Look at that! I jumped to WordPress because Blogger’s days have got to be numbered, right? Google can’t have put five bucks into a product that has barely evolved since I started writing in 2005—fear not, though, for Biff! Bang! Pow! isn’t going anywhere, at least not by my hand, since I refuse to deal with that re-linking bullshit again. And my links are fucked right now. Surely, Charles, we still made a sound decision, even if we’ve retconned our beginnings to that bout of mass constipation and excised a few instances of quick sizzle along the way.

In return I relinquish some control, in the manner of switching from an Android to an iPhone. (Inversely, I gifted my iPad to G. at Christmas and upgraded myself to a Samsung, thank you very much. My custom everything is no Steve Jobs Big Brother target at which to toss a sledgehammer—leave that to Apple’s defined, unyielding user experience.) My limited HTML skills can only take me so far as I try desperately to work around WordPress’s confounding “blocks,” though I’m digging this Oswald headline font even as I question the taste level of whoever named it.

Indeed, 2020 is a year of change. Blogger to WordPress, Tom Brady to Jarrett Stidham, Donald Trump to—really?—Joe Biden? How I covet a forty-sixth president for my forty-sixth birthday instead of this small-minded, arrogant fool. Let’s hope Old Joe chooses a strong running mate. Let’s hope we last so long.

Brady, though, Brady is the big one, assuming again that we last so long to witness another season of beer and football. It has yet to sink in—it’s not like I’d ever run into him at my local coffee shop or one of the town’s two breweries—but we also, due to Trump’s seasonal flu, never got to see an official press conference, uniform reveal or other ceremony welcoming Brady to Tampa. (Fucking Tampa. Of course.) It’s gone only so far as webcams, Twitter posts and a Howard Stern interview that was as boring and non-revelatory as every Boston interview he ever gave. I’ll miss that motherfucker and this team will be lucky to win seven games without him, regardless of how well Stidham will eventually be. Maybe it’s all a prank? Drag.

(One more change: I’m probably done sharing pictures of G. She’s at an age when it might get weird, as if it hadn’t already with those of her sleeping. Besides, since we’re responsibly homebound most of the time, they’d end up looking pretty much the same anyway, given the coziness of our house and yard. Sorry, internet. What’s her take, though, when faced with a Brady-less future? “I don’t know. I still like the Patriots.” She’s the best.)

How about the way I grouped tracks by common themes last year? Nice. That kept the word count and the billable hours down. Efficiency and consideration, folks—let’s keep it going. Now put on your goddamn masks.

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1. Stooges – Ann
Diamond Head’s “Amy I Evil?” is one of the songs I (sort of) learned to play on guitar in the last year. Its introduction borrows heavily from Gustav Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War” and so does the coda to “Ann,” itself an interpolation of a longer album outtake called either “The Dance of Romance” or “Dance of the Romance,” depending on your source. Bum… bum-bum-bum-bum… bum-bum-bum-bum… bum-bum-bum-boom-boom-boom-bam-bam-bam-bum… etc. for almost five minutes! And when Ron kicks on the wah-wah peddle? Hot flames of fire! Alas I choose the proper “Ann” and its single Hoslt minute to keep this under three and a half hours. I decided against “Am I Evil?” not because I’ll never, ever come close to nailing the “legato shred-fest” solo but because I don’t love the vocals. I’ll take Iggy’s bored growls any day, and besides, I think I can learn most of The Stooges and its—what, three?—basic chords.

