Fellatio Del Toro

10. Continuum - John Mayer
They say that every great artist hits his stride with his third album. The Beatles did it (A Hard Day’s Night, #5 on the list), Springsteen did it (Born To Run, #8), and you can bet that John Mayer, a fresh blend of singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso, did it.
On Continuum, Mayer mixes his first two albums with his live release by side project John Mayer Trio and blends it together to make a vivid, soulful, passionate record. Strains of his debut, Room For Squares, can be heard in the emotionally wrenching “Stop This Train” and the warming “Heart of Life,” while the more electric, hip-hop-meets-the-acoustic-guitar feel of Heavier Things, his sophomore release, can be heard in “Waiting On The World To Change” and “Vultures,” the latter taken from the Trio’s live album.
I have listened to this album over and over and I never grow tired of it. And regardless of how quickly songs may jump out at you in an album (not the case here; this album had to grow on me), the constant freshness is a sure sign of a great album. 

9. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner - Ben Folds Five
I first discovered this album less than a week ago, and I already recognize its place in music as a classic album. Ben Folds is well-known for his unique sense of humor (i.e. his cover of Dr. Dre’s timeless “Bitches Ain’t Shit”), and on the Ben Folds Five’s third album, it shows in songs like “Your Redneck Past” and the mostly-autobiographical “Army.” Folds draws from a number of influences, often at the same time. “Regrets” has a Steely Dan jazz-rock progression, climaxing in a powerful, harmony-filled Queen-style ending, while “Mess” is a Joe Jackson-meets-church hymns song. This album has an added weight as it was the last before the Five called it quits, stating simply, “No one gives a shit about piano rock.”
One of the reasons I love this album is that the songs work on their own, or as a narrative. While never hailed as a “concept album,” there are recurring themes, lyrically and musically, that appear throughout the album, notably death, loss, and aloneness. Other concept albums usually have some ‘filler’ songs to tie together the album (The Who’s “Miracle Cure” from Tommy or the reprise of the title track on The Beatles Sgt. Pepper). But this album is unique in that every single song has feeling, emotion, and a personality that connects them to each other and to the listener. I cannot recommend getting this album highly enough. I have no complaints about this album.

8. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
In a word, epic. Springsteen’s third album has been described by The Boss himself as a “four corners record,” meaning the songs beginning each side (“Thunder Road”, “Born to Run”) were uplifting odes to escape, while the songs ending each side (“Backstreets”, “Jungleland”) were sad epics of loss, betrayal, and defeat. There is so much energy packed into this album, particularly in the title track, lush with guitars, strings, and the trademark glockenspiel. Like life, it has its highs and lows, and both are equally compelling. It is the definitive Springsteen record.

7. Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
This album begins not with a bang, but with a hushed cough, as if to say “excuse me just a second” before launching into “Whole Lotta Love” and not stopping until the last bluesy strains of “Bring It On Home.” Unlike others, Zeppelin hit their stride on their second album, perfectly meshing the varying styles on the first album (among them rock, metal, blues, and folk) and mixing it all up to create a whirlwind roller coaster of an album. Simply unforgettable, even within the group’s legendary catalog.

6. Armed Forces - Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Another legendary Third Album, this was my introduction to the world of Elvis Costello. I put on the vinyl record and as soon as the needle hit the groove I found myself swimming in a deep sound I’d never heard before but instantly loved. The first track, “Accidents Will Happen,” has swirling strings, sliding basslines, room-filling piano, and a very clean production sound, a stark contrast to his lo-fi debut, My Aim Is True (a classic in its own right). Costello succeeds in expressing his angst and frustration with passive-aggressive wit and pointedly funny lyrics. He makes the chord progressions sound instantly familiar, but as soon as you think you know what’s coming next, he changes it up in a revelation of how far popular music has come. A prime example is “Moods For Moderns,” in which it would appear that he wrote three different songs, took the hooks from each of them, and combined them.
The original American release (and all subsequent CD releases) close the album with Costello’s cover of Nick Lowe’s faux-protest song “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love & Understanding” which Costello sings without a hint of irony in his powerful voice, rising above driving drums and frantic guitar and piano.

