Ghosts of Christmas Past
musicks of bygone tymes
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
James Joyce, Ulysses
The unprecedented proliferation of top 40/100 album lists feels like the felling of a forest or the hauling in of a net, the harvest and the classification of a year’s worth of creation, in a surreal musical adaption of Foucault’s dystopian vision. Interleaved blog and social media interrogations of critique in 2024 differ from the way it was presented in past media, when few critics discussed each other’s opinions, the public’s held less weight, and the two were kept distinct by the Editor. Any attempt of mine at an objective rating of albums or songs would be pointless, but I know what I’ve liked, and some extent why. Consequently, I’m half-way through a narrative review of the ways music connected with me at an AOTY level, not a top 40 nor 100 God forbid, but a smaller amount of things, songs mostly, that certainly, reliably work for me. The year’s not over, the haste to publish lists out there is as indecent as any rap I’ve heard lately, and I’m taking my time.
And in the meantime - because nostalgia is where the big money is (nostalgia and top-tier A-pop) - here’s a list of the articles I wrote this year rediscovering (or just plain discovering) great artists and albums from the past.
Feb 16
I write about a long-time favourite, Kevin Ayers, focusing on his avant garde connections, the experimental aspect of his songs, and the cosmic significance of his lyricism.
March 3
I write about Mark Linkous and his time-traveling electronica, and Sparklehorse, who coulda been the best biker rock band of all time.
More Yellow Painbirds
"I have a lot of cheap, little keyboards and this octagon [sic – optigan] thing and this synth module that has a zillion different sounds in it. A lot of the keyboards I got at thrift stores. I have a little Casio SK-1 that has a built-in sampler. My favorite microphone I found at the landfill. It was on a CB base station. I've got these wireless interc…
April 30
I get lonely and write about The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Darlin’ Be Home Soon’, Slade’s definitive cover, plus several sundry songs of separation.
May 14
I hear Opal’s Happy Nightmare Baby and am compelled to undertake a quest to find Kendra Smith and hear all of her music.
Ways of Reappearing
”If you get intimate with a piece of land you get super attached to its well-being. Part of the culture I experienced here is having this large piece of land, more than 30 acres of wooded hilly stuff and a very small part of that is dedicated to humans, the rest is dedicated to whatever life belongs there – from owls to salamande…
June 29
I discover a prog rock compilation from 1969 and use it to explain a era of general and wide-ranging experimentation that also marked the start of the elite capture of rock and pop.
August 21
I write about ELO, Olivia Newton John, and The Tubes and their 1990 roller disco movie Xanadu.
Sept 18
I write about Gwen Stefani’s 2004 Love. Angel. Music. Baby and its ties to the music of 1986 and 2024
Nov 03
I revisit the work of the greatest musical polymath of the rock era, Frank Zappa, via the lysergic surrealism of stop-motion animator Bruce Bickford.
Dungeons and Discos
Neither the torture chamber nor the disco knows about the existence of each other. But there is psychic contact between the two; the evil doings on the disco floor have their counterpart in the dungeon below.
Nov 21
I hear the Yoko Ono remix albums, especially 2007’s Yes I’m A Witch, the best 21st Century album by any ex-Beatle.
The Ballad of Yoko
The value of art-amusement must be lowered by making it unlimited, mass-produced, unobtainable by all and eventually produced by all. Fluxus art-amusement is the rear-guard without any pretension or urge to participate in the competition of ‘one-upmanship’ with the avant-garde. It striv…
And there, mostly, was Song’s From Insane Times’ excavation of past glories in 2024. There’s also some good music by Butler, Lou Reed and The Prodigy, among others, in various of my omnibus posts.
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