13 Greatest Albums: The Sex Pistols - 'Never Mind The Bollocks'

Ever since I can remember I've been angry. It has taken me 40 years to realize that this is not anything brought on by external forces. It is primal. It is soulful. Denying that anger is a baseline for me would be like arguing that my teeth were artificially implanted in my head.

I don't know of any other album that more perfectly captures the sense of what a fit of anger feels like.

The Sex Pistols 'Never Mind The Bollocks' album is a work of art so perfectly realized that you can almost be fooled into thinking that it is artless, that it is the pure form of what it expresses. In other words, it so perfectly embodies rage that one could mistakenly label it as merely an after-effect of rage, instead of a masterful evocation of it.

The music industry was so threatened by these guys that they thought they had no choice but to deride this as mere juvenile ranting, the bark and howl of an underclass that is not worth a nickel. They didn't mind making money off of it but they sure as shit weren't going to hold it up and say, "This is a flawless work." Which it is.

In the 32 years since it was released (!?$#?), music has exploded. Rage has become an economic juggernaut. Volume has increased, censorship both implied and explicit has ebbed, and no one is shocked when they encounter uncomfortable topics presented with all the unpleasant details right out front.

But when The Sex Pistols hit the scene, this was far from the case. They were unseemly. They were unruly. They had unabashed scorn for anything that smacked of the establishment. They hated hippies as much as businessmen. Those baby boomers who thought their softly strummed odes to fucking while stoned were going to change the world were the biggest resisters to the noise and clamor of these hooligans.

Lost in all of that is a gem of a record. Sid Vicious killed more than a couple of junkies that night in the Chelsea Hotel. He also killed any real chance that The Sex Pistols had to be viewed as anything other than an aberration, instead of a meteor.

Getting back to the changes in the record industry, what strikes me is that, as comfortable as everyone has gotten with rote expressions of anger and disappointment (nu metal, grunge, rap/rock, gangsta rap, emo-core, etc.), 'Bollocks' puts it all to shame. Even me with my affinity for anger, for loud uncompromising music, even I find myself wanting to tell Johnny Rotten to shut the hell up, to behave, to act like a gentleman. He is relentless in his vocal attack, seeming to rip convention to shreds with every line.

And this clarity extends right into the production of the album itself. This was no mere angry spurt. The sound of that album is like a chainsaw with a grudge. It is as clear as a bell which gives the emotional content even more weight because they aren't willing to let you escape one second of it via a muddy mix, a muffled drum beat, a garbled lyric. Each musical moment is like a shining dagger headed right for your chest.

Thrilling challenging exasperating alienating incriminating and exterminating. The Sex Pistols killed the 1960's and it was about the fuck time.

As I mentioned at the top, I am almost always angry on a cellular level. Somehow if you were able to test my DNA for rage you'd get an off the charts reading. If you could trace anger itself as an evolutionary force you would slide into the DNA and travel back in time through each scream, each punch, each threat, each explosion. And lo and behold, at the beginning of it all, at the moment that God created anger, you would hear his booming voice in the halls of heaven. He would warn you about the evils of this emotion, how it will warp you and rob you of human connection.

And The Sex Pistols would burst in and say, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

14 Greatest Albums: The Rolling Stones - 'Beggar's Banquet'

Stones fans will most likely take issue with this choice and I understand. They have better albums. 'Exile On Main Street' is like a time machine...it prefigures about 8 different musical genres. It is like its own cottage industry. 'Some Girls' is probably my favorite with a sound that is like the collective energy that accumulates from every stripper in New York City the split second before they start their burlesque.

But 'Beggar's Banquet' is the one that came first for me.

In high school, as I've repeatedly said, I was a punk. I rejected a lot of the mainstream music I heard, a prejudice which was retroactive to hits of the '60's. Anything that wasn't written and recorded in a teenager's basement by angry 1980's punks was a golden oldie for me.

