Caltrops - No Stairway to Heaven - 2004: The year in music.

Forum Overview :: No Stairway to Heaven

by Senor Barborito 12/25/2004, 6:39am PST

I don't know when half of the stuff I've downloaded this year - which is 85% of the music I've ever downloaded in my life - was released. Doing a top ten would be stupid; I'd have to pick a top ten out of the thousands and thousands of albums of all genres that blew into my hard drive like a sand storm, clearing out cobwebs of anime theme song gayness. Can't be done. So instead I'll list the top five albums that rewarded me for impulsive behavior.

#5: The time I was dead certain that if I got enough dinosaur rock from the 60's, I'd suddenly like it.

I picked up Eric Burdon And The Animal's "Winds of Change" - this is an album, I later learned, stuffed with cover songs from bands contemporary to our Animal heros. Sincere, well-intentioned covers of Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones (Paint It Black!), etc. A doom-and-gloom spoken word number for the proto-goths who fathered us, (The Black Plague) and, most sensationally, a screaming, surprisingly moralistic ballad about gender relations: "Man-Woman", in which our protagonist regularly squeals out MAN!!!.....WOMAN!!!......DEEEEE-SIIIIIIYUH!!!!!.... as a coda. Hilarious, touching, affectionate picture of the era in which my mother was a Beatles-chasing teenager.

#4: The time I had to watch every episode of Get A Life, in a row, over the course of two days, and despaired of tying my love of things that weren't Get A Life to my attractive and generally kind-hearted live-in stud.

Handsome Boy Modelling School's "So....How's Your Girl?" gave me an excuse to foist of all manner of quality hip hop on an unsuspecting audience. Get A Life samples!!!! Father Guido Sarducci!!!! Plus, Prince Paul, Del, DJ Shadow, DJ Kid Koala. Fantastic album, fantastic jump-off point. Most of you guys have heard this one already, right? I don't need to say any more.

#3: The time Mr. Hayt dinged me for not knowing jack shit about prog rock.

I'll show you, fucker!!!!!! I'm still in for the ding, since one of the things I've learned about myself this year is that I stop paying attention to any song not sung by Isaac Hayes that's longer than 11 minutes. BUT! That still leaves me with lyrical, musical, uplifting "Forse le luciole non si amano piu" by Italian one-album-wonders (they later put out an inferior sophmore album 20 years later) Locanda della Fate. I picked this one up at Pedro's and it was worth every pretentious, fussy, cranky prog dork who demanded I get my share ratio up. Brilliant musicianship in a genuine marriage of rock and classical (rather than sloppily tacking one onto the other.) The promise of the uploader ("15 years later I am still finding new countermelodies") has led me to spend many happy re-listenings picking apart the songs, and I think he might not have been shooting the shit after all.

#2: The time I wanted to take goth seriously.

Some goth kids want to be vampires, but I wanted to be a goth kid. Oh man! If I could just take that shit seriously, I'd have a completely developed social life just handed to me and every night I could mourn about something new. It didn't happen, and this impulse led me to download quite a lot of bad Dead Can Dance impressionistas, but it also provoked my acquisition of the Empyrium album "Where At Night The Wood Grouse Plays." I thought the dude who painstakingly corrected the album genre of "gothic rock" to "dark folk" was unbearably gay at first, but now I agree with him. It's more gentle and melodic than rawk or goth, but especially in the production, the ambiance, the chorales, the (occasionally elfy) lyrics - this is a folk album from the beset villages of Castlevania games. I mean that with love. The music is beautiful and unvoluptuously gloomy, and stems more from dark metal than goth anyway.

#1: The time I just downloaded whatever was available for download at ThePPN

Mika Nakashima is a naughty little lotus petal.