Top 50 albums of the decade

It seems that everyone has been compiling not just year-in-review but decade-in-review lists lately, and I’ve never seen a bandwagon I didn’t eagerly jump on. So, without further ado (after all, why spend any time in careful reflection upon a full ten years of life?), here we go.

The challenge: sum up, in my opinion, the past decade in (semi-)popular music, in 50 albums, 5 per year. The result: the following list, presented in alphabetical order (since ranking them seemed even more arbitrary and superfluous than listing them in the first place). Enjoy.

Beck: Sea Change (2002)
One-sentence review: Beck gets serious.
Beck: Guero (2005)
One-sentence review: Beck proves he’s still Beck.
Benoît Charest: The Triplets of Belleville (2004)
One-sentence review: It’s as charming, brilliant and unexpected as the film it accompanies.
The Bird and the Bee: The Bird and the Bee (2007)
One-sentence review: The ’60s meet the ’00s at a lounge in the ’70s.
The Bird and the Bee: Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future (2009)
One-sentence review: It offers more sweet lounge-electronica delights, this time with more David Lee Roth references.
Coldplay: X&Y (2005)
One-sentence review: The Coldplay album that takes the longest to grow on you also leaves the most lasting impression.
Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs (2008)
One-sentence review: I finally realized I should have been listening to that band with the stupid name for the entire past decade.
The Decemberists: Castaways and Cutouts (2003)
One-sentence review: I dreamt I was an architect.
The Decemberists: The Crane Wife (2006)
One-sentence review: Victorian prog meets indie rock.
The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love (2009)
One-sentence review: Victorian prog consumes indie rock.
Field Music: Field Music (2006)
One-sentence review: Here’s what Gentle Giant would sound like in the indie rock era.
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
One-sentence review: Perhaps it’s the album of the decade; definitely the era’s answer to both Pet Sounds and Dark Side of the Moon.
Flight of the Conchords: I Told You I Was Freaky (2009)
One-sentence review: I got hurt feelings.
Fujiya & Miyagi: Lightbulbs (2008)
One-sentence review: Knickerbocker glory is an ice cream sundae.
Peter Gabriel: Up (2002)
One-sentence review: If this proves to be his last album, it’s a brilliant farewell.
Green Day: American Idiot (2004)
One-sentence review: I never knew they had it in ’em, but I’m glad they did.
Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest (2009)
One-sentence review: As inscrutible as its title, it’s worth trying to figure out.
Keane: Under the Iron Sea (2006)
One-sentence review: Who knew another band would write a song called “Crystal Ball” that I would inexplicably love?
King Crimson: The ConstruKction of Light (2000)
One-sentence review: It’s the album that should have been a brilliant farewell.
Kraftwerk: Tour de France Soundtracks (2003)
One-sentence review: It’s like Electric Cafe and The Mix never happened.
M83: Saturdays = Youth (2008)
One-sentence review: M83 = brilliant.
The Mars Volta: Frances the Mute (2005)
One-sentence review: Excessive noodling is offset by brilliant prog riffing.
John Mayer: Heavier Things (2003)
One-sentence review: It’s probably all you need to hear from John Mayer, except…
John Mayer Trio: Try! (2005)
One-sentence review: This.
Minus the Bear: Planet of Ice (2007)
One-sentence review: I’d like this band more if it weren’t for the stalled adolescence of some of their lyrics (and their name).
The Most Serene Republic: Population (2007)
One-sentence review: There’s nothing serene about this republic. (And that’s how you write a one-line review. Rolling Stone, I await your job offer.)
My Morning Jacket: Z (2005)
One-sentence review: You won’t be catching any Z’s with this one. (Attn. Rolling Stone: Still waiting.)
My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges (2008)
One-sentence review: Though many site Z as the band’s masterpiece, this is the one that speaks to me most.
Phoenix: United (2003)
One-sentence review: Any band that can release a nearly 10-minute track called “Funky Squaredance,” and it’s good… is worth your attention.
Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)
One-sentence review: Bigger than Mozart.
Porcupine Tree: In Absentia (2002)
One-sentence review: The venerable prog band’s almost-breakthrough.
Radiohead: Kid A (2000)
One-sentence review: Radiohead managed, in a single album, to encapsulate the entire decade… before it happened.
Radiohead: Amnesiac (2001)
One-sentence review: In case you forgot, Radiohead defined the music of the decade. (Come on, RS.)
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (2003)
One-sentence review: A minor success in Radiohead’s catalog is a crowning achievement for almost any other band.
Radiohead: In Rainbows (2007)
One-sentence review: The band of the decade delivers its best work yet.
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Stadium Arcadium (2006)
One-sentence review: Not only do RHCP have some life left in them, they still might have their best left in them.
Steely Dan: Two Against Nature (2000)
One-sentence review: The Grammy was an apology, but it’s still a pretty damn good album.
Tenacious D: Tenacious D (2001)
One-sentence review: Though this album shouldn’t be tenacious, plenty of its lyrics have become household staples around here.
Tool: Lateralus (2001)
One-sentence review: It’s the masterpiece of latter-day metal.
Tortoise: Standards (2001)
One-sentence review: If you only buy (or hear) one post-rock album, this is it.
TV on the Radio: Dear Science (2008)
One-sentence review: Consider this the “most slighted album” in my previous years’ top 5 lists.
U2: All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)
One-sentence review: One of the all-time greats by one of the all-time greats.
Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
One-sentence review: A strange introduction (for me) to this band, it’s still one of their best.
Wilco: A Ghost Is Born (2004)
One-sentence review: Though more straightforward than its predecessor, it’s a mellow masterpiece.
Wilco: Sky Blue Sky (2007)
One-sentence review: Even more back to basics, it’s their best yet, and near the top of my list for the decade.
Brian Wilson: SMiLe (2004)
One-sentence review: Better 33 years late than never.
Wolfmother: Wolfmother (2006)
One-sentence review: A brilliant, visceral throwback to classic hard rock.
XTC: Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) (2000)
One-sentence review: If Skylarking is XTC’s Aja, this is their Two Against Nature, though comparing XTC and Steely Dan may be somewhat oblique.
Zero 7: Simple Things (2001)
One-sentence review: Simply brilliant.
Zero 7: When It Falls (2004)
One-sentence review: If I could produce an album like this, I would happily retire from music therafter.