Into that wall of judgment came 'Beggar's Banquet'. At this point I knew 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' and didn't like it. I probably knew 'Start Me Up' and didn't like it. And I especially didn't like 'Sympathy For The Devil' which was the ULTIMATE establishment rock song. They played it 3 times a day on the classic rock station. Everyone knew the 'woo-woo' bit and everyone over-inflated the depth of the thing itself.

How I wound up with the cassette is a story that has escaped my memory. Why I delved in at all when I considered The Stones to be hopelessly passe...this too has flown into the mists of the past.

I'll tell you what I do remember.

Our station wagon didn't have a tape deck so I would pile 27 gigantic batteries into my boom box and tote the thing around with me wherever I went. Usually it held The Replacements, or 7 Seconds, or Minor Threat, or Husker Du, or The Descendents.

But every now and then I'd pop in 'Beggar's Banquet'. Usually the second side. I have a giant streak of the contrarian in me so 'Street Fighting Man' is something of a touchstone. The ease with which The Stones delve into religious territory while keeping all of their edge and raucousness infuses 'Prodigal Son' with, dare I say it, an ecstatic tinge. 'The Stray Cat Blues' is sex on wheels. 'Factory Girl' has a hard-won ramshackle ease that brings to mind a whole neighborhood of good time bars and late night hook-ups. And then 'Salt Of The Earth' shoots a cupid's arrow through it all, tying it up with a shout out to the collective.

If you'd never heard of The Stones and listened to this album, you might do a jig and say, "At last! Wilco had a few cups of coffee before they recorded for once!" Or maybe "Damn, who knew The Jayhawks could actually write good songs?" Or even "Thank God Ryan Adam finally grew some nuts."

Point is, this is the best alt.country album of all time and it was recorded 30 years before there was ever a blank dot blank anything.

I must also turn this review back to the personal and admit a deeper reason for my affection for this album. My girlfriend Shannon and I would cruise around the mean streets of South County and crank this sucker. Its echo would still be ringing when I fumbled with her buttons in the parking lot of the Great Swamp under a gorgeous summer night sky.

And that moonlight that visited us, that lit her young beauty from the reaches of outer space, that moonlight, though noiseless, that moonlight sang in my head as I explored the wonder of what lay under her shirt.

15 Greatest Albums: Rufus Wainwright - 'Rufus Wainwright'

In a dream we all go to the same sad place to mourn our lost love. How such a place can be so beautiful is maddening to us. We wish we could dream ourselves into some post-apocalyptic barren landscape, scorched earth mirroring the inner wasteland that still serves to beat blood into our extremities. But no. Our subconscious is much crueler than that.

That feeling rises in us, that wave of love which is as pristine as the first moment it rose up to break on our shore. This wave contains every moment of passion, every stolen glance, every small gesture of intimacy, every ecstatic coupling, every tearful reunion, every tragic parting, every shared hilarity, every every every. And that wave washes us, in our dream, up the delta of a bursting river. The salt of the ocean slowly ebbs away and the fresh water takes up our weight. It is as if the tears we shed at the end have been dissolved, brought back to a more primal place.

The river, now free of the bitterness of that terrible end, picks up steam as it rushes backwards away from that all-encompassing wave.

On the shore of this river sit monuments to the failed love, gorgeous statues hewed from whatever rock lay closest at hand, trees whittled into murals, birds preening and singing familiar melodies, flowers clutching stems and trying to hold onto the fragrance that once wafted down and over your entwined limbs.

The river speeds. The detail of the passing banks becomes a bit blurred as you move towards the inevitable. You wish the inevitable were a holocaust made visible, a nightmare of epic proportions. But again, our hearts don't help us. The easy out of an awful vision is not afforded to us.

The trees blur, the moments mingle, the river speeds. You can't be going any faster. All of a sudden you stop.

Your dream, the result of your tragic lost love deep in your subconscious, is a waterfall going up. You see fish leap from it and walk away, evolved. Clouds form and elevate. It is the most romantic sight you've ever witnessed.

But everything is over. Everything is over.

In that distant dream mist, in that backwards cataract, this album was born. And the scales on the fish that walk out of that impossible river have a vague memory of the one that got away.