5. A Hard Day’s Night - The Beatles
One of the greatest Third Albums ever made, A Hard Day’s Night is important in that not only did the Beatles find their sound, but it was the first (and only) album completely written by Lennon/McCartney. The opening chord of the title track is iconic in it’s own right (and impossible to play without two guitars, a piano and a bass), and the rest of the album keeps up the greatness. Songs like the biting “You Can’t Do That” and the classic “Can’t Buy Me Love” show the Beatles ability to mix a traditional blues form with the Mersey sound, the frantic “Tell Me Why” and “When I Get Home” show the Beatles with an edgier, more driving sound, and “And I Love Her” and “If I Fell” showcase their talent for writing beautiful love songs. There is not a bad song on this album, nor is their one in their 13-album, 200+ song catalog. A must-have for anybody who likes music.

4. Smile - Brian Wilson
This is the album that almost didn’t happen. Nearly 35 years, 400 pounds, a mental breakdown, and a year in bed in the making, Smile was intended to be the follow up to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, taking the musical direction the Beach Boys were headed in and taking it to places never seen by popular music.
However, that never came to fruition.
With Brian Wilson’s breakdown, the unfinished Smile sessions were distributed throughout their next few albums, many on Smiley Smile, an album detested by many fans for being a poor substitute for the unreleased legend (the notable exception on the album is the immortal “Good Vibrations”). For years afterward, Brian refused to discuss the album, saying the topic was “inappropriate.”
Until a Christmas party in 2003, when Brian sat down at a piano and started playing “Heroes And Villains,” a track which had ended up on Smiley Smile. The room grew quiet with curiosity; nobody could believe that Brian was revisiting Smile completely unprovoked. Soon after, plans were formulated to finish the album with members of his current band. Using the original tapes as guides, Brian and his band assembled the tracks in a new order, and Brian and Smile lyricist Van Dyke Parks worked together to finish some of the songs. In 2004, the band played the album in its entirety for a sold-out audience at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The performance has gone down in books as “legendary,” and soon afterwards the group went into the studio to record the album.
The album comes in three parts. The first is about America, the second about childhood, and the third about the ‘elements’ (earth, fire, and water). Songs that were originally completely separate flow together as if they had been one song split in two or three parts. Brian’s voice is not even close to what it used to be, but his multi-talented band takes his direction and their soaring harmonies are, dare I say, better than the Beach Boys. If you like warm, fuzzy feelings on the inside, get this album pronto.

3. Abbey Road - The Beatles

I’ve got nothing new to say about the next three albums, so I’ll let Rolling Stone cover them:

“Come Together” is John Lennon very nearly at the peak of his form; twisted, freely-associative, punful lyrically, pinched and somehow a little smug vocally. Breathtakingly recorded (as is the whole album), with a perfect little high-hat-tom-tom run by Ringo providing a clever semi-colon to those eerie shooo-ta’s, Timothy Leary’s campaign song opens up things in grand fashion indeed.

George’s vocal, containing less adenoids and more grainy Paul tunefulness than ever before, is one of many highlights on his “Something,” some of the others being more excellent drum work, a dead catchy guitar line, perfectly subdued strings, and an unusually nice melody. Both his and Joe Cocker’s version will suffice nicely until Ray Charles gets around to it.

Paul McCartney and Ray Davies are the only two writers in rock and roll who could have written “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” a jaunty vaudevillian/music-hallish celebration wherein Paul, in a rare naughty mood, celebrates the joys of being able to bash in the heads of anyone threatening to bring you down. Paul puts it across perfectly with the coyest imaginable choir-boy innocence.

