31 Greatest Albums: Paul Westerberg - 'Suicaine Gratifaction'

The first time I heard this album I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and I'd just fallen in love harder than I ever imagined possible. But I'd essentially given up on Paul Westerberg and I dismissed the album out of hand. My new love was thunderstruck by what she heard but I'd jaded myself into a lack of recognition.

Now? It is his masterpiece. Of course I couldn't hear it at the time. If I had actually let this music in at that point in my life (marriage crumbling, new fatherhood, love I couldn't truly accomodate) I would have had a nervous breakdown. So I filed it under Paul Westerberg slowly slipping away from icon status to nostalgic teenage memory.

Cut to two years later. I've taken necessary steps in my life. I've ended my marriage. I've begun a relationship with the new love who got 'Suicaine Gratifaction' at first glance. I've expanded my own musical horizons in such a way that I've transformed my art forever (thanks, Cousin Tim).

I revisit this album. This time it is a sledgehammer to my soul. It is as if all the pain that I'd been forced to marginalize has now been given free reign through spinning this disc.

He opens with 'It's A Beautiful Lie'. I'd written it off as another pun/wordplay puff piece. I had felt like he was using clever bon mots as shorthand instead of getting to any kind of real psychological truth. Now? This was a desperate man who was clinging to the power to shape words, to morph one thing into another. And who couldn't see any basic truth in the pursuit he'd dedicated his life to. Hmmm...sound familiar? As Michael Jackson said, "I'm starting with the man in the mirror." I knew in a flash that I'd completely misread the entire album because it was simply too painful for me to experience.

I then opened my heart to it completely. And let me tell you, it was a difficult hour. And it dawned on me that that was the true nature of the genius at work. He was absolutely unconcerned with any sense of enjoyment.

And once I gave over I saw that I'd been expecting something else from him, I'd been stingy. I'd not allowed what he actually offered to enter my consciousness. So when he said, "Cheekbones and hormones/He's the accidental man", I was trying to hear something else. Next he called himself "the best thing that never happened" and I superimposed some other sentiment. He then roused himself to declare that he was "lookin' out forever" now. That is quite a journey in three songs. And I completely missed it.

He stops for a poignant song of love, "Born For Me" which drives us right into "Final Hurrah" which states exactly what it implies. This is my final hurrah. Which in itself creates a next moment after that supposed finality. Where was my reaction to all of this bare naked articulation? I was perpetuating an idea I had of him across the actuality of his work.

I'll never do that again.

I sneered at the open romanticism of "Sunrise Always Listens". I thought "Actor In The Street" was deliberately vague and obscure. "Bookmark" was quietly effective but why would he end the album on such a dour somber note?

Hmmmmm...I realized in my new listen that I'd done him a great disservice in my initial response. I had failed him as an audience. An audience must engage what they witness on the terms put forth by the artist in question. Perhaps your taste will eventually decide that it isn't to your liking, but first you must meet it halfway.

So when Paul sang "I'm the fugitive kind/You better make up your mind/I can't wait", all of a sudden I realized that I'd made him wait and that he'd left me behind. I caught up right quick.

This album is Paul Westerberg's flag on the moon. Who am I to claim it was shot in the Phoenix desert?

32 Greatest Albums: Prince - 'Under The Cherry Moon'

Prince is one of those artists whose persona eclipses his work. Somewhere along the line the person becomes more of a fascination than the actual music. With some people this is part of the plan. Ahem, Madonna. Britney Spears. In my opinion this helps them because the music isn't all that memorable, the person is.

But with Prince I feel quite differently. And this album more than any other suffers because of it. When Prince released this album he was famous in a way that few other people have ever been. Along with the album came a movie. This movie was the follow-up to 'Purple Rain' which had catapulted him into some heretofore unknown area of celebrity. 'Purple Rain' is quite a good movie, Appolonia and the costumes and the little purple motorcycle aside. 'Under The Cherry Moon' is most definitely NOT a good movie.

This is unfortunate because the music that accompanies it is some of the most sophisticated of all time.

