Anyone still with me?

24. Transient Waves - Sonic Narcotic. This is one of the more aptly titled albums in recent memory. The similarities between this album and Sigur Ros' "Agetis Byrjun" are fairly startling. Both were released on Fat Cat, and it makes you wonder whether the SR mini-phenomenon would have happened at all had this TW album broke big. By the end, it's nothing but repeitive washes of reverb, dreaming sighs and moanings, and if you listen carefully, you can hear Sonic Boom wringing his hands in the background and muttering "damn, I wish I'd written this record". Although, given TW's clear Spacemen 3 idolation (they even contributed to the S3 tribute album a few years ago), you could argue that he did write it after all. B, $3.00, E.

25. Various - Rewind: 1984 Chicago. Superbly mixed by Rick Garcia, this is a wild run through twenty four tracks from the dawn of house music time. There are several classics here, but I had never heard well over half of the tracks before this. Not like it matters, because almost all house music sounded the same in those days (with the soothing, supple tones of Larry Heard as the exception -- to this day nobody sounds anything like him). Therefore, all this material sounds tremendously dated ... but who cares? It's *old school* house, and it's the shit. For fresh beats and sounds, don't look here. For insane amounts of fun, come on over. B, $5.95, E.

26. Empirion - Advanced Technology. Empirion failed to make a big splash with their debut album, despite releasing it at the peak of the electronica hype and being fresh off remixing the Prodigy. I can see why: its acid loops and super long tracks are far too techno for the coffee shop electronica crowd whose experience extends barely beyond the MTV Amp collections. But for the technoheads, there's not much new here either: acid loops, super long tracks, basic 4/4 beats; and few buildups, hooks, or moments of high intensity that make dancefloor fodder exciting. Hyping it on the basis of the "classic" "Narcotic Influence" didn't mean anything, because it meant nothing to the coffee shop crowd and was old hat to fans. It was never that great a track anyway. Take away that one sample and it'd never be remembered. D, $0.83, L.

27. Steve Reich - Reich Remixed. Let's get this straight: almost nothing here sounds anything like Steve Reich. This is the answer to the expected question, "how can one possibly remix a minimalist composer?". A typical remixer would sample a few seconds of a Reich composition and loop it into an entirely new track composed by them. Wrap it in a bow, call it a remix, and there you go. Those remixers further to the experimental left can find a way to make Reich's original work more of the focus of the remix. Guess what? The latter kind produce far better results here. Tranquility Bass throw together bits of several Reich tracks, and the epic end result sounds remarkably like a long lost Orb track. And Nobukazu Takemura gets in the minimal swing of things, looping melodies together in proper Reich fashion. A, $5.95, M.

28. Various - Dance to the Underground. This CD came with an issue of Muzik mag earlier this year. It features the hugely hyped new breed of "dancepunks", with acts such as The Rapture, Le Tigre and Black Dice, all mixed into a 40 minute dancefloor funk by DFA. It's a fun slab of dirty house, but the rock elements are nearly stripped completely away since many of the tracks are remixes (done for precisely that effect). I'll should probably reserve passing judgement on the whole genre until I hear the Rapture's album. But I should point out the obvious: nothing the dancepunks are doing is new in any way. I doubt that any of them have the guts to go dark and creepy while retaining their danceable flavour (like the Joy Division reincarnate moments on the Colder album). And if this is dancepunk , then so is Porter Ricks' "Spoil" -- try and top it if you can. B, $3.00, M.

29. X-Press 2 - Muzikizum. I lost track of X-Press 2's career shortly after their Junior Boys own period several years ago. They've retained a healthy career among the club crowd, which didn't surprise me since they were always a no-nonsense, "we'll house you" crew. I was surprised (relieved? joyed?) to discover that they're still so great. Bouncy, fun, more hooks than a meat locker, and storming beats that make you forget what you're doing and get up and dance. Old school, new school, completely uninitiated, it just doesn't matter. Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes of their life in a danceclub should love this record. A, $1.46, E.

30. Various - Volume Four. The Volume series from the early-to-mid 90's are sorely missed. The CD's were busting at maximum capacity with 80 minutes of exclusive music in each issue. The M.O. was twofold: showcase rare or alternate versions of songs by known bands, as well as brand new recordings by unknown bands (for instance, Garbage's debut recording appeared on a Volume compilation). Comps never used to include both electronic and indie music, but Volume did right from the outset. Plus, with a 192-page booklet containing interviews and laugh interludes such as the immortal "Diary of Dave Stewart's Beard" and "Running Up That Hill With Kate Bush", the Volume comps were a great entertainment bang for the buck. But until this purchase, I'd never owned one (discounting "Wasted", a compendium of dance tracks from the Volume comps. It featured a brand new Orbital track. I couldn't resist).

I had a great moment in high school when those of us who listened to cool music were hanging out with a bunch of people who certainly did not and managed to sneak Volume Four onto the CD player, play the Aphex Twin track, and freak out to it in the living room. You had to take what you could get back then. Normally, we would only hear thirty seconds of one of our songs before ten people would hijack the stereo and put on Guns N Roses instead. Most of what I remember about high school parties involves slipping music onto the stereo while everyone's guard was down and getting away with it.

There's a lot of solid stuff from the big names here (The Fall, Aphex, Stereolab), and the heart-melting piano version of "My Insatiable One" by Suede, which recalls one of my fave Suede songs ever, the piano version of "The Living Dead" which was ALSO a throwaway on a free cassette that came with an issue of Select. Suede shouldn't bother with a series of gigs where they play each of their albums start to finish, they should do some gigs and play ONLY PIANO VERSIONS. But there's also many fine tracks from bands that never made it, and much of it is lo-fi and lovely post-shoegaze dreampop. 1993 was such a good year for music. This CD is a great reminder of that. C, $3.95, E.