And, since it just seems necessary, here are my top 5 albums of the decade, hastily and subjectively compiled, and subject to rapid and frequent change:

5. Tortoise: Standards
4. Tool: Lateralus
3. Radiohead: Kid A
2. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
1. The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Help! I’m stuck in the ’60s!

A strange thing is happening to me. I’m suddenly feeling compelled to cultivate a long-dormant interest in 1960s pop culture (specifically, music and movies, and the graphic design associated therewith).

It’s not like I’ve never been “into” the ’60s. There’s plenty of ’60s music I like, especially the hard bop and early electric jazz from the likes of John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. And the early prog rock albums of Yes, King Crimson, et al, even though most of that didn’t happen until the very end of the decade (1969). And then, of course, there’s The Beatles. Need I say more? And I’ve always enjoyed the visual aesthetic of the ’60s, from the tail end of Mid-Century Modern into the psychedelia of the Woodstock era. But I’m a child of the ’70s at heart (and biologically). I’ve always been more into ’70s music and ’70s aesthetics than ’60s music and ’60s aesthetics. But over the past few days I’ve found myself thinking more about the decade preceding my birth.

It all started when I showed the kids Help! That’s the surreal, hypercolor second Beatles film: part Marx Brothers, part James Bond, part (as Martin Scorsese suggests in the liner notes to the DVD) proto-Monty Python, with the first hints of the psychedelic fantasy of much of the band’s late work. It’s no Yellow Submarine, not even Magical Mystery Tour. But it’s definitely more “out there” than A Hard Day’s Night, the band’s “mockumentary” (before the term existed) debut film from the previous year.

