As I sit down to write my first KQED “music obsession” blog I should be thinking, “Yay! I’ve found yet another place to share my musical power with the people.” Instead, what is typing its way into the keyboard is more like “Eesh!” My first assignment: A “Best Of” for 2006. I don’t do “Best of,” or “Desert Island Discs” or anything relating to music that requires me to numerically obligate myself to something that I can’t change my mind about at a moment’s notice. Take the last dinner party where someone who I would never get into a musical chit chat with said, “Hey Dennis, you’re the musicologist — what albums would you bring to a desert island?” This resulted in me having to explain that I’d rather talk about the sports. And I don’t know shite about sports!
What is wrong with me that I can’t commit? In relationships I’m rock and roll solid. Reliable, romantic, a “go to the end of the earth” for the one woman I’m interested in kinda guy. However, when it comes to music I am definitely always up for a one-night stand — willing to go for the next big thing and then reject it the second I get bored. Full disclosure here: Record companies send me what I guess-timate as over 1,000 CDs a year, so it’s easy to be keen on many things at once.
Anyhow, against my better judgment (literally) in alphabetical order is the music that I will be playing on the radio as my faves of the year.
Art Brut — “Formed A Band” is hilarious. Much of the rest of their Bang Bang Rock & Roll album is of a similar note and yet, every year needs it’s own version of The Tubes.
Beck — The Information — I saw Beck perform “Nausea” on Lettermen and it was the most kinetic two and a half minutes I have ever seen on that show. Beck rules. That is all.