing "until about 11:30, when they kick us out". The song ended at 11:28 p.m.

Race For the Prize (clip) - The Flaming Lips - Kings Theater 6/8/2023

As I think back on the concert I can't help musing a bit on the significance of sensory excess in our culture. From Disney World to the Bicentennial Fireworks, we seem to love it for its own sake. It's related to what Kant called "the sublime", not because it is aesthetically great, which it usually isn't, but because it overwhelms the senses while being comprehensible to the mind. From the grossly overbuilt cars of the 1950's to the gaudiness of some wedding halls, excess seems to please us when it helps us express ourselves without inhibition. The magnificent interior of the Kings Theatre itself - one of five palatial theatres built by Loews in 1929 (the same year as the Beacon) - is perhaps an expression of the ebullience of the "roaring twenties". All of them opened on the eve of the Great Depression, yet as businesses folded left and right and the vaudeville shows the theatres were partly designed for went out of style, somehow they survived, to eventually host the sensory excesses of Cinerama, Imax and Avatar.

Excess has resulted in a world where the climate and environment are perhaps irreparably damaged, which strongly suggests we need to control it better in the future. But if it serves some deeply human emotional need - as testified by so many aspects of our culture, including every new blockbuster CGI-created 3D-spectacled superhero film - it is probably here to stay in one form or another.

In which case, the form it takes in Flaming Lips concerts is probably one of the most positive and sustainable. So, having just watched a documentary on the music for (increasingly excessive) James Bond films, it's irresistible to end my comments on the Flaming Lips by saying that as far as excess goes, nobody does it better.

Sundays at the Theater With Steve: A Reflection on Stephen Sondheim

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 23:30:00 +0000

Now there is no hat. Where there was a hat. And life is not the same.

My reaction to the death of Stephen Sondheim was not exactly rational, even as emotional things go. It was easy to find connections with him in my life, but hard to say why any of them would have brought me close to tears. The most obvious ones I came up with are too indirect to have much emotional impact, so I kept exploring.

One is that he studied composition with Milton Babbitt. An odd fact for someone who is generally considered one of the greatest geniuses of the Broadway musical; Babbitt was a strictly atonal composer, one whose stringent formalism was a model for composers when I was a composition student at Northwestern. I studied there with David Noon, who was a student of Mario Davidovsky, who also studied with Babbitt. So there you go, only four degrees of separation: Alterman - Noon - Davidovsky - Babbitt - Sondheim.

Another has to do with Sondheim's musical Saturday Night. Written in 1954, it was to be his first musical, lyrics and score. But it was cancelled due to the death of a producer. In 1997, more than 40 years later, Saturday Night was finally produced by the Bridewell Theatre Company in London. The story has to do with young men growing up in Brooklyn, and for the promotional artwork the designers chose a photograph of three boys sitting on a pier with the Manhattan Bridge in the background. That photograph, Boys on Pier, Manhattan Bridge, was taken by my uncle, Harold Roth, in 1948. I now own the rights to Roth's work and the prints he left behind when he died in 2001.

Here is one of the original prints next to the sheet music booklet for Saturday Night:

The same cover design was used for the original cast CD, fliers and posters.

None of this really gets at why Sondheim's death seems so personal to me. Nor does the following, though it is a bit closer: My mother died early this year, age 91; she was found on the floor of her home in Delray Beach, Florida, where she lived alone. Sondheim, age 91, was found on the floor of his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he lived alone. The cause of my mother's death is unknown, but it came as she appeared to be getting over a bout of COVID. The cause of Sondheim's death has not been announced, but he died just as news of the new Omicron variant of COVID was reaching the public. It occurrs to me that if someone has devoted his life to musical theater, then at age 89 watched Broadway shut down and revivals of his work get postponed for 2 years due to COVID, hung in through all that, and just as everything was opening up again, news of a variant that could send us back to square one reached him, he might not survive the emotional shock of that. I don't know if this was true or if he even heard the news, but he was said to have been in good health before his death.

I suppose this focus on morbidity is not what anyone wants to hear, but with the emotions regarding my mother's death still raw it was hard to keep my brain quiet when I heard the news, particularly right after a Thanksgiving that would be the first one she missed and the last one Sondheim enjoyed.

Sondheim grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where my parents moved (from Brooklyn) when I was ten years old. We lived in a tenement on West 83rd Street; he lived in the San Remo, one of the most famous buildings in a neighborhood full of famous buildings (the Belnord, the Apthorp, and of course the Dakota) where an arm's length list of famous actors and musicians have resided. To me and my friends, the San Remo was just the most distinctive piece of skyline you could see from Central Park. Too bad he did not have a happy childhood there; I suppose mine was a bit better, if poorer.

But let me finally say what I think is going on with my Sondheim connections. Of all his musicals I have only ever seen Gypsy and a film version of West Side Story, to both of which he only wrote the lyrics. I narrowly missed seeing a production of Into the Woods before the pandemic, but I own the soundtracks to a A Little Night Music and Sunday in the Park With George. None of that explains how I felt at hearing of his death.

No, it can only be one thing: Judy Collins' recording of his most famous song, "Send in the Clowns". Why? Because I loved the song from the first time I heard it? There are lots of songs I love, and lots of people love that one but may not feel it in quite the same way, even if they are songwriters like me. I think it represented for me a kind of paradigm of how to be a songwriter, a model that I could mentally turn around and examine to remind myself how it's done.

Strangely enough, in interviews Sondheim said that he kind of tossed off the song. He said he needed to find something with short phrases for Glynis Johns (the original Desirée in A Little Night Music) because she couldn't sustain notes; that he had the idea that questions would make naturally short phrases, and to use the stage metaphor because, fictionally, she was an actress. And then bing bang boom it all came together in two days. Including the fact that it would have to be in two different meters (9/8 and 12/8).

That's great - when you're a genius it all seems simple. And even when you're not, songs do sometimes seem to pull themselves out of thin air and you have little to do but take notes. But it's more than the fact that the song is inspired, which goes without saying. The first thing that struck me about it was the line, "Sure of my lines" - you have a sad song in a major key, then it sort of tumbles into minor in the bridge, which heightens the tension, and then, as the bitterness of the situation becomes clear, descends almost chromatically through the line "Making my entrance again with my usual flair". Finally, dropping the sarcasm that guards the rawness of her emotions and letting herself admit the self-doubt that underlies the whole scene, she sings "Sure of my lines", and the tonality descends into near chaos as the singer traverses a diminished fourth, an awkward melodic interval that emphasizes the interiority of the emotion, and the troubled backward glance at that false sense of security.

If you are not a musician you surely have no idea what I just said, but the point is that a seemingly insignificant musical touch just nails the emotional content, creating a mystical moment in which the singer suddenly lays it all bare and you share her sense of despair. That is the stuff of genius.

Then there is the way the lyrics seem to alternate between a controlling theatrical metaphor, which is brilliantly deployed again and again, and a second metaphor about clowns, until they somehow magically seem to come together at the end of the third verse: "Don't bother, they're here". Now, in fact, as Sondheim explained, it is all one metaphor, the clowns being sent in to cover when a performance is not going well. The star is reviewing her mistakes, or failures, and asking for the clowns to be sent in to distract the audience from them. But I think the clowns work on another level, which I realized when Sondheim said it could have been "send in the fools" instead - that is, the "clowns" metaphor captures the growing feeling of foolishness, particularly about the actress's illusion that with her well-honed skills she could bend reality and undo the error she made when she rejected her lover so many years ago.

Now let's look at the melody itself. It seems to have just three basic elements, which makes their contributions easy to isolate, and to see how they relate to the meaning of the song. One is the jump from the 3rd to the 4h note of the first two lines of each verse: isn't--->it rich, are we--->a pair. This motion is completed by a fall of an octave at the end of the verse: you in<----midair. (Note that there are a number of ways in which Fredrik, the previously rejected suitor, could be thought of as being "in midair" - between two women, two stages of his life, his sexual and emotional desires, etc.) The leap ending in a fall perfectly captures both the spirit of the drama and the literal meaning of the first verse, "me here at last on the ground, you in midair".

That line, though, has more of an implication of a dance performance than drama, as does "one who keeps tearing around, one who can't move", while "losing my timing this late in my career" could indicate a performance of almost any sort. So the setting of those lines actually provides the third element, a rolling melody that is somewhat reminiscent of circus or carousel music, but is also very close to a waltz, a dance which literally employs lilting, up-and-down and sweeping motions. So what the whole thing amounts to is a leap into the air, a giddy ride followed by a fall: exactly what the fictional actress is experiencing as she confidently ventures a proposal to her ex-lover, sure that it will be warmly received ("I thought that you'd want what I want") and then suddenly finds herself falling without a parachute when he rejects her offer.

This is my perhaps over-analyzed take on the common observation that Sondheim was able to use songs to move his dramas forward. Before him, songs in musicals were often a pause in the dramatic action, a kind of break for the audience. He made them part of the drama, a way of deepening the personalities of the characters. In fact, "Send in the Clowns" is partially re-worked as the show's closer, now conveying a completely different feeling in which the characters have been reconciled to their own foolishness and accept one another and themselves.

I could probably go on a bit longer, but it comes down to this: Sondheim put everything you need to know about songwriting into a 4-minute song. Almost everything: the line "Don't you love farce" is awkward, forcing singers to breathe between the last two words or risk the suggestion that she is professing an affection for derrieres. (Barbara Streisand seems to pause for a drink between them.) All this shows is that an errant brushstroke in a Rembrandt is worth talking about more than the same mistake in a million other works of art.

I don't know if I've really said what I wanted to say about Sondheim and how his death affected me, or why. Perhaps, ultimately, it comes down to respect: the idea that someone could take a form of entertainment that sometimes seems one step from kitsch, and make it into something that seems one step beyond opera. Some modern operas have serious subject matter and the highest level of musical creativity, but no one saw that coming in the Broadway musical until Sondheim did it.

I think I've run out of words - highly unusual for me. Fortunately, Sondheim saves the day:


    Somebody crowd me with love.
    Somebody force me to care.
    Somebody let me come through,
    I'll always be there,
    As frightened as you,
    To help us survive,
    Being alive.
    Being alive.
    Being alive!

It does sound like he wrote them this year. They're from Company, 1970 
- and 2021. Maybe now I will finally get to see one of his musicals.

Dave Chappelle and "The Closer" (II): Terrestrial Demographics

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 23:46:00 +0000

I set out to write some comments on Dave Chappelle's "The Closer" focusing on his two jokes about "Space Jews". Originally I thought I would send it as an Op-Ed to the Times; as usual with such thoughts, the piece got too long, so I cut a lot of the material below. Then I changed my mind and decided to post it to The Parrot's Lamppost, so this post is partly the material I cut from the previous one, and partly some additional thoughts.

Meanwhile Chappelle has responded to his transgender critics, or rather, to the perceived judgment that he is being held to account for what he said about them in "The Closer". He is not backing down on anything and clearly still trying to drum up support - in this case, with a story about a special he did in a cornfield which is now meeting resistance in the distribution channel. "So am I cancelled or not?" he asks before casually tossing the microphone over his shoulder.

"Cancelling", that effluence of unregulated social media, stands in an awkward gap between free speech and bullying. I have nothing to do with it, and like Chappelle my main reaction is that Twitter is not a real place. But that doesn't mean we all have to sit down, shut up and laugh at whatever Chappelle takes to be amusing. Anyway, after The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, Vox and so many others have weighed in, what are the chances that a squawking parrot can "cancel" Dave? We'll probably have less impact than intellectually feeble adulatory rants like this. Be that as it may, your bird will sing, be the impact what it may.

It is a notable fact, of Chappelle's own making, that of the thousands of possible subjects for comedy, he has chosen things like the claims of the transgender, gay rights and women's movements, as well as Jews, Asians and other vulnerable populations. Nobody forced this on him, so it is a bit disingenuous when he gets the criticism that might be expected, and pushes back as if he is the one who has been injured. "I'm the only one who can't go to the office", he says. Well - is the point that there are trans comedians making jokes about black folks, and they can "go to the office"? If so, that's wrong, of course; but since he chose his subjects and got paid $20 million per special to talk about them it's not like he was in a corner or something. I have to say that I admire both Netflix for not caving in to criticism and removing the shows, and the communities for not backing down in light of Chappelle's defensive gestures.

By chance I happened on a NY Times Magazine article from a year ago - the title in print was "The Last Laugh", by Dan Brooks, but online it is called "How President Trump Ruined Political Comedy". It contains some telling analysis on conservative comedy, including this:

...any statement that gets too much blowback can become someone else's failure to take a joke.

This approach lets irony serve as a stalking horse for ideas that decency prevents the ironist from advancing seriously.

Referring to conservative comedians Steven Crowder, Jesse Watters and Milo Yiannopoulos, Brooks says,

All three men construct jokes that operate in a gray area between tweaking political correctness and simply repeating the prejudices it forbids.

In his estimation, "ambiguous irony has allowed both political comedians and pundits to say what cannot be said."

Much of that could be applied with equal accuracy to the recent comedy of Dave Chappelle. No one will accuse him of being a conservative, but the thrust of "The Closer" and some of his other recent work has an eerie similarity to the methods of conservative "blowback" that Brooks put his finger on. Chappelle wants us to sit back and relax as he throws "forbidden" barbs at various communities, and then demands the space to say "but it's comedy, give me a break!" when people object. If that doesn't do it, he insists that we listen more closely to see that his jokes are not really aimed at these various marginalized groups. And if we are still not willing to follow him down that path he insists we don't have a grip on reality ("gender is a fact" he states informatively) or reminds us that white activists are always willing to jump across the racial barricades when push comes to shove. It's a lot of moves to defend jokes that, prima facie, seem offensive.

Apart from the "Space Jews" routines, "The Closer" includes obvious, raunchy bathroom and bedroom humor, a critique of racial myopia in the women's movement and a true story about his supportive relationship with a trans woman who was an aspiring stand-up comedian. The most common word in the show is either "bitches" or "niggas" (which I shall reproduce in this form only insofar as I am quoting Chappelle). Both words lose their shock value by repetition.

Actually I'm not sure if any shock value still remained in the "n-word" after Richard Pryor famously introduced, and later abandoned, the use of it in his routines. Lenny Bruce once repeatedly ran through a long list of ethnic insult words with the goal of something like what psychologists call "semantic satiation" - where words temporarily lose meaning due to repetition. Here the words seem in line with a delivery style derived from ghetto talk and hip hop culture. In his Ohio show on 6/6/20 he also says "I use the word 'bitch' all the time because it's black." That seems to be another version of "it's all in the delivery", and Chappelle lacks nothing in terms of delivery. He gets plenty of women laughing at what he says about "bitches", and I'm not going to get on a pulpit and say they shouldn't, it's demeaning, etc. So I'll focus on other aspects of his humor.

Chappelle minces no words about racism; he delivered a lengthy monologue on the George Floyd murder at that 6/6/20 show, and he was clearly not looking for laughs or even applause, he was saying how it affected him and how he appreciated the protests. But he is not always heavy, and delivers some self-deprecating humor as well. He actually opens "The Closer" with a routine on COVID-19 in which he describes getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as "the most nigga-ish thing I've done in a long time". But anyone who follows him knows that such self-deprecation comes wrapped in a lot of context. So for contrast we have one of the funniest lines in "Sticks and Stones", where Chappelle relates an interaction with a television producer who told him he cannot say "fag---" on tv. He asked why not, when he says "nigga" all the time? "Because you're not one of them," she tells him. "That's true," he replies, "but I'm not a nigga either!" Zap!

But notice something: here we forgive the way he skirts the logic that is really behind the producer's remark, because the sentiment seems genuine. What the producer meant is that we reserve to each ethnic or national group the right to use common insults about themselves, but rarely give such license to others. Jews can call one another "Yids" or joke about our schnozzolas, but it's a rare situation where someone else can do it with impunity. So Chappelle doesn't really have a license to talk about "fag---s", but he can go ahead and mock Martin Luther King's speech patterns and use the n-word as he pleases. His response to the producer is brilliant but slightly off-target; and we let it go because we want it to be right.

But when he discusses other communities things get dicier. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine may deserve some ribbing, but, "I'll have what the homeless people are having"? There's a sense of "the homeless get screwed" there, but it comes with a very rough edge, a distancing that suggests he is really better than them. Another joke reifies Trump's reference to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus": referring to news media coverage of attacks on Asians by black people he says that he failed to get sick from COVID because the same thing was happening inside his body. Is Trump the target here? If so that's pretty subtle for stand-up, where the impact has to be immediate if you want a laugh. Maybe Chappelle was just satirizing the trope about black-Asian antipathy. He's not above using just about anyone as the butt of a joke (the Amish take it on the chin pretty squarely in one of his routines) but it is usually possible to read it as a humorously hyperbolic reaction to some existing prejudice rather than an exercise in prejudice itself.

As I said above, though, that ambiguity can be a dangerous tool, should it fall into the wrong hands. You might say that the entire support for the limb Chappelle is out on is our willingness to treat him as everyone's friend, underneath it all, whether that assumption is earned or not. It takes a lot of courage to walk that line, putting your audience in that position and hoping they give you the benefit of the doubt. With the "Space Jews" jokes he definitely crossed the line for me: clever, not particularly funny, and no underlying truth to them either. I wonder how Asians took the COVID joke. If that moral ambiguity fails too often it's not a good sign.

Another one of his routines has a laugh at the expense of both trans women and veterans, a bit of crude bathroom humor that involves a reference to the kind of wound that male veterans might find least amusing. So you might say to yourself: "No one could be that heartless about a wounded veteran, so it must be rooted in empathy." Well, someone very prominent in American politics made some of the most repulsive comments ever aired in public about veterans and still got elected, so we can't just assume that everyone on a stage cares much about veterans, or everyone listening to them either.

Yet another routine involves Chappelle's alleged sexual abuse by a preacher: "Don't feel bad for me - I liked it", he says, and then attempts to make the preacher sound like the loser in the transaction. I don't know if Chappelle was really a victim of such abuse, but even if he was, and this way of dealing with it works for him, I wonder if other victims wouldn't feel more like it was a fresh assault. A longer discussion of pedophilia in "Sticks and Stones" was better prepared and somewhat less graphic, but this quickie gets crammed into the act as if he needed to make up time. Child sexual abuse is one of the few subjects where the demand for trigger warnings is arguably justified. Since trigger warnings in stand-up comedy are all but guaranteed to ruin the jokes, maybe the standard should be that if you can't ease into it, don't do it at all?

Chappelle insists he is not a misogynist; in fact, he is a "feminist", if that means believing women should have equal rights. Good; welcome to the mid-20^th century, at least. "Equal rights" is extremely vague, though; depending on where and who you are it can mean anything from equal pay and employment opportunity to the right to work at all. He has stated clearly enough (in "Sticks and Stones") that he is pro-choice; the routine involves a sort of giveback to men, but it is a funny quip and he's probably not holding us to it. He directs some barbs at the women's movement, mainly for what he takes to be its whiteness. But as for women, once again there is that ambiguity in some of his jokes that lets him say things with a note attached: "Of course I don't mean to offend anyone personally by calling them a 'cunt'; it's comedy, after all." Actually in his 6/6/20 show it seems that he does want to offend someone that way. I don't know what attraction this holds for him. You get more bang for your buck calling someone an "ignorant cretin" or "pathetic jerk" or hundreds of other nice putdowns than with the commonplace, non-specific "cunt", which seems to say little more than that "I hate women like that".

He also has nothing against gay people, he just envies the progress they have made, by comparison with people of color. He is upset that DaBaby was taken to task when he "made a very egregious mistake" with repeated, vile remarks about gays and people with AIDS. Chappelle's delivery often starts with a factual back story that shades into pure setup, so it is not really clear whether characterizing DaBaby's remarks as a "mistake" is something he sincerely believes or just part of the setup for the next gag. "Can't do that... can't do that," he says - is this "can't" as in shouldn't, or as in there will be consequences for your career? (See what I mean about ambiguity?) Regardless, it was certainly not a "mistake", it was intentional homophobic bigotry. Does Chappelle believe it was wrong, or not? He doesn't really say.

The gag that follows is way off base too. This involves (spoiler alert) an ironic reference to the fact that DaBaby's career didn't suffer after he shot and killed a man, but it did when he made homophobic remarks: "In our country you can shoot and kill a nigga, but you better not hurt a gay person's feelings!" Chappelle's effort to focus on the contrast between racism and homophobia, or black liberation and gay liberation, shows once again how a funny quip can mask very faulty reasoning. DaBaby was not charged with a crime (other than carrying a concealed weapon), because he convinced the police that he fired in self-defense; he also posted on Instagram to the effect that he was protecting his family. So the incident hardly shows that nobody cares as much about killing a black person as they do about insulting gay people. What it shows is that his constitutional right to be held innocent unless proven guilty was respected; while his crude and explicit hate speech was rejected. (Just to be clear, I am not taking sides over the morality of the shooting; but the evidence available to the public was not sufficient to say "he got away with murder, so let's not let him play on this Dua Lipa single" or whatever.)

Chappelle clearly has nothing against transgender people, for some of his best friends are trans - or at least Daphne Dorman was, until she was driven to suicide after trans advocates dragged her for defending him. That may be on the trans community, but he seems to think that because she indulged his humor transgender activists ought to take a lesson from her. That's really up to them, and I can see how some of his jokes might set them off. One that could trigger the transphobia alarm is the statement that so-called TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) see trans women the way black folks see white people in blackface. The joke seems to imply not only that trans women are not women in the true sense, but that their "impersonation" of women is offensive, because blackface is offensive. (Cf. the recent case of composer Bright Sheng and the Othello video.) By itself, the line pins the comparison on others. But then he claims to be "team TERF" and repeatedly admonishes his audience that "gender is a fact". That is a lot to swallow, even if there is room for discussion of how trans women are and are not like cis women. Moreover, to define yourself in terms of the exclusion of certain types of people is just bigotry; in this sense, TERFs stand with Trump and his coterie of Christian fundamentalists.

Stepping outside the theater for a minute, I'm not sure J.K. Rowling, whose conflicts with trans activists are the kickoff for Chappelle's routine, counts as a TERF at all, because "radical feminist" does not seem to describe her. Anyone can be a feminist in some lightweight sense, including Dave Chappelle, as he pointedly reminds us. A "radical feminist" is usually understood as one who takes one or more positions that is more antagonistic to traditional sex roles than merely arguing for women's equality - e.g., one who advocates female or lesbian separatism, wants to criminalize pornography, or finds women's oppression to be inherent in the nature of capitalism. I don't think Rowling or several other women who have been labelled "TERFs" are radical feminists. In fact, their belief that biology is in some sense destiny is a position that used to be taken by anti-feminists, with different implications. The ideas that trans women don't stand in the same relationship to the women's movement as cis women does not make someone a "radical feminist", or transphobic, for that matter; but to self-define as "trans-exclusionary" makes someone a bigot no matter what comes after it.

Chappelle's repeated comment that "gender is a fact" seems directed against the claim that gender is socially constructed. This is a rabbit hole he probably should not go down, because arguments grounded on the claim that "race is a fact" are almost always attempts to justify racism in one form or another. Of course, just as "biology is destiny" has suddenly been stood on its head by some feminists, so has this: whereas it was once considered scientifically false and racist to assert that there are basic biological differences between races (because "there's only one race - the human race"), both the scientific facts and their social implications have been reconsidered, with some in the scientific and intellectual community (including critical race theorists) embracing the reality of race in the context of a struggle against racism. Which aspects of race or gender are socially constructed and which are genetically given? There are some obvious facts and falsehoods, and a lot of gray areas. The appeal to common sense in the statement "gender is a fact" is dangerous in that it may be a way of pushing through some of the falsehoods under the guise of obvious truths. But what is surely not a fact of biology is that trans and cis women cannot be equal participants in the women's movement, or shouldn't use the same bathrooms. That is a socially constructed platform of feminists who only deserve the name "radical" for their narrowmindedness.

Chappelle's contrast between the effectiveness of black liberation initiatives and those of movements he needles for being "white" when they need to be seems to me exaggerated. The civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter, among others, have certainly not lacked for achievements, while the biggest victory for women in the last 50 years may be about to evaporate, and gains for transgender people have been mostly at the local level here and there. What is true, though, is that what you might call the "arc of liberation" for a people whose history in this country began with chattel slavery is much longer and steeper than it is for any other social group; so even very significant gains may still leave them much further from true equality than others were before they even began to fight. But, as has been said before, liberation is not - certainly not always - a zero sum game. Women's and LGBTQ liberation in particular do not come at the expense of black liberation.

In any case, there are few if any strictly "white" liberation movements, even though there are inner tensions over the proper thrust of some movements and the role of people of color within them. Not to excuse the racial myopia they sometimes exhibit, but depicting them as expressions of white privilege is not constructive. Even a women's or LGBTQ movement that plays primarily by a white playbook will have benefits for women and gay/trans people of color; the point is to nudge them in the direction of more conscious appreciation of the specific issues of black and brown people. Would Chappelle welcome a really powerful women's or LGBTQ movement within the black community, one that could not be called on the carpet for white privilege? I'm really not sure, for I suspect such a movement might have little truck with his current brand of humor.

Chappelle is not just a comedian but an orator, and for all his dependence on old Anglo-Saxon words, quite a brilliant one. His 6/20/20 show had virtually no jokes, and it is hard to imagine a more intense speech on police violence. But I am not always persuaded that he uses this talent fairly. There is a theme to some of his remarks in which he assumes the role of the injured party, implying that we are obligated to grant him a license to say whatever he wants just because he is a comedian plying his trade. I will say one thing in favor of this, and it has to do with the comedic voice. There is a "voice" to every utterance, be it straight, sarcastic, pedantic, tongue-in-cheek or whatever. The comedic voice can often be taken to be prefaced by something like this: "Here is the natural reaction to this sort of thing, though I'm not saying it is right: ..." As I said in the previous post, you play to your audience's underlying assumptions in order to get a laugh, and it doesn't always mean justifying those assumptions. But Chappelle sometimes undermines his ability to use position as a defense. Sometimes, as with "Space Jews", his convoluted setup for the joke betrays his own interest in making a point, not the receptivity of the audience; while in other cases he turns to straight lecturing to tell us what he thinks ("gender is a fact").

In any case, comedy has a long history - Aristophanes, Chaucer, Twain, Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Jon Stewart - and raising painful issues for people facing various forms of injustice is hardly the only way to make a living at it. Certainly he doesn't always do this; but "The Closer" had a few too many instances of it.

I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of stand-up, and I would not be shocked if someone pointed to an example of a white comedian who made remarks no less offensive than Chappelle's and was never called on the carpet for it. But Andrew Dice Clay was excoriated for homophobia and more in Dice Rules, and Louis CK (along with numerous other white male celebrities) was not spared a #MeToo shaming, though it was not for making offensive jokes. (If only he had done it underneath the bed instead of on top he could have passed it off as serious performance art.) Chappelle seems bent on not merely questioning today's high expectations of sensitivity but at least occasionally flying in the face of them. It's as if he painted himself into a corner and is now mad at people for pointing out he's in it.

In a moment one has to acknowledge as touching, he refers to LGBTQ activists asking him not to "punch down" on them, and he similarly asks people not to "punch down" on him for pursuing his art. But you can't compare someone offended by a stand-up comedian who may have crossed a line and caused pain with a stand-up comedian offended by someone who doesn't appreciate the joke. The former is punching up, not down; the latter has a bully pulpit and a $20 million contract. It's just not a fair comparison.

Chappelle has a problem now, and as one of the top comedians in the world I assume he will find a way to get through it. He took a break earlier as he questioned whether he was happy with what he was doing on The Chappelle Show with regard to depictions of black characters, and for some reason decided his new direction would be taking the anti-discrimination struggles of others as a subject for comedy. But he did this at a time when their issues are being taken very seriously in the entertainment world, as is the movement to confront structural racism. You could say there was a problem of judgment there.

Well, you do have to take risks, right? Lenny Bruce took risks; Dick Gregory took risks; Andy Kaufman, Richard Pryor, Cheech and Chong and many others refused to be limited by convention. But they didn't take these risks at the expense of other vulnerable people. It would feel much better to have him in the ring punching up, down or sideways at the many actors on the world stage who truly deserve to be on the receiving end of his wit.

Chappelle says he will not do another special for a while, though in his Instagram post he complains that he has been trying unsuccessfully to distribute a special he recently did in a cornfield. Maybe he could use another timeout; he took a rather long one before, an opportunity for introspection. "The Closer" doesn't have to be anything more than a slightly fraught step on the way to finding his new voice.

Dave Chappelle and "The Closer" (I): Space Jews

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 18:50:00 +0000

This blog has been mainly concerned with perspectives on cultural issues in New York City, especially the intersection of politics and the arts. How appropriate, then, that Dave Chappelle, like so many other stand-up comedians, learned his art in New York's comedy clubs. Truthfully, I would have been inclined to write this piece even if he didn't, but it seems history is on my side. I therefore intend to post a follow-up on other aspects of Chappelle's "The Closer" shortly after this.

The final installment of Chappelle's Netflix comedy series has generated controversy primarily because of his remarks about transgender people. But two of his more eyebrow-raising jokes are about Jews. I get that it's comedy; I even get the jokes, which apparently quite a few people didn't, given the tepid reactions. I don't think someone is going to attack a synagogue because of Chappelle's jokes. I don't think Chappelle should be "cancelled" - a word almost meaningless to those of us who disdain Twitter, hardly use Facebook and cancelled Instagram (literally - my account was hacked before I ever opened it).

But I do think the jokes are worth unpacking, because they tap into beliefs and assumptions that are shared by various critics of Israel, including some prominent voices in Congress. In fact, I used to share some of them myself. Now I don't even think they're funny, and certainly not true.

Israel is an appropriate target for a great deal of criticism - even a brief discussion of what I think they have done wrong would take an essay, not even a long blog post. (But we could start with their recent declaration of certain Palestinian human rights groups as "terrorist front" organizations - if they're channeling some of their money to the PFLP then arrest those responsible for that, don't ban the organizations.) But the underlying logic of Chappelle's jokes questions the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and makes a one-sided attack on a people who have suffered the most severe oppression of any race on earth. That should not go by without comment.

Jokes whose apparent target is Israel do not in themselves make Chappelle an anti-Semite; they do depend on some very insensitive assumptions, which he might or might not embrace when made explicit. (I wonder if Chappelle would give me a similar suspended sentence in the event some joke of mine contained unstated negative implications about people of color?) But having converted to Islam 20 years ago he may have no more objective a view of Israel than anyone else with a stake in the relationship between Jews and Muslims.

Chappelle spends plenty of time in "The Closer" explaining why he has nothing against the people he tells jokes about, but he neglects to extend this courtesy to Jews. Why? Each of the two jokes requires a fairly detailed fictional setup, and the punch line (the same for both) at first sounds like a non sequitur. Indeed, it is a non sequitur: the apparent target is Israel, not "Jews". He does warn his audience, after the first joke falls fairly flat, with perhaps a catcall or two, "It's going to get worse than that!" It's a telling comment, both a recovery line after a weak gag and a defiant refusal to apologize for offending anyone.

One joke (spoiler alert!) begins with a reference to recent news coverage of "U.F.O.'s" (a government report called them "U.A.P.'s" - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). This leads to a shaggy dog story about a race of technologically sophisticated earthlings who left the planet long ago and have now returned to reclaim their former home: "Space Jews". The other begins with the story of a black slave who was manumitted only to become a particularly cruel slaveholder himself, which is to be made into a movie called "Space Jews". Both narratives might have their biggest appeal to woke leftists, who might not be inclined to sit through an hour laced with patter about "bitches" and "frumpy dykes" and a Chinese virus, so that alone could account for why they landed with a thud. (That the second received a slightly warmer reaction is probably due to the fact that it was second; Mark Twain observed a long time ago that he could have an audience in stitches by using the same bad punch line repeatedly.)

Chappelle obviously thought it was clear enough that the jokes were directed at the state of Israel, not "Jews" in general. But "Space Israelis" would surely be an even worse punch line, to say nothing of "Space right-wing Israeli politicians, religious fanatics and settlers", who might be the only legitimate targets. So you need a more concise punch line. But similar logic surely would not justify substituting "Palestinians", "Arabs" or "Muslims" in a comedy routine whose target was "Islamic extremists and terrorists"; so why is "Space Jews" okay? Why might people be inclined to dismiss the jokes about "Space Jews" as dumb but harmless when we would see the parallel case as bigoted, venal and ignorant? Responsibility for intransigent Israeli policies lies with those who support them, not with "Jews".

Chappelle's sci-fi fantasy suggests that the Jews became a diaspora in order to explore new worlds. This setup elides any mention of the fact that the Jewish people were driven out of their original homeland in one violent assault after another. Jesus of Nazareth was one of tens of thousands of Jews tortured to death on the cross by the Romans, while other Jews were murdered en masse, their religion violently suppressed and their main temple destroyed. Some astronauts. It's hard to see how this fantasy is any less insensitive than one that described the African diaspora as leaving on the Starship Enterprise rather than slave ships.

The Space Jews then return and "decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own" after "things go terrible for them on the other planet". This, at least, has the seed of truth: the primary drivers of migration to Israel, or what is called in Hebrew "Aliyah", have been pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, the Holocaust, and, after the 1948 U.N. resolution creating Israel and Palestine, anti-Jewish laws, expropriations, racist riots and expulsion from Arab states. Vitriolic discrimination against Jews in the Soviet Union was a later spur. These still searing pains certainly bear out the idea that things didn't go too well for us; they also make it a lot less funny, especially when dropped into a comedy routine with scant context.

The contrast of Chappelle's humor with historical reality is also concealed in the ambiguity of claiming "for their very own" a land to which, the joke implies, Jews were no longer entitled. Since the demise of the ancient Jewish empires, the land that is modern Israel was ruled at various times by the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Ottoman Turks and finally the British. Both Jews and Arabs had originally migrated there from Egypt, Syria and nearby nations, and both put up occasional resistance to foreign domination; but no native peoples ever held state power in the territory. Jews, who were present in much smaller numbers than Arabs at the end of the 19^th century, purchased land while the area was under British domination over the next several decades (mostly in flight from European oppression) and their combined resistance finally freed the area from colonial domination after more than two millennia. Hostility between the two religious and ethnic groups resulted in the U.N. decision to create two new nations where there had been none. Such is the alleged land grab attributed to these Jewish space travelers.

As for Jews enslaving their former oppressors, it is surely one of the most peculiar slave systems in history. The "enslaved" within Israeli borders not only have the right to vote and be represented in the Knesset but now form part of a coalition government. The slaveholders recently had to pull down their armored window shutters and run for cover as the elected representatives of the enslaved in Gaza rained 2,000 missiles down on them. I mean, I'm capable of appreciating irony: the "enslavement" is really a reference to various forms of discrimination, which I neither deny nor condone. But only with regard to Israel would anyone even get the hyperbole. Reference to people of color as being "enslaved" in the U.S. today would not even register as humor. Reference to Jews as manumitted slaveholders is pretty off the wall: some Israeli Jews are descendants of some of the most recent modern slaves, those forced to work in Nazi factories. I think Chappelle should seriously consider how far you can go with historical distortions before the label "anti-Semitic" becomes appropriate. Would Holocaust denial also be acceptable if it gets a couple of laughs?

Intended or not, the ultimate implication of the two jokes - that Jewish people have illegitimately occupied Israel and that they have enslaved the Palestinians - amounts to denying the legitimacy of Israel and the U.N. resolution that created it, an extreme position that is contrary to international law and directed at the sole democracy in a region of brutal, autocratic dictatorships.

Israel is a nation of refugees from Europe (not Europa), Asia and Africa (not Andromeda). Most who arrived were lucky to escape with their lives, most of their possessions having been expropriated and some of their relatives murdered. Dave Chappelle has also had some hard knocks, despite being the son of an American college professor and Dean of Students and a woman of considerable accomplishment, but he is now absurdly wealthy: the $20 million he made for his 1-hour-plus Netflix set (and it was not the first) is something like 10 times the lifetime earnings of the average college-educated American. From that position, with an international audience, social responsibility is about the least one could ask.

"Space Jews" doesn't seem to meet that standard, but taken literally it could describe one historical fact: after increasing hostility to them in Arab nations following the partition of Palestine, practically the entire Jewish population of some countries was airlifted to Israel. These Jews do get around, though not quite to outer space.

Lockdown Rock: 40 From 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 14:00:00 +0000

This post was motivated by the thought that people might believe, as I did, that little notable music could have been released in the midst of a pandemic. It turns out that that is far from true: Wikipedia lists 1073 albums released in 2020, and this is probably not complete. A lot of the releases are live recordings, re-issues, EP's, Christmas albums and the like, as well as dozens of releases by new indie artists who I do not know and do not have time to investigate. So I am going to focus on the tried and true, with a sampling of lesser known contemporary artists.

Although it ranks as some kind of accomplishment to have put out an album at all during the worldwide health crisis, not many of these albums represent some technically awe-inspiring act of collaborative music-making over physically isolated electronic channels, as with some of what we saw in online broadcasts this past year.

Rather, many of them were recorded prior to the spread of COVID-19, the rest of the work being largely a matter of digital manipulation that can be done in the privacy of a recording studio, or, these days, at a desk in in one's bedroom. Some may have just gotten in under the wire before all hell broke loose (Nektar, Green Day), while others represent work accumulated over many years (Tower of Power), or recorded as part of a larger project that had only been partially released (My Morning Jacket), or actually dug out of the archives (Neil Young).

Quite a few, though, are stripped-down solo projects that might be largely done in isolation during a lockdown. Since I've been at work on my own such project, I would not underestimate the challenge of making music like that. In some cases, the results were surprisingly good; in others, they show that someone badly needed a little feedback.

Before we go on, let's take a minute to remember some important musicians who were lost to this bug: John Prine, Charlie Pride, Trini Lopez, Adam Schlesinger (of Fountains of Wayne and other bands), Joe Diffie - and that's just a few of the better known names. Their loss sucks big time, for even if many of them were not in their prime, there is no such thing as a swan song from a living artist. We've lost the chance for some more valuable contributions from them. But for those still in this world, one thing that didn't die is the music.

As a sometime performing singer-songwriter myself, I also have to mention that throughout my career (such as it is) I have known and loved recordings by dozens of mainly acoustic musicians who don't register on Billboard chards and Top 40 lists, but are no less admirable for all that. My list below is not a tally of all the worthwhile music released last year, just a jaunt through mostly familiar territory that far from exhausts what's worth listening to.

For example, my friend Dusty Wright released Can Anyone Hear Me? in 2020. He also brought to my attention John Howard's new recording, To the Left of the Moon's Reflection. I noticed that Rod MacDonald had another album in 2020, Boulevard; he was recording in the same studio I was when I recorded my only album (so far) many years ago. Colleen Kattau, who I knew as one of the finest singers around in those days, just released Besos Kisses, and she is still a pleasure to listen to. I hereby award 10 stars to each of them, and to every other album that is a result of the hard work, perseverance, love of music and fine thoughts about the state of the world from independent artists. The financial rewards for them are small (if not negative) but they keep turning out songs worth hearing.

One more thing: I'm not including any links, because generally they seem to be superfluous. All the albums and artists mentioned in this post are available on Spotify, information about the bands and artists is available on Wikipedia, many of the videos are on YouTube and the physical media or downloads are available from you-know-which online shopping site or your favorite music store. Occasionally I've taken a tidbit of information from some web site or another, but nothing so important that it really needs a reference. Enjoy the write-ups, and if you wish to do so follow up with your favorite music site/app/source.

As always, your comments are appreciated - even if for some odd reason you disagree with my judgments!

How I Rated the Albums

I feel like I should shout this in all CAPS, to avoid giving the opposite impression: although I have numbered the albums 1- 40, other than dividing them into the approximate decades in which the groups came to public attention, the albums are listed in no particular order. This is not an annual "Top 40" - just 40 picks from some of the better known artists who released albums in 2020, and a handful of lesser known ones who deserve attention.

I have used a simple rating system, recording my impressions after one or two close listenings: one star (*) means "this is at least a pretty good set of songs", two (**) would be "a damn good album, no question", and three (***) is something like "this seems like a bleeding masterpiece!" A few albums also received a plus sign (+) rating, which means roughly "I'm not sure I like it, but it is at least interesting". As to what is worth a listen, the answer is all of them - there's not a single album mentioned here that I would not listen to again. Any of the judgments I've made could morph into stronger or weaker ratings over time, but that is always the case with musical opinions. We grow into or out of our initial impressions; some are unshakable, others we look back on and say, "I thought that??"

I'll throw in one more caveat: my assessments are about songwriting, first of all, and secondly performance and production. I do not even look at most of the videos. Also, I try to maintain a critical distance even from artists and bands I am totally invested in, as you will see from the first two reviews. The ratings here are a straightforward reflection of how much I liked this particular group of tracks, and nothing else.

Ten Solo Acts You Know and Possibly Love

1. Paul McCartney, McCartney III

Is this what we've been waiting 50 years for? McCartney was a decidedly low-key album, almost a quarter of it instrumentals, and nothing much happening until the 12th cut, then goodbye. Maybe I was not amazed; in fact, definitely. It had none of the awe-inspiring songwriting that characterized at least three of his other incarnations - Beatle Paul, Ram Paul, and Winged Paul - not to mention the fact that it played a significant role in the Beatles' breakup. He calls it an "indie" thing; to me, it's best forgotten, but for one cut.

McCartney II was a different ball of wax, an engaging set of songs with creative production ideas. The songwriting may not be up to his best albums, but it's far from his worst, I think. It got a lot of poor reviews like the first one, but it has a lot of advocates too. Still, did it necessarily scream out for yet another me-myself-and-I effort? Is Paul a glutton for punishment, or is there a point to all this?

McCartney III is here now, and I mean - the low-fi thing was understandable on the original, where he was depressed and actually isolating himself and only had a very primitive recording system on hand. So now we have the international COVID-19 lockdown, on and off, and it seems to make sense to do the same sort of thing, an isolation album. But isn't the DIY posture a bit hard to believe from a guy who's been making records for six decades, when top notch recordings can be done on a laptop with a decent mike and a cheap interface?

And what about the music? "Decent" is about as far as I would go with regard to any of the eleven cuts on the record, except maybe the opening instrumental. I doubt this is McCartney's last album but it's the last of this trilogy, and it's not great.

The truth is, I have been generally unimpressed with the recent endgame efforts of some of my earlier heroes, even as the press tends to give them a lot of attention. Paul Simon's final album, or so he'd have us believe, was not great. Bowie's last couple of albums too, though the title cut of Blackstar is gripping, and of course there was "Valentine's Day". The last essential Stones album was a more or less spontaneous set of blues covers in 2016; who can even remember the last important set of originals from them? I can't think of the last Neil Young album of new material that really blew me away. Joni Mitchell's Shine was brilliant; that was in 2007, half a lifetime ago. Has that generation finally given up writing decent songs?

+2. Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways

The Man Who Sold His Catalogue for an estimated $300 million has gotten more attention for this album than anything since Love and Theft (2001), to my recollection. The Tempest (2012) had some pretty good songwriting - it will never knock Blood on the Tracks off the rails, but it was a respectable latter-day effort. Did he outdo it eight years later, at the ripe young age of 79? This one has been greeted almost like the second coming of folk-Jesus.

One thing I'll say: Dylan's voice gave out 20 years before it should have, and 30 years later, when he should be unlistenable, instead he's learned how to use it in a way that almost sounds appealing, a gravelly baritone that now conveys character rather than someone gargling with whiskey. And he can actually carry a tune when he wants to. This is all good news.

But the big thing is of course the songs, and the question is, what hath Dylan wrought? As a folk musician, he is something like the largest deity in my universe, and the album has been very widely praised. Yet I'm not giving it even one star, for which I have taken a few bullets even before publishing. So let's talk about it a little.

"Murder Most Foul" is the big statement here, but what statement is it? Initially it's a song - to be charitable - about the assassination of President Kennedy, with Jack Ruby as "Wolfman Jack" and references to the conspiracy theory that suggests Oswald was a patsy ("like Patsy Cline"...?) Dylan also appears to suggest that VP Lyndon Johnson was involved, a discredited idea with about as much veracity as QAnon. There follows a long series of allusions to music and culture, largely though not exclusively of the sixties, including obscure references like the one to artist Karl Wirsum, whose art was influenced by the 1960's Chicago blues scene. At several points Dylan also suggests that the Devil was behind the whole plot; I mean, sure.

My biggest question is: did we need this song at this time? We just lived through a nightmare of a presidency characterized by outlandish conspiracy theories, and Dylan offers us a rehash of an old one. What sort of judgment is this? Oswald may have had an accomplice who fired from the grassy knoll; that is the only "conspiracy" that remains the least bit credible. This well-known issue doesn't seem worth reviving in an 18-minute song. My next question is, what do all the cultural references have to do with the Kennedy assassination? It seems like an opportunity to press a bunch of popular song titles into service as comments on the evils of the assassination, which frankly leaves me cold as both poetry and social commentary. Some have attempted to read them as a form of solace in troubled times; nice thought, but Dylan offers no evidence that he is even aware there is a psychotic president and a worldwide health crisis. The reactionary Christian nationalism of the time doesn't seem to faze him either, as he hauls out the Kennedy horror as an example of the devil's work. Honestly, I'd trade the entire song for the line,"Sometimes even the President of the United States must have to stand naked".

What about "I Contain Multitudes"? It's a lot shorter, more personal, more poetic, at times more obscure and again highly referential. While it's interesting to see what comes to the mind of a songwriting genius when he writes about himself, I'm not sure it's utlimately any clearer what he does think about himself when it's all over. His early song "My Back Pages" and "Scarlet Town" from The Tempest (which has a lot in common with "Multitudes") both speak to me more than this hermetic ramble through what may be some of his influences.

Aside from the lyrics, there is something I can't quite love about the music on this album. Although these two tracks, and certain others (like "Black Rider") have a bit more going on musically than they appear to on first listening, they tend to plod along rhythmically: a chord is strummed, another chord is strummed, or a keyboard track changes chords without any particular fanfare. I certainly don't hear anything with the singalong qualities of "Duquesne Whistle" on Tempest. The music seems almost perfunctory, like what he really wanted to do was just read the lyrics. Maybe that would have been better.

When all is said and done, I'm not sure where this album stands. I'm inclined to see it as an almost-but-not-quite, like perhaps Empire Burlesque. Some may find it more on a par with Time Out of Mind, which also doesn't impress me as much as it does some other Dylan fans, or with Love and Theft, which certainly had its merits. Given that it's Dylan, I will almost certainly spend more time with it before I'm sure what I think. In fact, if anyone but Dylan had released it I suspect we would not even be discussing it. But there is and will ever be only one Bob Dylan, so we do, and we should.

**3. Bruce Springsteen, Letter From Home

Here's one from the Boss with a kickoff song that showcases his acoustic instincts, then moves into a set of rockers that reach for and often hit the heights of earlier Springsteen recordings - songs like "Last Man Standing" and "The Power of Prayer". The simple but effective "House of a Thousand Guitars" seems like an anthem of sorts, though for whom I'm not quite sure. With a few songs that seem like Springsteen classics-to-be and nothing that is less than pretty good, I suspect this will take its place with the Springsteen albums you end up listening to in their entirety and not just for a couple of power-pop hits.

Be aware that there are some significant borrowings here; a Neil Young vocal line from "Cowgirl in the Sand" ends up as the main guitar riff in "Last Man Standing" (recall how Coldplay got in trouble for the opposite sort of acquisition from a Joe Satriani guitar line), and "Song for Orphans" owes more than a tiny bit to Dylan's "My Back Pages"(which may itself owe something to traditional folk material). Then there's the allusively titled "Janie Needs a Shooter", which raises the question, what happened to the gun she got back in 1989 on Aerosmith's Pump? Anyway, like Dylan, the Boss is a great enough songwriter that he can make this stuff his own, and you'll probably forget the references after hearing it a few times.

4. Elvis Costello, Hey Clockface

I will admit that the last time I paid serious attention to him Ronald Reagan was President. I will also admit that the best thing I've heard by him since then is the theme song to Pete the Cat (he's one groovy dude...). Apart from that, a song here and there, nothing that made a huge impression.

This set starts out well enough - after a brief spoken intro he breaks into "No Flag", a rocker that leaves nothing to be desired, followed by a ballad that is at least well executed, if not exactly the new "Alison". After that, though, I'm a little lost. The only other song that stands out in the rock department is "Hetty O'Hara Confidential", and the only other ballad that really nails it is the last song, "Byline". That is a reasonable number of decent songs, but with nine others to get through it's still a bit of a trying experience.

One of the issues is that Costello's voice, though still occasionally effective, is not a good enough vehicle for some of the slower songs that could perhaps pick up a bit with a full-blooded crooner behind them. There are nice, subtle production touches throughout the album, though. A bit of a mixed bag, but 43 years after My Aim Is True, his aim is, let's say, better than a wild pitch.

+5. Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters

If there is a Grammy for original album titles I think I know who's getting it this year. That said, what to do with this set of percussive neo-soul from the supposedly blue-eyed singer? (They look like glacial ice to me, whatever color that is.) This album is a head-scratcher. But that appraisal isn't very different from my take on some of her previous albums. I tend to find more high points on Tidal and Extraordinary Machine than the others, but there is a certain feeling of trying to figure out what she's up to on all of them. She takes her time between albums, yet I'm still trying to assimilate The Idler Wheel... (2012) - though I've given up on memorizing the full title.

I don't want to criticize her flights of musical fancy; artists should explore, and in fact I often prefer the failed experiments to successful work that reminds me of 17 things I've heard before. Of course, what I like best is the successful experiments. So is this one? Does it break new ground for her? Does it ever settle down enough to say "I like it" or "I don't"? I'm not any more sure about that than about her eye color, but at least I never find her boring.

In case you didn't know, Ms. Apple has achieved immortality for her contribution to another album on this list: the fingers behind the moody tinkling on Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" are hers.

***6. Steve Earle, Ghosts of West Virginia

I've followed him only sporadically after ending up with a couple of his early CD's. He's a serious guy with good intentions, but his albums haven't always sent thrills up my spine. Some of the better recent ones were tribute albums (Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark). This one is all originals, and to my ears he aced it. One of the best alt-country sets I've heard, especially if you consider the combined virtues of authenticity and great songwriting.

A tribute to the miners lost in the 2010 Upper Big Branch explosion, its feels like a back porch jam that just went so right it had to be released as an album. That sense that the songs rolled right off the West Viriginia hills is actually a tremendous feat of songwriting. Reminds me of the first time I heard John Hiatt's 2001 album The Tiki Bar Is Open - another prolific alt-country songwriter who sometimes feels too prolific to be consistently good. My sense is that this is the Steve Earle album we've been waiting for since I don't know when - Transcendental Blues?

7. Lucinda Williams, Good Souls, Better Angels

Lucinda Williams somehow seems to have found a portal to Patti Smith's brain, and I'm not sure I want to go there with her. Her previous album was a gorgeous collaboration with Charles Lloyd, and before that I remain under the impression that she was Lucinda Williams. Now, on an album that has more than one apparent reference to President Voldemort, she attempts to kick out a number of angry protests. The thought is appreciated, but the execution is problematic.

The main issue is that whatever you think of the quality of the songs, she does not have the voice for this sort of effort. Her voice is still viable, and there are at least three beautiful country-ish numbers in the latter half of the set that are nothing less than Lucinda Williams as we know and love her. But age (67) and perhaps other things have been catching up with her vocals, and she is not up to the challenge of the rock-and-roll articulation needed for much of this album. The result is that where she sounds plaintive on the country numbers, on many of the others she sounds like she had way too much to drink, fell asleep, and was suddenly woken up and dragged to the recording studio by her manager.

There are some virtues besides the sweet old country numbers, though. Some of the instrumental work on the album is commendable and helps the songs along, giving us a break from the overwrought vocals. And her lyrics are another of the album's better features; aside from the not-exactly-understated antifa sentiments, there are some very creative touches, as in "Big Rotator". So let's not write this off, exactly; maybe just give her a little nudge back in the direction of the first few cuts on The Ghosts of Highway 20 (2016), which combined novelty with inspiration while remaining within the mould that is clearly her comfort zone.

**8. Neil Young, Homegrown

Neil Young has a new album out. It was recorded in 1974. Huh? Truth is, only hardcore Young fans can follow the ins and outs of his recordings, released and unreleased, throughout the 1970's. Several of the songs on this album have been previously released, e.g., on Decade (1977); yet, this is not exactly a collection. Rather, this set, or one overlapping it but including other compositions recorded around the same time, is the (famously, for Young fans) unreleased album that was supposed to come out in the spree that included On the Beach (1974), Zuma (1975) and Tonight's the Night (1975), but was held back because it consisted largely of thoughts on the breakdown of his relationship with Carrie Snodgrass which he found to be too much of a bummer at the time.

So, in the midst of a 45^th anniversary spree of archival releases at a time when making new studio recordings has been challenging, Young has finally had the album remastered from the original tapes and laid it on his breathless following. It is hard to think of many albums that are classics the day they are released, but with "Love Is a Rose" already one of his better-known songs, "Homegrown" and "Star of Bethlehem known from American Stars 'n Bars (1977), and "Little Wing" familiar from Hawks & Doves (1980), this album just has to walk down the waiting red carpet. For a deeper dive into unreleased material see his Archives, Volume II: 1972-1976, also released in 2020.

**9. Gordon Lightfoot, Solo

It sometimes feels as if Canada produces a folksinger for every 10 children born there, and for all that, Gordon Lightfoot pretty much remains at the top of the list for most people. (At least if we discount Canadian ex-pats Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.) This is an elite position to hold, and it is not going to slip with his latest, Solo.

Solo it is, a true lockdown album: just Gordon and his acoustic guitar. And that's about all he needs, because he is still one of the finest songwriters around, and for the most part he can still put over his songs. His voice has weakened a bit - not surprising given not only his age but numerous serious medical problems over the years - yet, like the equally beloved John Prine before his death from COVID-19 (he had suffered from lung cancer and other issues), Lightfoot soldiers on, and it takes a careful ear to notice the differences.

Whatever the album's technical merits, there are no throwaway songs among the ten in this set; each is a polished specimen of what Lightfoot has been doing since... 1966? I didn't even realize he'd been at it that long, but yes, 55 years of "Early Morning Rain" and everything that followed. This is only his third album of new material since Waiting For You (1993), and holds up very well by comparison, both lyrically and musically. It's hard to say which songs from this collection will win the popularity contest - on Waiting For You it was "Ring Them Bells" - but I'd be happy to cover any of them.

10. Bruce Hornsby, Non-Secure Connection

Hornsby has often been willing to step well outside the folk/blues tradition he started in, showcasing his skills as a jazz player, a film composer and occasionally dabbling in the avant-garde. Whatever he does, his chops at the keyboard are beyond criticism; versatile, inventive and one of the most technically competent players in popular music.

His last two albums have been prone to experimental side trips, and had this been a review of his 1999 offering Absolute Zero it certainly would have earned a star or two. On this set, though, there are too many cuts where I'm not sure he's doing more than rambling around vocally, pretending there's a song or composition in the background. He has always been attracted to somewhat jagged melodic lines (roughly similar to Joe Jackson in that respect) but some of this album just feels melodically awkward. The cuts range from more typical Hornsby material, i.e., comparable to earlier work like Harbor Lights (1993) to the title cut, in which I detect some creeping "Blackstar" influence, to other tunes that just seem to meander aimlessly. He's been a person of interest since 1986, and this is just a stop along the road. I anticipate he'll be back with more well-honed compositions in the future.

The 1970's: Working in the Lockdown

**11. Nektar, The Other Side

The year 2016 was a far worse one for music, in terms of lives lost, than 2020, and one of those who went down was Roye Albrighton of Nektar. Although I have seen the band, among my favorite prog rock artists, in a number of different formations, it was always hard to think of them as Nektar without him and his guitar work. But the group, including two of the original musicians and some re-attached former members, has persevered, and released this new album in January, just before COVID gathered steam. Ryche Chlanda, who briefly played with Nektar in 1978, does the guitar honors, and though he is not Roye, he is pretty darn good.

Impressions? For me, they did it right: pulling no punches and making no concessions to current trends, they turned out a real early-70's prog recording, full of synthesized sounds and pyrotechnics and the thrill of pushing the form of the rock song to its limits. A comparison comes to mind: what the Blues Magoos did with their 2014 set Psychedelic Resurrection, which is to say, if you're going to make psychedelic rock, then damn well make it and don't apologize. This is prog without apologies, and feels more like the classic stuff than the efforts of a number of very well-meaning contemporary practitioners.

So the music gets a thumbs up, or two, but the lyrics - I mean, who starts off an album today with a chorus of "take it higher... I'm on fire... burning desire"? Ha ha - at least one other album on this list sports a song with virutally the same rhymes. Give the cliches a break, man, and write some freakin' lyrics. But Nektar's lyrics always ranged from the sublime (some of A Tab in the Ocean, maybe Down to Earth) to the fairly puerile. I gave them a pass then, and I'll do so now. Whatever it takes to make some serious prog rock, go for it.

12. Kansas, The Absence of Presence

Kansas is on my short list of latecomer prog rock bands that ruined FM radio in the late 1970's, and this album won't do anything to get them off it. But it does conform to my just-enunciated sentiment that if you're going to do prog today, do it and don't back down, or pander to contemporary taste while also trying to drag along a graying prog rock audience (like me). That is to say, if what you liked was the "prog" of Kansas, Journey, Rush, Toto, Styx and other combos of that era, you should like this just fine. Plenty of orchestral interludes, keyboard riffing, extended compositions, unusual rhythms and time signatures - the whole works. Only for me, it doesn't work. Rather, it seems like a lot of bombast, a series of overtures to cosmic events that aren't happening, philosophical musings that don't make me any the wiser.

If you are scratching your head and asking, "Why do these guys get jacked up and Nektar gets a pass?", the answer is, timing. For me, prog was largely over by 1977; I could count on one hand the great progressive rock albums that came out later (Pink Floyd's The Wall, mainly). Kansas and their cohorts were trying to breathe life into a dead animal; and unlike the post-punk and New Wave bands who followed the short-lived punk rock era, their "post"-prog made a mockery of it instead. In any case, the wayward sons of the late 70's are carrying on, and if it is no better than what they were doing 45 years ago, it is no worse, I guess.

***13. Blue Oyster Cult, The Symbol Remains

A band that burst out with one of the greatest debut albums ever, then went to a place where not many wanted to follow them, then roared back with the ultimate radio hit, "(Don't Fear) the Reaper", and a couple more decent if not entirely consistent albums. Then long gaps between records, most recently 19 years. Was it worth the wait?

Damn straight it was. To use the vernacular, this album kicks ass. The songwriting is terrific (they've added some new talent in that department), the lyrics are as interesting as ever, and Buck Dharma contributes enough brilliant guitar work to recover from a two-decade dry spell. It's hard to imagine anyone not seeing the virtue in this album unless you just don't like hard rock.

There's nothing much more to say, except - yes, there's plenty of cowbell.

*14. Wire, Mind Hive

One of the few authentic 70's punk bands that's still going, they actually released two albums in 2020, though the other (10:20) consists of extended play versions of earlier songs. Wire's first album, Pink Flag, came out in 1977, and had that core punk sound. But not long after that they were already demonstrating an aversion to being constrained by rules (of which punk, ironically, has more than a few). And so it goes with their 18 or so studio albums so far: they lack nothing in punk credibility but they can sound like anything from Pink Floyd to a horror film soundtrack when they so please.

It would take more listening than I've got time for to say how this ranks among even their recent releases (they put out an album every year from 2011-2017, most of them containing new material). But my ears tell me this is a very good one.

