Good music is like a time capsule- it takes you to the time and place the music was recorded. Hearing ¨Paul’s Boutique¨ feels like being in Giuliani’s New York, complete with graffitied trains, the crack epidemic and being mugged in Times Square. You can almost taste the Reaganomics at work. I always forget how high the Beastie Boys’ voices can get, except for MCA (RIP). Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s grating, and while they’re never going to win awards for lyricism, they do know how to create an atmosphere. Listening to ¨Hey Ladies,¨ I’d put this era of the Beasties as the rap equivalent of Motely Crue (see ¨Girls, Girls, Girls¨ for a spiritual sister track). The music is just as 80s as anything else, but I do appreciate the ¨everything and the kitchen sink¨ approach to sampling. I know people call this the Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds of rap, but I’m not cultured enough to have made that connection. It’s 80s rap for someone who reads Pitchfork and New Yorker cartoons, and I’m not cultured enough to read those either. Standout tracks: Car Thief, Shake Your Rump, Hey Ladies

What do you do when an album is too painful to listen to? When listening to ¨You’re a Big Girl Now¨ takes you back to washing dishes and thinking about a girl in France who was out doing who knows what with who knows who? When it’s, in your humble opinion, the second greatest album of all time (after London Calling, of course)? You put on the album once every few years, talk a walk through the painful alleys of the past, and pretend it doesn’t still hurt as much as it did then. Bob Dylan crafted possibly the all-time greatest break up album, an album full of such opaque storytelling and specific emotions that they could almost apply to anyone, anywhere, at any time going through some sort of emotional turmoil. About the album: musically, nothing Dylan hasn’t done before or since. Lyrically, nothing he hasn’t done before or since. So why is it so special? Maybe because, for once, you can get a glimpse of the man behind the music and he’s telling you that he too feels the same as you. Best songs: ¨Tangled Up in Blue,¨ ¨You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,¨ ¨Simple Twist of Fate¨

Perhaps I’m a philistine, but Neil Young is one of those classic artists that just kind of passed me by. He’s no Dylan or Cohen, but I’ve always grouped him in with those poetish folk/whatever singers of the 60s and 70s. Some people can’t handle Dylan or Cohen because of the croaky, out of tune way they often sing. For me, it’s Neil Young’s high voice that initially turns me off, like Daniel Johnston on helium. This album makes me think it might have been something my Uncle Phil listened to while getting high and beating up hippies while also sort of being a hippie himself. ¨Southern Man¨ could have been written about probably any male member of my family over the age of 40, and also a younger cousin. It’s an unpleasant surprise when you find out Neil Young is Canadian, almost a betrayal. The music itself is pleasant, but nothing musically or lyrically grabbed me by the throat apart from ¨Southern Man,¨ perhaps because I myself am a Southern man. Any song could have been on the soundtrack to a Judd Apatow movie- is this a good thing? Bad? You be the judge. Best songs: ¨Southern Man,¨ ¨Only Love Can Break Your Heart,¨¨Birds¨

People throw around the words ¨life changing¨ too often and too easily, but what else do you call it when you’re 13 and you listen to the whole (edited) album in a music store and have your eyes opened to things you never even knew (or wanted to know) existed. Then a year later you listen to the (unedited) cd a friend lent you while you’re trying to sleep in the top bunk at camp and ¨Ken Kaniff¨ comes on and you hope listening doesn’t make you gay. Then of course you make it until ¨Kim¨ and good luck sleeping after that. Growing up in a Christian home, going to a Christian school and being forced to go to a Christian church for hours every week leaves you culturally adrift, forced to listen to the Newsboys and Adventures in Odyssey. Who knew there was a whole world out there, full of pop culture, poverty, violence, vulgarity and dope Dr. Dre beats? Eminem knew. Few things seem as dated today as the pop culture milieu of the late 90s/early 2000s, and this album is certainly included in that. Unlike ¨2001,¨ which sonically still sounds great and lyrically was always back in 1992, ¨The MM LP¨ contains the lyrical equivalents of WWJD bracelets, frosted tips and pants about 5x too big. It’s embarrassing, especially with all the misogyny and homophobia, but then these things have had a resurgence in the US in the last few years. Maybe bigotry is evergreen? Regardless of how dated so much of the subject matter is, it’s still one of the best rap (and maybe any genre) albums of all time. Why? Because Eminem was the absolute behemoth of culture for at least four years, a lifetime in a world where 15 minutes of fame is the rule, not the exception. We hear Marshall Mathers grapple with fame, his relationships, his horrible upbringing, his insecurities. This guy had (and has) everything anyone would ever want but hearing him coming to grips with it is still fascinating after all these years. More than any other rap (or rock) hero, he always seemed the loneliest, the most broken, the one who couldn’t come to terms with having achieved his wildest dreams. He’ll always, in some way, be the skinny, scared, abused kid that grew up in poverty, and the way he showed the world who he really was has never been done so viscerally, so bluntly or on such a big platform. Name another artist who has ever been that big and bared themselves to such an embarrassing degree. That’s why he’s one of the best who’s ever done it, because he dared to go so deep inside himself and take us along, all six billion people alive when this album came out in the year 2000. Best songs: ¨Remember Me,¨ ¨Bitch Please II,¨ ¨The Way I Am¨