31. Laika - Sounds of the Satellites. The second Laika album fits somewhere between the multi-genre melting pot of their debut and the rhythmic whimsy of their third. It wanders between Laika past and future, never quite sure of where it is going. B, $3.95, L -- because I liked their other albums more. It's a bit unfair to compare this to an album they had yet to make, but hindsight's a bitch. Then again, Laika albums are complex and can take some getting used to, but I've gotta go with the first impression and I've got another thirteen CD's to go.

32. DJ Shadow - The Private Press. Speaking of first impressions, when I first heard "Lost and Found", I thought it was incredible but had to stop just short of reverence. It was like nothing I'd heard before, but I knew it wouldn't change my life. Fast forward a few years, and "Endtroducing" blew all sorts of minds. It's still regularly cited as one of the greatest "dance" albums ever. It was never duplicated, in part because it's such a difficult record to make. No regular schmo can construct something so complex. Shadow didn't want to either, distancing himself from the triphoppers and sticking to hip hop, like on this album. But "Endtroducing" had a near-magical, cinematic quality in every track, a feeling which is missing on almost all of "The Private Press". Like I said, Shadow was all about the hip hop at this point (there's even rapping on this record, albeit by the frequently awesome Lateef the Truth Speaker), and that's OK. With this straight-ahead approach, not too much reaches out and grabs me here. I guess we can safely pass the instrumental hip hop torch to RJD2, whose "Deadringer" rocked my ass seven ways from Sunday, approximately five times more than "The Private Press" did. A, $1.43, M.

33. Doldrums - Desk Trickery. Less bizarre than the blurb on the cover of this advance copy seemed to promise (the album was actually released in 1999). Electric guitar fed through computer? I'm there. The guitars emerge from the computers still sounding like guitars, but the more chaotic the sampling and looping, the better the track. If Doldrums ever lost all of their "mountain jam" tendencies and just noisily wigged out completely, then look out below. D, $1.52, M.

The beat goes on ...

19. Quoit - Properties. You generally can't go wrong with Mick Harris. However, you are generally more right when choosing his dub material over his drum n bass material. His Quoit alias is reserved for his nosebleedingest beat experiments, although the Overload Lady project (with Eraldo Bernocchi) offers a smoother sculpture. On second thought, OL is the forming, crafting and setting of the sculpture. Quoit is what happens when you chisel it into pieces. To each his own. Coincidentally, I hadn't owned the OL album until just a few weeks back. I'm proud to say I found it on vinyl for the criminal price of two bucks (CDN). Hey, it's not *all* about the West Coast. B, $3.95, M.

20. Telstar Ponies - Voices from the New Music. I listened to a TP album in HMV a few years ago. It was OK, but not what I was expecting. I think I'd heard about their first album being kinda Krautrockish. The album I heard was not Krautrockish at all. I think it was this album. Whatever it was, it was a bit folksy and a bit too meandering in getting to the point of each song.

If this was that disc (I'm 95% sure it was), then what was I thinking back then? Oh yeah, it cost like 25 bucks. This CD isn't worth that. But for three bucks, I figured, hey, let's give this thing another chance. This album is equal parts the unpredictability and strangeness of the Flaming Lips, and the wild-eyed psychedelic shoegazing folk of Mercury Rev. Except it’s nowhere near as good as the best stuff by either of those bands. Still, it's a nice little piece of buried treasure. A, $2.95, E.

21. Manitoba - Up in Flames. Rasputin had a promo copy in their clearance racks. Patience, people! It pays off! Start flipping through those racks! I'd already heard this record earlier in the year, and it's been reviewed to death, sowhat more can I add? I don't think Byrds-ian folktronic pop is the future of music or anything, but it's more interesting than what 99% of the Boards of Canada clones are doing. B, $3.00, M.

22. Innerzone Orchestra - Programmed. Sometimes, techno pioneers get bored of just doing pure techno. In his Model 500 guise, Juan Atkins branched into soul music on the aptly titled "Body and Soul". Here, we have Carl Craig doing a jazz album. These Detroit guys really know their music, they never fail to make tried-and-true genres sound fresh. That's probably why Detroit techno never seems to age.

As for the price, yeah, that's no misprint. It was less than a dollar thanks to a clearance bin filled with dollar discs plus the "buy three get one free" thing. D, $0.83, M.

23. Steve Roach/Vidna Obmana - Innerzone. You can always depend on Steve Roach for dreamy late-night ambience. I can never tell any of his songs apart, but when you're drifting off to sleep, those details never seem to matter. C, $1.95, M.

Moving right along ...

7. Glenn Branca -- Symphony No. 9. I drooled at the thought of something as powerful as his 8th and 10th symphonies (for guitar), imagining sheets of violin drone pouring down like sleet. But this isn't really Branca played by a symphony, it's symphonic Branca. Days later, I found the same CD in Berkeley for half the price. Huh. A, $14.95, L.