Someday, just for fun, Capitol/Apple’s going to have to compile a Paul McCartney Sings Rock And Roll album, with “Long Tall Sally,” “I’m Down,” “Helter Skelter,” and, most definitely, “Oh! Darling,” in which, fronting a great “ouch!”-yelling guitar and wonderful background harmonies, he delivers an induplicably strong, throat-ripping vocal of sufficient power to knock out even those skeptics who would otherwise have complained about yet another Beatle tribute to the golden groovies’ era.

That the Beatles can unify seemingly countless musical fragments and lyrical doodlings into a uniformly wonderful suite, as they’ve done on side two, seems potent testimony that no, they’ve far from lost it, and no, they haven’t stopped trying.

No, on the contrary, they’ve achieved here the closest thing yet to Beatles freeform, fusing more diverse intriguing musical and lyrical ideas into a piece that amounts to far more than the sum of those ideas.

“Here Comes the Sun,” for example, would come off as quite mediocre on its own, but just watch how John and especially Paul build on its mood of perky childlike wonder. Like here, in “Because,” is this child, or someone with a child’s innocence, having his mind blown by the most obvious natural phenomena, like the blueness of the sky. Amidst, mind you, beautiful and intricate harmonies, the like of which the Beatles have not attempted since “Dr. Robert.”

Then, just for a moment, we’re into Paul’s “You Never Give Me Your Money,” which seems more a daydream than an actual address to the girl he’s thinking about. Allowed to remain pensive only for an instant, we’re next transported, via Paul’s “Lady Madonna” voice and boogie-woogie piano in the bridge, to this happy thought: “Oh, that magic feelin’/Nowhere to go.” Crickets’ chirping and a kid’s nursery rhyme (“1-2-3-4-5-6-7/All good children go to heaven”) lead us from there into a dreamy John number, “Sun King,” in which we find him singing for the Italian market, words like amore and felice giving us some clue as to the feel of this reminiscent-of-“In My Room” ballad.

And then, before we know what’s happened, we’re out in John Lennon’s England meeting these two human oddities, Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam. From there it’s off to watch a surreal afternoon telly programme, Paul’s “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.” Pensive and a touch melancholy again a moment later, we’re into “Golden Slumbers,” from which we wake to the resounding thousands of voices on “Carry That Weight,” a rollicking little commentary of life’s labours if ever there was one, and hence to a reprise of the “Money” theme (the most addicting melody and unforgettable words on the album). Finally, a perfect epitaph for our visit to the world of Beatle daydreams: “The love you take is equal to the love you make …” And, just for the record, Paul’s gonna make Her Majesty his.

I’d hesitate to say anything’s impossible for him after listening to Abbey Road the first thousand times, and the others aren’t far behind. To my mind, they’re equatable, but still unsurpassed.

2. Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys

Recorded and released in 1966, not long after the sunny, textural experiments of California Girls, Pet Sounds, aside from its importance as Brian Wilson’s evolutionary compositional masterpiece, was the first rock record that can be considered a “concept album”; from first cut to last we were treated to an intense, linear personal vision of the vagaries of a love affair and the painful, introverted anxieties that are the wrenching precipitates of the unstable chemistry of any love relationship. This trenchant cycle of love songs has the emotional impact of a shatteringly evocative novel, and by God if this little record didn’t change only the course of popular music, but the course of a few lives in the bargain. It sure as hell changed its creator, Brian, who by 1966 had been cruising along at the forefront of American popular music for four years, doling out a constant river of hit songs and producing that tough yet mellifluous sound that was the only intelligent innovation in pop music between Chuck Berry and the Beatles.

Previous Beach Boy albums were also based on strong conceptual images — the dream world of Surf, wired-up rods with metal flake paint, and curvaceous cuties lounging around the (implicitly suburban and affluent) high school. It was music for white kids; they could identify with the veneration of the leisure status which in 1963 was the ripest fruit of the American dream. It wasn’t bullshit, you could dance your silly brains away to “Get Around” or “Fun Fun Fun” if you felt like it.

