CAUTION: EXTREME SOLIPSISM AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CARE.

Rod, when he's not busy avoiding updating his blog or writing binoculars columns or being the coolest motherfucker on the planet, recently unearthed a copy of the first ever Disco Family Plan, the newsletter/poster (11 x 17)/tipsheet that Woody McBride did starting in '91 to help spread the word on house/techno/et al in the Minneapolis area (and, not incidentally, to promote his own events as a DJ and later promoter). DFP was his pseudonym at the time; he later changed it to M.O.R.E. Productions (Minneapolis Organization of Rave Enthusiasts). Woody's a good guy and I've always liked him a lot, though he was fairly annoyed at how my piece on the Halloween '92 rave bust in Milwaukee turned out--he thought it glorified drug use, which wasn't really the idea--and this thing reminds me why. I wish I had a scanner, but in lieu of that, allow me to retype as much as I can, verbatim:

GET DOWN

FOR THE WEEKS 9/26-10/9
DISCO FAMILY PLAN.
MINNEAPOLIS UNDERGROUND MUSIC CHART.

THE ESSENTIAL 20
This list covers a spectrum from House to Techno
1. DOMINATOR - Human Resource on R&S
2. GOD of ABRAHAM - MNO on AM/PM
3. SUCH A FEELING - Bizarre Inc. on VS
4. THE SNOW - Coll on Torso Dance
5. THE RIOT EP - on Underground Resistance
6. ANYTHING YOU LIKE - B1 on SSR
7. EVERYBODY'S FREE - Rozalla
8. DIRECT ME - Reese Project on Network
9. XEROXED - Zero Zero
10. LIFT EVERY VOICE - Mass Order
11. DEEPER - Susan Clark
12. VORTEX - Final Exposure on Plus 8
13. F.U. - F.U.S.E. on Plus 8
14. WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME - Utah Saints
15. EPILEPSIA - Epilepsia on Hit House
16. VAMP (rmx) - Outlander on R&S
17. ARTIFICIAL FANTASY - Meng Syndicate
18. MENTASM (rmx) - Second Phase on R&S
19. TRONIKHOUSE EP - on R&S
20. MEDITATION - Meditation on Beat Box
This List was compiled from the top twenty lists submitted by the contributors below being local DJ's, radio people, & retailers who specialize in dance music. Songs are listed by title, the artist, and then its label, if known. Get down. Get down. Get down.

Week 1 CONTRIBUTORS
Kevin Cole/Depth Probe
Jon Schultz/Saloon
Gregg Wolfe/DJ Dance Shop
Jeremia Wells/DJ Dance Shop
Thomas Spiegel/mobile DJ
Ron Clark/Audiocon
Rod Smith/Northern Lights
John Tasche/WMMR
Craig Thron/Let It Be
Melissa Rasmussen/Girl/Boy Bar
Woody McBride/DFP
Ryan Peck/DFP

THE TOTALLY STOKED MENTAL TRACK OF THE WEEK
- EPILEPSIA BY EPILEPSIA ON HIT HOUSE RECORDS

HOUSE TECHNO TRANCE

SMASH SEXISM
FIGHT RACISM
END QUEER BASHING

FEATURED PLAYLISTS
KEVIN COLE/DEPTH PROBE
1. ZEROXED - Zero Zero
2. ANYTHING YOU LIKE - B1
3. A CASE OF FUNK - Nightmares on Wax
4. EPILEPSIA - Epilepsi
5. THE BURIAL - Sound Clash
6. DOMINATOR - Human Resource
7. ARTIFICIAL FANTASY - Meng Syndicate
8. F.U. - F.U.S.E.
9. THE SNOW - Coil
10. FREE/FAITH - Rozalla

JOHN SCHULTZ/SALOON
1. DIRECT ME - Reese Project
2. DEEPER - Susan Clark
3. EVERYBODY'S FREE - Rozalla
4. THE PROMISE - Subject 13
5. GIVE ME YOUR LOVE - Be Noir
6. THE SNOW - Coil
7. OPEN YOUR HEART - Cybil Jefferies
8. INTOXICATION - Rythem to Rythem
9. SUCH A FEELING - Bizarre Inc.
10. BOOM - The Grid