8. Cocteau Twins -- Tiny Dynamine. I’ve been on a Cocteaus kick lately. I grabbed the Harold Budd collaboration on vinyl a few days before this trip. I always find their harder-to-find singles at Amoeba, and can’t resist adding to my collection. In June I bought the gorgeous, near-unplugged "Twinlights". That EP, together with its sister disc "Otherness" (they were released within a month of each other as a stopgap before the "Milk and Kisses" album) are some of the finest work the Cocteaus ever did. Put them together and it's their best album, hands down. Basically, you can't go wrong with Cocteau Twins. At the very least, you end up owning some beautiful artwork. A, $2.95, M.

9. Andreas Tilliander -- Elit. Much of the usual clicks and cuts fare, but any album with song titles like "Kevin Shields" and "When Routine Bites Hard" (the opening line from Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart") is worth owning. A, $4.95, M.

10. Renegade Soundwave -- Soundclash. When you buy something old school that you haven't heard in a while, it may no longer sound fresh, but it's most important to hope that it won't be embarrassing. Fortunately, no such embarrassments are found here. Music deeply rooted in dub never really goes out of style. A, $1.46, M.

11. PWEI -- Amalgamation. Stuff like "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" used to unite the dancefloors. It was rough enough to please the metalheads, but not intimidating enough to alienate the Britpoppers. Whereas the indie kids already liked PWEI and were thrilled to hear something besides "Wise Up, Sucker" for a change. In hindsight, the militant stance and the liner notes describing the music as "noise pollution" were a prototype for what Primal Scream perfected six years later on "XTRMTR". C, $1.99, M.

12. Higher Intelligence Agency -- Colourform. Made in 1994 and sounding exactly like it. The remix EP "Reform", released the following year, is a shiny thirty minute jewel and has lost far less luster. B, $3.00, L.

13. Various Artists -- Kanzleramt 3. This is a nearly brand new release from just about the only tech-house label I’d admit to liking. A, $4.95, M.

14. Hash Jar Tempo -- Well Oiled. Cocteau Twins singles, Bardo Pond side projects. These West Coast shops seem to carry them all, the East Coast shops, nada. In June I picked up the second HJT (=BP + Roy Montgomery), "Under Glass". When questioned, I'd tell the hippie folks that it was "East Coast hippie music, much like the jam bands out in these parts", and point to the cover art depictions of neon lights shaped suspiciously like bongs to help support my argument. Yeah, I know the comparison isn't exact, but there's certainly some truth in it. Besides, how else can you explain it to uninitiated West Coast ears in ten seconds or less?

Lord only knows what they'd make of this, however. There's no band aesthetic for an unsuspecting hippie to grab on to. Unlike "Under Glass", this isn’t rock music, the drums and bass don't lead the band in a freeform jam, rather, it's not much more than chords played over and over and over and over and held in constantly circulating patterns and tremelos for ten minutes at a time. But there's an immense power in their stasis as they drag your wrecked body up the crescendos and down the diminuendos. I was absolutely transfixed. A, $7.95, E (and that's saying something, considering how highly I regard the BP outtakes and side projects).

15. Various Artists -- T_zero_O. A solid compo from Touch Records, it features oodles of prominent names (Fennesz, Brinkmann, Locust, Biosphere) and whackloads of weird and wonderful sounds. A, $7.95, M.

16. Pluramon -- Bit Sand Riders. Part of the Rasputin Birthday Special, this is a remix album stacked with big name remixers. Thus, I'm holding it to a fairly high standard. Consistency-wise, it's a bit of a mixed bag. It sounds like Mogwai weren’t trying too hard with their mix. Hecker turns in a Hecker-by-numbers contribution. It's difficult to figure out if he was actually trying or just noodling, but then again, it's difficult to figure that out with his own music as well. Fortunately, the good stuff is *really* good stuff, with remixes by Merzbow, Matmos and Atom as the standouts. C, $1.99, M.

17. Subhead -- Neon Rocka. It's on Tresor. Therefore it is good. That's all you need to know. A, $1.46, M.

18. Otomo Yoshihide -- Sampling Virus. No matter how many times I see them, I'm always shocked at the size of the Experimental sections in these stores. This is something you just never see in Toronto. Maybe the scene is more secluded than in other major music centers. It's not a Canada thing because in Montreal, the scene is more prominent, as is the CD selection. So when I'm presented with this kind of choice, I try to take advantage of it. This CD, on Extreme Records, is my first by the prolific Yoshihide, is a series of 77 "viruses". Each "virus" is a short track, anywhere from one second to three minutes long. There are blasts of noise, spoken word from Japanese TV shows or adverts, tape looping, tape shredding, and various combinations of some or all of the above. The liner notes explicitly warn against playing the CD from start to finish. Play parts of it on random play, use the pause button, loop tracks over and over, sample the tracks and loop parts of them yourselves, all is permissible except putting the CD in the tray and simply pressing play. The concept is so blatantly simple, but the best ideas always are. The concept and the record label helped me this Yoshihide album over the multitudes of others. For my first experiment, I put it through a five disc random play along with the new Mogwai and Tindersticks albums, and the aforementioned Flowchart and PWEI CDs. I'd be listening to a perfectly normal song and then I'd hear one, two, or sometimes even three tracks of Japanese mumbling or looped something-or-other. Then, I'd be listening to another perfectly normal song, until some undetermined time later when another little bad dream would interrupt once again. I can't wait to hear what happens the next time I try it. A, $7.95, E.

No updates for the last while, since I was temporarily banished to a land where the dialup is slow. Fortunately, this faraway land is the state of California, best known for its recall elections, fine weather and cheap music.

I've written about how one can find amazing music for next to nothing out there, and have provided a couple of examples, but for those who have never stepped foot in these bargain CD havens, I don't feel I've accurately portrayed just how incredibly cheap and good this music is. I believe more detail is needed.

