If he had been interested in exploring the most commercially successful musical genre of all time, Frank would have encountered an alien world filled with frightening labels: shoegaze, AOR, rockabilly, metal, emo and Britpop, to name a few.  “Francis, you handsome devil,” he might have muttered to himself with great agitation, “where to begin the descent into this pit of musical despair?”

So for Frank and his disciples, here’s an introductory guide to easing into this wonderful new lifestyle choice.

The Apples in Stereo #1 Hits Explosion
Imagine a sugar-dusted shiny day filled with birds tweeteling through a pale blue sky, happy faces dotting the cotton candy landscape with syrupy waterfalls of … well, you get the picture. If one were to distill what pop music should be, add water and serve it for breakfast, The Apples in Stereo might just rise to the top of the cereal bowl. Highly produced songs à la Sgt. Pepper, perfect in their every phrasing, soar through the psychedelic soundscape treating eager ears to a sugar coma of pleasure.

The Feelies Crazy Rhythms
When I was in college, The Feelies played what was called “college rock.”  Yes, it’s a fairly non-descript description, but it implied music that was quirky, non-commercial, and aimed at people with an alternative lifestyle. In the case of The Feelies, college rock means nasally, trembly vocals combined with a tom-heavy beat, somewhat lo-fi production values and song titles like “The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness.” The band’s far-out cover of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)” will have you racing to throw out your oh-so-yesterday Beatles version of the song.  

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 Goodnight Oslo
Robyn Hitchcock has been my favorite musician for 25 years. He performs and records as a solo artist, with his backing group The Egyptians, and lately with The Venus 3 (one Venus being Seattle’s own Scott McCaughey, singer for the Young Fresh Fellows). Hitchcock’s solo pieces, including the exquisite gems “Agony of Pleasure” and “Sweet Ghost of Light,” tend toward a delicate beauty. On the other end of the spectrum, The Egyptians lend a heavy crunch to songs such as “Brenda’s Iron Sledge” and “Do Policemen Sing?“

 Goodnight Oslo finds Hitchcock and his mates at their best creating shamelessly infectious pop janglies in “Saturday Groovers,” hypnotic auto-pilot dronings in “What You Is,” and lush cathedral harmonies soaring to the troposphere in “I’m Falling.” This album is an excellent introduction to the uncrowned king of rock and roll.

Flight of the Conchords Flight of the Conchords
It’s a sneaky album: it’s comedy, it’s music. In a way, Flight of the Conchords gives listeners a genre tour while spouting out hilarious (and sometimes unprintable) lyrics. Take, for example, the blue-eyed soul masterpiece, “The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room).” After telling his girl that she is “…definitely in the top three good looking girls on the street, depending on the street,” the song’s narrator caps off the moment with the romantic sentiment, “You’re so beautiful, you could be a waitress.”

For my yet-to-mature mind this is funny stuff. The song itself is musically stunning and could easily be sung as a serious ballad (with different lyrics, of course) by The Righteous Brothers or The Style Council. For something completely different the boys offer up “Foux du Fafa,” a song with rudimentary and banal French lyrics that should have been (and may well have been) in every European film from the 1960s. Continuing through the genres, “Robots“ is a sci-fi disco romp sung by robots after “the humans are dead.” Hilarious yes, but Flight of the Conchords is also a musical treasure trove of aural delights.

Did I mention there would be a quiz at the end?

*Quote source

Ron

Later in life, I discovered the Johnny Cash of Sun Records. This Johnny Cash inhabited  the dark edges of rockabilly playing “Get Rhythm,” “Big River,” and other edgy, energetic songs. Sadly, this J.C. was also responsible for “Luther played the boogie,” a song which possesses perhaps the worst chorus of all time. And, when taken in large doses, songs from this J.C. would begin to run together and all sound the same.

There was yet another Johnny Cash, one whom I avoided like possum pan-fried in goat lard. This J.C. was the Cash of the American West, one who wore black cowboy hats and spun tall tales. He enriched our nation’s musical heritage with memorable songs such as “Dorraine of Ponchartrain,” “When Papa played the dobro,” and “Hiawatha’s vision.” These songs would often feature spoken word stories about bigger-than-life characters from the wild west. The result was akin to a poor man’s William Shatner “singing” melodramatic ditties.

