2015 Top 25: my favorite albums of the year

This list comes with my standard year end disclaimer: this isn't a critical list of the best albums of the year. These are just the albums that I enjoyed, played, and/or that stuck with me the most throughout the year. Roughly in ranked order.

1. FFS - FFS
2. PUGWASH - Play This Intimately (As If Among Friends) 
3. WAVVES - V 
4. WIRE - Wire 
5. NOEL GALLAGHER'S HIGH FLYING BIRDS - Chasing Yesterday 
6. ROBIN GUTHRIE and MARK GARDENER - Universal Road 
7. MARITIME  - Magnetic Bodies / Maps of Bones 
8. GUY GARVEY - Courting the Squall 
9. MARTIN COURTNEY - Many Moons 
10. COURTNEY BARNETT - Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit 
11. SWERVEDRIVER - I Wasn't Born To Lose You 
12. BELLE and SEBASTIAN - Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance 
13. NEW ORDER - Music Complete 
14. the MAVERICKS - Mono 
15. BEST COAST - California Nights 
16. KITTY, DAISY & LEWIS - the Third 
17. DWIGHT YOAKAM - Second Hand Heart 
18. CHRIS STAMEY - Euphoria 
19. DISAPPEARS - Irreal 
20. the SONICS - This is the Sonics 
21. Le BUTCHERETTES - A Raw Youth 
22. MARRIAGES - Salome 
23. JEFF LYNE'S ELO - Alone in the Universe 
24. DUCKTAILS - St. Catherine 
25. GIRLS NAMES - Arms Around a Vision 

Alright, bring on the 2016 releases.

My picks for Slicing Up Eyeballs’ Best of 1985 Poll

Slicing Up Eyeballs is currently in Part 6 of their Best of the ’80s, Poll: 1985. Being Slicing Up Eyeballs, the list focuses on new wave/alternative albums. From their guidelines: "the albums that made the ballot are limited to those that fall within the very loose and ill-defined “alternative” banner, generally titles from the punk, post-punk, goth, college rock, indie, synthpop, industrial, New Wave and related genres". All ten of my picks came from their ballot. I made a quick look at the 1985 albums on my MP3 player and didn't see anything else that needed to be added (although I almost added APB's Something to Believe In before remembering it was actually a compilation).

1985 didn't have as many life changingly great records for me as as 84 did, but it was still a pretty great year for music. This Is Big Audio Dynamite, Throb Throb, Tim, and Rain Dogs are all guaranteed spots on my all time favorite albums list, so putting them up here was a no brainer.

Here are my ten picks in artist alphabetical order.

• Big Audio Dynamite - This Is Big Audio Dynamite
• Game Theory - Real Nighttime
• Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians - Fegmania!
• Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
• The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy
• Naked Raygun - Throb Throb
• R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction
• The Replacements - Tim
• Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
• Yello - Stella

Alright, bring on 1986.

Are We Not Polyresin Throbblehead Figures? We Are Devo!

I've gotten away from buying cool little tchotchkes and knick knacks, but this Devo Energy Dome Throbblehead from Aggronautix is making me reconsider that stance. I kind of feel like I need to own one of these. 

Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Block Party at the Hideout (2006) PART TWO: Arcwelder, Supersystem, and Girls vs Boys

Here's PART TWO of my pics from the the greatest music fest I've ever attended, the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Block Party. On September 8, 9, & 10 twenty five Touch and Go bands got together to celebrate 25 years of Touch and Go Records. PART ONE is over here (featuring Didjits, Pegboy, Jon Langford, Sally Timms, and Katrin Bornfeld). Scratch Acid and Big Black reunion pics are coming soon.

CLICK PICS TO ENLARGE (there are plenty more photos in my T&G25 photoset on flickr)

ABOVE and BELOW: Girls vs Boys

 

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ABOVE and BELOW: Arcwelder

 

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ABOVE and BELOW: Supersystem

 

Rick's Picks: My visit to the Rick Nielsen/Cheap Trick exhibit in Rockford

Last month I made the journey out to the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford for their temporary exhibit, Rick’s Picks: A Lifelong Affair With Guitars & Music. The exhibit is collection of Cheap Trick memorabilia and guitars pulled from Rick Nielsen's personal collection. Rick is a packrat of the highest order, so there's no shortage of great artifacts through his entire career.

The obvious museum pieces like the guitars (Uncle Dick, the five necked monster, a Brian Jones guitar, etc), posters, and plaques were great, but it was the ephemera that got me to stay for 3 hours. Rick saved everything from notes handed to the band on stage, equipment receipts, fan letters, rejection letters, etc. For the most part, the entire exhibit is one giant room, but it's loaded and displayed incredibly well.

I've been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Museum in Cleveland several times, but I think Rick's Picks does an even better job of capturing the excitement of rock and roll. I'm hoping to make a second trip in the next few weeks to see it again before it closes in April.

[ CLICK EACH PIC TO ENLARGE VIA FLICKR ]

We went on a weekend morning, so we pretty much had run of the place without any crowds. Above is me (wearing a Redd Kross t-shirt - one of many Cheap Trick logo parodies out there).

ABOVE: Many of the display cases had drawers below that pulled out to display even more ephemera. 

BELOW: As a former member of the Sparks fanclub myself, I was happy to see Rick's Sparks fanclub membership button among the artifacts from his pre Cheap Trick days.