2. Honey Drippers – Impeach the President
This isn’t a political statement, per se—we’re less than six months from ditching the asshole by other means, if you believe the polls, which I don’t—so much as a coincidental highlight from AMC’s thirty-three-percent good series Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America. The good two-sixths focused on stories surrounding Run-DMC’s “Rock Box” and MC Shan’s “The Bridge” and dove into the history of New York City street music, from block parties to radio DJs to crate diving. On this last point, Questlove hammered the importance of “Impeach the President,” which (according to Wikipedia) has been “sampled hundreds of times since the mid nineteen eighties.” It goes on: “The hi-hat is lifted on the sixth note of the drum pattern, similar to ‘Hihache’ by Lafayette Afro-Rock Band which does so on the eighth.” “Hihache” by Lafayette Afro-Rock Band? Do I know that one? Anyway, I didn’t watch the presumed lousy remaining four-sixths of the program because no one will give a shit about Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks,” Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” OutKast’s “Elevators” or Queen Latifah’s box-checking “Ladies First” over time. I’m admittedly not Lamar’s target audience but that song was only four years old when the show aired and we’re to believe it’s as significant as anything by Run-DMC, MC Shan or Boogie Down Productions? While Public Enemy doesn’t get its own episode? Gimme a break.

3. The Driving Stupid – Hide the Lobsters (Demo)
“Watch out! The postman is coming! He’s going to come in our house now! He’s going to put his mail on all of the furniture!” This batshit 1966 demo—recorded “as more of a lark than a serious endeavor” (no kidding) and somehow not called “Here Comes the Postman”—is a paranoid coronavirus fever dream come to life, especially if you forget to quarantine your mail for a couple of days. “Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail-mail-mail-mail! Mail-mail-mail-mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail! Mail!”

4. The Fall – Hip Priest ✔️
Are we sure this isn’t beer-and-football? “He [i.e., Brady] is not appreciated.” “Drink the long draft, Dan.” Mark E. Smith with his finger on the pulse and holding no grudge after missing the cut last year. He is forever a true gentleman.

5. Thee Oh Sees – Contraption/Soul Desert ✔️
This is the payoff from John Dwyer’s removal of “Thee” from his band’s name. “Thee Oh Sees”? “Thee Oh Sees”? They’re two different bands! More or less. The half-Can “Contraption/Soul Desert,” or anything else from 2011’s Carrion Crawler/The Dream, will no longer be stifled by the annual inclusion of John’s “new” band of Oh Sees. To be continued.

6. Mudhoney – When Tomorrow Hits ✔️
Mark Arm: “We said it would, and it has.” Steve Turner: “And it will continue to do so.”

7. Black Flag – TV Party ✔️
That’s Incredible! Hill Street Blues! Dallas! Fridays! Saturday Night Live! Monday Night Football! The Jeffersons! Vega$! All pre-2019 Biffys®—“Creamies”?… yuck… Creamys®—are now accounted for: Hex Enduction Hour (1983), Carrion Crawler/The Dream (2011), Mudhoney (1989) and Damaged (1981), respectively. See you later to close the 2019 loop, just don’t expect me to redo last year’s math.

8. Mary Timony – On the Floor
“We’ll pass out on the couch… alright!” You guys are still here?

9. Six Finger Satellite – Do the Suicide
Expect a deeper podcast dive about an hour from now, but I’ll tease it by proclaiming the best episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Uncover season about the Satanic panic to be borrowed from the entirely different podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz. “Hidden Messages, Backmasking and the Satanic Panic” was a fascinating examination of the technological gymnastics required to actually record something backwards and the mental transgression necessary for someone to interpret it. Good stuff, even if Six Finger Satellite settled on overt commands (following what I think is a Neu! sample) of “Suicide, do it now!” eight times over two verses, with no other lyrics to confuse the matter. That’s why they’re the best, and that’s why all of their LPs (and more) are represented among the annual playlist blather. Anyway, Uncover’s seven proprietary episodes were boring and pointless, treated as a serious cold-case investigation deserving of a big reveal when we’ve known for years that it was all a fear-mongering hoax. Oh, Canada. Stuff You Should Know surprised nobody by making it an interesting subject, handling a ridiculous right-wing culture with their usual humor and brevity. USA! USA!

10. Temptations – 1990
“This is supposed to be America!” I regret to inform Norman Whitfield and the Temptations that this kind of shit is still happening in 2020.