**15. Tower of Power, Step Up

Like many other albums in the list, this wasn't actually recorded in the midst of a worldwide health crisis, but in "the 2010's", which perhaps explains the ironically upbeat mood. While a few key people have remained with the band through most of their career, they are a bit like the Volkswagen that had most of its 600 parts replaced but continues to be identified as the same car. Be that as it may, this is a terrific recording, and I don't really care if the musicians who made it are calling themselves "Tower of Power" or "Fred's Soul Station" or whatever. It's 1970's soul, funk and fusion, with no concessions to either disco or hip hop. It ain't "neo"-anything; it's the real thing, and a fine job of it.

I was not the biggest follower of Tower of Power in the 70's (nor of Earth Wind and Fire, who always seemed like their alter-ego) though I certainly heard enough of them. But if you were into soul at all then, count yourself lucky that such a fine soul recording could be made in the last ten years. I don't expect there will be a lot more of these.

The 1980's: Second Wave

16. Midnight Oil, The Makaratta Project

Their origin is pretty early in the 70's but the albums that made them famous were all released in the 1980's. They split up for quite a while as founding member Peter Garrett pursued direct political engagement, serving for some time in the Australian Senate and then as Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts. So they are pretty serious about their political goals, and that's fine. But is this album what they reunited for?

I'm all for politically informed rock and roll, and I'm fine with crossover projects, but this just doesn't seem to have a personality. After a couple of more or less standard Oil tunes we get a few world music-oriented collaborations in an effort to bring the cause of the Australian Aborigines to us, ending with a 6-minute cut that is a political speech followed by a brief, perfunctory tune. The whole thing amounts to less than a half hour of music - and went to #1 on the Australian albums chart in November!

But #1 or not, I seriously think the cause would be better served by an album that grabs your musical attention like Diesel and Dust (1987) which was a similarly motivated offering. I don't think they've lost the touch - at least, Capricornia (2002) their last studio album before this set, was a pretty fine effort. Great music inspires great thoughts which inspire great movements, whether it's the spirituals that accompanied the Civil Rights movement or "All we are saying is give peace a chance" or "Sun City". I'm happy for the Oils and the Aborigines that the album got some attention, but unlike their previous albums I can't really see this having much impact overseas.

***17. The Pretenders, Hate for Sale

Finally, a new album from Chrissie Hynde and company that rivals their best early work. It's been a while, I have to admit, since I was even willing to listen to an entire Pretenders album, as the singles, which should have been among the best songs, were distinctly unimpressive. That slump has ended with this dynamite set.

In spite of the overwrought title (reference, I suppose, to the obvious hate-monger of the past four years) the songs here are all eminently listenable, mostly solid hard rock but not without a few shapely ballads as well. I was initially a bit resistant to the final cut, "Crying in Public"; it seems to be an effort at a sentimental country tune along early Dolly Parton lines, but it grew on me a bit after a couple of listenings. Most of the others needed only one time through to establish themselves as top-flight Pretenders material.

One sign of a wayward artist is that as soon as they try to vary from their core sound they lose the thread of musicality. Not here - there's plenty of variety in style, and it all hangs together. Hynde's voice always had a bit of a warbly quality, so if age has added a few warbles they barely show. A big sigh of relief for an early Pretenders fan who wondered if they learned to crawl and then kind of gave up on walking. They're back with this sprint.

***18. Psychedelic Furs, Made of Rain

These guys also wore out their welcome a while back, specifically with Book of Days (1989), an album I couldn't get into no matter how hard I tried. A sort of reunion concert some 10 years ago which featured uninspired performances of some brilliant old material, and seemed like it was over before it began, didn't help. Can they make a musically convincing comeback album decades after their heyday and minus key personnel?

Short answer, Yes! But, honestly, this is more than that; in fact, it threatens to claw itself to the top of the Furry album-ratings heap - at least, if you are willing to reconsider the extremely catchy but also quite commercial Mirror Moves, which for me has taken the default position up there for many a decade. It is at least as good as their last (1991) album, World Outside, better than Book of Days, competes with Midnight to Midnight without the stigma of being a concession to commercial demands, and has much of the grit of Talk Talk Talk. "Wrong Train" may be one of the Furs' most powerful songs ever. And three decades seem to have had little effect on Richard Butler's voice.

I don't want to overdo it with the accolades; the latter part of the album may drag a little, and I'm sure other critics can find bones to pick on. But it's a true entry in the PF canon, and can also compete in the era of groups like Animal Collective and Tame Impala without sounding too much like a throwback. If albums were still physical objects I would tell you to just run out and buy it. In fact, despite propaganda to the contrary, you actually can grab the CD for under $12, or a vinyl copy for about twice that.

The 1990's: Keep 'Em Separated

**18. Alanis Morissette, Such Pretty Forks in the Road

I must have been looking the other way when Morissette became a keyboard artist. After two plaintive fingerstyle guitar tunes - a milder deviation from expectations - 8 of the next 9 songs are not-quite-solo keyboard offerings, with some unmistakable echoes of Tori Amos, if not Kate Bush, as well as a more folksy approach that ties the few guitar songs together with the mostly acoustic piano sound. I don't know what got into her - was it the more meditative spirit that goes with having to shack up with one's reflection and CD collection? Whatever it is, she has made the transition without a hiccup - these are some very fine tunes, and a welcome addition to the canon of this kind of music.

Morissette has not been one of those artists who churns out music so rapidly that you quickly lose track of her. Aside from three new versions of Jagged Little Pill (1995), which were desparately needed to supplement the acoustic version released in 2015, and a live album, she has not released a new collection since Havoc and Bright Lights (2012). That was more of what we came to expect from her from her debut at least through So-Called Chaos (2004). So this is another artistic departure, one that presumably speaks to the collective trauma we're going through. But even though she has occasionally shown a certain amount of versatility before (check out "Till You" on Havoc) I was ready to hear something entirely new from an artist whose work I always respected, but who seemed to have only one trick up her sleeve.

Now we can't say that anymore; and this trick is expertly performed. Not only does her songwriting adapt well to the change in style, but she is only a spry 46 (keep in mind that when she blew the roof off with the release of JLP she had reached drinking age just 12 days earlier) and her voice shows no sign of going south any time soon. So, in short, here's another winner from the now-classic rock crowd.

*19. Green Day, Father of All Motherfuckers

In case I haven't mentioned it often enough yet, it was a year for musical transformations, and this album threatens from the outset to become another one. Not until the third song does the band actually start sounding like Green Day. So what do they sound like before that, Beethoven? Britney Spears? No - they sound like the White Stripes. I don't mean they vaguely resemble Jack & co.; they sound like they are trying to imitate the White Stripes in those first two cuts, and doing a pretty good job of it.

But the next cut is "Oh Yeah", a controversial alternative radio hit that samples a song by serial child sex abuser Gary Glitter. It's more like the patented Billie Joe Armstrong sound. The rest of the album is a mix of more typical Green Day territory and some fairly basic rock. I'm not sure I hear the "history of rock" or "garage rock" that Billy Joe Armstrong has been quoted as attributing to the album, but the last song, "Graffitia", is clearly based on "I Fought the Law" - a song they have covered. All in all it amounts to a decent if not exceptional Green Day outing, with a somewhat closer relationship to rock's roots in the blues - or, if you please, "garage rock" - than any effort since ¡DOS! (2012).

The "back to basics" mentality may explain why Billie Joe Armstrong released an entire album of cover tunes in 2020, No Fun Mondays. The other musicians on it all have some association with Green Day, though not official members. One thing you can do to get on my good side is do a decent rendition of practically any Tommy James and the Shondells song. They open this album with a cover of the one that happens to be my current ringtone, "I Think We're Alone Now". The rest of the album rocks too, with somewhat more obscure material.

**20. Pearl Jam, Gigaton

You never know exactly what to expect from Pearl Jam, except that they'll sound like Pearl Jam whatever they are doing. That ability to always sound new while remaining true to a vision is just what makes them one of the most interesting and important American bands of all time. Gigaton is more of that "same but different", experimental but grounded, loud but listenable (is this starting to sound like a line from Alanis Morissette?) style that they have incubated in eleven studio albums so far, with a remarkable consistency of personnel.

What I find interesting in this album, and pleasantly so, is that their songwriting, and Vedder's vocals, take a more melodic turn, going places that sound like the work of more traditional bands in the context of an overall harmonic and sonic picture that is unmistakably Pearl Jam. The melodies reach for more embellishments and follow more predictable patterns than their most challenging work, without losing their identity as uncompromising grundge. I agree with most reviewers that this is one of their better efforts.

21. Stone Temple Pilots, Perdida

"Is this Pearl Jam or STP we're listening to?" You won't be asking that question with their latest offerings. For fear of being accused of pigeonholing artists, let me state for the record that I do not feel a band has to keep doing the same exact thing all the time. Rubber Soul / Revolver. Clouds / The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Atom Heart Mother / Dark Side of the Moon. Who's complaining? Not me. But - STP's neo-sixties acoustic set? DeLeo does The Seekers? I'm not kidding. The only thing is, if you're going to try that kind of turnaround, it had better have some energy. Especially if you are STP. And it doesn't.

That's not to say it doesn't have some beauty. But the moments that grab me tend to do so because I'm trying to figure out just which sixties band they sound like the most. Here it's The Association, there the Hollies. Probably not the most accurate references, but you get the idea. These are great sounds that have been endlessly imitated by sixties revival bands, some of whom are pretty good at breathing life into their latter-day versions of psychedelic folk-rock. I'm afraid I didn't find much of that here - a passing moment or two, a chorus or break here and there, but for the most part, dare I ask, Where's the beef?

Of course there is the missing link of Scott Weiland, whose contributions included not only his vocals and stage antics but a good deal of the songwriting on some STP albums. I'm not sure that explains it, though, as he dropped out of the songwriting credits on the hard rocking Stone Temple Pilots (the first one). Dean DeLeo said he wanted a singer (Jeff Gutt) who would "carve out a different path", but the DeLeos are still co-writing all the music. So this is their baby too. Are they too old to rock and roll? Hope not.

22. Smashing Pumpkins, Cyr

I have a lot of catching up to do on Smashing Pumpkins albums. You see, I didn't like Gish much and found nothing in Siamese Dream, so I kind of wrote the band off, not to mention being turned off by Billy Corgan's professed libertarian views. It was only many years later that I discovered Pisces Iscariot, and flipped out - "they did this?" Since then the band went through many changes, but everyone knows it's Corgan's little fiefdom so that doesn't matter much.

Now, in the midst of the pandemic, comes Cyr. What's a "cyr"? No idear. But as to the songs, be forewarned: this is pop-pop-popmusic, consciously and relentlessly. Corgan says he wanted to make a "contemporary" album, but that is at most a matter of its chronology. It is 20 pop songs of varying quality. Pisces Iscariot it ain't, nor Oceania. Like I said, I have to catch up on the others.

Don't get me wrong, it's listenable enough, but not really my cup of tea. If I'm going to devote my time to Corgan and his Ayn-Randish philosophy (fortunately, though, his lyrics are typically not quite up to the level of "philosophy" of any sort) what I like to hear is his readiness to do whatever strikes his imagination, occasionally landing on a catchy riff or chord progression, not a conscious attempt to be "contemporary", or rather, commercial. Hopefully, he proved he could do it, it's over, now he'll get back to business.

23. The Strokes, The New Abnormal

Quoth my seven year old daughter: "Daddy, what kind of music is this?" "It's rock music, honey." "Well it's very soft rock music then." No, Casablancas and company are not looking to bring the house down, just put a few basic melodies out there, with their patented single-string guitar playing. (Or maybe Sleater-Kinney patented it; I don't want to get in the middle of a catfight.) One or two songs might stick in your ear, particularly the opener, "The Adults Are Talking"; most of the rest just sort of ease by taking up time. Decent enough effort for a lockdown, but nothing that will get you out of your chair.

+24. The Flaming Lips, American Head

Less anxiety and tension is what we all need after a year like this, so a little relaxing music might be just the thing. Well, here come the Flaming Lips to answer our prayers with an album of soporific spacerock. Or wasn't that what the doctor ordered? I don't know. There is at least one particularly fetching song, "Flowers of Neptune 6"; other than that, it's pretty much a sonic soup of lush synth sounds and Wayne Coyne's silky vocals. If that's your thing then you'll appreciate it like any other Lips album, but be aware there is nothing on here to rock the stadium like "Race for the Prize".

25. My Morning Jacket, The Waterfall II

You remember them, right? Seems so long ago when groups like MMJ, Oasis, Spoon, Jimmy Eat World, Kings of Leon and Muse dominated the "alternative radio" airwaves - if you were lucky enough to have alternative radio airwaves in your area, which those in New York City at many points were not. Well, if Dylan and McCartney are still making albums, you bet the Jackets and some of your other 90's favorites are too.

Their "Waterfall" sessions have been released in two stages, the second coming during the pandemic. It's all good, if you like eclectic - the songs on II range from more or less 70's folk and country territory to hard rock, reminiscent of an early Eagles album. It didn't make me want to get up and dance around the maypole, but it was pleasant enough to listen to.

2000's: Millenium Pandemonium

*26. Taylor Swift, folklore and evermore

Did Taylor Swift suddenly become a songwriter? I mean, a mature one, in some sense of the word? I'm still not sure I believe it. I was never a fan of the comfortable, superficial songwriting on Fearless or Red, and reputation did nothing for me either. But here come two complete albums in one screwed-up year, and I'm no longer ready to mutter the usual thing about her being an annoying pop machine who just churns out indistinguishable songs with formulaic hooks. In fact, whether or not she will ever replace Joni Mitchell on my CD shelf, I find myself having to admit that I not only do not mind her latest work, I actually like it.

folklore - The first time I heard it I thought she must have dusted off her Suzanne Vega and Lucinda Williams CD's and set out to write songs with that in her head. But the more I listen to it the more it sounds like Taylor Swift, only... different. Does this set mark a transition from formulaic pop to something else? The least you can say is that it's not trying to reel us in with glitzy production qualities or easy hooks. But is it really contemporary folk music, as the title seems to suggest, or just her trying? ("this is me trying" is the winsome 9^th cut on the album.) It's like she decided to compete in Brandi Carlisle's space instead of Carrie Underwood's. She still can't sing like either of them, but her vocals have always been adequate to the music she writes. Jury's out on whether this is just pleasant and intriguing or an outstanding contemporary folk-rock recording, but the good news is that the jury will be happy to listen again to find out.

evermore - Again, I'm hearing female folksinger-songwriter influences all over the place - everyone from Shawn Colvin to GIllian Welch and a lot inbetween (Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, Indigo Girls, Beth Orton, Mary Chapin Carpenter, etc.). But, I mean, is this what's really going on, or am I dreaming? What's more - and I can hardly believe I'm saying this - even the lyrics suddenly have something resembling depth. This is not mainly one of her catalogues of boyfriend miseries and love interests, but frankly, even when it is, as in "long story short", there is a new level of facility with words, thoughts, metaphors and images that I never expected to hear from her. She's clearly getting poetic - what's with the all-lower-case album and song titles if not the emergence of her inner e.e. cummings? Or the two (?) lyrical references to Frost's "The Road Not Taken"? Apparently she has taken some kind of new road, and now has to be taken a lot more seriously than before.

27. Lady Gaga, Chromatica

You already know the hits from this release, unless you've been a hermit. I mean, especially if you've been a hermit, hunkered down like the rest of us with your Spotify account or YouTube or Alexa, and occasionally your car radio. In spite of her reputation for musical shape-shifting, this album is not going to shock anyone; it's a solid but not very innovative set of largely techno-pop songs. Gaga fans will be pleased. Note: it does not include her famous standard, "The Star-Spangled Banner".

*28. Grimes, Miss Anthropocene

The title is clever, the album is attractive enough if your thing is relentless techno with industrial overtones. It does sound a bit like a soundtrack to some Philip K. Dick novel. I guess hanging out with Elon Musk breeds the illusion that everything techno and futuristic is good, or at least that it will continue to make you the girlfriend of the richest and possibly most overvalued man in the world.

In any case, I'm not going to inflate the value of this album like Tesla's stock, though I don't need to denigrate it either. It's apparently a concept album about climate change, though as I sit here in front of my pretty decent computer speakers I can barely make out a single word behind the relentless echoes and percussive effects. Musically, it ranges from electronic experimentation to synth-pop of the ArtAngels variety. Nothing here is going to force you out of your chair like Doja Cat's "Say So", but as electronic beats go it's not without interest. It also reaches for sounds that could qualify as world-music inspired, inbetween siren-voiced space(X)-pop.

The album is certainly neither boring nor trashy, but it's a relentless onslaught of electronics, occasionally melded with vocals that lean toward contemporary pop but rarely devolve into anything much like pop songs. Notable, though, is the cut "We Appreciate Power", co-written with HANA and Chris Greatti, which has more hook appeal than most of the others without losing the industrial touch (not far from the sound Rihanna was exploring on Anti).

*29. Yves Tumor, Heaven to a Tortured Mind

His previous album, Safe in the Hands of Love, was interesting enough, but this is on another level, not to say planet. He has been compared with James Ferraro, an artist I need to check out more, and others. But what I hear is more familiar - call it "Prince on way too much acid". (You can't just say "Prince on acid" - that sounds too much like "Prince".) Or maybe TV on the Radio. There is nothing that sounds derivative, though - it's a bit too wild for that. I do get the feeling that he is more comfortable innovating with tones than with words, but I haven't sat down and read through the lyrics. In any case, this is the way I like it - just inside that line that separates daring but listenable sound from too-far-gone experimentation.

**30. Thundercat, It Is What It Is

Yep, and what it is is a pretty great piece of unclassifiable stuff that hovers around jazzrock but goes anywhere it wants. Start with Curtis Mayfield's Curtis, add a touch of Spyro Gyra, then patch in anything from latter-day R&B and hiphop to your favorite contemporary jazz vocalist, and you have something that resembles this album. For all that, it tends to hang together. I suspect it would require many more listenings to take its full measure, and doing so would be a far from unpleasant way to spend time these days.

In case you don't know the artist, he is Stephen Lee Bruner, and he has been the bass player for West Coast punk band Suicidal Tendencies and appeared with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Most importantly, he had a major impact on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, certainly one of the most important rap albums of the last 20 years. So this is a guy to watch, especially if he keeps making albums as good as this one.

*31. Destroyer, Have We Met

I have not read anything by other critics to confirm my impression that Dan Bejar, who has been recording music under the band name Destroyer since 1996, sounds like a David Bowie clone; that his accent (though he's Canadian, his father was Spanish and his mother American) is Bowie's accent, his voice is similar to Bowie's, his articulation is Bowie's, his lyrics and much of his music could have been outtakes from a Bowie album, and his production is often Bowiesque too. I mean, from the first song on his first commercial release in 1998 to now. I love Bowie, so if he's is any good at it and the least bit original I have to at least like Destroyer. And he is often very good at it, and if the echoes are clear, there is also plenty that is his own.

Take "Crimson Tide", the first song on Have We Met: if it isn't channeling Low then I must be having aural hallucinations. But it's a great song; so channel away. Sometimes he sounds a bit prissy, a bit like a latter-day prog rocker who thinks you have to sound elfin, dazed or twee to do prog. But that is only when his lyrics aren't really working and the recitative is belabored. Often they're working, if not necessarily comprehensible. I haven't yet heard the Destroyer album that is compelling all the way through, but this one is compelling often enough to deserve a good listen.

32. Tame Impala, The Slow Rush

One of the characteristics of artrock since the 90's has been the dominace of the male songwriterer-composer-performer, the one figure without whom the band would either cease to exist or be unrecognizable: Thom Yorke, Trent Reznor, Julian Casablancas, Chris Martin, Jeff Tweedy... Dan Bejar. The list goes on. Since 2010 Kevin Parker has been adding himself to that roster under the band name "Tame Impala". The music has tended to be in the psychedelic-revival genre, and Parker has done much to not only make that critically acceptable but smooth the differences between rearview-mirror rock and the contemporary sound.

This album, his first in five years, goes beyond smoothing, though: it seems to be an outright capitulation to contemporary synth-pop, like what you would expect Hall and Oates to be doing after listening to Arcade Fire, or some such thing. There are other directions one can go and still be contemporary, but this honestly sounds like it is intended to break down the door at the local disco. The beats are particularly dance-worthy, there is nothing resembling a guitar solo, the harmonic palate is that of some current Z100 pop tunes. I'll take Doja Cat for this type of music. Let's hope that once the lulling effect of looking at your four walls every day is a thing of the past Parker comes out of his stupor and gets back to making serious music.

*33. Rumer, Nashville Tears

You don't know the British country singer Rumer, I imagine, but here's why you need to listen to this album: it is entirely comprised of songs by a songwriter you don't know. That songwriter is Hugh Prestwood, and he is one of the finest songwriters around. His songs have been covered by artists like Judy Collins, Jimmy Buffet, Alison Krauss, Crystal Gayle and plenty of other people you have heard of, to say nothing of the long list of those you probably haven't, like Rumer. Not surprising that, according to his Wikipedia page, he taught a course in songwriting at the New School for 20 years. Bill Staines, Stan Rogers, Merle Haggard, John Prine - these are names that come to mind in looking for comparisons.

This is a gorgeous album, and should make Rumer more of a household name. (Many years ago a certain British country singer did a Nashville album with a song about a preacher's son and got pretty big here, so why not Rumer?) But all that said, the reason you must listen to it comes down to one song, "Bristlecone Pine". Once you've heard Rumer's beautiful version of it you can go to YouTube and see or hear performances by Michael Johnson, who developed an achingly gorgeous fingerstyle guitar part, or Jim Salestrom, who meticulously reproduces it (and then some) with a flatpick; or to the album where I first heard this masterpiece, The Wilderness Way by Alaska's Hobo Jim (another brilliant songwriter, somewhat better known in Nashville under the name Jim Varsos), with Johnson on guitar. This may be a lot about one song, but once you hear it you will understand, and it will stick to your soul like glue. Indeed, you may end up thinking, as I and others have done, "this is the song I want played at my funeral". Of course, none of us will hear the songs played at our funerals, if any (songs, that is) - but it will be easier to pass on knowing that this one will be in the air.

As for the rest of Nashville Tears, it is a fine project brought off with grace and beauty. It's a great thing to have so many of Prestwood's fine tunes collected under one roof, and they make a great vehicle for Rumer's lovely voice.

*34. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, K.G.

One way of motivating yourself is to give your band the most ridiculous name possible and attempt to do enough musically that people ignore or even embrace it. This Australian combo has managed that with flying colors, having released 16 studio albums in 10 years as well as numerous live albums, EP's, videos, and more. They also recently made Rolling Stone's list of "50 Greatest Australian Bands" at #47. Their following down under is apparently fanatical.

None of that would make this a good recording; that achievement is rather a feature of their endless quest for innovation and refusal to be bound by conventions, plus extraordinary technical ability and, fundamentally, creative songwriting by Stu Mackenzie. Although they are mainly a progressive rock band, this album is not primarily an expression of that, but ranges over experiments in microtonality, acoustic music and their own, idiosyncratic form of rock. Zappa and Captain Beefheart come to mind, if only for their unconventionality, as does Umphrey's McGee among more recent groups. But the nonconformity is not for its own sake, but to enable their musical experiments; and comparisons are bound to be misleading, because nothing sounds quite like these guys. My one suggestion to them: could we maybe shorten the name to "Izzy"?

35. HAIM, Women in Music, Pt. III

I wouldn't know where to look for Pt. I or II; certainly not in their commercial album releases. The band gets enough attention, signing with Jay-Z's management team, headlining festivals and recording a single with Taylor Swift. They also regularly get compared to Fleetwood Mac, or The Bangles. I'm not sure any of this is very helpful, though. For me, they basically sound like the Indigo Girls with a slightly heavier beat, though it is reported that they can rock out in concert.

This album, like their previous ones, tends towards unimpeachably pleasant tunes with tight harmonies. Nothing to offend anyone, except possibly me, because I don't usually gravitate to such inoffensive music. One thing I have to add, though: they had the guts to do a song called "Hallelujah" that is not the Leonard Cohen cover. And it is a pretty good song, not one that obviously suffers by the inevitable comparison. That is perhaps an incentive to give the album a listen.

36. Angel Olsen, Whole New Mess

I'm not going to win any friends by running down the lengthy list of contemporary female solo singer-songwriters who I don't like, but if it's any help I'll mention that there is also a fairly long list of their male counterparts who I don't like either. Angel Olsen has gotten a lot of attention for her just-me-and-my-electric-guitar efforts - albums characterized by not especially notable guitar strumming and vocals filtered through a cavernous reverb. At one point she seemed to be bending towards a more commercial sound, but now she's back to basics. It's clear that this sort of stripped-down sound appeals to some people. For me, I picture myself in a very large, empty room with someone wailing away at the other end, and if I am in the mood for this it really doesn't matter whethere there are songs behind the echoes or not; and if I'm not, then it is more than a bit annoying. Suit yourself, but I usually want more than this from an album.

**37. Norah Jones, Pick Me Up Off the Floor

What exactly is Norah Jones - a jazz singer? blues musician? R&B artist? pop star? I guess the question could be asked of many others as well: what manner of songwriter is Fiona Apple? what was Amy Winehouse? I'm good with saying it's all jazz-tinged pop with a bluesy feel that occasionally becomes traditional R&B. Hey, I have a certain facility with categories... or, a talent for defining them in an impossibly detailed way.

This album, whatever its melange of styles, has a very appealing simplicity, not much more than piano and voice - if you could eat it they'd put a "minimally processed" label on it. Why is it that this doesn't bother me, while long-reverb vocals with solo electric guitar does? A matter of taste, I guess; or the fact that these are just more interesting songs, for all their understated melancholy.

There is variety here, but it's all within a range. Sometimes the ghost of Laura Nyro seems to hover over it; sometimes it's more Sade. Either way, with its plaintive musings about loneliness and the like it has a way of getting to you. I never thought of myself as a Norah Jones fan, but this set makes me want to check out some of the earlier efforts that I've ignored.

**38. Rufus Wainwright, Unfollow the Rules

"Songwriter" doesn't seem to carry the right weight for Rufus Wainwright, except perhaps in the sense that Stephen Sondheim is a songwriter. "Composer" is clearly what he thinks he is, for his work ranges from heavily arranged folk and rock to opera. (And yes, he covered Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" - famously, in fact, in the Shreksoundtrack.) I have not always been a fan of his wailing glissandos, his frequent melodramatic octave leaps, or his unrelentingly romantic lyrics. What I do admire is his drive to do more than write pop songs and his willingness to go out on a limb to be creative.

This strikes me as one of the best entries in the Wainwright canon. Like some of his other albums it hovers around high-end Broadway but never settles down to any strict classification. I appreciate the unexpected melodic turn, the creative harmonies and orchestration, the variety of piano textures.Most of all, in several of the songs, like "Trouble in Paradise", "Damsel in Distress" and "Peaceful Afternoon", he seems to be at the top of his game in setting lyrics to music.

*39. Fontaines D.C., A Hero's Death

Get it? The title, I mean. The reference is surely to Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, "A Hero's Life", which itself contains numerous references to the composer's own musical life, making it clear who the hero it. Now, you can follow this line to the band's intentions, or not, as you wish.

As I started listening to this highly touted Irish group my first thought was of the Velvet Undeground - and how many groups have tried to imitate that sound? Then I started to hear a bit of Bowie, some Buffalo Springfield, a snippet of the guitar lead from Status Quo's "Pictures of Matchstick Men", then maybe the Beatles in some demonic mood like "She's So Heavy", but all the while Joy Division was flitting in and out, though so was The National. After all those connections, probably few of which the band ever had in mind, I read their Wikipedia bio, and it makes a big deal of their having "bonded over their love of poetry", actually writing and publishing some collections of their own work. Whereupon I asked myself: how did I not think of The Fugs? But in fact, they sound almost nothing like The Fugs, even if they remind me of everyone else under the sun.

Well, enough with the influences, if that's what they are. This is quite an interesting album, though it takes a bit of tolerance for choruses that consist of one line repeated over and over. Don't spin this disk to be uplifted; it's about as optimistic as one of those psychosocial critiques by their countrymen, the Gang of Four. In spite of all that, the music starts to grab you after a few cuts, forcing you to acknowledge that it is something you should be hearing, whether it makes you feel better or not.

*40. Nada Surf, Never Not Together

So you love Wilco, and maybe The Jayhawks too? In that case you have no right not to love Nada Surf; in fact, it would be illegal. At their origins they perhaps sounded a bit like Jeff Tweedy jamming with Green Day, but then morphed into a pretty solid alt-country band. That's the spot they continue to stake out on this album, and little more needs to be said if you know that musical territory. They are a band that may never have released a bad song, and more than enough particularly good ones. This album is about on the same level.

---------------------------------

Updates, 5/27/2022

Title of King Gizzard album K.G. corrected.

Added a star to Pearl Jam's Gigaton.

Spotify playlist created with all 2-star and 3-star albums.

Should Museums Show Their Johnsons? (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 28 Dec 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Philip Johnson's Glass House (1947-49), which he said was inspired by the denuded chimney of a house that was destroyed by the Nazis. (Photo credit: Staib, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

I suppose Part 1 should have been enough about the underside of our Johnsons. Yet, hard on the heels of the Seward folly comes another riposte from the cancel culture of modern arts activism. "Erasing Philip Johnson's Name" was the original title of the NY Times article that describes the open letter of the "Johnson Study Group" (okay... hereafter "JSG") calling on MOMA and other institutions "to remove the name of Philip Johnson from every leadership title, public space and honorific of any form" due to Johnson's "widely documented white supremacist views and activities". A week later Harvard University responded by changing the title of a building to eliminate the reference to Johnson. MOMA, as of this writing, has said only that they are "taking this issue very seriously and extensively researching all available information".

El Papgayo thinks he can help MOMA out. What is "widely documented" is that this Johnson's support for fascism, as well as his anti-Semitism, went far beyond mere words. Johnson, born into a very wealthy Cleveland family, began working as MOMA's first curator of architecture and design in 1929; hardly surprising that he fell out of college directly into this cushy position given his family's upper class social connections. After co-curating the 1932 exhibition on "The International Style" which introduced architectural modernism to the U.S., he went to Germany, attended a Hitler youth rally, and was highly impressed. As the naive Johnson recalled later, "You simply could not fail to be caught up in the excitement of it". (One can imagine his opinion of a Trump rally. He worked with the Donald at least twice, on Riverside South and Trump Tower, both pretty dismal works of architecture.)

In 1934 Johnson announced that he was leaving MOMA to help Huey Long's campaign in Louisiana and to found a right-wing party. From then until the U.S. entered the war at the end of 1941 he was an ultraright political operative. After Long was assassinated he went on to work with Father Coughlin and tried to found a fascist political party. Both Long and Coughlin were favorites of the fascist agitator Lawrence Dennis, whose writings Johnson had begun to follow. He made several more trips to Germany, and to Poland, where he lauded the Nazi invasion. He wrote extensively in support of fascism, opposed French and British resistance to the Nazis and U.S. entry into the war, expressed sympathy for the annexation of Poland, and even applauded the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and Modlin as a "stirring spectacle". He unleashed an endless stream of hate-filled invective about the Jews, perpetuating and adding to the most idiotic Jewish conspiracy theories in both Europe and America. According to Mark Lamster, he also contributed financially to an anti-Semitic organization called the Christian Mobilizers. (Some quotes from Lamster and Johnson are reprinted in The Architect's Newspaper on November 6, 2018.)

A gay man, Johnson seemed little disturbed by the Nazi atrocities against gay people, even issuing a variety of remarks about his homoerotic fascination with blond boys in uniforms. This glib attitude towards one of the most homophobic regimes in history was typical of Johnson's overall narcissism. As long as he himself was feted and solicited by the Nazis, who asked him to help identify fellow travelers in the U.S., he demonstrated little sensitivity to the plight of gay people in Germany, some of whom were arrested, tortured and murdered.

After the U.S. entry into the war it became politically impossible for Johnson to continue his open support of fascism; he was investigated by the FBI under the Smith Act, but never tried, unlike some other equally perfidious American fascists. (One reason for that is that being so rich himself he did not need to take money from the Nazis, as some others had done.) He entered military service, remaining in the U.S., then took a degree in architecture at Harvard, and was accepted back to a leadership position at MOMA in 1946.

To my knowledge, there was no public statement from the MOMA Board of Trustees regarding his Naziism when they invited him back as curator of architecture; he was simply welcomed back to the fold like a lost sheep. According to one source, when Johnson was up for election to the Board in 1957 and someone raised the question of his background, John D. Rockefeller's wife Blanchette responded: "Every young man should be allowed to make one large mistake." Decent of her, no? And of MOMA to "research" the issue almost 75 years after they re-instated the anti-Semitic American fascist in an influential position in American architecture.


Philip Johnson in 1933, a year after his first visit to Nazi Germany. (Photo credit: Carl van Vechten, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The JSG says that Johnson "used his office and his curatorial work at MOMA as a pretense to collaborate with the German Nazi Party". I don't know what their source is for this claim, but according to most sources he left his post at MOMA to become a full-time political miscreant, and had, at least officially, abandoned politics by the time he returned there. Perhaps his tenure there gained him certain privileges as a "journalist" in Europe, but he was not officially associated with the museum during this time, but rather with Father Coughlin's ultraright newspaper Social Justice. In later interviews he retracted his support for fascism, once calling it "utter stupidity", while at the same time making various self-exculpatory statements about it. As late as 1964 he was quoted as saying that Hitler was "better than Roosevelt".

He never publicly issued any explicit retraction of his rabid anti-Semitism. In 1956 he donated a design for a synagogue in Port Chester, NY, which has been interpreted as a kind of apology; but he also admitted there were pragmatic reasons for doing it (he was advised that he needed to have some credits for larger structures than the houses he had so far designed), and never made the apology explicit. In fact there are serious questions about his intentions. See this article on the building by biographer Mark Lamster, and the comments below it, including the one by Gavriel Rosenfeld, author of this book on Jewish architecture, who states that Johnson first tried to sell the design to a temple in Greenwich, CT, and donated it to the Port Chester synagogue only after it was rejected. It may not be Johnson's fault that the Ibram Lassaw altar backdrop reminded some congregants of barbed wire, but in my opinion the barracks-style form of the building bears an eerie similarity to Nazi concentration camp architecture, and from the outside the narrow vertical windows resemble prison bars.

Johnson's Nazi sympathies may not have been widely known until recently, but they were certainly known, or knowable, to anyone who was interested. They absolutely were known to MOMA, where he was joined in his fascist sympathies by Alan Blackburn, another MOMA official. Here is some of what MOMA officials might include in their "research":

December 18, 1934: Johnson's leaving MOMA to found a "Nationalist Party" of "Gray Shirts" was reported by both the New York TImes and the Herald Tribune.
September 1940: An "article in Harper's listed Johnson as among leading American Nazis." (Wikipedia, "Philip Johnson")
1941: William Shirer's Berlin Diary published. He knew what Johnson stood for in 1939 when the two were assigned to be roommates as journalists covering the rise of the Nazis. Johnson was working for Father Coughlin's Social Justice, a publication sympathetic to fascism.
January 1969: David Harry Bennett's Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party, 1932-1936 is published by Rutgers University Press. Johnson and Blackburn's activities are noted in relationship to Father Coughlin's short-lived Union Party and their own effort to form a "Nationalist Party".
October 1988: Michael Sorkin publishes "Where Was Philip" in Spy magazine. This revealing article offers a concise overview of Johnson's activities on behalf of fascism and his anti-Semitic writings.
November 1995: Kazys Varnelis, "'We Cannot Not Know History': Philip Johnson's Politics and Cynical Survival", is published in the Journal of Architectural Education, 49:2, 11/1995, pp.92-104. (No link is provided here because access requires a JSTOR account.) An informative essay on Johnson's politics, with many historical and scholarly references, some of which I have utilized here. Varnelis has also published some of Johnson's early writings on his web site.
June 1996: Franz Schulze's Philip Johnson: Life and Work, the first full scale biography, is published. In spite of the author's sympathetic stance, Johnson's wretched politics and hate-mongering are on display. Check out the comments on the Amazon page, none of them particularly sympathetic to Johnson as an architect, much less as a political figure.
January 31, 2003: Robert Hughes publishes "Of Gods and Monsters" in the Guardian, in which he relates that in a 1978 interview, Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, named Johnson as the person who would be best to replace him if another Hitler came along. Speer sent along a signed copy of a book of his own work as a gift for Johnson. (According to Hughes, Johnson was anything but pleased to receive it, having made a lifelong effort to dodge responsibility for his allegiance to the Nazis.)
January 31, 2005: A week after Johnson dies, Mark Stevens, art critic of New York magazine, publishes an Op-Ed in the NY Times, "Form Follows Fascism", reminding readers of his Nazism as well as his mixed legacy as both an architect.
April 2016: Marc Wortman's 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War details many of Johnson's fascist activities.
April 2016: Wortman's book is excerpted in a Vanity Fair article entitled, "Famed Architect Philip Johnson's Hidden Nazi Past".
November 2018: Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century offers more details about Johnson's politics.
December 2018: Nikil Saval's article "Philip Johnson: The Man Who Made Architecture Amoral", based on Lamster's book, is published in The New Yorker, again documenting Johnson's nefarious activities on behalf of fascism. Lamster is interviewed in Metropolis magazine, and again discusses Johnson's Naziism.
July 2020: Ian Volner's Philip Johnson: A Visual Biography published by Phaidon, again discusses Johnson's Nazi past and adds unsavory details of his personal politics as well.
July 2020: Volner's book is the lead item in a Bloomberg News summary by James Tarmy entitled "Why Hasn't 'Starchitect' Philip Johnson Been Canceled?". The subheading reads, "A new book shines a light on his enduring architectural legacy, despite a 'flirtation' with Naziism", followed by the comment, "Philip Johnson's Nazi past was probably the worst-kept secret in New York, but it wasn't the only piece of the superstar architect's character that was reprehensible."

So, yes, there is some "extensive research" to be done at MOMA: call it a deep dive into what has been known to the world about their Curator of Architecture for some 85 years, with the Greek chorus reaching a dramatic climax in the last five years, including two new biographies and other books and plenty of press. I mean, weren't MOMA's trustees, curators and directors in lockdown for much of this year? Plenty of time to catch up on some reading.

I mean, seriously, who are they trying to kid with this "research" bullshit? They surely know, and have known for a very long time, that MOMA helped foster the career and influence of this fabulously wealthy man who became even more wealthy under the noses of their filthy-rich benefactors, and that he was a raging anti-Semite and Nazi supporter. What is their supposed research going to turn up? Johnson bragged about having mentored several prominent Jewish architects. He was apparently friends with Shimon Peres. So what does this buy him, after concocting a hit list for the fascist "revolution" that began with his Jewish friend and classmate (and fellow gay man) Lincoln Kirstein?

The JSG has actually taken a mild approach to calling this man's various honors into question; maybe the question should be why does this architect of mixed reputation and despicable morals have his name attached to an AIA Gold Medal and the Pritzker Prize? What is the state of our culture in general when a university, art museum or professional organization cannot figure out that someone like this should not be honored? Why does it take a movement and public prompting from political activists? As we know from the last four years, when you let hate speech and racial scapegoating go it can one day find fertile soil to flourish. A son of privilege who climbed the artworld ladder through social connections, a bitter anti-Semite, a fascist operative, a purveyor of discredited racial theories, an architectural chameleon without a distinctive personal style, and a vocal worshipper of the dollar bill - this was Philip Johnson. Yet MOMA has to do "research" before dropping his name from an exhibition gallery and curator title.

A list of Johnson's commissions - all of them subsequent to his pro-Nazi activities - says just how much America's cultural and political elite cared that this Dutchman of Half Moon ancestry hated Jews and all racial minorities. It includes not just corporate buildings like Seagrams (most of which was done by Mies van der Rohe), the Lipstick Building and Trump Tower, but arts and cultural institutions galore, the JFK Memorial in Dallas, university buildings and labs, the New York State pavilion for the 1964 World's Fair, libraries, religious centers, and more. Sure, he may have suggested that the murder of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto was a glorious thing, but hey, let's give him another million dollar contract and more public monuments to enshrine his name!

I mean, we still buy Fords, right? No, better than that - even Jews now drive around in Volkswagens and Mercedes Benz's, love their Wagner recordings, and read Heidegger, so why the hell should we care that some American architect made a few stupid remarks?

Is it any wonder why 74 million people voted for a man who calls neo-Nazis "very fine people", tells neo-fascist groups like the Proud Boys to"stand by", and initially expresses little concern about Jews murdered by another anti-Semite in Pittsburgh? This is where our collective amnesia about such haters leads: to a president who wreaks havoc on our political system, tears children away from parents, makes racism and sexism publicly acceptable, denies basic science, and helps cause the deaths of thousands through misguided leadership during a health crisis. Yes, it really does have disastrous practical consequences when we let these kinds of people off the hook, under the lazy assumption that their dumb words are just mistakes that we can ignore and move on from.

Obviously we cannot count on business or institutional leaders to sound the alarm about such cultural self-destruction: to them, Johnson's fascism was just some ineffective and discarded political ideas, with no real impact and in any case protected by the First Amendment. But those who can't see the impact should not be leading anything, much less Lincoln Center (where Johnson designed the NY State Theater) or MOMA (where he designed the roof garden). If not sent to jail for treason he should have at least been a pariah to every decent human being in a leadership position. That was clearly not the case.

So this piece of "cancel culture" is not about the erection of a 26-foot statue with a cinematic rear end shot, it's about the pornographic mark left on the American landscape by a devout admirer of Adolph Hitler. The question about him really is, how did this despicable person ever get a commission, a post, an award or an honor after his perfidious activities in support of the Third Reich? What does it say about the moral fiber of our society in general that he was able to carry on after being a traitor to his country and a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semite? At minimum, it shows that no decisions about morality, or indeed culture, can be left to the rich and the business interests that fund the construction of large buildings, control cultural institutions, and anoint architects with museum appointments. The Rockefellers have plenty of blood, or at least crud, on their hands for the sponsorship of this Nazi.

The problem is not merely that Johnson's name is attached to some gallery or design institute. Certainly it should not be. The much larger problem is that the nation is now dotted with monuments to a morally corrupt individual for architecture students to gawk at, scholars to write about, critics to hold up as examples of the craft and museums to put on exhibitions about. Take away the institutional honors and titles that the JSG objects to and we are still left with dozens of prominent glass towers and structures. Albert Speer's architecture is mostly a thing of the past; but Johnson's will stand for a very long time. JSG says, "There is a role for Johnson's work in archives and historic preservation." This sounds a bit like wishful thinking, when his "work" moons us from the sidewalks all over New York City and around the country. Billions of footsteps will traverse the shadow of his towers, the careers of many generations will be spent inside his steel and glass structures, before he is committed to the archives. Their point, though, is why add insult to injury by naming things after him? We are just getting around to "canceling" Confederate generals, who rank no higher than fascists on the moral spectrum. Do we have to wait 150 years to consign Johnson's name to the archives, even if we can't get rid of his buildings?

Sure, I anticipate the response: But he created some great buildings, outstanding contributions to American architecture, structures that have helped make the urban landscape what it is. Are you squawcking that you would rather just be without this cornucopia of creativity? Answer: that is a false dichotomy. For every Philip Johnson with his dozens of commissions, there are less well known but highly creative talents who would have been employed to build those structures. The JSG says that Johnson excluded all black architects from his exhibitions, and it could be added that some of those architects might well have given us better buildings than Johnson did had the world consigned Johnson to the dustbin of history with his Nazi idols. We might have benefited more, not less, if Johnson had been limited to building factories for Henry Ford. (Okay, Trump Tower is just as appropriate.) Where a need opens up, whether in architecture or the other arts, there will usually be more than one person capable of filling it. I won't deny the beauty of some of what he created (the MOMA garden has always been an appealing spot), but I could live without it if its absence were to send a message that haters and fascists get what they deserve - in this case, obscurity.

So the objections of the JSG are not just well taken, but an understated approach to what should be said and done about Johnson. We can't very well tear down everything he built - one can wish something never existed but acknowledge it has some merit while it does, like Heidegger's philosophy, and Wagner's music, and the work of too many literary anti-Semites and racists to name. Better those people should have gone to hell after a life of obscurity; but as fate, and human weakness, would have it, they left something behind that deserves recognition, even if they personally deserve scorn. (Quite a few people have commented on Johnson's fondness for Nietzsche, but while I don't have much use for his philosophy, the simplistic association of his "superman" with Naziism is mostly a misunderstanding.)

It was courageous of the JSG to challenge the institutional sainthood of this icon-itect and to focus on his exclusion of architects of color from MOMA exhibitions during his long tenure there as curator of architecture and design. But the letter makes it sound like that is the most reprehensible thing he did, and the very reason he should be dis-honored by the powers that be. To say the least, that needs a lot of refinement, because the record so far made public shows that he was as vile an anti-Semite as there ever was, applauding the earliest forms of genocide and championing the Nazi cause long after Krystallnacht. To make a public statement calling for the removal of Johnson's name from various sites without so much as alluding to his anti-Semitism seems very curious, as if being a political operative and possible spy who colluded with the perpetrators of the Holocaust is on the same plane with a failure to include black architects in museum shows. It is like criticizing the administrator of a Jefferson Davis memorial for making an unkind remark about Jews, without so much as mentioning their primary function in honoring the slave system. It just seems skewed.

The JSG does make explicit the fact that Johnson was a proponent of, and collaborator with, Nazism. But they begin by describing his "white supremacist views", and their discussion of his Nazi activities slides directly into the point about his racist curatorial practices. The logic of removing his name from institutions is based on this. It is hard not to notice the awkward absence of a single reference to his hatred of Jews, as if it were preferable to let people infer that from the words "Nazi" and "fascist" without saying it outright.

But when Johnson ranted, as he often did in his writings, about the need for the "white race" to band together and defend itself, and the like, "white" was not primarily contrasted with "black" but with Jews, and sometimes with people of Japanese heritage. (The Japanese are the only explicit target of Johnson's eugenics-infused essay, "Are We a Dying Race?", though one can infer his other antipathies easily enough.) In every quote I have seen from his racist writings, when he is being explicit about an enemy, it is these two groups he is talking about. Of course, the man was almost certainly as racist towards black people and all other people of color as Hitler himself was. If, as JSG suggests, he consciously excluded all architects of color from his exhibitions, that is further evidence. (I say "consciously" because a curator hardly needs to be a Nazi sympathizer to unconsciously exclude non-white architects from exhibitions; that, I am certain, happens on a daily basis, though perhaps somewhat less after some very recent consciousness-raising within the art world.) But I think it is important, as a matter of historical accuracy, to be clear that the "racist" and "white supremacist" Johnson, though he may well have hated blacks and other people of color just as much, nevertheless directed almost all his venom at the Jews and Japanese.

On the other hand, one can't exactly leave it at this; because, to ask a blunt question, where the devil have all the Jewish spokespeople been on the Johnson issue for the past 20, 50 or 85 years?? Searches on the web sites of the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai Brith, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, Tikkun and Jewish Currents turned up not a single reference to Johnson, nor did numerous kinds of Google searches for Johnson material turn up a single link to any Jewish advocacy organization or web site. Ada Louise (Landman) Huxtable and Paul Goldberger, long time architecture critics for the NY Times, apparently had little to say about Johnson's Nazism. And if you want to see just how important the Jewish Museum thought the past of an American Nazi was, read Michael Wise's article in Forwards describing their purchase of some of the original artifacts from the Port Chester synagogue. A September 2016 essay by Richard Hurowitz in the Jerusalem Post sums up Johnson's anti-Semitic history pretty well. But I can't find anything that explicitly calls into question the bestowal of numerous honors on a man who was a notorious hater of Jews.

In his later years, Johnson was a mentor to Daniel Liebeskind, Richard Meier and other Jewish architects. Did they know or care that the man had called the bombing of Warsaw "a stirring spectacle"? Or that 20 years or more after the war he said that he prefered Hitler to Roosevelt, that WIlliam Shirer was irresponsible for reporting on his fascist sympathies, and that his biggest complaint about the Nazis was that their architecture was poor? Taking a few Jews under your wing cannot erase that kind of history. Nor helping to create the Rothko Chapel. If the man uttered a peep about the Holocaust before he died it was not recorded. The liberal Jewish establishment seems to have totally dropped the ball on this, or rather, never picked it up.

So, while I find the absence of a reference to anti-Semitism in the JSG's presentation uncomfortable, in the end I want to thank them for doing what has never been done by the people Johnson most explicitly despised. Johnson seems to have danced with agility between his own raindrops; if there is any one consistent feeling among the various authors cited here, it is that due to his wealth, connections, charisma and in some cases inspiration, he continually avoided accountability for his nasty past; as one journalist put it, "his comeuppance never came". Actually getting an institution to take some action regarding the Johnson stain on the artworld, as the JSG has done, is quite an accomplishment, and if what it took was a group of black architects and their supporters raising a cry about his racism, that just shines a spotlight on the utter lack of Jewish leadership on the matter.

Which brings me to a disturbing thought: that today (and perhaps not just today) the charge of anti-Semitism simply doesn't move insitutions enough to even raise it; it doesn't get anybody in the world of education or art institutions all bent out of shape to point out that their institutes or chairs are named for a man who actively supported a regime that murdered 6 million Jews, and who tried to foment the same sort of hatred here. But if the same man unfairly failed to recognize black architects, that moves people to take action. There seems to be both a sickening blindness in this society to the depravity of anti-Semitism, and a disturbing kind of stasis among Jews and their alleged defenders, as if all we need to do to stand our ground is rally around Israel's right to exist, rail about the dangers of BDS, and argue about the latest definition of anti-Semitism. Who cares if lowlifes like Johnson become world famous symbols of American architecture? We have Israel, and a few jerks in the U.S. aren't going to hurt us, so why waste energy on them?

I don't want to get sidetracked into a discussion about it here, but I have experienced anti-Semitism in the U.S. so many times I would need to write a book just to describe all the instances. Not too long ago I witnessed a confrontation between a loud but peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration and a group of white patrons at an outdoor dining area who seemed intent on harrassing them. As tempers flared, an elderly white man shouted at the crowd, "Tell it to George Soros!" The direct object of his enmity was the anti-racist protesters, but the content of the remark was pure anti-Semitism, Soros being the latest stand-in for the kind of garbage about Jewish bankers and their conspiracies that Philip Johnson did much to promote. This took place in New York City. Good luck elsewhere trying to pretend that we can just ignore anti-Semitism and it will go away.

If the JSG is really a "study group" and not just an ad hoc list of people who signed a letter then I assume we can expect more from them than this missive. It would be interesting to find out just what Johnson's level of engagement was with African-Americans and other racial and national minorities. JSG has posted one dismissive comment he allegedly made in 1973 about building "a monument for blacks", but has not documented the source or context of this remark. So far, the picture that emerges of his attitude towards minorities other than Jews is one of not-so-benign neglect. If more can be done to document his racism towards people of color, then that and his anti-Semitism together would make an even stronger case for a general reappraisal of the man's legacy.

We are not going to tear down bridges and highways that Robert Moses built, even if we no longer consider him a godsend to the city, and in fact recognize the racism that was part and parcel of his master plan. Maybe Philip Johnson will be the next colossus to fall, even as his monuments remain standing.

A bigger question, though, is whether New York City, or anywhere else in the U.S., will ever be known not only for more humanitarian architects, but for a truly humanitarian architecture. In his NY Times columns Michael Kimmelman has often described the potential of architecture to not only beautify spaces but humanize them, bring people together, diminish differences. Just the opposite of Robert Moses, who built low walkways over the expressways to his beaches in order to prevent poor black folks who didn't own cars from getting there on buses. Although architectural humanism goes back almost six centirues, we have yet to establsih a mandate for architecture in the service of humanity. This would require much more than an architect with great humanitarian instincts; it would mean institutions, regulations and cultural priorities that push those values to the forefront. To put it mildly, we're not there yet.

Johnson's aesthetics, to the extent that he had any, seem to have been about him, mainly, a Nietzschean drive to aestheticize his life. The broader critique of what he stood for would start there. For example, the soaring atrium of 550 Madison Avenue was originally sold to the public as a space that would serve some community function; but it quickly became clear that it was all about grandeur and schmaltz and had no particular appeal to anyone as a public area. The self-involvement of a human being like Johnson manifests itself in his works.

The critique of Philip Johnson and what he stood for, both as a person and as a builder, could serve a higher purpose in this respect. It could put on notice the developers - the Trumps, Kushners, Helmsleys, and Ratners - and the architects who serve them that their legacy will be judged not by poured concrete, steel girders and panes of glass, but by their success or failure at making people and communities better by their works.

Canceling fascists, racists and anti-Semites may help improve the ideological composition of art institutions, and keep future bigots from running them. But that should not be the ultimate goal. To have a real impact it should be no more than a stepping stone to a reorientation of urban architecture towards humanizing urban spaces. We see this happening in dribs and drabs; then we see horror shows like the Atlantic Yards and the Downtown Brooklyn development plan. Once we get rid of rascals like Johnson there is still a lot to be done.

Should Museums Show Their Johnsons? (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 13:30:00 +0000

God, I haven't had that much fun creating a title in a long time! I guess the opportunity was arranged by the Fates and Muses in some occult ritual.

Cries had just gone up regarding the planned placement of Seward Johnson's monumental sculpture of a slightly exposed Marilyn Monroe near the entrance to the Palm Springs Art Museum, when a group of anonymous scholars threw into question the naming of museum institutes and university buildings after Philip Johnson, the modernist architect and one-time American fascist. These days, it seems that having a Johnson is not always an asset.

Let's do Seward first. His 2011 Forever Marilyn depicts the movie star in a famous shot from The Seven-Year Itch, where a gust of wind from a subway tunnel blows her dress up above her knees as she tries to press it back down.


"Forever Marilyn, by Seward Johnson" (Photo: Christopher Lance)

No less an authority than the Palm Springs Art Museum's Director, Louis Grachos, as well as three former directors and other Palm Springs cultural luminaries, have spoken out against moving the statue there. Here's a quote from Grachos: “When you exit the museum, you are going to see the exposed backside of a 26-foot-tall Marilyn Monroe, including her underwear,” he explained by phone this week. “That’s not the message we want to give to our community.”

"Exposed backside?" Listen, um, Louis, and your predecessors, with your undoubtedly shining credentials as artworld judges of taste and propriety, I have one piece of advice for you: Don't go to Florence!


Michelangelo's David at the Academia Gallery in Florence	(Photo: Anton Alterman)

I mean, seriously - from directly below the statue you can look up at Marilyn Monroe's underwear... So what the hell is in your museum, Mr. Director, if you are so horrified by the thought of the Marilyn's underwear outside the museum? Just still lifes and Abstract Expressionist canvases? Or are you saying it's okay to show depictions of privies within your hallowed halls, but outside you'd better be more cautious? (Actually, don't go to Florence, but do go to the Vatican - where a guard stands outside the Sistine Chapel checking that there are no bare shoulders or knees about to enter, while a priest inside warns over a PA that "this is a house of god". But I digress.)

Let's keep in mind that Johnson's Marilyn has been around the block and behind the bushes once or twice. Forever Marilyn has resided in a public plaza in Chicago, at Grounds for Sculpture, Johnson's public sculpture park, in New Jersey, and in Downtown Palm Springs. This has not, to my knowledge, resulted in the deterioration of the moral fabric of society. (Okay, that fabric has deteriorated - but that has more to do with a certain New York demagogue than a New Jersey sculptor.) The brouhaha is all about moving Marilyn from Downtown to a spot near the art museum's entrance. I guess the culture czars of Palm Springs were too busy to raise the cry of poisoning the public mind when the statue was downtown, so they made it a NIMBY issue. Terribly responsible of you folks.

What, then, is the right "message" to send to the Palm Springs community? How about: "We will do absolutely nothing to offend your presumed 19th century sexual morality. Indeed, we are not so much an art museum as a repository of artifacts pre-approved by a committee of West Coast evangelicals, the Pope and the local Republican establishment..."

Wait! What? This is actually a liberal southern California city, one with the highest concentration of LGBTQ households in the country, who just elected an openly bisexual woman as mayor, and where a Republican is lucky to get forty percent of the vote in a local or national election. What is this community doing imposing such anachronistic Victorian prudishness on their art institutions?

According to the directors and their cohorts, the objections are not due to phony religious scruples about sexuality. Rather, putting the statue at the museum "elevates an approach to women that is inappropriate in 2020, introducing a blatantly sexist statue in front of our most significant cultural institution." They refer to it as "a 26-foot statement about women and sexual appeal". Johnson's monumental "war memorial" statue of a sailor kissing a woman at the end of WW II has similarly been criticized for its upskirt view and the woman's submissive pose. (He called it "Unconditional Surrender", obviously relishing the double entendre.)

But women have been depicted in sexually suggestive and submissive poses since, oh, Botticelli's Venus? To say nothing of the frankly pornographic works of Picasso and others. Or Lautrec's prostitutes. Today, though, we know better than to show a woman's undies. Today we know that when men depict women's bodies they are being used as sex objects. In fact, why focus on secondary works like Forever Marilyn - what about The Seven Year Itch itself? Not to mention other Marilyn Monroe films, and of course, her Playboy spread. She didn't actually agree to be in Playboy, but she agreed to pose nude for photographer Tom Kelley, who sold the pictures to Hugh Hefner; apparently, she didn't mind the attention it got her. So, is the idea that the best way to honor her is never to show the films and photographs in which she is, clearly, depicted as an icon of beauty and sexual attraction - a role she conspired in over the course of a roughly 15-year career? Or am I missing some hidden logic?

Sorry, I don't see any more sexual objectification in this derivative work than in numerous cinematic and photographic images that Marilyn participated in hundreds of times. But perhaps the narrative is supposed to be something like, "Marilyn was forced to let the male-dominated studio system make a sex object out of her in order to have an acting career, but we need not endorse that grim reality." (I believe something like this was argued by Gloria Steinem in a book on Marilyn.)

There have been plenty of cases where women were taken advantage of in film and other visual arts, and I have no doubt that in order to break into the field Marilyn had her "MeToo" moments. But a blanket label of "blatantly sexist" for representations of her as a sex symbol is blatantly false. She was actually a trend-setter in taking control of her career; she formed her own production company, carefully managed her image, and forced the world to take her seriously as an actress after having edged into cinema in "dumb blonde" roles. I regret if it doesn't fit the pretentious piety of the #MeToo era to point out that some women want to be admired specifically for their beauty, glamor and desirability, but, whatever her other troubles (they were many) Marilyn was apparently very comfortable with expressing her sexuality in a variety of ways. There's absolutely no reason to think she would have been disturbed by Stewart Johnson's sculpture.

It seems that even art directors toss around casual judgments about sexuality without so much as a thought about the broader implications of what they are saying. To give the slightest credit to their offhand comments about sexual morality would be to write off a vast segment of the plastic arts, film, theater, vocal music in various genres, ballet and perhaps much else, past, present and future, as an affront to decency and something from which to protect the impressionable minds of society at large. It is frankly quite disturbing to see people who ought to be upholding principles of liberty, progress, openness and artistic freedom buying directly into a moral agenda that could equally come from the playbook of the religious right.

But this, sad to say, has been my experience of the left in general, going back many decades, and the more so the more left they are. The unfortunate truth is that there is a thin line between the fulminations of the Moral Majority or the Catholic Church about the sanctity of family, with its narrowly defined limits on what constitutes legitimate sexual expression, and feminist scruples about sexuality and sexual oppression. The latter run side by side with reactionary efforts to suppress female self-expression when it happens to take sexually liberated forms that they do not understand as empowerment.