Everyone knows 'Kiss'. The song and video rank right up alongside the all-time MTV moments of Michael Jackson dancing on light bulb pavement and Madonna kissing the Black Jesus and Sinead right up against the camera bald and crying (and singing a song written by Prince, lest we forget).

Prince dancing around the oriental screens in matador pants while licking his hands and caressing himself will never be forgotten. But the rest of the album has been and I must cry out against this injustice.

Imagine a snow globe of Paris. The Paris of Baz Luhrmann's 'Moulin Rouge'. This snow globe is special because it allows you to roam the streets while keeping your modern perspective. Sure there are cobblestones and hansom cabs but all you have to do is snap your fingers and you are back in your well-appointed apartment playing with your iPod.

On this snow globe Paris street, you stop in front of some burlesque theater with a name like "Les Jambes Ouvertes". You take the name to be a good sign so you drop in. The band has somehow gotten hold of modern instruments and electricity. They play music hall tunes for les filles to strip to but they have all the finesse and versatility of Parliamnet Funkadelic.

Now the strange thing about this album is that the songs sound miniature. They are compressed. In 'Purple Rain' you heard a man bursting out of the pressure packed vacuum of an extraordinary childhood. Minnesota would never be the same. On this album it is like he decided to turn that vacuum inside out, rendering the bombast in as delicate a manner as possible.

The songs seem like cubbyholes in a box by Joseph Cornell.

I was one of the many who was underwhelmed when I first heard this album. Where was the kickass? Where was the freakshow? Well, Prince had other things on his mind than what I expected of him. His world had fractured to a level that must have seemed unreal. Thus the music mirrored this. Now that I mention it, a mirror is an apt metaphor for this album. Some imaginary fun house where a kaleidoscope unfurls reflected all around you, using your deepest fantasies and fears as a backdrop.

I would say that if we could listen to Prince dream it would sound like 'Under The Cherry Moon'.

33 Greatest Albums: Billy Bragg & Wilco - 'Mermaid Avenue'

I'll never scoff at a gushing parent again. In fact, I may start some sort of a political action committee designed to stamp out scoffing at baby-struck parents.

To me it is the height of cynicism to view a parent in the throes of new baby love as anything other than the perfect articulation of all that is potential in the fruition of billions of years of DNA. We are supposed to lose our minds in love. Some of us wind up mistreating, beating, even killing our own children, so it seems to me that the new infant love train is one that ought to be cultivated, encouraged, celebrated.

Now, full disclosure. I probably wanted to be a parent more than I wanted anything else. So I am one predisposed to this sort of emotional response. And to top it all off, my kid was so cute people wouldn't let me pay for my morning coffee. Connecticut Muffin on the southwest corner of Prospect Park in Park Slope consistently gave me the 'cute baby' discount, giving Cashel and I free coffee and bagels repeatedly over the years we lived there.

So if you are one of the converted I am preaching to, hello. If not, if you are one of those who smirks when they witness a parent cooing over a little bundle I just feel sorry for you. And I look forward to the day when you have your own kid and you have to look at yourself in the mirror and inwardly apologize to all the people you slighted with your scorn.

In any case, this album is intricately intertwined with my son's childhood. It is a collaboration between a Socialist bi-sexual pop star from England and an eclectic American roots rock band. Woody Guthrie's granddaughter found all these old song lyrics and wanted to pay homage to him. So she gave EVERYTHING in the vault to Billy Bragg who called Wilco. They recorded two albums of material. 'Mermaid Avenue' and 'Mermaid Avenue, Vol 2'.

My wife (soon to be ex) gave me a copy of the album. I'd not heard of it at all so I was shocked at the triple combo. I popped it on the stereo in our little apartment right off the park. My son, under 2 and in diapers, immediately started dancing.

I have film of him on all fours bouncing his rump to the strains of 'HooDoo VooDoo'. The look of delight on his face was almost too much to bear. Kids have a direct line to joy. They chase it relentlessly. When they find it they surrender completely. We hide our pursuit, we temper our release.