If only we could forget so easy.

16 Greatest Albums: The Beatles - 'The White Album'

This is not your ordinary Top 50 List. First of all, the albums are not in any real order in terms of quality or ranking. I merely search through the muddled ether that serves as my cerebral cortex and I grab onto whatever seems weighty enough to drag my fingers down to the keyboard from their normal position, which is on my skull tearing my hair out.

Putting The Beatles up against anyone else in pop music is unfair. Being a musician in the wake of The Beatles is like claiming to be the Messiah anytime after this guy named Jesus was hanging around. You might be able to do it, you might get a few people to believe in you along the way, but the scope of history is not going to pay you much heed.

So let me state that if this were any kind of conventional list, the 13 official album releases of The Beatles would be #'s 1 thru 13 and everyone else would be a very distant 14 thru 50.

Since it is an unconventional list, I am picking the album that is sort of like the Sesame Street song...'one of these things is not like the other'.

'The White Album'. Right away there is something subversive going on because everyone knows the album by a title which is incorrect. Out of all of their albums, THIS one is the one The Beatles were comfortable saying, 'This is The Beatles' about. As an artist, I look on that as a very significant gesture on their part.

The two previous albums had been 'Sgt. Pepper's' and 'Magical Mystery Tour', both of which fictionalize the band to a certain degree. There is a level of myth and creation that sets them apart, that separate the listener from the band. This has its own set of pleasures. And as I said, either of those albums could go at # 1 on any list and it would not be inappropriate.

But if you want a real idea of what it was like to be one of those 4 guys trapped inside of that nuclear bubble of fame, creativity, politics, cultural upheaval, Cold War posturing, media explosion, the dismantling of accepted sexual structure...this is the album to listen to. And those 4 guys collectively said, "This album is The Beatles."

(In a very interesting side note that undercuts everything I've just been typing, legend has it that they wanted to call the album "A Doll's House" but some band called Family released a similarly titled album earlier in the year. I could write 17 books about this one fact. Or read 29 books about it. Or both.)

I just got overwhelmed by merely looking at the track list. I can't go into it. I feel mildly like Nigel Tufnel forbidding Marty DiBergi from even looking at a certain guitar in his collection.

I'll go back to the simple fact that these 4 guys, clearly at the top of their game, having completely restructured the music business, shot a youthful jolt through the crusty bullshit of a decaying outdated moral framework, experienced fame in a completely unprecedented manner...these 4 guys together decided that THIS particular album didn't need an intricate cover, didn't need a clever title, didn't need any trappings WHATSOEVER. All it needed was the packaging material it came in and two words on the cover.

The Beatles.

To speak of these things is dangerous and unnecessary. How can you quantify genius on that scope? Tell me what the universe means. Why is the sky blue. What does it all mean?

I am a false Messiah.

17 Greatest Albums: Minor Threat - 'Minor Threat EP/In My Eyes'

I am in high school. I have just become friends with Tom DeVincke via Justin Brady. I'd known of Tom as far back as junior high, mostly because he got a mohawk and rumor had it that he'd almost kicked out of school because of it.

That goes to show you just how much CONTROL was still being exerted over teenagers in 1983. If you cut your hair a certain way they threatened to DISCONTINUE your education.

Preppies. When I look back on this fad I get profoundly disturbed. Teens and pre-teens dressing as if they were figures from a 1950's sitcom. Now, I don't want my teenagers toting guns and shooting heroin but a little rebellion is rather important. At a time when they ought to have been questioning the line of mularkey their parents were giving them, these kids were emulating not even the parents themselves but some sick idealized version of a past their parents wished they had lived. Very creepy.

This was the atmosphere I was in when I met Tom. I remember us in a study hall laughing about some math homework and that was it. Best friends. He Justin and I then spent all of our free time loitering around town or in Tom's room listening to music.

This is where I first heard Minor Threat.

