December 2023 Overview

December 2023

Writer's Check-in

Hello everyone, it's been a while. I wish I could say the reason that it's been so long was that I'd been working on other projects or devoted more time to listening to music for music's sake, but unfortunately, that was not the case. The real reason was that around mid-July, I simply lost interest in music...period. Seriously, as if I had caught some horrible disease that started showing symptoms overnight, I flipped from song to song, artist to artist, album to album, even trying to get something out of music videos, live performances, and movie soundtracks, to absolutely no avail: nothing was doing anything for me emotionally anymore.

I've fought some difficult mental battles before, but this was a beast of an issue that I had no idea how to fight. Initially, I just tried to pretend that the problem didn't exist and kept listening to music as usual, but I think that ended up making things worse. You have to understand that this took place last summer, and last summer I was getting paid for doing absolutely nothing. All I basically did all day was sit and listen to music for hours on end, and inertness combined with overdosing on a certain activity is a recipe for disaster, especially when that activity is the center of your life. So, as I was sitting there doing nothing but listening to a bunch of songs that weren't moving me at all, the frustration started to intensify and morphed into a mild depression, where I had pretty much relegated myself to solely listening to three albums: Ocean Rain, Low, and Heroes. These three albums I listened to at a fairly unhealthy degree, squeezing every drop of enjoyment I could possibly get out of them before hitting rock bottom with music. And then, once my brain started to finally reject the 20th listened to "Always Crashing The Same Car", I finally hit a point where listening to music ceased to be an activity I wanted to do.

This is not to say that I didn't have some good experiences with music in this horrible interim: Elizabeth Cotten, Parliament-Funkadelic, Jimmie Rodgers, Toots & The Maytals, Louis Armstrong, and the Impressions kept me company in the periods where music occasionally started to do something for me again. Yet, my workload last semester destroyed my hope of it returning to normal: having 12-16 hour workdays drained whatever dopamine and serotonin I had left in my brain, and music was not able to properly gain a recovery for months.

In the meantime, I had to have something keep me going, and what worked as a formidable replacement was TV and movies. I decided to rewatch Seinfeld from beginning to end, and that provided a nice dose of artistic substance in my life that made this period bearable. From there, rewatching Wolf of Wall Street and then seeing Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters made me interested in properly establishing films as a second hobby, and I did. From November to December, I watched 30 movies, mostly revisiting old favorites (Taxi Driver, The Godfather I-II, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, After Hours, Fargo, etc.) or finding new ones (The Big Lebowski, The Conversation, Scarface, Barton Fink, Rumble Fish, etc.). It has been great exploring movies so far as a serious hobby, and I plan to continue my exploration to keep it as a great second hobby (right now, I plan to rewatch Reservoir Dogs and watch Casino and From Dusk Till Dawn for the first time). I might even start writing about it here, who knows?

Still, nothing can truly replace what music can do for me, and miraculously enough, my urge to rewatch this wonderful scene from The Big Lebowski made me want to listen to "The Man In Me" once again, and it was, by far, the best experience I had listening to music in nearly 5 months. So, thanks to the blessings from El Duderino himself (no, I clearly DON'T believe in the whole brevity thing!), the recovery of my interest in music began. It has been rocky so far trying to get it back, with many highs and lows, but I can say quite confidently that I have not lost it forever, and at this rate, my intense love for it will be fully back by the end of this month (and if it is not back by at least February, I am probably dead or something).

Not the cheeriest subject to write about on New Year's Day, I know, but hey, I won't say I regret this period ever happened. It was a big period of growth for me personally with all sorts of things, and developing another hobby to complement music is certainly not something that I would claim was a bad result (especially since people watch movies much more than they listen to music these days, so hey, not a bad conversation starter, right?). And at the end of the day, I am slowly getting my love for music back, so not an unhappy ending to this story thankfully.