My first impression of The Cars is a slightly less weird version of Talking Heads, like if Ric Ocasek was a simple streaker compared to David Byrne’s compulsive public masturbator. A sticky analogy, but the late 70s were a weird time. Unlike the new wave and power pop albums that came out in the early 80s, this album thankfully largely avoided that canned sound that instantly dates so many otherwise stellar Reagan-era albums. ¨My Best Friend’s Girl¨ sounds like what ¨My Sharona¨ would have sounded like with a better mind behind it. The guitars, jangly and subtle, make me want to pull out a Smiths album. Unfortunately, the further into the album you go the more 80s it sounds, with synths and other tricks from that period. I guess that makes it ahead of its time, but that’s the aural equivalent of investing in Beanie Babies after 1998. Do I hate 80s music? A bit. Regardless of poor production choices, I do love big hooks and simple-seeming but clever lyrics, and The Cars do deliver. Are they weird? Yes. Does it sound dated? Sort of. Worth listening? Yes.

Some albums are timeless and some are so timestamped you can’t listen without being taken back to that time and place. Fatboy Slim belongs firmly in the 90s, the aural equivalent of Beanie Babies, WWJD bracelets and a pre-9/11 sense of innocence and enthusiasm. This was the American century, after all, and with ¨You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby,¨ Fatboy Slim was an electronic music evangelist bringing his loops and beats across the pond to give the uncultured colonists a peep into the future of popular music. Nowadays everything you hear on the radio is electronic, synthesized, looped and autotuned. Popular tastes change and it’s very easy to be an old man yelling at a cloud, but one can’t help but miss the days when there were a few musicians in the studio making music. The Europeans had been making robot music throughout the 90s, and the rave scene thankfully mostly missed in the New World but then again we did have dubstep. Perhaps it’s a matter of taste, but hearing the same words looped over and over again like Groundhog Day, a collage of samples and a drummerless beat is my idea of hell. 1998 will never go down as a great year for art, and ¨You’ve Come A Long Way…¨ is about as good a proof of that outside of a Limp Bizkit album. Best songs: ¨Funk Soul Brother,¨ ¨Praise You¨

The first notes of Bert Jansch’s self-titled album made me think of a less sad Nick Drake. There’s the aimless plucking, perfect for a lonesome stroll along a riverbank as the autumn leaves die on the branches. There’s the soft voice singing about sorrow. There’s that indefinable sense of time and place you only get from a 60s folk album. Wherever there’s a sad guy with a guitar there’s a potential folk singer, and if he’s Scottish you might as well imagine the music playing over a Celtic funeral scene in a movie about moors and heather and lochs. There’s something about the Scottish (and Irish) that makes for good, sad folk music. Unlike the gloomier English, the Celts give their sadness a sense of the inevitable and therefore something to be lived with as opposed to dying of. We in the US make that mistake as well. There’s not a lot of market today for a man with a guitar to sing about his feelings, but the 60s seemed to be the best time for it. Sometimes the absence of anything else gets stifling, lonely and monotonous, but the lack of background noise really lets the listener feel like they’re sitting next to the artist. That’s what I felt listening to this album, the sense of walking next to the singer on a cold autumn afternoon watching the leaves fall. If that’s not art, I don’t know what is. Best songs: ¨Strolling Down the Highway,¨¨Needle of Death,¨ ¨Angie¨

Joni Mitchell is a name I’ve always heard in relation to the 60s and folk music and something that older people like, but never something that found its way into my ears. I always put her in a box with Joan Baez, and since I don’t remember Joan’s music either I’m not sure if this comparison is fair or not. ¨The Hissing of Summer Lawns¨ is such a cool title that actually listening to the album itself threatens to cheapen it. I imagined a less angry, more refined Patti Smith and that’s basically what I got. Replace the grime of the 70s with the vaguely optimistic vibe of the 60s, put it in your kooky aunt Tabatha’s album collection and there you go. {Note: this album came out in 1975, the same year as ¨Horses,¨ but it sounds 10 years older} I found the music to often be a bit boring, but the opening ¨In France They Kiss on Main St.¨ was exciting, as was ¨The Jungle Line.¨ What isn’t boring is the poetry she spews, painting pictures as good as Dylan or Nas, often eschewing any sense of verse or chorus. If an album could ever be considered ¨a grower and not a shower¨ it would be this. What was boring on the first listen I found nuanced on the second. There are musical and vocal choices that superseded any kind of expectations I’d normally have of a singer-songwriter. Respect to Joni Mitchell. Best songs: ¨In France They Kiss on Main Street,¨ ¨The Jungle Line, ¨ ¨Harry’s House/Center…¨

Vaguely countryish guitar sounds with a pounding percussion pushing the song forward. That’s my first impression of Happy Monday’s ¨Bummed¨ album. Obscured words by a high pitched voice singing about rednecks. Next song, the canned 80s drums that I love so much. ¨Mad Cyril¨ sounds like nothing so much as Robert Smith fronting a more optimistic version of the Smiths, one in a world where Morrissey had hanged himself in his mum’s drawing room the day before Marr came calling. Marr then convinced Robert to quit the Cure and come play with him. Honestly, I like the idea of this band almost as much as I like the Cure and the Smiths. This Smiths/Cure/New Order melange continues throughout the album, vacillating between all the different sad bands of the 80s, establishing itself as perhaps the perfect distillation of sad Britain. I didn’t find anything another band hadn’t done better, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Best songs: ¨Country Song,¨ ¨Mad Cyril,¨ ¨Brain Dead¨