My musical upbringing consisted of show tunes and folk songs, with a little bit of The Beatles thrown in for good measure. I knew virtually no classic rock, none of the punk scene, nothing. I was a babe in the woods. Justin and Tom would continually rag on me when our band would try to cover some classic rock song. They'd play something, ask me what it was, and then roll on the floor when I had no clue. I couldn't tell Zeppelin apart from The Scorpions.

So I'd had no intermediate LOUDNESS in my music. Minor Threat sounded like a bomb going off.

I flipped out.

I went back recently and listened to their entire catalog and was pleasantly surprised at how good the songs are. How instantly catchy. How well-played. Compared to what passed for rock in those days, they sounded like a bunch of monkeys trying to turn Shakespeare into the Sex Pistols but it is almost poppy music. Crude, yes, sloppy? Not a bit.

Minor Threat had broken up by the time I ever heard them so I never got the chance to see them live. I wonder at how few people actually did see them live. It can't be over 10,000 in total. But if you listen to Ian MacKaye bark and growl those songs you hear the future of radio. The poser from Rage Against The Machine? Stole it from Ian. Nirvana's rasp? Cribbed. Linkin Park's almost rap? Minor Threat.

Much like the beginnings of what is today gangsta rap, Minor Threat started something that quickly snowballed into a whole new industry. At the time Minor Threat picked up their instruments the loudest thing you heard on the radio was Led Zeppelin. Maybe late at night you got The Ramones.

When I played Minor Threat for the uninitiated back in those days it was as if I were physically placing their heads inside of giant machinery. People have been trained differently now. They don't automatically dismiss something merely due to the volume at which it is played.

But they sure did back then.

And the guys who INVENTED this music were all teenagers. Minor threat, indeed.

Tom and Justin had guitars. I knew I could sing. Et voila. A band was born. Are Tom Justin and I friends today because we were in a band? I don't know but I sort of think so. In some way we will always be that band. Fecund Youth. And even though we never put out a record (officially!) never toured (farther than a house down the road without parents), we also never officially broke up, either.

Take your time
Try not to forget
We never will
We're just a minor threat
-Ian MacKaye 'Minor Threat'

18 Greatest Albums: Foo Fighters 'The Colour And The Shape'

This album is a marker for me, a placeholder, a doorjamb. It came out in the spring of 1997 which was a very full time for me, as Cashel would be born on Halloween several months later. If you tested my DNA you would find microcosmic snippets of these songs in there.

I know many people who are big fans of this band and most of them dislike this album. Most of them had flipped over the first Foo Fighters record which I have never gotten into. In fact, I don't own any other Foo Fighters music. I've heard the songs and like them, I enjoy Dave Grohl immensely and root for them, but I never needed anything but 'The Colour And The Shape'.

There are a few albums like this in my collection. I knew they were in the pantheon the first time I heard them, I listened to them obsessively until I could sing every note (and by every note I mean every vocal, every guitar solo, every bass line, every drum roll, EVERYTHING), and I consistently revisit them once the initial obsession has passed.

From what I can tell, Grohl was going through a break up and much of the album delves into this difficult territory. It's hard not to layer Cobain over everything which gives it a whole different level of depth and tragedy, something that doesn't detract at all. It's like Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler'. The movie isn't about Mickey Rourke fucking up his movie career but those echoes certainly add to the impact the story has.

So it is with this album. For me, a guy who was in a trying relationship of his own, it hit me like a ton of bricks. From the gentle opening notes of 'Doll' which segue violently into 'Monkey Wrench', it is clear that we are in for a tough ride.

Actors all have little tricks for getting at difficult emotion. Or good actors do. Years later doing my cousin's play 'Searching For Certainty' in Los Angeles, I would use 'The Colour And The Shape' to channel myself into the state I needed to be in. My character has been pining away for 9 years over the girl that got away in college. He takes a road trip to New York and has a dinner with her in which he finally comes clean. They kiss. The pent up emotion lets loose and he begins to cry at this dream which has finally come true.

This is what this album sounds like to me. A triumph, a moment so hard-earned that your celebration has a wide swath of regret braided into it. You wish you could merely jump for joy but you paid such a price in getting there that your capacity for that kind of unfettered positivity has diminished. You receive your trophy, it is in your image, but it needs crutches to stay on its pedestal.