First, a few introductory notes. I) I am always getting poorer, and thus, I resolve to spend less money each time. However, somehow I keep spending LESS, but return with MORE music. Chew on that one for a while. II) Officially, I now have more music than I know what to do with. Literally and figuratively: I have run out of space in my apartment for all this stuff, and I keep buying it faster than I can absorb it. I've barely had the chance to drill the recent spread of late summer/early fall releases into my head, and I'm barely through getting my teeth into my early summer trips to Montreal and the good old West Coast. Kazaa has served me well for previewing the stuff I'm curious about and am considering buying, but when you can get a CD for two bucks, it's practically free already. III) Sometimes I fear I'm becoming too repetitive on these pages, always writing about Kevin Shields and Jason Pierce are so great. The following project will allow me to write about a wide variety of artists in a short amount of time. I'll get to write about several forgotten and under-appreciated artists, and in doing so I'll get to show off how much I (think I?) know.

So, I'm going to list every one of the 44 CDs I bought, along with comments and pricing. I haven't heard everything yet, so there will be more than one post on this subject. Thus, items will be listed as I hear them, not in the order I bought them, which may become a bit confusing, but hopefully the following coding system will be of assistance. If the coding system merely adds confusion, then you'll still get an idea of how confusing and disorganized things can get when 44 new CDs plop into your lap during a ten day span.

There were four purchasing sprees: Amoeba (San Fran) on Sept 13 (A), Rasputin (Campbell) on 9/16 (B), Rasputin (Campbell), 9/18 (C); Amoeba (Berkeley), 9/22 (D). Each disc will be labeled by the corresponding letter. The prices are in USD. If there was a particular special (buy three, get one free, for example), the price of each CD will be adjusted accordingly to reflect the percentage saved. So if four CDs cost three, two, two and two dollars; then I'll have spent seven dollars on nine dollars worth of music, therefore each disc’s price will be adjusted by 22%. That makes $2.33, and 3 x $1.56 for the example above. I'm sure nobody except for me truly cares about the number crunching, so don't worry about the exact numerical details and just trust that I'm not making things up. It's the *deal* itself which is important, the buy three get one free stuff that you’d want to know about, and those will be explained in the text.

Last, I'm going to use a crude trinomial rating system for these discs. E -- music exceeded my expectations. M -- music met my expectations. L -- music is below my expectations. The key word is, of course, "music". Once you've bought a piece of music, you really don't care about the price anymore. That is, I don’t expect more from a ten dollar CD than I do from a two dollar one, but I do expect more from something on Mille Plateaux than I would from an impulse buy (although I reserve the right to make a couple of exceptions). Most of these comments are first impressions, gleaned from many quiet afternoons and a five disc changer perpetually on random play. So let the fun begin ...

1. Soul Center -- Soul Center (III). This was one of eight clearance discs from the SF Amoeba, therefore, with their standing "buy three get one free" offer on the clearance bins, two of them were free. Sometimes, the clearance bins are loads of slim pickings. It was certainly not the case this time. That's why I bought 19 CDs on 9/13 at Amoeba, and those choices were edited down from a group twice that size.

I'd thought that Soul Center was Brinkmann's dabblings in house music. I suppose it's reasonably to insist that techno shouldn't focus on samples or hooks. So if Soul Center is house, then so be it -- but it's one hundred percent pure Thomas Brinkmann: stripped and minimal up the wazoo, yet catchy. A, $1.46, E.

2. Various Artists -- A Brief History of Ambient volume 3. I’ve been holding out for a good price on Volume 4 for a while. That installment, subtitled "Isolationism", was key in refocusing the label of "ambient" toward proper, motionless, ambience as nature intended it (Aphex's "Selected Ambient Works II" played a similar role). After those two works, ambient returned to being ambient, and all the other non-rave electronic music fell under the "electronica" banner. I generally hate labels, but the "Isolationism" and the Aphex record were good ones.

For now, here's Volume 3, which suffers from the New Age bug, and Virgin’s understandable reliance on material on its own label: there's no way David Sylvian deserves four entries on any history of ambient. But there’s an impressive array of artists across these two discs, and the genre mish-mashing from rock to dub to drone makes for an engaging listen. A, $7.95, M.

3. Starfish Pool -- Kinetic. I wasn't planning a visit to the Berkeley Amoeba, but we ended up going to dinner right around the corner and I couldn’t resist finally completing the Amoeba trifecta. Having already bought 35 CDs to that point, I couldn't imagine what else I could (or should) possibly buy, but again the clearance bins were so good that I had no choice. "Interference '96" remains the only Starfish Pool release you really really ought to have (Koen Lybaert has never come close to reaching those heights before or since), but for any fan of minimalism, all of his stuff is worth having. D, $2.30, M.

4. Spectre -- Second Coming. One of Wordsound's many classics. I'd forgotten how awesome the Sensational track is. D, $1.62, M.

5. Flowchart -- Gee Bee. I keep finding Flowchart CDs for cheap on the West Coast. This EP seems to mark the start of their shift into house rhythms, which is mildly interesting in and of itself, but can't touch their earlier Stereolab fixations.

I wasn’t planning to visit Rasputin on that day, but two days earlier I’d noticed a sign saying you could buy one CD and get THREE free clearance CDs on your birthday (just for being you, said the placard). My Bday was coming on the 18th, unfortunately, I didn't notice that sign until I was already leaving with my ten CDs. I figured I'd already bought enough from that place, but two days later, I realized there was no way I could pass up free music. It wouldn't be right. And whaddaya know, I found a bunch of things I hadn't seen the day before. I bought a $7.95 Pluramon CD, plus two extra clearance discs, just because I'm me. C, $1.99, M.

