Diane and I were driving in the car this morning, on our way to brunch, with SiriusXM tuned to – what else? – E Street Radio, which was playing the February 2, 2016 concert from Toronto. It was the sixth date on that year’s River tour, which was tied to the 35th anniversary of the album and, too, the Ties That Bind box set released in 2015. (We’d see him 10 days later in Philly.)
For those unfamiliar with the specifics of that tour, Bruce and the band performed The River from start to finish. In this Toronto show, he introduced “Independence Day” – a song he wrote in 1977, debuted in concert in 1978 and recorded in 1980 – with a monologue similar to what we heard in Philly. “It was the first song I wrote about fathers and sons,” he explained. “It’s the kind of song that you write when you’re young and you’re first startled by your parents’ humanity.”
Today, the fourth verse stood out to me: “Well, Papa, go to bed now, it’s getting late/Nothing we can say can change anything now/Because there’s just different people coming down here now and they see things in different ways/And soon everything we’ve known will just be swept away.”
It’s about the father-son dynamics unique to Springsteen’s own (self-mythologized) life, obviously, and yet it’s also more. It’s about the changing realities everyone confronts, at some point, in his or her life. When young, such change is expected and embraced. In the song, it leads the narrator to set out on his own. But for the old? Though the world we knew is no more, the memories – and our faded hopes – remain. That’s when bitterness sets in.
“Resolution” differs from “revolution” by a letter, but – as the Oxford Dictionary definitions demonstrate – there’s more than a consonant that differentiates them. A resolution is “a firm decision to do or not to do something” while “revolution” is “a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system.” In colloquial terms, however, a resolution is what we often make on New Year’s Eve and sometimes break a few weeks or months later. Revolution, on the other hand, has become synonymous with non-violent change that upends society – the first and second industrial revolutions, for instance, or the (mis)information age we now live in. The secondary definition of revolution, however, is “the movement of an object in a circular or elliptical course around another or about an axis or centre.”
As I see it, a resolution can result in a personal revolution that spins out a new you. It’s not easy, as we humans are flawed creatures: stumbles are as likely to happen as perfect pirouettes. But resolve to revolve, anyway. It takes time, patience and stick-to-itiveness, and the willingness to forgive yourself when or if you tumble.
To that end: There’s a new wave coming…
One thing that struck me when compiling my Top Posts of 2019 was that my Top 5 lists accounted for an astounding 35 percent of posts over the past 12 months, while my First Impressions came in at just 27 percent and Essentials at only 13 percent…and, of my now-70 posts for the year, only two were Of Concert Pasts. Concert reviews were minimal, as well.
Which leads to this: In 2020, I resolve to overthrow that status quo and focus more on new releases and old favorites, while reducing the Top 5s. Already, the Year of Visual Acuity is shaping up to be a magical, momentous 12 months of music due to forthcoming releases from such longtime favorites as Diane Birch, Maria McKee and Rumer. New favorites, including Emma Langford and Harriet, also have albums due, too, and a slew of archival wonders are sure to be shared by Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, among others.
Breathe deep and exhale: We, as a people, have survived another run around the sun. I may or may not reflect on the year writ large in the next week, but suffice it to say that 2019 has had its share of good and bad times, and plenty of moments that fell somewhere in-between. We’ve all weathered days not with smiles or frowns, after all, but a stoic determination to get the job – whatever it may be – done. We soldier on.
That said, I posted less often over the past 12 months than the past few years – about 75 percent of what I managed last year, which was curtailed by preparations for our move, and a little more than half of what I shared in 2017, when life was groovy. The main reason? As David Crosby sang on a now decades-old song of his, “time is the final currency/not money, not power/the time will come/when you will give/anything for one more hour.” Life’s demands took a toll, in other words.
(Hopefully, the Year of Visual Acuity – aka 2020 – will see me return to frequent postings.)
Yet, despite the steep drop-off in my posts, traffic actually ticked up by a bit more than 15 percent; it was my best year, stats-wise, since resurrecting The Old Grey Cat back in 2014. Thank you to everyone reading this for that.
Below are the top 20 posts (old and new) for the past 12 months, along with the published date and links to each.
Making music is not akin to building a model, though sometimes it may seem that way. Prefabricated pieces aren’t stamped out at a factory in some far-off foreign land. Picture-laden directions aren’t included. There’s no inserting of staccato guitar solo A into steady rhythm B, and no slathering on glue and waiting for it to dry. Otherwise, the world would be awash in indistinguishable songs.
Oh wait. We are.