Unless we're holding our newborns. Then we remove the obstacles. Then we say, 'Nothing will stop my joy.' And some of you have a problem with that?

Shame on you.

34 Greatest Albums: Del Amitri - 'Waking Hours'

College is cataclysmic. All parental restriction removed. All home town perception washed away. Reinvention reigns.

Unless you go to college in your hometown and live at home. Which I did. University of Rhode Island, Kingston. My parents house is about a mile off campus. My dad worked for 42 years in the library there and walked to and from work every day. So college was much less of a shock to the system for me as it was for my friends who went out into the great wide world.

I don't know how they did it frankly. Because it still blew my mind, as slight as the transition was. My freshman year I stayed in a dorm. Hated it. Sophomore year I moved back home, saving a lot of money and headache. I also didn't have to share a room with anyone anymore. Junior year, the year in which I first heard Del Amitri's 'Waking Hours' I lived in a house 'down the line' which in URI terms meant a rental house 15-20 minutes off campus near the beach.

I shared the house with Todd and Christian, both seniors. Christian I knew from the theater department and Todd was a friend of his. CD players were still quite new but all three of us were music junkies with wildly different taste. This led to many evenings playing what we called 'The DJ Game' where we would rotate song choices and whatever you chose had to somehow connect to the song before it. Beer was involved.

The fun part of this was getting to know someone elses record collection through their eyes. I gained a new appreciation for classic rock that hadn't bloomed yet due to my punk roots. Suddenly .38 Special could somehow be connected to The Dead Kennedys.

I don't know if I can adequately describe the atmosphere in the house. An 8 foot road sign that Christian had dismantled rested against the wall in the living room. We arbitrarily decided that our next door neighbors were our enemies. We saw them studying on a Saturday night once and wrote them off forever. Things came to a head one night because we could see one of them wearing a terry cloth bathrobe. Shortly thereafter a bottle rocket streamed from our elevated porch through their kitchen screen door.

The cops arrived. Our friend who'd actually set the bottle rocket off told us to hide in my bedroom. He then spent a good half hour trying to convince the cops not to take him in. Once he realized that wasn't going to work he took his sweet time getting ready. He decided he wanted to change his clothes. They said no, let's go now. He changed his clothes. He decided he wanted a glass of milk. They said no, let's go now. He drank his milk. He reverted back to his original argument. He's a lawyer now. All the while Todd and I lay in a dark room on the floor half petrified half in hysterics.

Christian's car the Wax Bean Bomber was a danger to the public at large. When taking a right turn flames would stream out of the engine. I am not kidding. He avoided right turns.

He once was kidnapped by a bachelorette party. They came into a bar he was at and picked him out. He then spent 14 hours with a group of amoral hotties who were determined to torture their friend who was getting married with the fact that she couldn't do X anymore, they could still do Y if they wanted, she'd never get to Z now that she was headed to the altar. The red plastic handcuffs used to keep him in line hung on his wall. He had pictures to prove it.

Most of the time Todd and I sat back and watched him go. Occasionally we'd get drawn into his shenanigans and then we were a true force of chaos. We called each other Skippy. 3 Skippys.

Somewhere this year I heard a song on the radio. It was called 'Kiss This Thing Good Bye' and it struck a chord with me. I bought the album. For quite a time it cancelled out the DJ Game as we only listened to this album. All 3 of us were mired in the midst of the usual college dating nightmare. This album spoke to us directly.

We went to The Living Room and saw Del Amitri in front of a crowd of maybe 40 people. They'd been on tour the better part of a year and a half and were clearly going stir crazy. They'd had a 'weird facial hair' competition. One guy had stripes shaved into one side of his beard. The other side was shaved clean. They blew the place apart.

Later over the summer, after the album had become quite a hit, we saw them open for Melissa Etheridge at Great Woods. We may have been the only people who left after they performed.

I'll forever remember standing on the roof with the 2 other Skippys, Del Amitri playing at call-the-cops levels, looking over the tops of all the houses down the line, seeing the sun reflect off the ocean, and having no idea what was going to happen next.