Left and right, using superficially different vocabularies, attempt to suppress explicit sexual expression that doesn't fit their political narrative. But before modern feminism and gay liberation and the coming out of transgender people, what happened was the sexual revolution of the sixties, and you cannot go backwards to undo that without taking a lot else with you. We need to sharply distinguish between the critique of moral transgressions like rape, domestic abuse and the sort of serial predatory behavior that #MeToo targets (when it is on target, which it often isn't) and the celebration of sexuality as a game, a skill, an art form and or just a facet of human nature. Otherwise the public conversation is like a coin with the same face on both sides. Attacking a work of art with feminist rhetoric about "sexual objectification" adopts a different language to achieve the same ends as conservative monitors of aesthetic propriety

Let Marilyn's butt wave free. Maybe her message is just what Seward Johnson's was: if you don't like it you can kiss my ass.

Before I leave this part of the Johnson disputes, it seems worth adding that the Palm Springs art directors, before they got into their feminist rant, were complaining about the fact that the statue would obscure the art museum itself. Though it seems like a problem easily solved by judicious consideration of its exact location, I bow out of that conversation. It certainly was possible to debate that point without bringing in spurious social critiques.

But more interestingly, they did not even address other more serious issues of aesthetics and morality in their statement, to wit:

1. The statue, like many of Johnson's other works, was copied from a shot in Billy Wilder's film, and Johnson might be accused of plagiarism, as he was with Unconditional Surrender (apparently based on a famous photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, V-J Day in Times Square). I'm not endorsing this view, for there is a robust tradition of secondary uses of images from previous artworks, and Johnson's sculptures surely add an aesthetic dimension that is not there in the original. But this is a more serious discussion, and one suspects that the relevant authorities had no taste for intellectual challenges, preferring to haul out some trendy epithets about sexism that need not be backed up with real logic in the current climate.

2. This and other Johnson works have also been described more than once as kitsch, not real art. His manufacturing process, employing CAD (computer-aided design) software to create works from existing images, has also put his originality in question. I have been to Grounds for Sculpture, where many of Johnson's works reside, among hundreds of works by other sculptors whose content ranges from contemporary abstractions to, let's say playful humor and fantasy.

Seward Johnson, "Dejeuner Déjà Vu" (Photo: Anton Alterman)

I've been to enough sculpture gardens to say that the range felt liberating. There is nothing wrong with modernist mountainsides like Storm King or rolling estates like the one at the Nassau County Museum of Art. But a visit to Grounds For Sculpture can relieve you of the tendency to stomp your foot and insist that "this public sculpture stuff is Very Serious Business!" And whether it is or not, I see Johnson's work being in the tradition of Warhol and the artists who used popular culture as a jumping-off point. He had an eye for the iconic, and if his work is kitsch or lacks originality then so does that of a hell of a lot of pop artists who stand in modern art museums all over the world.

3. There is also a more legitimate reason to at least consider the charge of sexism, though against Wilder, not Johnson. I recall that it was reported not very long ago that Marilyn, though she had agreed to the famous shot in which a gust of wind blows her dress up from below, was not expecting the strong blast that not only blew it above her knees but made it impossible to push the dress back down, exposing her for several seconds on the movie set in public.There was some suggestion that this was all intentional and that she was not very pleased about it. (I am not going to hold up this post trying to find the reference, but I believe it was in the NY Times; I'll keep looking.) Even if true, Johnson would not have known this when he created the statue. But one might argue that it rubs the wrong way to have an embarrassing moment so monumentally immortalized. The problem is, it is already immortalized in the film and a thousand reproductions of the clip. Making a sculpture of it does not necessarily endorse the original motivation, and if someone finds the statue disturbing, all the better. Andy Warhol did silk screens of an electric chair and other unsettling images. This is your culture, make of it what you will.

4. Finally, in this era when support for the arts by morally bankrupt corporate executives, and in particular by those involved with predatory pharmaceutical companies, has become an issue, it might have been interesting to raise the question of the extent to which Johnson's monumental sculptures owe their existence to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, spoils of a drug company that has been involved in plenty of ethical controversies. Seward Johnson was the grandson of Robert Wood Johnson, the company founder, one of whose sons (Seward's uncle) ran the company, and fired him from a job there at the age of 32. Seward became CEO of The Atlantic Foundation, a non-profit established by his father. Though he was not a direct heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune (he even had to wage a legal fight for a small portion of his father's estate) it seems likely that his studio, artworks and sculpture park were at least indirectly subsidized by money from the pharmaceutical company. It has been an ethically rocky road for Johnson & Johnson, perhaps tainting Seward's work like a bottle of Tylenol or talcum powder. I say "perhaps", since I remain a bit skeptical of this charge too, given Seward's minimal connection with the company himself. But someone might develop such case, and it might even have more sticking power than the sexism label for Forever Marilyn.

So the putative art experts with their feminist consciences decided to shoot from the hip about the exposure of the metallic undergarments of a woman who is known the world over as a symbol of beauty and sexuality, because it was an easy potshot to take, while other objections would actually require an argument. Unfortunately, the whole thing is a sad reminder of another recent public art debacle by the liberal West Coast intelligentsia - the decision by the San Francisco Board of Education to paint over, then (after an outcry) to cover up instead, Victor Arnautoff's historic WPA murals in George Washington High School, out of fear that they may be exposing minority high school students to uncomfortable realities of U.S. history. (Read what the Parrot had to say about this one here.) Maybe California should just remove all its public artworks, close its art institutions, and take a breather.They have Disneyland and the Hearst Mansion, anyway; do they really need all these sculptures and murals too?

I think I have discovered something about myself. When forced to choose between freedom of artistic expression in just about any form, and political correctness in at least some forms, I stand with the artists, ready to endure the slings and arrows of self-righteous activists for the long-term good of our cultural heritage. But (there's always a "but"), there are limits. Peppering the landscape with works by admirers of Adolph Hitler is one of them. I'll talk about that in the next post.

Closer to Home? 50 Years Later, It Seems Prophetic

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Happy June 15, everyone! Yes, even before this Friday (Juneteenth) we have an anniversary to celebrate!

As everybody knows,1970 was the year that rock and roll died. It was the year in which, as I vividly recall, I read a music review in one of the underground New York newspapers (maybe The East Village Other) referring to the "Grand Funk and James Gang garbage" that had begun depreciating the airwaves. I knew who Grand Funk were. I had never heard the James Gang, and in the half century since I don't think I have ever listened to an entire album by them.

The year the Beatles broke up. The year Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died. Or, how's this for contrasting "egad!" occasions: the year Black Sabbath releases their first album, and The Partrdige Family have a #1 hit with "I Think I Love You". There were always artists who you thought must have had to bribe DJ's to play their records - you turned out to be right, in some cases - but suddenly you had this influx of soon-to-be superstars whose records you could turn up as loud as you wanted and still not feel like they should be in your rock collection: The Carpenters. James Taylor. The first U.S. release by a sort of piano-bar type guy named Elton John. In general, everything was too loud, or not loud enough, and nothing was just right.

Or so it seemed. What a difference a day makes, or at least a half-century.

In June 1970 my junior year of high school drew to a close. The civil rights movement, feminism, gay liberation and especially protests against the war in Vietnam had gripped the consciousness of people my age. Revolution was in the air; there were so many self-styled Marxist groups around that you could take any combination of "revolutionary", "worker", "socialist", "league", "world" and "party" and there'd be a group for that. The Strawberry Statement became a film, and so did Joe - the one, an exaltation of student rebellion, the other an outlet for reactionary anger at everything associated with the Hippie movement of the 60's. Nixon, the redbaiting politician from California, was busy invading Cambodia, with the support of his notorious National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, who would later win a Nobel Peace Prize for the humiliating peace treaty he was forced to sign after the death of about a million Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans.

March 6, 1970: The Weathermen explosion, as self-styled revolutionaries accidentally blow up a Greenwich Village townhouse. 3 unlucky members die, the others are arrested.

April 13, 1970: The Apollo 13 explosion, a near-disaster. 3 lucky astronauts survive.

May 4 1970: National Guardsmen open fire on a student protest at Kent State, killing four. The day goes down in infamy. A few days later, hard hat construction workers attack student protesters on Wall Street. (When I marched about a week after that they merely threw rivets at us from the upper girders of construction site.)

May 15 1970: After some rowdy behavior on the campus of mostly black Jackson State College in Jackson, FL, police officers pump 460 bullets over 30 seconds into a dormitory filled with unarmed black students, killing 2 and injuring 11. The news is quickly forgotten.

May 25, 2020: The entire world watches a video of the brutal police murder of George Floyd, the streets of major cities erupt in protest for weeks, and some long-overdue changes may finally take place. It only took another 50 years, and hundreds if not thousands more black lives being exterminated by the "justice" system, for anything at all to change.)

The country was in the grip of a major recession for most of 1970. The average rate of inflation was 5.7%, the highest since 1951. (It would be more than double that 10 years later.) The unemployment rate was over 6%; the economy grew by .2 percent. The U.S. position as postwar economic leader of the "free world" was eroding rapidly.

Look for things to love about 1970 and you come up pretty empty-handed. But I have one. And it is calculated to make every rock critic in America hold their forehead with two hands as if they just woke up with a major hangover. If I could only get every... any?... rock critic in America to read this.

So, yes, this was the year that everything went to shit in music; it wasn't just Grand Funk and the James Gang; we were suddenly inundated with noise bands who sounded like they had possibly heard Little Richard once and figured if they could just learn to play three chords and a couple of simple blues riffs they could be rock and roll stars. And they were right. Sabbath, Spooky Tooth, Slade, Wishbone Ash, REO Speedwagon, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Mountain, Savoy Brown, Iron Butterfly - you keep going if you want. It all sucked. True, some of those bands managed to come up with a song or two that was not completely worthless; one or two even managed an album that I would not melt down for the value of the vinyl. I can think of only one - Aerosmith - that managed to turn my head around and make me a fan. But all this dreck - pre-metal or degraded rock&roll or whatever you want to call it - we knew it was garbage and rock music was more or less over. We knew that because we knew Hendrix and Cream and Led Zeppelin and we didn't think these guys got it about how to play hard rock.

The end of the decade more or less confirmed that we were right; for in place of the sorry list above, you could now make a new one: Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Kansas, Rush, Toto, Boston, Kiss, Steve Miller, and a lot more bands I have never had any use for. Inbetween came another sorry lot - Montrose, Van Halen, Foghat, Slade and those endlessly productive one-hit wonders, Golden Earring, who had actually been around forever until they got on anyone's radar. To say nothing of peripheral progressive rock acts like Starcastle and Uriah Heep. Once again, here and there a song or two managed to climb up from the mire and prove that there was life beneath the surface. Provoked by one of my brothers, I was recently forced to acknowledge "Separate Ways" as a so-called "guilty pleasure". There may be more than that buried in these bands' combined output, but having just taken a refresher course in the Grand Funk discography, I am not inclined to do a listening project to see what I missed. I know that the 70's start out bad, and get worse.

And yet... the thought that this assessment might be a little too harsh pushes its way into my consciousness, due to the all but criminal intervention of a friend way back when, at a time when teenage angst was as ripe as a week-old banana and even the distant chimes of romance were about as sweet. I put up valiant resistance, to the music at least. She was a big Grand Funk fan, had all of their albums - three or four, at that point. I would show up at her house, where, if I recall, a sister or brother and mother and maybe a few pets would be wandering about, but we had something remotely resembling privacy in her room - at least if the music were loud enough that no one could hear us. And Grand Funk was loud, nobody would deny them that. She played their first album a few times; I hated it and told her so. "What about 'Heartbreaker'?" Although the single only charted in Canada, it somehow struck GF fans as a hit. I found it no less annoying than the rest of the disk. Besides, by the time our story takes place, there had already been a song called "Heartbreaker" - actually more like a few dozen, but the one I had in mind was not only a great song but had one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded. I was a huge Zep fan from almost the day their first album came out, and this was a lot of nonsense by comparison.

She played their second album and thought I had to like that. It had already gone Gold by that time, for reasons that people of discerning taste are still trying to figure out. I thought it sucked. She probably would have thrown me out, had it not been for their third album.

By way of hindsight, let me just add that today I find their early albums less offensive in certain ways than I did then. Though neither of them will ever have much of a place in my heart, or ears, I no longer hear them as collections of incompetent, not to say cynical, junk. In fact, while you can point to places here and there where Farner's guitar solos seem to just die, or never get started, and Brewer's drumming is not always convincing (and usually of little creative interest), there are plenty of other places that demonstrate a fair amount of competence. Farner's lyrics are usually pretty forgettable, but the songwriting, especially from "Heartbreaker" to the end of On Time, has some sparks of creativity. Toss them in with all the hard rock bands that were crawling out of the woodwork at the time and they sound like more of the same. But give a good listen and you can see that while he's no Eric Clapton, Farner was already a bit better than quite a few rock guitarists at that time, and he was willing to take a few chances, while Brewer - again, no Ginger Baker he, but the extended solo he manages on T.N.U.C. is not compatible with complaints about the band's competence. Brilliant, no, but more than competent.

June 15, 1970: Capitol Records releases Grand Funk Railroad's Closer to Home. It was the album that made them a household name. The latter may not be something to celebrate, but the album surely is.

There used to be this industry thing about third albums; something like, "Either this one hits or we're going to stop wasting our money promoting you." I don't know if anyone told that to Mark Farner, the songwriting, singing and guitar-playing engine of Grand Funk Railroad. At the time of which I'm writing, the single "I'm Your Captain" had already made the rounds, and I could not deny it was a good song, maybe a great song. It was not the kind of song that made you think, "Oh shit, the 60's are really over now;" it was, on the contrary, the kind that made you feel like there might be hope. So, even though it was delayed gratification, being the last cut on the 2nd side, I listened a little more attentively to the whole album. And it grew on me, and grew, and... well, finally, I bought the album. Many years later, I bought the remastered CD. I downloaded it and put it on my CD Walkman, on my mp3 player, on my smartphone. If I could only bring 10 albums it would probably go with me to a deserted island. What the funk happened to me?

First thing - it is one of those relatively rare albums - I know you have some - on which I can honestly say I look forward to every track. Second, unlike their first two albums, it has a clean, professional sound, though not as clean as it would become on E Pluribus Funk. Third, the songwriting is top notch - and for the most part not in the least addressed to Top 40 radio, as nearly every song is more than four minutes long. "Sin's a Good Man's Brother" is built around a riff that's up there in the "Day Tripper" class. "Aimless Lady" is just incredibly well constructed, a great melody (not always Mark Farner's forte, to say the least), with a terrific bass line from Mel Schacher and an irresistable beat. In contrast to "Heartbreaker" and some other early tracks, the 2-part harmonies are not perfunctory but really put some bite into the chorus. It's a kind of vocal sound that practically identifies GFR, and when they work they work - e.g.. on the chorus of "I Don't Have to Sing the Blues", which opens the album's second side, or on a song like "Black Licorice" from We're an American Band (albeit in the latter case behind lyrics that just about hit rock bottom, and in both cases are borderline offensive). "Nothing Is the Same" is another great composition. Starting with another very nice guitar intro, it becomes a fine rocker that sort of boils over as the song goes into double-time towards the end. The two cuts that stand out least, "Get it Together" and "Hooked on Love", are blue-eyed soul efforts (which I suppose a lot of Farner's songs could be called), and since I will unabashedly say that some of my favorite soul is of the blue-eyed kind (The Righteous Brothers used to be regulars on my turntable) I happen to like them. And "Mean Mistreater", a title familiar from more than one old blues song, is enough all by itself to paralyze me with nostalgia for days gone by, a ballad of uncanny power in its simplicity. A by no means minor virtue of the album is some note-perfect solo work by Farner, pretty much throughout the first side.

Songs about sailors, or with sailing metaphors, were not exactly uncommon in rock at that time. The years 1966-72 featured Billboard top 10 hits like "Yellow Submarine", "Sloop John B.", "Come on Down to My Boat Baby" and "Brandy", not to mention hosts of others that didn't chart much but burned into our skulls nonetheless, like "Wooden Ships". In 1970 Blues Image contributed their still familiar hit "Ride, Captain, Ride". So "I'm Your Captain" had plenty of thematic company, and its strong acoustic component was right on target in a year when James Taylor was a big star and even Led Zeppelin released an album full of acoustic and folk-derived tracks. On the other end of the musical spectrum, producer Terry Knight somehow managed to hire musicians from the Cleveland Symphony, one of the world's leading orchestras, to record the instrumental overlays at the end. Not that the parts are so difficult they demand top flight professionals, but the silky string sound is what you would expect from that ensemble. (I doubt that George Szell was conducting - though if he was, that might help explain why he kicked the bucket a month later.) The harmonies are great throughout, and in particular they give the bridge ("Am I in my cabin dreaming/Or are you really scheming/To take my ship away from me") the kind of depth needed to keep things moving forward as the D chord changes to minor and the song suddenly assumes a new level of harmonic complexity. But ultimately, it's the success of the simple, repeated chant "I'm getting closer to my home" that makes you keep listening and want to raise your voice and chime in. Add to all that some of Mel Schacher's most interesting bass guitar work. (On the album as a whole Schacher's work has a good parallel: John Paul Jones' work on Zep II, which still seems like the best thing he ever did.) All of that behind an unusually fine set of lyrics from Farner.

At the time, a version of the song cut down for Top 40 play made it to #22. Now, I'm no big fan of the listener-polled "Top 1043 Classic Rock Songs" released every year by Q104.3 in New York City (there's another early post in this blog on that topic). But apparently, in 2015 "I'm Your Captain" ranked #9. Those rankings are heavily affected by the station's rotation in any particular year; the 2019 poll had it at #52. Whatever - for a song that didn't even make the Top 20 playlist when it was released, it has had remarkable staying power.

And here's another thing to make you scratch your head: it is usually interpreted as having something to do with misgivings about the Vietnam War. Farner has never confirmed this, and I personally don't find it compelling. But it does have an odd thematic similarity to Amazing Grace, the song by and about a slave ship captain who felt "mighty sick", turned around and brought his enslaved cargo back home.

"I'm getting closer to my home...": is it Farner's "Amazing Grace", or the anthem for a national quarantine? If it seems prophetic, with its mood of impending doom and its exaltation of the virtues of being home, that is just one more thing that adds to the mystique of Closer to Home. There is a long list of groups with one great album, writers with one great book, and filmmakers with one great movie. Put this on the list: Closer to Home is one of the greatest albums ever made, no matter what you think of Grand Funk Railroad, Mark Farner or 70's rock.

Anniversaries are a good opportunity to re-evaluate things, and in that spirit I have taken it upon myself to listen once again to some of GFR's albums, which I had once dismissed as rubbish. I am not about to become a Grand Funk fan, other than Closer to Home. But I am willing to say that my degree of antipathy towards their other albums has somewhat diminished. The first two still don't impress me, though the first, On Time, seems a bit more creative, and the second ("Red Album") just a bit more polished, than I used to think. Survival doesn't do much for me, quite a letdown after Closer to Home. But E Pluribis Funk suggests that after finally getting their act together on Closer to Home, and then losing it again on Survival, they at last found their groove. It's not going to any deserted islands with me, but it is a respectable, possibly even good, album. The band and the sound are both extremely tight, and Farner's guitar work, which was already excellent on Closer to Home, has become first rate - or maybe second rate, since he is no Clapton or Page, or Hendrix for that matter. But whatever the merits of the view that GFR emerged from the streets of Flint as a trio of hacks, it is completely untenable by the time E Pluribus Funk comes out. Phoenix, their next album, is, like most of their albums, a land of peaks and valleys, the latter being the points at which you are pretty sure you were right about them the first time, and the former constantly challenging that with more creative songwriting and flashes of instrumental inspiration. We're an American Band is similarly tight and instrumentally excellent, though I don't like the material as much as on the previous two albums.

That, to me, is all the important albums they made, and it turns out that out of the six there is at least one outstanding gem, one pretty decent hard rocker, and one that might get a "not bad" in a generous moment. Now, think of another band that tends to get a bit more respect, alleged cowbells and all. I refer, of course, to Blue Oyster Cult. Their first album was pure genius, start to finish; their next best, Agents of Fortune, a respectable effort, with of course one of the greatest singles of all time; and their only other collection even worth talking about, Fire of Unknown Origin, might get a "not bad" in a generous moment. The rest is pretty much on a par with the worst of Grand Funk, if not a drop below. The difference comes down to maybe two BOC hits that are a bit over GFR's level (the other, of course, being "Burnin For You"). Mountain gets way more respect than Grand Funk, for reasons that are obscure to me, as they do not even have one album as good as Closer to Home. (Not to mention it was really "Mississippi Queen" that had the cowbell!)

Sadly enough, Mark Farner, the creative force behind GFR, the man who sang, on Closer to Home, "I don't care who you are, I love the human race", is now a raving rightwing lunatic, given to conspiracy theories and other nonsense of a sort currently enjoying a pulpit on Pennsylvania Avenue; he has been quite explicit about their anti-Semitic content, which even the Trumpet of the White House has not enunciated publicly. In 1972 he wrote "I Just Got to Know", which asks if you're ready "to stand up and fight for your rights" and "tired of the war and all that shit". The album also contained a rather dubious appeal in the name of Jesus to stop overpopulation "so you won't have to die". What's more, "The world is full of pollution/and Jesus is the solution". Okay, if that's your bag... but where was this heading? Farner's 1976 song "Don't Let 'Em Take Your Gun" (from their god-awful Zappa-produced Good Singin', Good Playin') has become an anthem for "Second Amendment people", while 1983's What's Funk? features an ignorant anti-communist rant against the revolution in tiny El Salvador, as if a victory of the downtrodden peasantry there would have been an existential threat to Farner's freedom in the U.S. (Recall how the revolution in Nicaragua toppled democracy in America...)There is so little to love about his politics that it is hard to believe he was once a hippie and a liberal. "Talk about a revolution/It seems to be the only solution", he sang on Closer to Home's opening cut, "Sin's a Good Man's Brother", at a time when the "revolution" was supposed to be about peace and love and and legalized pot and an end to war and rigid conservative values. He wrote environmentalist songs before that was a thing, peace-love-and-brotherhood songs, and anti-war songs. It's hard to understand how that guy became the person he is today.

As a Jew living amidst growing anti-Semitism I am not about to forgive Farner for promoting hatred and religious fanaticism. On the other hand, as a human being I cannot fail to admire his devotion to a son who tragically became quadriplegic after some ordinary teenage antics, and died a couple of years ago at 29 after a 10-year battle for survival. I wish I could put the two men together, as I wish I could put the genius of Closer to Home together with GFR's more prosaic efforts. The difference between a good human being and a cynical jerk can go act by act, and that between a great band and a mediocre one can go album by album.

I have discussed at some length in a previous post the unforgiving assessment of Grand Funk Railroad by my lifelong friend (and professional rock critic, which I can hardly claim to be) Ira Robbins, so I won't repeat myself here. The main reason to mention it again is that you can now read it on the magnificently updated Trouser Press web site, which has its own rewards if you like to read about rock; and that, if you appreciate the great writing in that piece, you can now partake of more of it in Ira's second novel, Marc Bolan Killed in Crash. (I already plugged his first one in that 7-year-old post I just referred to!) That should get you in the mood for a golden anniversary trip through 70's rock if anything will. In any case, GFR will never be a favorite of critics, and though I can't quite find my way to the Voldemort view that Ira takes of them, there are some good reasons for this.

But what I now want to go into is another aspect of their legacy that picks up again where I began, with the demise of worthwhile rock and roll in 1970. The year that rock music got sucked down a sinkhole, never to quite make it back, as we all know.

Well, here's an album playlist in which you might find a redeeming song or two:

Bridge Over Troubled Water, Moondance, Sweet Baby James, Ladies of the Canyon, Deja Vu, Elton John, McCartney, Let it Be, Workingman's Dead, BS&T 3, Time and a Word, Cosmo's Factory, John Barleycorn Must Die, A Question of Balance, Stage Fright, After the Gold Rush, Abraxas, Jesus Christ Superstar, Zep III, Tumbleweed Connection, American Beauty, The Man Who Sold the World, Layla, Naturally, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Tea for the Tillerman, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, All Things Must Pass, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.

I don't care how old you are, if you don't know and love most of those 26 albums you are not a person I can go out for beers with. Well... okay, maybe that's a bit hasty, but it would be more fun if you did! They all came out in 1970. I could try to boil it down some more, but already, most of those are arguably the best, or one of the best, efforts the respective artists ever produced. Maybe not Zep III; maybe not Let It Be, though in its stripped down version (Let It Be... Naked) it is up there, for me. Maybe The Man Who Sold the World is not Ziggy or Hunky Dory. Maybe...

Let me put it this way instead: in 1970, The Band, Blood Sweat and Tears, ELP, Eric Clapton (with Derek and the Dominoes), CCR, CSNY, the Grateful Dead, George Harrison, Elton John, The Moody Blues, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, Santana, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Three Dog Night, Traffic and Neil Young each released what is either their best or one of their two best albums. The only reason Joni Mitchell and Yes are not on that list is that they each made too many albums of surpassing brilliance to choose one or two. All four of the Beatles released their first solo albums, and all four convincingly demonstrated that their solo careers were going to live up to our expectations. The Dead and Elton John each released two great albums in the same year. What a terrible year for music.

Lauro Nyro's Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, even if not her best, was part of a trio of albums that opened a door through which Elton John, Joni Mitchell and a long list of later artists, including Kate Bush and Tori Amos, were happy to walk. (You can argue that Stevie Wonder deserves some credit there, but Nyro brought in a quality of freedom from pop limitations that I think anticipate his 1973 Innervisions and later work.) Melanie's Leftover Wine and Candles in the Wind and The Carpenters' Close to You came out too - you can mutter "But that's not rock!" all you want, they won a lot of fans.

Still, I may have undersold 1970, in some ways. Perhaps you are a Ten Years After fan, you're going to add Cricklewood Green, I guess. If you are a prog rock fan you can point to early albums by about a dozen important prog bands, from Hawkwind and Van der Graaf Generator to Jethro Tull, Genesis and Gentle Giant. There is some classic underground stuff like Soft Machine's Third, if 2, Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother, a couple of Zappa albums, a Beefheart album, and, if you wish, Bitches Brew.

I have not mentioned 2 albums each by Dylan, King Crimson, The Doors, Badfinger and T Rex, and albums by the Beatles, Beach Boys, Todd Rundgren, Pretty Things and Poco, among many other noteworthy efforts, because they might not be those artists' best recordings. I ditched all live albums and posthumous releases (Cream, Hendrix, Stones, even The Who's Live at Leeds) and lots of other stuff. Chicago, marred by a few too many instrumental breaks of questionable merit, still had "25 or 6 to 4" and some other great songs. Jethro Tull's Benefit came out, and The Guess Who released by American Woman and Share the Land.

I have plenty of personal favorites that year, though they might not be yours: One Day at a Time, my favorite Joan Baez album, for example. Also three albums that Wikipedia seems not to know the exact release date for, all of which I think I still have: the eponymous Seatrain (with "13 Questions") and Sugarloaf (you do remember "Green-Eyed Lady", right?) and The Jaggerz' We Went to Different Schools Together (you should recall "The Rapper" too).

Beyond that, just a buttload of interesting stuff, take your pick: Argent, The Strawbs, Spirit, Faces, Canned Heat, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, Fairport Convention, Mott the Hoople, Blue Cheer, Shocking Blue... It seems that while we were pining away for sixties music, musicians were busy re-inventing it, in spite of the James Gang crowd. It wasn't all them and Sabbath and Savoy Brown at all. Maybe there was a bit more in the "Hmmm, that's interesting" category than the "OMG what a brilliant album" category. Maybe Jefferson Starship's Blows Against the Empire, another 1970 release, does not match up with the best Jefferson Airplaine albums. There was a lot of searching for direction, some underwhelming experimentation, but overall, a lot of life.

It turns out we had our heads up our asses, so we could only see the shit that was coming out, while the next era in rock was unfolding. It was driven in large part by folk music, in part by technology, as new synthesizers, keyboards, mixing and amplification equipment were rolled out, and to some extent by a turn toward classical music, at least in the prog rock contingent. Still to come, amidst all the dreck, were The Yes Album, Fragile and Close to the Edge, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, Aqualung, Madman Across the Water and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Joni Mitchell's other jazz-inflected middle period albums, nearly the entire, brilliant output of Steely Dan, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and some great work by the later Genesis, the best Moody Blues albums, and terrific work by some of my personal favorites - Nektar and 10cc, for instance. A certain guy named Bruce was about to spring from the Jersey Shore, initially to be dismissed by serious music fans as a Dylan wannabe; so, we had been wrong before. Across the ocean was a guy who didn't just make great music, he sort of re-ordered our thinking of what popular music was, again and again; I refer of course to David Bowie. And though a regrettable schism opened up between rock and R&B, and between white and black artists - another charge frequently heard in reference to the 70's - albums like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On?, Isaac Hayes' Shaft soundtrack, and work by Sly Stone and others still broke through the artificial barriers.

Take it all together, and it was one of the greatest decades for music. The year 1975 alone had a slew of incredible albums - if I'm still blogging then, tune in for my next golden anniversary post.

And, finally, as if this is not enough fun already, there's this 1970 timeline story from Wikipedia:

"Grace Slick is invited to a tea party at the White House by Tricia Nixon, daughter of U.S. President Richard Nixon. Slick arrives at the party with Abbie Hoffman, who is on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The pair planned to spike Nixon's tea cup with a heavy dose of LSD. Slick is recognized (although Hoffman is not) and told to leave because she is on the FBI list."

Now, look, Ivanka, you can do better than Tricia Nixon, can't you? So who can you get to help with that? I'm voting for Courtney Love, but you can use your imagination - Carrie Brownstein's an option, maybe even Lady Gaga? I do admit that there's a slight problem with this plan: if your Dad got dosed and lost his grip on reality, who would ever know the difference?

Oh, how far we've come since Richard Nixon! Maybe we'll get some great music this decade.

(Note: Originally posted at 9:00 a.m., and substantially updated at 4:25 p.m.)

Joker: Is the Joke on Us?

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 15:17:00 +0000

The bird population may be severely diminished, but there is hope: a Parrot has been spotted outside the box office of a famous Brooklyn cinema. What this means for biodiversity I'm not sure, but it at least means a new view from the Lamppost.

What is Todd Phillips up to, anyway, in this latest epistle from the Batcave? I sat through about two thirds of the film thinking it was a genuine art house piece which was going to take me somewhere new. I ended up feeling like I had been treated to a remake of The Dark Knight, with references to the urban decay of the 1970's and a Fellini-esque ending thrown in to top off a really unworkable stew of moral, political and psychological themes.

The problem with this film is that it starts out by providing motivations for Arthur Fleck's anger that suggest a serious psychodrama, but the plan is realized amidst a confusing muck of thematic impulses that never really get sorted out. First we get the idea that Arthur is a just a bit off, then almost immediately we find that he has a medical condition that causes him to laugh inappropriately - presumably Pseudobulbar affect, or PBA, though the film never puts a name on it. This condition can have a range of emotional effects, but Phillips never makes it clear whether Arthur's bizarre behavior all stems from this or whether he is also subject to schizophrenia or some other condition. For example, he is also strongly delusional, but that is not obviously related to PBA. We learn that he is on medication, but we are never sure what the medication is for, since he seems to have more than one mental disorder. At some point he apparently loses access to his medication, but yet another loose knot is what direct effect this has on his later actions or mental condition, if any.

Into this already complex picture Phillips adds a history of severe child abuse. That makes probably three different psychological motivations for the murderous spree that ensues. Hey, let's also make him an orphan with a deranged adoptive mother who he still lives with - why stint on emotional issues? The method here seems to be to pile it on rather than carefully work out any single theme.

Well, we are not done. Arthur is also placed in New York City at its nadir, the street violence, racial animosity, riots, graffiti, declining social services and infrastructure decay of the 1970's. (In a piece of ahistoric but playful nonsense, the film opens with Arthur dressed in his clown suit, holding a sign advertising the closing of "Kenny's Music" - presumably a dual reference to Manny's Music on 48th Street and Kenny's Castaways, which closed in 2009 and 2012 respectively - but hey, we get the idea.) The urban decay forms a backdrop of general hostility, insensitivity and paranoia that stokes the flames of Arthur's already inflamed psychosis.

Believe it or not, Phillips is still not quite finished motivating Fleck's violence. Arthur is also trying to hold down a job as a clown, where labor issues and a co-worker who is a bit of a lummox add to his worries. Yes, he is going down, down, down...

But he's not quite at the bottom yet. You see, amidst all his tsuris, Arthur still wants to make something of himself. Although the film makes clear (sometimes in surprising ways) that Arthur is delusional, it is not clear that he is incapable of surmounting this to the point of being able to do standup. He even wants to appear as a guest on a t.v. talk show with host Murray Franklin, who seems to be modeled on Merv Griffin, the iconic talk show host of the 70's. And in a plot twist that is such a stretch I can't even count this as a spoiler, Murray gets hold of a clip of Arthur being foiled in an attempt at standup due to his laughing disease, and makes fun of him on the air. So add public humiliation to Arthur's worries. This is almost like a second film spliced onto at least one, if not two or three others, for the sake of adding another opportunity for Arthur to spill blood. It's also a cheap way of getting off, though I don't want to say anything that would spoil the unsurprising ending. But I'm jumping the gun a bit - let's go back.

The first two encounters that set Arthur off are both with black people - a group of violent youths who steal the "Going Out of Business" sign he is carrying in front of Kenny's and beat him up, and a woman on a bus who shows remarkable insensitivity. But Arthur is not going to seek revenge on these people, which would immediately put in question the moral assets he needs to attract our sympathies by pitting him against other down and out individuals. Instead, the appropriate opportunity presents itself when he is, rather dubiously, attacked on a subway by three Wall Street dudes who have turned from harrassing a woman to pummeling Arthur. He has been given a pistol by the aforementioned lummox at the agency he works for, and the one-percenters and sexist jerks get their bloody comeuppance in an act that could be called self-defense.

Well, it is self-defense, but it is also feels like a reference to the Bernard Goetz shootings of 1984. This is the first instance of how the film is not just psychologically murky but politically questionable. The stage for Fleck's killing spree is set with incidents perpetrated by minorities, but to make it acceptable at first Phillips engineers an unlikely subway assault by white guys in business suits. Of course, neither the actions of a Goetz nor the shooting to death of three white guys really is morally defensible, though some use of the gun might have been in that situation. But Phillips also needs this incident to incite a grander theme of epic violence by people who worship the clown as something like the leader of an Occupy Wall Street movement. So the film is now involved with yet another, almost contradictory, theme: what begins as a parable of urban decay (the outer representation of Arthur's psychological decay) turns into an Occupy story, only grafted onto scenes of violence reminiscent not of the Occupy encampment or marches but of New York during the blackout, of Chicago or Paris in 1968, of Watts and Newark and other scenes of resistance by the poor, minorities and students to the mess that their cities had become and the power structures that kept them that way. All of which is carried out by demonstrators in clown masks, which both hides their racial identity and tacks on an urban legend about violent clowns, a sort of visceral mockery of a movement that was subjected to violence by the police, not the other way around.

Cinema can be great entertainment even when its content is highly questionable. Joaquin Phoenix's performance as Arthur is so brilliant it shouts "Academy Award" and keeps you riveted even as the film's endless multiplication of strands leaves you wondering what meanings it is trying to put across. Comparison with Heath Ledger's Joker is inevitable, and if Ledger has anything on Phoenix it is just that he played this kind of character first. But in Christopher Nolan's film one thing the Joker clearly lacks is any justifying motivation; it is his embodiment of pure malevolence that marks his character. Phoenix's ability to enter the overly complex psyche of this mentally fragile Joker is remarkable, even if there is ultimately no way to reconcile all the disorders it encompasses. The cinematography is also terrific; Lawrence Sher depicts bleakness both indoors and out with a vividness that recalls not only Scorcese's 1970's films but Blade Runner, Repulsion and others that disturb visually as much as they do psychologically.

The moral shape of the film runs like this: we are initially somewhat sympathetic to Fleck in defending himself, and willing to at least understand as he takes revenge for his child abuse. Arthur, as the lingo of narrative fiction goes, now has "agency"; he is not going to simply disappear down the tubes of abuse, illness and depression. But at this point we are led to believe that Arthur has exorcised his demons and is on the way up - the expectation, for me, was that he would be healed but then have to face the consequences of the way he got there. Instead, we are treated to additional, quite gruesome, murders with a pretense of justification so thin that it is all but irrelevant. We are left in a kind of moral limbo, where Arthur's "recovery" turns into the lame idea - supported by extraordinarily lame speeches that are presumably supposed to have an effect on the audience - that whoever hurts you in any way whatsoever should be blown away.

This sorry outcome is then appended to a mythos of a city upended by clown-suited protesters who sanctify Arthur and his violent spree, so that not only Arthur but the Occupy-like critique of social inequality is compromised by the descent into random violence. That is a mythos that does not really resonate. The egalitarianism of the moment, from the Occupy movement to Black Lives Matter to the Democratic primary debates, is a potentially transformative development that needs to be taken seriously, and has nothing to do with violent clown myths. Ultimately, the joke is on us: the film sucks you in to Arthur's mission of righting every wrong done to him only to invite you to a clownishly violent form of opposition to social injustice. I have to pass on the invitation. Feel the Bern, if you are so inclined, but not the burn.

The Arnautoff Mural and the San Francisco School Board Taliban

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 17:15:00 +0000

In March 2001, six months before the destruction of two much larger (and heavily populated) twin structures, the Buddhas of Bamyan were destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Having first attacked the Buddhas with mortars and failed to do much damage, they declared all out war on these 1500 year old statues carved into a mountainside and obliterated them with dynamite.

The Buddhas may have been "false idols" according to Islamic law, but that was not the initial reason the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, gave for blowing them up:

"I did not want to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamiyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings - the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddha's destruction."

So said Omar the Humanitarian, in a flawless piece of logic. He was angry that someone offered money to preserve cultural artifiacts instead of for famine relief, so he blew them up. Mullah Omar did not discuss whether the Taliban's imposition of a Neanderthal form of Islamic law, or the enormous refugee situation caused by the civil war being fought against it, had anything to do with the famine. But the appeal to the plight of the oppressed must have seemed like a fine diversion for an act of cultural barbarism by the reactionary, mysoginist, Taliban, who were only following Sharia law in stoning the stone staues.

The San Francisco Board of Education has recently voted to paint over Victor Arnautoff's Life of Washington, a 1936 mural in George Washington High School, because it depicts history as it really was, with the Father of Our Country (and largest slaveholder in the nation at the time) in proximity to the dead bodies of Native Americans and black slaves being sold and picking cotton on his plantation. Inspired by his socialist view of U.S. history, Arnautoff wanted to shock people who were used to seeing the whitewashed view of history in which the only thing going on in the Revolution is a victory of brave white men over their British oppressors. The SFBE is duly planning to respond by whitewashing Arnautoff's mural.

If you have not heard about the controversy you are probably thinking, "What a bunch of conservative idiots. Another right-wing attack on an artwork that depicts unpleasant truths." It does indeed remind us of the efforts by conservatives like Jesse Helms and Al D'Amato's to defund the National Endowment for the Arts because they helped pay for Andre Serrano's photograph Immersion (Piss Christ) – a protest against the denigration of Christian icons which was taken as its exact opposite, a denial of Jesus. Life of Washington is SFBE's Piss Christ, and signals open season on works that depict the uncomfortable truths of life in America.

But the SFBE, at least according to their rhetoric, are not reactionaries but progressives. They say that the mural "glorifies" slavery, genocide... white supremacy" etc. Not being art critics they do not appear to have given much thought to what difference there might be between depicting and glorifying. Such nice distinctions do seem to be too much to ask of ideologues on either the right or the left.

Worse yet, the mural upsets students, they say. Erasing artwork is apparently their idea of teaching freedom of expression: the art upsets some people, so get rid of it. Yet the Times reported evidence that few students thought the murals should be removed. I have not seen a study or poll of these students by racial category, but the Times article says, "Of the 2,004 students at Washington High, most are Asian-American; 89 are African-American and four are Native American." It wouldn't matter if there were only one African-American student, or none – if the message of the murals were clearly racist, and they had no redeeming artistic content, then one would have a case for obliterating them. If they did have artistic merit there would be a case for finding a new school building and using the old one as a museum, letting in people who wanted to view the artwork - just as I can, if I wish, open up a copy of slavery apologist George Fitzhugh's Cannibal's all! but I don't think it should be required reading for high school students. But Life of Washington is not racist but anti-racist and does, by most accounts, have considerable artistic merit. There's no case here.

Someone should inform the SFBE that high school students are frequently endowed with brains. And those brains can surely comprehend this "trigger warning" if it were conveyed to students in general assembly on their first day in the school: "Our school is lucky to have some of the greatest artworks of the Works Progress Administration, a project of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that created public art works during the Great Depression. But these murals depict scenes that might be upsetting to some, scenes of slavery and the murder of Native Americans. When you see these scenes keep in mind that the artist was drawing people's attention to the darker facts of U.S. history, injustices which others tried to hide by making the Founding Fathers heroes without talking about some of the evil things they did. Victor Arnautoff was a socialist who didn't think the reality of American slavery or genocide should be painted out of history, any more than the Holocaust should be denied. So keep that in mind and appreciate the historic nature of the school you are attending."

But they don't have to stop there. They could also add: "And for those who feel that there should be more positive images of people of color we have those too. In the 1960's African-American artist Dewey Crumpler was asked to create a new mural, which he dubbed Multi-Ethnic Heritage, and it positively depicts the struggles of people whose rights were denied in George Washington's day."

Obliterating murals for political reasons is nothing new. One of the most famous cases was Nelson Rockefeller's destruction of Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads at the RCA building (30 Rockefeller Center) because the painter refused to remove a portrait of Vladimir Lenin from the mural. In May 1934, in spite of protests from many of the most famous artists of the day, the petroleum heir ordered that the mural be plastered over.

Rivera's Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park was also initially removed by its owner because it contained a portrait of a Mexican atheist holding a banner that read "Dios no existe" (God does not exist). Rivera was finally forced to remove the "offending" words, which happened to be true. Apparently facts are not acceptable on murals when they offend people. The fact that Washington was a slaveholder apparently makes no difference to the SFSB Taliban.

The statements from the SFBE defending their vote are, in the vernacular, a pile of sanctimonious, self-serving bullshit, and it is hard to even give them the time of day. "This is reparations," SFBE Vice President Mark Sanchez is quotedas saying. This and undocumented references to the sensitivities of students make up the sum total of their argument. Going from the banal to the absurd, at least if it is supposed to be an argument to obliterate an artwork, we have this:

"Native American Barbara Mumby-Huerta, who staffs the San Francisco Art Commission, challenged statements on historical accuracy, saying that the mural is ignorant of indigenous people. 'To portray a Native person face down, dead, you are trapping their soul so that they can not move on,' she said, per KQED."

Let's just say this: there is intelligence as well as ignorance in artistic traditions in every culture and every nation, and if we are going to sort through our entire cultural legacy and start trashing everything that offends modern sensibilities then we will have nothing left pretty soon. But sorting and selecting is not even what the SFBE is about – get this: "School district spokeswoman Laura Dudnick confirmed that although only two mural pieces stand out as offensive to members of the community, the board’s decision would apply to all 13 panels of the mural." I guess they made an aesthetic judgment that painting over just the allegedly offensive images would offend more people than leaving them as is!

Recently, Sanchez and SFBE President Stevon Cook responded to an op-ed piece in the Times by Bari Weiss, whose credentials mainly seem to be a series of critiques of student activism. The mural bashers' response is of a piece with the rest of their self-serving logic: like the Taliban, the Rockefellers and others they are putative knights in white armor serving the interests of offended minority students. But Weiss is hardly the only one who has responsed to their intended desecration of Arnautoff's work: over 400 artists signed a letter asking them to reverse the decision, a fact they have not addressed and are not capable of addressing because they have nothing of any intellectual merit to say. Pity the students of the San Francisco school syste, whose education is being directed by misguided, self-appointed curators.

Among the points made about the mural by the artists is: "Its meaning and commitments are not in dispute. It exposes and denounces in pictorial form the US history of racism and colonialism. The only viewers who should feel unsafe before this mural are racists." Artists 1, "Educators" 0.

Other heavy hitters of the art world are starting to weigh in. Rocco Landesman, former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, wrote a letter that was printed in the NY Times on July 3. On July 26 art critic Roberta Smith also weighed in. (Go to this link for pictures of the murals.) Both of them mentioned the similarity of the SFBE's planned action to the Taliban's demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and Smith also mentioned Rivera's Man at the Crossroads. But what they missed is the terrifying similarity in the logic of these acts: let's destroy this artwork because it makes decent people uncomfortable. Let's make the world a better place by removing this unpleasant reminded of the past.

Which makes me wonder: has the school board also banned the reading of Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom used the "N-word" in some of their stories – although it is perfectly plausible that they put the "N-word" in the mouths of characters who would have used it, while neither endorsing such use nor intending to demean people of color?

Leni Riefenstal was an ardent Nazi who made the film Triumph of the Will as a promotional Nazi video. As a Jew, not to mention the son of a survivor of the Battle of the Bulge, my discomfort at watching it is mitigated only slightly by the passage of time since those horrid events. But watch it I did, not just to remind myself that evil can at least temporarily triumph, but because its deplorable effectiveness makes it one of the greatest early examples of documentary film. True, it is not shown daily in my school, but suppose I went to a film school where it was required viewing - should I object and refuse to watch it? Why? It may have been intended as a picture of an Aryan future, but there could not be a better portrait now of national insanity.

Explicit sexuality makes some people uncomfortable. We do have a responsibility not to show young children certain things that would upset them, for the simple reason that they are not capable of understanding enough to put those things in context. But when someone wants to cover up a painting or sculpture because people capable of adult forms of reasoning (am I giving everyone too much credit?) might be offended seeing David's naked penis or whatever, it is not a matter of being sensitive to the feelings of a certain social group but of pandering to a lowest common denominator that it is the job of cultural institutions to educate.

Oh, did I say a bad word? Yes, perhaps the next thing the SFBE Taliban should do after they've spent over half a million dollars to destroy art is to obliterate the word "education" from the entrance to their offices. Apparently it offends some people. Them, in particular. After all, if the geniuses of the SFBE are capable of raising the $600,000 it is estimated to cost to remove the mural, why haven't they raised it to buy textbooks and technology, raise staff salaries, improve infrastructure, or even – I can't believe I thought of this – build a new building where the still anonymous offended students can conduct their education in blissful isolation from unsettling images? (Maybe that would take a little more money, but there are plenty of supposedly progressive Silicon Valley billionaires who should be more than happy to help with such an admirable cause.)

Victor Arnautoff, whose politically progressive mural is to be whitewashed, was an assistant to Diego Rivera. Apparently the destruction of socially critical ideas on walls is a great source of agreement between the alleged Bay Area reformers and the man who is mainly remembered for the violent death of dozens of Attica inmates and corrections officers. Arnautoff was a prolific painter who did quite a few murals in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Most of them raised controversies due to his left wing views. Maybe they should all be painted over? That would eliminate much of the legacy of a major American immigrant artist, who brought a critical perspective to U.S. culture and history. Could the SFBE possibly see that that is something to be preserved and supported today, rather than attacked?

Arnautoff taught numerous future artists during his career as a professor at the California School of Fine Arts and, for 25 years, at Standford University. After a 1955 series of lithographs in which he criticized Richard Nixon and McCarthyism there were calls for his removal, and he was hauled before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. He survived this assault and remained on the faculty. But his work may not survive the assault of putative liberal educators in an atmosphere where the desecration of left-wing art counts as "reparations". "Intentions don't matter" said one official. Yes they do, say almost every art, literary or cultural critic I've ever read.

While writing this piece, entirely by coincidence, I discovered a form of personal connection with Arnautoff. My uncle, the photographer Harold Roth, was stationed in the Bay Area when he was training as a paratrooper during World War II. (He was never deployed as far as I know.) There was a competition for army artists in his service division, and he entered a photograph entitled "Vermont Landscape". Among 475 works submitted, his photograph was selected as one of 180 to be exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, and one of only 30 to be sent on to a national competition. There were photography and fine arts juries of four persons each, and presumably both had to vote on works sent to the national competition. The photography jury included two outstanding photographers, Dorothea Lange and Imogen Cunningham. The most well known name in the fine arts jury was Victor Arnautoff.

But this distant personal connection to Arnautoff, through my uncle (another progressive artist, who made a major contribution to a community program in the Bronx called The Point, which helps poor children learn photography) has little to do with my sentiments about the planned actions of the SFBE. Those sentiments are a reaction to the perversion of progressive politics by the senseless actions of a gang of ideologues. If anyone needs further confirmation of Arnautoff's anti-racist sentiments they can read this. What a grave-roller it would be if he were to find that his mural is to be destroyed by administrators who call themselves defenders of oppressed minorities.

Rockefeller got away with his acts of vandalism, not to mention wanton killing, but the SFBE Taliban may not fare as well. The destruction of public visual art is now prohibited by law, specifically by the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. Among its provisions are:

Grants such an author [i.e., the artist] the right to prevent any destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would harm his or her reputation or honor

Extends such rights 50 years beyond the author's death (or co-author's, in the case of a joint work) with respect to visual art works created as of the effective date of this Act.

Arnautoff died in 1979, so the SFBE Taliban may need another 10 years before they can legally proceed with their white paint assault; maybe by that time some actual educators will be in charge. Being in a public institution, George Washington High School is ultimately owned by the people of San Francisco, so any citizen may have standing to sue for the destruction of a common cultural heritage. And there is reason to think they might win, too, given this recent decision:

Ruling that graffiti — a typically transient form of art — was of sufficient stature to be protected by the law, a federal judge in Brooklyn awarded a judgment of $6.7 million on Monday to 21 graffiti artists whose works were destroyed in 2013 at the 5Pointz complex in Long Island City, Queens.

In November, a landmark trial came to a close in Federal District Court in Brooklyn when a civil jury decided that Jerry Wolkoff, a real estate developer who owned 5Pointz, broke the law when he whitewashed dozens of swirling murals at the complex, obliterating what a lawyer for the artists had called “the world’s largest open-air aerosol museum.” (from The New York Times)

San Franciscans might have standing, but so might Arnautoff's heirs – he died in 1979, and perhaps there are living descendents who care enough about his legacy to stop the West Coast Taliban from protecting students in the wrong way.

So, finally, you are no doubt wondering what African-American artist Dewey Crumpler thinks about destroying the mural that he was brought in to "respond" to? He was interviewed by artnet news, and I couldn't imagine a better way to end this discussion than by quoting him. You really need to read the whole interview, about his own mural and his views on art and society. But the following will do for here:

"I thought 50 years ago that it should not be destroyed—because there are elements that are just waiting in the wings to take down other art, and they will use this argument to do exactly that."

"If you run away from history, you’ll never change history. You have to confront history. Art is a teaching tool. That’s why every culture in the world uses it.

All the conversations and emotions stirred up by a work of art are part of what that work of art means. My mural is part of the Arnautoff mural, part of its meaning, and its meaning is part of mine. If you destroy his work of art, you are destroying mine as well."

And those words may be worth a thousand paintings.

List and You Shall Hear VII: The 75 Greatest Albums Really Made By Women

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 15:00:00 +0000

Here, at long last, is my VII^th and final post in my series on NPR's 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women and their quite contrasting Reader's Poll of the same.

As I said in post VI, in no way is this list any more definitive that the original one. But what's "definitive"? Nothing, because great new albums will continue to be released, and old ones will be re-evaluated. But at least I can say that I have made an effort to be rigorous in my selection criteria, thorough in my effort to familiarize myself with a lot of music, and as objective as possible given the fact that "taste" is not always possible to get away from.

One reason I undertook this exercise is that I find all the existing lists of albums by women – the two from NPR, the Rolling Stone list, and others I've mentioned in previous posts – lack the quality of what I would call hard listening: actually evaluating the musical quality of each album track by track, and placing what is there in a meaningful musical, social and historical context. Doing so leads to the exclusion of pretty much all lightweight pop, whose presence diminishes the other lists, since that is never of any real aesthetic or social consequence and has the staying power of roughly the adolescent years of one generation.

I have all but placed each artist's albums in a giant spreadsheet in which each song is given points for musical quality, originality, and other virtues, and the results compared horizontally and vertically. That would be a bit too artificial, but it is a kind of ideal to keep in mind so as to avoid overly subjective evaluations. For example, comparing Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels On a Gravel Road track by track with her Sweet Old World, it quickly becomes clear that "Sweet Old World" and "Sidewalks of the City" are each better than any track on Car Wheels, and few if any tracks on the latter are superior to the other tracks on Sweet Old World. Compare this method of compiling the list with subjective attitudes like, "It took her six years to make this album and she worked so hard at the lyrics and it's pretty good after all so it must be a masterpiece". I feel like this, or some similarly weak reasoning, underlies a lot of the popular choices for other lists.

I'm a guy (straight, cis, white...) evaluating music made by women. Although most of what I like best is also liked pretty well by lots of women, I can hardly pretend to be listening to songs from the perspective of a woman. I'm listening to the music, first and foremost, which has no gender, and secondly to the general quality of the lyrics. If certain albums speak directly to women in a kind of wink-wink nod-nod "we're all girls here" voice then that's as may be. I should think it is a kind of defect, and at any rate not a virtue, of a recording if it is incapable of being fully appreciated by half the human race due to either their genitalia or gender identity. It hardly needs saying that male rockers from The Beatles to Coldplay have fanatical female followings, so whatever may be particularly male about their music does not exclude appreciation by women. So I could not accept the argument that some album or other is great because it speaks to women in a way that it cannot to men.

Two examples: Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, and Beyonce's Lemonade. Neither one blows me away musically, but they both apparently have a lot of buy-in from the fairer sex; at least, they are given luminous positions in both the NPR Pros and Readers lists. Why? Are my musical ears are so different from those of women? Or is it, rather, that what they hear in albums like these is some sort of statement? As shots over the bow in the age-old war of the sexes, these statements are at best mildly interesting. To me, the complaints of women about the defects of male behavior are on the same level as the complaints of men about the behavior of women. (I am talking about the behavior of ordinary people in ordinary relationships, not about violent physical abuse.) But it is hard to think of an album by a male songwriter that consists solely in efforts to detail their issues with a woman or women. One can think of individual songs: "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "I Can See For Miles", "Lying Eyes", "Your Time Is Gonna Come", etc. But it is not that easy to come up with such examples, and much harder to think of entire albums of this nature. If certain female songwriters get inspired by indulging their views of men's emotional shortcomings, fine, but an album of songs like Alanis Morisette's "You Oughta Know" is justified only if the emotional wringing-out is the inspiration for really great songwriting. Chain-linked complaints about guys, and relationships with them, is really not a virtue in itself, whether it goes by the name "honesty" or whatever. Whether it's hip-hop soul like Beyoncé's, stripped-down post-punk like Liz Phair's, or formulaic pop like Taylor Swift's, it does not make great a great album unless there is something really exciting going on musically.

*****

Considering and critiquing the greatest albums made by women has been an interesting project that has compelled me to listen to hundreds of albums by female songwriters and performers (usually multiple times). I probably would never have listened to a great many of them without this project in mind. But time-consuming as it was, and in spite of the fact that there are a great many female artists I still have not checked out, the size of the pool of likely contenders for a list like this made this a manageable project.

That gives me pause. Consider a differently gendered project: to find the greatest albums "made by men". Yikes. It may be difficult to face up to, but that list in many ways overtakes and surpasses the women's album list I offer below before it even begins to get off the ground. Consider, for example, a list of near-perfect albums made by men. Applying roughly the same rules I will apply to the selection of women's albums (thus, for example, leaving out Jefferson Airplane and all other groups in which women played prominent roles; no compilations, live albums, etc.) I might start like this:

The Beatles (British releases only): With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, Help, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles, Abbey Road (9) (I am being rather restrained here)

Bob Dylan: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, Desire (5) (I am being rather restrained here)

Elton John: Elton John, Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across the Water, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (5)

Led Zeppelin: I, II, IV, Presence, In Through the Out Door (5)

David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Heroes (2) (I am being extremely restrained here)

Yes: Time and a Word, The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge, Going for the One (5)

That's 31 albums so far, including three double albums. with hardly a mediocre track; maybe some fun and games here and there, but basically set after set of terrific songs from only six artists. To continue:

Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland (3)

Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall (3)

King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King, Starless and Bible Black (2)

Jethro Tull: Aqualung, War Child, Minstrel in the Gallery (3)

Genesis: Selling England By the Pound, Trick of the Tail, Wind and Wuthering (3)

Paul McCartney: Ram, Band on the Run (2)

The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Some Girls (3)

The Who: Tommy, Quadrophenia, Who's Next? (2)

The Grateful Dead: American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Blues for Allah (3)

Traffic: John Barleycorn Must Die, The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (2)

The Moody Blues: On the Threshold of a Dream, A Question of Balance, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor (3)

Steely Dan: Countdown to Ecstasy, The Royal Scam, Aja (3)

The Band: The Band, Music From Big Pink (2)

Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young): Crosby Stills and Nash, Déja Vu (2)

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run, Born in the USA (2)

Another 39 brilliant albums, by artists that have more than one such effort; we are up to 70 albums altogether. Adding a few one-off favorites:

Queen: Sheer Heart Attack

Grand Funk Railroad: Closer to Home

Blue Oyster Cult: Blue Oyster Cult

Blood Sweat and Tears: Child Is Father to the Man

10cc: The Original Soundtrack

We now have 75 albums, or half of a list of 150 greatest albums by men, and I have not even gone past the mid-1970's: no Tom Petty or John Mellankamp here, no punk or New Wave groups, no 1990's Seattle grudge, no modern bands like Radiohead, Wilco, Oasis, Death Cab For Cutie or Weezer. I have not listed a single R&B album (surely Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? would be an easy pick) much less any hip-hop artists. Though I dug deeply into the singer-songwriter genre for women's music I have ignored almost everyone except Dylan in the male list. There are several country artists in the list by women (it's an area where prominent female artists abound) while I have not mentioned a single album by anyone like Merle Haggard, George Jones or Dwight Yoakum. And I have reached for relatively obscure female artists like Fanny, but ignored my favorite lesser known male artists, like Nektar. In short, I am merely skimming the surface of rock by men, yet not one of of these 75 albums is a stretch; indeed each of them contains, to my taste, a nearly flawless (and in some cases innovative) set of songs. Whereas I think the list of the 75 greatest albums by women, below, begins to fall off in quality roughly half way through; while the two NPR lists seem to me of inconsistent quality throughout.

Another comparison: in the Women's Department I find relatively few artists who released more than one or two consistently brilliant albums in their careers, at least given what strikes me as "brilliant". Joni Mitchell, Siouxsie Sioux, Suzanne Vega and Joan Armatrading have done it; on any particular day I might add Laura Nyro, Janis Ian, Tori Amos, Aretha Franklin, Courtney Love or Sheryl Crow. (Some would insist that Patti Smith and Kate Bush should be on that short list, but I have explained before, and again below, my issues with their albums.) There are a lot of one-offs on the list below, flashes of brilliance not followed up by anything of similar quality.

So what does all this mean? I have already answered this to some extent in my previous posts: women have largely shied away, or been diverted from, many of the kinds of music that have defined rock from the beginning. Not that they could not play it, as has been amply demonstrated by women from Suzi Quatro and Fanny to Melissa Ethridge and Lez Zeppelin. Outright sexism, which has tended to shunt women into vocal groups and surround them with male producers and engineers, is another factor. The toxic atmosphere that #MeToo is now confronting throughout the entertainmet industry is another. There may be several more. The unfortunate result is that the list of really first rate albums primarily made by women is nowhere near as deep as the list of those primarly made by men. All the more outstanding,then, is the accomplishment of women like Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Madonna and others who managed to have a major impact on popular music beyond their own record sales, in spite of the odds. In any case, to return to my original point, the very fact that the list of candidate albums is narrow made this exercise possible.