To my taste, the sound on this album perfectly represents that kind of contradiction. The guitars are crisper than crisp but still pack major punch. The drums are powerful and full of abandon but never stray over into bombast. Grohl's singing is emotionally spot on, to the point that he disappears and the song becomes its own performance. This album is alive to me, it has a personality and a point of view. It hurts.

To this day if I need to cry for any reason, all I have to do is try and sing along to 'February Stars'. I simply can't get through that song without having the primal response I had when I first heard it, when I felt as if I'd never be happy again, but at least I was admitting I had to try.

I said you'd find snippets of this album in my DNA which is true. The strange thing is, it hit me so hard it felt like it had been there my whole life. As if I'd been born with this album. Just like Dave Grohl. And I would like to give him a prize for it, one that didn't have to use crutches to hold itself up.

19 Greatest Albums: Let's Hope It's Beck or Jeff Buckley - 'Grace'

The year is 1997. It is May and New York is blossoming. Maria is pregnant with what will turn out to be Cashel. We work together at The Hub, a channel on AOL. I am writing a column a week as Legs Urbano, investigating urban legends for the Urban Legends website.

It seems an impossibly naive time in the city. The internet boom is in such full force that money is being thrown at anyone with an idea. People still smoke in bars. Clinton is flirting with the whole world. In fact, one of the legends that had started to surface on my site was that Clinton had had an affair with an intern. Unlike the albino alligator in the sewer, this one was true.

Even that brewing scandal seems quaint now that we've had 9/11, Abu Graib, Cheney hunting old friends, fake yellowcake, and the collapse of the economy. We all gathered every morning at the offices in midtown and played ping pong until we had good ideas. We were making it up as we went along.

Several years earlier, when Maria still lived in Providence and we were doing the long distance dating thing, Jeff Buckley was playing an in-store appearance at a record store in Providence. I took the bus up and we went and sat on the floor as he sang a short set of material from 'Grace'.

In person he was somewhat of a disappointment. He was not as handsome as he seemed in the shots on the album and this made that seem like a bit of a pose. He was sort of a runt, stringy hair, a bit of a dirtbag.

But when he sang, all of a sudden the James Dean beauty that infused the photos on 'Grace' appeared like a shot. He became larger, larger than he'd seemed, larger than life. Then the song would end and he would shrink back down to the little scrawny dude who just didn't know what to do with all these people watching him. He seemed like a monk who all of a sudden has to pray in front of an audience.

To anyone who wasn't around when the album came out, you might not be able to fully grasp the feeling he brought out in people. He influenced so many singers that his style seems inevitable, like something that was there all along. But, no. If you go back to 1994 there was a grunt and groan aesthetic born from grunge that was passing for emotional depth. Jeff Buckley shot an arrow through the heart of that bullshit.

I can't help but compare the sound of 'Grace' to the vision I have of New York prior to 9/11. There is a simplicity and ease that can never be duplicated.

Working for an internet startup in those days meant that I was something of a town crier to my friends who weren't connected to the internet. So when word started coming in that a 'young white male rock musician' had passed away, I was one of the few who knew about it. There was a short period of time when those were the only details we had. Young white male rock musician. It was rumored to be Buckley but no one knew for sure.

One of my coworkers, no doubt busy creating a slide-show that would seem prehistoric today, spoke out into the common space...

"Let's hope it's Beck."

I've always been startled by the blackness of that comment, which never fails to make me laugh. And it seemed like after we found out who it really was, everything started to come apart at the seams.

Less than 4 years later, my marriage would be over, The Hub would be long gone, Bush was President, and the city was in flames. Thank god you could still stand in a bar and have a smoke.

But not for long.

20 Greatest Albums: Joe Strummer &The Mescaleros - 'Rock Art & The X-Ray Style'

As far as I'm concerned, this entire Top 50 List could consist entirely of Beatles, Clash, Rolling Stones, and Replacements albums. So in order to shake it up and distinguish it from other similar lists, I've forced myself to include questionable entries, i.e. albums that I wrote, my sister and cousins wrote, and 'Chinese Democracy'.