11. Stonewall – Outer Spaced
Here’s what I think happened. Stonewall, in an effort to ease my transition from Blogger to WordPress, traveled forward in time from the mid seventies to May 25, 2016 to study future music trends. Stumbling upon a copy of From Out the Space to Yours, the band was suitably impressed and returned to their own time—the year of my birth—to record “Outer Spaced” as the Next Big Thing. Lo, these many years later, I legitimize their honorable quest and douse it in heavy cream.

12. Unwound – Nervous Energy
13. Donovan – Get Thy Bearings
Jesus Christ, can we start with the track-grouping already? Let’s see… we’re all stuck indoors, stir crazy, we don’t know what to do with ourselves. But if we take a step back to look at the big picture of maintaining a strong and healthy community while at the same time caring for the ones we love, then we’ll make it through this OK. Or, you know, go to the goddamn beach with a bunch of other assholes.

14. Steppenwolf – The Ostrich
It’s all here. Fifty-two years later, it’s all here. All of it.

15. James Brown – Goodbye My Love
“Goodbye My Love was a South Korean television drama series that aired with sixteen episodes in 1999.” Are we sure we clicked on the right one? “Ahn Jae-wook stars as Min-soo, an aspiring businessman who once saved the life of his friend Gi-tae (Jung Joon-ho). Afterwards, Gi-tae’s wealthy father hires Min-soo to keep Gi-tae out of trouble. But then Min-soo meets Yeon-joo (Kim Hee-sun), a factory worker with financial problems.” Yeah, this is definitely not the right one.

16. Crime – Murder by Guitar
17. Halo Benders – Bombshelter (Part 2)
How to avoid death by guitar or other means—e.g., machine gun—in the theater of war: “I’m not gonna suggest you shouldn’t register for the draft. That wouldn’t be legal. But why not take a cue from my buddy Sam and register ten times? Fifty times? A hundred times? Ain’t no law agin it! Just let them know what’s on your mind.”

18. Billy Nicholls – Girl From New York
“[Andrew Loog] Oldham wanted this to be the British Pet Sounds but financial difficulties with the label caused it to be shelved before it ever hit the streets.” I don’t understand how it wasn’t given a chance, not only because of the consistent strength of the material but also for who was involved in making it: all four Small Faces in Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones; future Humble Pie-er (alongside Marriott) Jerry Shirley; session superstars Big Jim Sullivan, Nicky Hopkins, Caleb Quaye and thee John Paul Jones; and person I’ve never heard of Joe Moretti. I don’t necessarily know who plays lead on “Girl From New York” but I’m hoping it’s Moretti because this guitar slays.

19. Little Richard – Ooh! My Soul
As with Chris Cornell, I won’t let an artificial April 30 deadline get in the way of paying tribute to an important artist. I heard a lot of Little Richard on oldies radio growing up but it took the appearance of 1956’s “Long Tall Sally” in Predator—both in its canonical form and as later performed by Mac moments before his head exploded all over the camera lens—to make me really take notice. Years later, his 1970 single “Freedom Blues” was in heavy rotation every Sunday on Little Steven’s Underground Garage, cementing the man as a real deal behind some of my favorite music. Exhibit A: that “Rhythm Writers” pencil set I designed at Mass Art.

Tagline
“Commemorate our American rock luminaries in your own words.”

Packaging copy, heavily editorialized
“Whether you’re struggling through an SAT or looking for an ear accessory, you should never be away from the rock & roll that keeps you going. That’s what Rhythm Writers are here for. Relive the eras that make the USA the kings of rock, writing along with your favorite stars:

• Muddy Waters
• Chuck Berry
• Elvis Presley
• Bo Diddley
• Little Richard
• Bob Dylan
• The Sonics
• Jimi Hendrix
• The Velvet Underground
• Blue Cheer
• The Stooges
• The Ramones

“What are you waiting for? Crank it up and write!”