One more thing must be said though. Heading out in new directions is hardly something men have failed to do - a very short list might include Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Fripp, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Syd Barrett, Peter Gabriel, Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. But women seem to have made a point of not sticking by the rules, and their smaller numbers belie their influence: Aretha Franklin, Grace Slick, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Joan Armatrading, Madonna, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Siouxsie Sioux, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Julia Holter and Janelle Monae, among many others, were unafraid to cut new trails for themselves, undeterred by the potential for being written off as outliers. Nyro, Mitchell, Bush and Amos, for example, not only created a kind of keyboard-driven artrock song genre, but each (except Nyro, the precocious teen who started it all) built on their predecessors in ways that don't owe much, from what I can tell, to more mainstream, and male, pop keyboard styles. Proportionately to men, women seem to have had less compunction about redefining genres rather than letting the music business redefine them. This has inestimable cultural and musical value, beyond merely making outstanding albums. Experimentation only rarely results in widely accessible music; but it expands the boundaries of what is possible and prevents the stagnation of pop forms.

*****

Here, then, are the ground rules for my selection of the greatest albums by women:

The album has to be substantially created by women, with women doing most of the performing, or at least have clear influence and authority over the performances, and either writing most of the material or at least arranging and producing it, such that the album as a whole is clearly their creative product.
I include rock, folk, some rap, soul, country and various hybrids of those forms. Classical, jazz, blues, Broadway, and all kinds of avant-garde or clearly experimental music are excluded because they are incommensurable with these other genres. So-called "world music" is not a kind of music but many kinds, and they need to be considered differently from Western popular music.
I make no attempt to be representative of female artists in general, however popular or important they may be; this is a list of great albums, and that's all. I acknowledge a handful (or less) of cases where I have stretched to include an album whose merits I am not 100% convinced of because I could not see leaving the artist off the list, but there are absolutely no cases where mere popularity or album sales have motivated me to put an album on the list.
An album is originally conceived as such: I don't include singles compilations, greatest hits, most live albums, retrospectives, etc. The songs had to be released as an album relatively close to the time they were recorded (though not necessarily close to the time they were written).
I don't begin at any arbitrary year, as long as the rest of these criteria are met. But I have cut off the list at 2015. The insistence of both the NPR Pros and Readers on including albums that have barely hit the stands (er... streaming services) shows very poor judgment, as if it is just not possible that a few years' hindsight might relegate Lemonade to some lesser position than that of the 6^th greatest album ever made by a woman. I was tempted to make the cutoff 2010, but relaxed it a bit to allow in a couple of the current decade's most outstanding recordings.
In rating an album, we consider first and foremost its creator's total creative contribution. This means that, with a few notable exceptions, women who write their own music are going to dominate the list. Other important considerations are instrumental as well as vocal performance, production control and lyrical originality.
It's a list of albums, not videos. I'm sufficiently impressed by the content of contemporary rock videos, but evaluating them is a separate exercise from evaluating the content of albums. This is all the more important because successful artists can pour big bucks into the creation of a high-end, artsy, technically polished, brand-defining video for every song on a new album, while more obscure artists are lucky to produce one or two decent videos even if their album is of substantially higher quality. (The contemporary emphasis on evaluating music by its video accompaniment is quite backwards, aesthetically; the song came first, it's not a soundtrack, and its YouTube companion is more in the nature of an ad than an integral part of the musical work.)

Playing by these rules, bands like Jefferson Airplane and Sonic Youth are not going to end up on the list, nor even The B-52's or Blondie; their albums are not "made by women". Indeed, against my initial inclinations, I have even excluded Pat Benatar, due to the central importance of Neil Giraldo's contributions on virtually all of her albums. We will have no Pauline Oliveros, Diamanda Galas or Meredith Monk; this kind of music cannot be evaluated on a continuum with Joni Mitchell and the like. Billie, Nina, Lena, Ella, Sarah, Phoebe – you're out, jazz and blues are your main idiom, even if you managed to crash the pop charts now and then. (But trust me, you would top my list in those departments.)

Apologies to Barbara Streisand, Shirley Bassey and other outstanding song interpreters – there are a few outstanding albums of mainly cover material here, but mostly it's original songwriting. Moreover, I am staying away from show music and other forms of popular music that have little to do with rock, or with the singer-songwriter space that bridges rock and folk music.

Awful of me, I know, to slide in relatively unknown people while ignoring too-well-known people like Taylor and Britney and Adele, who have sold at least 20 million times the number of albums as some of the artists on the list, but this is about quality, not sales. I am willing to accept responsibility for my nonconformist tastes. If I have included two albums by Loreena McKennitt while ignoring her far more famous compatriot Shania Twain I'm just letting my gut reactions rule, and overriding, with all due respect, the considered judgment of critics as well as the masses who vote with their feet (or did when there were such things as record stores).

Also, I may have listed half a dozen Joni Mitchell albums and more than one by other artists, leaving no room for many talented songwriters who just don't have better albums than the best of those outstanding female recording artists. (The NPR Readers' Poll was similar, in this respect, though my list was largely formed before that poll was published.) Once again, it's a list of the greatest albums, not the greatest artists. There may be albums here by artists who are not "great" (whatever their self-penned Wikipedia page suggests) but have an outstanding recording, while some great ones who just never managed to put together an entire album that reflects their illustrious status are missing.

I have been a lot less generous to neo-soul and hip hop than NPR was. Sade has been promoted and Queen Latifah stays; I have already given my opinion on the other NPR selections so I will say no more about why they are not here. However, speaking specifically of music by black female artists, the absence of Minnie RIperton's Perfect Angel and Joan Armatrading's best albums from the NPR list seems to me wrong on account of taste, original musicianship, songwriting and importance; these oversights have been corrected here. Racial categories are a bit absurd, anyway. I'm not sure if Linda Perry identifies as a "black" artist, but "white" she is not; her brilliant album with 4 Non-Blondes is duly recognized below. I have added Janelle Monae thanks to being alerted to her work by the Readers' Poll. (Strangely enough I knew her as an actress from Moonlight and the "Autofac" episode of Phillip K. Dick's Electric Dreams on Netflix, and did not even know she was a musician.) If the list were to continue, Erykah Badu, Aaliyah, Meshell Ndegeocello, Mary J. Blige, Macy Gray and perhaps other neo-soul artists might well be represented; the fact that these artists don't rank for me where they do on the NPR list doesn't mean I don't like or respect their work.

A number of other perverse oversights of the original NPR list have been corrected: Suzanne Vega, Janis Ian, Judy Collins, Amy Lee (Evanescence), Neko Case (well represented on the Reader's Poll), Bette Midler, Mary Chapin Carpenter (another Readers' pick), Carrie Underwood, Nanci Griffith, Enya and Michelle Shocked are all on the list, while Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos are represented by more and different albums. Some under-the-radar choices like Fanny remain, and a few are added: Pat Humphries, a folk musician whose album Same Rain contains some of the finest songwriting I know; and Lili Haydn, a violinist who has not only performed with many of the most famous popular musicians but released several little-noted but excellent albums.

So how do I have the gall (you want to ask) to create a list of these albums when I previously said, or implied, that lists were evil? Actually, I didn't say that – what I said was that they shouldn't be a ranking, because the rankings are arbitrary. So I have put these albums down in roughly the order they came to me as I was trying to figure out how the list would go if I had to do it myself. Obviously the first few are choices I would stand by as belonging at the top of any ranking – it's not a coincidence that they came to me first. I'm also pretty sure that where the same artist is represented by several albums, they are in the right order (a weakness of the other lists, to me). And the first half of the list is clearly stronger than the second half. But other than that, you could juggle the order here randomly and I would probably not object to most of the rankings. So much for lists: they would be better if they were consciously random. But that would not satisfy the list lust of the Internet's denizens.(Don't be surprised to see this list end up on Spotify some time soon.)

*****

Here, at last, is the list:

1. The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) – Joni Mitchell

2. Diamond Life (1984 U.K./1985 – U.S) – Sade

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Thus far I am absolutely certain of my rankings! These two albums were like musical lightning bolts: after one hearing, and increasingly with every subsequent hearing, they each sent an electric thrill down my spine – sounds I had never heard before, new ideas, brilliantly worked out; lyrics that haunted yet impressed as poetry. Each of them is like a world you want to keep going back to, just to see if it is really as good as you thought it was. And it is, every time. Makes no difference that Sade's first album stands head and shoulders above her others, while Joni has a slew of great disks with this one as a kind of apotheosis. No questions in my mind here. Things get dicier when I try to proceed.

3. Pearl (1971) – Janis Joplin

Once again, regarding Wesley Morris's idiosyncratic view that this is "just not a great album", my answer is: either side by itself is a great album. The NPR Pros and Readers seem to agree. The only thing that weakens its claim to this high a rank is that she didn't write most of the songs. Be that as it may, there is no clearer example of a woman having artistic control over an album – she formed the band, picked the songs, and did all the singing. Without this album her legacy would be half what it is. This was her final and greatest offering and it is a fitting monument to the singing phenomenon that was Janis.

4. Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) – Laura Nyro

NPR's choice of New York Tendaberry is a typical example of their trying to walk in lockstep either with critical consensus or album sales. This may account for Nyro's ridiculous ranking at #82, behind dozens of less notable albums and artists. While Tendaberry is in some ways the pinnacle of Nyro's freewheeling style with melody, rhythm and tempo, it is too dissolute to be "great" as an album - the songs stop and start, wander around, return briefly only to fly off in new directions. I've owned it for decades and played it many times and I can still barely get a grip on it. Christmas and the Beads of Sweat is considerably better in my opinion. But Eli has long been recognized as a masterpiece, even if Tendaberry gets top billing with most critics. In a word, Eli changed the face of popular music. Released two years before Ladies of the Canyon, the first album on which Joni Mitchell turned (in part) to keyboard-based compositions, Eli is the first stop on a road that female composers from Joni to Patti Smith, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Bush and Tori Amos, among others, have gone down - to say nothing of male musicians, including Elton John, who was a big Nyro fan. The melodic, rhythmic and stylistic freedom she introduced was a model for a whole new direction in music, and here it is brilliantly incorporated into songs that sport so much inherent musical interest that the seemingly impromptu vocal leaps and rhythmic aberrations only make them more appealing. Aside from that, this is perhaps the first true jazzrock album - unless that honor belongs to Blood, Sweat and Tears' Child Is Father to the Man, released a few weeks earlier, the first effort by a group that would eventually make some of Nyro's songs famous. All in all, one of the greatest and most important albums ever made - #4 here, 78 places higher than NPR has Tendaberry.

5. Tapestry (1971) – Carole King

If ever an album needed no comment, this would be it. But I will have a few comments below. No argument that this is a milestone and one of the most consistent pieces of songwriting in pop history. It also dominated the airwaves during a brief period in my life when I was locked in a darkroom for hours at a time with only a radio for entertainment. Alison Steele ("the nightbird") and Carole King might have been my girlfriends, as they were the female voices I heard the most in that space.

6. Abnormally Attracted to Sin (2009) – Tori Amos

Please excuse me while I emit unpleasant eruptions in the general direction of the clowns who dismissed this album as too long, too incoherent, too self-indulgent, or whatever their tired and tiresome complaints. Open your ears to pure songwriting genius - there are thousands of songwriters whose entire output does not contain a cut the equal of "Give" or the title song. Get a life, critics. Or better headphones. The album is like some kind of aural heaven. I respect the more traditional Tori Amos pick of Little Earthquakes, but this was a big earthquake for me, a master class in how to do contemporary popular music in an edgy, sophisticated way. That she performs these pieces alone on stage, surrounded by keyboards, before large, enthralled audiences helps make her one of the most amazing personalities in the history of popular music. But the album is a deserted island disk for me, one that my life would not be complete without.

7. Learning to Crawl (1984) – The Pretenders

While The Pretenders' first album was a great debut with a memorable hit single penned by Chrissie Hynde, Learning to Crawl just blew the roof off, and propelled Hynde to the status of leading woman in rock. Deborah Harry had shared leadership and songwriting credits in Blondie with Chris Stein; Pat Benatar had a lesser role in her own sound than Neil Giraldo did; and even Suzi Quatro and Joan Jett were heavily indebted to other producers and songwriters. Chrissie was her own woman, The Pretenders her own band. She slam-dunked "Back on the Chain Gang" and "My City Was Gone" into the pop charts before Learning to Crawl was recorded, and then, with a somewhat different band, laid down the rest of the album. It is unfortunate that over the course of a long career, one band member after another was either fired or quit; in spite of the fact that she managed, like Siouxsie Sioux, to turn out several more albums and singles and hold her sound together, she never again reached a peak like this. I've mentioned above that the history of women's popular music is littered with shooting stars, there for a moment and quickly gone, at least in terms of top-notch albums. The Pretenders certainly fit that picture.

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So far I'm still pretty sure about these choices; they share the qualities of greatness with the first two, but questions do arise. Janis' contributions to Pearl include very little songwriting and no instrumental performance; as earth-shaking as her vocals are, as great as the material she chose happens to be, does this compromise its placement near the top of the list? This raises a philosophical question about the artistry of performance compared with composition, and I don't want to try to solve that knotty problem here. On the other hand Carole King's songwriting on Tapestry is greatness itself, but her singing and keyboard playing are just adequate to the task of bringing it off. Hard to come to terms with, given the album's iconic status, but it's true – she was neither a great vocalist nor a particularly accomplished rock pianist. With Tori Amos, my question is whether this is even her best album, although it usually comes out on top when I consider them. All of her albums have some material that moves me more than the rest, making them difficult to assess as albums. For example, I mentioned in a previous post that Boys For Pele has four of my favorite Tori songs, but the rest of the material falls off more sharply than my least favorite songs on many of her other albums. Considerations like this make ranking very difficult and ultimately pretty arbitrary.

8. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967) – Aretha Franklin

I hate to do this, but I'm going to say it (after which I will probably be drawn and quartered on account of musical taste and abuse of language): I selected this one not mainly out of love, but out of... respect. And I think that's all she's asking for, just a little bit. So everything's good. But still... while the historic status of "Respect", not to mention the title song and "Do Right Woman", almost demands that this album go somewhere in the list, I am not sure I hear an enormous difference between this and quite a few other albums of hers: Lady Soul, Spirit in the Dark, Young, Gifted and Black and perhaps others are on about the same level, and this is to say nothing of her numerous early albums, live albums, jazz albums, and more. Yet, as with Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston and others, I feel less inclined to honor a great singer with a backup band and a bunch of covers by adding several of their albums to the list than I do with great singer-songwriters and band leaders who write most of their own material. The total creative expression is what counts for me, and terrific vocals are only one part of it. So, while I understand the inclination of both the NPR Pros and Readers to place two or three of Aretha's albums on their lists, I am going to settle for the one that really announced her as a major musical force and leave it at that.

9. Joan Armatrading (1976) – Joan Armatrading

Number One on the list of artists whose albums were absurdly omitted by both NPR's Pros and Readers. Sorry Joan, but apparently some of my compatriots have very selective vision when they look across the ocean. In any case, this first example of unconscionable historical injustice is hereby corrected. This, her third effort, is truly a great album. Get this: according to the album's Wikipedia page, Glyn Johns, the producer and/or engineer of some of the most famous albums by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, Led Zeppelin and others, "said that it was the best album he'd ever been associated with"! I do wonder what he meant by "best", but regardless, it testifies to the power of this disk. Any list of women's music without it is seriously suspect.

10. Solitude Standing (1987) – Suzanne Vega

Number Two on the list of "150 Most Unaccountable Oversights in Listmaking". And maybe more ridiculous than Number One, if only because Vega is so well known, and no oceans, or even bridges, separate her from the New York cultural elite who came up with the first NPR list. Here, though, I admit to uncertainty of a sort: the album is brilliant, and has some of her best material; but as with Tori Amos, I am forever going back and forth about which Vega albums I like best. In fact, I am sometimes inclined to think that she made small but consistent improvements with almost every new album she released, right through Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles. Each one has considerable merit; lacking a clear criterion by which to select one over the others I start with the one that more or less kicked off her sound and career and made her the Next Big Thing on the singer-songwriter front.

11. Clouds (1969) – Joni Mitchell

Said enough about this in my third post in this series... see that.

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It was hard to even get this far. I mean, isn't it just possible that Clouds is #2 overall, and that Me Myself I is ultimately better that Joan Armatrading's eponymous third disk, or as I just said, that some other Suzanne Vega album is better than Solitude Standing? And what about the status of I Never Loved a Man...? One of several Aretha landmarks, but like Pearl, you have these brilliant vocals but no (or few) songwriting credits. Maybe the first 10, 25 or 50 spots should be allocated to women who wrote their own material as well as performing it? IDK. And my uncertainty only grows as I go on.

12. Between the Lines (1975) – Janis Ian

The Number Three Oversight of both Pros and Readers. Ann Powers & Co. should never be allowed to live down the fact that they included the superficial and minimally talented Britney Spears on their list, as well as numerous other dubious commercial choices, and lots of albums that are far from having been "made by women", while the illustrious Readers dropped in every Taylor Swift album they could think of and even the fourth-rate talent Carly Rae Jepsen... and left off Janis Ian, one of the greatest singer-songwriters ever, who offers penetrating social messages in songs of poetry and deep beauty. This is perhaps Ian's greatest album, but it is only an introduction to a deep collection of original compositions. Some of these songs had a social impact in their time that puts her in the rare company of songwriters like Dylan, Paul Simon and Neil Young.

13. Fanny Hill (1972) – Fanny

Once you finish flogging yourself for having not known about Fanny when they were a happening thing, you settle back and acknowledge that this was one of the greatest moments in rock and roll made by women or men. Before Heart, before Suzi Quattro, before Joan Jett or Pat Benatar, there they were with first rate rock vocals, instrumentals and songwriting, an all-female band. That the Millington sisters happened to be Filipino-Americans only makes it more fascinating how thoroughly they had mastered the rock idiom. David Bowie and George Harrison are said to have been fans of Fanny, who opened concerts for them. The NPR Readers embarrassed themselves by dropping this group after the Pros wisely included them. Please add one Parrot to the fan club list, though he flies, like the owl of Minerva, after the sun has set.

14. The ArchAndroid (2010) – Janelle Monáe

If the NPR Readers goofed on Fanny, they sure got this one right vs. the critics: this is one of the boldest, most innovative and just plain brilliant albums in a long time, a worthy decade-opener. It takes an obvious analogy, comparing racism with the contempt for androids that one recognizes as the backdrop to science fiction films like Blade Runner and A.I. - and works it into an ingenious concept album. It is interestingly postmodern: not only do sci fi memes float freely about, but so do musical styles from spy film scores to Prince to the B-52's to hip hop; yet it does not sound at all dissolute, but rather like a composition with contrasts that manage to cohere. The curmudgeonly Robert Christgau, famous for shamefully panning Joni Mitchell's greatest album (see #1, above, and my previous post on Joni), embarrassed himself once again by declaring this "the most overrated album of the year" and saying "her songwriting is 60^th percentile" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean). Monáe is in excellent company being dissed by Christgau. The Readers also included her follow-up, The Electric Lady; though I like it too, it does not pack quite the same punch as this one. That said, if two or three of my favorite cuts on that collection had found their way into The ArchAndroid instead, perhaps replacing some of the less stellar tracks, I would be ready to push this up to the top five on this list, it's that brilliant.

15. Fallen (2003) – Evanescence

Insanely influential and a consistent piece of songwriting, the Queen of Goth gets her due after yet another eyebrow-raising oversight on NPR's part, which in this case only follows in the wake of the more general critical oversight that greeted the rise of Evanescence. For the next 10 years or more after Fallen, numerous female pop singers tried to sound like Amy Lee in at least a song or two, as if you hadn't really nailed the contemporary sound until you've knocked off one of the tracks from this set. More than enough time has elapsed to recognize that the initial critical evaluation was seriously flawed: this was a defining moment of millennial rock, one that holds up well 15 years later.

16. Bigger, Better, Faster, More (1993) – 4 Non-Blondes

The track "What's Up?" is one of my favorite singles of the 90's. (I assume it was for the obvious reason that they didn't use the song's actual lyric, "What's going on?", as the title.) Aside from that, this album kicks off with a string of great numbers, including notably "Mr. Spaceman". One of the most brilliant one-offs in the history of rock, Linda Perry's vocals stand out for me as among the greatest vocal debuts. It's unfortunate that she apparently does not hold the album in high esteem, but that doesn't change my opinion of it. Too bad Perry and the band split up after one album. All the more reason to be thankful that this intense mix of rock, soul and New Wave made it to the airwaves.

17. The Mask and the Mirror (1994) – Loreena McKennitt

I'm really not sure why Loreena McKennitt gets so little attention, but my guess is that no one knows exactly how to classify her. Her Wikipedia entry begins by calling her work "world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes". That's already complicated enough, but it goes on to mention that she is "sometimes classified as folk music in record stores". Well, maybe in Canada, but in the U.S. – when there were record stores, and when they carried her albums – she was usually found in the Rock bins. To stir the pot even more, the Wikipedia page for The Book of Secrets adds "new age" to the list of genres. Electric guitars and Celtic harps and Middle Eastern drums... what to do with this? Well, a 2010 link says she had sold over 14 million albums by then; I'm sure it's quite a bit more by now. I said I am not including so-called "world music" on this list because it gets too hard to compare so many different musical styles with Western/Northern popular music, but this is Western/Northern popular music – she has two gold and one 2x platinum album in the U.S. and at least seven Canadian Top 20 albums (maybe more; her Wikipedia entries were a bit out of date last time I looked). A great musician with an operatic soprano and serious genius as an arranger. This album seems to me her best; when someone lifted a case of some 20 CD's from me many years ago, it was one of the first ones I replaced. Another one follows below; these are the two I know best, but The Visit, at least, would be another option.

18. Ladies of the Canyon (1970) – Joni Mitchell

It is convenient for the Blue contingent to forget that it was on Ladies that Joni first explored those moody piano arrangements and freewheeling vocal rhythms. Aside from that, it just has more of her greatest songs than Blue. And more memorable songs than most of the 10's of thousands of other albums of original songs ever recorded. Wherefore the general tendency to overlook this masterpiece? I don't know. (It feels a little like the attitude towards Laura Nyro's Eli, as if the mere fact that it has so many of her most popular songs makes critics want to look smart by giving higher marks to one of her more esoteric albums.) If Joni had done nothing but this album she would still be one of the greatest folk-rock songwriters, as it gave us not only "Woodstock" but "The Circle Game" and "Big Yellow Taxi" (one of the precious few contemporary songs that Dylan covered on a recording), as well as other excellent songs. I think critical rankings are out to lunch on this one; it should be high on any list of music made by women or men.

19. Tinderbox (1986) – Siouxsie and the Banshees

When I first began listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees as I pursued my endless responses to the NPR list, it was almost like discovering a female David Bowie; a kind of object lesson in how to play uncompromising rock without foregoing raw musical appeal. The band released a series of excellent albums of which at least The Scream, Juju and Peepshow might also be on this list; though each has its own character and is admirable in slightly different ways, they somehow all come across as the product of a consistent artistic vision. That in itself is some sort of testament to Siouxsie's leadership, since it's a guitar-driven band that swapped out lead guitarists several times. Tinderbox seems to me the most consistent, though each of the others has one or more of my favorite cuts by this band.

20. Middle Cyclone (2009) – Neko Case

Shall we say Number Four in the Major NPR Pros Oversight count? One cannot be knowledgeable about contemporary alternative rock or folk music without knowing about Neko Case, or her two more or less equally brilliant albums, both of which I list here. You really have to wonder what kind of games they are playing over in that office that they could come up with such a list and not put either of her best albums on it. I have no big beef with k.d. laing or Teena Marie or Salt'n'Peppa or a great many of their other entries, but by almost any criteria whatever, Case towers over so many of the artists they chose, it's like they had a corkboard with the names of artists and threw darts at it to make a selection. Here the NPR Readers have provided the necessary corrective action, though they chose so many pop stars from the last two decades that you also have to wonder if they really identified Neko Case as the outstanding artist she is.

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Things have been getting more difficult album by album from the point of view of ranking. Of the last ten and the next ten I have no idea what order they should be in, or even whether they should be in any order at all. Nevertheless I believe we are still in the territory of albums that deserve a place somewhere closer to the top of the list than those that follow them.

21. All Over the Place (1984) – The Bangles

A terrific collection of R&R all the way through. It's a pity that The Bangles went in a more commercial direction after this, which is not to say they didn't make any more good music – who can really resist "Walk Like an Egyptian"? Be that as it may, this is clearly their masterpiece.

22. Me Myself I (1980) – Joan Armatrading

See above. If she needed anything more to establish solid rock credibility, this certainly meets all the requirements. Some of her other albums are not far behind. There's an odd symmetry between the lack of recognition of her work and that of Linda Perry with 4 Non-Blondes: two women of color with resonant voices playing original hard rock material – why is this so hard to acknowledge? Well, no one has a problem acknowledging Aretha Franklin, or Beyoncé, right? Ah, but they're doing what black women are supposed to do, singing some form of R&B, mainly. Here, though, we have some naughty ladies stepping over the line and doing straight-out rock and roll... that must be the problem. And to confirm the hypothesis we can point once again to my favorite neglected black-female-fronted rock band, Maxayn.

23. St. Vincent (2014) – St. Vincent

In case one needed proof that popular music is alive and well in this decade, this would probably sufficient all by itself. A knockout set of compositions (it feels almost like denigrating them to call them "songs") this is as fresh as it is thoughtful. "Prince Johnny" probably gets a place in my Deserted Island Cuts list. It would be superfluous to say more, but see my comments in the previous post in this series.

24. Court and Spark (1974) – Joni Mitchell

I seem to recall it was hailed as Mitchell's best album yet at the time. It is sobering to think that it was just a warmup for The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

25. Perfect Angel (1974) – Minnie Riperton

Little by little, older one-off albums have disappeared from my collection, but not this one. Riperton's amazing vocals and great song styling put her on a special plane. She co-wrote most of the album too. Another weird NPR miss.

26. 99.9 F (1992) – Suzanne Vega

Am I sure I want this one rather than Days of Open Hand or Nine Objects of Desire? No... There are at most fine shades of difference in quality between all her albums, so call this a placeholder for the middle period of her consistently excellent output.

27. Aerial (2005) – Kate Bush

What to do about Kate Bush in a list like this? She has a fanatical following and a deep well of respect among musicians. Her albums display a rare consistency of musical integrity; like David Bowie (who may have been channeling some of her ideas on Blackstar) she often has an ability to find the focal point where innovation and mass appeal meet. The only problem, for me, is that her albums tend to start off with one or two outstanding songs and then tilt towards what you might call connoisseur tastes. This is true of Never For Ever ("Babooshka"), Hounds of Love ("Running Up That Hill"), The Red Shoes ("Rubberband Girl"), The Sensual World ("The Sensual World") and Aerial ("King of the Mountains"). (The same might have been true of Lionheart, since the first cut, "Symphony in Blue" is clearly more engaging than either "Hammer Horror" or "Wow", but in a bizarre marketing decision, the former was released only in Japan and Canada while the other two were released worldwide.) This is not the place to get into all the nuances of her output, from her numerous literary, scientific and intellectual references to the always interesting production of her albums. I admire the restless energy of her compositions, her appeals to the folk music of the British Isles (one of many common elements with progressive rock), her moody piano sonorities on tracks like the opening of Fifty Words for Snow, and much else. But, as I have said too many times already, this is a list of great albums, not great careers, opening songs or ideas, and as song collections her albums often lose their grip rather quickly, sometimes drifting into fairly banal pop, sometimes pursuing endless shifts of rhythm, tempo, sonority and texture, and often sounding more like recitative than aria. It is also noteworthy that Bush, for all her influence, remains largely an English phenomenon as far as sales go; other than Hounds of Love, propelled by what is surely her greatest single track, her albums have made a very scattered impression worldwide, with The Red Shoes charting highest in the U.S. at 28. For this project I have listened to many of her albums again and again and tried to find the one that seems the most consistent. But my opinion of this still changes frequently, and I have little confidence that my choice of Aerial is more defensible than other choices. I know that Hounds of Love, Never For Ever and The Sensual World do not do it for me as albums, much as I like their best songs; and Fifty Words for Snow, which does have considerable merit as an album, nevertheless lacks any tracks that rise to the level of her best songs. I like The Red Shoes overall, though neither the critics nor Bush herself consider it her best work. It was my choice yesterday, and could be again tomorrow. But today I am going with Aerial because aside from some excellent tracks in the first part of the album (which would certainly not include her self-indulgent and otherwise ridiculous setting of a few dozen digits of π), I think the second part, a 42-minute suite, is largely successful. I do wish there were one Kate Bush album about which I could have total conviction, but alas I will just have to wait for Kate Bush's Greatest Hits - or create my own playlist.

28. She's So Unusual (1983) – Cindi Lauper

Here in Brooklyn we stand by our own sons and daughters, but we also know that people from Queens are citizens of the same greater body of land known as Long Island. So Cindi rocks - and bops, as we all know. This album, with its lengthy string of pop hits, has somehow always stood out from the mass of girl-pop albums, while almost epitomizing that idiom. Not sure how she managed that, but she did. Whatever she may owe to Madonna, this will always stand out, like Tapestry, as a masterpiece of female songwriting.

29. Jagged Little Pill (1995)– Alanis Morisette

And so will this, in a completely different way. Somehow you don't mind being assaulted by Morisette's angst, in the same way that you don't mind Lauper's feints in the direction of superficiality. I do wish that she had found a new direction for her lyrics at some point – as she racks up one musically consistent album after another she never quite moves on lyrically. Thus this first and probably best marker of her talent will stand in for an impressive career.

30. The Divine Miss M (1972) – Bette Midler

Bette Midler's album had an impact close to that of Tapestry when it came out, even though these were all covers. Her renditions of "Superstar" and "Hello in There" alone would make it a great album – and those weren't even the hits. I have included albums of covers only when they bear the mark of a highly original statement; like Pearl and a few others, this album did that.

31. One Day at a Time (1970) – Joan Baez

This has always been the Joan Baez album closest to my heart; from the title song and the beautiful Baez composition "Sweet Sir Galahad" (written for her sister Mimi Farina) to her covers of "Long Black Veil" and "In the Ghetto", I find every track moving. Her vocals set a standard few in folk or popular music have equaled. Diamonds and Rust, the NPR choice, has perhaps her best composition as its title tune, but overall I don't think the album is as good as this one. Her numerous albums of traditional folk songs, Dylan songs and even classical pieces are all worth a listen. Her recording Graçias a La Vida, consisting entirely of Latin American folk and nueva cançion (thus excluded from this list) is one of my favorite albums of all time.

32. Pirates (1981) – Rickie Lee Jones

Her unusual career is a bit too complex to get into here, but somehow she struck people across the rock and jazz spectrum as an artist of interest. Her diverse output is hard to capture by picking one album, but I agree with NPR that this one is a good candidate to represent her and probably her best work overall. She is one of those artists who showed that women can make their own way in popular music- the list of those is much longer than Patti Smith and Kate Bush and few punk rock icons, and Rickie Lee Jones certainly belongs on it.

33. Ray of Light (1998) – Madonna

I have nothing against Madonna's pop outings, they contain many classic songs in a vein that Madonna all but invented. But this is a more serious work, spiritual and forward-looking in its time. She more or less invented the electronic dance-pop genre here, while making an artistic and spiritual statement as well.

34. Sweet Old World (1992) – Lucinda WIlliams

I've said it so often in public and private that I think someone may strike me if I protest again that this is Williams' best album, not Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. So I won't. But even if you disagree with what I'm not saying again you at least have to admit that this is a great album.

35. Tuesday Night Music Club (1993) – Sheryl Crow

Why there should be only one Sheryl Crow album on this list I don't know; there are others just about as good. While precision is not really possible in this kind of undertaking, I have tried, as I said, to make fairly fine-grained judgements, and that leaves this one as her best by a hair.

36. The Scream (1978) – Siouxsie and the Banshees

This was NPR's pick and I do think it's great, though I put Tinderbox ahead of it. We're talking about an artist whose fourth or fifth best album ranks higher, for me, than a lot of stuff on the two NPR lists, so it was a little hard to choose.

37. It's My Way (1964) – Buffy Saint-Marie

The album gets high marks for guts and grit and fearless confrontation of social issues, and for having two of the greatest protest songs ever written: “Now That the Buffalo's Gone”, a more powerful defense of Native American rights than a thousand poison-tipped arrows, and “Universal Soldier”, which may have few fans among veterans (it squarely lays the blame for war on the people who actually do the killing) but captures the spirit of the old protest line, “what if they gave a war and nobody came?” “Universal Soldier” became a hit when Donovan covered it. Yet another song, “Cod'ine”, became famous when it was covered by Janis Joplin. Saint-Marie also introduces Native American instruments, chants and (from what I can tell) language. But for all that, if this album were not so fitting for this list I might feel compelled to put one of her later efforts on it, as the next few albums each have a couple of classic original tunes. With the release of her 2017 album Medicine Man she had been putting out new, original material for 53 years, which sounds like some kind of record.

38. Joni Mitchell (1968) – Joni Mitchell

She hit the ground running with this still fresh-sounding album, her vocals already top notch, her guitar arrangements already sounding new and different. The songwriting leaves nothing to be desired either. A great start to a brilliant career. Pay no attention to those who insist on reading backward from her later albums and assure us that this was merely hint of what was to come. Her early work shouldn't be denigrated just because she matured from great to brilliant. (An undocumented comment on the album's Wikipedia page claims that the official title should have been Song to a Seagull, words that are part of the artwork and the title of one of the songs, and that there were printing and other errors in not using that title; in any case, though it is often known by that title, the official release was eponymous.)

39. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (2006) – Neko Case

By the criteria NPR used to compile their list, not only the two Neko Case albums I chose but several Dirty Photographers disks would be valid choices, since Case sings most of their lead vocals. I have been diligent in not including albums "made by women – and men", at least insofar as the contributions of band members are concerned. But both of her genre-bending solo efforts contain one great composition after another.

40. True Stories and Other Dreams (1973) – Judy Collins

The Number Five inexcusable and unaccountable omission of the two NPR lists is Judy Collins. Her compilation album Colors of the Day is so key to my musical existence that it was difficult to resist making an exception and putting it on the list. Another critical outing is Judy Collins' Fifth Album, for its terrific choice of songs and particularly the rousing, live performance of Malvina Reynolds' "It Isn't Nice". But this album is one of the few that has more of her own compositions than covers, and by and large they stand up well next to terrific songs like Valerie Carter's "Cook With Honey" and Tom Paxton's "The Hostage". The NPR crowds managed to recognize a single Joan Baez album, probably based on a single Top 40 song about Bob Dylan, but they know little about folk music and therefore failed to include this equally important bearer of the folk music flag. Justice, about which she sang so movingly, has now prevailed!

*****

Beyond this point I don't have even a shadow of an argument for a comparative ranking of these albums. I start to wonder if I am really picking what I think are the best, or, contrary to what I promised, just trying to get everyone who deserves some respect onto the list. There are albums below that seem to have something great about them, but in some cases that judgement is slightly tempered by questions about a lack of significant innovation, or too much innovation, or a more than minimal amount of mediocre material, or stylistic choices that don't thrill me even if I recognize the album's quality in general. Others I love without apology, but not without some question as to whether mere familiarity makes it seem better than it is. In any case, the numbering from this point on is nothing more than a convenience for counting; I would have little issue with someone putting them all in a bingo spinner and picking one at a time in any order.

41. Tracy Chapman (1988) – Tracy Chapman

It's easy to forget what a revelation this was when it came out. Prominent black women in folk music were not that common – there was Odetta, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and not too many others who registered mainly in the folk-inspired acoustic singer-songwriter vein. The very idea of folk music having much of an impact on popular music in general seemed to be a thing of the past. Then this bolt of lightning... Every song is a gem. Her voice and diction are as unique as that of anyone in popular music, and her songwriting captures the knife edge of emotion as it tries to cut through the hardships of social injustice. As with Sade, the first album made such a huge impression that her later work either seems to be missing something by comparison, or to gain what power it has from being a product of the same spirit that produced this brilliant collection.

42. A Place in the World (1996) – Mary Chapin Carpenter

Another perverse oversight of the NPR crowd. She's a seriously talented songwriter who's been making her way on her own terms through the often narrow alleys of Nashville. Quite a few of her albums might be included here; this one is most familiar to me, and after listening to several others I have no reason to think it isn't the best of many excellent outings, though critics tend to prefer her earlier ones.

43. Platinum (2014) – Miranda Lambert

She's a bit different. Sassy and in your face in a way that's refreshing in the calcified world of Nashville (I just said that, didn't I? well, there I go again...) Her music is also beyond catchy. My only reservation about her is personal, not musical: what kind of an individual starts an association to protect shelter animals and also becomes a lifetime member of the NRA? Gotta love those poor little mutts; as for all the bloodied children, not so much. Such reservations aside, I'd rather hear her than Reba MacIntyre any day, even if Reba is technically the better singer; she just sounds fresh, in every sense of the word.

44. Whitney Houston (1985) – Whitney Houston

If she isn't simply the greatest singer who ever graced the pop charts then I don't know who is. I can hardly listen to her sing without tears starting to form, such is the beauty of her voice. I particularly cannot listen to her performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 1991 SuperBowl without having a good cry. In my opinion, her albums, especially the ones after this, don't fully represent her vocal genius; it seems as if producers and company executives tried to steer her to traditional R&B material that did little to showcase her vocal abilities. Nevertheless, she all but paved the road for R&B and pop singers after her, bringing the style of spiritual, already deeply embedded in American popular music, right out into the open. Which makes this album a rare kind of milestone – like the Delaware Water Gap, there's no easy way to get around it, and why would you want to anyway?

45. Blown Away (2012) - Carrie Underwood

As I have already warned, place no stock in the order of selections at this point; it is more or less how they occurred to me. But Carrie Underwood owns one of the few voices in popular music that can come close to that of Whitney Houston. On purely technical grounds she might even be better, in the sense that Jascha Heifetz might be a better violinist than David Oistrakh, though for the perfect combination of tone and expression I will still choose Whitney (and Oistrakh). She bears comparison with Whitney in another sense: her albums as a whole are nowhere near as good as she is. Not that they don't showcase her voice, they are just not (overall) made up of the best material. Singing like hers, though, can't easily be shoved under the rug.

46. Wave (1979) – Patti Smith

As with Kate Bush, I really had a hard time with Ms. Smith. In the first place, I am just not as impressed with any of her albums as I am with her overall artistic persona. Secondly, it seems to be my fate to be swatting away the flies of critical consensus: it is not only Ann Powers and NPR but the community (if such they are) of rock critics as a whole that endorses Blue, New York Tendaberry, Like a Prayer and Horses as the finest albums by their respective creators. In each case I disagree, and never more strongly than about Horses. I first heard the album some time in the 70's, not very long after it came out, and didn't like it. But as the volume of critical approval grew, I bought it and continued to listen to it periodically, and again – at least 3 more times – after the NPR list appeared. Final verdict: "Break It Up" is the only song that really appeals to me; her disruptive rendition of "Gloria" is interesting; and "Redondo Beach" was an early if not otherwise outstanding entry in the white reggae trend that took hold in the mid-late 70's. In terms of attitude and lyrics the album certainly is a milestone of some sort; but I am not judging great attitudes here, just great albums. My only solace in the opinion that Horses is not one of those is that my two brothers, who, like myself, are lifelong musicians and rock fans, with tastes that often differ from mine (and each other's), seem to concur in the opinion that it's not a particularly listenable album. Having been turned off by the album I made little attempt to consider Smith's later work very carefully, until now; and now that I have done so I am pleased to now call myself a kind of Patti Smith fan, because I like almost all of her later albums better than Horses. In particular, her next three – Radio Ethiopia, Easter and Wave are all much more compelling. I am amused by Smith's Wikipedia entry, where the author opines that Radio Ethiopia is "considerably less accessible than Horses". That may apply to a couple of the cuts at the end, including the title song, but in general the album seems to me considerably more accessible than Horses – more than one of the cuts has a very Dylanesque feel, and some of the others are good old-fashioned hard rock (indeed here and there I was moved to compare it – not disparagingly - with Grand Funk). There is little on any of these albums, including Horses, that sounds much like punk, unless "punk" means anything that is not pop, folk or prog – which these certainly are not. Easter almost won my vote, not mainly for the hit "Because the Night" (which starts to sound like a Springsteen cover as soon as you learn that they co-wrote it) but because it has a good deal of great rock and roll, rarely mainstream and always with Smith's patented vocals and poetry. But in the end I found Wave more consistently appealing, without losing the edge that defined her as a great innovator. I did take note of the decidedly different opinion of Ira Robbins in his Trouser Press review of the album: he calls the production "inappropriate", her lyrics "preciously self-indulgent", her cover of The Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star" "misguided... phony and self-conscious" and most of the record "unfocused and half-baked, frequently insufferable". Whew! The lyrics – yeah, self-indulgent and full of clichés too; but if I were going to eliminate albums due to the lyrics then no Led Zeppelin recording would ever make it onto my list of great albums. Since that is unthinkable, why apply a different standard to women? (To get a little closer to Trouser Press's core expertise, should we talk about the lyrics, if they qualify as such, on The Ramones' Rocket to Russia?) I don't know why Smith chose to cover that Byrds song either; it does seem a bit "misguided", an attempt at irony that falls flat (the irony was already there in the original, and twice-told irony is always stale). Musically, though, they give it a pretty good reading, including some great lead guitar work. Other than that, like I said, the album retains Smith's edginess while being very listenable. And that is as good a statement of what makes a great album as any I could come up with: make it edgy but musically satisfying. Great lyrics enhance the package but you rarely get them.

47. To Bring You My Love (1995) – P.J. Harvey

I've listened to most of her albums – some are way out there, too raucous and aggressive for my taste, though one has to appreciate the way British musicians manage to turn the infamous national penchant for reserving emotions on its head. This album does that well enough, I think, but also demonstrates some impressive songwriting that plays to a way more punk than pop aesthetic, without losing the thread of accessibility.

48. Other Voices, Other Rooms (1993) – Nanci Griffith

If ever anyone ever made a truly great album just by picking a truly great set of other people's songs, while avoiding most of the obvious choices in the same genre, this is it. I do want to at least give honorable mention to an important predecessor, which is happily now available in digital form: Priscilla Herdman's 1987 album Darkness Into Light, which had a strong influence on me. She has many other albums that I am not familiar with, mostly also covers. Griffith sometimes writes her own music, as for example on her album Clock Without Hands; but this collection has her stamp all over it, and with brilliant consistency brings one lesser known gem after another to shining realization. Here too the unseen hand of Judy Collins is at work; it was she who made an art of collecting brilliant but lesser-known songs into a cohesive folk music album, giving them each a signature reading that helped the song make its way into the national consciousness. Griffith follows this example with exemplary taste and musicianship.

49. The Memory of Trees (1995) – Enya

Number Six on the list of unforgivable NPR omissions. You can pigeonhole her as "New Age" if you want, or downplay her as a Celtic musician who lacks the authenticity of the Clancy Brothers. Whatever – she all but single-handedly created a new musical style with roots in Celtic music, and became the second most popular musical artist in Irish history (after U2). I have four of her albums, not including her work with Clannad, and they are all a bit different; this one has stood out over time as the most engaging.

50. Unrepentant Geraldines (2014) – Tori Amos

As I said, I go back and forth about what my favorite Tori Amos albums are. I sometimes use the Microsoft star rating system to remind myself of the best cuts on albums. On this I gave 5 stars to one song (the first, "America") and 4 stars to five others, which makes six excellent-to-great songs on one album - pretty high for me. Everyone is granted one glib piece of nonsense like "Giant's Rolling Pin" per album, and there is almost nothing she writes that I don't find appealing on some level, so even with eight songs that strike me as "good enough" this album makes the cut.

51. The Book of Secrets (1997) – Loreena McKennitt

That this album occurs so far down the list from her The Mask and the Mirror is one of the absurdities of listmaking - it is just about as good, and could arguably be called her finest. I just didn't know what to displace in order to feature a second Loreena McKenitt album, and I happen to so love a couple of the tracks on The Mask and the Mirror, in particular “The Bonnie Swans”, that I couldn't see them any further down. But “The Highwayman” is roughly the equal of them. Just put the albums on random play as you settle in for a long flight and be prepared to let your cell phone power go to 0 rather than take them off.

52. Short, Sharp, Shocked (1988) - Michelle Shocked

The Texas Campfire Tapes, the low-fi indie tape whose hand to hand circulation made Shocked an underground folk sensation, was eventually released as an album, but was not really conceived that way. Her Arkansas Traveller is an album, and contains one of the great pop songs to come out of the folk music corner, "Come a Long Way" (perhaps comparable to Shawn Colvin's "Sunny Came Home"). But it is largely a bluegrass album, and judged in that way it is not exceptional. Short, Sharp Shocked, her first commercial release, is a terrific album, mostly written by her, and should be on anyone's list of great albums by women. (Shocked's later political and spiritual foibles are not of much interest in evaluating her music, but in any case one would be hard pressed to find any trace of homophobia or intolerance on this album.)

53. Lili (1997) – Lili Haydn

I knew this had to be on my list when I played it and realized that every song on the album is familiar to me – certainly not from airplay, but because every time I have spun the CD, just about every song grabbed me. That is not the case with albums I've played far more often, and speaks to both the quality of the songwriting and the originality of her arrangements, in which her violin playing figures prominently and to great effect. (Full disclosure: I'm a violinist, and performed the fiddle parts on the one album I have released, so I'm a bit partial to original violin work, but I believe the album transcends that prejudice.)

54. Blue (1971) – Joni Mitchell

Okay, Blue, for goodness sake – I never said it wasn't a great album. It's just not her best. I mean, if I say that The Times They Are A-Changing is not Dylan's best album, or even one of his five best, does that mean it's not a great album? Seriously.

55. Tell Mama (1968) – Etta james

Etta James released more than 30 studio albums and many others besides, and if one had time to listen to them all no doubt there would be other choices. But NPR's choice, her 1964 live recording Rocks the House, should not be on either their list or mine, since it contains live versions of previously recorded material. Tell Mama is the early James album for this occasion. Like Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Griffith, Whitney Houston and Bette Midler she makes the list with a recording of covers. And like them, her versions are powerful, transformative interpretations that make it seem like she wrote the songs, so much does she invest in them.

56. Germfree Adolescents (1978) – X-Ray Spex

As one-hit wonders go, this one is up there with the best of them. Poly Styrene quit the band after this late 70's punk album and they didn't release another one until 1995. It's a significant piece of punk history and a consistently interesting set of songs.

57. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998) – Lauryn Hill

While I am not so blown away by this album to call it the second greatest album ever made by a woman, as NPR did, it is a strong artistic statement and another one-off achievement. The fact that neither "neo-soul" nor "hip-hop" nor "reggae" completely captures the creative spirit of the album is an indication of Hill's originality and vision (as with Janelle Monae's equally unclassifiable recordings). But the almost universal admiration it gets is probably due in part to a quality that few albums share: the sense that you are almost a part of it, that rather than being presented with some alienated consumer object, you could be her friend or roommate hanging out and listening to her in a college dorm room. That was a brilliant approach, one that recalls another great R&B milestone, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? Too bad she didn't follow it up and develop as an artist, considering how much authority this one effort still carries after two decades. There are 20^th Anniversary celebrations going on as I write this. (Well, I wrote a lot of these reviews some time ago.)

58. Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung (1973) – Ellie Greenwich

I don't care how many people covered her songs, her album is not a mere footnote to her legacy. They are, after all, her songs (with Jeff Barry, and in some cases Phil Spector) and her vocals; the production is terrific, and the album sounds like an integral effort, not so-to-speak covers of her own work. It has been a regular feature on my turntable since I stumbled on it decades ago, and will be so for the foreseeable future. So, let it be honored.

59. Dig Me Out (1997) – Sleater-Kinney

Another band that I respect more than love, but this is a fine set of songs and justifies their exalted position as post-punkers.

60. Tales From the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles (2014) – Suzanne Vega

As I said earlier, she seems to get better and better by small degrees, though I would not have any strong arguments against substituting anything since Days of Open Hand for this one. Her unique sensibility as a songwriter contrasts strongly with both the relatively predictable folk/country crowd and the more recent crop of Lana Del Ray knockoffs, which offsets whatever assists she may have received from labels and producers.

61. Homogenic (1997) - Björk

I'm not a big Björk fan (in fact I liked the Sugarcubes better) – I listened to just about her entire output before creating this list, and was ready to call it a day and forget her until this album came to my attention. The critics are right this time – this is a creative peak, Post notwithstanding. To my ears it is the one that shows she can write songs as well as experiment with sounds. (The well-known cabaret-style number from Post is not enough by itself to demonstrate that.) And she manages to contain her tendency to turn what sound like text messages or bits of idle chatter into lyrics. I wish she would do more like this.

62. All Hail the Queen (1989) - Queen Latifah

I admit to having limited tolerance for rap: it has to sound classic and it has to have real content and be devoid of gratuitous violence, explicit sexism and puerile, raunchy, tiresome bedroom chatter. Thus, L'il Kim I can do without, for reasons just stated. Missy Elliott is very important to others in the business but I don't find her own albums all that compelling (I realize there are plenty of rap fans who disagree with me on this). Queen Latifah has the rhythm, the words and the content to make her the only rap artist, strictly speaking, on the list.

63. Bachelor #2 (2000) – Aimee Mann

I said earlier that it “may be warmed-over Sheryl Crow” but still “damn good”. I admit that I'm starting to scratch for albums that meet all my criteria and seem to be the best efforts by the best female musicians. But this bit of new folk has enough originality to qualify as better than just “good”.

64. Nobody's Daughter (2010) - Hole

Despite all the sturm und drang surrounding it and the lukewarm critical reviews, this is Courtney Love's best album, as she herself claimed. Her debut with Hole, Live Through This, gets a lot more attention, as do her other 1990's releases with the original Hole lineup, but they simply do not have the combination of raw intensity and great writing that this does. Nobody's Daughter might have been Love's second solo album, as it was originally intended to be, but in spite of the dubious distinction between a short-term group of new "Hole" members and a bunch of studio musicians, the album is a triumph. It's better than her 1998 Celebrity Skin too, which got several Grammy nominations, primarily because that album sounds a bit too much like a Sheryl Crow wannabe release, even to the point of pretentiously taking "California" as a "theme" (why not a cover of "All I Wanna Do" while she's at it?) This one is just more original, more raw, gutsier in every way. It has been the go-to Hole album for me since it was released. (As an aside, it is another Linda Perry triumph, of a different sort than 4 Non Blondes – as producer and songwriter in this case.)

65. Same Rain (1992) – Pat Humphries

This debut album by Pat Humphries is simply one of the finest collections of original songwriting I know. The standout pick among many excellent albums by musicians I used to know in the People's Music Network, I wish I could tell you to check it out on Spotify, but alas, it is not to be found, as of this writing. (Several new and used copies were available on Amazon, though.) Pat's later album Hands is there, and it contains a slightly mellower version of "Swimming to the Other Side", from which the title of the first album is drawn ("We're all living 'neath the great Big Dipper/We're all washed by the very same rain/We're all swimming in the stream together/Some in power and some in pain..."). I do have a short list of songs that should be beamed across the universe to give whoever might be out there some idea of the human spirit in its most positive aspect, and this song is on it no matter how short the list might be.

66. Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015) – Courtney Barnett

What can you do when something like this comes along other than admire it, smile, and ask why you didn't come up with this kind of thing yourself? A sense of its having been there all along waiting to happen may be one mark of a great album, and artist. Although she is generally averse to melodies, Barnett can write them when she wants to. She is not trying to be a British rapper like MIA but rather presents her lyrics like a one-sided conversation with an almost Dylanesque sense of irony. Few artists bear comparison to Dylan, so that alone signifies that there is something unusual happening here.

67. Loud CIty Song (2013) - Julia Holter

I don't pretend to understand everything that I like or admire; in fact, in spite of being the proud possessor of a degree from a music conservatory, I don't understand much of what drives contemporary classical music. But I know what I think is good, great, or not so much. So although I can't entirely explain what Ms. Holter thinks she is doing, I often find it highly effective. It defies genre classification, but belongs to popular music in some sense or other. You could dance to it in the way you can dance to just about anything if you're willing to work out the choreography, but it is more the kind of thing that warrants sitting back with a good set of headphones and zoning out, dropping any expectations about what rock music should be, since it will relentlessly defy them. If Laurie Anderson married Peter Gabriel, Julia might be their daughter. I like some of her other albums too, but this one particularly grabs me.

68. Taking the Long Way (2006) – Dixie Chicks

They were "not ready to make nice" after their 2003 public statement condemning George W. Bush and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was completely justified by everything we learned since, but was loudly criticized by conservatives at the time. But they were ready to make great music on this album. That "don't tell us what to say" attitude perhaps contributes to making this album feel more original and ballsy than Wide Open Spaces. I like them both, but considering how confining the parameters of the Nashville sound tend to be I have chosen only those country albums that seem to me just the slightest bit different in some way, and this one fits that description.

69. Rock a Little (1985) – Stevie Nicks

She does just as the album title says – for a change. And that gets this one onto my list. I'm neither a fan of the Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, nor of their joint outings, nor of her solo work, as a whole. I've made it plain that I don't care much about awards, sales or critical consensus(es? consensi? ask a Latin scholar) all of which suggest that I am tone deaf if not brain dead. Even the warm recommendations of friends and relatives have not made me a Nicks fan. There is something that doesn't sit right about almost every song she's done except "Rhiannon". Yes, I can occasionally be found walking down the street unconsciously mumbling some FM hit, just as I might find myself mouthing "Don't stop... beleeeving..." until I hear myself and gag. But I did a lot of listening, and while I wouldn't call this a stellar album, it fits pretty well at this point on the list. Note that by my criteria, neither FM nor Buckingham/Nicks would qualify for this list of albums "made by women" anyway, so I was evaluating her solo albums only.

70. Aggro-Phobia (1976) – Suzi Quatro

Neither NPR list recognizes any Suzi Quatro album as among the greatest by a woman. While I can't call this one of the great oversights, since her albums vary quite a bit in quality, it is an oversight nonetheless, since this one doesn't. She and guitarist Len Tuckey wrote half the songs, the "Chinnichap" camp (Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn) who provided some of her early hits contributed one, and there are several other excellent covers. (Her dynamite remake of "Heartbreak Hotel" alone is worth the price of the album.) Typical of Quatro and her band, every song has some kind of distinctive touch, even when it is basically straight-up R&R. That is true of her other early albums too, but this one seems to me the most creative and consistent. Aside from just being an excellent album, consider her contribution to women's rock music. She was the first widely recognized female rock band leader, and she was not leading a band of women, but men. She co-wrote a good deal of her own material, sang all the lead vocals, and played the bass. She was a major inspiration to Joan Jett and Tina Weymouth and to countless girls for whom she broke down the doors of the male rock syndicate.

71. The Walking (1987) – Jane Siberry

What an odd patchwork quilt of a legacy she has, and similar in certain respects to some of her Canadian compatriots. She began with some quite folksy albums, migrated to electronics where she did both pop and some more experimental stuff, not to mention a Christmas album and at least one rather sanctimonious if well-meaning set of socio-political commentaries. I can hardly claim to have listened to every note she has recorded, but from what I know she has not surpassed this masterpiece. As usual, I am on my own little island of admiration here, since this disk got neither overwhelming critical praise nor tremendous sales. For me, there is only one possible criticism you could make of it, and that is that if it had been released with Kate Bush's name on the cover no one would have doubted it was authentic. (The Wikipedia entry mentions "Laurie Anderson-style performance art narratives", but those actually occupy a relatively small portion of the album.) Being (or at least sounding) heavily influenced by Kate Bush is not exactly a crime, nor exactly unusual, so get over it and check out the original and (critics once again be damned) very melodic and appealing use to which the style is put here.

72. Breakaway (2004) - Kelly Clarkson

This is a dynamite set of songs, by a singer who set an early standard for American Idol success stories and then veered into a bunch of ideological and personal stuff that we can remain silent about while acknowledging the extraordinary quality of this album. Only Carrie Underwood has been more impressive as a vocalist.

73. Back to Black (2006) - Amy Winehouse

I'm neither jumping on the Winehouse bandwagon, nor do I wish to completely ignore a pretty good set of songs which nicely imitate older styles, and are put over with a certain amount of flair. She was some sort of blue-eyed neo-soul phenomenon and it's too bad she didn't have a chance to develop, though who knows where that would have led.

74. The Idler Wheel Is Wiser... (2012) - Fiona Apple

As I said in my last post, I have come to appreciate Tidal more than I used to, but much of it still sounds to me like she was trying to pick out Laura Nyro tunes on the piano and then wrote a few homages herself. With this album, however, there is no longer a serious question about originality. The more serious question is whether it is rock, jazz or something else. I'm not sure of anything except that it is not obviously modern jazz, therefore it gets a pass as some kind of popular music. Hooks are not exactly the point here, but the sonorities are intriguing, and it gains in sincerity and vision whatever it may give up in direct songwriting appeal. (A last minute note: as I was all set to publish this I heard Apple's Extraordinary Machine for the first time, and might have replaced Idler Wheel with that pick, as I found it immediately appealing in a way that I'm not sure Idler Wheel always is. I might pick them both, but I was done trying to knock albums off the list, or expanding it. I also have some qualms about the process that led to the release of Extraordinary Machine, as it seems to have been comandeered by a group of male producers before the company would let it out. But she still wrote the songs, sang them and played the keyboards, so maybe that is not a major concern. Anyway, it's an excellent album.)

75. Shine (2007) - Joni Mitchell

Let her close it as she opens it. This final studio effort of hers is once again a mark of her genius. Many aging rock and folk-rock stars have moved in the direction of American Songbook tributes, even to roughly a cocktail piano sensibility. But each of them are different and original and do more than simply imitate. That's true of this album too, a mellow but never boring look at the world by a songwriter who no longer needed to prove anything, having pretty much reinvented folk-rock and jazz-rock and set a direction for women in popular music that has continued to be influential for what will soon be half a century. Shine is what she does, brighter than any star on this list and as bright as any popular musician anywhere.

*****

Well, that's it. Without listing every single album by a few stellar artists it was hard to find even 75 “great” albums that are overwhelmingly driven by female artists, so you can imagine why I think the NPR lists of 150 are weighed down by inferior efforts, many of which are there to represent great artists who simply don't have any great albums, or popular artists who are not great. This should answer most of the critics who suggest I must have forgotten someone or other. No, I didn't forget the Indigo Girls, I'm just not impressed enough with any particular aspect of their work, except the non-musical fact that they did what they did with an all-female cast. Did not forget Beyoncé, or Lemonade, she and it are just not my cup of tea. Rihanna's Anti- was on the list until the very last moment when I decided the songwriting and stylistic innovations were just not special enough to displace any of the other entries. I've defended my idiosyncratic opinions often enough in the course of seven pieces on this subject that anyone who reads the whole series would by now have a pretty good idea why I have not included this or that group or album. Now I must let it rest.

Anyway, I'm exhausted after seven posts on this subject (this one alone runs to over 16,000 words), but I still can't claim that I've been exhaustive. Walk into any thrift shop that sells records and CD's – there will be lots by female artists we have not even considered. Lisa Loeb. Lori Lieberman. Jane Olivor. Women whose albums turn up in $1 bins, but the value of their music by no means always corresponds to the price, and I'm by no means certain that some of their efforts don't surpass some of the albums I've selected. And that's just scratching the surface of what I have not had time to consider. There are lots of contemporary artists whose names have not shown up: lesser known songwriters like Rachel Yamagata, better known ones like Regina Spektor. And female artists who are highly popular but so far not recognized on either NPR's two lists or mine: Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Pink, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande. (Since Lady Gaga and Lorde only showed up on the Readers list, who knows if the pop figures just mentioned were only a wee bit behind in the voting?) Not to mention some interesting country artists who I just could not fit in: Iris Dement (Infamous Angel was an early candidate), Roseanne Cash, and Faith Hill, for starters.