6. John Cale -- Fragments of a Rainy Season. A word on Rasputin. If you buy five clearance CDs (ordinarily $3.95 each), the lot will set you back a mere fifteen bucks. Wow. There's a few in the Bay Area, this one is in Campbell, which is a suburb of San Jose. There aren't supposed to be any good music shops in the suburbs. Yet, I totaled sixteen CDs on my two excursions there. I don't think I've purchases sixteen CD's from Toronto suburbs in my entire life. If I have, then it's entirely due to those post-work Saturday afternoon swingbys of Sonic Temple in North York, covering roughly the years 1997-8.

This solo performance is a real gem. All tracks feature solo piano (except for guitar on two tracks) and singing. The playing is stellar (you'd expect nothing less from Cale) and the vocals more than hold up their half of the bargain (you never know what to expect there from Cale). Covering his entire career, from "Paris 1919" to "Guts" to a pristine "Style it Takes", incorporating covers (a nearly unrecognizable "Heartbreak Hotel", no shizzle), and poetry (Dylan Thomas set to music, as he'd done on his "Words for the Dying"). I can't say I've heard enough of his solo stuff, but this is the definitive John Cale album, from what I've heard.

I have to mention the ovation given to the opening lines of "Style it Takes", which was a recent release at the time. There is very little crowd noise on this album, but this crowd knows quality when it hears it. Kudos to them. It's got to be the best song Cale has ever sung on, and it's from one of the most underrated albums of the past twenty years -- the "Songs For Drella" record his did with Lou Reed. It's likely been forgotten because of the overshadowing of the following twin peaks, a) it doesn't stand up to the Velvets best work (but what can? It's way, way better than "Loaded", though), b) the Velvets reunion a couple of years later. B, $3.00, E.

I forgot to write about one more "dormanter":

Travis -- The Man Who (1999). In the UK, this album was very near the second coming of "What's the Story Morning Glory?". For two solid years, everyone from grannies to youngsters, ages 7 to 70, was singing along to "The Man Who" on the radio, on TV, and at outdoor festivals. In North America, only "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" was played on the radio. On rare occasions. And that line following the title in the chorus "is it because I lied when I was seventeen?", oh, oh, so, SO SO SO Smiths, so Morrissey. So uncreative. "Driftwood" was a bit better, and the video was admittedly kinda cool, but I still couldn't see what the big deal was.

And I still don't. Travis don't do anything particularly creative or original. They're simple guys in a guitar band, so what? Well, one day I woke up and it shook me : "Driftwood" is an absolutely amazing song. And I bought the album and thought, "gee, it's really been a long time since I got into a plain, ordinary guitar band with no fancy frills or walls of sound or intricate soundcapes -- just killer, heartfelt tunes". And I saw them in concert and could sing along for a whole hour and a half and it came to me, "when was the last time I went to a show and sang along with a couple thousand strangers for an hour and half?". As I said, there's no big deal about Travis. They write great songs. They write about sadness and teenage angst and all that other good stuff. And that's enough.

I'm a fan of lists. A big fan. If you don't believe me, look at the lists on my web site. I'm a sucker for magazines with cover stories about the "Top (number) (somethings) of (a certain period of time)". I always look at these stories, no matter now ridiculous the concept. Yeah, I even looked at Maxim's "Top 500 most beautiful women ever" issue. I wrote about it somewhere on these pages. Was it even 500? Was it 1000? I don't remember. But I definitely don't consider a list to be the last word on the subject. I can reminisce about great music from years past while looking at my Top Tens from the last several years, but there's a lot more to a year of great music than a ten item summary.

Sometimes you buy a record and it doesn't really hit you until months afterward. Those sorts of records aren't always well represented on a yearly compiled list (it depends on where the end of the year falls in relation to the "adjustment" cycle of the album in question). Exclaim! referred to the new Weakerthans album as a "creeper", i.e. a record that will take months to fully digest. But as I understood it, they used the term "creeper" to describe a record that one immediately recognizes as being great, yet also understands that the record's complexity neccessitates the passage of some time to fully understand that greatness. The first album to do that for me was "The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld". I immediately took to it, but it was so unlike anything I'd been listening to before that I knew it would take a while to adjust myself to hearing that sort of music. And in the process of doing so, I'd grow progressively more attached to the album as I understood it more and more with each listen. Which is exactly what happened.

But there's another category of music closely related to the creeper which, in similarly awkward grammatical fashion, I'll call a "dormanter". This is an album whose greatness is NOT immediately recognized, but is finally recognized as being truly great after weeks or months of listening. Here are some examples from my experience:

Orbital -- Snivilisation (1994). I'd secured an advance copy of this about two months prior to its release. The 4/4 rush of the "Brown" album literally made me a techno fan for life, and I was expecting similar material on the follow up. But "Snivilisation" had only one track of so-called "banging techno", and that track ("Crash and Carry") was previously released. The rest of the album was filled with bizarre samples, strange breakbeats, and vocal tracks reminiscent of the most recent 808 State album ("Gorgeous"). In retrospect, these were the criticisms of a novice who couldn't decide which was the better 808 State album, "Gorgeous" or "Ex:El". Ha! As techno continued to develop and mature, it soon became obvioius that one album was infused with the spirit of classic Detroit and London dance and thus sounds remarkable even today. The other was a rave album for the post-rave indie set which became old around the time the Shamen petered out. The reader may deduce which is which at his or her leisure.

