'The Diaries of Jane Somers'

Doris Lessing was a badass six ways to Sunday. 

She was born in Iran (back in the good ol' days when it was referred to as Persia) in 1919 and later moved to Rhodesia before striking out on her own. She got a late start in writing. She started in the 1950s and went well into the next century including the novels The Diary of a Good Neighbor and If the Old Could ... which were combined as The Diaries of Jane Somers. 

Lessing, though, was brave. Early on she made her socialist views very public, and even moved to London and abandoned some children along the way with their fathers. She protested nuclear weapons and apartheid, which got her blocked from visiting South Africa and Rhodesia. She later left the communist party after the USSR invaded Hungary and was critical of the war in Afghanistan. The British government spied on her and released their dossier years later. She had to have been doing something right. 

Lessing had been grocery shopping when it was announced that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. 

'The Cider House Rules'

A grand example of when the book is exponentially better than the film. Having seen the latter before the former, I thought it would carry the same emotional impact of a handshake, but instead it is a great story elevated by the flashbacks of Dr. Larch (you just don’t wake up and decide to become the leading abortion doctor in New England), the story of Melony and expanding the impact of the secondary characters (particularly Wally and the seasonal workers) makes it a very rich story.

Appropriate of nothing, author John Irving never met his father, who split with Irving’s mother in 1942 while in utero. Later, Irving’s father was shot down over Burma during World War II, a fact Irving did not discover until 1981 and a plot added into Wally’s story in The Cider House Rules.

'Songs From The Big Chair'

One day the world will understand what a brilliant band Tears for Fears was and what a mammoth three-song tour de force "Shout," "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Head Over Heels" was in the history of recorded sound. Few could have a better triumvirate quite like that.

The one guy looks like Jon Cryer.

'Pump'

Got to give Aerosmith some credit: They kept their bit going for a long time and didn't stray too far from what sold records. Lug-headed, horny riff-rock that was largely about sex even if it was sex between a father and daughter. 

It's not good. It's not appealing even in a sexual way because Aerosmith lived in a world completely unlike our own, where casual sex simply based on who you were (as opposed to how nice you were, how you looked, etc.) was probably pretty common. 

When they weren't singing about complete sluts they wrote anthem-worthy warblers appealing to the disenfranchised teenage girl. Written, we can assume, just to get in their pants. 

About Pump, guitarist Joe Perry said, "When we went to do this album, we knew what we wanted, we wanted to strip off a little fat we felt on our last one. We didn't say 'We need a drug song or a child abuse song,' but when they fit, we used them. That's Aerosmith: we aren't bound by any rules."

Wrong, Joe. You are more bound to rules than any rock band in history. And the fact that you did it so stinkin' well is what makes you rich and able to hump girls in elevators. 

'Soul Mining' & 'Infected'

The The is basically Matt Johnson and a revolving door of special guests and musicians including The Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr and Jools Holland.

Outside of a relatively clever band name, this is not remarkably better or worse than most pop-electronic music from the 1980s. 

One note that is worth mentioning is that Matt's brother, Andrew, did some of the artwork for The The under the name of Andy Dog. This included the original cover for Infected, which featured a demon masturbating and apparently completing. The album was pulled and an edited version was released. You can see the unedited version here. 

I would love someone to interview the Johnson brothers and just ask them what exactly they were trying to do. I don't know if the controversy helped with album sales. It probably didn't hurt, but that seems like a pretty shallow reason for doing something. 

Furthermore, was the record label thinking the same thing assuming that repackaging would cost less than the free advertising they'd get for having a demon ejaculating on himself? 

'Shadowlands' & 'Ingénue'

Not to take away from the massive steps forward the United States has made in accepting of the homosexual community, but k.d. lang came out of the closet in 1992, during the very heart of her massively successful career. And no one seemed to care.

lang is sorta weird for several reasons, none of which include her sexual preference.

For one, she sings and plays pretty weird music. At the time, however, it was popular to like country-ish pop, easy-listenin’ rock. It’s why Bonnie Raitt sold about 10 billion albums and why Dwight Yoakum wound up so popular that he became a part-time actor.

k.d. lang got popular by playing this moody country adult contemporary that nobody that liked country listened to but everyone that was pretty lame loved. There is no way this should have been popular. The only explanation was that it happened in the 1990s and a lot of weird things happened in music during the 1990s.