So no, this album by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros is not better than 'London Calling'. 'London Calling' has its place in the pantheon as one of the greatest albums of all time in any genre. So why should I write about Joe Strummer in place of that? Because.

I came to Los Angeles several times before moving here. Two days after Cash was born I was flown out on a callback for a beer commercial. That was my first time in LA. The second time I came I booked myself into an Extended Stay hotel for a couple of weeks and tried to scare up some meetings. The third time I came...well, that's what this review is really about.

Earlier that year, my cousin Mike had been visiting New York. As usual, debauchery and comedy ensued. This might have been the beginning of the 'Law and Order' skit that we've been amusing ourselves with, whereby a regular civilian when faced with homicide detectives, continues vigorously polishing silverware or stacking cantaloupes instead of sitting the hell down and answering the questions.

And Mike played me Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros. I remember we were riding in a cab somewhere, it was already quite late, and Mike said in that insistent tone I've come to expect great things from, "Dude, you've gotta listen to this album."

The Clash had been the true template for the band I'd been in in high school. As much as I love The Replacements, The Clash are the true height of rock and roll. Some famous quote called them "The Only Band That Matters" or something to that effect. And I think in many ways that was true. For my friends and I, their breakup was as crushing as The Beatles had been to the Baby Boomers.

And then Joe Strummer disappeared. Mick Jones pushed the boundaries of popular music with his rock/rap outfit Big Audio Dynamite, music that is still influencing the scene today. If you check out their stuff you'll not be able to believe it was recorded in the '80's.

But Joe Strummer? He was our Springsteen. Imagine that for the next TEN YEARS Bruce Springsteen was silent. Well, that's what Joe Strummer did. That's how punk rock that fucker was.

He'd put out the excellent 'Earthquake Weather' in 1989, he'd done some work with The Pogues, but it all felt like after-thoughts, like he'd decided to have some fun.

But when 'Rock Art & The X-Ray Style' snaked out of those headphones into my ears in early 2000 in a cab shooting up 6th avenue, I knew this was no after-thought.

Cut to LA. I'm again visiting knocking on mostly closed doors. This time, due to financial considerations, I'm staying at Cashel's uncle, my former brother in law's house. But I'm spending most of my time with Mike and Lisa in Venice. Mike excitedly tells me that Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros are playing The Troubador, the famed West Hollywood club. Mike immediately snaps up tickets.

I shoot up the 10 in my teeny Ford Aveo rent-a-car. In some strange fit of fiscal irresponsibility I've paid for every bit of insurance one can buy, even though my credit card supposedly covers me anyway. I am jazzed about the prospect of seeing one of the few heroes I have.

I exit the 10 onto Crenshaw. At the top of the ramp I skirt right through the tail end of a yellow light. It's about 2AM so traffic is slight. About 50 yards up Crenshaw is the ramp from the 10 going in the other direction. As I take my left onto Crenshaw that light turns green. I continue through it, thinking about Joe Strummer.

As I cross under the light, I see out of my peripheral vision a car barreling up the ramp. I realize they are not stopping at the light. They've come off the highway and must be going close to 50MPH. I brace for impact.

All is quiet. I spin, lights trace, wheel turns. I whip the wheel to keep myself from flying into the oncoming traffic of the other lane. I do either a 360 or a 720, I'm still not sure which and I come to a stop in the lane I was in but facing in the opposite direction. Imagine a car parked in a lane facing the wrong way. My brain was boggled.

The car that hit me was a giant American model. They'd taken a left onto Crenshaw, plowed through me and now pulled over on the overpass.

Here's where things get kooky.

In my head I can see the driver get out of the car and take a few steps in my direction. They are maybe 20 yards away. They are either a tall skinny black man or a short fat black woman. Both images are equally real in my memory. Perhaps there were two people in the car but I guess I'll never know. Because he/she got back in their damaged car and took off.

