Top 102 Albums. No 54. Black Monk Time.

Top 102 Albums. No 54. 
Black Monk Time. The Monks.

"Let's go, it's beat time, it's hop time, it's monk time now!
You know we don't like the army.
What army?
Who cares what army?
Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?
Mad Viet Cong.
My brother died in Vietnam!"

I came to The Monks as a result of  Black Monk Theme on The Fall's Extricate. Gradually, information on the originators of this track became available and I became more rather than less intrigued. Five G.I.'s dressed as monk's complete with tonsures playing the same beat clubs in Germany that the Beatles had but arriving at a very different destination. The Monks spewed invective at a world they had no belief in. The name, the tonsures and the music seem all to reverberate with a profound sense of dislocation. The lyrics at times sound like random voices from the terraces, observing rather than participating. But then there will be a howl of pain that puts the singer smack in the middle of it all, trying to find a foothold. And then his passion will be undercut again - "Hey, well, I hate you with a passion baby, yeah I do!
(But call me!)"

Top 102 Albums. No 55. George Best.

Top 102 Albums. No 55. 
George Best - The Wedding Present.

"I thought we said all the things we had to say"

Today's choice is inspired by the choice of a later Wedding Present album over at Cathedrals of Sound. I did a little listening and then listened to the albums that followed this, Bizarro and Seamonsters, both of which have their supporters in the title race for best Wedding Present album. Maturity, a less 'tinny' sound, more variety....

Top 102 Albums. No 56. Loveless

Top 102 Albums. No 56.
Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

With the excitement surrounding the eventual release of another My Bloody Valentine album a mere two centuries after the last one I suppose that it is apt to focus on their previous, sophomore album which only took two decades to record while bankrupting Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and tipping the world's economy into a recession from which it may never recover.

This is an album that I consume as a single piece of music, or two on vinyl. I often used to leave this on while I was going to sleep. I've always found the washes of sound soothing and dream inspiring. I didn't play it at the ear splitting levels which are apparently obligatory but to make up for this I would stab at my eardrums with knitting needles.

Out

Out - Natsuo Kirino

"It didn't make much difference where the man was from, she thought, there was no cure for the kind of depression that came from working in that factory."

The opening section of this novel builds a picture of four women (Masako, Yoshie, Yayoi and Kuniko) who work side by side on the night shift on an assembly line putting together packaged meals. The work is hard, the hours disruptive of their lives outside. Other things are clearly not right in the lives of the four women and one, Yayoi, has a large bruise on her torso on the night when we are introduced to them. Her beauty, for she is the most beautiful of the women, has not brought her luck. "Her looks were so conspicuous at the factory that a number of women had taken to bullying her, though others were nice to her."

Top 102 Albums. No 57. Babble

 Top 102 Albums. No 57 
Babble - That Petrol Emotion

First there was the rumour that the O'Neill brothers were together again. Then there was Keen, and quite possibly my favourite band name, That Petrol Emotion which paid its respects at one and the same time to improvised devices and incendiary passions. The first time I saw them the tension was generated by a rump of Undertones fans who just kept on calling for Teenage Kicks. But it was clear that this was a very different band to The Undertones, darker, murkier, angrier with Pere Ubu the closest thing to a benchmark. They regularly played Ubu's Non Alignment Pact, a song that would form part of The Knocking Shop's small repetoire of covers*.

Top 102 Albums. No 58. Moanin' the Blues

Top 102 Albums. No 58. 
Moanin' the Blues. Hank Williams

"I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? 
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet 
But I hear him coughing all night long 
A hundred floors above me 
In the Tower of Song"

(Leonard Cohen)

After writing up Dustbowl Ballads I found myself moving on to listening to Hank Williams. They are both foundational artists. I was wondering what to include by him, having come to him through songs rather than albums. I possess a number of compilations but none stands out from the rest. I thought I'd give myself two guiding rules - look for an original album released before his death and look for one that included the spectral, haunting Ramblin' Man, a song that, alongside Son House's John the Revelator, seems to be evidence of a strange, parallel universe.