I miss those guys.

35 Greatest Albums: The Refreshments - 'Fizzy Fuzzy Big And Buzzy'

I first heard this album on the 7th floor of an office building directly south of Central Park. I was working for The Hub, which was a 'channel' on AOL back when you still paid by the hour to get online. The Hub was a joint venture between AOL and New Line Cinema and the fact that their business model included throwing money at me should give you an indication of just how far that internet bubble had expanded.

My journey to The Hub had been a strange one and it all started in my ex-wife's brain.

She had been temping for a conglomerate of the magazine industry. Her job was to take their content and shoe-horn it into an AOL format. During this process she had to deal with many AOL execs and she eventually heard about something called AOL's Greenhouse Project. Their mission was to find, acquire, develop and promote original AOL content.

Maria thought that the rabid world of romance novels, novelists and their fans would be a great community to bring into the online world. She used her knowledge of AOL platforms to design a sample cross section of the interactive site dedicated to bodice rippers and forbidden petticoat exploration.

AOL Greenhouse was intrigued. They ran it all the way up the corporate ladder and it looked like they were going to buy it. At the last second they declined but they liked Maria's ideas so much that they asked her if she wanted to join the team of one of the ideas they HAD picked.

This site was dedicated to the collecting and retelling and debunking of urban legends. It was to be called...Urban Legends. They hooked Maria up with the creator of this site, a woman named Wendy. They rented office space in the Village and set about building the site.

At the time I was temping and auditioning like crazy. When they asked me if I wanted to pose for pictures as the fictional host of the site I said sure, why not. I dressed a little like Indiana Jones and they took a bunch of photos. The actual host of the site then had to back out and they asked if I wouldn't mind re-writing some of the legends up from existing source material, which was pretty dry and scholarly.

This became a part time job. I was working during the day and cranking out internet size re-creations of those myths we all know. Well, as the deadline approached it became clear that they weren't going to have enough material. I came on full time as the primary writer of the legends and also embodying the character I'd only been in pictures up to that point.

Legs Urbano. Get it? Urban Legends. Legs Urbano.

For the next two years I was on deadline. The show was quite a success right out of the gate. I wrote an article a week examining the legends from an investigative journalist/private eye perspective. People responded, pouring local legends in from all over the country.

Our show lived on The Hub, the channel on AOL's front page that was aimed at the MTV crowd, 18-35 white males. We were enough of a success that The Hub wanted to buy us out, have us join their company and not just live on their website.

The creator of Urban Legends is one of the most colossally insecure and narcissistic people I've ever met. In our little 4 (by this time my sister Sheila was also working with us...) person outfit she could stand back and let us do all the work while taking credit for it. On a team of larger proportions she'd be exposed. In our discussions with the President of The Hub, I made sure to let him know that I was a working actor and that I would be pursuing acting work while working at The Hub. She saw this as a terrible betrayal. On our last day in the Greenwich office, all her fears boiled to a head and she attacked me. I didn't answer the phones, I didn't check with her about topics I'd been working on, etc. I quit.

As I gathered up my stuff, I realized that I didn't want to quit. So I walked back into her office and told her I wasn't quitting. I told her that her complaints were unfounded and that her complaints were all secondary to the contributions I'd made to the ACTUAL CONTENT OF THE SITE. My writing had struck such a cord in the ether that we were being picked up by the big fish. I didn't say this but I knew it threatened her. I'd rendered her unnecessary.

The Hub itself was very different. 20-30 people in a cliche internet boom loft like space. Pool table. Bean bag chairs. Loud music. Unconventional dress.

One of the perks was that we got sent free music by the cartload. Everyone wanted to get their music mentioned on this new thing called 'the internet'. Amazing how far we've come.

Today's album is something I'd never have heard without going to work at The Hub.