But Pet Sounds….nobody was prepared for anything so soulful, so lovely, something one had to think about so much. It is by far the best album Brian has yet delivered, and it paradoxically began the decline in mass popularity that still plagues this band. It also reflected Brian’s preoccupation with pure sound. In fact, the credits on the new edition of Pet Sounds read: “This recording is pressed in monophonic sound, the way Brian cut it.” It’s a weird little touch. The tone of it is so mythologizing it sounds as if Brian were no longer among us.

The love songs of Pet Sounds begin with the gorgeous theme of frustrated mid-Sixties blueballed adolescence, “wouldn’t it be nice to stay together, hold each other close the whole night through?…” That question lays the entire premise of the album immediately in front of us. “You Still Believe In Me,” with Brian’s lovely harpsichord playing, carries the affair a little farther, through and past indescretion into the reconciliation of “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder),” sung in Brians’ wrenching, melting butter falsetto with the gentle lyrics of Tony Asher, Brian’s major collaborator in this period, at the top of their form. There are also the perceptive songs of anxiety, malaise and self-doubt — “That’s Not Me,” “I’m Waiting For the Day,” a tribute to the larger-than-life echo chambers of Phil Spector, the striking choral ensemble of “God Only Knows” and the angst-laden “I Know There’s An Answer.” Each of these tunes has its own singular flavor, one little brilliant touch — the slur of a baritone saxophone or the luxuriant tintinnabulation of Brian’s omnipresent chimes — that puts it apart from the body of the whole record.

The Pet Sounds story ends unhappily, or at least stoically. “Here Today” is an angry blaster, and portrays a pessimism and disaffection that jars with the previous optimism. It is the end of the affair, and our persona is clearly pissed. “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” is an expression of general disenchantment with just about everything, rendered politely of course, in a low-key manner. These two tunes, like the rest of the record are great not only because of the lush, dramatic arrangements, but because the strangest of the brothers Wilson has his psyche on the pulse of universal subjectivity. Being extremely aware of fantasy himself, Brian knows how most people think.

Three cuts are impossibly dated and don’t even enter into consideration: a boring cover of “Sloop John B.” that had some success as a single (with all the genius on this record, Capitol Records chose this as the single because it probably sounded truest to preconceptions about the Beach Boy “formula”). The two instrumentals, “Pet Sounds” and “Let’s Go Away For Awhile,” are pretty mood pieces and that’s all.

The final episode of Pet Sounds is “Caroline, No,” three minutes of heartbreaking pathos, a haunting ballad that is the guts of hapless melancholy, the hollow and incredulous feeling at the loss of a lover.

Ah, Pet Sounds.

 Ah, the wonderful 20 second trailer right out of Thomas Hart Benton with the barking dogs, the signal bells and at the railroad crossing as a fast diesel roars by towards where you are not, the barking in the distance again and then silence. Ah, Brian.

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles

I just listened to it and said to myself, ‘God, I really love this album.’ Still, today, it just sounds so fresh. It sounds full of ideas. These guys knew what they were doing. They’re good. And they’re inventive. I haven’t heard anything this year that’s as inventive. I don’t really expect to.

That’s how Paul McCartney describes his response to hearing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandearlier this year, and it’s hard to argue with him. The album he and those other “guys” in the Beatles released in 1967 revolutionized rock & roll. The “splendid time” McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr “guaranteed for all” has lasted more than two decades — and that immensely pleasurable trip has earned Sgt. Pepper its place as the best record of the past twenty years.

After the Beatles stopped touring in 1966, they had time to explore in greater depth the possibilities of the recording studio with producer George Martin. And removed, essentially for the first time, from the nonstop hoopla of Beatlemania, they also had time to question their identity as Beatles. A chasm had begun to open between their growing musical sophistication and the public’s perception of them as lovable mop tops. The magnitude of the Beatles phenomenon was starting to encroach on the band — and their experience with psychedelic drugs made that phenomenon seem increasingly surreal. Already trapped, in their early twenties, the Beatles had to find a way out. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was born.

