some musical acts of note

This used to be an annotated list of the albums I own, but now that I've finally gotten around to converting my collection to MP3s, I imagine my actual shelf of CDs will gradually dwindle down to a few discs kept for sentimental value. So instead, here's a partial discography of some bands I have followed. Most of them are long gone but there are a few active ones sprinkled in there toward the end.

I read on Mike D'Angelo's site that the Movie Nerd Discussion Group has five ratings: PRO, pro, mixed, con, and CON. Here's how my ratings correlate:

PRO: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6; pro: 5, 4; mixed: 3, 2; con: 1; CON: 0

Want to listen? Most album titles are clickable. (At least once you get past the records that came out before I was born.)

	the Beatles 2 • Please Please Me, 1963 2 • With the Beatles, 1963 5 • A Hard Day's Night, 1964 2 • Beatles for Sale, 1964 5 • Help!, 1965 4 • Rubber Soul, 1965 5 • Revolver, 1966 4 • Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967 3 • Magical Mystery Tour, 1967 4 • The Beatles, 1968 2 • Yellow Submarine, 1969 3 • Abbey Road, 1969 3 • Let It Be, 1970 That the Beatles were the most popular musical act of the 20th century is remarkable for a number of reasons: first, that they deserved it; second, that they started as a fad yet remained popular for more than a year or two; third, that they had coattails, as others followed them to the new heights of songwriting quality they had achieved; fourth, that they used their massive popularity to expose the world to experimental music the likes of which only a tiny fraction of their audience would have ever gone near otherwise. Though I tended to prefer the late, experimental stuff during my Beatles-listening heyday of 1989-90, after I started playing music and writing songs myself I became much more appreciative of the moptop-era stuff, as the list above testifies.
	the Who 2 • The Who Sings My Generation, 1966 4 • A Quick One, 1966 5 • The Who Sell Out, 1967 5 • Tommy, 1969 4 • Live at Leeds, 1970 4 • Who's Next, 1971 5 • Quadrophenia, 1973 3 • Odds and Sods, 1974 Who bassist John Entwistle said the Beatles made better albums but the Who put on a better show; forty years later, the albums are still around but the shows are a thing of the past, so you'd think the Beatles would come out ahead. Thing is, Entwistle was wrong. The Beatles' albums may have broken more new ground, but the Who grabbed some prime real estate full of power chords and ludicrous drum fills and built some really ambitious records around that sound. The Who was my favorite band my freshman year of college. As recently as a few years ago I used to take the Keith Moon side in the eternal Moon vs. Bonham debate, until I started playing drums myself and decided I preferred them as a rhythm instrument rather than a lead one.
	Nirvana 5 • Bleach, 1989 8 • Nevermind, 1991 4 • Incesticide, 1992 9 • In Utero, 1993 When I was in high school, everyone listened to the bands their parents had listened to. Teachers and administrators would shake their heads at the fact that here it was the late '80s and the popular bands of the day were still the Beatles, the Doors, Pink Floyd. I reluctantly accepted that there would never be a band in my lifetime to surpass the ones that had come and in many cases gone before I was born. Then came "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I've written various articles over the years about Nirvana's importance in my life. Kurt Cobain had a musical genius that appears maybe once in a generation, and that is manifest not just in the hook-laden songwriting but also in the dissonant-candy texture of the music. Let me put it this way. Here Comes the Zoo by Local H is one of my favorite albums. I listened to it over and over in '02 and thought, y'know, Nirvana may be gone, but this is a hell of a substitute. Then at the end of the year, Nirvana's last studio recording, "You Know You're Right," was released. And within forty seconds this one song had already eclipsed Local H's entire oeuvre.
	Hole 8 • Live Through This, 1994 9 • Celebrity Skin, 1998 Courtney Love may be a rather unsavory character, and her songs may have been at least partially ghostwritten, but the fact remains that she was the driving force behind a record that helped me pull out of a deep depression in the summer of '94 and another one that's on my short list of favorite albums. The calculated career moves, the spoiled-celebrity antics, the drugs, the plastic surgery... it's more than balanced out by the fact that "Boys on the Radio" can still make me tear up hundreds of listens later.
	Stone Temple Pilots 5 • Purple, 1994 5 • Tiny Music, 1996 5 • No. 4, 1999 3 • Shangri-La Dee Da, 2001 Few '90s bands were trashed more than Stone Temple Pilots, and while Scott Weiland's arrest record may have deserved the mockery, the music didn't. The usual line was that STP was a second-rate Pearl Jam clone. Except, uh, STP didn't sound like Pearl Jam. They sounded like Alice in Chains. And with their second album, Purple, STP vaulted past both bands. (Actually, they were better than Pearl Jam from day one.)