It's hard to say where it stops, if it does, because someone is uploading some new work to Spotify or YouTube as you read, and it may be the first and last album they will ever do, but that never says much about its quality. Two examples: (1) While I was in the middle of this project I sat down in a local coffee shop and met a young woman named Sara Kendall; she was working on a video for her latest song. I think she had a total of 14,000 listens on Spotify, the amount that Beyoncé probably gets per minute. I added about a dozen more, and most of what I heard was comparable in style and quality to plenty of much more popular stuff, say, Grimes, Happy Rhodes or St. Vincent. Could she be next? (2) Remember Maxayn, the group I have ranted about periodically, fronted by Maxayn Lewis? Though almost completely forgotten (at least prior to the recent re-release of their albums on CD and streaming services), in the late 1970's I found two of their records in a box of albums I bought for a few bucks, and have been a diehard fan ever since; at least one of their albums would surely be on this list but for the fact that Maxayn Waters is not the only leading musical force on their albums. The point is, there is way more great stuff out there than any listmaker can listen to.

So maybe we should give up then. The trouble is, these lists are fun, and fun is good, as Dr. Seuss reminded us. I have tried to discharge my duty to argue with the NPR (and other similar lists, both older and newer) without becoming as ridiculous as I think their lists are, in part by eliminating one of the most absurd aspects of the project: I make no claim as to a real order of greatness beyond the first half of the list or so, and even there I openly express my doubts. On the value of many individual albums I am pretty certain; others, not so much. I have tried to rescue some gems from obscurity and relegate some overhyped stuff to the dustbins. In the end, it's one man's opinion of women's popular music albums. I hope I have at least given you food for thought, and perhaps some valuable recommendations for listening.

And now (3 or 4 deep breaths) the Parrot can once again turn his attention to other cultural matters. Squawck!

Tone Deaf on Protest Songs? A Kind of Protest Against Loudon Wainwright III's List

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 16:11:00 +0000

In what is no doubt a nod to the Trumped up need for honest-to-goodness protest music, the New York Times saw fit to print a list of "10 Great Protest Songs" suggested by Loudon Wainwright III. Who better to take up the task than this noted folksinger? Yet his picks raise some significant questions about what we mean by "protest song".

Wainright acknowledges that his choices are "extremely subjective, and strong arguments could be made for" songs by other artists. Well... I'm not sure he makes "strong arguments" for his own choices, and I don't know if I'll make any either. But I will make some arguments regarding the term "protest song", and what counts as a clearcut or paradigmatic example of a protest song, which will tend to be arguments against many of his choices. So I hereby interrupt my (apparently endless and obsessive) series on the irksome NPR list of "Music Made By Women" before the long-awaited final post, in which I offer my own list, to offer my own list of protest songs. Yes, it's listmania here on the Lamppost, but don't worry, we will have heavier topics to discuss in the near future. (It is a culture blog, but it feels almost ridiculous to split hairs over the term "protest song" in the wake of pipe bombs, stock market crashes and Boston being up two games in the World Series.)

What is a "protest song"? To me, it's a song whose lyrics call for justice where it is notably missing. It's not a mere complaint or an airing of roughly anti-establishment sentiments. It is not a song that vaguely or passingly alludes to some sort of social issue. If those were enough there would be so many protest songs that the category would lose its meaning. John Lennon's "Imagine" fits all those criteria, and so, perhaps, do a long list of rock, R&B and hip-hop songs. People who want, but can't get no, "Satisfaction" or "Respect" may be protesting something that is roughly a social norm. But we should not call those "protest songs". There are rock protest songs – U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is an obvious one, or the Gang of Four's "Ether" (while we're on the subject of the "troubles") – but these have specific political targets.

It's also the kind of song that anyone can sing, which is to say, it is the songs and not a particular recording that counts. It should not depend much on production values, vocal or instrumental virtuosity or arrangement. Somebody strumming a guitar on a back porch can do it as effectively (or more) as an expensively mastered studio production job or an opera company with orchestra and chorus. I am blown away by Robert Goulet's opera-quality performance, with a gospel chorus, of Lee Hayes's great (but entirely metaphorical) protest song "Healing River", written after the murder of civil rights workers Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman. But the song has as much power in Pete Seeger's much simpler concert performance, and I think an a capella performance by a mediocre singer at a rally on a street corner would be just about equally moving.

Protest songs are meant to grab you, to get your attention, to rouse you to action, not primarily to entertain you. They have to be alluring enough that you can't help listen while they kick you in the pants and say, "Get out there and do something about it!"

But most importantly, a protest song has to be against some form of injustice, and make it's purpose plain. This is what I would call a classic protest song:

          Who will remember, the hands so white and fine
          That touched the finest linen, that poured the finest wine?
          Who will remember, the gentle words they spoke
          To name the lives of two good men, a nuisance or a joke...

Who will remember Judge Webster Thayer

One hand on the gavel, the other resting on his chair

Who will remember the hateful words he said

Speaking to the living in the language of the dead...

          Who will remember the hand upon the switch
          That took the lives of two good men
          In the service of the rich?...

          We will remember this good shoemaker,
          we will remember this poor fish peddlar,
          We will remember all the strong arms and hands,
          That never once found justice in the hands that rule this land.

Ending with the injunction that "all our lives we must struggle to rid the earth of all such crimes", Charlie King's "Two Good Arms", describing the railroading of Sacco and Vanzetti, is more generally a protest song about how the rich manipulate procedural justice to deny it to working people. Many protest songs came directly out of one labor struggle or another, from early ones like "The Man Who Waters the Workers' Beer" and "No Irish Need Apply" to Merle Haggard's "Sixteen Tons". They lay out what is wrong with the social order as it is and demand or at least make obvious the need for change.

The songs, in other words, usually wear their politics on their sleeves. "Healing River", which as I said is highly metaphorical, is an exception; but what is not an exception is that it is intended as a protest against a quite specific act of hatred, violence and racism. That is captured in lines like "wash the blood from off the sand" and "Oh seed of freedom away can flourish" even if it does not explicitly shout "we demand justice for the murdered civil rights workers!". Woody Guthrie wrote protest songs, like "Plane Wreck at Los Gatos", protesting the deplorable treatment of migrant workers. No one could mistake it for anything else.

But some of Loudon Wainwright's choices do not seem to me like "protest songs" at all. The most dubious is "Okie From Muskogee", Merle Haggard's defense of conservative Southern values against the cultural encroachments of hippies and peaceniks. Like "Sweet Home Alabama", it may be a good song but it just barks at the wrong people in the wrong way at the wrong time. It certainly does not demand justice of any sort, but rather takes issue with certain forms of freedom of expression that are themselves more legitimately conceived as "protests" than the song itself. The Lynyrd Skynyrd tune we just mentioned was a swipe at a couple of Neil Young songs, of which at least "Southern Man" does merit the title "protest song". (His "Ohio", about the Kent State massacre, is also a good example.)

The sort of reasoning that would makes Merle Haggard a protest singer would also apply to John Lennon's "Revolution" – it protests annoying Maoist demonstrators who fail to understand how a popular movement wins the hearts and minds of ordinary people. If that social complaint counts as "protest" it opens the door to almost any complaint at all as a "protest song", which takes the term way too literally. The Jagger/Richards song "Mother's Little Helper" is a protest against overprescription of Valium, or frozen food, or something. There are a zillion "protest songs" about unfair lovers (or former lovers). Everything's a "protest song" if there's something it's against, in this literal sense. But that's not what we mean by "protest song".

I start to get the impression that Wainwright's op-ed piece has a subtext when he offers as his last choice "America the Beautiful". Wainwright claims that, "Last year my friend Chaim Tannenbaum unearthed and recorded an unexpurgated version", and he reproduces the following lines:

America, America

God shed his grace on thee

Till selfish gain no longer stain

The banner of the free.

and

Till nobler men keep once again

thy shining jubilee.

He comments: "Clearly the anthem was as much a protest as a prayer." Well, first let me say that Chaim Tannenbaum did a fine thing recording the verses he did; moreover, he's an inspiration to me – a philosophy professor (hello) and lifelong folk musician (hello) who released his first album at 68 (I released one at 43 but my next one will be at 68 if I don't get cracking). So I will be the last to say anything bad about him, but if Wainwright's choice of this song is in part motivated by the chance to promote his friend (he also records and produces with Tannenbaum, and his first wife Kate McGarrigle is close friends with him as well) it makes it a bit suspect.

In fact, the original verses of "America the Beautiful" were not exactly "unearthed" by anyone, since the song's history has never been unavailabe if you wanted to read about it. Moreover, what we might call this "unexpurgated" version is far from being a "protest song". First of all, the lovely lyrics about "selfish gain" – without a clear target in the first place – were removed by the author herself (Katharine Lee Bates) in the next published version (1904) and replaced with,

Till all success be nobleness

And ev'ry gain divine

Whatever "selfish gain" was referred to in the first version, clearly the author did not have any wild anti-capitalist sentiments in writing those lines. Moreover, the second couplet is cited inaccurately: it was "thy whiter jubilee" (not "shining" jubilee) that "nobler men" were supposed to keep "once again". This couplet too was later replaced by the author, with the well-known final lines,

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

Bates may well have had fine sentiments about equality and Christian beneficence, but what comes through in the original lyrics and any later version is just the anodyne injunction to use whatever you gain for good purposes. That's not a protest song, by my lights.

Some of Wainwright's more traditional "protest" picks are questionable models of this genre. Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes" is, sure, a protest song of a sort, but about some fairly vague gripe like conformity ("And the people in the houses / all went to the university / where they were put in boxes / and they came out all the same"). But if you're going to pick a Malvina Reynolds protest song there are so many others to choose from. For instance:

It isn't nice to block the doorway

It isn't nice to go to jail

There are nicer ways to do it

But the nice ways always fail

It isn't nice, it isn't nice

You told us once, you told us twice

But if that's freedom's price

We don't mind, we don't mind

Recorded by Judy Collins, it's a rousing call to civil disobedience against war and racism. That's what I would call a real "protest song", one of the relatively rare ones in which protest itself is the song's central theme.

There are so many clearcut examples of protest songs, with the most famous of all being "The Internationale", a protest song translated into dozens of languages. "Arise ye prisoners of starvation, arise ye wretched of the earth... No more starvation's chain will bind us... etc." – this is Protest Song #1; it is also Unity Song #1, a related category that does not always overlap (more on that later). I don't get why Wainwright is inclined to offer up songs with half-baked complaints when the folk song literature alone contains probably hundreds of examples of clearcut, serious protest songs.

His choice of "We Shall Overcome" illustrates another difficulty with the concept "protest song". Lyrically it is more an affirmation of unity and spiritual strength than a protest against anything in particular. It is most likely derived from spirituals that were a form of protest but also a form of religious worship. But it played a great role in the Civil Rights movement – surely a protest movement – and in many other struggles in the U.S. and around the world. Is it a "protest song" in virtue of having become associated with protests? I don't know if there is an answer to that question, but it is worth considering whether something can evolve into a "protest" song regardless of the lyrics or original intent. If so, then perhaps the old Mexican folk song "De Colores" is now a protest song in virtue of its adoption as an anthem and rallying song by the United Farm Workers union. Pete Seeger's "My Rainbow Race" is clearly a protest song of sorts, but against what – nuclear annihilation? – is not all that clear; but it has lately become associated with protests against global warming, due to lyrics the refer to the human race being bound together by "One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping at our shore." This is a version of so-called "folk process", a song gathering new meanings as it is put to different uses.

Personally I would generally be inclined to characterize the nature of a song by its original purpose. But many spirituals were rewritten by civil rights activists, and these may convey a protest in their revised form. "We Shall Not Be Moved", "Woke Up This Morning" and "Wasn't That a Mighty Storm" are some examples off the top of my head. Whereas "Down By the RIverside" is a spiritual that had a clear protest (antiwar) message from the beginning.

There are a large number of older songs sung by slaves with a freedom message under the surface, like "Joshua Fit the Batte of Jericho" and "Raise a Ruckus". But I don't know if we want to call every song written partly in the spirit of resistance a "protest song". It might be better to say that sometimes singing a protest song is too risky, so resistance is captured in the implicit meanings of songs that lacked any explicitly contentious statements. Much of Latin American nueva cancion consisted in such subtly disguised songs that channeled the desire for freedom, equality and change under oppressive dictatorships that violently suppressed explicit dissent. Here we can see that the term "protest song" can have many gray areas, for nueva cancion should probably be thought of as "protest music" but many of the most famous songs of the genre say nothing controversial at all. Perhaps the most famous song of all is Violeta Parra's "Gracias a la Vida" – explicitly it is a joyous celebration of life. "Protest song" would be a difficult label to pin on it, though when Mercdes Sosa sings her all but mournful version of it we get a different impression.

There are also many songs that affirm some great cause –"El Pueblo Unido", for instance, or "If I Had a Hammer – without protesting anything specific. It is easy to confute songs that were used as rallying points for protest movements because some of the lyrics, or the song's history, communicated a sympatico message, with songs that actually protest something. We might take a cue from the title of Tom Glazer's book, Songs of Peace, Freedom and Protest – there are plenty of songs of peace and freedom that are not explicitly songs of protest, though one is at liberty to infer (and probably should) that people don't generally sing about peace and freedom when there is not some lack of one or both to protest.

A subtle protest can be achieved in many ways, but not, for example, merely by using the word "freedom" somewhere in a song. Songs like "Oh Freedom" and "Freedom Road" do not just say "let's be free", they mention the particular form of oppression they are opposing (slavery, and both racism and fascism, respectively). Richie Havens' version of "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", in which he sings the word "freedom" again and again, is not exactly a protest song, but performed on the stage of the Woodstock Music Festival it certainly seemed like it was. His "Handsome Johnny" is a protest song which sounds like a 2classic antiwar song. Listen again! Most of it is a protest against the need to bear arms, to defend freedom by force. The verses that mention the wars in Korea and Vietnam may have slightly different meanings than the others in which wars or struggles against oppression are the subject.

Wainwright counsels us to listen to Garland Jeffreys (another friend of his? I mean, two progressive, witty New York area folksingers with long careers behind them... just sayin') – in particular his Don't Call Me Buckwheat, the album and the song. I appreciate the reference, since I don't know his music well enough and my impression so far is that it is damn good (I just downloaded a couple of his recent albums to my Spotify offline collection). But I would hesitate to pick out one of the many songs Jeffreys has written about race, class and society as the protest song to listen to on these perennial issues. Isn't "Strange Fruit" a bit more obvious a choice of protest songs about racism? And there are other modern folk classics on this subject, notably David Masengill's "Number One in America". (I also find Pierce Pettis's song "Legacy" very moving. It's a little hard to come by, though, and it may be an example of yet another type of social justice song that is not quite a "protest" song – it's rather a lament, about the sordid history that artificially divides poor whites and poor blacks.)

Like Jeffreys, the entire 2-tone movement in British rock, the Rock Against Racism groups and other trends in British punk rock and ska often addressed racism head on. The issue with using the term "protest song" here is roughly the same as with using it for Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On? It's a fantastic thing that one of the greatest albums ever made is a lengthy panegyric on social issues. But it has a bit too much value as pure entertainment and a bit too artsy an attitude to also fit neatly under the category of protest music. We can love and appreciate the songs for their embedded social messages as well as their musical genius without dubbing them "protest songs".

Cheryl Wheeler is another songwriter worth more of my attention than I've given her (even after a year of listening primarily to music by female songwriters), and once again I have to thank Mr. Wainwright for bringing her work to our attention. But her song "If It Were Up to Me", one of his "10 GreatProtest Songs", consists mainly of one line: "Maybe it's the..." repeated dozens of times, each line ending with a different cultural reference, with no clear connection between them. Some have a relationship to gun violence ("drugs", "skinheads", etc.) but many don't. Finally, at the end of the song she declares "if it were up to me I'd take away the guns". Okay, goood, me too. That's another "protest song" that protests everything and nothing. It's not clear from the song why Wheeler would "take away the guns", though one can always provide one's own reasons. According to her (apparently self-written) Wikipedia page the song got a lot of attention after the Columbine High School massacre. As I said, a lot of songs that do not really fit the profile of a "protest" song get associated with certain protest movements (in this case, the gun control movement, considered as a protest against inaction on controlling the availability of guns) due to a certain sympathetic line or feeling. I don't know if I agree with Wainright that that one line at the end of the song "says it all". Personally I would take away the Second Ammendment; maybe that says it all.

Another pick of his is one of Tom Lehrer's send-ups of the arms race, "We WIll All Go Together When We Go". I mean, I've been a fan since I was about 12, but a humorous, tongue in cheek, clever, ironic "protest song" is... come to think of it, not that unusual. There is Joe Hill's "Pie in the Sky", Country Joe's "Fixin'-to-die Rag", Phil Ochs' "Draft Dodger Rag", even oddball "protests" like Steve Goodman's "The Lincoln Park Pirates". Lehrer is a kind of Jonathan Swift of folk music. Still, if you're picking just ten protest songs I'm not sure that his sardonic humor makes the grade. If it does, then Tom Paxton's "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation" is perhaps a more poignant bit of protest sarcasm, one that directly spits in the face of Presidential hypocrisy:

I got a letter from LBJ that said this is your lucky day

It's time to get your khaki trousers on

We've got a job for you to do, Dean Rusk has caught the Asian flu

And we are sending you to Vietnam

And Lyndon Johnson told the nation

Have no fear of escalation

We are trying everyone to please

And though it isn't really war

We're sending 50,000 more

To help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese.

Wainwright overlooks so many obvious choices of protest music, both the singers and the songs, that if I didn't know better I'd say he was new to the genre. Nothing written or made famous by Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Josh White, Pete Seeger, Odetta, the Weavers or many other singers of protest music makes his list; ditto for Tom Paxton, Joan Baez, Buffy Saint-Marie or Judy Collins, to name a few of the folk revival protest songs of the sixties. Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, The Mighty Sparrow and the entire output of Cuban and Puerto Rican protest singers are overlooked as well. In rock, Eric Burdon, Neil Young, Tom Robinson and many others are passed over for his obscure choices. Cheryl Wheeler's somewhat dubious entry stands in for a large and for a time prominent feminist folk trend (Holly Near, Cris Williamson, etc.) that produced many clear examples of protest songs. Tracy Chapman? Nina Simone? I really wouldn't care who he missed in a list of ten songs if only he had picked ten clear examples of protest songs. He apparently wanted to do a protest song list for the Trump era, but he seems to be all over the place and nowhere at the same time.

Ok, enough protesting his list! I guess I'm glad he did it, even if I am nonplussed by the choices. Let's have a go at what I would call a list of protest songs that are (a) models of the genre, in having some particular form of injustice as a direct and explicit target (b) terrific, inspiring songs in their own right (c) capable of being sung or performed by almost anyone, anywhere, and (d) free of pretenses about entertainment value, other than to move an audience on the strength of a cry for justice.

1. Viva La Quince Brigada – A song of the Spanish Civil War, recorded several times by Pete Seeger. One of the outstanding songs that directly targets fascism, it declares: "We fought against the mercenaries and the fascists... but on the Jarama front we had no tanks, no canons... We are leaving Spain to go on fighting on other fronts." If they're still up for it I think there's a job to do in Washington.

2. Masters of War – Bob Dylan, to music arranged by Jean Ritchie. He was young and brash and suffered no fools, warmongers or hypocrites. "You fasten the triggers / for the others to fire / then you set back and watch / while the death count gets higher..." and on and on like that. A riposte against the military-industrial complex as a whole, it is possibly the most damning protest song of its type ever written.

3. Is There Anybody Here? – Phil Ochs. "Is there anybody here who'd like to change his clothes into a uniform?" is the lead-in to one of the most powerful antiwar songs I know. Ochs wrote so many great protest songs that the choice of any one seems arbitrary.

4. It Isn't Nice – Judy Collins, written by Malvina Reynolds. Discussed above.

5. Last Train to Nuremburg – Tom Paxton. I'd have to quote the entire thing. A direct strike on war criminals of all sorts, from rogue soldiers to the Presidents who dispatched them.

6. Save the Whales – Country Joe MacDonald, to roughly the tune of "What Shall We Do WIth the Drunken Sailor?". There are many good songs that raise consciousness about the effects of whale hunting, including an excellent one by Yes, the progressive rock group. But this much simpler Country Joe song rips the whaling industry apart almost like they do to the whales themselves, pointing out that romantic notions whaling from older times no longer apply: "A modern ship and a modern crew, with sonarscopes and exploding harpoons, a mechanical boat made out of steel, a floating machine going to kill the whales."

7. Now That the Buffalo's Gone – Buffy Saint-Marie. The kind of song that just about leaves you speechless, a hundred essays on the oppression of Native Americans folded into a few brilliant lyrics, with equally moving music behind them.

8. Freedom Road – lyrics by Langston Hughes, music by Emerson Harper, recorded most famously by Josh White. "United we stand, divided we fall / Let’s make this land safe for one and all / I’ve got a message, and you know it’s right / Black and white together unite and fight / That’s why I’m marching, yes, I’m marching / Marching down freedom’s road / Ain’t no fascists gonna stop me, no Nazis gonna keep me / From marching down freedom’s road." Hughes takes on domestic racism, Nazi racism, racism in the armed forces and international fascism in the dynamic sweep of his lyrics, and the music is almost enough to make you get up and run down to the recruiting center to sign up.

9. Bourgeois Blues – Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly). "Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs / We heard the white man say "I don't want no niggers up there" /
Lord, in a bourgeois town." A plainspoken invective against housing discrimination in Washington D.C., this use of the blues for overt political protest is somewhat of a contrast to the more frequent airing of troubles that may be a result of poverty and racism without being directly attributed to a political cause.

10. The Ballad of Hurrican Carter – Bob Dylan. Than which there is no more powerful indictment of living "in a land where justice is a game". Sing it again every time a black prisoner is set free after wasting his or her life doing time for a crime they did not commit; every time cops are found to have engaged in racial profiling; every time the real criminals lie on the witness stand to pin blame on someone else; every time an unconstitutional "stop and frisk" operation is carried out.

11. I Don't Want Your Millions, Mister – Jim Garland. "We worked to build this country, Mister / While you enjoyed a life of ease / You've stolen all that we built, Mister / Now our children starve and freeze". A protest song if ever there was one.

I guess I don't count as well as Loudon – I had two #5's and decided I couldn't give any of these up. Like him, I admit the subjectivity of my list, which represents my own tastes in music as well as lyrics. I believe it could be replaced with ten equally valid choices, some of which I have mentioned above. But I don't think you can call any of my picks dubious or idiosyncratic choices of protest songs; they are all paradigmatic, and pretty widely known and sung, examples of the genre. They might be a bit incongruous on the Times' Op-Ed page, especially if they appeared alongside some of the neo-con writers that the Times in its infinite fairness and wisdom chooses to provide a platform for. I guess you could say that for Wainwright's list too.

List and You Shall Hear VI: The "Readers" Sing a Different Tune

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 14:00:00 +0000

After posting on and off for about a year in response to NPR's "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women", curated by Ann Powers and a host of NPR and Lincoln Center music business pros, I was just about ready to publish my own (more or less dissenting) list when NPR followed with a new list based on a "Reader's Poll". The "Readers" (aren't they actually "listeners"? or is that a dumb question when people are more likely to read media web sites than listen to the radio?) came up with a substantially different list of albums. So that has diverted me into a separate commentary - brief, but only by my verbose standards!

In certain ways the "Readers" have improved on the "Pros" list (as I shall call them, respectively, throughout this post). For a few examples:

Tori Amos shows up multiple times, as she should, even if the specific album choices wouldn't be mine; while she may suffer from the perception of being America's answer to Kate Bush, she is to my mind one of the most brilliant artists on the music scene in the last 25 years and deserves far more recognition than was accorded by the inclusion of only her first solo album, Little Earthquakes.
Though they retained the Pros' Joni Mitchell picks (which I disputed in my third post) they added several others of hers which are to my mind superior.
Again, while they kept Bjork's Post, they awarded a higher place to Homogenic, clearly a better album musically.
Madonna's Ray of Light and her first album are there and Like a Prayer is not, another way in which the readers have demonstrated that quality known as taste that is supposed to be the province of music critics. In reality, the latter are just as often moved by extraneous factors that the ordinary listener neither knows nor cares about.
Joan Osborne's Relish has been accorded its rightful place; Alanis Morisette's Jagged Little Pill seemed a bit lonely without its companion on the Pros list.
P.J. Harvey's To Bring You My Love makes the list; although the Readers recognized other albums of hers that I am sort of meh about, at least they included this most listenable product of her unique style.
Neko Case's two best albums are duly recognized; it was difficult to fathom how the Pros managed to neglect her brilliant work, both as solo artist and with The New Pornographers (since the Pros included many not-really-made-primarily-by-women albums in their list).
Mary Chapin Carpenter has been added (twice), as she should have been to begin with; and while I regret their dropping Iris Dement and Miranda Lambert, overall I am more pleased than not to see the likes of Carpenter and Brandi Carlisle added.
Janelle Monáe: how on earth (!) did the critics and other Pros miss her? With their long list of neo-soul albums and their willingness to indulge electronica of various sorts, what the heck were they thinking by not including some of the most interesting R&B, or popular music of any kind, in decades?
Ditto St. Vincent! Her first two albums, though difficult to classify, are a new standard of some sort, and an inspiration to artists trying to find that space between underimagined and overreaching. The Pros managed to jump all over Beyoncé's latest but somehow missed this more original, and by now somewhat time-tested, recording. (My hunch is that in this visual age critics, no less than the average teenager with a cell phone, think they are evaluating music when they are actually evaluating videos. My remarks in all these posts are directed to the music alone. I can post about the 150 Greatest Rock Videos Made By Women another time. Video content is irrelevant to musical content, period.)
Whether out of intuition or ignorance, the Readers made almost no attempt to include classical, jazz or world music choices. I said it was a bad idea to include albums of incommensurable musical styles and give them a rank in a list. Once again the Readers exercised better judgment than the Pros.

Aside from that, the Readers, who are clearly less knowledgable about the history of popular music, omitted a number of obscure choices, like Robyn's Body Talk or Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band, ESG's Come Away With ESG, Bikini Kill's Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, etc., as well as passing on some earlier pop idols like Chaka Khan, Teena Marie and Shania Twain. All fine with me.

One other notable difference between the lists is that the Readers seemed to be picking their favorite artists and sticking with them, rather than trying to be nice to every female who has ever made some recordings. Thus not only are there several albums each by Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos, Laura Nyro, Kate Bush, Bonnie Raitt, Madonna and Erykah Badu, but the Readers squeezed in three albums by the relatively new artist St. Vincent, four by both Taylor Swift and her antithesis PJ Harvey, and at least two each by Janis Joplin, Norah Jones, Janelle Monáe, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Florence and the Machine, Sade, Beyoncé, The Pretendeers, Janet Jackson and quite a few others. In short, the Readers list includes a lot fewer artists and recognizes the best albums by these artists at the expense of the best efforts by other artists. In part this reflects the space opened up by the Readers' exclusion of most albums outside the English-speaking folk/pop/soul mainstream. But it also reflects the non-curated nature of the list: without the gravitational pull of professional experience and responsibility, people were free to just list their favorite stuff by their favorite artists. But that also means that some unfamiliar efforts that represent greater achievements than the latest Taylor Swift album were simply ignored in favor of whatever turns people on at the moment.

In spite of their many improvements, the Readers list suffers from some of the same flaws as the Pros list. On many of the albums women are not the primary musical drivers: Blondie, the Cocteau Twins, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Fleetwood Mac are albums where women were either equals, or simply sang (most of) the lead vocals, with the album in most other respects being a product of male musicians. The Readers even added Cheap Thrills, on which Janis Joplin contributed vocals for a pre-existing band and did not have creative control over the album (which is why she went on to form her own bands for her next two albums). Grace Slick's outstanding songwriting, singing and instrumental contributions for Jefferson Airplane are still not recognized, even though the bar has still been set very low for what constitutes music "made by women". She is literally the first person who should come to mind when the phrase "women and rock" is uttered, and if the Airplane's albums and the later release of material by Slick's earlier band The Great Society are not included, the same criteria should be applied to the whole list.

Moreover, while chucking some older pop singers with little staying power, a lot of more recent teenage pop is catapulted into top positions: Carly Rae Jepsen, Lady Gaga, Lorde and others now join the list, and Adele and Taylor Swift are further exalted. Also, some classic album choices are probably based more on well known titles (Nina Simone's I Put a Spell On You, Grace Jones' Nightclubbing) than on serious critical comparison with their own or other artists' work. And while I might agree that much of the neo-soul that finds its way into the original NPR list is overrated there, some of those artists make more sense in a list of 150 albums than many of the newer selections on the Readers list.

The same standard but dubious critical evaluations show up as before:

Blue (once again) is not Joni Mitchell's best album, good as it may be; indeed, the critical history of selecting it as the number one album by a woman is so overwhelming at this point that the choice can no more be considered objective than the choice of "Stairway to Heaven" as the best classic rock song (it is not even the best Led Zeppelin song, much less the greatest rock song).
No matter how often it is lauded, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is not Lucinda Williams' best album, though it strains at every seam to equal Sweet Old World.
Although I'm happy with Homogenic as the Bjork album of choice, the ubiquitous and overrated Post is still there. The inclusion and high rank of Vespertine is less standard and a bit bizarre.
Patti Smith's Horses is once again picked, presumably as an icon, not an album, because as an album it has not gotten any better than it was; though I appreciate the posting of a reader's comment that demonstrates exactly this point: "it gives precisely zero f***s how you or anyone feels about it. It is the embodiment of punk." Okay; it is anything but "the embodiment of punk", and there are a lot of albums that give "precisely zero fucks" how we feel about them, which makes them... what? Sociopathic?
Marianne Faithfull's Broken English shows up again. While it is hard to say exactly why Horses commands so much attention, Broken English is on both Pros and Readers lists for obvious reasons: it has a memorable single, and it is the only well-known album by a woman who had more than a minor place in the history of rock and roll. For all that, it is not, in its entirety, a particularly impressive album. Neither the album nor the single sold very well in either the U.K. or the U.S. It also once again raises the question, "Just what do you mean by 'Made By Women'"? Three of the songs were co-written (with many other writers) by Faithfull, the rest by men, while men played all the instruments as well as doing the producing, engineering and just about everything else.
Kate Bush is an important and extremely influential artist with some great individual songs, but as I will argue in my next post, I don't see much that fits the bill for great albums. The one that comes closest for me is not on the list.
Sinead O'Connor's I Do Not What What I Haven't Got is again chosen.

All of these are respectable artists, but the judgment about their best work, both from critics generally, the NPR Pros and the Readers, is just off, in my never very humble or popular opinion.

Worst of all (and a bit too politely acknowledged by Ann Powers in her introductory essay), in spite of the welcome inclusion of two more Laura Nyro albums, and more Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox as well, the Readers list has a ridiculously strong slant towards contemporary artists, suggesting that the vast majority of the voters were 20-somethings only vaguely familiar with the history of popular music. Lana Del Ray unsurprisingly gets the nod from the readers, while Suzanne Vega, who could give her songwriting lessons, is again nowhere to be found; nor is Judy Collins, though offbeat contemporary folk entries like the annoying Joanna Newsom and sullen Cat Power get on this list. Joan Armatrading, the game-changing British rocker, is still excluded, and Fanny, duly recognized by the pros, have been inexplicably nixed; but the more currently hip Melissa Ethridge, who owes a lot to those great pioneers, is included instead. Fiona Apple and St. Vincent are each recognized multiple times, which I might not object to except that Siouxsie and the Banshees are infuriatingly knocked off the list altogether. Brandi Carlisle's 2007 album The Story is now on the list as the 72^nd greatest album made by a woman – is that supposed to mean that it is better than any album by Janis Ian, who is again perversely excluded? Such judgments can't be taken seriously. In fact, while I like some of them okay, are the various contemporary folk entries better than every album by Shawn Colvin, Lucy Kaplansky, Beth Orton, Dar Williams, Amy Speace, Gillian Welch or several other songwriting women in the folk tradition who are not on the list? The folksinger-songwriter entries have been picked by people who don't have the background, interest or patience to discover many of the artists on whose shoulders their second-rate choices stand.

And those are only the more interesting contemporary additions. Multiple listings for Taylor Swift is a joke: her trite lyrics and formulaic country-pop do not display a shred of uniqueness or originality; she takes no risks whatsoever, not in her puerile complaints about relationships, nor the melodic or harmonic structure of her songs, nor in her production values. As a singer she is not the equal of either country divas like Reba McEntire or Carrie Underwood, nor of pop idols like Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera. The idea that anything she does is the best of any kind of music at all is utter nonsense; at most she gets honorable mention for being a prolific songwriter at a young age. But Swift is possibly slightly less guilty of pandering to immature tastes than Carly Rae Jepsen, whose pure fluff E*MO*TION of 2015 stands at an incredible #42 on the readers' list of greatest albums by women! Did someone drop a couple of digits in that ranking? Also, two albums by Lorde?! On the basis of what highly original creative contribution? At least Britney Spears fell off the chart, but one feels that that is less a result of more discerning tastes than the substitution of the current moment in Top 40 trash for its earlier incarnations. (Where's Abba, anyway?)

So this list is in no way any more definitive than the Pros list, even if it does swap out some bad choices for some good ones. Which is not surprising, if you compare it with other radio listener polls. People know what they like; that's terrific, but it lacks both the breadth and the depth of music critics' judgment. The critics, on the other hand, suffer from not only their own bizarre individual prejudices but an equal and opposite feeling of not wanting to be seen as too far from mainstream opinion, at risk of sounding ignorant. And both Readers and Pros, frankly, don't consistently judge albums even when they claim to be doing so; they tend to praise an albums with a couple of outstanding songs even when the product as a whole is not particularly noteworthy. Avoiding that fallacy will be one of my goals in my own list. Stay tuned.

*****

Here, then, is my response to the Readers' choices, to the extent that they differ from those of the Pros. I'll highlight a few of them that may make my own list as well.

#9, Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes; #17. Boys for Pele; #40. Under the Pink; #123. Scarlet's Walk

Little Earthquakes moves up from its position on the Pros list, and the others make a new appearance. While I no longer think Boys For Pele is her best album, it was the first Tori Amos album I owned, and there is a sequence of four songs on it, including "Hey, Jupiter" and "Caught a Light Sneeze", that made me a lifelong fan. I wish the whole album were that good, but that would be like asking for another Tapestry. There are few songwriters, male or female, who have four such brilliant songs on a single album. Scarlet's Walk seems to me roughly as good as From the Choirgirl Hotel, Unrepentant Geraldines and a couple of her other albums, in terms of the number of really outstanding cuts on it. But Abnormally Attracted to Sin is her masterpiece, brilliant almost all the way through, so I am baffled at its failure to be included by either the Pros or Readers.

#13, Taylor Swift, 1989; #19, Reputation; #33, Red; #148, Fearless

On a mission to inform the world of every single thought she has ever had about every single relationship she has ever been in, or imagined being in, whether it is of the slightest emotional or philosophical interest or not, Swift offers a slew of rigidly formulaic Nashville-style pop tunes to those who need a musical accompaniment for their fried chicken and apple pie. Calling her prolific would be both obvious and misleading: on Fearless alone I counted five songs that are entirely or in part carbon copies of her hit "You Belong with Me". (The album title is not exactly original either; since Family's brilliant 1971 album Wikipedia lists 17 other albums by that title.) There are other prolific songwriters, from Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Laura Nyro and Van Morrison to Freedy Johnston, Tori Amos and Michael Stipe, and they do not sound like they are channeling the same idea again and again. Country pop does have a limited stylistic range in general, but Swift just goes on and on with the same song structures, same syntax, same production, again and again. Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to buy a few copies of each of these albums, as she contributes a lot of money to disaster relief, school arts programs and children's causes – the only reasons I can think of to own any of them. (Oh, dash it, true confessions time: I picked up up the Platinum version of Fearless in a thrift shop for $1; I suppose there are worse objects taking up space on my shelf. And I do have a copy of Red too... bought it for one of my kids, when I thought they still listened to CD's and liked Taylor Swift. Turns out they didn't, and they don't.)

#20 (tied with Hejira, of all things), Joanna Newsom, Ys; #150, Have One on Me

From the predictable and formula-bound Swift we move on to the endlessly rambling and improvisational Newsom, whose voice seems as little tethered to any vocal tradition I can think of as her songwriting does to the concept of verse and chorus. Where does all this leave us? I infer from the listener comments on the YouTube version of Have One on Me (her albums are not available on Spotify) that she has admirers who have actually played her 2+ hour album more than once, but I would need an awful lot of free time to join that group. I'm good with concept albums (see below, Janelle Monae's The Archandroid for one example). But too much of her work seems to just drift by, making no particular attempt to engage the listener's attention, giving expression rather to her lyrical and musical whims, as if someone were handed a long poem, given the instruction "Sing this!" and put in front of a microphone. There are a few tracks that do feel a bit more compositionally integrated, like something by the roughly sympatico Decembrists. But beyond that, the problem with these albums is that she has opted to let her thin and frankly uninteresting voice carry almost the entire weight of the vocals. Those who admire her, if they have any interest in the singing at all, must be taken with the absence of tone or inflection rather than any any positive quality of it. The improvement in her voice after surgery, which has been widely commented on, is just the thickening of the most wirey reed into something ever so slightly more robust. Dylan's voice was not great, but his singing style was very interesting and became highly influential. I don't get anything like that here; it's like listening to half a voice, with a lot of lethargic background instrumentation. As for the lyrics, they are certainly not formulaic, but they do include a good number of clichés, and there is a certain smugness to some of them that I don't really appreciate. Thus, to put it mildly, I do not get the elevation of Ys to the 20^th greatest female-made album, and I don't even think either of these would be bringing up the rear at #150 on my own list.

#22, Bonnie Raitt, Nick of Time; #96, Luck of the Draw; #97 (tied), Give It Up

Every once in a while in this project I feel like I'm walking on hallowed ground and spitting out chewing gum rather than showing the expected reverence. So how do I say this? I own three Bonnie Raitt albums – two of the ones selected by the Readers, and another, Sweet Forgiveness (a response to John Prine's Sweet Revenge?) I have played all of them often enough, and heard others as well. I've seen her in concert. But I do not consider myself a Bonnie Raitt fan. Why? Because as likable as the albums are, as strong and gutsy as her voice is, as much as I respect her being a longstanding female musical force in a male-dominated industry, there is hardly a song I have ever heard from her that grabs me by the throat and and screams "creative genius", or anything very close to that. Sheryl Crow and many others may owe her an arm and a leg, but there are at least a dozen Sheryl Crow songs that make me sit up and pay attention every time I hear them. Bonnie Raitt's music, both her own songs (from none to 4 or 5 per album) and her chosen covers, seem like perfect background music for a barbecue or informal cocktail party; they demand no more attention than you would normally pay to standard lyrics, standard chord changes, and well executed, slightly bluesy vocal lines. In 40 years of listening to her I have not been able to say whether I am listening to folk, country, rock or the blues; but I can say that each of those genres has artists and albums that excite me, while Raitt's work, when I am trying to do more than just let it be, always leaves me waiting for the spark to ignite a flame. It is not out of the question that a collection of the most interesting songs from her 17 studio albums (so far) might be a wake-up call. But as for the three albums here, my issue with them as picks for this list can be gleaned from the Wikipedia comment: "In 1989, after several years of critical acclaim but little commercial success, she had a major hit with the album Nick of Time." So, both Pros and Readers zeroed in on the "major hit" which was a "commercial success", and the Readers added a follow-up "commercial success" (Luck of the Draw) and, finally, what is probably a better album than either of those, her second (1972) album, Give It Up. Honestly I find only shades of difference between any of her albums; they are all pretty much on a par. All good, when you're in the mood. Great tracks that I want to hear again and again I don't really find on these three or any of the ones I've heard.

#25, Sleater-Kinney, DigMe Out; #129, The Woods

Given the content of the two NPR lists I am happy, on the whole, to see Sleater-Kinney promoted to the Top 25. I had commented in a previous post that their #81 position did not seem to correspond to their achievement. They were far from the first all-female punk band, nor were they one of the original Riot grrrl bands. They were simply the most musically interesting and successful of the many all-female or female-led neo-punk bands in 1990's. Adding The Woods is a courageous choice, but I tend to want to walk a fine line with groups that spend a lot of their time in vocal assaults – they need to deliver some solid music behind the screamo stuff. Dig Me Out definitely has it, not so sure about The Woods.

#26, Melissa Etheridge, Yes I Am; #77, Melissa Etheridge

No surprise that the Readers picked Yes I Am, the one with her power-pop hit "I'm the Only One". The earlier Melissa Ethridge is pretty good too, and so are some of her other albums. I mean, she is channeling Pat Benatar and other earlier female rockers, including Joan Armatrading, as well as more contemporary voices like Alanis Morisette and Sheryl Crow, so the challenge is to say which albums represent the very best of this trend. One thing that has to be acknowledged, but not overweighted, is her fearlessly aggressive lesbian romanticism. She is far from the first openly lesbian singer-songwriter but she sort of took it to a new level with her hard-driving female-to-female love songs. (She didn't "officially" come out until the later Yes I Am but her sexual preference was known, or "rumored" as it is diplomatically put, well before that.) By itself it doesn't make an album better or worse but it adds a touch of gutsyness that generates more heat than a standard pop love song. Last thing: I am a lot more partial to her bluesy inflections than I am to those of Annie Lennox, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt or Florence Welch. She doesn't sort of wander into them for lack of a better melody, she inhabits them.

#28, Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood; #127, Middle Cyclone

Fox is such an obvious choice it makes you think the Pros need to have their credentials examined for having overlooked it. Middle Cyclone is just about as good; I'd rank it a lot higher than #127. You want to know how to continue the folk tradition into the 21^st century, losing none of the authenticity but capturing its feelings and sounds in a more modern way? Done. Next case.

#31 Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel... (long title); #45, When the Pawn... (even longer title); #70, Tidal (full tidal, I mean, title)

I admit to having pretty much neglected Apple's later work and not really appreciated Tidal prior to engaging with these NPR lists. While she has been characterized as an angry-young-woman songwriter, I suspect it was me who was more angry when Tidal came out in 1996, being a 40-something musician struggling to make my first album and bleeding cash when along comes this so-called "child prodigy" (she wrote the album at 17) from the Upper East Side getting promoted all over the place with her melodramas and whatnot. Gave it a listen, shrugged, forgot about it. Okay, I'm over the grudge. Tidal holds up as one of the most original and interesting products of that decade; and The Idler Wheel... is just about as forceful a musical statement for the 2010's. Indeed, it is one of the boldest musical statements I've ever heard that still keeps a toehold in the pop idiom. I do like When the Pawn, too, but it slides more easily into a neo-soul and quasi-jazz genre that makes it less daring and exceptional, for me, than the other two. I have to credit the Readers with forcing the issue about her two later albums, as the Pros stuck conservatively with Tidal. With her last album being six years old now, and she being still quite young, one hopes that there is more to come from her in the future.

#34, Lorde, Melodrama; #51 (tied), Pure Heroine

I mean, it's hard to dislike Lorde, she does not exactly pander to rock bottom tastes as some other pop singers do; but what makes either of these a particularly great album, one for the historical record books? Nothing that I can hear. I do think that for all their superior choices, the Readers are awfully prone to think that New + Good = Great. This is the vein in which Lorde and many others seem to be recognized.

#42, Carly Rae Jepsen, E*MO*TION

Whatever the deconstructive qualities of the title may be, the only emotion I really feel in listening to this is sadness, at someone wasting what might conceivably be some hidden songwriting talent on the creation of pop tunes so trite that Taylor Swift fans might find them vapid. Not long ago I attended a reading by several rock critics in which one young woman touted this as a kind of landmark album. I didn't get it then, and I don't now, though it may indeed be a new low of some sort (or it may just be that rock criticism has hit a new low). All surface, no depth, to put it as gently as I can. It tells you what sort of "Readers" are checking in when this ranks 42^nd among greatest albums made by women.

#46, St. Vincent, St. Vincent; #74, Strange Mercy; #97 (tied), MASSEDUCTION

And this tells you that there are also Readers of an entirely different breed! Though Anne Clark is not exactly unknown she is a bit under the radar – some of her albums have ranked fairly high on Billboard and other charts, but it doesn't take much in the way of sales these days to do so; and though a couple of her singles have registered, she is not really the pop singles type. She has conservatory (Berklee) creds, though no degree, and the tracks on her albums include original electronic elements while still hewing close enough to the pop vein to have mass appeal. Overall I would classify her as trip hop, but with more depth and breadth than Portishead, Mandalay and other groups I've heard in that genre. Her eponymous album (if "eponymous" applies to glib stage names) is most likely going to find a lofty place on my own list of the greatest albums by women (see next post). Strange Mercy is another excellent outing, maybe just lacking some of the high points of the later effort (like the ingenious "Prince Johnny"). MASSEDUCTION, on the other hand, seems like a dubious attempt to seduce the masses of pop music listeners, though it does get a bit more interesting about half way through.

#48, Annie Lennox, Diva; #145, Medusa

Diva is a respectable album of backward-looking, original, blue-eyed soul (she's about as blue-eyed as they come, though I find the label a bit dismissive) and another style or two thrown in. The singing is awesome, but where's the electricity one might expect when the co-author of "Sweet Dreams" is let out of the pen to do her own stuff? As for Medusa, she has at least two other albums of originals so I'm not sure the NPR Readers picked an album of nice but not exactly inspired covers for their list. It all leaves one with the feeling that her best work was with The Eurythmics; which is not a bad legacy to have, but it does not qualify as music "made by women".

#54, Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid; #85, The Electric Lady

Amazing, brilliant – The ArchAndroid is one of the most interesting and satisfying things to come out of the pop world in a long time. I will go into more detail in the next post. I will also say a little about The Electric Lady, which seems to me just a tad less consistent, though with some major high points.

#64, Sade, Diamond Life; #105, Love Deluxe

About Diamond Life I will say very little, as I will have enough to say about it when I present my own list, where it will occupy an illustrious position. But I must say I find it extraordinary, in spite of the wildfire that her first album ignites in me, that not a single one of her later albums even sets off a spark. There are other artists like that (Tracy Chapman, for one) but it is particularly striking with Sade because her first album announced a whole new musical world, while each of her later ones seems to settle into a comfortable place in that world without really finding anything new and exciting in it. The most interesting follow-up to Diamond Life would have to be Erykah Badu, not Sade's own work. Love Deluxe, like Soldier of Love and the others, gets into that wide open space way down on a list where albums reside that are not particularly interesting, but are reasonably pleasant as background music to a cocktail party or romantic evening.

#65, Dixie Chicks, Wide Open Spaces; #141, Taking the Long Way

I'm not sure why Wide Open Spaces is considered the superior album; the Pros chose that one alone and the Readers placed it way ahead of Taking the Long Way. The latter seems to me superior in both lyrical and musical content and in social significance. They certainly bucked longstanding Nashville tradition in "Not Ready to Make Nice", which can be read different ways but is most obviously a response to the derision they received for making a public statement in England against Bush's war in Iraq. As for the music, it is almost as close to early 70's folkrock (CS&N, America, etc.) as it is to a traditional country sound. If anything from these "chicks" belongs on the Greatest-By-Women list it's this one.

#72, Brandi Carlile, The Story

She's a fine songwriter and guitarist, a lot of people have covered her work, she has musical integrity... it's all good. But as I said above, there are too many people in this musical space to make an individual album like this stand out. If I were to put together a representative list of the best albums by the 150 best female folksinger-songwriters this might well find a place on it. I'm just not convinced it is so clearly better than dozens of other albums in this genre as to merit a place among the 150 greatest among all recordings by women.

#75, Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy; #121, Surfacing

Not sure why, but these seem more legitimate entries in the horse race of "150 Greatest" than many of the other folk-style entries, though they share some of the quality of quietude with much contemporary folk that makes me pass into dreamland before the album is done, rendering a thorough evaluation difficult. I wish there was more effort at making a musical statement, as opposed to channeling through an existing musical genre; that is what made Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Laura Nyro, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and others stand out from the general run of folk rock. There's something bubbling under the surface here but I keep waiting for it to emerge. Lots of good songs, but greatness seems to be lurking just around the corner.

#79, Grimes, Art Angels

This is an example of what I think is the New + Good = Great tendency of this list. It's basically electronic dance-pop, modern-arty enough that it attracted Elon Musk (or did the music not have much to do with that?) but to my ears, other than a new noise or two, nothing much that we haven' heard before. Interesting to compare her with St. Vincent though: I hear Grimes as taking more risks with the electronics, but less risks with the songwriting and formal elements. Others may hear it differently; such are the vicissitudes of taste.

#82, Florence and the Machine, Lungs; #90, Ceremonials

I cannot get into Florence or her Machine for more or less the same reason I cannot get into Stevie Nicks and her Mac, or Bonnie Raitt: rather than offering carefully constructed melodies they make do with bluesy vocal riffs that don't really create a feeling of blues or gospel authenticity. That may sound over-intellectualized, but the feeling is gut level: it just doesn't grab me. (Ditto for an awful lot of male-made Top 40 hard rock, for the same reason; but that's another diatribe.) To my ears, Lungs picks up a bit about half way through, but not enough to put it on a greatest albums list. Ceremonials doesn't do any more to trigger my interest. It's slightly affected rock, having a bit of a goth slant, but otherwise sounds to me like someone doing the best she can to conjure up her momma's AOR favorites. Pretty amazing how some groups will get Platinum albums out of this kind of music (they were heavily promoted by the BBC) while others who do practically the same thing, just as well or better, get absolutely nowhere. I've heard any number of local rock bands I like better than Florence and the Machine, so rather than forcing me to admit how terrific they are, their album sales just make me mad on behalf of all the groups who have been sidelined to make way for such stars.

#83 Sinead O'Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got; #118,The Lion and the Cobra

I do not get what I am supposed to like about O'Connor's second album, which the Readers follow the Pros in honoring; like many albums, I suspect it is held to be great largely on the strength of one hit single, in this case Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U". But her first album is a whole 'nother story, a blast of rock and roll with a lot of variety and harmonic interest. O'Connor is one of many artists, male and female, who came out of the gate at full gallop, and for the rest of her career slowed down to a barely perceptible trot. She is also one whose public statements – e.g., about politics, religion, and sexuality (including her own) – push buttons all over the place. Like Nina Simone, she can manage to be quite irritating even when you agree with her, or at least with what she says at the time, since it is difficult to discern a consistent point of view from one statement to the next.

#86 (tied), Lana Del Ray, Born to Die

Well, speaking of brutally "honest"... I was surprised and pleased to see that the Pros did not pick this. I do not really appreciate the influence she has had on folk-rock, with her wan voice that seems to almost be pleading for absolution for being a folk artist. The music is likable enough; nothing so brilliant as to get on a greatest-by-women list, though it would certainly go on a "yeah, that too" list. (Tied with Ladies of the Canyon? In her dreams.)

#97, Tegan and Sara, The Con

Why this album was chosen from among their eight studio releases (so far) I don't know, and I don't have time to compare them all. But as far as this one goes, it is a viable but far from outstanding entry in the comtemporary rock scene, musically appealing (for lack of a more serious critical term) and lyrically somewhat banal. Though its credits suggest a large production influence from current and former Death Cab for Cutie and Weezer members, and they cite as influences everyone from Kate Bush to Smashing Pumpkins to The New Pornographers, the album says nothing so loudly as "We love The Strokes!" Is their forgetting to mention Julian & gang an example of the anxiety of influence? The indie folk-rock subgenre they inhabit is roughly the same bailiwick as that of Greta Kline's recordings as Frankie Cosmos, which is also appealing (for lack of a more serious critical term – I think I'm running out of them after my sixth post on music made by women). I have nothing against this stuff; it certainly rises above the self-indulgent, formulaic, chart-hopping pop drivel that characterizes a lot of pop music. But I don't hear it as one of 150 albums that jumps out from the crowd and demands recognition.

#104, Lady Gaga, The Fame Monster

I was wondering which of the current pop superstars who were denied entry by the Pros would be chaperoned in by the Readers. Would it be Katy Perry? Rihanna? Nicki Minaj? And the answer is, Stefani Germanotta. Who? Just think Blue Swede, "Ooga chaka ooga ooga..." which is pretty close to her most famous line as well as her name. I have no real objection to an album of outrageous dancepop hits getting on the list, and this fits the bill as well as any Madonna release. But if you're going to go with that sort of thing, there may be a slippery slope to Katie Perry, Britney Spears, Abba, and other triteness that I have generally nixed. It's sort of an all or none proposition, and I'm going to go with the "none" option. Mainly because you could not twist my arm far enough to let any such album displace, let's say, X-Ray Spex' Germfree Adolescents, which they will if you take your thumb out of the dike. So no Gagas for me, even if I admit to having a much ligher level of tolerance for this (and Nick Minaj too, by the way – something about that lawnguyland accent just turns me on!) than I do for the countrypop efforts of Taylor Swift.

#108, Pat Bentar, Crimes of Passion

Pat si, this album no, and not because I don't like it. "Hell Is For Children" is one of the best pop hits of the decade, and covering a Kate Bush tune was awfully prescient back then, whatever you think of her version. There's more to say, but I'll say it in my next and final post.

#109 (tied), Aimee Mann, Bachelor No. 2

Okay, it's warmed-over Sheryl Crow, if you like; but it's damn good warmed-over Sheryl Crow. At some points she sounds like the winner of the Judy Collins sound-alike contest; and where's Judy on these NPR lists (I ask, for the 3^rd or 4^th time)? But for all her influences and derivations, practically every song on the album has some moment where the lights go on and she feels like the real deal. Does it reach high enough to get on a best-music-by-women list? I dunno; we'll see how things work out when I make my own list. It's a more likely entry than a lot of the folk-rock choices on the Readers list.

#117, Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Down Under and almost under the radar, she writes brilliant lyrics, plays a mean guitar and has a post-punk sound that is equal parts punk and "post-". Happy to lose M.I.A. and acquire this one for the list, but if one of her two albums belongs on the list, don't three or four by Siouxsie and the Banshees? That question aside, this is definitely an interesting pick. She is a bit aversive to writing melodies, landing the style somewhere between rock and rap, though the punk aesthetic can sort of accommodate that too. It will be interesting to see where she goes as a songwriter. One of the 150 Greatest? Maybe.

#120, Cat Power, Moon Pix

I'm not sure if this album was the root cause of the headache I had earlier today (I suspect it was probably the overcast weather) but it was certainly a facilitator. I wonder about people who claim to actually like certain albums, as opposed to admitting that they are simply intrigued by them. Suffice to say that the persistent vegetative state signified and possibly induced by her soporific songs, in conjunction with the slightly off key character of her vocals, is a bit more than I can take, and I did not hear much to write home about in her guitar arrangements either. (To anyone who thinks I am just aversive to offbeat female singer-songwriters, I can cite one Mark Kozelek, a.k.a. Sun Kill Moon, as a parallel nuisance of the male persuasion.) The music feints in the direction of contemporary folk while simulating actual fainting by never rising much above a depressive whimper. (Sorry, I don't mean to make her more depressed by expressing my sentiments about her music, but I am trying to give some quick and honest feedback on a lot of stuff here, so my reactions are mostly of the unexpurgated variety.) Since I could not bear to listen to much more of this without a long break I have not explored her numerous other albums.

#121, Emmylou Harris, Wrecking Ball

This one was also picked by the Pros, but I didn't comment on it in my critique of their list. The choice of this, among her 26 studio albums, illustrates one difficulty with producing a list of albums "made by women". She recorded a lengthy string of albums that hewed largely to traditional country music boundaries, though like Bonniee Raitt she was often a bit bolder in her choice of material, reaching into the classic rock portfolio and often sounding a bit more like a folk-rocker than a Nashville artist. Suddenly, after decades of this sort of material, a member of the Grand Old Opry and collaborator with a lengthy list of country stars, she bursts the chains of Nashville oppression and emerges as an alt-country rocker. At least, that's the narrative we are supposed to buy, and apparently both the curators of the NPR list and their readers have opened their wallets for it. The reality is a bit different. She was dropped from the cutthroat country music playlists due to being old and in the way (at the age of forty, after one of her best albums, Cowgirl's Prayer – in case you thought agism was less virulent than sexism in this business!) So she teamed up with Daniel Lanois, the famed Quebecois producer and musician who has lent his modernist aesthetic to albums by everyone from U2 to Bob Dylan, to transform her into something that was once again marketable. Lanois certainly worked his magic, giving her an entirely different sound. He wrote two of the 12 songs and co-wrote another, played electric guitar on all but 3 tracks, mandolin on all but 4, and several other instruments. He also brought in Malcolm Burn on keyboards, synthesizer, vibes and more. The sound of the album, in short, is a Lanois artifact; it had little to do with Emmylou Harris, who did her usual smooth job providing the lead vocals, co-wrote two songs and played acoustic guitar on about half the album. (You can read about Dylan's struggles working with Lanois in Chronicles, Volume 1; who could believe that the all but washed up Harris had more control over this album than Dylan did over his?) The end result is an unusual and generally intriguing collection, more synth-country than alt-country. Half the songs were written or co-written by women; the title track is by Neil Young. I would be inclined to include it in a generous list of "greatest albums..." of some sort, but to call this one an album "made by women" is as absurd as listing Cheap Thrills under that heading. On other disks both Janis Joplin and Emmylou Harris put together their own bands, chose the songs and were responsible for the overall sound of the music. Not on these.

#125, Angel Olson, My Woman

This is about the most under-the-radar, and one of the most uncommercial, picks on the Readers list. She has only a few albums out so far, none of them anything like chartbusters. The album has "indie rock" written up one side and down the other: bare bones, low fi, underproduced, with lyrics that just manage to depart from your average lonelyheart complaints. Picture a slightly more depressive Exile in Guyville, or for that matter, Lucinda WIlliams with a cheap DanElectro and a Fender Champ. It's an intriguing if not entirely convincing choice for the list, and shows that at least a few of the Readers are listening outside the mainstream. "Honorable mention", perhaps, but I'm pretty sure it's not among the 150 greatest albums ever made by a woman.

#132, Jewel, Pieces of You

A bit different from most of the folk entries, her fingerstyle guitar work is outstanding (more musically than technically) and her lyrics are, er, disarming? Not sure what's the best word for them. But for all that, I don't hear a lot of terrific songwriting here, more like songs looking for a place to happen. Perhaps worth a few more listens, for her syntax and rhythms are at least interesting. If this is the best of her early albums, and her later albums veer more towards standard dance-pop formats, I am not inclined to award this one the gold star for best-of female-made music.

#137, HAIM, Days Are Gone

A decent exercise in white retro soul and pop of roughly the ABBA or Michael Jackson era, appealing enough on a purely visceral level... But one of the 150 greatest albums made by women? Is there any musical statement or innovation whatsoever going on here? None that came to my attention. I think music by women deserves more respect than to place something like this among its greatest products, even if at the same time one is moved to say that the album is likable enough.

