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Alejandro is playing at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle tonight.  You should be there.  If you aren’t going, you’ll have to settle for a YouTube video.  Get drunk… you might even think you are there.

He’ll probably play this tonight too…

… and maybe even this one

Update:  Always fun to guess what cover songs he will play.  He did not play “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” but he did do “Beast of Burden,” and one I had not even thought about, Neil Young’s all-time greatest song, “Powderfinger.”

There sure were a lot of great albums released in 2008.  Several of my favorite artist put out some of their best music ever, and they are the ones at the top of this list of the top 25 albums of 2008: 

1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
2. Alejandro Escovedo – Real Animal
3. Jim White – Transnormal Skiperoo
4. The Duke Spirit – Neptune
5. Devotchka – A Mad and Faithful Telling
6. Sons and Daughters – This Gift
7. Slim Cessna’s Auto Club – Cipher
8. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
9. Paul Weller – 22 Dreams
10. Tricky - Knowle West Boy
11. Saul Williams – The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
12. Jakob Dylan – Seeing Things
13. The Moondoggies – Don’t be a Stranger
14. Kathleen Edwards - Asking for Flowers
15. The Kills – Midnight Boom
16. The Black Keys - Attack and Release
17. Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue
18. Mudhoney – The Lucky Ones
19. Wussy – Left for Dead
20. The Pretenders – Break up the Concrete
21. The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band -The Whole Fam Damnily
22. R.E.M. – Accelerate
23. Flogging Molly – Float
24. Hank III – Damn Right Rebel Proud
25. Dandy Warhols – Earth to the Dandy Warhols

I’ve surfed around and looked at lists put out by Mojo Magazine, Uncut Magazine, Paste Magazine, and NPR.  What I found is that people seem to prefer softer, soulful sounds this year.  My list has a lot of entries that buck that trend.  That’s probably because this year, for me anyway, was an intensely nerve racking year.  During the very long primary season and general election, I found myself mostly listening to music that matched my high level of nervous agitation throughout the whole process. 

Anyway, there are a few polls out there where you can still cast your votes for best albums of 2008.  I’d start with the KEXP Top 90.3 poll because it closes tomorrow.

And Mojo Magazine. 

If I find any more open polls, I will add them.

KEXP is having a fund drive now and during the drive they are playing the top 903 albums of all time as voted on by their listeners who submitted their lists of top-ten albums.

I meant to vote in the KEXP poll, but I agonized for so long over my list that the deadline passed before I could vote.

And you may ask yourself, what’s so difficult about naming your ten favorite albums?  Well… in many cases it’s difficult to select one album from an artists entire body of work.   What’s the best Dylan album? The best Springsteen?  The best Neil Young?  The best Nick Cave?  Should you choose more than one album from your favorite artists?  How would a list of top-ten albums of all time look if it included three from Dylan, two from Springsteen, three from Nick Cave, and two from Neil Young?  I could easily make that list.  You might be able to create a similar list from the works of your four favorite artists.

Should you stay within the realm of folk/blues/pop/rock/soul or should you include jazz and classical?  Should you care about what era the music was made?  I ask because it would be very easy for me to list the ten best albums from each decade beginning with the fifties and ending with our current decade.  So by not including something from all five decades, would you or I be ignoring great works because they are too old or too new?

Those were all difficult issues for me to resolve.  My wife said I was overthinking it.  She suggested I just go through my albums and pick my ten favorites.   Okay… but that’s a huge stack to sort through.  It would take me a whole lot longer to that than it’s taking me to write this.

So in the end what I came up with is what’s probably obvious to people who don’t dwell on these types of decisions like I do.  I started thinking of the albums that I never tire of hearing and that I listen to quite often.

Here’s the list is in alphabetical order because it’s impossible to rank them numerically:

Hector Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique/Tristia, Cleveland Orchestra, Pierre Boulez (1997)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Let Love In (1994)

Mile Davis – Kind of Blue (1959)

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Alejandro Escovedo – Gravity (1992)

P.J. Harvey – To Bring You My Love (1995)

Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)

Patti Smith – Horses (1975)

Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Neil Young – Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

That’s ten.  It wasn’t easy because my first draft was twice as long, so I’ve left off at least ten more really great albums that deserve to be on this list.

What albums are on your list of the Top Ten Greatest Albums of All Time?  I want to know!  Please click on “Comments” below this post heading and tell me.