The Housekeeper & The Professor

The Housekeeper & The Professor - Yoko Ogawa

This is an odd little book. A housekeeper is sent by her agency to work with an ageing mathematics professor who has had an unusually  large number of housekeepers already, represented by the nine blue stars on his chart. When she finds out why this is she wonders how long she will last. "How exactly does a man live with only eighty minutes of memory? I had cared for ailing clients on more than one occasion in the past, but none of that experience would be useful here. I could just picture a tenth blue star on the  Professor's card."

The Professor was a professor of maths and still spends his time solving maths problems, often winning prizes from "the Journal of Mathematics". Maths is a safe place for him, just as it can be a safe place for anyone. The numbers always add up the same way. "Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realised that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort."

Top 102 Albums. No 59. Dustbowl Ballads.

Top 102 Albums. No 59. 
Dustbowl Ballads - Woody Guthrie.

Like many people I first became fully aware of Woody Guthrie through Bob Dylan. But he'd infiltrated my mind long before that! My Daddy Rides a Ship in the Sky was on a children's compilation by skiffle stalwart Wally Whyton that was one of my real first introductions to music. This was one of my favourite songs and its vision of the links that hold society together resonated to me as a little kid and still does.

"Don't be afraid when it gets dark and rains
My Dad'll bring your daddy back home again"

Top 102 Albums. No 60. Colossal Youth

Top 102 Albums. No 60.
Colossal Youth - Young Marble Giants

There is something tentative and provisional about this album. It can seem at times like a blueprint for something grander, more elaborate but I can't help thinking that this is its greatest strength. It was in the air at the time, everyone seemed to know enough about deconstruction to namedrop Jacques Derrida when too drunk to remember they didn't understand it. So here we have some of the pieces of popular music, put together with sticky tape,  paper clips and precision.

Aghwee the Sky Monster

Aghwee the Sky Monster - Kenzaburo Ōe

We open this story once again with a narrator who has had violence perpetrated against him in the past. The narrator has almost lost the sight in one of his eyes. "Ten years ago I had twenty-twenty vision. Now one of my eyes is ruined. Time* shifted, launched itself from the springboard of an eyeball squashed by a stone. When I first met that sentimental madman I had only a child's understanding of time. I was yet to have the cruel awareness of time drilling its eyes into my back and time lying in wait ahead." (*'time' is in italics in original text)

It turns out that this almost sightless second eye causes him to see, when not wearing a patch "a vague and shadowy world on top of one that's bright and vivid".

Top 102 Albums. No 61. Go 2

Top 102 Albums. No 61. 
Go 2 - XTC

When I think of XTC it is usually one of their many fine singles that comes to mind. Making Plans for Nigel and Senses Working Overtime are peerless moments of pop brilliance. However the album I listen to most doesn't have any of their singles on it. Nor is it one of their albums from the period after they had passed their commercial peak. It is, in fact, their difficult second album. It is a pulsing grim meditative album full of bubbling frustration and self-hatred, Go 2 - my favourite XTC album,  remembered now more for it's Hipgnosis cover (click on the image to bring up a larger version) than for the music within.

Top 102 Albums. No 62. New Day Rising

Top 102 Albums. No 62. 
New Day Rising - Hüsker Dü

As I continue to post on my favourite albums I find that I am uncoupling any pretence of objectivity or order. These are 102 of my favourite albums. I could list another 102 easily and then do the same again. And if I spent enough time I'm sure that I could come up with a new great album every day. Music is abundant but time is firmly rationed.

This is one of the albums which I listened to most back in the eighties and one that still gets pulled out now. The thrill of the wash of guitars; the stuttering, piledriving drumming and the pop nous of the melodies on offer is still potent.

Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness

Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness - Kenzaburo Ōe

This is the title story in this collection and it deals with the relationship between a father and his son, who has a brain defect. It opens, almost dramatically, with the father almost thrown to a polar bear, an experience which, we are told, led to him being "released from the fetters of an old obsession."