What also is weird is that the United States fully embraced an openly gay celebrity. The same year she “came out of the closet,” lang’s album, Ingénue, went double platinum. Double platinum. It was mega-popular. Every one over the age of 30 bought this album. These are the same people that 20 years later are thumping their Bibles and bemoaning the rhetoric of same-sex marriage, basically condemning the country as a modern Sodom. In fact, they did more for normalizing homosexuality than anyone.

Plus, lang is Canadian.

k.d. lang is extremely popular and there’s no viable reason why she should be outside of the fact that Americans love lesbian Canada pseudo-country contemporary adult pop music. Go figure. 

'The Nightfly'

Steely Dan broke up and Donald Fagen recorded a solo record, The Nightfly. On the cover is Fagen in a collared shirt and tie resembling the jazz DJs that he would tune into in the 1950s and 1960s in suburban New Jersey. 

Fagan said living in the suburbs was a prison. A bit of an exaggeration because the suburbs may be boring but they are far from as disastrous as Fagen would like to pretend. 

The album itself is strictly autobiographical with tales of listening to late-night jazz DJs and bomb shelters. 

Of course, by age 11, Fagen had become a self-admitted "jazz snob" and developed an "anti-social disorder." Maybe it was all the suburbs' fault. 

Worth noting that apparently he played in a band with Walter Becker and Chevy Chase (drums) while at Bard College where they all studied. Chase apparently has perfect pitch. 

'Faith' & 'Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1'

I've never understood why George Michael was such a polarizing guy. I guess in conservative America in the 1980s a blatantly homosexual singer could turn heads. Then again, he sold a gajillion records, so most people had little problem with his sexuality at this point.

But my memory of the late 1980s might not be as accurate as I perceive. I don't remember a time when George Michael was never a heterosexual. And I'm starting to question that memory only because I recollect a time when I thought Michael was pretty cool with that quaffed hair, the stubble, earrings, leather jackets and sunglasses perpetually perched on his nose.

Michael admits to bisexuality and (despite Wham! being incredibly gay) basically going through women like air during his heyday of the 1980s.

Reading more about the guy, the more I sorta respect him. If you take his quotes as gospel about how he really feels, sexuality had less to do with how they were attracted to a male or female form. It had to do with love. He thought he was a heterosexual in the 1980s because he was in love with a woman. It had less to do with who he wanted to have sex with (I only assume he had sex with whoever he was in love with). Then, he fell in love with some guys and he's not so much heterosexual anymore.

I also get the feeling that George Michael is in love with falling in love.

Later, when Michael's sexuality was pretty well known and he started to get into legal trouble he suddenly became an uninteresting lightning rod that occasionally released pop records.

He's just a man who loves his anonymous sex in roadside bathrooms. It was one time!

OK, it was two times. And he likes weed. No big deal.

The guy's been around for 30+ years now and if enjoying things enjoyed also by heterosexuals (weed, sex with strangers) is the guy's biggest pockmark, then I think that's OK.

'Viva Hate' & 'Your Arsenal' & 'Vauxhall and I' & 'You Are The Quarry'

Should someone that records so prolificly as Morrissey be such a person in demand?

I remember when You Are The Quarry was released and it was a major deal. I assumed that The Smiths quit playing together and the get went into hiding (granted, it was his first album in seven years). But I feel like he's done enough to be a pretty accessible artist. I mean, you can have all the Morrissey you really want.

I don't much care for his music and I'm not a huge Smiths fan in the least. Morrissey is actually kinda of a boring subject although almost everyone I know either loves him or hates him.

I don't know if any recording artist of Morrissey's stature to maybe be known for being a vegetarian as much as he is known for being the lead singer of one of the best bands of a particular decade. It's like equating Paul McCartney with being left handed rather than one of The Beatles.

Morrissey is almost equally as known for his questionable sexuality and being an odd sex symbal not necessarily for his looks (he's not terrible looking) but for being a songwriter that wrote about being awkward, out of sorts and depressed. People latched onto that and made them kindred spirits to the point of being boyfriend and girlfriend.

