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Today’s email from NPR included a link to this blog post asking readers to submit their choice for best opening track of an album.  I can think of a few.  My number one choice is:

“Gloria” on Patti Smith’s debut album Horses. Not only is that song the best opening track, it also has the best opening line.  The very first words you hear on the very first album by Patti Smith are, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.”  With that line and that song on that album with one of the greatest covers ever, she became an iconic rock ‘n roll figure that has inspired thousands of young punks and poets to express themselves through music.

Number two would be “Like a Rolling Stone” from Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited.

Number three is “London Calling” from the Clash album of the same name.

What are your favorites?  Leave a comment here and/or go to the NPR page and submit your choice before they close it down.

It’s New Year’s Eve and KEXP is just about ready to star their countdown of the best albums of 2009.  I’ll be listening and commenting on that later but, for now, here’s what you need to know.

The Top 10 Albums of 2009

1. Rising Mountains – Capsula:  I first heard Capsula on KEXP on July 3rd and I was immediately hooked.  They are the most exciting band I’ve heard since discovering The Duke Spirit three years ago.  The band is originally from Buenes Aires, Argentina and they relocated to Bilbao, Spain.  They are a guitar driven, hard rocking band that knows how to write songs with catchy lyrics and great hooks.  The album is currently available as an import only.  You can get it at Amazon.  I suggest you go there now and buy it.  They will be coming to the U.S. in March for a show in NYC and then will be in Austin for SXSW.  See them if you can.  More about them here.

2. Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever – Scott H. Biram:  Gorby turned me on to this guy by giving me an earlier album to listen to.  In May, I went to Austin with Gorby and Zippy, and we saw Scott live at The Continental Club.  GREAT one-man show.  I bought the album shortly after that, and I’ve been listening to it constantly.  Junkyard blues just don’t get any better than this.  Scott Biram will be in Seattle at the Tractor Tavern on Friday, February 12th.  See you there.

3. Truelove’s Gutter – Richard Hawley:  I read a review of this album in MOJO magazine, and immediately went out and bought it.  It is by far the most sonically interesting album of 2009.  He uses some really rare instruments:  the glass harmonica (based on the haunting tone you get when rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass – a.k.a. the hydrocrystalphone invented by Benjamin Franklin), the waterphone, the cristal Baschet, the ondes Martenot(kind of like a theremin), and a musical saw.  The key track on this album is “Remorse Code.”  Can’t stop listening to it. 

4. One Fast Move or I’m Gone, Kerouac’s Big Sur – Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard:  I am a huge fan of Jack Kerouac, so I bought this they day it came out.  The cd is the soundtrack to a movie about Kerouac’s journey back to California to get some down time at Ferlinghetti’s seaside cabin.  The film is excellent.  It features readings of Big Sur by the man himself.  Kerouac’s voice is intoxicating.  I could listen to it for hours.  Oh, and the music by Farrar and Gibbard is stripped down and soulful.  I recommend “California Zephyr” and The “Void.”  They will be performing at The Showbox in Seattle on Sunday, January 24th.

5. Wilco (the album) – Wilco:  The guitar work by Nels Cline on this record is incredible.  The songs are great.  Tweedy sounds great.  What more can you ask for from a Wilco album?

6. I and Love and You – The Avett Brothers:  This is a beautiful sounding album produced by Rick Rubin who fleshed out the trio of banjoists and drummer with piano and sometimes lush orchestration.  The title track and “Tin Man” are my favorites. 

7. Broken – Soulsavers:  This is Mark Lanegan at his best.  A dark brooding album that matches his voice perfectly.  He gets excellent vocal support from Rosa Agostino (a.k.a. Red Ghost), and Richard Hawley makes an appearance too.

8. Welcome Joy – The Cave Singers:  I heard of this band, but never really knew what they were about until I saw them at Bumbershoot.  It’s real rootsy stuff with catchy lyrics and great vocals.  “At the Cut” and “Leap” are my favorites.

9. The Spirit of Apollo – N.A.S.A.:  That stands for North America South America.  It’s a duo that pulled together a whole lot of artists to sing vocals on twenty-some songs.  Who?  David Byrne, Chuck D, Tom Waits, Kool Keith, Kanye West, Mia, Del the Funky Homosapien, and more.  The first song I heard was “Spacious Thoughts” featuring Tom Waits and Kool Keith.  You just have to hear it.  The two with David Byrne, “The People Tree” and “Money” are really great.

10. A Woman A Man Walked By – P.J. Harvey & John Parish:  The album starts out with one of my favorite songs of the year, “Black Hearted Love,” a pop song, and then it veers off in all different directions.  Thanks to “That Irsih Fella on my block, I got to see P.J. and John put on a great show at The Moore Theater this year.  P.J. was in perfect form, and John and the band were tight.  They are PROFESSIONALS!

The Top Teen Albums of 2009

11. Tell ‘em What Your Name Is - Black Joe Lewis and the Honeydrippers:  My Austin pals told me about this band last year.  Black Joe Lewis has a huge fan base in Austin, and I was lucky to see the band at a sold out show there in May.  I love the fun energy in this album.  “Get Yo Shit” and “I’m Broke” are the shit.

12. ¡Let Freedom Ring! – Chuck Prophet
13. Horehound – The Dead Weather
14. Middle Cyclone– Neko Case
15. Together Through Life – Bob Dylan
16. Hombre Lobo – Eels
17. Through the Devil Softly – Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions
18. Secret, Profane, & Sugarcane – Elvis Costello
19. The Eternal– Sonic Youth

and number 20…
Backspacer  – Pearl Jam

This year’s best series of reissues is of course the first four albums by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds out on Mute records:  The First Born is Dead, From Her to Eternity, Kicking Against the Pricks, and Your Funeral, My Trial.  Buy them all and play them loud.