That list is beautiful—only in an art-school project could I have gotten away with slotting Blue Cheer ahead of Jefferson Airplane. And there’s our man Little Richard between Bo Diddley and Bob Dylan—now that’s a sandwich, even if the overall chronology isn’t perfect. Each pencil had its own imprinted legend as well, and his reads “Little Richard and his eight consecutive smash hits in the mid to late fifties ensured that his boogie would shape the future of rock & roll.” Hmm, that could use some work. I’m still proud of it. And I’d still buy it for my daughter. RIP.

20. Buzzcocks – Fast Cars
21. Skin Yard – Slow Runner
Man, it feels good nowadays to go anywhere by any method of travel.

22. Cream – Pressed Rat and Warthog
With Ginger Baker’s passing a few months ago and Jack Bruce’s in 2014, the last man standing from the fantastic Cream is its least talented, most temperamental member. I’m sure he envies Baker and Bruce or otherwise resents these circumstances so long as it’s fashionable to do so.

23. Tangerine Dream – Ultima Thule (Teil 2)
The B-side continuation of “Ultima Thule” (translation: “What If It’s Just Green Sausage”) offers another podcast warm-up: the BBC’s Thirteen Minutes to the Moon was an A+ all over if you take away the slow-motion narration (not nearly as bad as in the intolerable The Teacher’s Pet) and Hans Zimmer’s time-wasting and melodramatic score. Chappaquiddick? Moon landing? Woodstock? “Go!” Bryan Adams picked the right summer to sing about.

24. Ty Segall – Taste ✔️
It was a close call between Segall’s First Taste and Thee Oh Sees’ Face Stabber but the latter three-peating would call the whole effort into question, as if my limited interest in and/or exposure to contemporary artists isn’t evident enough every January. Segall was due for a break anyway after a, what, two-year dry spell? Sad. My name is Jarrod P. Halfenhalf and I am a tired old woman.

⚪

2019

Ty Segall – First Taste

25. Portishead – The Rip
I swear “The Rip” was used in a recent car commercial but I’m finding no trace of this whatsoever. (Not the first time, either. I also swear there was one of Little Richard—in a bowling alley?—proclaiming “Who do you think taught Paul McCartney how to go ‘Woooo!’”) Instead, all I get is something for “Gucci Bloom” that I had never seen until Google insisted there were no secondary results for “portishead the rip car commercial.” Fine. But what the hell is happening here? Let’s take a motorik beat perfectly suited for highway driving and drop it behind some Instagram hotties picking flowers and swimming and lounging around and probably (in a limited aural/visual medium) smelling vaguely pleasant throughout. Advertising is the biggest racket—just ask WordPress.

26. King Crimson – 21^st Century Schizoid Man/Mirrors
27. The Freeze – I Hate Tourists
28. Dr. Octagon – Blue Flowers
29. Royal Trux – Under Ice
30. Moby Grape – Seeing
Let me direct you to the following podcast episodes, complete with single-sentence reviews:

Sound Opinions, February 7, 2020
Jim and Greg present a career retrospective of King Crimson, a band that is somehow not from Chicago and was not a highlight of their trip to South by Southwest and did not market twee demos recorded in their bedrooms and did not produce any tracks for Kendrick Lamar.

Lost Notes, April 25, 2019
Lost Notes, as always (and despite a pearl-clutching host), does a great job capturing a moment in time and exploring how the members of an early-eighties punk band feel today about singing “It’s only their daughters I wanna fuck.”

Stuff You Should Know, February 25, 2020
Did you know the color blue does not appear in nature?

Kreative Kontrol, March 6, 2019
Jennifer Herrema tolerates Vish Khanna’s tendencies toward yellow journalism and discusses her fascinating career, including the difficulties surrounding Royal Trux’s “reunion” album White Stuff.

Let It Roll, July 9–30, 2018
Lastly, in two parts, my man Nate Wilcox (the only worthwhile voice in the entire Pantheon network) welcomes author Cam Cobb for an insightful you-are-there discussion of the clusterfuck that was Moby Grape’s career.