Orbital were mashing up nearly every existing genre of electronic music, and putting a half serious/half ironic "state of the world" bow tie on top of the whole thing. Musically, it was so far ahead of its time that I had no idea what to make of it. For instance, jungle (now drum n bass) was not even close to breaking through in the UK, but Paul Hartnoll had been spinning the stuff in his DJ sets for months. So it's no shock that an unsuspecting fan like myself was flabbergasted by the fifteen-minute "Are We Here?". "Snivilisation" was a quantum leap forward, and I had to take baby steps to catch up with it.

Verve -- A Northern Soul (1995). Their debut album had soundtracked many a lonely day. I was obsessed with it, and I don't use that word lightly. I have been obsessed with only two other albums in my life, Pulp's "His N Hers" and Drugstore's eponymous debut. "Obsessed" means listening to it many times a day, not being able to enjoy other music because I'm still thinking about my obsession, and thinking about it while not listening to music to the point of not being able to concentrate on daily life. Fortunately, these states of existence never lasted more than a week or so, for that would have been seriously unhealthy. Caring about music in this manner must be correlated with either youth or loneliness, because it hasn't happened to me in quite a while. I'm hoping it's youth.

It wasn't that I didn't like "Snivilisation", as much as I just couldn't get it. Not so with "A Northern Soul" -- I really hated it. It repulsed me. Gone was the half-asleep, half-waking dream production of John Leckie. Gone were the light as a feather ballads. In its place were lumbering rock riffs and the up-front production of Owen Morris, who duplicated the sound of his work on "What's the Story Morning Glory?". That's not a slag against Oasis, but the style didn't seem right for Verve.

Eventually, I realized that it might have sounded like Oasis (and nothing like "A Storm In Heaven"), but Verve still had something that Oasis never had and never will. Soul. I even grew to love the riffs.

That WAS a slag on Oasis, though.

Pulp -- This is Hardcore (1998). I started out ahead of the pack by connecting the dots between this album and Pulp's macabre material from a decade before. Those who were only familiar with Pulp's 1992-1996 catalogue likely gave up on "This Is Hardcore" right away, and I can't say I blame them. It's dark, there's a recurring theme of death and things coming to an end, and the title track uses pornography as a metaphor for the apocolypse. I was in the minority of people who'd actually liked Pulp's early work (seriously, "Freaks" is a way underrated, totally ignored classic) but that didn't make it much easier to swallow "This Is Hardcore".

But with all Pulp albums, you don't really "get" them until you "get" the lyrics. No matter how good the tunes are. In this case, the lack of a "Disco 2000" or a "Common People" clouds the accessibility of the album as a whole, and that includes the lyrics. I didn't realise how good this album was until I watched the "Live at Finsbury Park" video. The tunes sprung more to life, I started to really listen to what Jarvis had to say, and I listened to "This Is Hardcore" more than any other album in 1999 (the year *after* it was released).

Sigur Ros -- () (2002). When this album came out, I said the success of "Agetis Byrjun" was a fluke and certainly wouldn't be duplicated by an album without a title. And I was right. But I left out something important: this album is awesome.

Of course, if I'd known this at the time, I'd have said so. Sampling it, I decided it was a largely bland album with only one standout track (the last one). So in retrospect, I'm not sure why I bought it. I think it grew on me because it's a cleverly disguised excercise in rock n roll minimalism. But not in the way of NEU! with their motorik beats, It's with the glacial pace that could soundtrack "Eyes Wide Shut". The simplistic melodies that seem to keep recurring throughout the whole album (I'm still not sure if they really do, or if it's my imagination). "Agetis Byrjun" is filled all sorts of shimmery noises, in its place, () has ... well, mainly just silence and open spaces.

They say only a few percent of the people who bought Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" actually read it. Well, "Agetis Byrjun" is the "A Brief History of Time" of music. It's not easy to get through, and neither is the follow up. Too bad the hype all came with the far inferior album.

I finally saw D.A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back", the documentary about Bob Dylan's 1965 English tour. It's not a film I'd blindly recommend to the "VH1 - Behind the Music" generation -- there's no narration or storyline to speak of, just a fly-on-the-wall look at a couple weeks in the life of Bob Dylan. I guess the VH1 Style has become so commonplace that I was taken aback by the first few minutes with the lack of explanation as to what was going on. I guess we're all used to watching musicians on film and hearing the blow-by-blow gossip in juicy, hindsight-is-20/20 detail. Of course, it wasn't always like this. Sometimes, as is the case with "Don't Look Back", you have to read between the lines by yourself.

It's said to be a film about an artist at the brink of exhaustion. Dylan historians know this to be the truth, but I don't think that's what is depicted in the film. He doesn't look exhausted. He looks stressed from the incredible attention he gets from city to city and the weight of expectation from his sizeable entourage and fanbase. He looks bored from having to play his then-current single (to English fans) "The Times They Are a-Changin'" every night despite being considerably more excited about the newer material he'd preview for Donovan and Joan Baez while backstage. He appears to genuinely enjoy verbally harrassing reporters during interviews, turning their questions back on them and matching them in a battle of wits that few has come prepared for. Or maybe he didn't enjoy it, maybe it was the stress and frustration of answering the same questions every day and the boredom of not having anything better to do with his time.