The kids loved it, and I did too, more than I remembered from the one and only time I had seen it before, back in college. They watched it again today (twice). And that got me thinking more about The Beatles. I already own the boxed set (stereo version… though I’d happily accept the mono box as a gift if you’re feeling generous), but I’ve never owned (nor even heard) Let It Be… Naked, the 2003 re-release of the band’s final album stripped of the orchestral excesses slapped on the original release by Phil Spector without the band’s input. So I headed over to Amazon and bought it. While I was at it (gotta get that Super Saver shipping, you know), I also threw in a couple of kitschy ’60s classics my CD collection has been woefully missing: Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights and the self-titled release by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66.

What led me to those, besides my general spirit of ’60sphilia? That’s easy… after watching Help! I put The Beatles on shuffle in iTunes, and their recording of “A Taste of Honey” (from their debut, Please Please Me) came on. I’ve never really been into the band’s earliest albums (having never even heard the albums before Help! in their entirety until I got the boxed set in September), and I had more or less been completely unaware they’d even covered this song, which, of course, was also given the Tijuana Brass treatment on… Whipped Cream & Other Delights. From there it was a small hop to Sergio Mendes, who, incidentally, was fond of covering Beatles songs, including “Day Tripper” on the album I ordered.

Small world, the ’60s.

A few other things I noticed, watching Help! last night:

  1. I’ve spent years listening to Paul sing “Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC” in the opening line of “Back in the USSR,” never really knowing what BOAC was… but assuming it was an airline. Well I noticed in the beginning of Help! that the sinister swami Clang (played, rather absurdly, by Australian actor Leo McKern) is given a BOAC airline ticket by Ahme (also absurdly played by English actress Eleanor Bron). (Of course, I could have just consulted Wikipedia.)
  2. Late in the film, when all of England joins in singing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to soothe the escaped tiger threatening Ringo’s life, I noticed that the soccer match is between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur, the latter being a favorite team of some Premier League loving friends of mine who frequent The Local on Saturday and Sunday mornings to catch the Spurs’ matches.
  3. The one thing from the film that made a lasting impression on me 15 years ago, when I first saw it, was the Beatles’ delightful set of rowhouses, which all open into one large space (divided into four separate living areas, by color). George’s green space, with its indoor lawn; Paul’s white space, with its illuminated organ that rises from the floor; John’s brown space with a bed and reading nook embedded in the floor; and Ringo’s blue space with assorted food and beverage vending machines built into the wall. The moment when they all approach their own individual doors from the street, and then walk into this single open space is priceless.

I think, though, more than anything else, the thing that makes the biggest impression on me, seeing The Beatles in “living color,” engaging in their mid-’60s silliness, is the splash from the trailer (below): “Seven new songs!” The songs in this movie are woven so deeply into the fabric of my life, and of our culture, that it’s almost incomprehensible that they were brand new when this movie was made, written expressly for the movie. As much as I can relish the experience of watching this movie and listening to the music, there’s no way I can ever experience the ’60s as something fresh and new, with all that has happened in the 40+ years since then (including the entirety of my life) still waiting in the mysterious and unknowable future.

I actually remember the ’70s. Sure, it’s the late ’70s, and they’re the faded and fuzzy memories of a small child. But I still have firsthand memories of that period in history. I remember when disco was popular and Jimmy Carter was president. But I will never know a time when The Beatles were actively recording new music. I’ll never know the feeling of anticipating new Beatles music. The closest I’ll ever come is playing Beatles Rock Band. And that’s the strangest thing about introducing my kids to the music and the wonder of The Beatles. They love it… they’re just eating it all up. And that’s great. But I remember when my mom introduced me to them as a kid, and they were already an artifact of history.