I sat stunned in my crumpled Aveo. An SUV was stopped at the light in the lane going the other direction. We were separated by the divider. The woman leaned out of her car and said, "You should get out of the car...you're gonna get hit again."

I thought that seemed like a sensible idea so I put the hazards on and stepped out of the car. I walked around it onto the median strip. I felt soft and over-inflated. I sat down on the ground and called 911. Then I called Mike. He said he was leaving immediately from Venice and would be there in 20 minutes.

I could now see the damage to the passenger side of the car. It was considerable. The car had struck my car right over the back wheel well, which had saved my life. If it had hit me a second sooner it would have caught my car right in the middle and pushed me into oncoming traffic where I'd have been hit head on. As it was the whole left side was punctured and indented from the impact.

More kookiness ensued.

As I sat there, a car came chugging up from the ramp where my hit-and-run attacker had come from. This car was on fire.

A small white car, perhaps a Toyota Celica or something along those lines. It rolled to a stop directly across the street from me and the driver got out. He was a small Mexican man wearing a baseball cap. He ran across the street to a house yelling, "Agua! Agua!" Another man, perhaps his father, came running out with a bucket of water and proceeded to douse the engine. I knew this was a bad idea but I was still too shocked to try to communicate with them. The hissing from the water hitting the hot engine block sounded heinous.

The fire truck came and put the car out. It took a few attempts to explain to the firemen that these two cars were completely unrelated to one another. They asked if I was hurt and I didn't think that I was. Although my head was ringing and my ears were stuffed with cotton.

Mike came. He waited for me until the cops came which was quite some time. Apparently, if you're ever in a car accident in LA and need assistance, you have to say that you thought the other person had a gun. Then the cops will rush right over to you. But if there isn't a gun involved they have better things to do.

Needless to say it was pretty cut and dried since it was a hit and run. The extra insurance paid for the car which was totaled. I went back with Mike to his apartment and gingerly went to sleep, but not before I terrified Melody by leaving her a voice message which said something like...

"Hey babe. Got into a car accident. I'm at Mike's and I'm just gonna go to sleep."

She freaked out! Pictured me like the folks in the movie who just want to lie down after head trauma. But no, it wasn't that severe. However, I was rattled to a very intense degree. I was sore all over, very emotional, spacey, irrational...you name it.

We didn't go see Joe Strummer.

I don't care about the car. I don't care about the occasional aches and pains I still get. I don't care about the shudder when I cross that intersection again, which I do at least 10 times a week.

No. I care that those fuckers drove up the Crenshaw ramp and killed my last chance to see Joe Strummer in person. He'd be dead in a year. They didn't kill me, though. You hear that whoever the fuck you are? You didn't get me.

21 Greatest Albums: Dr. Mars - 'Up In The Air, Vol. 1'

Dr. Mars is a mysterious band. My cousin Liam is Dr. Mars. And yet, they remain a band and mysterious.

I've started this review three times now and I am finding it hard to express just how this music strikes me. I was going to go song by song and dissect just why each one is a perfect little jewel. But now that I sit down to do that I find something lacking in that approach.

Why? It's too literal. And this music is anything but literal. It is visceral. To say that Dr. Mars echoes the sound of Bowie, The Beatles, The Ramones, The Clash, T Rex, glam rock, Queen, etc. is to put you in the arena but it doesn't put you in your actual SEAT. The beauty of 'Up In The Air, Vol. 1' is that is invokes those sounds you've been hearing since you started listening to music but somehow it turns them around, faces them in a new direction, puts them in a new context. So you are at once comforted and exhilarated.

But what pushes this music from pure enjoyment into genius is the tension that exhilaration is faced with when it is paired with the underlying theme of the album. There is a narrative that shoots through the songs, one of a great love challenged by some strange and unwieldy ideas. A man and a woman in an urban landscape wrestle with their suspicion that aliens have landed and are trying to contact them. Dr. Mars himself explained this story to me at one time but I've probably telephone-gamed it into something else.

Here is the story as I understand it.