The major thing which we now take for granted is the intense scrutiny given to songwriters and their songs. Watching the film in 2003, we know that "Bringing It All Back Home" was his first foray into electric music, he was becoming rapidly bored with the purist folk scene, and "Maggie's Farm" isn't really about a farm. Today, we always look to interpret a musician's work. We try to understand the artist by reading into the lyrics, or looking for clues in interviews. In 1965, this was just not done. "Bringing It All Back Home" had been out for a couple of months at the time, but nobody considered what it meant for Dylan's maturity as an artist because a) rock and roll was so new that the concepts of maturing, developing as an artist, and evolving one's style didn't exist yet, b) the album format was so new that nobody yet considered the full-length album as an artistic statement. Nobody was asking him about any of this stuff because Dylan was stiff in the process of helping to invent all of it. Thus, we shouldn't ask ourselves why these journalists were asking such silly questions about religion and fame instead of inquiring about the (now more obvious) meaning of lines such as "I got a head full of ideas / And it's driving me insane / It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor / But I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more". The best part about "Don't Look Back" is watching it forty years later, knowing how to look for the telltale signs of an artist in flux, and thinking about how in 1965, nobody knew how to do that.

Notes log from the MTV Video Music Awards.

:00 Britney singing "Like a Virgin"? What an underhanded, transparent publicity ploy to take an ironic stab at her "wait until marriage" insistence while engaging in pre-hype for the attempted ressurrection of her career with the release of her newe record this fall. It's saucy, it's brilliant.

:01 Christina's in it too! Oh, this is good.

:02 Madonna's in it too! She's the groom -- this is really good.

:03 Kisses! Yowza!! Then Missy Elliot completely ruins the sexy erotic vibes with her run-in. The Gap must be thrilled though.

:05 There are too many little things to love about this performance, from Mads cradling X-tina's leg and sliding off her garter, to Britney's up-to-the-pupik bridle skirt, to the Queer Eye guys losing it in the audience during the whole thing. Awesome.

:15 Chris Rock rules the monologue, tearing up Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, and "50 Cent took more shots to the face than Jenna Jameson". CR should host every award show. The Oscars, the Country Music Awards, everything. It should be his full time job.

:16 You know, the outfits Ashanti's been wearing recently would work a lot better if she had any tits. Someone needs to tell her this.

:17 How is "Hot In Herre" eligible for Best Hip Hop vid? That's so last year. But it's not such a bad idea to nominate it every year from now on, since the song and video kick ass. And where's 50 in this category?

:18 Missy wins it with the worst vid of the bunch. There aren't even any hoochies in "Work It". No hoochies, no hip-hop.

:21 The voice-over reminds us to stay tuned for "America's sweetheart Kelly Clarkson". Yeah, like that wholesome image will get her over with the X-Games generation. If she's not naked in Maxim by spring 2004, her career is dead.

:29 I'm grabbing a snack during most of Good Charlotte. As if on cue, CR tears them apart after their performance with perfectly timed "Good Charlotte? More like mediocre Green Day". YEAH!!

:31 Beyonce's wearing the open-styled dress a la J-Lo or Cameron Diaz on the Tonight Show. Way to promote those Christian values. Rhetorical note to Daddy Knowles: why would you forbid her to date until she was 18, but allow her to wear stuff like that?

:36 Speaking of Christians, here's Evanescence to say nothing of note, and come off like the whitest losers ever while trying to hang with the infinitely cooler Sean Paul.

:38 There are so many "dated" videos nominated, i.e. "Lose Yourself", Nelly + Kelly, Aaliyah ... these vids seem so ... old, so last year. When the Grammys and the Oscars have already nominated (and honoured) this stuff, then it makes these awards look really behind the times. But maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that the videos are out of date, since MTV doesn't actually play videos. (everyone else has been making that comment, so I might as well do it too)

:45 Murphy Lee makes the shows' first plug for a new album. A whole three-quarters of an hour until the first instance of this type of shameless self-promotion -- gotta be a new record.

:48 X-tina gets to perform again, a medley of "Dirty" and "Fighter" and a medley of the usual leather/skank/raunch stuff that we used to getting from her. Nothing wrong with that, though.

:53 The MTV2 award is the dumbest thing ever. Roots, Interpol, Common, AFI, QOTSA -- what do these acts have in common? So it's honouring the best of the 2nd tier of pop music? The best artists who aren't popular enough to get Punk'd or played on TRL? AFI wins, if anybody cares.

1:00 When everything sounds the same, what exactly is a Best Pop vid? Didn't X-tina get nominated for the R&B award for the same song? Are Kelly Clarkson and Justin Timberlake "pop" artists because they're white? Even the categories at the Grammys make more sense.

1:03 P Diddy's wearing an oversized "Remember Barry White" shirt. Come on, Puffman, say with feeling -- rip off one of his songs and call it "sampling" just like you do with everyone else.

1:05 After the very genuine emotion showed by P Diddy, Run, and DMC, the award introduction vid featuring a goofy white boy rap take-off sure is tasteless. Best Rap Vid = 50 Cent, duh.

1:08 There's going to be a "special appearance" by Eminem? He's been all over the show already!

1:13 L'il Jon makes the best of a tough situation by giving some wild shout-outs while Hillary Duff and Jason Biggs do their unsuccessful best to not look as white as they are.

1:15 Coldplay win for Best Group Vid. They're the only non punk/metal rock band at this show. In other words, the only "regular" rock band. Then again, most "regular" rock bands didn't have a good year on the pop charts.