The father, who is known as "the fat man" throughout, has focussed all his energy on caring for his son. It is as if the birth of his son had created a new version of him. The doctor tells him  "Even if we operate I'm afraid the infant will either die or be an idiot, one or the other." "That instant, something inside the fat man irreparably broke. And the baby who was either to die or be an idiot quickly elbowed out the breakage, as cancer destroys and then replaces normal cells." 

Top 102 Albums. No 63. I Am the Greatest.

Top 102 Albums. No 63. 
I Am the Greatest. A House

When your first single is called Kick Me Again Jesus, you become a hostage to fate. Anyway, Jesus must have worn out the toes of his Doc Martens doing just what Mr Couse asked him to. But with the release of I am the Greatest it appeared that this divine assault and battery had merely goaded A House into the greatest resurrection since Jesus' own.

Top 102 Albums. No 64. The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy

Top 102 Albums. No 64.
The Chocolate Biscuit Conspiracy - The Golden Horde & Robert Anton Wilson

Some music is so closely bundled with the time you heard it that the experience of listening and remembering is inseperable. This is one of the reasons why a list like this becomes personal. I remember watching the original incarnation of the Horde, sitting amoung cider cans in park beside St Patricks Cathedral in Dublin; going to afternoon gigs in McGonagles; the Trinity Ball. The band had go-go dancers onstage, laughed and jumped and played with the idea of being a rock 'n' roll band.

Taster for the new/old Wire album.

Wire in 1977, 35 years ago!

Taster for the new/old Wire album.
Wire have retooled songs, many just sketches from the period after 154 which can be heard on Document and Eyewitness.

The new album, called Change Becomes Us hits the shelves in March. Here's a taster.

Prize Stock

Prize Stock -  - Kenzaburo Ōe
(from Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness, a collection of "Four Short Novels by Kenzaburo Ōe".)

The second story in this collection, Prize Stock, is shorter than the first, only sixty pages long. It is narrated by a young boy, or should I say his older self, remembering. It is set in a small village in the woods, somewhat isolated from the nearest town. An american bomber crashes in the woods and the villagers capture the survivor, something that causes great excitement amoung the village children.
""He's black, you see that! I thought he would be all along." Harelip's voice trembled with excitement. "He's a real black man, you see.""

Top 102 Albums. No 65. Hot Buttered Soul

Top 102 Albums. No 65.
Hot Buttered Soul - Isaac Hayes

My No 67 included Isaac Hayes on piano. Today I thought I'd give the man his own slot. A while back Trevor at Hissyfit (also choosing his top albums) included the collaboration between Richard Harris and Jimmy Webb, an extravagant confection, often left out in the rain. It made me think of this album which includes an 18 minute version of Webb's By The Time I Get To Phoenix. Even the spoken intro is around eight minutes long. I can see how scientology looked a pretty sane proposition to the man who made this...

Top 102 Albums. No 66. Otis Blue

Top 102 Albums. No 66.
Otis Blue - Otis Redding

Famously recorded in 24 hours this is possibly the fastest recorded classic album apart from live concerts. No surprise that Redding's live recordings are amoung the very best. This is pretty much the dream team, the MG's with Isaac Hayes replacing Booker T, the Mar-Keys, The Memphis Horns and engineering genius Tom Dowd helping out on the desk.

The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away

The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away - Kenzaburo Ōe
(from Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness, a collection of "Four Short Novels by Kenzaburo Ōe".)

"partly I was afraid that, eaten in a valley surrounded by a forest, and early in the morning besides, the smell of a thing like that would draw down upon us all those ghostly creatures that had dwelled for years in the forest's depths."

This is the first, and longest, of the four 'short novels' that make up this volume of Ōe. Even from this one short novel it's easy to see why Kenzaburo Ōe won the Nobel Prize. The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away is an emotionally powerful excavation of the tensions at play between the members of a Japanese family in the aftermath of WW2.

The narrator lies dying (or maybe not) from liver cancer in hospital, dictating his story to a a person known as the "acting executor of the will" who comments from time to time on the details of the story or of the narrator's current situation. The author also refers to his father as 'a certain party' throughout. These abstractions seem to indicate that the characters they refer to may be read in many ways.