They are in love. She is convinced that aliens are among us. At first he is concerned for her sanity and worries that the woman he loves has lost her mind. She slowly convinces him that she isn't crazy, that she has seen x,y,z and while she doesn't have an ET in her closet eating Reese's Pieces, some strange things have certainly been happening. His love for her ushers him into this world of deciphered messages, hidden meanings, as Dr. Mars says, '...scanning for cyphers and clues'.

His willingness to see her point of view sends him into a madness all his own. He yearns to break free from this Earth, to see, to KNOW. So while the idea of aliens might seem B-movie, here it is understated enough to achieve allegory.

By the end of the album they have left all normalcy behind and are ready to board, to vanish, to let their love take them away from everything they've ever known.

Scary. Romantic. Funny. And it rocks.

Now, I'm sure that I've changed some details here and perhaps Dr. Mars could write a synopsis for me someday, but that isn't really the point. You could listen to this album without knowing any of this and your response would still be enormous. The territory covered is perfect fodder for anthemic rock songs...love, doubt, fear, regret, sex, and yes, UFO's.

All great rock and roll front men are mythic figures. They place themselves outside of our experience so that they can better reflect a wider range of human truth. So, sure, Bowie seems to be singing about some cat named Ziggy Stardust. But really, he's singing about you.

When Dr. Mars imagines himself 'seein' home through the dome/wavin' back', we are the ones who have boarded the ship. We are zooming into space forever, leaving all we know behind us in the hopes of some great adventure. We are up in the air.

22 Greatest Albums: Siobhan O'Malley - 'Alibi Bye'

So my sister Siobhan has just released a killer second album. No sophomore slump for her, no sirree! Her first album, 'Permanent Markers' is wonderful in its own right, with a homemade feel and emotional intensity. This album keeps those qualities, yes, but the production and instrumentation are far more intricate.

Siobhan is always quick to list her influences. She is a voracious listener and soaks up all sorts of styles and genres. She's also, in spite of her willingness to write, sing, and record songs, rather shy of the spotlight and kudos. So while I think that her deference to those who influence her writing is classy, I also think it deflects attention from this groundbreaking music.

The range of styles on 'Alibi Bye' is breathtaking. This is not all of the songs on the album, but merely a taste of the whole.

'Give Me The Creeps' is a rollicking rock song with a bite.

'I Might Have To Deal Drugs In Order To Afford To Live In This City' uses a funk r&b guitar lick and a tempo change to underscore its bleak picture of the economic reality of the life of an artist in New York City.

'It's Not Yesterday' is an alt.country heart breaker which has my favorite line on the album...'There's nothing like denial to blur your periphery'. It also is one of those songs that instantly gets into your consciousness and you find yourself singing the chorus while brushing your teeth.

'A Future Me' is that rare bird, a song without a trace of rancor. It details the pure love of a girl for her older sister. Granted, I'm part of this family so it hits me very square in the gut but I defy anyone with any sense of familial tenderness to hear this song without breaking into tears of joy.

'Squinting Optometrist' is...I mean, just look at the title. Do I even need to say anything else?

'The Fundy Bay Forecast' is an epic. Modern love leaves most of us at one point in a state of bleakness so total that we are unable to move, breathe, eat, sleep, or most important, consider loving again. This song is like a dark psalm attempting an exorcism the singer doesn't believe will work.

'Avenue C'd' ends the album and takes all the emotion of the previous songs and funnels it into a pinpoint of helpless rage and despair. I can barely listen to this song without having to check into a spa.

Now, the subject matter is often difficult, the emotion is deep and disturbing, but with the sound of this album, Siobhan gives the listener a lifeline, and by doing so she positions herself as a kind of humorous shaman, guiding us through our own treacherous terrain.

So, yes. Siobhan is influenced by Sheryl Crow. She loves Elvis Costello. She digs Mariah, Beyonce, Britney, etc. She invokes Cat Power somehow. But with this album she has declared that these people are peers, not idols.

Somewhere, sometime, a young girl with a guitar will listen to this album. And then she'll think, "I wish I could write like Siobhan O'Malley."