As for this blog, I will probably start to actually begin writing pretty regularly here whenever I feel I am ready to get that going again. It may just be some random thoughts, or it may be something more structured, frankly, I have no idea. All I know is that writing about music keeps me sane and fulfilled, so I'm gonna keep using this blog for as long as I can. In the meantime, here are my top 10 albums of 2023 along with my playlist for December 2023. Thank you to all my family and friends who kept going during this time, and happy new year to everybody!

My Top 10 Albums of 2023

1. 1928 Sessions - John Hurt is more of a grandfather figure to me than just a mere "favorite musician," and the healing power of these gorgeous songs only grows with time. "Louis Collins" is not just my favorite song of all time: it's become intertwined with who I am and who I hope to be with the time I have here on Earth. I thank god every day that his music has survived nearly a century because I'm not sure how I could live without these 13 gems of folk music.

2. The Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings - unfortunately, to no fault of most modern listeners, people are not exposed to why people really worship Louis Armstrong: the godly trumpeter who, with his skilled band members like the god-among-men Johnny Dodds, not only laid the foundation for jazz as we know it but also made music that sounds just as beautiful and timeless as it did in the 20s (provided you can deal with poorer recording quality compared to modern standards). Of course, nobody should go right into the complete sessions: listen to the compilation I linked before touching his complete sessions. Yet, every appreciator of the legacy of 20th-century popular Western music shouldn't die without once sitting through the entirety of the complete sessions, where nearly every recording brims with so much energy that it can add a few extra years to your life. People tend to note "Potato Head Blues" as one of the great masterpieces of the 1920s (and rightfully so), but really, nearly all of this material I can say about, from the fluttering "Cornet Chop Suey" to the playful "Ory's Creole Trombone" to the serenity of "West End Blues". Genuinely cannot praise this stuff enough: historical context be damned, this is music that gives people a reason to live another day.

3. Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar - there is no way a fan of Mississippi John Hurt could not learn to love Elizabeth Cotten and vice versa: listening to them is like sitting right on their front porches, letting the honest, pure beauty of their music flow through as they melt away your troubles with love and compassion. I loved "Freight Train" the moment I first heard it, but the album itself is a wonderful piece of music: samey and repetitive, sure (Cotten never built up a collection of great songs as large as John Hurt unfortunately), but there's not a single moment on this record that does not soothe the soul in some way. Whether it be the grandmotherly empathy in her voice or the beautiful chord changes in her songs, her music will find a way into your heart and keep it warm even in the toughest of storms.

4. The Best of Blind Blake - my first musical love was Scott Joplin, so it makes sense that this sort of music was extremely easy for me to get into, especially by the greatest ragtime blues player who ever lived. Not much to say about this music besides if you find "West Coast Blues" as much of a howling good times as I do, you'll love every single danceable ragtime number he's put out. Musically rich and friendly despite the wildness, this man is proof that rock 'n' roll starts when you want it to start.

5. The Best of Charley Patton - I've enjoyed the hell out of a lot of Delta blues in 2023, so let me sum it all up by putting my favorite Delta bluesman, a voice so shredding that it can still kick the bejesus outta you. I think the coolest part about Charley Patton is his guitar work though: nearly all of his songs are catchy as hell, and they're all catchy in strange but compelling ways, like the way "Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues" literally sounds like a swarm of insects ravaging a cotton field or how cocky the guitar kicks along the fiddle on "Going To Move To Alabama" or how the anguished riff of "I'm Going Home" literally sounds like a pained journey up above. Lots of cherish in these recordings that sound quite timeless if you can get past the shitty sound quality: you'll not get this vibe from anywhere else.