	the Offspring 4 • Smash, 1994 4 • Ixnay on the Hombre, 1997 4 • Americana, 1998 4 • Conspiracy of One, 2000 The Offspring and Green Day were the big hits of 1994, and treated as interchangeable, but while Green Day played very simplistic and even boring pop-punk (they've since improved a bit), the Offspring offered up a thrashier sound with surf and novelty-song elements. It's funny — all their songs sound pretty much the same, yet the minor variations make a huge difference. Some are a waste of time; others achieve anthemic godhead.
	Madder Rose 4 • Bring It Down, 1993 4 • Panic On, 1994 Madder Rose won me over with beautiful, noisy art-rock, but took a hiatus and came back in 1997 as a trip-hop band that wasn't nearly as good.
	Veruca Salt 4 • American Thighs, 1994 3 • Blow It Out Your Ass It's Veruca Salt, 1996 5 • Eight Arms to Hold You, 1997 Nina Gordon 4 • Tonight and the Rest of My Life, 2000 Veruca Salt was built around a pair of singer-songwriters, one of whom was talented. Nina Gordon wrote catchy songs and sang them adorably; Louise Post wrote plodding songs and sang them poorly. Eventually they split up, Louise keeping the name and releasing a remarkably bitter (but no better) record and Nina trying to reinvent herself as the next Sarah Maclachlan.
	Letters to Cleo 3 • Aurora Gory Alice, 1994 8 • Wholesale Meats and Fish, 1995 7 • Go!, 1997 3 • Sister, 1998 Letters to Cleo had a big single on alt-rock radio in the winter of 1994/5 with "Here and Now," and as far as radio was concerned, dropped off the face of the earth thereafter. Though the band released an album in the summer of '95 that was worlds better than its debut, it got zero airplay in an industry so obsessed with finding the next big thing that it ignores the fact that the last big thing, once found, doesn't just disappear like a zapped '80s videogame monster. Feh. Anyway, yeah, LTC was a great band, bringing the rock while remaining girlish and fun.
	Garbage 7 • Garbage, 1995 8 • Version 2.0, 1998 5 • Beautifulgarbage, 2001 3 • Bleed Like Me, 2005 Garbage flirts with the line between rock and button music, but manages to stay on the right side of it. Yes, the music is heavily processed, but those are rock textures, not synth; those drums may be looped, but at least they sound like drums. And Shirley Manson, who the three producers who make up the rest of the band spotted in an Angelfish video and brought to America, is a master of voice acting. When, on "#1 Crush" (bizarrely relegated to a B-side), she sings, "I would die for you," you can almost feel the gun barrel she's pressing to her temple.
	No Doubt 4 • Tragic Kingdom, 1995 5 • Return of Saturn, 2000 I first heard of No Doubt in Anaheim, which is both my hometown and the band's; my brother mentioned them as a ska band that put on a free show at Cal State Fullerton every year. I don't like ska. I do like new wave, however, and No Doubt's '95 breakthrough album was very new wave and quite cool. Return of Saturn was even better. So I was slightly horrified when Gwen and the boys got conked on the head and woke up thinking they were from Jamaica or something, and even more horrified when becoming a reggae-flavored club band with hip-hop trappings returned them to superstardom.
	Scheer 4 • Infliction, 1996 4 • And Finally, 2000 Scheer was a band from Belfast that took a crunchy near-metal sound and topped it off with the lilting vocals of a redheaded Irish lass who sounded maybe nine years old. They put out one incredibly awesome song ("Shéa") and two albums that make for great late-night driving music.
	Local H 2 • Ham Fisted, 1995 4 • As Good as Dead, 1996 6 • Pack Up the Cats, 1998 8 • Here Comes the Zoo, 2002 Local H, like Letters to Cleo, had one big single on alt-rock radio — in this case, 1996's "Bound for the Floor" — and was then promptly ignored as it put out its best work. Here Comes the Zoo in particular is remarkable: nine excellent songs with many guest performers, and then after the tenth and final song seems to be over, at the six-minute mark, it suddenly barrels onward for several more minutes, playing the previous songs layered on top of each other to make something new. There's no way in hell that this should work, but incredibly, it does. Or did — unfortunately, the band seems to have regressed with its most recent releases (by which I mean the ones in the, uh, entire second half of the band's career).
	the Muffs 7 • The Muffs, 1993 3 • Blonder and Blonder, 1995 3 • Happy Birthday to Me, 1997 5 • Hamburger, 2000 Kim Shattuck sounds like the sort who beat up Lisa Simpson a lot in elementary school, but in the early '90s she managed to find some kind of songwriting powerup. Both the Muffs' first album and the early tracks from the odds-and-sods collection are great. (I've been significantly less enamored with the more recent stuff, I have to admit. Guess the powerup wore off.)
	Kenickie 6 • At the Club, 1997 2 • Get In, 1998 London nightlife isn't a topic in which I have a lot of interest, but I don't listen to music for the lyrics. Fortunately, in its brief career Kenickie also supplied singalong melodies, candy-coated hooks and chicks singing "yeah yeah yeah" in the background at appropriate moments, and I do listen to music for those things. The fact that Britain's big cultural export of 1997 was the Spice Girls and not Kenickie shows that there is something seriously wrong with our trade agreements.