Ultimately the most exciting thing about all of this is that it’s even possible for me to explore the ’60s at all. The technologies that came into widespread use in the 20th century allow me to hear this wonderful music that was played before I was alive, and to see people on an illuminated screen, moving before my eyes, doing things that they did a decade before I was born, and four decades before my kids were born. In all the previous hundreds of millennia of human history, there was no way to capture the sound of a human voice, the exact look of a human face, the idiosyncrasies of an individual’s movements, and record them for the benefit of future generations. And now we live in an era where technology is so incomprehensibly advanced, and moving ahead so rapidly, that the iPods Apple produced just 5 years ago seem quaint, and thereby the scratched film and vinyl of the analog era, of the 1960s and beyond, appear positively ancient. Yet someone living even a century ago would be amazed at what was waiting just a few decades hence, and someone from a hundred years before that would not even believe a horseless carriage could be possible, to say nothing of an airplane… or an iPhone.

Wow… well, needless to say, I didn’t set out to get this heavy when I started writing this post. But it certainly sheds some light on why I have such a passion for technology. Now I’ll end on a lighter note: as promised, the original trailer for Help!

Update (August 30, 2023): Well, I stumbled upon this old post today, and realized the video above wasn’t working… because it was using an old Flash-based embed code. But as it turns out, that didn’t matter, because the video itself had subsequently been taken down from YouTube. So, for the moment, I’ve restored it by finding another copy of the trailer on YouTube, unfortunately squished horizontally, but still… you get the gist. And now in another ~15 years (when I’m… wait for it… 64) I’ll revisit this and see what other aspects of the technology have become obsolete.

The Minnesota inferiority complex (and major league sports)

Twins UnderdogI love maps. I love charts. I love rankings. I love comparing the quantitative differences between major cities. I don’t know why I love this stuff; I just do. So bear with me while I geek out on this a little.

Minnesotans (at least, I think it goes beyond me individually) sometimes have an inferiority complex, especially those of us who live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. We are a major city, the 16th largest metro area in the country. We have a diverse and strong economy, with a prominent national and international role in medical technology, arts and design, retail and manufacturing. We have an excellent arts community, and the highest number of theaters per capita of any American city besides New York. We have excellent parks and recreational opportunities. And, as I’ll get to in a minute, we have teams in all four major league sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL). In short, this is a great American metro area, and the gem of the upper Midwest.

And yet, we feel inferior. We feel inferior to Chicago. We feel ignored by the rest of the country, who think of this only as a place too cold to ever visit, much less live in. (Never mind the fact that in July and August this place can be unbearably hot, and we typically experience warm weather from April to October.)

I was reflecting on this today, partly as I marveled at the fact that the comparatively tiny city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has managed to retain an NFL team since the league’s inception (though that’s mainly due to their unique ownership arrangements). I thought about how it always seems like our sports teams are the ridiculed underdogs, occasionally openly dismissed by sportscasters despite their successes. (I’m thinking particularly of the loathsome Cris Collinsworth and his generally disdainful commentary on the Vikings’ pair of ignoble defeats on NBC’s Sunday Night Football in recent weeks.)

I also think about this a lot whenever talk of one of our major league teams relocating comes up. There are frequent cries that this market is simply too small to sustain the teams it has. Never mind the fact that in every one of the leagues its four major teams participate in, Minneapolis-St. Paul is above the median market size (even ignoring Green Bay). We are one of only 13 markets with teams in all four sports. And I think we deserve to keep it that way. But I wanted to have a more complete picture of how the leagues and the markets they “live” in break down, so I created a table. I found the 50 largest metro areas in the country, and compiled data on the number of teams each has in the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. I decided to throw in MLS too, since it’s growing rapidly in popularity (not that you’d know it around here). Here’s what I came up with:

Rank City Population NFL MLB NBA NHL MLS Total
1 New York, NY 19,006,798 2 2 2 3 1 10
2 Los Angeles, CA1 12,872,808 – 2 2 2 2 8
3 Chicago, IL 9,569,624 1 2 1 1 1 6
4 Dallas/Fort Worth, TX 6,300,006 1 1 1 1 1 5
5 Philadelphia, PA 5,838,471 1 1 1 1 1 (2010) 5
6 Houston, TX 5,728,143 1 1 1 – 1 4
7 Miami/Fort Lauderdale, FL 5,414,772 1 1 1 1 – 4
8 Atlanta, GA 5,376,285 1 1 1 1 – 4
9 Washington, DC 5,358,130 1 1 1 1 1 5
10 Boston, MA 4,522,858 1 1 1 1 1 5
11 Detroit, MI2 4,425,110 1 1 1 1 – 4
12 Phoenix, AZ 4,281,899 1 1 1 1 – 4
13 San Francisco/Oakland, CA3 4,274,531 2 2 1 – – 5
14 Inland Empire, CA4 4,115,871 – – – – – 0
15 Seattle, WA5 3,344,813 1 1 – – 1 3
16 Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN 3,229,878 1 1 1 1 – 4
17 San Diego, CA 3,001,072 1 1 – – – 2
18 St. Louis, MO 2,816,710 1 1 1 – – 3
19 Tampa Bay, FL 2,733,761 1 1 – 1 – 3
20 Baltimore, MD 2,667,117 1 1 – – – 2
21 Denver, CO6 2,506,626 1 1 1 1 1 5
22 Pittsburgh, PA 2,351,192 1 1 – 1 – 3
23 Portland, OR 2,207,462 – – 1 – 1 (2011) 2
24 Cincinnati, OH 2,155,137 1 1 – – – 2
25 Sacramento, CA 2,109,832 – – 1 – – 1
26 Cleveland, OH 2,088,291 1 1 1 – – 3
27 Orlando, FL 2,054,574 – – 1 – – 1
28 San Antonio, TX 2,031,445 – – 1 – – 1
29 Kansas City, MO 2,002,047 1 1 – – 1 3
30 Las Vegas, NV7 1,865,746 – – – – – 0
31 San Jose, CA 1,819,198 – – – 1 1 2
32 Columbus, OH 1,773,120 – – – 1 1 2
33 Indianapolis, IN 1,715,459 – 1 1 – – 2
34 Charlotte, NC 1,701,799 1 – 1 – – 2
35 Hampton Roads, VA8 1,658,292 – – – – – 0
36 Austin, TX 1,652,602 – – – – – 0
37 Providence, RI 1,596,611 – – – – – 0
38 Nashville, TN 1,550,733 1 – – 1 – 2
39 Milwaukee, WI9 1,549,308 – 1 1 – – 2
40 Jacksonville, FL 1,313,228 1 – – – – 1
41 Memphis, TN 1,285,732 – – 1 – – 1
42 Louisville, KY 1,244,696 – – – – – 0
43 Richmond, VA 1,225,626 – – – – – 0
44 Oklahoma City, OK 1,206,142 – – 1 – – 1
45 Hartford, CT 1,190,512 – – – – – 0
46 New Orleans, LA10 1,134,029 1 – 1 – – 2
47 Buffalo, NY 1,124,309 1 – – 1 – 2
48 Birmingham, AL 1,117,608 – – – – – 0
49 Salt Lake City, UT 1,115,692 – – 1 – 1 2
50 Raleigh, NC 1,088,765 – – – 1 – 1

An interesting list, and it led to a few surprising observations:

1. There are the “old” major cities and the “new” major cities. Strong representation among the major sports leagues — especially the older NFL and MLB — is more common among older, more established cities, even though they may be on the decline in recent decades, like St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Kansas City. On the other hand, cities that have grown substantially in recent decades (even though they may be very old cities) typically either have no major league teams, or if they do, their teams tend to be in the newer (or more recently-expanded) NBA, NHL and MLS: cities like Las Vegas, San Antonio, Austin and Orlando.

2. Certain sports are more established in different regions. All of the sports seem to have their greatest representation in the oldest and most densely populated region of the country: the Northeast. But that area is especially well-represented in the NFL, whereas the NFL’s representation in the South is more sparse and newer — expansion teams like Jacksonville and Carolina — which may be due to college football’s comparatively strong popularity in the South. The rapid expansion of the NHL and NBA over the past 20 years has also led to more teams in markets in the South and West that have not typically been home to major sports franchises.