6. "Ragtime Texas" - Henry Thomas was an excellent performer with his own warm, grizzly charisma and beautiful panflute playing to boot, but this probably wouldn't matter as much if he started recording music in the late '30s or '40s when he had much more competition in this sphere. Even in the '20s, there were dozens of performers like him who could compete with him in terms of personality and musicianship (and many that were far superior). The real reason that he found an audience back then and many still listen to him is that he was one of the last practitioners of folk music before the recording era, dating to the late 1800s and beyond. It's the perfect time capsule, one that offers much of the spirit of a long-gone era but seamlessly mixed with the more accessible, commercial folk styles of the 1920s. This makes these recordings quite accessible if you are used to the sound of pre-war music, and given how gorgeous all of these songs are ("Fishing Blues" and "Bob McKinney" are some of my favorite songs of all time), they are really worth your while beyond the historical context. Folk is the closest thing to a spiritual experience you can get from popular Western music, and listening to this, you realize how much of it came naturally to these guys, as if they had a boundless supply of heart and soul that allowed them to glow a century later. Absolutely indispensable material.

7. Funky Kingston - Otis Redding was a figure whose style was so organic to every person's raw essence, but nobody could truly replicate the spiritual explosion of hearing him perform: most people simply do not feel on such a level. Yet, Frederick "Toots" Hibbert probably got closer than anybody to not just recreating that magic but also building upon it in a genre with as much emotional immediacy as soul music: reggae. It's this glorious synthesis that makes Toots & The Maytals my favorite reggae band, one that invokes your inner strength and grit to attain that better tomorrow they sing about. 

The original tracklisting of this masterpiece was great, but really, it is best to take in all of the peak material of around 1973-1974, so hearing the compilation tracklist (starting with "Time Tough") is the right way to do it. Every single song on this record is a perfect jewel of funky soulful reggae, soothing your worst fears while making you want to get up on your feet and groove to it. "Pressure Drop" and the title track (deservingly) get most of the accolades, but something like "Pomps & Pride" is simply one of the great humanist songs of the decade. It is that song that kept the fire of music burning within me when I was afraid I would lose it forever, so I owe that song, and this record, a lot. Even beyond that personal significance, I think it's one of the most satisfying listening experiences a 70s record can offer you. They even make the cliched "Take Me Home, Country Roads" sound fresh and transcendent, and if that is not high praise, nothing is.

8. Ocean Rain - a new favorite that, as I mentioned before, was one of the records that kept me going in that initial dark period. Yet, I rarely hear this record mentioned at the same level as many post-punk classics like The Queen Is Dead, War, and Pornography when it really deserves the same level of acclaim. The album is so incredibly lush and ornate that you'll want to drown in its beauty, even if such a world could only exist within the recesses of Ian McCulloch's dreamy romantic mind. It is melodramatic and pompous in the best senses of those words, capturing that magical optimistic spirit of the '80s where you feel anything is possible, yet it feels like a deeply personal record, showing you monumentally beautiful feelings ("Silver"), disturbing inner turmoil ("Nocturnal Me"), gentle empathy ("My Kingdom"), and dreams that can sweep you off your feet and take you along with them ("The Killing Moon", one of the greatest songs of the entire decade). It is not a perfect album (the first side feels a bit lacking melodically compared to the perfection of the second), but it's one of the high peaks of post-punk that I think anyone can get into once Ian's charisma gets to you (and since his vocals are often quite sincere, I can't imagine many people feeling opposed to them).

9. Mothership Connection - one of the most important and iconic cultural artifacts of the 20th century doesn't need any of my praise to get people to listen to it. Hell, I went to a jazz bar a few days ago and the choruses to "Give Up The Funk" and "Mothership Connection" are so entrenched in Western culture that everybody knew them without knowing it came from this record. The album is so visceral, upfront, and straightforward with its genius that you almost forget the blood, sweat, and toil it would take to create something this musically immaculate, where every beat, rhythm, and rhyme is so perfectly funky and tight it seems like seamless music anyone can create. Every single dance album since tried to capture even a tenth of the personality and inspiration that George Clinton, Bernie Worrell, and the rest of the P-Funk empire possessed at this time, and who could blame many of them for failing at such a Herculean task? 