31. John Mayall – The Laws Must Change (Live)
32. Melanie – Birthday of the Sun (Live)
Here’s another live set after last year’s rave reviews. Melanie (Safka) might be “the First Lady of Woodstock” but Nansi Nevins was the first lady of Woodstock.

33. Silver Metre – Cocklewood Monster
I’m not Googling whatever a “cocklewood” is, especially given how my playlists are dominated by men. Shameful. One word I certainly don’t need to Google is “monster.” I’m a monster.

34. Harry Nilsson – Ten Little Indians
35. The Jesus Lizard – Queen for a Day
36. Nico – Chelsea Girls
37. Pissed Jeans – She Is Science Fiction
38. Yesterday’s Children – Sailing
More single-sentence reviews, this time about some of the fine literature chronicled for the Ladies:

Agatha Christie, Ten Little _______, a.k.a. And Then There Were None
I loved this wisely retitled—what was Christie thinking?—take on the famous “children’s counting-out rhyme”/“colonial nostalgia” and, since the ending was never spoiled for me, it kept me guessing throughout.

The Jesus Lizard, Book
They sure hate Down more than ever.

Legs McNeil/Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
I love the ironic use of “oral history” in the novel’s title, given the wealth of blatantly dreamt-up characters around which this supposed study of proto-punk- and punk-era New York City is centered.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments
(Two sentences for two books.) Atwood’s insistence on a difference between “speculative fiction” and “science fiction” is beside the point as her metafictional symposium mars an otherwise perfect The Handmaid’s Tale. The Testaments, though, didn’t suffer because it was already mediocre. (Third podcast-related sentence: Nerdette’s insightful, hilarious and vulgar four fall episodes about these books are the epitome of entertainment.)

Ryan H. Walsh, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
It’s in the stack and I haven’t gotten to it yet but my theory that a young “Cambridge-based” Yesterday’s Children would be mentioned will probably be disproved after I just read on Wikipedia that the band is actually from Cheshire, Connecticut.

39. Thee Oh Sees – Fu Xi
Welcome back! As I was saying, “Thee Oh Sees” and “Thee Oh Sees” are two different bands. Oh, see? Har! Har! 2011 Biffy® Carrion Crawler/The Dream features main man Dwyer on vocals/guitar plus Brigid Dawson on keyboards/backing vocals, Petey Dammit on bass and Lars Finberg and Mike Shoun on drums. Last year’s Face Stabber, a near miss against Segall’s First Taste, features Dwyer on a whole bunch of shit, Tim Hellman on bass, Tomas Dolas on keyboards, Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone on drums, all of them on percussion and a returning Dawson on “additional vocals.” Different names, different side players, different bands. Let’s never speak of this again.

40. Misfits – Bullet
I am secretly an important man. Bob Dylan’s exceptionally wonderful and beautiful “Murder Most Foul” gets all the (deserved) love for its sudden appearance—a gift in these trying times as a demonstration of art easing pain—and its seventeen minutes. The song is its own thing and has no place on a compilation, no matter how traditionally steeped in good taste mine might be. In its stead I substitute a different band from a different time covering the same subject without the quarter-hour obligation, unless you count time spent wringing your hands over “bullet-ridden body” this and “slurp it from your palm” that. It can’t all be “Desolation Row.”