The best live album of the year is Tom Waits’ Glitter and Doom.

From what may be the most sonically intriguing album of 2009, Richard Hawley’s Truelove’s Gutter.

And here’s “Black Hearted Love” from one of my favorite albums of 2009, P.J. Harvey and John Parish’s, A Woman A Man Walked By.

And just for fun, here’s Bob Dylan doing  “Must be Santa,” from Christmas in the Heart.

From Bob’s latest album:

And here’s one of Bob’s favorite artists, Howlin’ Wolf doing “Smokestack Lightning” in 1964.

It’s Friday night and you should be listening to Nick Cave, so here he is doing Johnny Cash’s “The Singer.”

If you’re looking for the big link here, sorry.  No comparison. 

I read an interview with Bob Dylan today in the the August edition of Mojo Magazine.  Bob had many things to say about his career, his songwriting and his “voice” in the songs that he says is always himself.   You can read the whole interview here, but here are a couple of excerpts that I thought were worth passing around.  The first is Bob’s impressions of Obama and how he doesn’t expect too much of him, because most all presidents don’t live up to their expectations:

What in his book would make you think he’d be a good politician?

Well nothing really. In some sense you would think being in the business of politics would be the last thing that this man would want to do.  I think he had a job as an investment banker on Wall Street for a second – selling German bonds.  But he probably could’ve done anything. If you read his book, you’ll know that the political world came to him. It was there to be had.

Do you think he’ll make a good president?

I have no idea. He’ll be the best president he can be. Most of those guys come into office with the best of intentions and leave as beaten men. Johnson would be a good example of that … Nixon, Clinton in a way, Truman, all the rest of them going back.  You know, it’s like they all fly too close to the sun and get burned.

The second one jumped out at me because of the Nazi post last week and because I recently saw Inglourious Basterds, about the American team of Nazi hunters.   (Quentin Tarantino’s best film in years.  Go see it!)

Do you remember images of Hitler from growing up?

No, not growing up. He was dead by the time I was four or five.  I never had a real understanding of that.

Never had an understanding of what?

How you take a failed landscape painter and turn him into a fanatical mad man who controls millions.  That’s some trick.  I mean the powers that created him must have been awesome.

Well, the social and economic conditions of the Weimar Republic were so different than now.

Yeah sure, looking back in hindsight, you can see that someone would have to take control.  But still, it’s so perplexing.  Like why him?  You could see that the man’s a total mutt.  No Aryan characteristics whatsoever.  You couldn’t guess his ancestry. Brown hair, brown eyes, pasty complexion, no particular type of stature, Hitler mustache, raincoat, riding whip, the whole works. He knew something.  He knew that people didn’t think.  Look at the faces of the millions who worshipped him and you see that he inspired love.  It’s scary and sad.  The torch of the spoken word.  They were glad to follow him anywhere, loyal to the bone.  Then of course, he filled up the cemeteries with them.

Like Leonard Pitt said last week, Obama is no Nazi and definitely not a Hitler, so he won’t be exterminating the white race like so many of his deluded detractors want every fool to believe.

Today is National Record Store Day.  This annual event kicked off last year, and it was a huge success. This year it should be even bigger and better.  For more information about the stores involved and the importance of the event, read The Stranger’s article about it.

Last year I wandered into the Ballard Sonic Boom and watched some live music, including the dynamic 10-year old Vinnie Blackshadow who covered Van Halen, Rolling Stones, and KISS. 

Go to Sonic Boom’s website for this year’s lineup which includes Vetiver at 4:00 p.m. 

Dozens of bands have issued special limited releases that go on sale today.  The list is long and includes Dylan, Springsteen, Wilco, Dandy Warhols, Flight of the Conchords, Moondoggies, Pavement, Tom Waits, and Whiskeytown.  Lot’s of 7″ stuff on the list and some special live recordings.

If you are in Queen Anne or West Seattle, be sure to visit Easy Street Records.  The Moondoggies will be performing at the Queen Anne store at 5:00 p.m. 

Silver Platters on Queen Anne has Barton Carroll and the Toadies.

All in all it’s going to be a great day to buy some new music.  And when you ar done, visit other retailers in the area.  Many of them are offering discounts to people who show receipts from the local record stores. 

And remember, Ballard has lots of bars, so it’s going to be a big party.

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)

Miles 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.

That looks like Bob but that’s not Bob.  That’s Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan during the Blonde on Blonde years from the upcoming film I’m Not There.

Other actors playing Bob in this film are:  Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw.  David Cross shows up in the film as Allen Ginsberg.

Each actor plays Bob at some time in his life from his early folk-singer days to his current “never ending tour” days.

To learn more about this film project, go here and here.

Watch the trailer here.

Listen to Bob Dylan’s “Workingman’s Blues #2″ today.

There’s an evening haze settling over town
Starlight by the end of the creek
The buying power of the proletariat’s gone down
Money’s getting’ shallow and weak.

Well the place I love best is a sweet memory
It’s a new path that we trod
They say low wages are reality
If we want to compete abroad.

From his new album, Modern Times.  Great stuff!  Go buy it today.

What to listen to today:  Dave Alvin, or John Doe (in X) or Robert Earl Keen sing Dave Alvin’s “Fourth of July.”

Allen Ginsburg’s reading of “America.”

Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.“

Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.“

Feel free to add to the list with a comment.