3. Major sports teams make a “major” city. Cities that have major league sports teams — especially those cities with multiple teams — seem bigger and more “important” than those that don’t, regardless of their relative populations. This is highly subjective, I realize, and maybe it’s just my own impression of those cities. But I think the frequent national exposure a city receives as a result of hosting a major team (especially an NFL team, as this is clearly the biggest “event” sport in the country today) creates a nationwide impression of that city as being major in a way that almost nothing else can. (Perhaps this is why we in Minneapolis-St. Paul fight so hard for our status as a “major league” city, and why our governor once compared a Vikings-less Minnesota unfavorably to Des Moines, Iowa.)

Consider for a moment your relative impression of Austin, Texas to that of Milwaukee. Which one seems like a more “major” city to you? Now compare their populations on the chart. Or, compare your impression of New Orleans to Providence, Rhode Island. (I think the fact that I feel compelled to name the state of the city without a major sports team in both of these examples says it all.)

It’s a big reason why all of the sports teams in Minnesota use “Minnesota” in their names instead of “Minneapolis.” Until the Wild arrived in St. Paul, it would have been accurate to discuss the Minneapolis Twins, Minneapolis Vikings and Minneapolis Timberwolves, but what would that do to St. Paul’s reputation and self-image? It’s bad enough as it is.

Addendum: After writing this post, I discovered a handy and closely-related chart on Wikipedia listing US and Canadian cities by number of professional sports teams. Of note: the only city in the United States that is not in this list of the top 50 but is home to a major sports team is, of course, Green Bay. Nine Canadian cities have at least one team in these “American” sports leagues (mostly NHL). There are a few variances in the population rankings comprising this list vs. those I used for my list. Some may be simply out-of-date, but others may be based on different interpretations of what constitutes a metro area. Most notable in this regard is that San Jose is typically considered part of the San Francisco Bay Area rather than a distinct metro area.

Notes

1 Los Angeles did, of course, have two NFL teams for many years, until the Raiders returned to Oakland and the Rams fled to St. Louis, of all places, after the 1994 season.

2 Detroit fascinates me for many reasons, not least of which being its ability to hang on to both its four major sports teams and its 11th place ranking (though it’s slipped from its one-time peak at number 3) among major U.S. metro areas.

3 San Francisco’s position at number 13, along with its lack of NHL and MLS teams, may appear somewhat arbitrary; I’ve typically seen San Jose lumped into the same Combined Statistical Area, bumping it up to sixth place and, along the way, giving it San Jose’s NHL and MLS teams.

4 The Inland Empire lacks any major sports teams, true. It also lacks any kind of cohesive center or place of relevance (beyond jokes about funny-sounding place names like Rancho Cucamonga) in the minds of anyone besides its residents. Having lived there myself (in Claremont and Upland) for a little over two years in the late ’90s, I take that personally. It is most especially ignored by those who live in the Greater Los Angeles Area west of the San Jose Hills.

5 I still can’t believe the Supersonics ended up in Oklahoma City. That’s crazier than the Rams going to St. Louis.

6 Denver’s the smallest city with full representation in the five major league sports. But given that Denver is the outpost of metropolitanism for several states — I can attest from first-hand experience that there are people in northeastern Montana whose “local” TV channels are the Denver affiliates — its radius of influence significantly exceeds its immediate physical region.

7 While it’s true that the rapid growth of the Las Vegas metro area over the past 20 years may explain its lack of major sports franchises, the reluctance of the leagues to become (ah-hem, openly) involved in the world of sports gambling is also a well-known factor.

8 Hampton Roads probably suffers mainly from an identity crisis. Officially known as the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News MSA, a name that doesn’t really roll off the tongue, Hampton Roads is one of the oldest established population centers in the country, but it doesn’t seem to have the requisite prominent central city to attach sports teams to. However, it does look like Norfolk has come close to acquiring at least one major team in recent years. (Unfortunately I lost that citation among the mountain of links I clicked on to compile this list.)

9 I never realized Milwaukee was so far down on this list. I guess that’s what having a well-known Major League Baseball team for decades will do for a city.

10 And I’m really surprised New Orleans is this far down on the list, even after the population drop in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.