There are a few more Rick's Picks pictures in this set on my flickr page.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Here's yet another album cover for Steve Lamacq's Grand ReDeisgn on BBC6. This time I try my hand at redesigning Massive Attack's Mezzanine.

The photo image is a greatly reworked version of a photo I took at Queen of Heaven Mausoleum (right) in Hillside Illinois a few years ago. When I loaded the pictures into a viewer this one turned up upside down and I ended up liking it better that way. More pictures from the Mausoleum are over here.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads

Once again, here's another album cover for Steve Lamacq's Grand ReDeisgn on BBC6. This time here's my take on Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads: For this one I started out with a picture of church I took on a trip through Southern Illinois a few years ago. I took several different pictures of the church, each one getting closer, but I liked this one for the big open sky to work with. I was happy with the finished product (above), but then I started fooling around with the photo distortion in CorelDraw and ended up with more sinister looking version below.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Django Django - Django Django

Over at BBC6 Steve Lamacq is doing something called Grand ReDesigns as part of his celebration of album artwork. He's asking listeners to redesign album covers as if the original never existed. Here's my take on Django Django's self titled debut.

Django Django - Django Django: I've liked word balloons on album covers ever since I first saw Mothers of Invention's Freak Out cover. The woman was originally on the right, but I flipped the image because for some reason in my head the dog just had to have the last word.

Alternate Universe Album Cover: Adam and the Ants - Prince Charming

Over at BBC6 Steve Lamacq is doing something called Grand ReDesigns as part of his celebration of album artwork. He's asking listeners to redesign album covers as if the original never existed. Here's my take on Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming.

Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming: This is actually a reworking of a Velvet Underground best-of mixdisc cover I made many years ago. The image is from a bondage pulp novel, which was perfect for use on a Velvets mix. But it also lends itself quite well to Adam Ant.

Cheap Trick + Blackhawks = potential t-shirt

Not that the world needed another Cheap Trick logo parody, but here it is. I listened to a bunch of Cheap Trick this afternoon and while watching the Chicago Blackhawks beat St Louis tonight I thought this might be a cool combo. This was only intended to be a mock-up to see how it would look and to decide if I wanted to do it for real, but I was happy with how it turned out already. Looks wise it would have worked better with Blackhawks as two words, but I think the point still works.

Now I need to find a print-to-order t-shirt place because I want this on a shirt.

Joe Strummer

Joe Strummer is one of the few celebrities that I miss and think about on a regular basis the way I would a close personal friend. I saw this wall painting during a marathon bar crawl on trip to New York in 2006. I couldn't remember exactly where it was, but a FaceBook friend reminded me that it's outside Jessie Malin's bar, Niagara at 7th Street and Avenue A. I was quite excited to hear that it's still there.

Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Block Party at the Hideout (2006) PART ONE: Didjits, Pegboy, Jon Langford, Sally Timms, and Katrin Bornfeld

The Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Block Party was the greatest music fests I've ever attended. On September 8, 9, & 10 twenty five Touch and Go bands got together to celebrate 25 years of Touch and Go Records. Along with many current artists on the T&G roster were several one-off reunions, including Scratch Acid, Big Black, and the one I was most excited for, Didjits.

CLICK PICS TO ENLARGE (there are plenty more photos in my T&G25 photoset on flickr)

Didjits @ T&G25

 Didjits @ T&G25

 Didjits @ T&G25

 Didjits @ T&G25

 Didjits setlist for T&G25

 Didjits @ T&G25

Didjits @ T&G25

MORE PICS AFTER THE JUMP

surf-a-gogo: Lennon's Poster

Lennon's Poster: This short film by Nick Esdaile & Joe Fellows appeals to both the Beatles nerd and graphic design geek in me. The film follows the recreation from scratch of the Pablo Fanque circus poster that inspired John Lennon to write "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite". With meticulous attention to detail they were able to rebuild the poster using traditional wood engraving and letterpress printing techniques.

Disnëyzende Neubauten

Once the fervor over Disney's Joy Division t-shirt dies down I think calm heads will prevail and everyone will realize that the real issue is the lack of selection in the Disney post-punk collection. So in an attempt to get ahead of problem, here's my suggestion for the next mouseification: Einstürzende Neubauten.

Everything but the Jewel Case and 1/4th the space!

Tired of losing the war on space to my CD collection, I have begun converting jewel cases to plastic sleeves. 25 jewel cases (pictured below) take up as much space 105 CDs in sleeves!

Top-CDs in plastic sleeves. Bottom-jewel cases. It got little tricky with digipacks, but practicality finally won out over sentimentality and I took an exacto to them and cut them in half and trimmed them to fit in the sleeves. Since I don't plan to resell the CDs anyway, it's no big deal.

RIGHT: Here's a CD in the sleeve with the booklet on one side and the CD and tray card on the other side. And for the astute Didjits fan, yes the booklet is upside down for the sake of this picture (the front cover on the other side is upside down). For those of you playing at home, that's the Gatefold CD sleeve (SCDGF4) from Bags Unlimited.

This part seems to have made a few fellow music nerds cry. Continuing in the "conserving space" theme of breaking down my CDs to the much slimmer plastic sleeves, I've started on the box sets. It was a little harder to bring myself to reduce them to just CDs, covers, and the books, but once I brought myself to tear apart the Velvets and Nuggets box, everything else was pretty easy. Some boxes, like the Zombies, XTC, Grow Fins, and the Ornette Coleman are simply too beautiful to break apart, so they'll remain intact. But hopefully everything else will get broken down.

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Editors at Lollapalooza