Hmmm. What a depressing blog this is. If each J.C. is rife with shortcomings, why bother to spend so much time and thought on The Man in Black? But here comes the payoff. After a lifetime of dismissing all of these J.C.’s, I discovered a true musical gem in the other J.C.: Johnny Cash in his final years. Nowhere else have I heard a voice that so exquisitely communicates a lifetime of pain, salvation, sorrow and joy. Listeners are drawn in to share the experiences of J.C.’s adventure-packed life simply by hearing that haunting tone. No longer do I care about the lyrical content or the musical banality. All that remains is a raw distillation of emotions and ordeals delivered by a dying man. To hear examples of this incomparable display of passion, try “Thirteen,” “Redemption“ and “The man who couldn’t cry” from the album American Recordings.

If you’re interested in learning about J.C.’s life, the Everett Public Library has a variety of biographies including I see a darkness, a graphic novel, and the movie Walk the Line.

Ron

Fiction: Tinkers by Paul Harding

History: The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

Biography: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles

Drama: Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey

Poetry: Versed by Rae Armantrout

General Nonfiction: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

Music: Violin Concerto by Jennifer Higdon

There was also a special citation given posthumously to country music icon Hank Williams.

And closer to home, among the many journalism awards, The Seattle Times received the “Breaking News Reporting” award.

For a full list of award winners and finalists, and to learn more about the history of the award, visit the Pulitzer Prizes website.

Welcome to Everett! You drove here from Topeka. That’s a long drive. Did you listen to any cool music or audiobooks?
It is a long drive indeed, but I’m a fan of road trips. I listened to two great audiobooks: I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb and T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain. I also listened to some of my favorite music including Pavement, Wilco, Radiohead, R.E.M., Neil Young, Warren Zevon, and The xx.

Kansas makes me think of The Wizard of Oz. Can you recommend any favorite Kansas authors or books or movies about Kansas?
I’ve yet to travel from Kansas and not heard, “You’re not in Kansas anymore.” It’s an irresistible response to learning someone is from Kansas. Two great authors more or less from Kansas are Gordon Parks and Langston Hughes. A great book is James Carlos Blake’s Wildwood Boys, a historical novel about the pre-Civil War Kansas-Missouri Border Wars told from the perspective of Bloody Bill Anderson. I love John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing, set in both Kansas and Colorado. John Williams’ wonderful book Stoner is one of my absolute favorites, but it’s set in Missouri.

Do you have any favorite books or shows with a Washington setting or author?
Two of my favorite television shows are closely associated with Washington: Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure. As for books, I’ve recently become a fan of Spokane author Jess Walter and Olympia author Jim Lynch. The Financial Lives of the Poets and Border Songs are two of the best books I’ve read in the past year.

What’s your favorite book?
My all time favorite is Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Yates is an incredibly underrated writer. My previous favorite book was David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The aforementioned Stoner is a recent favorite.

What was your favorite book growing up?
The book that blew my mind as a youngster was Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Its meditation on the great expanses of time and the universe changed the way I thought about the world. The other seminal book of my childhood was To Kill a Mockingbird. I read it the summer after sixth grade and it hooked me on a life of reading.

What’s your favorite movie?
The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski is the greatest movie of the last 25 years. Other favorites are Mulholland Drive, Nurse Betty, Ghostbusters, and No Country For Old Men.

If you were stranded on Jetty Island and could only take three books, what would you take?
Infinite Jest—I’ve been meaning to reread it and it’s really long. Charles Willeford’s Sideswipe. And Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow — it might be quiet enough to actually concentrate to read it.

If you’re looking for last minute gift ideas, or holiday reading suggestions for yourself, look no further than the Everett Public Library. Our Gift Guide points you to book and music buying ideas for all ages and interests. Our Best Books list includes our favorites from 2009.

Here are a few other year-end lists that I will use to stack my shelves:

The New York Times Top Ten is my personal favorite. At just five fiction and five non-fiction books, this is a slim list of outstanding titles.

Library Journal produces a solid list, including genre and how-to books.

Nancy Pearl’s 2009 Under-the-Radar Books is unbeatable. I don’t know about you, but I always benefit from the action figure librarian’s serious crush on books.

Oh, and there’s so many more, such as The New Yorker, Salon.com, and Publisher’s Weekly. How lucky we are to have such rich stories to fill our lives.

From my pages to yours, happy reading and very happy holidays!

Kara