#143, Mariah Carey, The Emancipation of Mimi

Interesting how the Readers nixed Daydream, the choice of the critics. In a previous post I said I was not totally against this pop superstar occupying a position on the list, but described the hit "One Sweet Day" as "a syrupy, sentimental, bottom-feeding piece of trash". Maybe they agreed? I also find the songwriting uninspired and feel that the vocal melismas have already become a sort of self-parody. Anyway, The Emancipation of Mimi may be a better choice, but my personal response is "a pox on both your houses" – the Mariah Carey album that belongs on the list, if any does, is her first, Mariah Carey. Like Madonna's first album, though it hardly rises above basic pop, it is the sort of album you can write off as a guilty pleasure, in the way you can similarly excuse yourself for spinning a Michael Jackson's disk once in a while. It's the purest expression of her talent: she co-wrote initial versions of several of the songs while still in high school, did many of the vocal arrangements and sang both lead and backup vocals. The album's Wikipedia page relates how "Love Takes Time" drove the executives so wild that the album was remastered and packaging recalled just to include it. As for the singing, there's not much I need to say – she's probably the singing talent of the decade, and by the time the first cut on the album is over she has redefined the style of pop vocals, albeit in a way that owed a lot to Whitney Houston, and that got overdone very quickly. There are many later high points to her career, including writing one of the two best contemporary Christmas songs (the other, of course, belonging to George Michaels). But if we are going to go down the commercial pop route on this list of women's music (and it's impossible to completely avoid) then her debut is what we want, not an album so decorated with male music industry bigshots and peppered with trendy hiphop memes that it's hard to know how much it is really Carey's album.

******

Great music happens; it is just surrounded by so much mediocre music that it's hard to find it all. There are a couple of hidden gems, and some not so hidden gems, on the Readers list. I have no illusions that my own list will be either comprehensive or definitive. I think it will filter out all the dubious selections so far and include some of the most unfairly overlooked items, that's all. See my next post.

List and You Shall Hear (V): Women Missing, Please Report to NPR

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Continuing my extended reaction to NPR's "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women" (see previous posts in this series for all the relevant links) I am now going to discuss some of the more egregious oversights in NPR's list.

Plenty of people have commented on the artists who did not make it onto NPR's list, including some second-guessing by the list's curators, Ann Powers and Jill Sternheimer. Nevertheless, here for the record (album) are the Parrot's picks for:

Worst Oversights in the History of Women's Music Listmaking

a title justified by the fact that quite a few of them are also missing from several other lists of albums by women.

Rock and the like

I will begin by discussing the women whose impact on rock, pop and country music genres is so important that their absence from the list of beknighted "greatest albums made by women" sort of defies words. Each of these artists could have been included on the same criteria that allowed the selection of at least some of the artists who are on the list; but for what seem like utterly arbitrary reasons, the "canon" of women in music has to do without them. So much the worse for such a canon. Who designated 150 as the magic number anyway? But the artists and albums that follow should probably be in the top 100, several of them in the top 20, on any fair list of "greatest" albums by women.

Grace Slick: If the NPR list were confined to albums by solo female artists, or overwhelmingly female bands, or female artists who had overall control of their recorded output, then clearly Jefferson Airplane should not be on it. Even Volunteers, which is largely dominated by Slick, is a joint product of many musicians. And if it were a list of consistently great albums then Conspicuous Only In Its Absence, the release of live recordings by The Great Society after they had broken up, should not be on it. Since neither of these is the case, though, they should both be on it. Slick was not only one of the first prominent women in rock; her voice, songwriting and stage presence had a major role in creating the musical style of a succession of bands. The Great Society lasted only until she left. She then joined the Airplane and later formed Jefferson Starship with Paul Kantner. She played several instruments, and shook up the industry with her vocals, which aside from the raw power of her voice included explicit political statements, sexual references and profanities before any of them were considered acceptable. (I suppose her being a former model made that all the more difficult for the establishment to take.) She wrote "White Rabbit", the theme song of acid rock and the Airplane's most well-known song. The fact that the list doesn't include her encapsulates the absurd inconsistency of their approach.

Joan Armatrading: Unbelievable! Everyone who knows anything about women in music knows that Armatrading was a game-changer. A prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a voice reminiscent of Odetta, this black, female, working-class immigrant was so overwhelmingly talented and had such a distinctive style that she was soon claimed to be the British answer to Joni Mitchell. Her work was a statement that women could rock (especially after Me Myself I, her biggest-selling album), while she also managed the melding of musical styles in a wholly original way (cf. Lauryn Hill). Joan Armatrading, her brilliant, eponymous third album, produced and engineered by Glyn Johns, is my first choice. Me Myself I should also be on the list.

Pat Benatar: Hell is for adults who favor teenage pop idols over Pat! Hardly less jaw-dropping than the first two oversights, we have to begin with the fact that the operatically trained Benatar is one of the best vocalists rock has ever had. Secondly, she is one of the best female rockers rock has ever had. The list of her awards, charting singles, platinum albums etc. is too long to get into; what is more important is the musical integrity she brings to everything she records, her willingness to explore taboo subjects in pop songs, and, for the purposes of this list, her outspoken feminism. Once again, though, I have to add a comment about the difficulty of identifying music "made by women": although her albums have been released under her name, her husband Neil Giraldo, one of the finest guitarists in rock, has pretty much created her sound and written a good deal of her music. On a more restrictive definition of "made by women", Pat's recordings might not qualify; they are "Pat and Neil" productions. On the more relaxed operating definition here, Crimes of Passion would be an obvious entry. But I will argue for Gravity's Rainbow, because it's not only a great album but the first one on which she co-wrote almost every song. She is also co-credited as Executive Producer.

Natalie Merchant: Once again, huh? I mean, Eurythmics, B-52's, Pretenders... and not 10,000 Maniacs? Bjork, but not Merchant? Tigerlily, the album with which she started a second musical career that was even more successful than her first; but In My Tribe would be a fine choice too.

Evanescence: An example of critics largely missing the boat: after being dismissed as just another goth-metal band, Evanescence emerged as the essential one, all but knocking their predecessors off the chart. Amy Lee's vocal style has been widely imitated, with top female vocalists like Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne and many others copying her sound on a track or two, making her one of the most influential contemporary female vocalists. (Evanescence ex-pats David Hodges and Ben Moody had a hand in some of these knockoffs.) Fallen is the obvious choice.

Bette Midler: This omission is almost as looney as the others. The Divine Miss M, an epic female vocal album, end of story. Well, not quite the end – she's just finished a run kicking it out on Broadway, to wild accolades. (The Parrot was tempted to squawck something about her being a "Superstar" but thought better of it.)

Dionne Warwick: In the same way that Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Celine Dion would not be who they are if there had not been Whitney Houston to clear a path for them, there would not have been a Whitney without Dionne Warwick. To my ears you can actually hear Dionne's tone and phrasing in some of Whitney's early recordings. Already one of the most familiar voices in popular music before 1967, her album The Windows of the World begins with "I Say a Little Prayer", the first certified gold single for her and for the Burt Bachrach-Hal David songwriting team. It's a remarkable set from beginning to end; the title song was also a hit, and the set includes another famous Bachrach-David song that she was the first to record (though the original version was not released), "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me".

The Mama and Papas: Did you say Heart? B-52's? Once again the parity-of-reasoning argument: I don't understand what distinguishes these mixed-gender groups with female vocalists from The Mamas and Papas such that the latter don't get on this list. Mama Cass in particular was one of the definitive women in rock throughout the 60's. "Words of Love", "Creque Alley", "Dedicated to the One I Love", and other big M&P hits were showcases for her voice, which sometimes has the most character even on tracks where she is not singing lead. (Like Grace Slick, who could similarly change the character of a tune with her outstanding harmonies.) I'd go with their Greatest Hits, if that's okay with the canon-makers.

Shirley Bassey: "Goldfinger, he's the man / the man with the Midas touch / a spider's touch / Such a cold finger beckons you / to enter his web of sin / but don't go in... Golden words he will pour in your ear / but his lies can't disguise what you fear..." Was this supposed to be about a future American President? Well, read the NPR commentary on some of the albums they picked and you will surely become aware of their efforts to make what seem like personal statements - vulnerable, sassy or just proud – into political statements by their vocalists. Please let Ms. Bassey join the crowd. Aside from that, she made more than 30 studio albums over a 57-year career, so if her contributions to the Goldfinger or Diamonds Are Forever soundtracks don't do it I'm sure one could find something. In fact... Something, her highest-charting album.

Ellie Greenwich: Granted most of her songs were made famous on recordings by others. But so were Carole King's. She was one of the most important songwriters in the history of popular music, aside from doing backup singing for an arm's-length list of major artists, and she did in fact record quite a few of her best numbers. To include groups for whom she wrote the songs that made them famous, but exclude her own quite excellent recordings of her own songs, seems like a miscarriage of justice. Let It Be Written, Let It Be Sung, the greatest album you've never heard of by a female songwriter. (I've owned it for about 30 years and it has never been out of rotation for very long – "Maybe I Know", "Be My Baby", "Chapel of Love", plenty more.)

Joan Osborne: She and Alanis Morisette appeared on the scene at about the same time and had about the same effect; Morisette stayed in the public eye a bit more by sticking with in-your-face hard rock songs while Osborne tended to stick closer to the blues, soul and folk idioms. Relish certainly deserves a place on this list. Incidentally, I like Morisette a lot, but she is a bit more predicatble than Osborne, who once showed up in Downtown Brooklyn to play a spontaneous solo acoustic set on an outdoor stage near my office.

4 Non Blondes: The list is about great albums, right? Not necessarily representative albums by women with long and storied careers, right? But Linda Perry, who sang all the lead vocals and wrote most of the songs on Bigger, Better, Faster, More! has since had a long and storied career, writing and/or producing songs for a long list of contemporary pop stars and recording several solo albums. The 4 Non Blondes album, by a band that originally consisted of four women ( the guitar player was replaced by a male guitarist during the recording) is generally seen as her crowning achievement as a performer. She has said she doesn't like the album, and she's entitled to her opinion. For me it is a package of 11 songs that range from good to great (their revolutionary anthem "What's Going On" being an example of the latter), with Perry's vocals moving from the contralto to soprano registers with equal power. One of the greatest one-off rock recordings I know of.

Maxayn: Like Jefferson Airplane, this terrific 1970's group that brilliantly fuses rock, jazz and soul would not make the list if the term "made by women" were taken seriously. But if ever a female lead vocalist justified that label, it would be Maxayn Lewis. And like Slick, Maxayn Lewis also contributed songwriting and keyboard skills, so that altogether she was a major influence on the sound of the group. Simply put, she is one of the greatest singers popular music has ever had, and greater than many others in that she moved fluidly between rock, soul and jazz. The very first cut on their first album, "Trying for Days", announces a voice that should be as famous as that of just about any soul singer, earlier or later – she has the power, grit, technical abilities and tonal nuance of far better known R&B singers. Or check out her version of "Gimme Shelter", one of the best Stones covers I've ever heard, including a fantastic extended jam by the band, which is fully equal to their brilliant lead vocalist. Maxayn, their first album, is perhaps their strongest, but Mindful, their second, is a jazzrock masterpiece. NPR did a good turn in recognizing little-known Fanny on their list, but they missed the boat with Maxayn, whose three studio albums have finally been released as a CD set and made available on streaming services.

Folk is No Joke

Possibly even worse than the exclusion of A-list women in rock+ and pop is the fact that in spite of several notable entries, women who contributed to folk music and its modern singer-songwriter progeny have been so systematically neglected it casts serious doubt on the value of the list as something other than a popularity contest. These women did something far more courageous and, arguably, musically important than those who made spiffy pop records in search of mass audiences: they continued and expanded a cultural tradition that is in some ways the soul of nations. Overlooking them in this context is embarrassing and unconscionable.

It's nice that the canonizers found their way to one of Cris Williamson's under-the-radar but excellent albums, but left on her own among so many equally worthy but unmentioned folk musicians she looks like the token feminist artist. I'm talking about committed feminism, not the sort of allusive feminist innuendo of so many female pop artists, much less the attribution of stories about cheating men and whatnot as some sort of feminist statement. Feminist music is represented mainly in the folk song movement - see the entry on Holly Near below.

Moreover, I have the distinct impression of a serious lack of what I will simply call taste in the making of the list. For the work of some of these artists seems to me so clearly superior to so many of the beknighted "greatest albums" that I am left struggling to find words. To take one example, Janis Ian seems to me so vastly superior a songwriter to (conservatively) half the artists on the list that I don't how to begin to argue that she should be there and not them, except perhaps to say, "take the cotton out of your ears and then listen". That is to say nothing of the social importance of songs like "Society's Child", "Seventeen", "Stars", or "Jesse", which argues in a different way for her inclusion. Even leaving aside such obvious oversights, there are surely albums by Shawn Colvin, Beth Orton, Lydia Adams Davis or Dar WIlliams, to take just a few examples, that are no less worthy of being "canonized" than quite a few of those that were obviously selected on the basis of popularity alone; and these are not even my top picks among overlooked folksinger-songwriters. In spite of a few deservingly recognized artists (Joan Baez, Odetta, Tracy Chapman, Gillian Welch) the status of folk music on the list demonstrates emphatically that good judgment, of either a musical or social sort, did not always prevail.

Here are some of the more screaming oversights, though there are plenty of other candidates:

Judy Collins: I can see no rational argument for including Joan Baez and not Judy Collins, as if one prominent female folksinger is just about enough. Judy was also a pillar of the folk revival, songwriter as well as song interpreter, and, like Joan, one of the great voices of the 60's and beyond. True Stories or her "best of" album Colors of the Day, or both, belong on any list of great albums "made by women".

Suzanne Vega: Huh? Do I need to say more? I mean, pick an album. Solitude Standing... there, I did it for you. As with Joni, there must be half a dozen of her albums that would fit the bill. One of the most original and creative female recording artists, with hardly a missed beat in her entire output of studio recordings. How can a woman contribute this much and not get recognized in a list like this?

Janis Ian: Once again, I just don't know what to say, except sqwaaaauck. Not Janis Ian or Between the Lines or Stars or Breaking Silence – just a few of the albums that contained songs of great social and political import and happened to be quite successful to boot? She is one of the most important female musicians of our time, so I mean, if you like Britney and Mariah Carey and Shania Twain and Taylor Swift and their seriously charting pop songs with 200 million hits on Spotify, fine, but at least recognize that for all the $$$ their albums have made, their cultural importance is limited. They never wrote a song that had the musical or social depth of "Society's Child" or "At Seventeen". A tremendous oversight.

Holly Near: She founded Redwood Records in 1972 and used it as a platform to promote progressive music with a decidely feminist slant. She herself recorded about 30 albums, performed with many of the greatest folksingers of the day, and helped promote the careers of several other female, progressive singer-songwriters, including Cris Williamson (the only one who made the list), Meg Christian, and Betsy Rose. I don't know which is the best, but A Live Album contains the first release of her most famous song, "It Could Have Been Me". Near is also an outstanding example of what one woman can accomplish, having been a prominent actress, a writer, a political activist, and a teacher as well as a terrific musician. Another absurd oversight.

Loreena McKennitt: Like Holly Near, she may not be a household name, yet excluding her is really inexcusable, particularly in light of some of the shamelessly commercial pop that is on the list. She blazed a daringly original trail as an indie artist, founding her label Quinlan Road in Canada five years before Ani DiFranco started Righteous Babe records a little below the border. Her complex, original takes on Celtic and Arabic music defy easy genre classification: she is a folk, rock, world and New Age artist all rolled up in one. Her voice is the equal of almost any artist on the list; Joan Baez would be a good comparison. Either The Book of Secrets or The Mask and the Mirror, replacing any number of lightweight pop albums, would give the list more gravity and critical respectability.

Enya: She is the second most popular Irish artist ever, after U2. She has won four Grammies and a host of other awards. More importantly, she almost singlehandedly made New Age music respectable and popular. (I'm not sure Windham Hill on its own achieved either of those.) She is to Ireland everything that Céline Dion is to Quebec. My personal favorite is The Memory of Trees, but there are several other options for Enya albums to put on a list like this. Not putting her on at all is not really an option, though the illustrious judges at NPR seemed to think it was more important to have two Madonna albums, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, Destiny's Child and Chaka Khan. Dance all you want, then take a rest and listen to some music.

Michelle Shocked: Along with Suzanne Vega, whose first album had come out a year earlier, she helped kickstart the "second folk revival" with her Texas Campfire Tapes, a low-tech live recording that went viral before there was music on the Internet. Shocked and Vega paved the way for mainstream acceptance of new folk artists like Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, Lucinda Williams and a host of others to come. Since becoming a born again Christian she has made some remarks about homosexuality and gay marriage that are ambiguous at best, but I don't get the sense that most of the other artists on the list have been given a litmus test on their social views. Her important role should be recognized.

Neko Case: Okay, the list is trendy enough, with Joanna Newsom, Lauryn Hill, Alabama Shakes, M.I.A., Taylor Swift, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Beyonce , Solange, Alicia Keys and Miranda Lambert representing just some of the post-2000 recordings. (Where, I beseech you once again, is Lana Del Ray, not to mention Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Kesha and Ariana Grande? Picky, picky...) Are these artists all supposed to be part of the "canon"? Give me a break; there is no principled distinction here between current popularity and longevity; no serious effort to separate merely good pop tunes from significant creativity. If it's the latter we are after then I'm going to remove about half of these entries and replace them with people like Neko Case and others who are actually trying to do something musically forward-looking. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is probably the consensus choice for Case, but her follow-up album Middle Cyclone is as good or better.

Malvina Reynolds: Like Elie Greenwich she's known more as a songwriter than a performer, but she nevertheless released numerous albums of her own work. Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth, for example, contains her well-known song "What Have They Done to the Rain", as well as "Little Boxes" and "God Bless the Grass", both made famous by Pete Seeger, and the once-popular children's song "Magic Penny". As I have emphasized, "greatest" depends on many things; Reynolds' unique gift for musical social commentary makes her a standout artist who should be recognized in a list such as this.

Nanci Griffith: Other Voices, Other Rooms is one of my favorite albums in any genre; it is all covers, but one could certainly pick from other albums of hers with great originals. Like Neko Case, she is one of those folk musicians who transcends the genre.

Kate Wolf: She would be one of the first names to roll off the tongue of anyone who really knows the recent history of folk music: there are tribute albums and even a music festival devoted to work she recorded on 10 albums in her short life. The title song of Give Yourself to Love was something like an anthem of the folk movement in the 1980's. Not including her suggests ignorance of the history of contemporary folk music.

Christine Lavin: Funny they left her off, seriously funny. Don't know what I'm talking about? Well, there's Google, Wikipedia and YouTube to explain it.

Maria Farantouri: If she had done nothing but champion the songs of Mikis Theodorakis she would merit a place next to Mercedes Sosa, another expressive contralto who was happily discovered by the somewhat nearsighted makers of this pop list. But aside from her many other musical recordings she has truly stuck her neck out for justice in Greece and elsewhere. I'd pick her first album Songs of Freedom, with John Williams and featuring music by Theodorakis, but only because it's the one I know best; there is much else to choose from.

Make Our Country Great Again

Mary Chapin Carpenter: How about instead of some of those ladies with the blockbuster country albums we recognize this thoughtful and socially engaged songwriter? She has written almost every song on more than a dozen albums, including many great ones. Somewhat like Roseanne Cash, who was happily included, she has enough Nashville hits to be a household name but is also capable of setting record sales aside and making albums of honest integrity just for the sake of the music and what she has to say. I'm going to go with A Place in the World, but among her 13 studio recordings there are other possible choices, including her excellent breakout album, Come On Come On.

Faith Hill: She is similarly bedecked with country music awards and billion-selling albums, like Shania Twain and Reba Macentire; why they made the list instead is once again beyond the limits of my understanding. I happen to like her voice better. Breathe is the album I know best, and would be happy to see it on the list.

Carrie Underwood: If American Idol had done nothing else, discovering Carrie Underwood and her stunning vocal capabilities would have been a singular contribution to popular music. If her voice has any defect at all it is that it is possibly too good, making quite a few other leading lights of country music sound like they could be her students. I'm not as thrilled with her material as I am with her voice; it tends to be formulaic and lead her into predictable vocal moves. She also seems a bit obsessed with songs about taking revenge on cheating lovers. None of that is quite enough to remove the pleasure of hearing her bang out a tune with everything from coloratura melismas to throaty growls. I don't know which album of hers should be on the list: Some Hearts was her breakout recording, but in later albums she took more of a role in the songwriting. I'd go with Blown Away because her own material is acutally some of the best on the album and the best she's recorded.

Round-up

Also Worth Considering

Those are some of the more obvious oversights, the ones where it either boggles the mind how a list of the greatest albums by women could be thought complete without them, or where there seems to be no reasonable argument for including some of the artists who were included and not including those who are either their peers or in some sense superiors. Of course, there were plenty of opportunities for the listmakers to step up and recognize some artists who are not names on the tip of anyone's tongue. Were I to construct my very own list with an all-female cast of musicians, one of the things I would try to do is find under-recognized artists whose work deserves greater recognition, for example: Julia Holter, Lili Haydn, Jane Siberry and Melanie DeBiasio among others. They would all replace a lot of dubious pop selections on my list. Blossom Dearie recorded more albums than almost any three of the listed artists put together; I don't really know them (I've heard individual songs), but she had a fanatical following well into her 60's and continued recording at least through her early 70's. Tania Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer who won both Canada's Polaris Prize in 2014 and Juno Award in 2015 for her album Animism; if we are looking for women who make a musical statement that gives voice to a culture (like Mercedes Sosa or Umm Kulthum) this is a good place to look. In the rock category, there's a parade of M's that seems to have dropped through the cracks, including Minnie Riperton, Maria Muldaur, Melanie and Melissa Manchester; in addition to Phoebe Snow, these are popular names from an earlier era who made memorable albums that are not commonly heard today. If they are not worthy of "canon"-ization it suggests that some of the many pop, hip-hop and country stars who landed a spot may not be worthy of it either, and if they are, well, then they are. Suzi Quatro is another odd oversight, a prolific and influential role model for the duly recognized Joan Jett and one of the first women to go it alone as a hard rocker.

In the folk category, an older generation of singing-songwriting women await recognition for their important contributions to American culture, including Peggy Seeger, Jean Ritchie and Faith Petric. I don't have the time or resources to figure out which of their many albums might be among the greatest recordings made by women; perhaps none, because for the most part they were well on in years before they made solo records. (I have suggested that a better approach than the "greatest albums" effort would be a "Lifetime Achievement" list, where these artists would be more likely to get fair representation.) Singer-songwriters like Cindy Kallet, Pat Humphries, Bev Grant, Lydia Adams Davis and Priscilla Herdman, among many others, have given us memorable albums that anyone seriously researching a "greatest" list rather than a popularity contest might have found.

I decided long ago...

Never to spend six months critiquing a list? Oh well, another New Year's resolution out the window. (Anyone concerned about my sanity will be pleased to know that during that time my literary efforts have also included a draft of a short story, a piece of micro-fiction, some poetry, work on a novel, a memoir and a couple of philosophical essays. So, you could say I'm obsessed with this list stuff; but only between roughy 11:30 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. on weeknights.) But let's put some kind of cap on this at last. Here are my final squawcks:

Ranking: It is a fine thing to draw the attention of the public to women's contributions to popular music, but a much less fine thing to try to order one's selection according to some notion of "greatness". It is really of almost no interest that this group of judges thinks that Blue is the greatest album made by a woman, that The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is the second greatest, etc. So maybe Pride and Prejudice is the greatest novel written by a woman, Jane Eyre is the second greatest, and Middlemarch is the third greatest...? Or should To the Lighthouse or Ship of Fools, or something else, be in there? On what basis do you make judgments like this? You can make some very broad generalizations about entire bodies of work, in which case Joni Mitchell's stands out so far above Lauryn Hill's that they belong miles apart, while that of Pauline Oliveros looms far greater over contemporary classical music than anything the makers of most of the 100-odd albums in front of hers ever accomplished in relation to rock, pop, etc. Even rankiing the artists' overall contributions is only possible in a few cases. It is easy to say that Bob Dylan is the greatest singer-songwriter in modern times, but it is not so easy to say who is second, third, etc. Rankings also tend to lose their force as soon as they are challenged. For example, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is probably the consensus choice for the greatest album ever made; but I know more than one rock critic who believes it is not even a good album, much less the greatest ever made. They too can give reasons for their views, and make it seem like myth is doing more work than quality in upholding the album's status. Powers, NPR and their friends would have done a greater service by doing without rankings at all and just bringing to our attention the most interesting and important albums in which women had the most prominent roles.

So my comments on what is not included on the list are made without regard to any ranking. But that does not mean I can permanently resist the temptation to offer a list of what I think are the greatest albums made by women! I will do so in the next post, but with enough caveats to make clear just how little is being claimed in that list.

Quality: In the end, my biggest beef with the list is that it seems to treat quality as an afterthought. Quality comes in many forms, but it can certainly be distinguished from sales and popularity, to say nothing of marketing. Originality, importance in various ways, influence, musicianship, lyrical depth, complexity, intensity of feeling, the fit of words and music, and many other factors can contribute to quality in addition to the basic factors of performance chops and songwriting skill. On the other hand, excessive use of standard musical formulas, clichéd lyrics, sentimentality and over-reliance on technical production tricks may contribute to an album's popularity but not to its quality. Taking this distinction seriously would have eliminated many very well-known and popular albums on the list and replaced them with music that deserves the name "greatest". That is what critical responsibility is all about, but it seems to have been largely abandoned here.

Quantity: As if 150 were not a generous enough number of "greatest" albums by women, TheFader.com has graciously contributed another 150 such disks for our perusal. I have never heard of many of the albums, or even quite a few of the groups, on TheFader's list, but it ranges from the obvious move of adding every big contemporary female pop star (Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, etc.) to the highly speculative inclusion of albums like the Pharmakon effort mentioned in my previous post. This may be more of a comment on the nonsense of modern listmaking than on perceived gaps in NPR's "canon", for in the end it is hard to tell which list is the primary one and which the supplement.

Since I might seriously question whether there are 300 truly great albums altogether in the history of popular music, the idea that there are 300 made by women is a little hard to wrap my mind around. But if we take "greatest" in its purely relative sense, such that albums after the first 100 or so may be boring, irritating, or trite but greater than the next group of albums, I guess we could find another 200 and make it an even 500 Greatest Albums Made By Women. Then I might have a hard time keeping Britney and other lightweight Top 40 nonsense off the list.

Or maybe not. I haven't mentioned every worthwhile but overlooked female artist I know of yet. Take Bonnie Koloc for instance: one of the best voices among folksingers in the early 70's and after, she never got much attention outside the Chicago area. You can Spotify her (if that's a verb now) though they have only a couple of her later efforts. How many other little-known names might there be? Friends of mine who are music critics know an awful lot of artists and albums that I don't know, and I suspect they would rate quite a few of them higher than most of the NPR list. With the help of some like-minded souls it's not impossible we could at least have a 500-album list of recordings by women that did not compromise on quality or pander to any formulaic pablum.

Oh well, when I started this I thought I was done. But there's one more post to go; the one in which I produce

The Greatest List of All

But my next post really will be The Last Post of All on the "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women".

List and You Shall Hear (IV): Reviewing the Situation

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 02:19:00 +0000

I wrote much of this review before somewhat belatedly reading Wesley Morris's article "Voices in My Head" in the October 8 Sunday Times Magazine, and now that I've read it I feel much better. I thought that any reader who found his or her way to my blog posts on the NPR list of "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women" would wonder if I had a few screws loose, spending so much time listening only to music by women, and not incidentally offering my critique of the list. Now I can at least respond that I am not the only one: Morris informs us that for months he listened to the entire NPR list, from #150 to #1, and at least 75 more albums by women to boot. I have not even been through all 150, though the still unheard albums tend to be those by artists I am familiar with, even if I don't know the chosen album in full, as well as some of the jazz and classical artists. I have, on the other hand, listened to way more than 75 other albums by women, probably closer to 200 or so, not to mention attending concerts by Rickie Lee Jones, Tori Amos and an ensemble performing works of Pauline Oliveros.

Did all this increase my appreciation of the importance of music "made by women" (a term Morris does not seem to question, in spite of its inaccuracy)? I at least owe Powers et al. a note of thanks for sending me off on a journey of music discovery that has turned up numerous gems of which I was unaware. Some are albums on the list, some are other albums by artists on the list, and quite a few are albums by artists who were not included at all. Had the NPR list done nothing more than bring to my attention the brilliant early 1970's Filipino-American female group Fanny it would have done me a great favor. In fact, you can also now count me as a confirmed Siouxsie and the Banshees fan, and throw in The Bangles and a few others.

But it also pushed me to check out the empty spaces where Suzanne Vega and Janis Ian albums should be, and to listen to many alternatives to the listed works. Morris notes the exclusion of artists like Shawn Colvin, and questions (subsequent to a Tori Amos quip about the lack of "testosterone" in the Lilith Fair lineup) whether we are making the wrong demands on music by women. I would put it more bluntly: the list indulges vulgar commercial efforts at the expense of more serious artists, and often picks albums based on hits and sales rather than inherent quality.

Morris also makes some questionable judgments in his piece. Nostalgia for Donna Summer is perhaps understandable, as the loss of her and Whitney Houston in the same year is still an open wound five years later. But calling her "the musician who paved a boulevard for lots of women who top charts" is a bit much. The women who paved that boulevard aren't even allowed on this NPR list – Betsy Smith, Patsy Cline, Martha Reeves, and many others who laid down that pavement are not there due to being pre-1964 artists. Dionne Warwick is not on the list; neither is Judy Collins. But even if we stick with those who are on the list, after Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, Dusty Springfield, The Ronettes and Aretha Franklin put down the blacktop, all Donna Summer needed to do was walk on it. Nostalgia for Janet Jackson is a bit harder to explain, but since his tastes also include an outsized admiration for Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville and the dismissal of Janis Joplin's Pearl as "not a great album" I guess all I can do here is shrug and move on.

Morris also indulges the statistical game of counting albums "by women" in this or that list and comparing them with the much larger number "by men" and concludes that indeed music by women is underappreciated. It takes more work than this numbers game to show that, if it's true. There could be many reasons why there are fewer women than men represented in lists and such; those reasons may well show that women have not been treated fairly in the music industry (this would hardly surprise anyone) but not that the achievements they managed in spite of this are underappreciated.

Morris does not seem fazed by any of the criticisms I've harped on in my posts: that most of the albums are not in fact "made by women" in any sense other than (at most) having female lead vocalists; that it does not really recognize the greatest albums but rather offers us representative albums by those considered the greatest or best known female lead vocalists; that its tokenish inclusion of a few classical and jazz artists, and slightly more international artists, is ridiculous and results in absurd juxtapositions; that the rankings themselves are extremely arbitrary and could be radically revised even for the albums selected, to say nothing of those not selected (e.g., probably 2 or 3 albums each by Joan Armatrading, Suzanne Vega and Janis Ian could be among the top 25 albums in the list); that what is included has an overall commercial tilt that ends up under-representing many of the greatest female songwriters and musicians (Morris does hint at this point but doesn't target it directly); that it is not even an original idea, largely repeating the choices of earlier, similar lists; and that the starting point in 1964 is very arbitrary and excludes those who set the standard for female recording artists, on the misleading notion that before 1964 they did not primarily make albums.

Well, back to business, as I have elaborated all those objections in previous posts. Having had my say on the choices of Joni Mitchell albums, I will now discuss the rest of the list, identifying the albums in groups by their numbers on the list.

*****

1 (Joni Mitchell, Blue), 121 (Joni Mitchell, Hejira)

Please see my previous post regarding Joni Mitchell's albums.

2 (Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill), 9 (Amy Winehouse, Back to Black), 12 (Erykah Badu, Baduism) 57 (Mary J. Blige, What's the 411?), 77 (Aaliyah, Aaliyah), 92 (Meshell Ndegeocello, Peace Beyond Passion), 116 (Macy Gray, On How Life Is) 149 (Alicia Keys, Songs in A Minor)

If there is anything particularly new or provocative about the list it is the promotion of neo-soul, hip-hop soul and other variations on classic 1960's soul music to the center of the musical conversation. The sub-list doesn't stop with those seven selections, especially if you include early influences like Sade, and fellow travellers like Norah Jones and Adele, and of course Beyoncé, whose sometimes soul-inflected album Lemonade sits at #6 on the list. I am inclined to ask: is this correct? I mean, is Lauryn Hill's neo-soul/reggae/hip-hop crossover album the second greatest album ever recorded by a woman? The women I have asked tend to raise an eyebrow and then suggest that it's not a bad choice, but perhaps a bit surprising. To put it another way, are 3 (or 4, if you include Lemonade) of the 12 best albums ever made by women neo-soul albums? That's a lot of credit for this subgenre. Historically speaking, neo-soul had a brief heyday around 20 years ago, while hip-hop/soul confections continue to crop up. (Aside from Lemonade, Kehlani's SweetSexySavage is the latest entry in this category to win all sorts of accolades.) Not all of it represents what I would call first class songwriting, which is one of my main criteria for a great album.

Some, like Baduism, make a kind of musical/poetic statement: trim down the arrangements, don't be afraid to express your deepest feelings, make each single note as expressive as a symphony. These are solid ideas, but my simple ear just wants to know if it is an album full of great music. I'm not sure; after playing it maybe half a dozen times it still doesn't seem to compare with Sade's Diamond Life, for instance, nor with soul-inspired classics like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? or Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul. Similarly for many of the others here. Alicia Keys' Songs in A Minor is a very nice, listenable album, especially if you ignore the lyrics, which rarely rise above sentimentality; it would be hard to argue with a rank of #149, barely making it onto the list, if there weren't so many other better albums by artists who were not included on the list. Mary J. Blige's What's the 4-1-1? is also a perfectly fine album, on which she does a great job singing a collection of fairly straightforward R&B covers. Her My Life would have been a better choice: like Baduism and Aaliyah it's a completely seductive album on which (like Badu, unlike Aaliyah) she co-wrote almost every song. It's been listed again and again among the greatest R&B albums ever made, so why the former would be chosen to represent her instead is just one more of the ultimately unanswerable questions raised by this list. Ditto for Meshell Ndegeocello's Peace Beyond Passion: very nice album, but Plantation Lullabies, her first, seems to me superior to it in every sense.

But My Life and Plantation Lullabies still do not sound like the cream of the crop in popular music. Perhaps #57 and #92 would be good places for them, assuming some of the stuff that does not belong at all was removed. But what about #2, #9, #12 – can these really keep company with the best of Joni Mitchell, with Diamond Life, Tapestry, Pearl – or with some of the greatest albums by unaccountably excluded artists like Joan Armatrading or Suzanne Vega? Not to my ears. In fact I don't think they compare with #139 (The Bangles, All Over the Place) or with #133 (Fanny, Fanny Hill) for musical interest, and certainly not with #122 (Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Scream), or with Kate Bush, Tori Amos or Sonic Youth for innovation. So what are they doing in these exalted positions?

What I described above as "the fog of music" may have enveloped the brains of the list's jury members. The truth is, every one of these albums is pleasant, easy to listen to, takes some interesting new approaches, includes some notable performance moments, etc. They may be among the top albums in their genre, even if that is construed broadly. None of this adds up to being a great album, a term that brings together a number of outstanding qualities that create a surge of musical satisfaction and that rise far above the multitude of good albums released every year. Generally, such albums either identify themselves as summits of achievement in a certain style or era of music, or become points of reference for much that comes after them. But all these neo-soul albums stand on approximately the same plane, like latter-day reflections on Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and Nina Simone after the social and musical developments of the 2-3 decades since their greatest albums. Like neo-psychedelia and neo-punk, some excellent music can emerge, but this is rarely the place to look for great albums. Which, unless we are going to be uncharitable, suggests that they are over-represented and overrated on the NPR list.

***

3 (Nina Simone, I Put a Spell On You), 28 (Nina Simone, Nina Simone Sings the Blues)

Nina Simone's I Put a Spell On You is an odd choice for a #3 album on this list. For one thing, in spite of the fact that this was also the title of her autobiography, it is not her best or most representative album, and seems to have been picked solely because it is the first acceptable one post-1964, the list's arbitrary cutoff date. Secondly, in spite of the fact that she has influenced a lot of artists, Simone herself is fairly controversial, and not just for her advocacy of violent revolution, use of gun threats to get her way, or fabled histrionics. Her artistry, though widely revered, is a bit uneven. I personally think Robert Christgau's highly critical assessment, cited in Simone's Wikipedia entry, is too harsh by half – he was clearly not listening to her best work either as vocalist or pianist. (See my previous post on his mis-assessment of Joni Mitchell's later work.) That said, my feeling is that in contrast to some rich early recordings, both tone production and emotional resonance are somewhat spotty in her subsequent work. The controlled vibrato of her early (pre-1964) work is largely replaced with a tremolo that is not always applied to the best effect. Her keyboard work is impressive at its best, humdrum at worst. She has an enormous recorded legacy and I am far from being ready to speak about all of it, but my impression is that there are more important albums to occupy the title of "3^rd best album made by a woman". Now, having said that, I am going to flip back the other way and say that Nina Simone Sings the Blues, at #28, is one of her better later albums; her performance of the Gershwin-Heyward song "My Man's Gone Now" by itself deserves some sort of place in musical history, a sockdolager in every way. Overall her voice shines, and even the tremolo works better than in more popular material. Her keyboard playing is no great shakes but there are other worthy musical performances on the album, and it's her voice that is front and center on this album anyway. In short, #28 no problem; #3, not convinced.

***

5 (MIssy Elliott, Supa-Dupa Fly), 33 (Queen Latifah, All Hail the Queen), 43 (M.I.A., Kala), 71 (Salt-N-Pepa, Blacks' Magic), 96 (Lil' Kim, Hard Core)

No expert on rap, here, though I've listened to it on and off since the days of Grandmaster Flash. I think I can distinguish great rap from average run of the mill rap, and I can certainly distinguish intelligent lyrics with something to say from gratuitous scatological garbage and self-indulgent violent rants. Here, in the few more or less pure rap selections, we have both ends of the spectrum.On the one hand, Queen Latifah holds down the classic end of the genre on All hail the Queen, which more or less made it a commercial and artistic success. Salt-N-Pepa's album Blacks' Magic mixes fairly straightforward rap rhythms with a sometimes feminist message that defied the often misogynistic tenor of rap at that time.

Lil' Kim also defies misogyny, as well as taste, decency, the law, and a long list of other rappers, with whom she has feuded endlessly. Her foulmouthed and violent lyrics earned her music the label "gangster porno rap", which is fitting for someone who has been convicted of perjury for covering up her violent friends' perfidious activities. Any complaints I have aired regarding the moral fiber of Nina Simone, Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse are lightweight stuff compared with this treasure. Or is it not just obvious that the answer to sexism is not to offer one's vagina and anus as weapons in the battle to conquer male sexual dominance? All the rappers here can be explicit enough about sex and sex roles; but explicit can be in good taste, while raunchy and violent cannot. Really poor judgment putting Hard Core anywhere on the list, in my opinion.

Missy Elliott is one of the most important people in hip hop and in R&B generally, but that is more the result of her production and songwriting activities, which also helped catapult Timbaland into the first ranks of hip hop producers and musicians. As for Supa Dupa Fly, it is a fine album, but its exalted place at #6 on the list may be more a token of recognition for Elliott's overall contribution than a true rank for the album itself. Neither her singing voice nor her rap skills are first rate, but her great creative talent makes it a very good recording nonetheless - at some points not unlike some of Aaliyah's work, which she helped write and produce.

As for Kala, I'm not sure what to make of it. Being the only Tamil pop superstar certainly makes M.I.A. a person of interest. The eclectic mix of rap, dance, electronica and I'm not sure what else ranges from musically inspired to boring, and the lyrics, where I could follow them, have patches of interest and obscurity among their various personal and political directions.

***

6 (Beyoncé, Lemonade), 134 (Solange, A Seat at the Table).

Am I the only one who finds it a tiny little bit suspect that two albums that are just over a year old, done by two sisters, both happen to make the list, all but serving as bookends? I've heard and respect both of them, but as to the extraordinary confidence in placing the recently released Lemonade near the top of the list... can we talk? I mean, I can see the argument for it: Beyoncé has practically invented a new form of musical expression, something that is equal parts rock opera, hip-hop, poetry, video art, soul, electronica - it is so much to digest that perhaps the course of least resistance is to just call it one of the most innovative albums of the 21^st century so far, and leave it at that. But I have asked, and will continue to ask, the more basic question in relation to list-formation: is it a best-ever experience as music, as songwriting, as instrumental and vocal performance? Perhaps this is unfair to hip-hop and its ever-expanding reach into popular music, since "songwriting" is not exactly what it's about. (Nobody would characterize the achievement of Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly as somehow lesser because it is not an album of tunes you can whistle.) But for me, that is one of the things that needs to be there for an album to be near the top of a "greatest" list. There are a couple of outstanding songs on Lemonade ("Sandcastles" is an instant classic, and "All Night" is a beauty too) but it is the album's concept, spirit and visuals that have captured the imagination. It gets a seat at the table for that reason, but I'm not putting it at the head of the table without a more or less continuous stream of great music. Speaking of A Seat at the Table, Solange's album too may deserve one, but only by opening up numerous places from albums I don't think belong there, since there are quite a few more obvious choices that were omitted from the list altogether.

***

9 (Amy Winehouse, Back to Black), 93 (Britney Spears, ...Baby One More Time)

How did Lindsay Lohan's two recordings get overlooked? These two singers' personal issues have made for at least as much copy as their musical efforts. True, one can turn up plenty of tabloid worthy material on Janis Joplin, Nina Simone and others; we would lose a lot of talent if we denied people their rightful place in music history based on a few run-ins with the police or stints in drug and alcohol rehab. So what exactly does that place consist in? Amy Winehouse captured a lot of attention on the basis of her soulful but highly derivative style, and even if her notorious self-destructive force rates up there with some of our recent hurricanes, it is hard to deny the effectiveness of her music. I seriously question, though, whether she should be at any such illustrious position on this list or any other. She ranks here above Whitney Houston, than whom there is no greater vocalist in pop history; Barbra Streisand, about whom little needs to be said; and people like Kate Bush, Tori Amos and Rickie Lee Jones, all deep fonts of creativity on a level that Amy Winehouse does not even pretend to. Back to Black is a brilliant pastiche of soul-inspired styles, as is Frank, her only other commercial recording. But recognizing that is quite compatible with her being assigned a more modest role among the many creative women in popular music.

As for Britney Spears, there is absolutely nothing to recommend her from a musical point of view, unless popularity with teenage girls is in itself a sign of greatness. She has no particular vocal abilities; the material on her recordings is about as trite as you could dream up, even if some of it may have been vaguely transgressive in a quasi-feminist way that Madonna had long since made into a brand, or tickled the nascent sexual imaginations of teenage girls everywhere. I think the popularity of her recordings, to the extent it has any relationship to the music itself, is 90% about the production, for that is all that stands out as differentiating them from the mass of mainstream pop, if anything does.

***

10 (Carole King, Tapestry), 44 (Heart, Dreamboat Annie), 45 (Dusty Springfield, Dusty in Memphis), 53 (Linda Ronstadt, Heart Like a Wheel), 83 (Bobbie Gentry, Ode to Billy Joe), 85 (Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust), 124 (Carly Simon, No Secrets), 126 (The Carpenters, A Song for You), 133 (Fanny, Fanny Hill)

This imperfect sublist captures what you might call the rock, light-rock and country-rock genre of the decade from1967-1976 as represented on this list – that is, whatever is not strictly R&B, traditional country, early punk, experimental/jazz, etc. Of all of them, only two strike me as consistently good in a way that ranks them among the greatest albums by men or women: Tapestry, of course; and the discovery of the decade, Fanny Hill. The latter is like discovering the equivalent of Canned Heat, Humble Pie, or maybe Bad Company, having never even heard the name, and realizing that you have to rewrite the history of the era. The Carpenters' A Song For You is an inspired collection of songs, but I tend to relegate albums that are mostly covers of other people's material to a different class from wholly original ones; and The Carpenters are one of many - many – groups on the list where men and women played roughly equal roles (see the next section).

Most of the rest are really held in place by one or two hit singles. Carly Simon's No Secrets, for example, is not even a good album overall; I'm not even sure "You're So Vain" is a particularly good song (my favorite of hers is still her first hit, "The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be"). She is an excellent singer (way better than Carole King in that respect), but a sample of her many other albums suggests that she is good for one or two standout songs on a recording, a lot of fair-to-middling material and the occasional unlistenably trite filler. Like Taylor Swift, she sometimes makes me want to scream: "Not every single thought you've had about some passing relationship is worth writing a song about!"

Bobbie Gentry's Ode to Billie Joe is a dubious pick not so much for the songwriting as for the recording, which sounds like it took place in a cardboard box and managed to sneak into the mastering room without a final mix, or even so much as a small concession to reverb. Heart's Dreamboat Annie is the source of a couple of great R&R hits, but as for the album, they have better, including their much more recent Fanatic. I love the title song of Diamonds and Rust but repeated listening over many years has not convinced me that the album is as essential as the song. (Her One Day at a Time and Gracias a la Vida are two of my favorite folk albums.) Dusty Springfield and Linda Ronstadt are each represented by "classic", "landmark", "breakthrough" country-rock records that one can't help feeling a bit sentimental about, without necessarily wanting to listen to them much.

***

16 (Fleetwood Mac, Rumours), 35 (Blondie, Parallel Lines), 79 (Portishead, Dummy), 87 (X, Los Angeles), 127 (Sonic Youth, Sister), 135 (The B-52s, The B-52s), 138 (The Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas)

None of these bands are female-led groups in the same sense that, say, Hole is truly Courtney Love's group or The Pretenders is Chrissie Hynde's. The history of Fleetwood Mac is very complex and it certainly is not adequately captured by calling it a mainly female band in any of its several eras. Other than lead vocals, Chris Stein had a roughly equal role with Debbie Harry in Blondie, and The B-52's are also more or less gender-equal. Beth Gibbons seems to have had a role roughly equal to her two male collaborators in creating the music of Portishead. Calling this an album "made by women" seems like a calculated attempt to grab some foundational trip-hop credit for "women" when in fact nearly all the personnel except the lead vocalist were men. Elizabeth Fraser's vocals are central to the Cocteau Twins' sound but so are Robin Guthrie's synthesized guitars; songwriting credits are given to "The Cocteau Twins". I will deal with X and Sonic Youth below, and I have mentioned The Carpenters above. I do not understand why these groups would be on the list and not ABBA – though I am not offering ABBA or their material as instances of greatness. (They do, however, have the distinction of having twice won prizes in the Eurovision song contest, with "Waterloo" winning overall and "Ring Ring" placing third.) Given the largely mainstream nature of the list they seem like equally good candidates. But if we are talking about albums "made by women" these mixed gender groups are even less appropriate than some of the albums which, as I pointed out in earlier parts, are merely sung by women.

***

17 (Janet Jackson, Control), 75 (Donna Summer, Bad Girls), 118 (Chaka Khan, I Feel For You), 130 (Teena Marie, WIld and Peaceful)

There was a time when disco-era R&B performers like Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, Teena Marie and Chaka Khan would not only not make my list of deserted island disks, they would be sufficient reason to remove to a deserted island without electricity. I may be more open to dancehall funk, disco and post-disco now than I was then, but in spite of critics like Vince Aletti and changes in historical perspective, they are still not going on that ship with me. I have a short list of disco-pop songs (not many albums) that I like as pure music, for I am not really interested in what songs are best to shake your booty to; but they are not "made by women" even in the loose sense of this list. It is interesting to compare these with R&B entries like 4 (Aretha Franklin), 14 (Whitney Houston) or 15 (Diana Ross and the Supremes) – I would argue with anyone who denies their artistry, whether or not those particular positions are the right ones. But times have not changed enough for me to put any but a handful of disco/dance-pop songs on a list of "greatest" anything, and nothing I heard in the selected albums moves me to change that opinion.

***

27 (Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes), 37 (Kate Bush, Hounds of Love)

Tori Amos is represented by her first solo album, Little Earthquakes, having made way for higher-rated choices like Selena, Janet Jackson and Madonna. The injustice of this is startling. A brilliant songwriter, classically trained keyboardist and superb singer, she is one of the most interesting artists of any gender in the last 20 years. In the way she creates poetic, free form lyrics and then manages to coax formally coherent and powerful songs out of them she seems to me unique and something of a genius. Her From the Choirgirl Hotel, Scarlet's Walk and Abnormally Attracted to Sin, and possibly several others deserve to be on the list as much Little Earthquakes. Other than Joni Mitchell and Aretha Franklin, only Madonna seems to have been deemed worthy of multi-album representation (Joan Jett and Beyoncé each appear in two different musical formations), but that is ridiculous, and Tori Amos is one reason why.

The recognition of Kate Bush's work is also pretty lame. As great as Tori Amos is, she walks in part in Bush's footsteps, as do so many other female recording artists. Yet Bush's Hounds of Love is ranked below Adele's 21, Björk's eclectic Post, Grace Jones's interesting but hardly earth-shaking Nightclubbing, etc. While I am still searching for the Kate Bush album that will thrill me as much as the best work by Tori Amos (or the unaccountably overlooked Suzanne Vega), many of them are greater creative works than anything Adele has yet done (and produced more charting singles than Adele may ever do, for what that's worth). Perhaps the lesson here is that by offering a spurious and chaotic ranking of individual albums the NPR list does a disservice to women whose musical accomplishments are far greater than the sum of their parts.

***

30 (Adele, 21)

Adele has sold a lot of albums. "Rolling in the Deep" was a great single. But it will be a long time before we know whether there is a legacy here worthy of this sort of recognition. While she clearly has a strong voice, nothing else she has done signals more than another good pop singer/songwriter. That's just not enough to be selected for this position in a "new canon" because there are just too many such artists, big in their day and largely forgotten not long after. (Don Williams died a few weeks ago; remember him? Even if you do, does he stand out in the pantheon of Nashville stars? He had seventeen #1 singles on the Country charts, and 14 albums in the top 15. Get my point?)

***

35 (Blondie, Parallel Lines), 56 (X-Ray Spex, Germfree Adolescents), 72 (The Runaways, The Runaways), 74 (The Raincoats, The Raincoats), 87 (X, Los Angeles), 119 (The Slits, Cut), 122 (Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Scream), 127 (Sonic Youth, Sister)

Scattered around the list are these late 70's/early 80's groups with punk roots (or pretensions), many of them dominated by women. (I have omitted ESG's Come Away With ESG because I am not sure they really fit the category – they may be in a category or their own, like "minimalist dance-punk" or whatever.) The first question posed by this category is how many of these bands fall under the "made by women" label at all? Blondie and Siouxsie and the Banshees were co-founded by a male and a female member; in both cases, the female member did the lead singing and co-wrote some of the material, and the male member created the guitar parts and co-wrote some of the material. As for X, after joining the band formed by her boyfriend John Doe and guitarist Billy Zoom, Exene Cervenka contributed many of the lyrics for the album and shares the vocals with Doe. Sonic Youth is an even more dubious choice for the "made by" label. So half the bands in this category fit tenuously if at all in the list. The second question is, what justifies this distribution of punk-related albums? Does the order hold up even in itself, much less in relation to the rolling wave of genres and styles that characterizes the list? Here are my thoughts:

Parallel Lines by Blondie is certainly the most commercial; that it is the best of the lot could be argued for, but is not a truism, especially to those who deplore the commercialisation of post-punk. Impressive that they could make the jump so cleanly after two hardcore punk albums, but one is not required to prefer these clearly catchy pop tunes (including the discotheque number "Heart of Glass") to solid punk tracks. Cheap Trick, The Police and other post-punk bands took a similar turn, with similar results; apparently, all one had to do was decide to sell a few more records and it was not hard to trade in the revolutionary fervor for a spot on the Billboard charts.

Germfree Adolescents by XRay Spex is one of the great one-off albums in rock, a masterpiece of punk by a band that crashed and burned before releasing a second album but left a big mark, largely thanks to their female lead singer, Poly Styrene. With or without the punk anthem "Oh Bondage Up Yours", an early single which was added to the original LP later on (I have to credit the Trouser Press review for pointing this out), this album could easily exchange places with many of this list's top-30 selections - Adele, Lucinda Williams and several others, by my lights.

The Runaways were more like punk wannabes than a true punk rock band; The Runaways is a slick hard rock/heavy metal album that could have been the work of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath or any other competent metal band of that era, lyrics aside. Unlike The Raincoats, Siouxsie, or The Slits they are not much given to experimentation (an understatement, perhaps) but reliably land one hard rock number after another. Their later albums occasionally veer into a slightly more punk sound, while still exhibiting the same polish - think of ZZ Top covering The Ramones. Being a sucker for solid, guitar-driven hard rock I have no bones to pick with them on that score, but the sense of self-consciously pandering to adolescent rebelliousness sort of leaps off the vinyl every third song or so, and other than their gender very little of their music (particularly on this album) breaks any new ground at all.

The eponymous The Raincoats is here accorded the honor of being the 74^th greatest album "made by women", ahead of anything by Laura Nyro, Sheryl Crow or Carly Simon, for example. In spite of the endorsement of Johnny Rotten, Kurt Cobain and other Ministers of Noise, one can go either way about calling this album one of the "greatest" of anything. It may be one of the greatest recorded jokes in the industry: the lead singer can't sing, the rest of the vocals consist not in harmonies but off-unison shouting, the guitarist certainly can't play anything resembling a solo even when she is actually in time with the band. The drummer is quite competent and Vicky Aspinall, the violinist, suggests what might have happened if Chubby Wise or Buddy Spicher had moved to London and joined a punk band. That's as much as you can say for the performances. The lyrics, to the extent one can understand them, do seem a bit more interesting, and the music as a whole has a kind of anti-commercial integrity that is admirable if not often lovable. Perhaps it deserves a place somewhere at the nether reaches of the list, but that surely suggests that all nonsense by the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and the like is excised to make room for it.

As for Los Angeles by X, it is not even remotely an album "made by women". The style sometimes verges on "punkabilly", but however unusual, it's a great record and a piece of classic American post-punk, made mainly by men with significant contributions by a woman.

The Slits' Cut, another more-or-less one-off (discounting compilations and variations) stops short of being "experimental" but neither is it easily accessible, either in the way punk and post-punk can be, or as standard rock. "Artpunk" may be the best term to describe it. Because I'm partial to experimentation that somehow manages to work as songwriting I give this choice a thumbs up, keeping in mind that it feels more like a preview of things which never came than a completely convincing statement.

Siouxsie and the Banshees are surely the greatest, boldest and most influential of these groups. If The Scream were not on the list at least 2 or 3 of their other albums could be; critics seem to prefer Juju, Tinderbox and Peepshow to this one, and it is extremely difficult to see why The Raincoats or Cut would come out ahead of just about any of their albums, including their uncompromising Join Hands, some of which already brings to mind the much later rock trend known as "shoegaze". I thought this list was the work of people who have some in-depth knowledge of rock history, so I am a bit flabbergasted how this seminal group ended up with a single album near the end of the list, making way for higher-rated purveyors of superficial Top-40 pap. Then again, Suzi Quatro is represented by no album at all, so perhaps we should be thankful that the feminist listmakers saw fit to recognize one Siouxsie under an alternative spelling.

It is hard to imagine what on earth convinced Powers et al. to include Sonic Youth's Sister in a list of albums made by women, unless it was the album's name (referring to a sister of Phillip K. Dick who died shortly after birth). Nothing about the band's history suggests that it was so dominated by Kim Gordon as to justify the claim that any of Sonic Youth's albums were "made by women" – Gordon didn't have a more than equal role in the lead singing or songwriting, nor can the band's often noted alternative treatment of guitars (modified tunings, insertion of objects under the strings, etc.) be her invention alone. (None of those techniques were new to popular music in any case.) I am not trying to minimize what she did do, which is contribute to one of the most original and influential bands in history, but to call their albums "made by women" puts this in the wrong perspective. It is reasonable to point out the role that women have had in all sorts of innovative ensembles, from Pauline Oliveros to The Breeders, The Raincoats to Sonic Youth, but overstating the case does not help correct any historical oversights. The choice of albums is perhaps beside the point; their next album, Daydream Nation, is often considered their masterpiece, but the band's constant evolution makes the choice of any one album even more arbitrary than with many other groups.

Take the current order of appearance of these albums in the list as (1)-(7); for my money, judged on the basis of overall quality, with some credit for originality, the correct order would be:

1. (7) Siouxsie and the Banshees – Scream (or any of several others)

2. (2) XRay Spex – Germfree Adolescents

3. (1) Blondie - Parallel Lines (I'd replace it with Eat to the Beat)

4. (8) Sonic Youth – Sister (not really an album "made by women")

5. (5) X – Los Angeles (not really an album "made by women")

6. (6) The Slits – Cut

7. (3) The Runaways – The Runaways (Waiting for the Night might have bumped them up a notch)

8. (4) The Raincoats – The Raincoats

If the original order is so far off, interspersing these albums in that order between albums that are far removed in musical style seems like a recipe for a pretty random list.

***

47 (Celia Cruz, Son con Gauguanco), 73 (Astrud Gilberto, The Atrud Gilberto Album), 78 (The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Choir, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares), 103 (Umm Kulthum, Enta Omri), 112 (Mercedes Sosa, Mercedes Sosa en Argentina), 115 (La Lupe and Tito Puente, La Pareja), 137 Ofra Haza, 50 Gates of Wisdom, 145 (Oumou Sangare, Moussoulu)

If the list's efforts at cross-cultural inclusion are slightly greater than their efforts at cross-genre inclusion (see below), it is still a mere token selection of third world female artists. There is so much else to choose from, and so little to go on in choosing albums by these particular artists that it just does not make sense. Without trying too hard I can think of Greek, Polish, Lebanese, Israeli, Chilean, Mexican, Venezualan, Jamaican, Algerian and Inuit artists who have as good a claim to inclusion as many of these artists, and I'm sure this is also just scratching the surface. It's silly to imagine that of the 150 greatest albums made by women, just 10 or so are albums made in non-English-speaking third world countries. To take a few examples: While the nueva cancion genre is represented by Mercedes Sosa, the great Cuban singer Sara Gonzalez is equally important and deserving of recognition. Umm Kulthuum seems to be representing the entire Arab world, but there are others not quite so famous but perhaps more accessible, like the contemporary Algerian/Berber singer Souad Massi; her 2003 album Deb is one of my favorite pieces of so-called "world music". Please see my next post regarding the Greek singer Maria Farantouri.

***

55 (The Go-Gos, Beauty and the Beast), 59 (Indigo Girls, Indigo Girls), 64 (Spice Girls, Spice), 139 (The Bangles, All Over the Place)

Girl groups? Where's Bananarama? How about Pajama Party? (Just kidding – I happen to know someone who was in the band, though not on their recordings – you can see her introducing them in concert here.) One thing the list brings out is how differently we perceive bands with women filling most of the key instrumental and vocal roles. I've never heard anyone refer to Heart or Hole as a "girl group", and even Bikini Kill, which actually coined the term "girl power", is not really a "girl group" in the sense that the Spice Girls, who co-opted the term in support of a completely different musical experience, are truly a "girl group". A few comments are in order, anyway.

· First of all, the positions of The Go-Gos' 55.Beauty and the Beat and The Bangles' 139.All Over the Place should at least be reversed. The Go-Gos occupy an interesting place in rock history as perhaps the first all-female "New Wave" group. But they always sound like they are knocking off some tune by Blondie, The Knack, or The Cars; after all, Eat to the Beat, Parallel Lines, Get the Knack, Candy-O and a bunch of other New Wave albums were out before Beauty and the Beat. I'm not sure what makes it "one of the 'cornerstone albums of US new wave' (AllMusic), breaking barriers and paving the way for a host of other new American acts" (from their Wikipedia entry) – weren't those so-called "barriers" long gone, or at least seriously diminished? (What were Suzi Quatro, Joan Jett or Pat Benatar doing if not breaking those very barriers? To say nothing of earlier female rock stars from Janis Joplin to Linda Ronstadt.) I'd call it a good album, not a great or highly original or pathbreaking one.

· On the other hand,The Bangles' All Over the Place is one butt-kicking piece of rock and roll, good to the last drop, one that belongs in any "greatest albums" list that goes this deep. One note, though: The Bangles' 1987 smash hit "Walk Like an Egyptian" is more than a little reminiscent of "You Can't Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can't Sleep)" on this 1981 Go-Gos album – not close enough to call it plagiarism, but surely in debt to it as a predecessor.