	Tuscadero 2 • The Pink Album, 1996 7 • My Way or the Highway, 1998 This band had the same makeup as Veruca Salt — two singer-songwriter chicks and two dudes as a rhythm section — and even had the same imbalance at first: Melissa Farris's songs and vocals were at least tolerable, and Margaret McCartney's weren't. The difference is that on their second and final album, worlds better than what had come before, Margaret caught up and Melissa wrote the few clunkers.
	Jack Off Jill 3 • Sexless Demons and Scars, 1997 9 • Clear Hearts Grey Flowers, 2000 Scarling 6 • Sweet Heart Dealer, 2004 8 • So Long, Scarecrow, 2005 I am probably the least gothic person ever to listen to Jessicka Fodera's bands this much. What can I say? For me music isn't about the subculture. I don't have to slather myself in makeup for Jessicka's music to speak to me, any more than I needed to wear flannel and stop washing my hair to relate to Kurt's. In both cases they're taking pitch-black feelings and transmuting them into beauty and joy. In any case, despite the slightly different trappings, Jack Off Jill wasn't all that much different from Hole, both in its sound and in having created a strong contender for my favorite record. Scarling is somewhat different, owing more to the Cure and My Bloody Valentine than to grunge, but it's still astonishingly great. "Can't" is the kind of song that should allow the authors to spend the next sixty years watching TV without feeling like they've wasted their lives.
	Bangs 6 • Sweet Revenge, 2000 5 • Call and Response, 2002 Bangs (no "the," I have been advised) were an Olympia trio featuring Kurt Cobain's ex-girlfriend's little sister on bass. This connection wasn't enough to get them onto a major label, however, and they had to record at least one of their albums in some guy's basement. I was lucky to hear of them; if I hadn't happened to be in the tiny range of the Smith College radio station the afternoon they played "I Want More," I probably wouldn't have. It is too bad, for the Bangs were awesome. You know how in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video they have these punk cheerleaders and you think, wait, those are almost diametrically opposed cliques — what would punk cheerleaders sound like? They'd sound like this.
	Damone 6 • From the Attic, 2003 I randomly heard a snippet of "Out Here All Night" on the radio as I was driving to get groceries and was impressed enough that I scribbled down the two lines I'd heard so I could look them up online and identify the band. Turns out that after releasing a terrific if lyrically juvenile album in 2003 (the first line is "I'm rockin' a BMX bike"), the songwriter left the band and the drummer took over, deciding that their new sound would be "unironic '80s hair metal." Regrettable.
	the Dollyrots 3 • Eat My Heart Out, 2004 3 • Because I'm Awesome, 2007 The Dollyrots were my first discovery on Church of Girl Radio. They're kind of fun, sometimes punky like punk, sometimes punky like Brewster, sometimes both at once.
	Made Out of Babies 4 • Trophy, 2005 6 • Coward, 2006 7 • The Ruiner, 2008 "Uh, is she going to be able to keep singing like that?" Good question, guy quoted in the press kit! I encountered Made Out of Babies on Pandora, and they're a lot more... unnerving... than what I usually listen to. The first couple of albums do contain longish stretches of undistinguished sludge, but at their best, Julie Christmas's caterwauling and the band's general sonic assault create a powerful experience that few other bands can even approach. And with the latest album, Made Out of Babies extends its sound into a realm of what I can only describe as a kind of postcoital (or perhaps postapocalyptic) beauty.
	Killola 4 • Louder, Louder!, 2006 6 • I Am the Messer, 2008 Fronted by one-time sitcom actress Lisa Rieffel, whose accent is Gwen Stefani but whose theatrics and dynamics call to mind Mike Patton, Killola is the only band I went to see live in the '00s. Their first album had an eclectic sound with a scattering of dance/synth elements and a fair amount of just plain weirdness, but the second one is a straight-ahead rock record and marks the jump from good to great. Fun stuff!
	Die Mannequin 5 • Unicorn Steak, 2007 9 • Fino + Bleed, 2009 Pandora kept feeding me "Fatherpunk" from this band's first EP, which makes sense because it sounds exactly like the sort of thing I listen to: girls, crunchy guitars, pop hooks, you know the drill. The most recent album is a masterpiece, combining superlative songwriting with amazing vocal pyrotechnics from singer Care Failure — crazy zoops, pitch-perfect squeaks... at one point she somehow manages to sing guitar feedback... and, yes, she can nail the normal stuff too. This record is totally awesome. And... it's only available in Canada. I had to get Lizzie to smuggle a copy across the border for me. Canadian girlfriends are also totally awesome.

top eighteen albums

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