“Pepper was probably the one Beatle album I can say was my idea,” McCartney says. “It was my idea to say to the guys, ‘Hey, how about disguising ourselves and getting an alter ego, because we’re the Beatles and we’re fed up. Every time you approach a song, John, you gotta sing it like John would. Every time I approach a ballad, it’s gotta be like Paul would. Why don’t we just make up some incredible alter egos and think, “Now how would he sing it? How would he approach this track?”’ And it freed us. It was a very liberating thing to do.”

Clearly the Sgt. Pepper concept was more significant for the psychological escape route it provided the Beatles than for its specific use on the album. Apart from some relatively modest touches — the colorful uniforms, the opening theme song, the reprise near the end and Ringo’s entertaining turn as “the one and only Billy Shears” in “With a Little Help from My Friends” — the alter egos make no discernible appearances on the album. But one look at the cover of Sgt. Pepper — festooned with the band’s wildly eclectic gallery of heroes and with the wax figures of the youthful Fab Four standing next to their far more hirsute and serious-looking real-life counterparts — eloquently tells how greatly removed the group had grown from what they were. Under the guise of alter egos the Beatles had finally allowed their real selves to emerge.

Interestingly, however, the Beatles had freed themselves not merely to chronicle such weighty subjects as the joys of mind-expanding drugs, in “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the paradoxical wisdom of Eastern religious philosophy, in “Within You Without You,” or the sterile absurdity of mainstream values in the astonishing “Day in the Life.” On the contrary, Sgt. Pepper is filled with sly inside jokes, broad music-hall humor and completely gratuitous novelties. It is not only the Beatles’ most artistically ambitious album but their funniest.

Take, for example, the dog whistle — which humans can’t hear — buried on the album’s second side. “We’re sitting around the studio, and one of the engineers starts talking about wavelengths, wave forms and stuff, kilohertz,” McCartney recalls. “I still don’t understand these things — I’m completely nontechnical. And as for John, he couldn’t even change a plug — he really couldn’t, you know. The engineers would be explaining to us what all this stuff was. An ultrasonic sound wave — ‘a low one, you can kill people with the low ones.’ We were all saying, ‘Wow, man. Hey, wow.’ ‘And the high ones,’ he said, ‘only dogs can hear it.’ We said, ‘We gotta have it on! There’s going to be one dog and his owner, and I’d just love to be there when his ears prick up.’”

And the famous “Inner Groove” — the snippet of pointless conversation that sticks in the album’s run-out groove and that was not included in the original American version of Sgt. Pepper — has an equally zany genesis. Around the time of “Sgt. Pepper’s” release, McCartney explains, “a lot of record players didn’t have auto-change. You would play an album and it would go, ‘Tick, tick, tick,’ in the run-out groove — it would just stay there endlessly. We were whacked out so much of the time in the Sixties — just quite harmlessly, as we thought, it was quite innocent — but you would be at friends’ houses, twelve at night, and nobody would be going to get up to change that record player. So we’d be getting into the little ‘tick, tick, tick,’: ‘It’s quite good, you know? There’s a rhythm there.’ We were into Cage and Stockhausen, those kind of people. Obviously, once you allow yourself that kind of freedom … well, Cage is appreciating silence, isn’t he? We were appreciating the run-out groove! We said, ‘What if we put something, so that every time it did that, it said something?’ So we put a little loop of conversation on.”

These are minor points, perhaps, in the context of the enormous achievement of “Sgt. Pepper”. But such fun-loving experimentalism — born of the optimistic determination to blow away anything that “stops my mind from wandering where it will go” — is “Sgt. Pepper’s” best legacy for our time. In a decade of political conservatism and stifling musical formats, of sexual fear and obsession with the past, the hopful message of Sgt. Pepper

— that visionary breakthroughs are necessary to strive for and possible to achieve in every facet of life — is much more urgent now than it was twenty years ago today.