· The Spice Girls' Spice is bottom-feeding bubblegum trash, and with the very partial exception of their hit "Wannabe", it belongs on a list of the 150 Least Adventurous Albums Made by Humans. There are dozens of albums that could replace this in the list, even if we limit ourselves to overlooked albums by the artists already represented. As for their historical relevance, here's a quote from the album's Wikipedia entry: "It is considered to be the record that brought teen pop back, opening the doors for a wave of teen pop artists." And one from Britney Spears' Wikipedia entry: "Spears is... credited with influencing the revival of teen pop during the late 1990s." Credited? Was that supposed to have a "dis" in front of it? Something tells me that Powers et al. were sufficiently impressed with the "importance" of these pop outings that they felt it necessary to include such clearly unremarkable recordings for fear of offending middle school girls from Brixton to Brooklyn. I don't see why such pandering should determine the "canon" of music by women.

· The Indigo Girls, by contrast, are more aligned with the folkrock genre, show consistent artistic integrity, manage to be highly accessible without playing to lowest common denominator tastes, and are all but a women's musical separatist movement, so tightly do they control the gender makeup of their album personnel. (They do have a few men in their lineups but they are a distinct minority.) Whether you like this separatist approach or not, their results speak for themselves. As for which album belongs in a "greatest" list, this duo once again suggests that bodies of work rather than albums should be the main focus, as Indigo Girls is on a par with several of their other efforts.

***

78 (The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Choir, Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares) 80 (Laurie Anderson Big Science), 111 (Diamanda Galás, The Litanies of Satan), 128 (Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening), 136 (Yoko Ono, Plastic Ono Band), 147 (Meredith Monk, Dolmen Music)

Far be it from me to deny that these artists deserve recognition, but such clearly editorial choices seem so ridiculously out of place with the heavily pop orientation of the list that they are almost embarrassing. Oliveros' 1989 album Deep Listening, for example, consists of a series of very long tones played in an underground cistern. Is that better or worse, more or less important, than the album 100 places above it - Nina Simone Sings the Blues? Aside from showing that the one-list-fits-all idea was a bit loony, it also throws into question what the limits of "greatness" are. If Galás' incomprehensible and astringent wailing is to be bestowed with the "greatest" tag, why not add Pharmakon's Bestial Burden, an esoteric and deeply disturbing electronic assault that TheFader.com kindly placed on their list of 150 More Great Albums Made By Women? It is also worth pointing out that while these particular albums may stand out among these artists' work, it is far more difficult with experimental or classical artists to identify a single album as "greatest" rather than recognize the originality and influence of their work as a whole. The albums are mere tokens, representing not only a few unique artists but a whole world of contemporary music with numerous worthy female practitioners.

The same goes for the few non-vocal jazz entries (Alice Coltrane and one or two others) – they seem like mere placeholders. Apparently, for example, the listmakers were not familiar with the brilliant pianist Geri Allen, who passed away this year after making numerous recordings with many of the great jazz masters of the last 30 years. What's the point of throwing in a few classical, experimental, jazz or crossover artists without really exploring these areas? And by what criteria do you select these artists or albums while not recognizing someone like Blossom Dearie, also unique but not given to the vocal experiments of of Ono, Galas or Monk?

89 (Shania Twain, Come On Over) 99 (Taylor Swift, Fearless), 114 (Reba McEntyre, Rumor Has It)

What distinguishes the albums by any of these latter day country superstars from their superstar peers like Faith Hill, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood or several others? I can see the temptation to include older, known entities like Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, who have a sort of legendary status, whether or not they made any albums I'd call "great". I can understand the impulse to recognize slightly off-the-beaten-path artists like Iris Dement, Rosanne Cash, Miranda Lambert and the Dixie Chicks, all of whom challenge Nashville norms in one way or another and have made some great music doing it. But I do not see the point of including several mainstream, formulaic, slickly produced country albums, even if some of them write their own songs, when nothing makes their music stand out from the tidal wave of Nashville slush. Yes, Twain supposedly broke some rules, edging very close to rock at times while also playing to a Nashville audience, but I'm not sure what is so exciting about someone figuring out that you could sell even more records by appealing to both Nashville and rock mainstream audiences. (And that someone was mostly her husband, Mutt Lange.) In any case that idea was not new, since Graham Parsons, Linda Ronstadt, Dwight Yoakum and many others had already figured it out; what was new was the over-the-top production job that added layers of studio complexity to the standard Nashville sound. (This is how a Canadian ended up as the all time best-selling artist, by some measures, of music typically made below the Mason-Dixon line.) Why this is a significant contribution to music "made by women" eludes me – the listmakers seem to be so dazzled by the gold dripping from some recordings that they just can't ignore them.

As for Taylor Swift, she is a prolific songwriter, but has not an ounce of the depth that the similarly prolific Mary Chapin Carpenter has in that regard, and is no great shakes as a singer either. Once again, record album sales seem to speak louder than musical accomplishments in this list. There's no question that Reba McEntyre can sing, but Carrie Underwood is also an extraordinary singer, who began (unlike McEntyre) co-writing her material after her first album, not to mention exhibiting more of an active engagement with social causes than the typical female country singer.

I have questions about the selection of albums even for country artists I admire. Lucinda Williams' 18. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is accorded a dizzying degree of respect in the top 20; but it tries a little too hard, for my taste – her first album is better, though I doubt it belongs anywhere near #18 either. Rosanne Cash's 68.King's Record Shop is a good album with a lot of hit songs, but not especially pathbreaking; starting with Interiors she set out on a less commercial path, retreating from the Country Hot 100, and it might have been better to recognize those efforts instead. I don't know who thinks Iris Dement's second album, My Life, is better than her inspired debut, Infamous Angel, but apparently such opinions are represented in NPR's committee.

To me, all this adds up to questionable judgment in the country department. We can consult Billboard or Wikipedia if we want to know who sold the most albums or which album got the most rave reviews; the only reason to do a list like this is to present the verdicts of taste, independent of album sales.

***

97 (Mariah Carey, Daydream)

I will not stand on a soapbox and insist that no Mariah Carey album should be on the list, but it is my duty to report that "One Sweet Day", the zillion-selling single from Daydream, is a syrupy, sentimental, bottom-feeding piece of trash. Other songs on the album are considerably better, but it is also worth pointing out that Carey's endless melismas sometimes hide an underlying lack of inherent melodic interest. This reminds me to ask again, where's Mariah's melismatic sidekick Christina Aguilera? Selling over 100 million albums and winning six Grammys is not enough to get her a spot in the parade of superstars? This is the sort of thing that puts the whole list in question, as it seems like purely arbitrary decisions were made about what's in and what's out.

*****

So, that's it for my comments on the choices for the list. I have no regrets about devoting the time and energy to this, but I have also become more convinced than ever that there are few artists and perhaps fewer albums that deserve the label "great". Kate Bush is a great artist, but if Hounds of Love is her best album – and I've listened to most of her others more than once as well – she may not have made any great ones, on my definition. A great album doesn't have one or two hits and a bunch of okay material to fill out the record; it is an album where nearly all the songs are at such a high level that the hits do not stand out as exceptions. A great album may have one or two songs that don't generate much enthusiasm, without being completely lost causes; or it may have a song that is a sort of throwaway but a very amusing or entertaining one. Other than that, it has to grab you, song after song, right to the end.

Most great bands don't make many great albums. The Rolling Stones have made 26 studio albums by my count; other than singles collections I'd call only one or two great albums. I may enjoy listening to half a dozen of them, but they're not "great", they just have enough great material to warrant hearing them again. Great albums are not defined by having multiple hits – that may in fact signify an album that is reaching for commercial play at the expense of artistry. Queen had just one hit song on Sheer Heart Attack, "Killer Queen", but every song is exceptional; that makes a great album. 10cc's The Original Soundtrack sports the ever popular "I'm Not in Love"; it may be the least memorable song on the record. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King has no hits, but is a seamless, genre-defining brilliant album. Steely Dan was not much of a hit generator, but by my lights made one great album after another. The artists and bands who by general agreement created more than one or two great albums are few and far between: you might get consensus on The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Elton John – after that (and possibly before), tastes will diverge. I would gladly put Siouxsee and the Banshees as well as Suzanne Vega on that list. But due to the sheer quantity of male recording artists and male-dominated groups, there are a lot more great albums by males than females.

I have a lot more questions about the list than I've had time to raise in the reviews above. Like, whether there should be two Madonna albums on such a list; or, for that matter, why the two Like a... albums and not her first album, which had a generally better critical reception, or her much more courageous and artistic Ray of Light, which eschews the predictable hooks and sexual innuendo in favor of a spiritual journey? Or whether Sleater-Kinney isn't way more important to women in music than their #81 slot suggests? Or whether Robyn's #143 electro-dance-pop Body Talk is more than a curiosity with it's cute-catchy "Fembot" and a lot of sterile discotheque material. Or whether Joanna Newsom's squeaky voice and monotonous melodic lines on #141 Ys have even less to recommend them than the bloodless vocals of Lana Del Rey, whose Born to Die was unaccountably overlooked for the Top Contemporary Female Folk-Pop spot. Or whether Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway isn't so much better than Taylor Swift's #99 Fearless; not that it would be amiss to reserve a spot or two for Certified Pop Child Prodigy, though Swift would have quite a bit of child-superstar competition these days. Etc.

But I don't have the patience to argue for each of these claims; besides, they're either as obvious to you as they are to me, or you probably won't listen to my heartfelt arguments anyway.

Please stay tuned for my next and last post on this topic, in which I offer a list of overlooked artists and albums, serious consideration of which might force a radical revision of the NPR list. [Note: various typos and other errors were corrected on 8/11/2018. And my next (5th) post on this topic turns out not to be my last - there will be at least seven altogether.]

List and You Shall Hear (III): Joni Mitchell and the Critical Consensus

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 13:30:00 +0000

Having delved into the conceptual issues with NPR's list, I move now to the more profane arena of music criticism. I now get to speak from the gut, engage in pure, unexpurgated subjectivity, and promote my personal tastes. The fun part, obviously, but also the most difficult. Listening to dozens of albums, old and new, continuously for a few months, you descend into what I would call the fog of music, where everything starts to blend into everything else and the faculty of judgment loses its grip.

Be that as it may, I am convinced that better judgments could have been made than what we see in this list, and plan to argue for some of them, while being well aware that such things are outside the realm of strict demonstration. In fact, I shall generally cast aside not only proof or logic but critical consensus, to say nothing of popularity. I don't really give a squawck if my opinions don't conform to what professional music critics think; but since they are rarely univocal in their ratings anyway I guess I stand to risk no more than siding with a small minority. But I have, at least, reasons for my critical opinions, which I will not be shy about offering.

Indeed, this post, which I sincerely hope will be the next to last in the series (I'm a bit exhausted, and have one or two other things to write about before I die) will be limited to confronting the critical consensus on the list's #1 artist, Joni Mitchell. I hasten to say that I have no intention of arguing that she should not be Number One. A Joni Mitchell fan since her second album, I own nearly every one from her first, Joni Mitchell (sometimes referred to as Song to a Seagull, words prominently seen on her artwork for the album cover) through Wild Things Run Fast - somehow For the Roses and Mingus have eluded me so far. No, if I had created the list a lot more of her albums would be on it, displacing the numerous questionable choices I will mention in my next post. My problem is with the particular albums that NPR chose to represent her. So here goes.

*****

1 (Blue), 121 (Hejira). NPR stuck with the standard consensus in selecting Blue and Hejira as Joni Mitchell's greatest achievements. I demur on both accounts. I would demur even if it were not the case that the list makes a de facto effort to represent an artist's most important work, even though it is a putative list of greatest work. Since I think the two albums selected are neither her greatest nor her most important work, this fine distinction does not change my point of view. I will therefore present my heartfelt case that the choices should be Clouds and The Hissing of Summer Lawns.

I am aware of the critical status of Blue – it is the pick of both of the other lists of albums by women I referred to in previous posts, and consistently gets mentioned as the album in which she really came into her own; see the album's Wikipedia page for a long list of the honors it has received in lists of various sorts. Even as I was writing this, along came the latest New York Review of Books with Mark Ford's review of David Yaffe's new biography of Joni Mitchell, where Ford states: "The two highest points in her career, it is generally agreed, are Blue (1971) and Hejira (1976)..." Now, to say it is "generally agreed" is not exactly to state a scientific truth; and even if it were somehow a critical majority opinion, there are other opinions to consider. Indeed, I think the "critical" praise for these two albums says more about the critics than about Joni Mitchell's work: it shows what they were looking for, more than what she was doing. In any case, there has never been any doubt about what the critics say, selecting Blue again and again for this type of praise, while her first three albums have not been similarly recognized even once, to my knowledge. So that is what the critics say, and now I get to say what I say, and happy to have the opportunity.

But before I pursue this argument, let me be clear: I hold Blue in as much reverence as any Joni Mitchell album, nearly all of which through Don Juan's Reckless Daughter occupy an emotional place for this singing-songwriting Parrot next to Dylan and hardly anyone else. (And Shine, her latest 2007 effort which I am only just familiarizing myself with, may be on track to join that group.) Blue found its way to my stereo during a particularly melancholy part of my sophomore year in college, and remains a sort of coronary tattoo, its cover a kind of visual memory of a time when for me, as for Joni, romance occupied an essential, and fairly disastrous, part of my existence. Be that as it may, it would not be my pick as the greatest of her early albums.

Turning to Ford's review again, he says that it was only with Blue "that Mitchell's voice, music and words meshed to create a record that people still find they want to listen to again and again". I don't know which people find that they don't want to listen again and again to Joni Mitchell, Clouds or Ladies of the Canyon. If there are such people then they have a very limited appreciation of the idiom in which she was working at that time. All four of the albums are permanent milestones and eminently listenable.

What distinguishes Blue from what came before? It is not the first time she performs some of her songs on the piano; that would be Ladies of the Canyon, which would be another fine choice for the list, having several of her most well-known songs and introducing her keyboard work. But the keyboard arrangements on Blue are more confident and somewhat more complex; they have a more contemporary sound (listen to the out-of-key fills in "My Old Man" for example), and hint at what Kate Bush and Tori Amos would be doing many years later. But while her keyboard work is creative and appealing, Laura Nyro had quite brilliantly sailed that ship already, so I wouldn't call it pathbreaking. Moreover, as a kind of side effect perhaps, the guitar arrangements on both Ladies of the Canyon and Blue do not have quite the poignance of those on the earlier albums, especially Clouds; the voicings and picking style sound more standard even if the tunings are not. Of course the dulcimer adds a nice new sonority, but this would not make the album stand out.

As for her vocals, they seemed to me quite mature even on Joni Mitchell - say, in "Night in the City" or "Marcie" - and neither lose nor gain much subsequently, though they do change. There is a bit more bottom to them on Blue, but the difference is not dramatic (listen closely to her a Capella vocals on "The Fiddle and the Drum" on Clouds, they do not lack sonority in the lower range) and in any case her earlier soprano was clear and strong enough for her style of music. By comparison, on Kate Bush's 1978 albums she sounds like a squeaky toy compared with her vocals on 1980's Never For Ever. I can hear no such qualitative change in Mitchell's voice. Pointing to her smoking cigarettes as a cause of improvement, as Ford does, seems to me a bit perverse, aside from lacking evidence – the cause was probably age and hormones, not tobacco. (On Shine, on the other hand, I suspect we are hearing the throaty effects of a life of cigarette-smoking, rather than, as in Dylan's case, the results of poor vocal training.)

There is one very significant musical difference on Blue, something I would characterize as a new sense of freedom in how she matches the melodic lines to the lyrics. I suspect that this is part of what garners the critical attention, though if so it is rarely stated. (In fact, music critic Stephen Holden seems to interpret it as a defect of her later work, as we shall see below.) This is an important feature that will only fully flower by 1975, on The Hissing of Summer Lawns; but the roots are in songs like "California", "River" and especially "The Last Time I Saw Richard" on Blue. I think this was an important and positive development, and one of the strongest arguments for the virtues of Blue; but it characterizes only a few of the later songs on the album.

Next, there is the so-called "confessional" aspect of the songwriting, which Mitchell herself has questioned, though she does not question the transparency of the emotions it captures. Oddly, this same emotional transparency is sometimes considered a key virtue of much later, and different, albums by women, such as Erykah Badu's Baduism and Beyoncé's Lemonade. I'm not sure if this sort of praise is a male-sponsored demand for women to shed everything, skin included, or a female-sponsored cry of "Yeah, she really told them where it's at". But whatever the basis for this alleged virtue, I am not convinced that it is in any way better than plain, honest, poetic songwriting, as found on practically all of Mitchell's work. So, whether you call it "confessional" or transparent or whatever, I don't buy the idea that this is some sort of overriding virtue of Blue.

Lastly, there is sometimes an allusion to technical improvements in the recording techniques. Ford says something about her having "entered Studio C at A&M Studios in Hollywood to record Blue" as if this had some technical importance. I don't know what that would be; she used the same engineer as before, Henry Lewy, and the capabilities of the studio count for very little in the relatively simple arrangements that she used in those days.

Now let's talk about Clouds for a minute. Put the record on, and it does not take 30 seconds to hear that this is something completely new, different, almost revolutionary. Nobody in 1969 was writing acoustic songs with the dissonant, complex chords that announce the song "Tin Angel" – unless it was Joni herself, in "I Had a King" on Joni Mitchell. Nobody was picking a guitar the way she does. It was not simply the alternate tunings, which she had picked up from David Crosby, though she immediately puts these to completely different uses than anyone before her. But the style of guitar picking itself is new. If there is something like a Merle Travis picking style going on, it is so radically modified that it cannot be classified as anything but Mitchell-style. After playing the opening arpeggio of "Tin Angel", she announces the end of a phrase by repeating the final chord, just for emotional effect; this repetition is ramified throughout the album, the use of repetition on "Roses Blue" being particular dramatic. She varies the direction, timing and voicing of the picking, all in contrast to traditional fingerstyle methods. The combination of a new harmonic vocabulary and a completely personalized guitar style to match have the effect of ringing in a new kind of acoustic music. This accomplishment, I believe, is not matched by anything on Blue.

As for songwriting, Clouds has two of her best, most famous and most widely covered songs, "Both Sides Now" and "Chelsea Morning" (the first of which proved quite important to the career of Judy Collins). While at least half the songs on Blue have the feel of familiar tunes for Joni Mitchell fans, only "Carey" is really in the same class as not only poetic and deep but having an irresistible hook. The lyrics to both the "hits" on Clouds are extraordinarily poetic and unpretentiously philosophical, as well as emotionally true; the melodic lines are somehow complex while still having immediate appeal. Those two songs are in no sense uniquely accessible, as songs like "I Don't Know Where I Stand" and "The Gallery" leave nothing to be desired. But it is the sense of innovation, of going outside normal expectations, that gives the album its unique quality. Not only "Tin Angel", with its aptly handled dissonances, but "Songs to Aging Children Come", which adds unusual vocal overdubs, and in particular the amazing piece of poetry-psychology-social criticism "Roses Blue". The album as a whole is a major landmark in songwriting.

Mitchell herself has referred to what she was doing then as a kind of "art song", and while their harmonic and melodic complexity might not compare with the Lieder of Schubert or Schumann, or even with the jazz inflected idioms of the Great American Songbook, for the medium of voice and acoustic guitar it was revolutionary. Her guitar in Clouds speaks through careful arrangements that are each completely unique and designed to match the rhythms and emotions of the lyrics. I would say no less of her first album, and it is a slim edge that makes Clouds the better choice. The song that really decides the day is "Roses Blue", where a relatively simple melodic line becomes a formal and emotional knockout. The song takes aim at a trend in the women's movement that tended to legitimize dubious mystical ideas as if their very unscientific character were somehow a suppressed feminist narrative. (We can see where the anti-scientific bias manifested in that ideology leads today.) One of my contentions about the list has been that albums which have particular resonance (I hate that word, but whatever) with respect to the liberation of women should have a preferred place - or rather, that the criteria for including and rating albums should include this consideration, certainly over ordinary Billboard chart positions, perhaps over some aesthetic considerations as well. That doesn't mean they have to be women's liberation anthems, just that they should have a place in the conversation. "Roses Blue" certainly has it. Though Robert Christgau mentioned this song as a high point in his review of the album, I worry that too many people overlook it as just a song about an offbeat friend. It's a devastating piece of social observation, with a sonority that no one had ever heard before in an acoustic guitar part. For anyone who wants to listen, this is a kicker that has no obvious match on Blue or anywhere else.

To put it bluntly, Blue was a safe choice, not only today but when it came out: a way to recognize Joni Mitchell's unique contribution to popular music up to that time without having to deal with the sometimes harsh but seriously innovative aesthetics of Clouds. I suspect that critics would similarly latch on to Court and Spark, another gorgeous but relatively safe album, to represent her later style, had not the intermediate option of Hejira appeared.

*****

Well, enough said about that; I know I am fighting a tidal wave of critical opinion about Blue, an album I love and revere anyway, but not as much as Clouds. More disturbing is the supposedly settled critical consensus on Hejira, which would not be my pick of later Joni Mitchell albums by a long shot. While I have come to like it overall, this album has none of my favorite songs of hers. The best song on the album is the famous "Coyote", but for me, the re-used metaphor "prisoner of the white lines of the freeway" feels less sincere than in Merle Haggard's "White Line Fever", written 6 years earlier. (I don't understand why Ford "was surprised to learn" that the album was "largely written... while Mitchell was revved up on cocaine". Did he not get it?)

The second best song is probably "Song for Sharon", and it succeeds precisely because it re-uses ideas from "Shades of Scarlet Conquering", which I take to be one of the greatest recorded compositions in popular music and the high point among the 10,000-foot peaks of The Hissing of Summer Lawns. The original elements in "Song for Sharon" are not really to my taste, including some of the chord changes and the chorus of "De de de de de.."

As for the rest of the songs on Hejira, while they have something of that Joni Mitchell flair, not one stands up to the best material on The Hissing of Summer Lawns: "In France They Kiss on Main Street", "The Jungle Line", "Edith and the Kingpin", "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow", the title track and "Harry's House", as well as the aforementioned masterpiece, are all better than all the other songs on Hejira. (I will grant, not to be completely one-sided, that the appealing "Blue Motel Room" is a much better take on the blues than "Centerpiece", the attachment to "Harry's House"; but the latter is a cover anyway.) Lastly, allow me as an acoustic guitarist to object to the general quality of the guitar sound on Hejira; without trying to research it, I'm going to guess she was using a plugged-in Ovation or else an acoustic with a cheap pickup rather than miking a good acoustic. This has worked well on many recordings, but here I find the guitar sound tinny and lacking in the sparkle a good acoustic guitar can bring to a song.

The Hissing of Summer Lawns sounds entirely fresh more than 40 years later. Perhaps her incorporation of African rhythms in "The Jungle Line" has something to do with that, as artists from the Talking Heads and Paul Simon to Vampire Weekend and other contemporary groups followed her lead. The superior work of Tom Scott and the L.A. Express also has to be mentioned as a virtue of this album. Finally, tracks like "The Jungle Line" and "Shadows and Light" present her more experimental side, something not strongly in evidence since Clouds, and especially welcome in the context of the super-strong set of jazzrock songs.

The devaluing of The Hissing of Summer Lawns when it first came out was a monumental misjudgment of popular music criticism. Stephen Holden, after liberally praising Mitchell's lyrics on the album in a Rolling Stone review, represented the common view when he intoned:

If The Hissing of Summer Lawns offers substantial literature, it is set to insubstantial music. There are no tunes to speak of. Since Blue, Mitchell's interest in melody has become increasingly eccentric, and she has relied more and more on lyrics and elaborate production...

Four members of Tom Scott's L.A. Express are featured on Hissing, but their uninspired jazz-rock style completely opposes Mitchell's romantic style. Always distinctly modal, Mitchell's tunes for the first time often lack harmonic focus. They are free-form in the most self-indulgent sense, i.e., they exist only to carry the lyrics. With the exceptions of "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" and "Sweet Bird," neither of which boasts a strong tune but at least have appropriately lovely textures, the arrangements are as pretentiously chic as they are boring.

A retraction by Holden would at least mean he wouldn't have to carry the stigma of these tasteless comments to the grave. As I noted above, there is a newfound sense of freedom, beginning in the latter part of Blue, in setting the lyrics to music; that is literally the only grain of truth in the whole absurd diatribe. It counts as a virtue, not a defect, of this kind of writing that it is relatively liberated from regular metrical coupling while remaining highly melodic. As for writing a tune, anybody who can't sing most of the songs on The Hissing of Summer Lawns while walking down the street does not have an ear, much less a voice. The fact that she could write tunes, from Blue on, is sufficiently demonstrated by "Carey", "River", "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire", "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio", "Help Me", "A Free Man in Paris", "Raised on Robbery", and others if you care to listen. Appreciating the melody of "In France They Kiss on Main Street", "Shades of Scarlet Conquering" and other songs from this period requires having an ear that can take in more than a couple of bars at a time. To say it is not melody is like saying that Mahler didn't write melodies. Failure to appreciate them is in the ear of the beholder, not the skill of the composer. As for the putdown of the L.A. Express, since the album practically invented "jazzrock" it is worth asking what Holden would take to be "inspired" jazzrock.

Most critics neither appreciated nor understood the album any more than Holden. Many reacted to the critical social portraits in the lyrics as if their bright-eyed Woodstock child had become jaded, the sensitive lovesick girl of "Help Me" suddenly developed a backbone – a reaction they never had to Dylan's endless trail of caustic personal and social criticism. As "Roses Blue" and many other compositions show, this was the same Joni Mitchell. The new material speaks of the same type of emotional struggles in the third person as some of her earlier material does in the first person, which is really just a poetic choice, not a change of personality.

Moreover, after all she did for contemporary music, you would think that critics would have noticed that in the same year she and Steely Dan (Katy Lied, 1975) perfected a new art form, building on their earlier nascent efforts in jazzrock. The opposite was sadly the case, as critical opinion shied away from the rich new sonorities; as if the Crosby, Stills and Nash sound were going to define music forever. In retrospect, this just was the "rock" side of the fusion experiments that had been going on in jazz, where critics were not so dismissive of innovation and new sounds.

While the critics were busy panning the album, which hit the cutoff racks pretty quickly, my two musician brothers and I were playing it daily from almost the moment it came out. And among musicians, at least, we were not alone. Consider the continuation of the first quote from the Ford review above: "...but for Prince, an early fan and later ardent friend, it was The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) that stood out as her greatest achievement." Okay, glad that that was preserved for posterity. Next, please read the following from Elvis Costello's 2004 Vanity Fair article and interview with Mitchell, posted on her web site:

E.C. ...The sophisticated life you wrote about in "Free Man in Paris" and 'People's Parties" was not exactly everyone's experience... The very next record you did was, in my opinion, the masterpiece of that time.

J.M. What is it?

E.C. The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Suddenly you are talking about the isolation of wealth: "She patrols that fence of his / To a Latin drum…." And for some reason the release of this marvelous record marked a critical fracture and a break in the commercial continuity of your career. However, I think that this accidentally liberated you.

J.M. When you reach that kind of successful pinnacle, it is the nature of the business and the press and everything that they go about tearing you down.

So for at least two musicians whose opinion we would tend to respect, The Hissing of Summer Lawns outshines Hejira and everything else of that time. You can also take a look at the Pitchfork review for references to Björk and Julia Holter praising "The Jungle Line". Seems like quite a few musicians "get it" about this album.

The British are typically more attracted than Americans to popular music that contains experimental elements – witness the comparative popularity of Kate Bush in England and the U.S. Thus in Alex Macpherson's celebration of Mitchell's 70^th birthday in his music blog for The Guardian, after duly referring to Blue as "Mitchell's 1971 masterpiece", he then identifies The Hissing of Summer Lawns as "my personal favorite of her albums". According to the album's Wikipedia entry, British music journalist Howard Sounes, in a review from 2006, "has called The Hissing of Summer Lawns Mitchell's masterpiece, 'an LP to stand alongside Blood on the Tracks'". Author and music journalist David Bennun begins his 40^th-year retrospective with the line, "Nobody has ever made an album like this," which he repeats later in the essay. "It doesn’t really matter whether The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is Mitchell’s best album" he continues. "What does matter is that anyone who thrills to, say, Blue, as well they might, may find this even more thrilling if they’ve yet to hear it." My favorite line from the review, though, is his irreverent characterization of the irreverence with which Mitchell stepped over the line in the late 1970's: "People think Bowie, or Prince, were daring. People are right. But Mitchell risked everything, and lost much of it, and a fuck she did not give." I'm not absolutely sure that she was unconcerned about the loss of popularity after Mingus, but I am sure that her departure from the folk-pop mainstream beginning with The Hissing of Summer Lawns was one of the most courageous turns any songwriter, male or female, has ever taken; and considering that it was also one of the most musically successful, more's the pity that NPR chose to overlook it and stay with the safe choice.

Winston Cook-Wilson, the author of the Pitchfork review mentioned above, is from Brooklyn, not Britain; he sums up the album with this oversophisticated comment: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns was one of the earliest and most high-profile albums by a major pop artist—certainly by a female one—to theorize what a distinctly avant-garde-informed pop music might sound like. Its musical vocabulary—as well as its lyrical one—fell magnificently between acoustic realism and symbolic fantasy." Ahem – I'd settle for, "It's a great, deep, important album in every possible way." But he too recognizes its pathbreaking nature. Perhaps American opinion is glacially moving away from Holden's myopic review.

*****

Now, having said all that, the question of which two albums were chosen by NPR is perhaps less important than the fact that at least Joni Mitchell, Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira all belong on the list in place of quite a few of the albums now on it; the choice of two is just a nod in the direction of "fairness" to lesser artists. Fairness to artists is not what a "greatest albums" list is about, so the omission of the other Joni Mitchell albums is inappropriate. (If the "150 greatest albums made by men" includes half a dozen Dylan albums, 10 Beatles albums, 8 Led Zeppelin albums, etc. then tough luck for all those artists with very good albums that just aren't that good.) It would have made more sense to create a list of "Greatest Female Recording Artists", to be represented by one album each, but that is not what was done. Taking the list on its own terms, you could get rid of most of the contemporary singer-songwriter albums (Joanna Newsom, Gillian Welch, Ani DiFranco, Iris Dement, etc.), to say nothing of a lot of popular trash, and replace them with any of these and the quality of the list would be improved.

This ends my effort to correct the injustices of history with regard to the critical evaluation of Joni Mitchell albums. I agree, there are more important things to debate in the world, like how to end war and poverty and racism. But I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to have my say on this, and post it on the world's bulletin board. In my next installment I will offer my reactions to the rest of the list, in much less detail (or the world's bulletin board will run out of space).

List and You Shall Hear (II): NPR's "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women"

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 13:30:00 +0000

In this post I continue my critique of NPR's "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women"; scroll down to the previous post for the first part.

Whose Rankings? Which Recordings?

(The heading is a reference, no doubt too obscure for many, to a book on ethics by Alisdair McIntyre, entitled Whose Justice? Which Rationality?")

It was a choice, not a necessity, to make a list of albums rather than bodies of work. It was a second choice to list them albums according to a ranking of "greatness". Both of those choices were mistaken, in my view.

First of all, choosing one or two albums by outstanding artists is very arbitrary. As mentioned below, I'm happy with ranking Joni Mitchell at the top of the heap; but I disagree with both the album choices made on her behalf, even if they happen to be critically popular choices. The problem is the same throughout popular music. For example, there is some kind of critical consensus that The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of the two greatest albums ever made; the other common choice is The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. But I know rock critics and other music fans who think Sg.t Pepper is not even a good album, and certainly not The Beatles' best album, though they would agree that The Beatles are the greatest rock group ever. Ditto Pet Sounds – some think it is highly overrated, though I have yet to meet (and would fight) anyone who thinks the Beach Boys are not at least one of the greatest American rock groups (for me, hands down the greatest). So why honor this or that album when the real achievement is the artist's corpus of work?

Had this caution been taken, it would have been clear, for example, that whatever the merits of Lauryn Hill's 2.The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, it is a bit bizarre to find this effort, which was followed up with nothing, as second in a list of the greatest popular music by women. The work of artists who were excluded from the list, like Joan Armatrading and Grace Slick, would be much harder to ignore if bodies of work were the subject. Picking individual albums opens the door to not only very arbitrary choices but to sidelining women whose overall contributions are greater, whether or not they have an individual album considered to be one of the "greatest".

Having decided to select albums, it was certainly not necessary to rank them #1 through #150. What does it mean to place Liz Phair's 31. Exile in Guyville 63 places higher than Sheryl Crow's 94. Tuesday Night Music Club? It seems odd in itself, but meaningless in the context of all the other possibilities. Why shouldn't Sade's 22. Diamond Life be closer to #1? Why is Bobbie Gentry's 83. Ode to Billie Joe ranked higher than Marianne Faithfull's 129. Broken English? Virtually every entry in this ranking seems debatable when compared with other entries. So what was the point?

My feeling is that the classical, folk, rock, Hip-hop, world music and jazz albums are all incommensurable with albums in the other categories. There's no picking a Pauline Oliveros recording and comparing it with Shania Twain or any such thing, no way Mercedes Sosa can be ranked in greatness with No Doubt. This is all just a big mashup: there really is no order to speak of, though you can speak of a very broad consensus that certain albums are among the greatest ever, some are among the most important, some are among the most original or unique in some way and some are of great interest to women's rights, causes, self-esteem and the like.

Lists of "greatest albums" are in general a lot of nonsense, as is obvious from a comparison of NME's "500 greatest" with Rolling Stone's "500 greatest": neither the top 10, the top 50, the top 100, nor any other grouping is even remotely the same from one list to another. NPR's list has no added legitimacy for being a list of only albums by women; it's an absurdly arbitrary ranking of women's album rather than an absurdly arbitrary ranking of all albums. This is not exactly a great leap for womankind.

Sung (mainly) By Women

The idea is that the list represents albums "made by women"; but that phrase is never defined, and no more than a handful of the selections would actually fit a strict definition of it. Just about all of the choices are collections of "songs sung mainly by women", albeit with male vocals in various harmony and sometimes lead roles, while in some cases the songwriting, production, instrumental performance, engineering, mastering, and just about every other aspect of the album was done by men. It's not the case with all the selections, but having been largely, in reality, "made by men", was obviously not reason enough to avoid including some of these in a list of albums "made by women".

Let's discuss some of the actual levels of involvement women have with these albums:

Overall artistic control by women: In some cases a woman clearly has overall artistic control of the final product - Tori Amos, Mariah Carey and Madonna are good examples. On some of her albums Sheryl Crow wrote the songs, sang lead, played about a dozen different instruments, produced the album and had female recording and technical engineers. That is clearly an album "made by women", even if there were also men involved in various important roles. Later so-called "girl groups" (I guess this NPR initiative might suggest that we re-think that term?) like The Bangles, The Go-Gos and Indigo Girls substantially controlled most artistic aspects of their recordings. I can't say exactly how many of the albums on the list fit into this category but my suspicion is that more than half do not.

Limited artistic control by women: Here the situation is more mixed. Take The Ronettes, who released just one studio album (in 1964): they were clearly in command of the vocals, and among the songwriters who contributed to the album were two women, Ellie Greenwich and Cynthia Weil. The producer, of course, was Phil Spector, whose influence on the final product was enormous, and the other songwriters, all the session musicians, and many other participants were male. On Shania Twain's zillion-selling album Come On Over she sang all the lead vocals and co-wrote all the songs. The other writer was her husband Robert "Mutt" Lange, who produced and had overall artistic control over the album, and virtually all other musical and technical personnel were male.

Women as more or less equal partners: Many of the mixed gender groups in the list – The B-52's, the Cocteau Twins, Fleetwood Mac, No Doubt, etc. – are more or less equal partnerships between male and female members. As I point out below, if these groups belong in the list, then the #1 group in this category is Jefferson Airplane, due to Grace Slick's foundational role among women in rock; but they are not even recognized in the list. (They are, however, in the similar ListChallenges list mentioned in the previous post, where Surrealistic Pillow is #19 out of 100.) On the other hand, Evanescence is largely dominated by Amy Lee, but they are not included either. It seems that the canonizers have simply appropriated groups or albums they liked as "made by women" without any consistent criteria for what that means.

Sung by women and that's just about all: Albums that are all but the opposite of "made by women" are also represented in the list. There is little reason to question the fact that the #14 choice, Whitney Houston, introduced one of the greatest and most influential voices in the history of popular music – perhaps the greatest pop vocalist ever. That surely deserves recognition, but her own vocal style is virtually all she was responsible for on the album. Clive Davis made the executive decisions, Jermaine Jackson and a bunch of Michaels - Masser, Walden, Kashif (born Michael Jones) – teamed up to write and produce songs for Whitney to sing; add three more Michaels (Barbiero, Mancini, O'Reilly) in the engineering and mixing room, and a host of mostly male studio musicians and vocalists, and you have an album. Britney Spears had practically nothing to do with ...Baby One More Time other than singing the lead vocals (and not with one of the greatest voices of all time, either); she did not select the songs or make other key artistic decisions about the album. On her eponymous Aaliyah the singer did little other than sing: while she gets "Executive Producer" credit, almost all the songwriting and actual production were handled by men. (Missy Elliott penned the lyrics to one song and had some artistic input on the project.) Nico's Chelsea Girl was written, produced, arranged and engineered entirely by male former Velvet Underground members as well as folkies like Dylan and Tim Hardin. Nico did not even like the album, as it was far from the sound she hoped to project, and if she had fans they did not show up in droves to buy it. You could call it one of the 150 Albums Most Inappropriately Dominated By Men, but not really an album "made by women".

So the notion of "made by women" needs clarification, to say the least. Of course, an album with a female lead vocalist gives the impression that she "made" the album, but while the contribution of the lead vocals is of course very important, it can also give a misleading picture of the extent to which it is the lead singer's album. When The Monkees turned out to have done nothing but sing on their first two albums they were ridiculed for it (unfairly, since the session musicians who had played the instruments had done the same for hundreds of other recordings, without any outcry). Singing a song is quite different from the kind of artistic control that deserves the "made by" label.

Here, then, are a few options for a tighter definition of "greatest albums made by women":

1. Albums on which a woman was among the featured performers and had overall artistic control.

2. Albums on which a woman was the featured performer and is credited with writing most of the music.

3. Albums that were almost completely created by a team of women that included the performers, songwriters and key production and recording personnel.

Some of the albums chosen by NPR would not meet any of these sets of conditions, and very few would meet all of them, leaving the impression that "made by women" really came down to having prominent female vocals.

It's not always possible to know how much a female lead vocalist deserves credit for an album. Reba McEntire has recorded 29 albums, on each of which she has written at most one song and almost never plays an instrument. She occasionally receives credit for production, and I suppose the listmakers were careful to select an album (Rumor Has It) on which she is credited as producer. She presumably selects at least some of the songs she will record; or does she only exercise veto power? It would take some research to figure out exactly how much control she has over her albums, and whether they deserve the "made by a woman" label. (She at least gets the blame for both singing and "acting" on her insufferable "Back to God" video.)

1964: It Was a Very Good Year, But...

The decision to begin in 1964 and include only albums (as opposed to a body of work in any recorded format) has the odd effect of eliminating a very large number of black women who set the standard for women in music. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Eartha Kitt, Mahalia Jackson and Marion Anderson, among many others, seem like they are being relegated to a sort of fuzzy background role for no other reason than that Powers et al. thought it would be best to only consider albums from 1964 on. Not a few critically important white women, like Patsy Cline and Mother Maybelle Carter, are apparently excluded on similar grounds.

On the other hand, some albums seem to have made the list merely because they were post-1964; how else do you explain the relatively unimportant Nina Simone album I Put a Spell On You dropping into the #3 slot, replacing the much better sung and played The Amazing Nina Simone (1959) and other earlier choices? I'm really not sure how the choice of 1964 is motivated. For example, had 1963 been chosen, the list might have included Heat Wave by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, He's So Fine by The Chiffons, and about a dozen other albums by artists who were either left off the list or are represented by later and not necessarily better work. The so-called "album era" in pop music was really ushered in by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds in 1966; but artists have made albums since the early 1950's at the latest, and made them regularly since the late 50's, so the argument that the list should be confined to "album era" recordings has no particular force and is not actually captured by the choice of 1964.

Nor does the list of "greatest albums" consistently show a choice of great albums, as the above point about Nina Simone demonstrates. For another example, Tammy Wynette's single "Stand By Your Man" is certainly one of the most important (and perhaps "greatest") country music songs (albeit, ironically, a target of feminist ire) but the album of the same name on which the song appeared is of no special importance, being filled out largely with naive tearjerkers about emotionally wounded children and other pap; it is there simply because the single is on it. It's clear that the ill-defined criteria for being on this list could not even guide the selection of albums, leading to many mediocre recordings that contain a notable song or two getting on the list.

To return to the first point, if you want a new canon you can't exclude many of the most canonic musicians because they didn't make albums. For what exactly is a canon of albums? Something like a canon of novels? Which naturally will not include Chaucer, Flannery O'Connor or Alice Munro, since none of their most celebrated works are novels. But a canon of albums seems more arbitrary than one of novels; for even in the so-called "album era" an album may have been more than a collection of songs – a form of composition, in a sense – but it certainly was not always. An album does not have to hang together like a novel (squawck... the Parrot has perused a contemporary novel or two that hangs together about like jungle mist, but forget that for a moment). I suspect we shall soon see a companion list of "25 Greatest Pre-Album Era Recorded Legacies of Women" or some such silly acknowledgment that 1964 is not a cutoff with any real historical merit.

That albums of the woman, by the woman and for the woman shall not perish...

Why not require that the albums really be in some sense for or about women, or that they lend support to the advancement of women's rights or equality or recognition, or somehow make a statement of importance to women, or enhance the position of women in music... or something like that? Now, clearly there are albums on the list that do this; and just as clearly, there are many that do not, and have nothing more to say about women than some very boilerplate expression of a woman's side of romantic relationships. Some of these albums sold a lot of copies; but even if every household in the Western world had one they would have little to say that had not been said before, either musically or lyrically. A truly new and liberating voice in country music is hard to come by. The Dixie Chicks might be on this kind of list, maybe Iris DeMent, but most of the Nashville crowd would not be. Shania Twain, for example, makes some feints in the direction of feminist talk, but the sort of feminism that sells between 30 and 40 million copies is not going to push any buttons or break through any glass ceilings.

Some of the most clearly and consistently feminist sentiments are expressed by worthy folk artists not on the list. What sort of list is this without Holly Near or Peggy Seeger or other outspoken feminists who also have a huge recorded legacy? The idea that the list should favor albums or artists that have something to say about women's rights and struggles seems not to have occurred to the Powers That Be. Reorganize it along these lines and many things would be quite different. Tori Amos would get more than a 27^th-place nod for her first album; she does everything but explicitly proselytize about women's issues in her music, and she does that in other ways. Suzanne Vega would not have been overlooked (which is unaccountable on almost any grounds anyway), and even Ferron might have been recognized. Christina Aguilera, bizarrely omitted from the parade of superstars, might have had a better claim to a slot than Mariah Carey, and any of half a dozen country singers could have replaced Reba McEntire (Carrie Underwood and Mary Chapin Carpenter would be two good choices).

To put it in a nutshell, the apparent feminist impulse behind the list and the feminist content of the albums themselves seem to diverge far more than had to be the case.

Nothing would have been lost, and some moral ground might have been gained, by at least taking into consideration what an artist or an album has done for women.

Gratuitous "Greatness"

There really is nothing to the term "greatest" in the list's title, which is why a lot of the comments I have heard both on public forums and in private are, to be nice, dismissive of the whole undertaking. To be not so nice, a good deal of the list appears to be nothing but pop fluff, recordings with absolutely nothing to speak for them other than female lead singers and high chart positions or album sales. The lack of taste exhibited in the selection of various Z100-type pop stars, country divas and disco queens leaves one guessing as to why some of these superficial recordings made the list while other equally, or perhaps less superficial recordings of the same type and caliber failed. Thumbs down on Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, for some reason, each of whom has recorded material that ought to be of some interest to creators of a women's music "canon", while others who hardly seem like apostles of anything except Gold, in all its forms, somehow adorn the list. There's no accounting for taste, but there is for judgment, and there doesn't seem to have been much of that exercised here.

In the previously mentioned exchange between Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, Morris comments that "I think that the list is trying to strike a balance between greatness and importance. But sometimes, I think it assumes that importance is a form of greatness." To which Wortham says (a little later in the exchange), "It’s literally called the 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women." Well, that's just it, and I think Morris is being overly charitable: while selling itself as a "greatest" list it tries to strike a balance between greatness, importance, fairness and mere popularity. A popular album, no matter how popular, is not necessarily either important or great. The two commentators then seem to agree that a recording by Destiny's Child doesn't really merit inclusion. But the other question is why they chose The Writing's on the Wall rather than Survivor, with its feminist anthems? (I agree that neither of these has the degree of inventiveness one finds in Beyoncé's later solo work.)

In general: if you are going to do a list like this – a curated list, not the results of an online poll or the choice of a specialized audience – it ought to have some clear criteria for "greatness", which this list doesn't. Here is one example of criteria for a list of "greatest" albums by women:

1. It should be important for its musical and lyrical qualities, not merely another blockbuster entry in a tired genre.

2. The level of women's contributions should be considered carefully: being sung by a woman is important, but songwriting, production and any other significant contribution are important too.

3. It must have some quality – in the lyrics or any other way - that speaks to the liberation of women in some important respect or other: emotionally, economically, sexually, politically, even musically, but in any case it must have something significant to say about women per se.

This is just one example of a set of guidelines for critical judgment. The choices should be based on something more than record sales, or having been listened to enthusiastically by your friends at college. Or being boldly presented by someone in the selection group and receiving nods of assent, which, I suspect, is something like how many of these choices and rankings came to be.

Political notes

The last of these guidelines deserves some comment. What I do not mean by it is that in order to be on a list like this an album should have some explicit feminist content. My worry is that Powers and her associates think that many of these albums already do. But if so, I suspect that what counts as being a feminist statement is something like Lemonade, and I have to demur from that view. A woman stating forcefully and eloquently how hurt she is by a man's infidelity, and poetically describing the pain, anger, recovery, reconciliation and redemption that follows is a great thing in itself, but it is not a political statement at all. A sensitive male who has been similarly hurt could express the same set of feelings, go through the same emotional process. (I know I have; I don't suppose I have any claim to uniqueness in that respect.) Many, many other descriptions of relationships gone bad pepper these albums, and popular music in general, but have no feminist political content on account of that.

The country song "What Hurts the Most" describes in aching detail the aftermath of a breakup: written by two men, it was recorded by both male and female groups and solo artists without change of content. Another example is "Since U Been Gone", the Max Martin-Dr. Luke song made famous by Kelly Clarkson but also covered by various male vocalists. The song is also a bit of an emotional echo of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright". Emotions like "I can breathe for the first time" and "You just kind of wasted my precious time" are not political statements. Infidelity, emotional abuse, control issues, and the like, are gender-neutral hazards of relationships.

Political claims for music have to be judged according to the context in which they are made. Neither "Respect" nor "The Greatest Love of All" are necessarily statements either about either racism or the oppression of women, but they came be perceived that way due to the larger social context. "Respect" was written by a man (Otis Redding), about a man looking to get little respect at home for working to support his family. The lyrics to "The Greatest Love of All" were written by a woman, but as the theme song for a biopic about Muhammed Ali, who had long ago adopted the title "The Greatest". But in an era when there were still serious limitations on the respect a woman could expect either at work or at home, Aretha's forceful (and slightly rewritten) version of the song rang out with an unmistakable message. So did Whitney Houston's version of the Michael Masser-Linda Creed composition, at a time when the oppression of minority women had begun to be recognized as a struggle with its own dynamics. But though this can happen, it does not mean that every time a woman sings of respect or self-fulfillment a political statement is being made. Plenty of women, like plenty of men, are too full of themselves already to be honored as apostles of feminism for being independent, sexually explicit, or critical of something perceived to be a male defect.

What my third criterion suggests (and as with the other two I do mean they are simply suggestions, conversation-starters) is that the album either (1) represents a particularly original aesthetic accomplishment that focuses attention on what women can contribute to popular music (this, I would argue, is why Lemonade belongs on the list; ditto for Horses and many others); or (2) turns our attention to the experience of being a woman (which might include explicit political issues like rape and abortion, but need not), to issues of sex role stereotypes, or to women's efforts at self-realization and the challenges that faces, in a forceful and original way. I don't know how many of the albums on the list would survive this requirement, but I do know that several albums not on the list would do so. A lot of them come from the folk music genre, whose severe underrepresentation is one of the worst things about the list. Joni Mitchell's "Roses Blue", Janis Ian's "At Seventeen", and Suzanne Vega's "Luka" are subtle but intense contemplations of particularly female experiences. The first song is on neither of the selected Joni Mitchell albums, and the latter two artists are not even represented.

*****

Well I guess I have made enough noise about the general considerations that went into making the list. In the next (and last) post I turn to consideration of specific selected albums, and to some omissions.

List and You Shall Hear (I): NPR's "150 Greatest Albums Made By Women"

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:00:00 +0000

The Culture Vulture – pardon the temporary ornithological mutation – has been sitting on this egg even longer than his (? – egg?) usual dinosaur-era posts; such that it originally began, "This week...", then "Last week...", and is now past the point of "last month..." In the meantime this has also become, I think, the longest post ever delivered from the Parrot's perch, if not simply the longest thing anyone has ever dared to post on a blog, period. Or it was until I decided to split it up into several shorter, slightly more manageable posts. So this will be the first of a series.

The references to temps perdu pertain to the occasions on which Ms. Vulturess and I alighted on a couple of concerts featuring music by women. To say that this did not feel like some really new and unusual experience is an understatement: I guess I've been sufficiently impressed with the musical contributions of the fairer sex since, I don't know, my first Joan Baez album, or maybe my Mom singing a verse of some Tin Pan Alley tune every time I'd utter a phrase that reminded her of a song. (She briefly had aspirations to be a pop singer in the 50's.)

But these concerts, both at Lincoln Center – one by Ricki Lee Jones, in a perhaps slightly underrehearsed performance of her album Pirates, the other in honor of Pauline Oliveros, the influential composer who passed away this year – were related to a new initiative on behalf of music by women, courtesy of the tastemakers at National Public Radio. On what seems to me highly questionable evidence, they have argued that the contribution of women to popular music, and music in general, is under-appreciated, a situation they propose to remedy by the promotion of a List, that paradigm of web-based obsessiveness.

Now, lists are one thing on which parrots prefer to pontificate, as witness our previous disquisitions on the the so-called Top 1043 Classic Rock Songs of All Time or The Tommasini Ten. So excuse me if I ruffle some feathers, but I plan to say a few (thousand) words about this list, its rationale, and its method of selection.

One of the reasons this was a bit like a pregnancy is that I am addressing a list of 150 allegedly "greatest" albums by women, and I started out knowing about 20 of them fairly well. I was familiar enough with many of the other artists, but I am just not the type to alight on a Madonna album (much less some of the less sassy and more anodyne commercial pop, country and R&B entries) and remain there long enough to listen to the whole thing. So to write about this I had some more or less reluctant catching up to do. Roughly 45 albums and one Spotify Premium account later I am still discovering 12x platinum albums I never paid any attention to. It's not a case of "How could I not have known about this?" but rather "Am I supposed to care about this now because it's on this list?" Should the Powers That Be find this a sad confirmation of their beliefs in the underestimation of female popular musicians, I must inform them that I couldn't name a Steve Miller, Journey or Bon Jovi album I've listened to either, and hope I am never so inclined to write about them that I feel a need to. Whether Madonna or Mary J. Blige, Max Martin or Mitch Miller, I have a fairly dim view of commercial popular music and remain short on contrition about it.

The list does include a representative sample of albums outside the pop mainstream; in these cases I may have crossed paths with the artists but not necessarily with the selected album. Here and there I discovered something that was never on my radar, much to my own loss. X-Ray Spex' Germ Free Adolescents: who knew that one of the greatest punk rock albums was sitting in a record store bin under a strange name like this? Ditto for Against Me!'s Transgender Dyphoria Blues. Cris Williamson's The Changer and the Changed: A Record of the Times was a rediscovery of an artist I have known of for 35 years but clearly have not paid enough attention to. On the other hand, it looks suspiciously like nearly every woman who has made a prominent hip-hop/R&B crossover album has been added to the list, to the point where it is very hard to discern what is particularly notable about some of the choices in this category. (Rihanna has unaccountably been excluded from it, but there are so many curious oversights in the list as a whole that this is no more weird than the others.) I am not going to do any mea culpas about not having listened to most of them before, because having now done so I still don't know what is especially great about some of them.

Another issue is that I was constantly revising my judgments, or ways of expressing them, and that in part reflects the wish to avoid the perception of delivering some crass version of the Dominant Male Perspective. (Parrots cannot be accused of acting like King of the Forest, but it's true that we are situated high above the other denizens of the Urban Jungle.) The other part is that judgments in the arts are by nature partly subjective, and I was constantly rethinking the criteria supporting my judgments, reaching for something more objective. In this I don't think I've had more than minimal success; what I have to say still rests heavily on my perceptions, albeit perceptions guided by decades of listening to, performing, writing and commenting on music in many different genres.

Given the nature of what follows, I should make it clear that I think the idea of calling attention to music that deserves wider recognition, through a list or whatever, is a fine thing. My whole experience of popular music has been that popularity just barely intersects with greatness; so for example I have argued vociferously that Tori Amos and Loreena McKennit, to take two examples, are grossly underappreciated considering their merits relative to other better-known artists. But while it does, as noted, contain some lesser known works of genius, ultimately this list is not very helpful in turning perceptions around. It rather seems to endorse one zillion-selling recording after another, even when "great" seems quite a stretch to describe the album's overall contribution.

I've never seen a list of this type that I really liked, but this one is particularly irksome because on the one hand, it wears the mantle of authority, coming from two elite institutions (NPR apparently teamed up with some musical magpies at Lincoln Center, though it sort of wears the NPR label on its chest), and on the other, everything about the methodology seems off: the putative reason for the enterprise, the criteria for inclusion (or exclusion), the ordering of the selections - all seem to have been handled so badly that the legitimacy of the list suffers greatly. Or so I shall aver from my avian outpost.

The series is divided as follows:

This post: The focus will be on some of the arguments offered by the list's creators and supporters for the enterprise as a whole: the rationale for the list, in short.

Next installment: A discussion of some of the criteria that were used in selecting albums for the list.

Last part: A highly opinionated critique of the particular choices of albums that were included, and a short list of those that were not but should have been.

Taking a potshot at the notion of "a new canon"

That is how Ann Powers characterizes the goal of the list in the title of her lead article for NPR, followed by the rhetorical flourish that "In Pop Music, Women Belong at the Center of the Story". (Does this mean that men belong on the periphery? Or is everyone at the center, as in Lake Wobegon where "all the children are above average"?) Powers is not entirely oblivious to the cultural implications of declaring "a new canon", but nevertheless considers this a good thing to do and a gift to women everywhere. Coming from the bully pulpit of these relatively conservative cultural institutions I think we should not let that go by without comment.

The feminist critique of canons is that they express the dominant ideology of a culture, which is typically male and sexist. The response cannot be "let's make an alternative canon" or "let's make a women's canon" – that is just a different form of dominance, which can come at any level of power or control. Cultural elites who attempt to make musical canons in the interest of some disadvantaged group will end up creating a new class of culturally disadvantaged musicians: those who have made equally interesting contributions but were not recognized by the compilers of the list.

Before pursuing this, it is worth pointing out that canons are not generally created on the fly, they evolve over long periods of time through the judgments of entire peoples and generations. The "canons" that pertain to classical music or English literature, for example, are the result of judgments made, and discarded, over the course of centuries. Lists can be created at any time, by anyone, and some may have more value than others; but canons are at most captured after the fact by lists. I say "at most" because I think of canons as fluid and vaguely defined, which no list can ever be by its very nature. So any canon-making enterprise is suspect from the start. (Only the Vatican is exempt from this observation – by self-definition.)

Second, the recognition and itemization of canons – which is more to the point of what this list is really about – can have two aspects, one of which may be positive, the other of which is clearly negative. For the purposes of basic education and sometimes other reasons, it is useful to have a set of "canonic" texts, pieces or whatever, which can help guide individuals towards familiarity with the outstanding works of a nation, a period, or a social group. Fluency with the canon then becomes a sign of a culturally literate person.

But canons also tend to create an orthodox cultural norm that delegitimates marginal ideas and may stifle creativity. They offer an artificial paradigm against which both old and new works must be compared for authenticity, and are therefore one of the very things that can keep valuable contributions by women, minorities or third world peoples out of the "center of the story". They get established by prejudices that are often not manifest, and blind us to other ways of looking at cultural artifacts. The NPR list's inclusion of a few albums by third world and classical artists (about 10-12 and 4-5, respectively, out of 150 entries) suggests that the listmakers were hoping to avoid this, but the token-ish nature of these entries shows that it can't really be done.

Therefore I don't think it is either possible or desirable to establish "a new canon" with a list of recordings "made by women". To the extent that there is an old, intellectually calcified canon that suppresses the contributions of women, we should question and resist the canonization it represents. Yet what is being offered is not a canon-free world, or a revised, more inclusive canon, or even a revised list, with the underappreciated contributions by women restored to their rightful place; rather, it is simply another list, so that we now have some allegedly male chauvinist lists and a putative feminist one. Since this answers absolutely no questions about the relative position of women's musical offerings in a gender-neutral culture it does not do anything at all to support the claim that the other lists are biased.

But the oddest thing about the whole endeavor is that this is not a "new" canon at all: in fact, five years ago, Rolling Stone presented a shorter list, entitled "Women Who Rock: The 50 Greatest Albums of All Time", that virtually duplicates a third of the artists and for the most part the albums on the NPR list. Yes, the very magazine whose longer, non-gendered list of the alleged 500 greatest albums is maligned by the creators of this one (see below), produced practically the same list in abbreviated form! The web site ListChallenges.com also has a list of this sort, with a similar title but twice as long as the RS list, and a publication date of 9/26/13 (per the source code); it once again very largely overlaps the NPR list, but includes several artists or albums that (as I suggest below) were inexplicably left out, like Grace Slick, Mama Cass and Bette Midler. (The list also, in my opinion, has some superior album choices for the artists they include, such as Laura Nyro's Eli and the Thirteenth Confession rather than New York Tendaberry, and a more courageous Madonna choice, her Kaballah-inspired Ray of Light.) So what exactly is "new" or revolutionary or liberating about this NPR list? Nothing – it's been done before, and at most NPR has added another 50 albums, some well chosen and some not.

A dubious rationale

Powers' article does not get better after the curious title and subtitle. The attempt to provide a rationale for the list in terms of the alleged under-recognition of women in popular music falls apart under scrutiny. First, consider a version of this rationale given in a WNYC interview by Jill Sternheimer of Lincoln Center:

Well, in all of these lists, you know, you have the famous Rolling Stone lists, the famous Pitchfork lists and so many lists through the years. Women, they're on the list, but they're sprinkled in sort of as an afterthought. And after four albums by Bob Dylan comes a Joni Mitchell album or three albums by the Beatles, then there's Carole King. They feel like an afterthought and not the main meal.

Bad examples, perhaps – I think there should be at least 10 Beatles albums before Tapestry. That the latter is a brilliant album is hardly news to the world of pop music, since all but one or two of the songs on it were regularly on FM radio playlists from the time it was released. But the work of one top notch songwriter, who was also a decent singer and keyboardist, does not really even begin to match the output of three brilliant songwriters, four perfectly blended voices, four very creative instrumentalists and the greatest producer in rock music, to say nothing of the cultural significance of some of their recordings. I have to wonder what Carole King thought when she saw this – "Gee, she's right, my album shouldn't have to follow three Beatles albums!", or, more sensibly, "My work is great, but would I really rank it in front of any Beatles album – even the one where they covered one of my songs?" (That would be "Chains" on their debut album, Please Please Me.)