To me, 'Fizzy Fuzzy Big And Buzzy' is about that time in life when you are no longer a kid but you aren't adult yet. Very Douglas Coupland. Too much intoxication, too much meaningless sex, too much sun, too many road trips, too few destinations. When Jimmy Buffet sings about it, you long for it. When The Refreshments do, you feel like you need to dry out, straighten up, set some goals, turn things around.

I became absolutely obsessed with this album. This doesn't happen to me often. I am in the middle of it right now with 'Chinese Democracy' and that is how I know when an album will be with me forever. I can sing the guitar solos on 'Fizzy Fuzzy Big And Buzzy'.

Which brings me to the primary reason that this album is on here. The guitar playing is DELICIOUS. The tone of the leads is just a hare heightened from the rhythm, leaving them linked and potent. The singer has what I consider to be the best straight rock voice from the '90's, more Vedder than Cobain but with none of the self-conscious bad acting that mars much of Pearl Jam's work.

These guys go to Mexico. They pay for hookers and regret it. They fish. They beg their girlfriends to just kill them already and get it the fuck over with. They start fights when they are called 'faggots'. In other words, they drink and face the consequences.

A few songs in you start to feel the sun brow-beating your hangover, trying to convince you just to have a beer to cut the edge. And while you're at it, why don't you just call that chick and straighten things out with her? She'll see your point of view. Sure she threw your photo album into the pool but she was pretty fucked up too.

The scariest part is that you are enjoying your descent. So you can't see any reason to stop it.

And that is why it resonated with me so much. I was not where I was supposed to be. I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was not with who I was supposed to be with. Times like that drunk seems like the best idea there is.

The Uncollected Works of Umero Nuno

As many of you know I have had the wonderful pleasure, honor, and imposition to be named the executor and gatekeeper of the estate of Umero Nuno, thought by many to be the finest satyrist ever to come out of the region that spans the mountains of Portugal and the valleys of Peru.

To say this task is Herculean is to risk offending every bodybuilder who ever daydreamed themselves into a movie about his exploits, imagining this Grecian turn to be the fulcrum upon which their meteoric ascendancy to the highest ranks of state government ever hinges.

When the order from Mr. Nuno's lawyers came to my door they were accompanied by bootstraps and jackdaws, flowers and incense, kicks and kisses. They were leaving nothing to chance. If I happened to be a masochist they'd convince me. A pansy? Even better. Thankfully I was both and needed very little convincing.

In all honesty it was a dream come true of sorts. Not in any literary sense for I'd never heard of Umero Nuno before that fateful day. No, this dream coming true had deeper roots than any simple recollection or appreciation of any single man's identity. The plopping on my desk of the comprehensive list that I was entrusted with against my will showed me in some final way that I was not in charge. Never would be. My career was over. I was now the Keeper of the Flame. Or at least the guy who had the list of everything he ever wrote and how to get your hands on it. Which can be an equivalent to Keeper of the Flame in some deep jungle dialects which Mr. Nuno was very likely familiar with. And thus the mystery begins...

Who was Umero Nuno? Where did he come from? Why did he come from there? Why didn't he just stay where he was? If he'd stayed where he was, would I still be in the place I'm in now? Would I have been given the Keys to the Kingdom had he refused to budge? Would any of his writing been more palatable in any sense, either in comprehension or enjoyment? Hard to say. But know this...he did come from where he was, he was who he was, and what fell to me and ultimately beyond me and to you dear reader, is something that poses questions far more troubling than these, and most likely harder to answer.

Controversy surrounds his birth certificate, which has defied analysis ever since it fell into the hands of the Carballatran regime in Lower Yeltsa. Nuno had angered a minor bureaucrat by mounting a puppet opera that presented the Department of Licenses and Practices as a crucible of ultimatums and recrimination. No texts survive, only the small notice in the paper which recounted a terrible buggy accident that resulted in the fire which mangled the left hand of a semi-well-known puppeteer of the region.

The bureaucrat decided that the very existence of a document legitimizing this sort of craven idolatry and rabble rousing needed to be at the very least altered. Therefore the date and locus of Umero Nuno's birth is either July 12, 1917 in Hamburg, Germany or October 27, 1933 somewhere on the Ivory Coast.