Most like, he is bisexual although publicly he likes playing word games (once calling himself "humasexual" for being attracted to humans) and avoiding any one stereotype because he knows that girls and boys love him just the same. Gotta keep selling those records.

'Peking Opera Blues'

An odd film because it's pretty foreign-film wacky with all sorts of Chinese tomfoolery, which probably  drew a billion laughs back in 1986 from repressed young Chinese kids. Then, suddenly it turns into this very bloody, dark shoot-em-out action movie.

they hold nothing back. They have a girl getting whipped nearly to death and strapped to a bed, we assume, to be raped by a general. She is saved when a friend acts to seduce the general to create a means of murdering him, which she does and the two girls pull a "Weekend at Bernies" in order to appease the guards.

The only real interesting part of the film is the kabuki actors in the ornate face paint screaming into the camera.

'EVOL' & 'Sister'

Two rather contrasting albums for a band on the brink. Released in 1986 and 1987, respective, EVOL and Sister proved to be the jumping off point for Sonic Youth creatively and also as far as their careers go. 

EVOL was the first album released under the SST label. Dissatisfied with the label, they recorded Sister a year later with Enigma. EVOL, however, is considered the album that Sonic Youth’s alt-rock testicles dropped. Although, the next album, Sister, was far more palatable and melodic. So whatever step they took with EVOL, I would think it was taken a new or at least different direction with Sister.

Sister, for whatever it’s worth, was inspired by the life and times of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who was supposedly haunted by a twin sister that died shortly after birth.

'I Against I'

One of the weird shows that I can’t believe wasn’t more popular among my generation was Degrassi High, the teen Canadian melodrama. Edgier than Saved by the Bell but safer than Gossip Girl or My So-Called Life. 

ANYWAY, the bit with Degrassi: The Next Generation was that each episode was titled after a song. There are currently 13 seasons ranging from 15 to 40 episodes. That’s a lot of songs.

Of course, in season five, episode 14, there is an episode titled “I Against I.” Because Gen Y Canadian teenagers love American hardcore from the 1980s.

In all seriousness, this is a very cool album to listen to. Even for Canadians.

'Reign in Blood'

Once considered the “heaviest album of ALL TIME.” As if ANYONE could know that. 

I like metal despite the fact that I hate most metal. Which doesn’t make sense. What I mean is that what metal that I deem good I really like to listen to and that includes only about 10 percent of all heavy metal.

I think metal’s one redeeming quality is – somewhat ironically – is the musicianship. It’s what bands in a lot of current metal groups don’t quite understand and why a lot of 1980s glam metal is severely underrated. Kids today think it’s about anger and disassociation with mainstream culture. At its purest, it’s about playing harder, faster and louder. It’s what Slayer and Metallica perfected in the 1980s.

However, the idea wasn’t just to be fast, but to play with the precision of a concert violinist. I’ve always argued that heavy metal has more roots in classical music (and punk, for that matter) than any other music genre.

Concerning nothing, Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman died recently. It was suspected that it was related to his suffering of necrotizing faciitis, a deep infection of the skin, which basically makes your flesh rot away. He claims to have gotten it from a spider bite.

A week later, we all learned Hanneman died to liver failure and had suffered from cirrhosis. He basically drank himself to death.

How metal.

'Truth and Soul'

For essential rock band documentary viewing, I highly recommend . Good documentaries make you really interested in a band you normally wouldn’t be interested in. This documentary does that. 

Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone

As for Fishbone’s only entry into the 1,001 list, it’s shocking how good these songs are and, for the most part, how undated they actually sound. The first four songs on the album (“Freddie’s Dead,” “Ma and Pa,” “Question of Life” and “Pouring Rain”) could’ve been recorded in 1988, 1998 or 2008.

The album does dip into the 1980s sound more reminiscent of Prince than anyone later in the album. But it serves more of a time capsule than it does a dated rock record.

I don’t normally point out individual players especially with an ensemble group, but Kendall Jones’ guitar playing is phenomenal on this album. A real stand-out on an otherwise busy album.