41. K-Solo – Real Solo Please Stand Up
G., out of nowhere, expressed interest in watching Star Wars last week. Huzzah! What a father I’ve become, even if I did fail to act before her after-school program showed ET to the kids. That should have been mine. Star Wars, though, there’s a pickle. Ignoring the prequels is obvious but are the special editions of the original trilogy what I really want her to see, what with Han shooting first (or—“Maclunkey”—simultaneously) and Anakin Skywalker’s force-ghost reverting from redeemed old age to a younger (by, like, twenty-five hard years), already corrupted self? No. Alas, my 1995-edition VHS set is useless without a VCR. Useless! Noooooo! Enter “Harmy’s Despecialized Edition.” From where? Who knows! In what format? Beats me! Needless to say, the original original Star Wars, minus even the EPISODE IV header atop the crawl, now joins ET (drag) as G’s two favorite movies. I’m guessing she’ll like the despecialized The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi even more. Sorry, George, but retconning is the second-biggest racket. You should have given the people what they continue to want. (Alternatives to the spot-on “Real Solo Please Stand Up” are Antibalas’s equally spot-on “Out With the New, in With the True,” Boogie Down Productions’ “Original Lyrics,” Bratmobile’s “The Real Janelle,” Troy Dodds’s “The Real Thing,” Hawkwind’s “Seeing It As You Really Are,” Ice Cube’s “True to the Game,” Ice-T’s “OG Original Gangster,” the Jungle Brothers’ “Acknowledge Your Own History,” Kool Keith’s “Dark Vadar” (already covered), Russell Morris’s “The Real Thing” (also covered), Nas’s “Star Wars” (you guessed it!), Public Enemy’s “Say It Like It Really Is,” Sebadoh’s “True Hardcore,” Shellac’s “Genuine Lulabelle” or “Didn’t We Deserve a Look at You the Way You Really Are” and, without incriminating myself, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bootleg.”)

42. Flaming Lips – Always There, in Our Hearts
43. Elephant’s Memory – Super Heep
The bean taco is my friend. Always there, in our farts.

44. Paul Revere & the Raiders – Just Seventeen
“In an effort to change the band’s sound and image, the name was officially shortened to the Raiders while the 1970 album Collage was an attempt to move in another musical direction.” Gary Puckett & the Union Gap might be held in higher, less pervy regard had they simply added “And that’s a crime” to any of “their six interchangeable top-twenty hits about deflowering virgins.”

45. Areski–Fontaine – C’est Normal
“In 1969, [Brigitte Fontaine] began what would be a long collaboration with Kabyle musician Areski Belkacem. With Belkacem and in the company of Higelin, she conceived Niok, an innovative spectacle of theatre and song.” Some of these have to be nonsense words, right? “C’est Normal,” though, is an easy translation: “It’s Nor-mal.”

46. Halo of Flies – Headburn
I guess it’s too late for a block with the Halo Benders because this running order is set. Calvin Johnson (K) and Tom Hazelmyer (Amphetamine Reptile) founded and ran their own record labels as well. I could even throw in Kurt Vile’s “Smoke Ring for My Halo,” eat some Halo oranges and take up playing Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, Halo: Spartan Assault, Halo: Spartan Strike, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2, Halo Recruit, Halo: Fireteam Raven and Halo: Infinite. Lost opportunities, man. I’m leaving money on the table.

47. Herbie Hancock – Chameleon
If I’d chosen some standard three-minute pop in place of this Head Hunters workout then here’d we’d be, already finished and once again hitting the three-and-a-quarter-hour mark on the nose. Instead it’s three hours and twenty-seven minutes. I thumb my nose at myself.

48. Makers – Too Many Fuckers (on the Streets)
It’s true. There are too many fuckers on the streets, or “in” the streets if it’s easier to turn an “i” into a “1” for your typography exercise/album cover. Meanwhile, the Black Keys’ Brothers has sic’d its lawyers after me. Tighten up!

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With sincere gratitude to Black Flag and the Fall: we’ve got one song from the fifties; fourteen from the sixties (five from ’68, six from ’69); twelve from the seventies (three from ’70, four from ’73); five from the eighties (a new record!); seven from the nineties; four from the aughts; five from the now-complete teens (three from ’19); and not a goddamn thing from 2020. Bless you, daughter. We’ll still go for Red Robin chicken even if training camp is canceled.

More furious madness
Volume 0 | Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3 | Volume 4 | Volume 5 | Volume 6 | Volume 7 | Volume 8 | Volume 9 | Volume 10 | Volume 11