After fleeing the uproar which attended 'Pupperetta Gargantua: File # 237', Umero Nuno dropped from sight. But thanks to papers which I accidentally fell asleep under my third night living in the storage space he'd rented in Oaxaca, Mexico, I was able to trace his movements to a certain degree. Allegedly.

The Tunnel

He began to inflate like a parade float. His feet disappeared. It became more difficult to scratch his own back. This left him in a particular quandary because in order for his itches to be scratched he now needed to be unclothed and with someone else, both things he wanted to avoid due to his burgeoning girth. The expansion also caused a kind of rebellion in his skin. It continually tried to reject the new expanse by jettisoning what it could like ballast on a sinking ship. So there were flakes to witness shamefaced on dark clothing. But light clothing accentuated rotundity.

Whole portions of his life evaporated. Things which had seemed essential fell by the wayside like so many long distance rabbits at mile five of the marathon. His esoteric existence shrank in direct proportion to this corporeal growth. He was a train backing into a tunnel open on only one end. The horseshoe of light lost its square bottom he was so far in. It was now a pinprick, a circle. He may have been expanding but he was certainly not round enough to get back out of the hole.

Or was he? He was forced to ignore the reality of his body. To take a baby step. One day he walked a mile at lunch. The next he did the same. The day after that he added a half mile after work. Soon he’d logged eight miles in a week, ten. At first this seemed inconsequential, merely a manner in which to pass the time. But after a month the tunnel didn’t seem so tight around him and the pinprick circle had gained some shape along its perforations.

Two months later he was jogging and the tunnel was a quickly fading memory.

Did he will this transformation? Or did the transformation return his will? Who needs the debate when you are eating an egg?

This story takes place two years after that dark time. He’d come so far out of his shell that he was starting to feel like a preacher. He had gathered new friends around him. They bent their schedules to his whim. They made sure he was all right. They checked in on him.

Every so often he would be granted a vivid picture of his life back in the tunnel, flaking his bloated skin into the dark, moving towards a day when there would no longer be tunnel, when there would only be constriction, no delineation between the inorganic and organic. These visions kept him walking, reminded him that it was only through action that he could avoid such a fate. He couldn’t avoid fate per se but it wouldn’t get him that way. That was for damn sure.

Some remnants from his former life were still present in external ways. People. These resisted the new vision he presented them, refused to move along with the new. He couldn’t bring himself to abandon them because he felt he understood, wanted them to shrink from their tunnels and join him out in the light. But as he moved further and further away from that reality there were people he had to let go of. This was painful. He told himself he left a door open for them to come back and surprise him by stepping through but mostly he knew they were gone for good. See, those tunnels work like tractor beams. It might not be yours but you can get trapped in one just the same.

Every Play I've Ever Been In

Small diversion here from the list of 50 Greatest Albums according to me.

I'm going to try and recall every play I've ever performed in. I'm not including scene-work or anything like that. Starting in 5th grade...

Elementary School: Oliver. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

High School: Puss In Boots. The Madwoman of Chaillot. Grease. A Hatful of Rain. Rope. Guys and Dolls. The Diary of Anne Frank. Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

College: Hay Fever. Old Times. The Rivals. How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Biloxi Blues. The Imaginary Invalid. The Bride of Olneyville Square. Crimes of the Heart. Camelot. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. A Comedy of Errors. Barefoot In The Park.

Summer Stock: South Pacific.

Providence: Kind Ness. True West. Looking Glass Theater Repertory Company - 2 shows a day.

New York: 'Tis Pity She's A Whore. Angel Wings. Morning Milking, Evening Milking. Searching For Certainty. David and Allan, Allan and David.

Regional: The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Two Gentlemen of Verona. Side Men. Searching For Certainty.

Los Angeles: Searching For Certainy. Bloody Corsets/Body Count. Obsessive/Impulsive. Glory Pie. Diverting Devotion.

That's it so far!