Yet, this is not an album to hold as a museum piece: I played this music in the car with many friends who had never heard of Parliament, and the smooth, bubbly seductiveness of "Supergroovalisticprosifunksication", "Handcuffs", and "Give Up The Funk" immediately won them over and got them interested in the group. This album is nearly everything I hold dear in music: understanding the real way to give people a good time is to speak to their little light under the sun, letting the love and groove flow organically to make friends with their listeners. This is one of those perfect masterpieces (among my top 10 albums of all time) that I really feel anyone can love and get them interested in what music is all about, and there is nothing more beautiful than that.

10. Low - the album that I found to be a dear friend and emotional support when things were really going south for me, and the perfect album to hear when your insides begin to fracture while the modern world continues to give false promises of a better tomorrow. Really, it is written for all of us, those who feel isolated and internally crumbling while the hustle bustle of modern happenings ceases to halt even for a moment. This album is one of those critical favorites that nothing new can be said about it, but that's what it meant to me when I really felt hopeless about music. I've always been a fan of it, but it took a personal crisis for me to really see what made it so special to begin with. It's funny how our appreciation of art sometimes requires us to improve as people, right?

So, those are the 10 albums that defined my year. I could have expanded this list to be much longer, but I think I gave a good enough picture of what I was listening to. 

Monthly Playlist

I've decided to start giving names to my playlists, so here it this month's, titled "From My Toes Up To My Ears" (guess which song it's from): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0v0JkYg0qYnDbKvJhG6Wfd?si=68da7135c1a840dc

It's a nice little eclectic playlist containing bits of dub/reggae, post-punk, big beat, jazz fusion, funk, country, Dylan, 60s girl groups, thrash metal, and all kinds of other things. It does have some longer songs (the second half of Tubular Bells, Miles Davis's "Right Off" from Jack Johnson, and Pink Floyd's "Dogs"), but I don't think anything on the playlist is inaccessible. So enjoy! Here is the track listing:

1. "The Man In Me" - Bob Dylan
2. "Hero Worship" - The B-52's
3. "Tubular Bells Pt. II" - Mike Oldfield
4. "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" - Ike & Tina Turner
5. "Giant Steps" - John Coltrane
6. "Amazing Journey" - The Who
7. "Funkier Than a Mosquita's Tweeter" - Ike & Tina Turner
8. "When It's Over" - Wipers
9. "My Life Is Right" - Big Star
10. "The Rumor" - The Band
11. "Something Happened To Me Yesterday" - The Rolling Stones
12. "Right Off" - Miles Davis
13. "Dogs" - Pink Floyd
14. "Hallowed Be My Name" - Alice Cooper
15. "Hello In There" - John Prine
16. "Sam Stone" - John Prine
17. "Good Old Music" - Funkadelic
18. "Setting Sun" - The Chemical Brothers
19. "Don't You Cry For Me" - Ronnie Lane
20. "These Days" - Nico
21. "Ball and Chain" - Big Brother & The Holding Company w/ Janis Joplin
22. "Revolution Rock" - The Clash
23. "That's All Right" - Arthur Crudup
24. "I'm Alone In The Wilderness" - Culture
25. "You Know You're A Man" - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
26. "Peace of Mind" - Boston
27. "Everything Turns Grey" - Agent Orange
28. "Solid Foundation" - The Congos
29. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" - Bob Dylan
30. "Oh Yoko!" - John Lennon
31. "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" - AC/DC
32. "I Like It Like That" - Chris Kenner
33. "Have A Cuppa Tea" - The Kinks
34. "Halloween" - Siouxsie & The Banshees
35. "King Tubby's Meets Rockers Uptown" - Augustus Pablo
36. "Tonight's The Night" - The Shrielles
37. "Teenage Wildlife" - David Bowie
38. "Hangar 18" - Megadeth
39. "Seven Seas" - Echo & The Bunnymen
40. "The Cutter" - Echo & The Bunnymen
41. "Pressure Drop" - Toots & The Maytals
42. "Waiting On A Friend" - The Rolling Stones

All right, that's all for now. Thank you everybody for reading and sharing this passion with me I'm slowly getting back. Happy new year everyone!