In any case, there are actually only three Dylan albums before Joni Mitchell's Blue, which comes just ahead of Bringing It All Back Home. Joni and Dylan have a lot in common and are both truly essential, but as with The Beatles, I would put several Dylan albums ahead of almost every singer-songwriter album ever made, so it does not seem shocking, much less a sign of implicit sexism, that three should turn up ahead of Joni's album – which, incidentally, is ranked in this allegedly gender-slanted list a full 20 places ahead of any Simon and Garfunkel album, a choice that is certainly open to discussion. Perhaps an even better comparison for these solo artists is with Elton John, who finally checks in at #91 on the Rolling Stone list, well after Joni, Carole King, Patti Smith, Aretha and Dusty Springfield. To my taste, the four or five best Elton John albums would be in a dead heat with the four or five best Joni Mitchell albums. So it's hard for me to see how Joni has been disrespected by the RS list.

Another piece of alleged evidence can be found in Powers' introduction to the NPR list, where she refers to,

the shelves weighed down with books about Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana, while only one or two about Aretha Franklin or Patti Smith sit nearby.

I went to Amazon and stopped counting when I hit twenty (20) books entirely or largely about Aretha Franklin, not including sheet music and the like. I counted about the same number for Hendrix, though there are many more books of sheet music. So whatever may be weighing down the shelves, the statement does not seem to be an accurate representation of the comparative critical attention devoted to these artists.

And this, from the same source, once again on those other lists:

Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, compiled in 2003 and updated in 2009, includes no women in the Top 20. Pitchfork's "People's List," a reader-determined Top 200 list spanning the publication's lifetime, included two bands with women in its Top 20. Recent lists by publications ranging from SPIN to Entertainment Weekly, Time and NME showed similar results. And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has never remedied the problem of significant female underrepresentation in its ranks.

Now, Rolling Stone and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at some points all but united under the dominant influence of Jann Wenner, are institutions almost as famous for their musical prejudices as for their lists or inductees, and can be safely ignored as either barometers of mass opinion or widely accepted indexes of musical value. But again, Powers does not try to correct these or the other lists by showing which albums by women really belong in the top spots, but chooses to go with a brand new list of women only. That seems to cede ground, while also sewing doubt about whether the contribution of women is truly underrepresented.

Are these lists good indicators of the overall recognition of women in popular music? It's true that of the 50 best-selling albums of all time, perhaps 15 at most have women in the most prominent role. (What albums count as the best-selling depends on the criteria you use, so this is a rough number based on various lists.) This is not the critics speaking but the music-buying public. Far from defending this hodge podge of sublime and ridiculous best-sellers, I merely want to say that it reflects the relative number of female and male artists who have gotten far enough in this rough industry to make claims on our attention. If there is a problem here, isn't it that the aggressive nature of hard rock music, the sometimes barbaric incivility of both the (mostly male) musicians themselves and other industry players, the egos that tower over everything related to the rock music industry, are a discouragement to women's participation in the first place? So that while women have been prominent stars in soft rock, folk rock, pop, country, R&B, techno and many other forms of popular music, they are generally underrepresented in the world of electric guitar-driven hard rock.

We know that women can play electric guitar when they want to; indeed, even if we didn't have plenty of such examples, there is no shortage of women among the greatest classical music performers on string instruments like the violin, viola, cello and classical guitar, so what sense would it make to think that they could not conquer the electric guitar? But maybe this form of expression, which requires not just manual dexterity and musical taste but (in most cases) loudness, attitude and aggression, does not appeal to women to the same degree or with the same frequency that it does to men. Or if it does, then the prejudices may lie at the point where women are discouraged from taking up the instrument, that is, in the minds and hearts of parents, peers and other musicians. Whatever the reason, a core type of popular music is not heavily populated by women. (At least, this is historically true; see this recent NY Times article for suggestions that the situation may be changing.) It is only to be expected that both record sales and lists of favorite albums will reflect this.

I can understand the frustration that leads to the following comment by Jenna Wortham of the NY Times: "the way that even women just get categorized in the types of music that’s acceptable for women to make, or even the idea that something soft and tender and vulnerable and about emotions and feelings is somehow the antithesis of what it means to make rock music... that somehow these things are in competition... is just a little bit mind boggling." Let's not exaggerate the dichotomy, for besides the already noted fact that women do make hard rock, examples of "something soft and tender and vulnerable and about emotions and feelings" made by all-male hard rock bands are not difficult to come by: the Rolling Stones' "As Tears Go By", the Beatles' "And I Love Her", Grand Funk's "Mean Mistreater", Led Zeppelin's "Thank You", and the list goes on. But – to return to my original point – given the historical male domination of rock music it is no surprise that women are less well represented in lists that are comprised largely of rock music.

On the other hand, looking at the Wikipedia list of sales figures by artist rather than by album we get a slightly different picture. Among the 10 top-selling artists of all time are Madonna, Rihanna, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion (40%); among the top 15 add Whitney Houston and ABBA (still 40%); Taylor Swift is next at #16; and as you count down the list, out of every five artists you find at least one or two women. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Adele – all very new artists, in an era of supposedly diminished album sales - have each sold more records than Bob Dylan, Jay Z, Paul McCartney or Prince.

But sales do not and should not directly translate into critical recognition. The sales figures show what albums people find entertaining, and the standard for entertainment seems to be set by a largely teenage and easy-listening crowd. Britney Spears set all kinds of sales records with her first album, but like Madonna, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain and so many others on the NPR list, her appeal is not based primarily on originality in songwriting, vocal performance quality, instrumental chops or even tasteful selection and interpretation; it is based on presenting smooth, safe, musically non-challenging, somewhat catchy material delivered with airbrushed production qualities. If artists like Dylan, Bowie, McCartney, Springsteen and Prince appear higher on "greatest album" lists than more popular albums by women, it's because they take risks and challenge us musically in ways that many of the highest-grossing female artists do not. (Needless to say, there are more safe, dull, insipid albums by male singers and groups than by women, but the references in the comments by Powers and Sternheimer were to the likes of The Beatles and Dylan, which is quite another story.)

But women who do take risks and have moved popular music forward in some way are well represented in hearts and minds, and have generally achieved considerable critical recognition. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Roberta Flack, Grace Jones, Joan Armatrading, Deborah Harry, Patti Smith, Sade, Amy Lee, Lauryn Hill, Beyoncé – those who are not in the grip of some rank prejudice already recognize their outstanding contributions well enough, list or no list.

Indeed, one of the NPR list's surprises – the very recent Beyoncé album Lemonade occupying 6^th place among these 150 albums – even if it lacks the perspective of time, at least points to one of the great role reversals in music history: Beyoncé is, and arguably has been for a while now, taken even more seriously as an artist than JayZ, who is himself a kind of legend in his own time. (Now, thanks to Lemonade and 4:44, sharing a part of the legend spotlight occupied by Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton.) And it has arguably been that way before: consider how The Mamas and Papas were all but represented by Mama Cass; how Big Brother and the Holding Company came to be seen as little more than a backup band for Janis Joplin; and how female lead singers like Bjork and Natalie Merchant went on to successful solo careers without their former male bandmates.

So neither lists nor album sales may be a good indication of the recognition of women in popular music. Music by women appears to be critically recognized when it is made in a spirit of originality, creativity and artistic integrity rather than for purely commercial appeal. While this may exclude a great many very popular artists and albums, it includes a great many as well.

*****

In the next post I plan to talk about the criteria for inclusion on the list. Once again I have a few brief squawcks.

Virtualized Voice

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:00:00 +0000

So El Parroto is heading to the subway in Bay Ridge yesterday morning when he spies a pile of new Village Voices in their Red Box, sporting a picture of Bobby (he of the Nobel Prize in Literature) on the front cover, and worrying that something has happened to our leading folk poet, even though he the Parrot had not yet read the previous issue and was still hauling it around in his backpack, picks it up, hustles down so as not to miss the R train ( a transportation disaster) and has a quick look, when lo!, what is the meaning of this: Final Edition??

Well, I hadn't heard the news, though it was reported by the NY Times several weeks ago that the Voice would cease printing, but not when. No doubt there will still be plenty of copies when I get home, I will pick up a few more... not! By midday every box in the wide city had been cleaned out by "souvenir collectors", or to put it in the Parrot vernacular, fucking lowlife thieves who no doubt came along in vans or trucks right behind the distributors, scooping up entire boxes and throwing them in the back, to be sold on Craigslist for $100@ - the ultimately irony, as that is precisely who gobbled up the classified ad business that used to be the Voice's bread and butter.

Included in the issue is a 50-page photo spread of current and former Voice writers, photographers, and staff members, and as if almost half a century of reading it weren't enough to move me, what jumped out was how many writers in even this grossly incomplete album were familiar names, people who had continually given me reason to cheer, scream or shake my head in sympathy over so many years. Even more than the muckrakers were the music and film reviewers, people I would rarely agree with wholeheartedly but whose sense of engagement always motivated one to think, react, care about the latest indie film or unknown punk rock band.

That is was incomplete was driven home to me when I noticed they did not have a photo of my fellow philosopher Peter Kivy, who I distinctly recall having told me he was the Voice's classical music critic before he became the world's leading philosopher of classical music. Just to make sure, I checked his Wikipedia entry, which sadly did not have much of a bio and did not confirm his tenure at the Voice. So someone who knows for sure one way or the other, please correct that or correct me.

Meanwhile, after all the great photo spreads in the ultimate hard copy, it's that cover that sums the whole thing up. You see, Voice photographer, Fred McDarrah snapped the photo outside the VV offices one day some 52 years ago, clearly a candid shot, when Dylan was not yet Dylan and might still hang out on a bench in public without being mobbed, and he just gives McDarrah a casual salute, "Yo", as he raises his camera. But now the gesture comes to symbolize both a salute to the journalists of the Voice, which is largely what this issue is, and a way of saying "Goodbye" to the newspaper, from someone who became all but a stand-in for the very concept of Greenwich Village. Now, that is an absolutely brilliant use of an archive photograph, as it works in half a dozen ways: as an alluring cover photo, a representation of the neighborhood that gave the Voice a raison d'etre, a nod to the photographers, writers and editors who made it matter, a wistful farewell to the classic version of the paper, a recognition of the symbiosis between Dylan, music and journalism, and a final nod to the man himself who rose to greatness on the same wave of Sixties culture that the Voice did.

This final print edition also reminds me how different the newsstands of New York City were when I was a kid. Then, you would not only find daily editions of The New York Times, the Daily News, and the very liberal New York Post for sale, but also the Herald Tribune, the Journal-American and the World Telegram & Sun - each of their names signifying the collapse or merger of two or more formerly independent New York newspapers. Half of them have been gone for a while, and those that remain are ever more dependent on web-based revenue and ancillary enterprises to survive. The Voice was the only tabloid I had much use for any more, and now it's gone from the sidewalks. I still get the Times delivered on weekends, much to my considerably younger wife's consternation. If they give up the ghost - or rather, become virtual ghosts of their former physical selves - it will be the not very happy end of an era.

So I'm sad to see the print VV go... I like to hold things in my hand, like books and newspapers and worms and... well, okay, not worms, except when I've got the munchies. But yes, matter matters, and virtual voices are never as rich as real ones. Squawck!

Truth Trumped: NPR vs. the Parrot on Presidential Prevarications

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Sat, 04 Feb 2017 15:00:00 +0000

A little philosophy, a bit of controversy, a smidgeon of memoir... in short, another one of my 3000-word essays passing itself off as a blog post, and no more up-to-the-minute than the others. But while one might uncharitably call this blog "The Untimely Wisdom of H.A. Monk" - or perhaps "The Tardy Parrot's Soapbox" ("Anton's Antiquated Articles" seems a bit hypercritical) I do at least insist that the issues we deal with are of more enduring interest, and therefore addressed in more depth, than the average bit of 140-character fluff that even serves as "news" for major media these days.

It may have reached your innocent ears that President Donald Trump, has – prepare yourself – been accused of stating things that are not true. Naturally, one would infer that either the man has been misinformed at times, or else he would not register as an object of interest in front of Diogenes lantern.

Some news organizations, including the NY Times, have taken to using the word "lies" to characterize some of Trump's statements. This, mind you, is the same staid news organization that refuses to print the word [expletive], even as a direct quote, when hundreds or thousands of other media outlets do so. If the Times can refer to the man's "lies", you would think, so could any other news outlet that is not some mainstream conservative rag.

Not so fast. Recently, the illustrious National [semi-]Public Radio, refuge of liberals across the nation from the superficial chatter of commercial radio, was embroiled in controversy over an instruction from news chief Michael Oreskes not to use the word "lie" to characterize Trump's, er, "alternative facts", because we lack the ability to known if Trump had an "intent to deceive" when he uttered them.

Here comes the memoir... It has been my great fortune to occasionally be able to share with my devoted readers some personal experiences with people in the news, and here once again I note such a glorious opportunity. I went to school with Mike Oreskes for six years, through junior high and then high school. He was in my circle of friends, but to call him a "friend" unequivocally would be way more open to question than calling Trump a "liar" unequivocally.

Among other things, Mike at some point became close friends with someone who I and others regarded as the class bully, a diminutive but pugnacious individual named Louis Nathanson. I vaguely recollect having written about this before, so I won't go into every detail, just the relevant ones, as I recall them. (Fact-checkers please note: a memoir is a memoir, not a research project; its guiding ethical principle is to state the facts as you truly remember them. I aver that what I have to say passes that test.)

One day I was sitting at a table in the lunchroom with a group of people I knew. To my right, perhaps not my immediate right but nearby, was Michael. Further to the right was Louis Nathanson. There was some movement back and forth as people got up for one reason or another. Now, Louis had taken to harassing me some time before this, but the harassment up to that point was too petty and stupid for me to recall any of the details. But as I sat there that day I suddenly found myself eating a piece of frosted cake that I did not order. I was not only eating but breathing it, for someone had passed behind me and jammed it into my face. I looked around to see Louis Nathanson taking a seat at the far right end of the table.

How is any of this relevant to Donald Trump and his prevarications? (Is that word okay with all you J-school graduates?) Well, after wiping the butter cream and crumbs off my face as best I could, after some consideration I got up with a container of milk in my hand and headed toward the right to return the compliment. Before I could get to Louis I had to pass Mike. As I said, I'm not going to give every detail, just the relevant ones. Oreskes saw me about to pass and asked me a question: "Did you see who did that to you?" I was taken aback. Did I "see" something as it happened behind me, through the eyes in the back of my head, as it were? What was the point of this rhetorical question, when there was literally only one person in the entire school, to say nothing of the table, who would commit such an unprovoked act of hostility against me? I can't recall my exact answer, but Mike's next question was, roughly: "Well, if you didn't see it, where are you going with that milk?"

Like I said, I'm leaving out details, but I did not end up confronting Louis, and went to the Vice Principal instead. Apparently my cleanup job had been far from complete, for he looked at me and asked, "Who did this to you?" Louis was called to his office, lied (with intent to deceive, indeed!) and was given nothing more than a warning, though he was a known quantity to the administration by that point.

Perhaps between the ages of 13 (roughly) and 62 people don't change in certain ways. No, I'm not suggesting that Mike would have any sympathy with bullies today; hopefully a few decades of consciousness-raising about that issue has generated at least a moderate sense of contrition about his relationship with Louis Nathanson, which went far beyond the lunch table. But his demand for an impossible, and under the circumstances unnecessary, verifying observation on my part seems to match point for point the demand for an impossible, and unnecessary, verifying view into Trump's intentional states. In both cases, an unfortunate dodge is being made to protect something, at the expense of raw honesty.

Now, I have done my due diligence and listened to a variety of recent statements and interviews with Oreskes, and I have to say that overall he does not sound like someone who is trying to whitewash Trump's bullshit (more on that word later). He sounds like someone caught between a rock and a hard place, trying to protect the objectivity, such as it is, of a (partially) publicly funded media organization that is at maximum risk of losing its public funding under the current administration. He made a telling comment about the use of the word "liar" when he suggested that it turns people off: "I think the minute you start branding things with a word like 'lie,' you push people away from you." As the Daily Kos commented, "Oreskes appears to confuse truth telling with maintaining audience share and/or White House access". Circle the wagons, try to avoid the inevitable. Trump has been quite clear about wanting to defund everything from NPR to the NEA. Put a boor in the White House and a bunch of rightwing zealots just about everywhere else in D.C. and culture is on the chopping block for sure. Finding watered-down substitutes for "lie" ("untruth" etc.) will not change that, though you have to kind of sympathize with the last-ditch effort.

But that does not settle the philosophical question, does it? What is with this "intent to deceive" condition? Some people have become irate at the very suggestion of this criterion, alleging that it makes "lying" an empty concept, since intentions are by nature private. This is a misunderstanding.

First, the "intent to deceive" clause is a necessary component of the definition of lying. Why? Consider a weaker definition: "Making a statement that is in fact false, and which you know to be false." That sounds like a lie, right? And it dispenses with intent entirely. But is it sound? Of course not; otherwise every author of a fictional work, and every actor as well, would be a liar. "Well," you want to say, "these are secondary uses of language; if you limit the definition to ordinary communications it's fine." But there are various uses of language in which adherence to factual truth is not a norm, but which we don't characterize as lying. True, sometimes you are just playing a role. But you may be trying something out without committing to it. You might say something false because you want the other party to deny it. There might be a prior understanding between two parties that some falsehoods will be uttered. (Think, for example, of the possible verbal communications during certain kinds of consensual sex acts.) A metaphor is a literally false statement that is intended to convey something true. None of these uses of language involve the intent to deceive, and they are not lying.

Lying is a moral category. Under the right circumstances you can state falsehoods without crossing any moral lines. This is why the "intent to deceive" condition is necessary. There are, to my knowledge, just two extended philosophical works on lying:

one is called Subjects of Deceit: A phenomenology of Lying. Though the book seems to do without a definition of lying, you can already tell from the title that it takes lying to involve an intent to deceive. The other, more standard work is Sissela Bok's Lying, in which you find on page 13: "I shall define as a lie any intentionally deceptive message which is stated." The same requirement (re: lying) is offered, in passing, in Harry Frankfurt's essay "On Bullshit". Thus there appears to be no philosophical source on lying that fails to find "intent to deceive" to be a necessary part of the definition.

It is true that you could avoid it by coming up with ad hoc exceptions for every instance of false utterance (or inscription) that is not normally called "lying"; or with a global rule like "we will call every use of language that involves stating falsehoods without the intent to deceive 'role-playing'". The former method loses any force in the definition due to the need for ad hoc exceptions, and the latter of course begs the question against the intent condition.

So does this mean that after all is said and done, the wingèd blogger agrees with his old pal of sorts? (I mean, we did spend many a better moment playing touch football, and participating in protests against the war in Vietnam, among other things.) Not just yet. What most of the critics have overlooked so far is that determining "intent" is not, in our normal use of language, a matter of peering into someone's brain, having them submit to psychological testing, or the like. It is a social judgment that is made on a variety of grounds, based on the circumstances. Let NPR have the OED definition with its "intent to deceive". Who says we can't be certain, within reasonable parameters, of Trump's intent?

Let's consider the circumstances: he certainly has access to the facts; and while no intelligent life form would accuse him of being a genius, he is certainly capable of understanding the basis of the facts and reasoning involved in, say, the crowd estimates at his inauguration or why illegal voters could not alter an election result by nearly 3 million votes. Furthermore, he has an interest in stating the facts to be other than they are. Rational understanding plus self-interest: that sounds very much like evidence of an intent to deceive, don't you think?

Ah, but what if he actually believes his own false statements? For you have to disbelieve your own statement in order for it to be a lie. Recall the inadequate definition we began with: it included the condition that you know that your claim is false. This is not sufficient for a definition, but it is a necessary component of it. But if you know it is false, then you also believe it is false. (Statements of the form "I know that P but I don't believe it" are characterized as "Moore's Paradox", after the early 20^th century philosopher G.E. Moore.) So if you believe it is true then it can only be an error, not a lie.

People who truly believe what is generally known to be false, or disbelieve what is known to be true, and have no special basis or unique insights that account for their atypical viewpoints, are generally called either stupid or delusional. Again, I don't number Trump among the MENSA crowd. But, on the other hand, it is a frightening thought that our President is delusional. It is more frightening than the thought that our President is a liar, or our President is a hypocrite, or our President is a bullshit artist. For if he is truly delusional he cannot be any of those things, since he does not have the grasp of reality that is required to be confounding it in these ways.

So is he delusional? He is certainly an unbelievably narcissistic individual, who will grasp at any opportunity whatsoever to promote himself and build himself up. The photos show that no one came to your party? They're doctored. The results show that you lost the popular vote badly? The voters were illegal immigrants. Scientists all agree that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases? It's a Chinese hoax to gain energy dominance over us. Your statements about the security agencies have damaged your relationship with them? The press made it all up! Does Trump actually believe this nonsense? It does, at times, sound very much like he is delusional.

I am inclined to say that Donald Trump has a set of core beliefs about himself and the world and that not only does he continue to believe them in the face of massive contrary evidence, but he is susceptible to almost any argument in support of them, however absurd, making all the ancillary facts connected with this worldview highly resistant to contrary evidence. If not completely delusional on every count, he is open to being deluded, and in fact solicits self-deluding input from his inner circle, who graciously comply with "alternative facts".

So here is the challenge for Michael Oreskes and NPR, and for every other news organization as well: if Trump is not lying he is surely delusional, and that is what you should be writing. You don't want to say he "lied' about the election (and so many other things... we have all lost count) - so then say he is "deluded" about it. You don't want to say he is a "liar"? Then say he is "delusional". In doing so, you are making a judgment that in fact he does not exhibit an "intent to deceive" and in fact believes the utter garbage that he spews forth. If you think it is more likely that he does not believe it, then what do you think he is doing other than trying to deceive people? Come up with a more credible hypothesis than the one that says he is lying to deceive people so he can continue his self-aggrandizing trip through history.

Now let me address one last issue. I suggested that my childhood incident with Mike Oreskes demonstrated a willingness on his part to back up some closely held position with a demand for contrary evidence that is necessarily not available, and that this same trait is shown in his recent policy decision not to call Trump a liar. But then I also said that there actually is reasonable evidence that Trump had "intent to decieve" in many of his false claims. So is the problem simply that Mike doesn't realize the evidence is available? Unfortunately, he later "clarified" NPR's position by suggesting that evidence of Trump's intent would be made clear if a falsehood was repeated often enough. But Trump has every bit of information he needs in the first place to see that his statements are false. Repetition does not have anything at all to do with intent here. So rather than adopt the straightforward position that Trump already had available all the relevant facts and arguments at the outset and is therefore simply a liar, he has put up yet another illogical demand, in the alleged service of journalistic integrity. Trump stated the birther garbage about Obama over and over again in the face of direct contrary evidence; is he a liar or isn't he? The rest of his bullshit is equally suited to an Orwellian world where black is white; do we have to wait a few years to say so?

Let me close with one more bit of philosophical linguistics. Harry Frankfurt, whose essay "On Bullshit" I cited above, is a philosopher for whose philosophy in general I am not overburdened with sympathy, and his philosophical analysis of the term "bullshit" is one of several reasons for that. But while his bullshit project is flawed, it does have at least the merit of courageously plunging into the obscure world of deceitful discourse. Since I have used the term "bullshit" more than once here to describe Trump's statements, one question we might ask is whether anything more or less than this is needed to accurately portray the ethical qualities of his utterances.

Frankfurt's definition of "bullshit" turns on the idea that the bullshitter's discourse displays a lack of concern for the truth – not that he necessarily lies, or necessarily intends to deceive us about reality, but he intends to deceive us about the fact that he accepts no responsibility to accurately reflect reality. Now I am not convinced that there is a univocal use of "bullshit", nor even that the particular use that Frankfurt discusses is a paradigmatic one. But insofar as there is a type of utterance that is simply unconcerned with accuracy, is this the term we should be using to describe Trumpspeak (or Trumptweet)? Is he neither an outright liar nor a deluded ignoramus but a bullshitter who will say what is true or what is not so long as it serves his purpose?

Here I would say we meet one of those crossroads in language where we can have no clear indication that one way is better than the other. For given that what serves Trump's purposes is almost always at odds with reality, if we accept that Trump is willing to deceive us when it is in his interest to do so, it seems largely an academic matter whether we say that he is unconcerned with the truth – that he bullshits us, in Frankfurt's restricted sense - or that he lies to us. For it is by nature impossible to determine whether someone whose worldview is so utterly divergent from scientific, historical and social fact intends to deceive us about the facts or is unconcerned with them. Frankfurt's bullshitter must be a person whose concept of the real diverges only in part from socially acceptable knowledge claims. But Trump time and time again conveys as information about the world what most rational people take to be clear falsehoods. This, as I said above, suggests a man who is either a sadly deluded mental incompetent, or a garden variety liar.

Bruckner Rocks Carnegie

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 17:13:00 +0000

As those who have endured my opinionated rants on rock music have known for a long time, I maintain a slightly fanatical loyalty to artists, groups and albums that I considered underappreciated by mainstream opinion. Near the top of my list of all time favorites come rock bands that may be nearly unheard of (e.g., Nektar), or well-known for a few pop singles but unrecognized as the top notch artists I think they are (The Fixx, 10cc). The same goes for my take on individual albums, singer-songwriters, etc.

It is not much different when it comes to classical music. For example, being a violinist, I keep a mental list of violin concerti that I know well and often play recordings of, but which are all but completely neglected by touring violinists. It saddens and sometimes infuriates me to see the repertoire of concert pieces narrowed to a handful of big name composers (the canon would be Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Bruch and Sibelius) with maybe another small handful occasionally thrown in to be "adventurous" (every once in a while someone decides to haul out a concerto by Elgar, Shostakovich or Bartok). It's not the place for it, but I could probably name 20 other concerti that are fully worthy of frequent concert performance. At least in New York - and outside Europe there are few better places from which to observe - not one of them is played even once a decade.

The feeling of great historical-aesthetic injustice extends to other parts of the classical music canon as well. In particular, since my teens I have felt such a deep connection to the music of Anton Bruckner that it seems we must have shared a soul at some point. (As well as a name.) I own multiple recordings of most of his symphonies, the Te Deum, other choral works and even some of his chamber music. Sadly, for whatever reason, the classical music world does not have the same affection for Bruckner that I do. Not that recordings of Bruckner's music are hard to come by; he has had his champions, for sure. But performances are rare. I have managed to catch a performance of the 3rd Symphony (Masur, NY Phil) and the 6th (can't recall who) and I believe, though I can't remember the exact occasion, that I have heard his two most popular symphonies, the 4th and the 7th, at some point or other. But entire seasons of most major U.S. orchestras can go by without a single Bruckner performance.

The worst of the situation is that two of his greatest symphonies, the 1st and the 9th, are hardly ever played; and of these, the 1st is the more sorely neglected. It has been said that Bruckner was the first composer to take up the challenge of Beethoven's 9th. Perhaps that is an exaggeration - there were many romantic composers before him who helped expand the vocabulary of romanticism. More apt would be the statement that he was the first to take up in symphonic form what Wagner and Liszt had created through the opera and the tone poem. In any case, in his first symphony (completed in 1866) you hear for the first time the new vocabulary of high romanticism melded with the formal structure of the romantic symphony.

For me it is like the sounds come directly from the earth itself: deep, awe-inspiring, complex, hauntingly beautiful - in a word, sublime. Once, travelling by car through the hills of Austria, I felt like I was surrounded by a Bruckner score. If nature could speak, it seemed, it would be singing Bruckner.

There have been few greater advocates of Bruckner than Daniel Barenboim, and last night he began the first (almost) complete Bruckner symphony cycle in my lifetime, at Carnegie Hall. Each of the symphonies except the 8th is to be preceded by a performance of a Mozart piano concerto, played and conducted by Barenboim. I will not tell you what I spent on the ticket, but having no love for that hall with its extreme ticket prices, I will mention that I spent about an extra $30 for a "keyboard side" seat on the left, only to find that the keyboard was placed parallel to the stage. Shameful bilking of music lovers in that place. But back to the concert.

Barenboim paired the first "official" Bruckner symphony with the last Mozart piano concerto. The latter, unlike the last Mozart Symphony (for example) is a quieter and more subtle piece than many of the earlier ones. Barenboim was entirely equal to its silky textures and delicate phrasing, giving a performance that was as masterful and nuanced as it was understated. It is hard to imagine a better one, and the audience responded by calling him back for several bows.

How interesting, then, that he gave the Bruckner every bit of gusto and power that it deserved, pulling off, with the help of the top notch musicians of the Staatskapelle Berlin, a performance that did all it could to make amends for the years of neglect this symphony has endured in New York. The opening of the first movement (which surely must have inspired the opening of Mahler's much more famous 6th Symphony) progresses from gracefulness to raw power in just a few bars. By the time we hear it again in the recapitulation an entire world of new sonorities has unfolded. The delicate second movement was brought off perfectly, no small task given the individual refined contributions needed from so many members of the orchestra.

But the real fireworks in this piece come in the Scherzo, which all but lifts you out of your chair and makes you want to pump your fist in the air like some catapulting performance by a Seattle grunge band. This would be the first of numerous Bruckner Scherzos that follow a similar pattern, but it is clear that he has already perfected the form. It is tough for the last movement to live up to this level of energy, but Barenboim took no prisoners. While the rest of the performance seemed to be inspired by the early Jochum recording in sonority and tempo, here Barenboim led the orchestra on a frenzied chase that did as much as possible to keep the energy up right through the dramatic close.

The audience on its feet, conductor and orchestra were kept standing and bowing for quite some time, with individual kudos to the horns and the outstanding timpanist (the program lists two, Torsten Shönfeld and Dominic Oelze) until a no doubt exhausted Barenboim, age 74, smiled and waved what was clearly "goodbye".

The series continues tonight with the 2nd symphony, the only one I can't say I know very well. I am bit disappointed they are not going to do the so called "nullified" symphony, known as Symphony #0; this excellent early symphony was officially withdrawn by Bruckner after harsh critical commentary, but the man was notoriously thin-skinned and obsessed with perfecting and revising what were already brilliant works, so there is no good reason to think withdrawing it was a good artistic decision. If harsh critical reviews were always to be respected we probably would not have a good chunk of today's standard repertoire.

I hope I can find a way to get back for more of the series. Perhaps for the equally sublime 9th. But already a major gap in my listening experience has been filled.

It could be a great week, in spite of today's scheduled political event, which once again brings us from the sublime back to the ridiculous.

The Approximately 10 Albums That Influenced Me Most

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 07:56:00 +0000

I would not bother naming the same 10 Beatles albums that influenced everyone I know as a teenager if those were the 10 albums that influenced me most as a teenager, but they are not, and since no one actually says how they were "influenced" by the 10 albums they say influenced them most as teenagers I will say how my 10 albums actually influenced me.

P.S. I turned 13 in November 1967.

P.P.S. Most of the albums that influenced me most as a teenager were not released when I was a teenager

P.P.P.S It is all but impossible to find listings of classical music releases by year. About 50% of my choices might be classical if I could do so.

1. Dylan - John Wesley Harding. Already wanted to be a folksinger and songwriter. This helped seal the deal.

2. Led Zep - Led Zeppelin. I think of summer camp. I think of my one year of slightly beserk glory as a kitchen aid. I think of lying on a bed of pillows, in an area enclosed by a bar in the counselor's porch, listening to this album on a reel-to-reel, with headphones. I think ecstasy with a small "e".

3. Grand Funk - Closer to Home. My first romance unfolded to this set of songs. Nuff said?

4. Traffic - Either John Barleycorn or Low Spark. They capture the plangent feeling of my sophomore year in college, to the point where merely thinking the first line of the first song in my head ignites an emotional spark that has its own, lifelong unique quality.

5. Joan Baez - One Day at a Time

Joni Mitchell - Chelsea Morning

Judy Collins - Colors of the Day

Laura Nyro - Eli and the Thirteenth Confession

That counts as one album, sorry. If you don't understand that then you certainly won't understand what a haunting female vocal can do to the heartstrings of a lonely teenager.

6. Grateful Dead - Live Dead. Instant Deadhead.

7. Pharoah Sanders - Karma. I discovered modern jazz when I heard this in a dorm room, and not to long afterward sat a few feet from him as he wailed away at a Chicago club. Life has never really been the same since.

8. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On. After years of diverging audiences and tastes, suddenly black music/white music became a meaningless distinction again, a fine thing for a white kid who grew up as a minority in a black neighborhood.

9. King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King. This will have to stand in for a half dozen or so other progressive rock albums that more or less permanently changed my listening habits. The others being by the usual prog suspects, but put Nektar's Remember the Future near the top of the list.

10. David Bowie - Space Oddity. No matter how eloquent we may wax about our heroes (pun I guess intended) there are only a couple of life-changing artists out there. Rock star or Blackstar or movie star, here is a guy who I sunk my teeth into and never let go of, even seeing his performance in The Elephant Man on Broadway. Influenced me and a zillion others by clinging tenaciously to the proposition that rock is an art form. Stayed ahead of his time right to the end

No Bells for Dylan?

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 08:29:00 +0000

Stephen King and Salman Rushdie say "yay". But Gary Shteyngart and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting, Dockers) say "nay". Jodi Picault says "huh?" And their respective fans say, why not Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Haruki Murakami?

And all I want to say is that the Swedish Academy's “ill-conceived nostalgia wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile-gibbering hippies” (Welsh) shows that they understand American culture better than a lot of Americans, and literary culture better than many writers.

Prizes like the Nobel should not go to writers just because they are good. They are supposed to have done something with their work, brought about a cultural revolution or at least a better world through their gift of writing. Dylan has done all that and more. He took something that had not been considered an art form since at least the great English and Scottish ballads collected by Frances James Child, if not since ancient times, and he made it an art form and set a new standard by which the writing of lyrics is judged.

In the process he influenced an entire culture, becoming, even if unwillingly, the bard of an entire generation and the poet of American popular culture. Because Dylan wrote songs like "Gates of Eden" others would find the straightjacket of "straight" songwriting lifted, and John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen and so many others could exercise their extraordinary talents in a way that might not have happened if Dylan had not set the stage for it.

Dylan prepared the audience for the idea that poetic freedom belonged to the songwriter as to any other writer. Now the lyrics were not just a backdrop for musical creativity, of which there has always been plenty, but an art form in themselves that had to be listened to, aesthetically appreciated and intellectually interpreted. It is really hard to overestimate how deeply this penetrated into the culture, knocking down walls between high and low, popular and "fine" art in the same way that Andy Warhol did; and is anyone still questioning whether Warhol is really a great artist?

Dylan also stands at a great cultural nexus, a meeting of the folk tradition, Beat culture, the antiwar and Civil Rights movements and the hippie generation. He is just there, wherever there might be, the center of it all. That is why he is such an important figure. Not because he wrote a lot of songs, many of which (at least in his early work) utilize existing folk and country song melodies; because he channeled the spirit of so many cultural trends and made many of them matter more through his lyrics.

And let's not forget Tarantula, which among other things pioneered the concept of microfiction before microfiction was a thing; and the Chronicles, Vol. 1, which is probably the backdrop to a more aesthetic as well as more personal turn in rock memoirs, before Patti Smith and Keith Richards and many others got on that bandwagon.

There is nothing funny or overstated or off base about Dylan getting the Nobel Prize for literature; what is pretty funny is the sour grapes and snide comments from people whose contributions, not to be slighted in themselves, are barely a shadow of Dylan's work. That is not to say that authors like Don DeLillo are not deserving of such a prize; that all depends on who else is in the running. Plenty of great authors have failed to receive a Nobel Prize, and even more will fail to do so since the committee's horizon has been expanded beyond Europe and the Americas and now includes writers from all over the world. Those who do will have to stand out more. DeLillo, Murakami, Alice Munro who got it in 2013, they stand out. But none moreso than Dylan.

Gary, you are probably not in the running, and your diagnosis is a bit off: it is not hard to read books, it is hard to listen to funny authors pouting. Irvine, compared with your gallbladder those Swedish prostates don't bother me much. Jodi, sure, you can get a Grammy, just set your books to music as well as Dylan set his music to lyrics. A cinch.

Let's keep in mind that the prize has not always gone to writers of fiction or poetry. The second Nobel Prize in Literature went to a historian. Several times the prize went to a philosopher. Quite a few went to playwrights. Dylan correctly asks whether Shakespeare imagined that in his plays he was creating "literature". Probably not, he surmises. Point well taken.

Enough second-guessing already. Something great has happened, a deserving artist has gotten the recognition he deserved, in whatever form it came. We knew that Dylan was world-changing and life-changing and now the world knows it too. His acceptance letter is more proof of that, a text of deeply moving and intellectually deep observations about himself, literature and Nobel Prizes. If he gets a prize for his artwork no one should regret that either. Ring them bells, as Gordon Lightfoot put it. A towering figure in every way.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no telling who that it's naming
For the loser now will be later to win
Cause the times they are a-changing

[Re-posted on 9/28/2018 after correcting several typos, including a reference to Alice Munro receiving the Nobel Prize in "1913" - 18 years before she was born.]

Hamilton Plays Burr to Pence

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 04:22:00 +0000

Perhaps it is a queasiness that comes from having given numerous public performances, and feeling like the objective distance between the two is actually part of what makes it an art. Or maybe it's the lingering sense of awkwardness from recollecting political speeches from the stage of the Academy Awards. Or perhaps the feeling that a speech given at Broadway ticket prices of up to $199 a seat isn't exactly the voice of the masses. Or that while I am always happy to know there are still quality musicals being written and performed, the outsize reputation of Hamilton provides a sort of cultural bully pulpit that is not to my taste.

Or I could just be feeling contrary today. But my gut reaction is that it is not okay for performers to pinpoint a member of the audience and take the opportunity to make them the object of a monologue exhorting them to behave nicely. Even if that audience member is a rightwing, gaybashing, anti-abortion creationist whose most positive quality is the limited power he will have as VP.

It is not, mind you, that I have any sympathy for Mike Pence, who is not only a nightmare himself but was elated to be the running mate of boorish Neanderthal Trump. Had an audience member confronted him and asked him what the fuck he was doing bringing his unwanted presence to a show that celebrates diversity (which he falsely responded was just what he and Trump were about) I would have enjoyed it immensely. Had some passerby spotted him leaving the theater and lobbed a cream pie in his direction (anyone remember that other famous Aaron - okay, Aron - the pie-thrower?) I would have been elated. As the running-mate of the most disrespectful candidate who has ever appeared on the national political scene you should expect to draw the same amount of respect as you dish out.

In fact, the little 30-second sound bite directed at Pence was far more respectful than hundreds of emanations from the Twitter account and campaign speeches of Trump, who had the gall to demand an apology! Someone should take him up on that: you start, and keep going until you've apologized to everyone you insulted during your campaign, and we will apologize to your illustrious Veep-elect. It was also, according to reports, more respectful than a number of audience members were, as be was apparently received with loud booing, which continued after the show.

But the problem, in my view, is that it demeans the profession, because it opens the door to anyone who wants to use a stage provided for one purpose as a platform to expose someone they don't like. It is of course a judgment call where "not liking" someone crosses over into being personally threatened or insulted, and it becomes fair game to sound them out wherever they go. Much of what Trump and Pence appear to stand for is borderline fascism, which cannot be left to its own devices in any corner of society. But I still doubt that using the theater as a platform for that sort of confrontation is a good idea. Once you breach that distance; once you discard that form of etiquette; once you open that up as a partisan forum, you open yourself up as well, and release anyone who might find your views unacceptable from respecting the neutrality that was previously assumed. You can't take advantage of your privileged position, where you start with a presumption of sympathy from your audience, and utilize that to make a target of someone, unless you want to encourage others to do the same.

That this could backfire badly goes without saying, since the impulse to do it in the first place is an acknowledgment of just how far the other side has been willing to push against the bounds of decency. Best not to take that bait. Let them be the ones to flout cultural norms; they will generally look disrespectful and lose what weak support they have from decent people if they do.

It is not as if there were some missed opportunity had the cast refrained from saying anything to Pence. What opportunity? To change the mind of the Vice President? To annoy Trump? To alter the course of history? Nothing important happened there, except potentially handing Trump an example of critics to his left (and who isn't to his left?) displaying bad manners and poor judgment.

Keep in mind this is not about the content of art; I have never believed in anything like a requirement for art to be apolitical or neutral. Neither have many of the greatest artists in every genre you can think of. That is not the question at all. It is about the dignity of the performance medium and the best interest of the arts.

Our two worst choices for President have been a Hollywood actor and a reality show star. (Okay, GWB doesn't have any screen credits to my knowledge, so maybe it's 2 out of the 3 worst.) That doesn't make me hopeful that thespians will be the ones to alter our sad fate in the recent election. In any case, actors can say more with great acting than with political stage whispers.

Lamp-Post Mortem on the Election

noreply@blogger.com (Tony Alterman) — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 18:39:00 +0000

Did we actually wake up Wednesday? Or are we in fact still in some Cartesian dreamland, where parrots dwell in Brooklyn, cars drive themselves, and Donald Trump has acquired a new piece of real estate at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? From the parrot's outpost above the ruckus, the first is not all that strange (sqwuaak!), and the second we will probably get used to in some century or other. But Donald Trump the 44th Resident of the White House? (Washington didn't get to live there, and come to think of it, it ain't so white anymore.) Is this some sort of reality show? Maybe the Broadway version of The Plot Against America?

On the grinding fear that none of these suggestions explain what happened last week, here we go with 24 thoughts, in no particular order.

1. We could artificially extend our sanity for a couple of months by imagining some major medical event that relieves Trump of the need to fake governing the country. But do you recall the old buttons people wore during the Reagan administration: "Shoot Bush first"? In a FB post I referred to Mike Pence as an "innocuous Republican hack", but really he's no such thing. If I have to choose among anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-carbon-fuel, pro-business, anti-Muslim bigots then for sure I want the one who has absolutely no experience governing anything bigger than his penthouse.

2. Could there be some obscure tenet of domestic or international law that could rule the election results illegal? I mean, he's the one who said it was rigged, right? Isn't there some sort of penalty for vowing to scuttle international treaties? Can't global warming deniers at least be committed to a psychiatric ward? There is no reason the rest of the planet has to stand by and watch the seas rise because some maniac claims global warming is a "Chinese hoax".

3. So you say you are considering moving out of the country for a while? Here's a quick guide to the world. China is run by anti-democracy strongman Xi Jinping. Russia is in the hands of the aggressive KGB alumnus Vladimir Putin. England is wearing its xenophobia on its sleeve and is now led by Brexit champion Theresa May. In France, Francois Hollande, a putative Socialist, has lost virtually all popular support, and a victory next year by the far right Marine Le Pen is no more unthinkable than was a Trump victory in the U.S. Austria, never a bright light of democracy, may soon land in the far right column as well. From Poland to Denmark, rightwing governments are being installed all over Europe. So your choices are: Canada, of course, under the present liberal leadership of Justin Trudeau, and... Germany! Yes, the Germans suddenly look like the carriers of the democratic torch, under the conservative but practical Christian Democrat Angela Merkel. Her message to Trump on his victory: get with the program if you want to play soccer in our league.

4. The U.S. now joins the list of nations like North Korea, the Philippines and Venezuala where the leader is defined not merely as far "left" or "right" but as a complete loony bin who is off the chart of normal political behavior. Duterte has already expressed his admiration for Trump; can Kim Jong-un be far behind?

5. Lock him up! Possible grounds for sending Trump to jail immediately:

· - Treason: conspiring with a foreign power to interfere with democratic process in a U.S. election.

· - Criminal threat: suggesting that the "Second Amendment people"could take out his Democratic opponent.

· - Incitement to riot: recommending that his followers punch protesters in the face.

· - Tax evasion: claiming tax deductions for utterly worthless "partnerships" in his failed business.

Possible grounds for lawsuits to tie him up indefinitely:

· - Sexual harrassment: need I say more?

· - Unfair business practices: failure to pay employees and contractors in his failed enterprises while walking away with $millions.

· - Defamation: publicly stating that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. after his citizenship had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Surely some of these have to succeed? (I can't think of a crime associated with belittling veterans who gave or risked their lives in a war. It may be one of those perverse uses of free speech that has to be protected just because there are legitimate uses of speech that have to be protected.)

6. It is not clear what, in the opinion of 55 million people or so, is not acceptable for an American President to say, other than "here's a plan to provide affordable health care to millions of uninsured Americans". When the morally unthinkable loses its meaning, like a word repeated too many times, that is when a door is open for fascism to slip in.

7. Doesn't this feel a bit like watching a disaster film where the calamity unfolds in slow motion, the better to make your pulse churn while you await the horrible and entirely foreseeable conclusion, unable to warn those in danger?

8. There are really two countries here, two basic moral, cultural and political regions. One is defined by the broad swath of the nation from the Midwest to the Deep South, but is really rural America wherever it exists. This is the nation that elected President Trump. Look at an electoral map by county rather than by state and you begin to get the picture of what this country is about. For it is not as if Trump "lost" New York, for example; he, and every other Republican Presidential candidate in recent memory, overwhelmed the opposition everywhere but in a handful of counties dominated by big cities, primarily New York City. (Hillary barely won in Buffalo, which is much more like the industrial Midwest than like New York.) That's the way it is in Pennsylvania between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in all the other so-called "swing states". A "swing state" is one in which, in spite of the guaranteed rural white vote in favor of Republicans, the Democrats have a prayer of gathering enough urban votes to dominate. As long as the demographics of the nation stay more or less as they are and have been at least since WW II this is never going to be a country that embraces diversity, change, environmentalism or gun control.

9. I too was busy congratulating myself for helping in some small way to create in a country that elected a Black President, twice, and was about to cast more votes for a woman than for her male opponent. Forget all that; as Michael Moore rightly said in his post predicting a Trump victory, I was living in a bubble, deluding myuself. One sign of that was the venom that has been directed at Obama even by some of my more intelligent and knowledgable acquaintances, a vile and bottomless outpouring of nasty, empty vindictiveness that only a Black President would be subjected to. I never hear a single word of thanks for his lifting the country out of the financial and military disaster left to him by Bush amd his cronies. No sympathy for millions of Americans who can afford health care for the first time in their lives. Not even a thumbs up for finally taking out Osama bin Laden, or getting ground troops out of Iraq; just vitriol and a flood of baseless accusations. ("Look what Obama has done to Israel!" a Jewish acquaintance of mine declared the other day – Okay, what, exactly, has he done to Israel? – "I don't know offhand but I heard....") This country was not ready for a Black President, it was simply a matter of getting someone to undo the damage of the Bush administration, and the alternatives were the ever-unpopular Hillary and a Black man. People held their noses and voted for the Black man, and immediately turned around and told him everything he was doing wrong. It's the same old country, we just had a temporary bubble of pseudo-enlightenment.

10. We are still caught up in the defective political experiment known as the "electoral college", which this week for the fifth time delivered to us a Chief Executive who most of the active voters do not want to be President. Is it any wonder that the world generally holds in contempt our claims to be a shining model of democracy for everyone else? The principle of one person, one vote does not exist in this country, and if it did we would not be looking forward to an infantile, lecherous, ignorant, foul-mouthed buffoon leading the country for the next four years. In the election of 1888 Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland by 55 electoral votes but narrowly lost the popular vote, after insisting on high tariffs to appease Midwestern and MidAtlantic industrial workers and business owners. And you thought Trump don't know much about history – though he sure don't know much biology or science books.

11. A great deal is being made of the fact that people in certain areas are hurting where it counts, and largely because of a loss of manufacturing and basic industry jobs. Therefore, the logic goes, they voted for Trump just to have something different, someone who promises them jobs and is not a Washington insider. Yes, as dimwitted fantasies go, that is up there with the best of them. Industrial jobs began disappearing with the Reagan-Volker recessions of the early 1980's, which turned numerous parts of the industrial heartland into ghost towns, not to mention helping to bankrupt millions of small farmers. Many objective factors contributed to this, factors which only increased over time (see #13 below). The Great Recession was like a mopping up operation on basic industry; it was brought on in part by the Republican-led Graham-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 which deregulated the banking system (not a good recommendation for Clinton either: Bill signed it into law). Later deregulations under George W. Bush also helped. Now, there is a huge demographic in the U.S. that would vote for any Republican who mouths some basic bullshit about the sanctity of life and the right to keep loaded weapons of every sort around the house. (See Trump's platform: "the government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own".) So the logic of bringing back basic industrial jobs is at best a deciding factor in a few "swing states" in or near the Great Lakes region. Not even that – it is the logic of the even fewer swing voters in those states, the ones who truly are open to either a Democrat or Republican and just want to make sure they get a promise of future employment and/or better employment. These people are extraordinarily gullible to believe that the guy who managed a billion-dollar empire into the ground is the one who is going to help them. They easily forget the damage that one Republican after another has done to the industrial economy. But they are relatively few in number. Most of the Trump voters would vote for King Kong if he professed to be a fundamentalist Christian, promoted the illusion that guns provide personal protection, and professed to dislike the government in general. Let us have our fun with a gun and we will vote for you, son. The alienated unemployed are a very, very minor factor in the election; they have drawn focus because of the electoral college and their resultant role, but they are not the core Republican constituency.

12. People are tired of political insiders (read hacks) so they want an outsider - like Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, for instance. These folks are really going to shake things up in Washington! Of course, people knew about all of them during the campaign, even if they didn't know that after his victory Trump would immediately hire numerous corporate lobbyists (Washington insiders by definition) to help staff his new administration. The wolves will be guarding the chicken coop at every single federal agency – as always during Republican administrations (but only usually during Democratic administrations).

13. Hillary Clinton and her sidekick Bill are also responsible for some of the worst legislation and regulations for the working class, including the Welfare Reform Act, the anti-crime bill, the NAFTA agreement and the "Don't ask don't tell" policy in the military. Bill Clinton signed into law the aforementioned banking deregulation act. Hillary's support of not only NAFTA but its successor, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is rightfully galling to displaced workers, and is as good a reason as any for her not to have been elected. But these workers are in la-la-land if they think that the decline of many basic Midwest and Mid-Atlantic industries is just about NAFTA. There are some basic economic realities like the declining efficiency of U.S. manufacturing in general, the availability of cheap labor elsewhere, the relative cost of coal as a fuel, the need to reduce carbon fuel consumption, the ability of foreign automakers to produce better and/or cheaper cars, the growth of the steel industry in South Korea and elsewhere, the automation of many factory jobs, and other secular factors. Globalization is here to stay, and though we don't have to help it along in ways that destroy American jobs eve more rapidly, many of those jobs are going the way of all flesh sooner or later, free trade or no free trade. I am not being unsympathetic, but refusing to face reality is no kind of political strategy. Some of those jobs will come back, in the form of retooled, more automated and less unionized manufacturing facilities; this will have nothing to do with Donald Trump, though a good industrial policy would help. But they will not come back in a way that makes use of old labor skills, nor at the wage levels that were briefly enjoyed thanks to our industrial dominance and a strong union movement. By the way, who led the charge against those unions?Anyone remember PATCO? Arise ye wretched of the earth and vote for more reactionary "make America great again" Republicans like Ronald Reagan, that will surely bring about change in Washington!

14. Hillary and her email server. What? How can an email server have anything remotely like the weight of these major economic and global environmental considerations? The answer to that is that most people barely understand the concept of a "server" at all, unless it's the person who brings them coffee in the morning at the local diner. But what they do understand is the power of metaphor: the "private email server" is simply a way of recognizing that Hillary is for Hillary, she is about Hillary, she would play fast and loose with national security because she's an insider and can do what she wants, she thinks she's better than everyone else who has to follow the rules. The fact that she trots off to Wall Street to give speeches and earn millions of dollars only cements the perception: she is about herself, and secondly about them, and not us.

15. Hillary has been Secretary of State of the most powerful nation in the world. The world has continued to fall apart and is arguably worse now than when she started out. That's a recommendation to make her President? Don't expect people to understand that an entire army of Hillarys could not put Humpty Dumpy together again after the rise of Islamic extremism. But more broadly, other than her carefully chosen words, what accomplishments of hers did anyone have to go on? What has she done? Two terms as first lady, two as Senator and two more as Secretary of State, and what is her calling card? What does she have to offer as a memorable accomplishment? An act that expanded childcare? Give us a break; she has been around forever and doesn't have a single thing to brag about, just a lot of promises. She flip-flops on one thing after another. How was she ever supposed to mobilize anyone other than by being not-Trump?

16. 20-20 hindsight is good enough to see that by collaborating with the DNC to deprive Bernie Sanders of the nomination Hillary essentially handed the country to Donald Trump. Sanders had better numbers against Trump all along, had none of her baggage and had enough of a reform aura to avoid the "insider" label. No, I did not believe he could pull off many of his platform positions any more than Trump can do everything he says; in fact, Trump has a better chance, with a Republican Congress. I simply did not believe Bernie would do anything evil. Perhaps Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC were not the deciding factor in whether Hillary won the nomination, but they helped in their little ways to drive America into the hands of Trump. Imagine: right now we are anxiously awaiting the inauguration of President-elect Bernie Sanders, the first Jew and first Socialist ever to assume the office, while Donald Trump is already half-forgotten as he lands on the trash heap of American politics along with George Wallace and the like. How does that sound? Thanks, Deb. Thanks, Hillary.

17. Hello, President Putin, Sir? This is your faithful manservant Donald. Is it okay if I speak English, since I have at best minimal facility with that language much less am I fluent in Ukranian, I mean Russian? Thanks. Well, I just wanted to thank you for your help. I appreciate that you are a man of fine, upstanding moral character, a democrat with a small "d", and you wouldn't want to see Hillary win unfairly. Yes, I know, Sanders is a Socialist, there could be a conflict of interest there, but you guys have mostly gotten over the socialism thing, haven't you? Give Julian a big bear hug for me too, will ya? He and I have to have a talk about women some time, I think there may be a lot in common there.

18. Nothing energizes the left like a good kick in the pants. This should do it. We thought with Obama we had finally reached the seat of power. Partly correct, though he leaves a negative legacy in a few areas: failure to presecute the torturers from the Bush regime, permitting and expanding the collection of phone and email data (a program that will now be placed squarely in the hands of the most reactionary elements in American politics), and largely leaving in place many of the conditions that led to the financial collapse, among other things. We thought the same about Hillary – well, some did, though for reasons already stated I seriously question that. But now there is no question we are once again out. Forward ever, backwards never – don't get depressed, get active.

19. Does the name Joe McCarthy ring a bell? He came from one of our beloved "swing states", Wisconsin. "The State Department is infested with Communists" said McCarthy in his famous Wheeling (WV) speech. "Lock her up!" says Trump of the Secretary of State. November 14 would have been McCarthy's 108th birthday, but he had the decency to drop dead of hepatitis at age 48. Trump is a bit late in following suit, but as I said, January 20 is a good two months away.

20. Trump's support is paper thin and will wash out very quickly with those "swing voters" in those swingin' states. Many of them have been quoted saying they already view him with skepticism. But they hope he will bring back prosperity to their depressed industrial regions, make America "strong"again, "shake things up" in Washington. At the same time they hope he will not act on his ideological agenda of anti-immigrant bluster and anti-abortion rhetoric, or take away their newfound health care coverage. Too bad; he will act on exactly what they hope he won't, and he will fail to act on what they hope he will. But it will be too late by then to get rid of him, and the damage will be done.

21. Of course you can't be too politically astute if you voted for Trump because you didn't like Hillary, which means you could not be thinking seriously about things like the terrible impact of having Trump rather than Hillary nominate the Supreme Court justice with, yes, the swing vote. We will have to eat that one for a long time to come. Though Supreme Court justices occasionally disappoint their sponsors and fail to act consistently as tools for the ruling class, there is no reason to hope for such a benign outcome. The Neanderthal majority in the Court will be preserved now for decades.

22. I had thought that maybe the underappreciated cause of our electoral disaster was Bill, not Hill. She will always be Billary to most people, the one who stood by her man, not only his policies but his sleazy defacement of the oval office. So, perhaps the issue is that people don't want Bill as the first First Gentleman, a very reasonable consideration! But then, look what they chose as an alternative! Somebody whose sexual comments should be an embarassment even to his wife and children; and a first lady who does nude photo shoots with some light lesbian and bondage content. Well, admittedly it would be more pleasant to have to look at Melania than at Billary for the next four years, if only you could forget the proto-fascist politics she is there to put a pretty face on.

23. Predictions: Parrots are not very good at predictions, as they are better at saying what was just said than what will be true a few days or years from now. So with that thought in mind, allow me to make several predictions, which I hope will meet the usual fate mine tend to do:

· > The economy will take a nose dive, as it typically does in conservative Republican administrations. Interest rates up, business investment down, the unemployed will have a lot of new company.

· > Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil will dramatically increase; Trump will be a magnet for terrorists.

· > Social programs, health programs and the arts will be defunded.

· > Military spending will increase dramatically and there will be no more than a token effort, if that, to reduce wasteful expenses by the military, contrary to Trump's feeble comments on this subject.

· > Russia and China will expand their influence considerably, while the U.S. drops off the chart as a world leader. (After eight years of Bush and four of Trump who could take the U.S. seriously as a global leader? The periodic infusion of a Clinton or Obama White House is not enough to make us a reliable partner.)

· > Congress will turn over to the Democrats in the mid-term election, leading to an even more complete stalemate in Washington than will be the case with a narrow Republican majority. But this will blunt the impact of some of Trump's worst ideas.

· > Those displaced, unemployed, alienated, forsaken swingers will still be displaced, unemployed, alienated and forsaken in two years, three years, four years, and will return to their former instincts to vote for the lesser-evil in the Democratic Party.

· > The only people who even try to emigrate to Canada will be those who need health care coverage and expect to lose it here. No guarantee they will be welcomed there.

24. Ways to get through the next four years:

· * Look forward to electing lots of Democrats 2 years from now. I know this is not very exciting but it is the best reality we can foresee right now. There are even a few who are more appealing than Hillary Clinton.

· * Buy stock in all the companies that will profit from Trump's largesse – I'm thinking coal, and in general any regressive form of energy, real estate for sure, banks, biopharmaceuticals, and since you will already be morally corrupt at that point, why not short some healthcare stocks? Though you may be late to the game in all this, as Wall Street traders had this figured out before the end of last week.

· * A steady diet of soothing or cheerful classical music – I might recommend for starters any of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti or Handel's Concerti Grossi Op.6, the Clarinet Quintets by Mozart and Brahms, Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata for violin and piano, Schubert's Die Schone Mullerin song cycle, Elgar's Enigma Variations and Sea Pictures, Sibelius' 2nd Symphony, Borodin's String Quarter #2 and Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. (Note that I have not selected any Trumpet concerti.) For those who have already heard all these pieces 100 times or more I can also do a slightly more challenging list for you, or, if you prefer folk, jazz or rock I'd be happy to provide those too. I am convinced that frequent immersion in sounds of unparalleled beauty is the only antidote to the ugliness that will be streaming from every media device for years to come.

· * Organize a protest at least once a day. Nobody will come to most of them, but who knows, one of them just might be the spark that starts a prairie fire, as Chariman Mao put it, sending people by the thousands to camp out in Washington until the Trump Empire crumbles into dust.

· * Medical marijuana. A doctor can prescribe some for you. It may be no different from what you get on the street, but it feels like it's relieving pain better than what you get in a nickel bag.

What a world. Sqwuaauuck.

[Note: edited #3 for typos, #8 for clarity, #11 for an incorrect reference, added a hyperlink in #12, #15 for a typo. In #24 I really meant Handel's Concerti Grossi Opus 3, which I love even more than Opus 6, but since Opus 6 would hardly be an inappropriate choice in this context I'll let it stick.]