36 Greatest Albums: Eminem - 'The Eminem Show'

By the time this album came out I was already a full blown Eminem fan. But in order to truly describe the arc of my appreciation, it is important to return to a time when I was most definitely not a member of the Eminem Appreciation Society.

When Cousin Tim moved to Brooklyn in 2000 he brought a home-recording career that was almost the exact inverse of mine. Same amount of output but entirely different genre. He was a hip-hop fanatic and had been since the early 1980's. He'd been recording rap almost as long.

At this time I would have classified myself as an appreciator but not an aficionado of the genre. I had a few Public Enemy albums but their politics made them acceptable to a dyed-in-the-wool punk rocker like myself. When Eminem hit the scene I might has well have been a member of the Moral Majority.

All I knew was that he used the word 'faggot' with extreme regularity. I took umbrage and set about writing a song that was in essence a come-on. I wanted to shame Eminem by calling him on his homophobia. Of course, this was before I ever actually LISTENED to him. I only listened to what people SAID about him.

My Eminem flirt song never got off the ground mostly because Timothy insisted that I listen to him. After about 20 minutes I realized that he was more punk rock than anything I'd been listening to for years. The beats, the musical tracks, the WORDS. It is no surprise that Seamus Heaney is quoted on the dust cover of the new Eminem autobiography. Forget Kurt Cobain. Forget Paul Westerberg. (And if you know me you know how HUGE that is). Forget Maya Frickin' Angelou.

The voice of this generation, the one that stretches from the late '70's to 4 minutes from now, the True Poet Laureate of America is a dirtbag from Detroit who just happened to be born with two M's in front of his two names.

And 'The Eminem Show' is his 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.

He ranges from the broad scope of modern society and hypocrisy ('White America') to the deepest darkest details of his own harrowing life ('Cleaning Out My Closet').

If you are converted already and I'm preaching to you then I am glad to be in your company. If you've discounted him because of the genre he performs in or his penchant for violent hyperbole you need to take a closer look. Put aside your own prejudices and let the beat take you away.

After all, you don't want to be the Dylan fan booing at the Newport Jazz Festival because he plugged his guitar into an amplifier. Or do you?

37 Greatest Albums: They Might Be Giants - 'No!'

This is my favorite They Might Be Giants album and not just because John Linnell was working on it while renting out my ex-wife's basement in the condo I barely lived in but bought with her.

Late '90's Brooklyn. Prospect Park is quickly becoming Baby Central and I am helping it along. My son is almost two and the light of my life. Which is dark otherwise.

We'd signed the papers on the condo simultaneously discussing divorce. When we were getting ready to move in, I packed my things separately and almost got my own place. After a few fitful unhappy months in the condo, I got a basement apartment right around the corner and started the new deal.

Her family are notorious for buying property and then completely redoing it. This first floor brownstone had a gigantic unfinished basement which her brother, father, and mother transformed into a nicely lit railroad apartment, only with no kitchen or shower. Bathroom.

She put out a hand written cardboard sign on her front stoop advertising a studio for rent for an artist. I was skeptical. When I am skeptical of her she is usually right. And vice-versa. Which is why we are much better off divorced. A mere 15 minutes later a nice guy stopped by and inquired after the space. It was John Linnell.

He lived in the building next door and needed a work space. He was installed within a week and the lovely sounds of They Might Be Giants and John Linnell would often waft up into the kitchen as I made my son a PBJ while waiting for his mom to get back from work. Then I'd trudge over to my own basement and record some strange concoction of my own.

The songs on 'No!' are right for kids because they seem as if they were written by kids. Most kids music is heinous, almost like religious music that is only intended for the choir. The makers of most kid music seem to think that if they sing really slow and over-enunciate then kids will fall all over themselves with enjoyment. I've rarely found this to be the case.

'No!' is scary at times. It is angry. It is confused. It is hilarious. It is sad. In other words, 'No!' sounds like what it FEELS like to be a kid.

At that time in my life I needed a kids album to make me feel like I might be okay in the end. And like most kids, I wasn't really a kid.

I was a person.