But such has been the case since the dawn of the entertainment industry. Hits beget blurry copies that smell of mimeograph ink – and if you don’t appreciate that reference, don’t worry. It only serves to point out my age and say, slyly, that much of modern pop music isn’t being made for me. (Nor should it be.) As Paul Simon summarized in “The Boy in the Bubble,” “every generation sends a hero up the pop charts.”
Anyway, although my much-ballyhooed “Album of the Year” is an honorific I’ve doled out every year since 1978, when I was 13, putting forth an “Album of the Decade” never occurred to me until a month ago, when the notion was mentioned in someone’s tweet; and then, this month, magazines, newspapers and online outlets began posting their lengthy and semi-lengthy lists. The ones I’ve seen basically weigh artistry and commercial impact, and inevitably mix in a handful of niche records while ignoring select popular hits.
Most are little more than clickbait exercises designed to boost ad impressions.
You’ll find no advertisements on this page. To borrow/adapt the lyrics from Neil Young’s “This Note’s for You,” I don’t write for Pepsi/I don’t write for Coke/I don’t write for nobody/Makes me look like a joke.Also, very few of those lists achieve what I love most about reading about music: a sense of the author. From where I sit, the best music reflects the listener(s) as much as it does the artist. It intertwines with our DNA. (And “best” in that sentence construct is a subjective thing.)
With all that said, the reality of the past decade – which saw good times, bad times, and plenty of in-betweens for me and mine – is that a handful of albums turned my ear every year, and quite a few became constants. And of those, a select some have pretty much become one with my soul; they mean as much to me as the music of my youth.
One caveat: Your mileage may vary. One more caveat: It’s too early for my favorite albums of this year to be included here, as one never knows just how long they’ll stick with you (though I can’t imagine Allison Moorer’s Blood fading away). And one last caveat: I’m a middle-aged white guy with catholic tastes. (To quote Paul Simon again, “I know what I know.”) While I enjoy many different musical avenues, I generally find myself circling the same blocks of rock, pop and Americana/country.
And with that out of the way, here are my top seven albums for the 2010s.
1) Rumer – Seasons of My Soul (2010). In my first blog post on the Hatboro-Horsham Patch (which I’ve since moved to this site) in February 2012, I called it “an atmospheric song cycle that’s teeming with soulful, knowing lyrics and melodies that wrap themselves around the heart.” It spoke to me then and speaks to me now. It’s the definition of “essential.”
2) Courtney Marie Andrews – Honest Life (2016). I cannot properly put into words the many ways this album affected me, other than to say this: From the moment I first heard it, it felt like it had been with me all my life. “Honest Life” is a song I want played at my funeral, whenever that may be. “Some things take a lifetime to fully understand.” (For my initial review of it, click here.)
3) Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Psychedelic Pill (2012). This may be a controversial pick for some, as not even all Neil fans appreciate its grandeur. Such is life. But as I wrote in this “essentials” essay, “it features sprawling songs that capture the messy essence of this thing called life.”
4) First Aid Kit – Stay Gold (2014). So, long about 2012, I had pretty much given up hope for the youth of the world. And then I heard “Emmylou” by the Swedish sister act known as First Aid Kit and realized that, indeed, I was wrong. As good as The Lion’s Den album was, however, nothing prepared me for this gem. The psychedelic folk of “Cedar Lane” remains as hypnotic to me now as it did then.
5) Juliana Hatfield – Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John (2018). I can hear some guffaws echoing through the interconnected tubes that make up this thing we call the “internet.” Whatever. This album saw two of my favorite worlds collide, and made a rough last half of the decade much sweeter. To rework a line from my initial review, it captures the spirit of the originals while adding a touch of Juliana’s heart.
6) Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball (2012). From my original review (another first posted to the Patch but since relocated here): “[W]hat makes a song great isn’t that it conjures spirits from our youthful nights, but that it speaks to the present. Maybe the first blush of melody hurtles us into the past, but the bridge jerks us as fast into the here and now. And the lyrics ring true no matter the age – or our age, for that matter. The runaway American dream that drives Born to Run, for example, represents today as much as 1975, just as the bitter realities and resignation of Darkness reflect working-class life of every era. As Springsteen sings on the title track of Wrecking Ball, his new album, “hard times come and hard times go/yeah, just to come again.” Some things, for good and bad, never change.”
7) Diane Birch – Nous (2016). This EP is a true work of art anchored by what, to me, is one of the decade’s greatest songs: “Stand Under My Love.” To borrow from my review, Nous “documents dreams, disappointments, disillusionment, faith and acceptance, and an awareness not spoken that, indeed, the Last Things are the First Things.”