1:18 Eminem and the puppet continue this soon-to-annual running gag. Stupid but funny. Eminem has great comic timing. He handles the "reluctant straight man" part well -- he should put this talent to excellent use by starring in a remake of "Kindergarten Cop".

1:19 A strangely understated 50 performance ... until, oh, lots of posse, lots of boobs, and Snoop P.I.M.P. It's the shizzle, obviously.

1:30 We don't get "Queer Eye" here yet, but is this gay chic big now or what? Every show on TV has at least one gay character, and from Will & Grace to this upcoming reality show based around the search for a gay country singer, to The Kiss from earlier tonight, gay is in, big time. Seriously, I think gay is the new black.

1:38 According to CR, rap/metal = affirmative action for white people. Not as great as the Good Charlotte dis, but what possibly could be? But the disdain behind the comment is accurate -- excepting the opening number, every (straight) white person on this show has come off as a complete moron.

1:44 Gotta open the mail sometime ... might as well be now ... the girl can flat-out sing, but I've never liked Mary J. Blige. Nice change of pace with the performance out on the street. 50 makes a cameo -- it's obvious this guy's having the time of his life tonight.

1:53 Poor Avril (the only Canuck on this show) has to play 3rd fiddle to the legendary Duran Duran and Kelly Osborne screaming like a horny schoolgirl. I'm not one to put a huge emphasis on sales, but Avril has sold ten times more records than you ever will, Kelly, so get out of the way and stop hogging the stage. Kelly is right about one thing, though : everyone stand up and honour DD. They INVENTED MTV. The bodacious mostly-naked women, the exotic locales, the vast expense -- they are everything that is good, honourable and popular in videos over the last 20 years. The Michael Jackson freakshow has been turning up at award ceremonies for the last ten years to present himself with Lifetime Achievement by a Supergenius Pop Star Awards, and Duran Duran have kept quiet in the shadows and received nothing. They were even relevant more recently than Michael -- the "wedding" album was a huge hit in 1993 and resurrected their career, whereas Michael hasn't meant anything since "Nevermind" dethroned "Dangerous" at the top of the charts. Plus, we finally get some white guys on this show who don't make asses of themselves. Anyway, they get their overdue Lifetime Achievement award and we move on to the Best Dance Vid. X-tina looks upset about not winning, which is understandable since it's her 103rd nomination in an incredible 103 different categories.

2:05 J.Tim may like Coldplay, but what 15 year old is watching this show and saying "never mind MJB and 50, I never realised that Coldplay were so awesome". Having the whitest guy in the building endorsing them doesn't help the situation. Coldplay's performance is the equivalent of the Grammys using jazz and classical performers -- they want to appear well-rounded, but it's just a token performance since the industry isn't geared at all toward selling those artists. Coldplay aren't on the show because MTV likes their sort of music, it's because they became so huge last year that MTV didn't have any choice but to include them.

2:09 When John Mayer's name is read for Best Male vid, there is absolutely NO cheer. Like he has a chance against Em, 50, and JT in this category anyway. JT wins his third award here.

2:11 JT wants to share this award with co-nominee JC. Not Chasez. That's nice, no sarcasm. Poor Johnny was too ill to attend.

2:17 Way to go Mya, make a joke about Pammy's chest. That's so played out, you know, kinda like your career. As for Best New Artist in a video, nobody had a chance against 50.

2:20 Linkin Park's Chester likes all sorts of music, y'know? He listens to Outkast when he's smokin' blunts, know wha he's sayin'? Nobody does. See what I said about the white guys being as cool as Barry Manilow? When a normally sure-fire weed comment fails to get a reaction from the crowd, you're JUST NOT COOL.

2:24 I may make fun of Beyonce's "I'm so wholesome yet so slutty" daddy's girl image, but "Crazy in Love" is a fantastic pop single, probably the best of the year.

2:34 Ben Stiller wins the award for the Best Crowd Reaction to a Caucasian Performer or Presenter.

2:36 Whoa, Good Charlotte beat out the heavy hitters for the Viewers Choice Award. The singer thanks their fans by stating "nobody in this industry would care about our band if it wasn't for the people who came to GC shows". Uh, isn't that true of EVERY BAND? Bands without any fans don't tend to get noticed by the industry, with good reason.

2:43 Adam Sandler just stole the award I gave to Ben Stiller nine minutes ago. I take back my comment about white people not being cool. This show has shown that white people are uncool -- EXCEPT FOR THE JEWS!!! Fo shizzle ma dizzle!

2:46 Missy wins again with the worst video of the bunch (but it's still a good video). Lots of people have raved about "Hurt" but it isn't so much a great video as it is an incredibly scary video. Honestly, it makes "Thriller" look like an Aaron Carter video. It's so unnerving because the song itself is creepy, June and Johnny look like the walking dead (particularly when set against older tape of their younger selves), and it's filmed in grimy black and white and yellow. I don't mean to sound morbid in the wake of June's death, but my feelings haven't changed since I first saw the video months ago. As with John Cale, Johnny's years of hard living caught up with him in the nineties and he aged about thirty years in the last decade. Everytime I see Johnny on TV, he looks older and frailer, and the "Hurt" video is an extension of this sequence of steadily deteriorating health.

2:47 Metallica play a medley containing "Are You Gonna Go Away", "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Seven Nation Army", and "Beat It". With that last selection, 5% of their remaining fanbase vanished.

2:52 Here's to 20 years of MTV? Didn't MTV start in 1981? Anyhow, great show tonight : hardly a boring moment, shocks and surprises, T&A, high comedy, what more could you want?