KAVA SUPREME/BOING! - SALOON
1. DOMINATOR - Human Resource
2. THE DUNGEON - Ibiza
3. TRONIKHOUSE EP
4. DETROIT 909 - KGB
5. DARKNESS - Holy Noise
6. OH SHIT
7. STOPPIN' US - Gypseymen
8. GOD OF ABRAHAM - MNO
9. HYPNOTIZE ME - House to House
10. BULL FROG (rmx) - GTO

DJ MISS MISS/GIRL/BOY BAR
1. UNITY - Unity
2. THE PROMISE - Subject 13
3. DIRECT ME - Reese Project
4. MIDNIGHT - Orbital
5. KEEP ON LOVIN' ME - Soul City Orchestra
6. THE AFTERMATH - Nightmares on Wax
7. WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME - Utah Saints
8. SOMEBODY KNEW - MK
9. V FOR VENDETTA - Fred
10. WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN - Definition of Sound

THOMAS SPIEGEL
1. ODURO - Watanabe
2. AIN'T NO WAY - Cheryl Pepsi Riley
3. LIFT EVERY VOICE - Mass Order
4. LOVE INJECTION - QXI
5. COOL HOUSE EP - Test Pressing
6. STRAIT TRIPPIN - Terrace
7. NO HEARTACHE NO PAIN - Sharvoni
8. COME INTO MY LIFE - Sonia Collins
9. MY BABY - Tony Shannon
10. FREE YOUR MIND - DAC

THE PLAN'S 11 (DJ LIGHT BRIGHT - DJ GROOVE SPOT
1. Epilepsia - Epilepsia on Hit House
2. Riot EP on Underground Resistance
3. Artificial Fantasy - Meng Syndicate on Hit House
4. Dominator - Human Resource on R&S
5. Anything You Like - B1 on SSR
6. Tune - Silver on R&S
7. Lift Every Voice - Mass Order white label
8. Direct Me - Reese Project on Network
9. Tronikhouse Ep on R&S
10. Bull Frog (rmx) - GTO on Beat Box
11. Cataclist Hillbilly - white label YIKES!

The content and format of the DISCO FAMILY PLAN IS [copyright symbol] and is protected by Murphy's Law.

---

[all typos verbatim!]

I can't describe how thrilling it is to have this in my hands. When I got over my (mercifully brief) shock-the-squares phase of pasting my high school locker with Playboy centerfolds (well, they were mine; had a subscription in high school! became a massive fan of Q&A's and the Rockmeter critics--Christgau, Nelson George, Marsh, V. Garbarini & C.M. Young once the novelty of naked women wore off--those naked women, at least), I had a whole gang of DFP newsletters on my locker wall, and I wish I'd kept them. So this (the first DFP, apparently!) is quite a nice gift. Just to imagine a time when "Dominator," UR, Rozalla, "Deeper" (total badass trad-soul-house--and track 14 on FFRR's Only for the Headstrong: The Ultimate Rave Compilation!), F.U.S.E., Utah Saints, Bizarre Inc., et. al., were all considered more or less the same thing . . . mindblowing! But that's how it was back then, and apparently not just if you were a teenager in the suburbs who only heard about this stuff in a kind of thirdhand way--though luckily, I was already going downtown and uptown a lot, buying records and tapes at Northern Lights, listening to and taping Cole's Radio Depth Probe on KJJO-104, during that halcyon-ish year-and-a-half or so that it was a mod-rock station (RDP was on at midnight-2 a.m. Saturday nights). It wasn't until late 1993 and the convergence of, yep, two compilations, Profile's Best of Techno Vol. 3 and Moonshine's Speed Limit 140 BPM Plus 3: The Joint (STILL easily in my top 10 of that year), that I even noticed there was any kind of difference between the techno that used breakbeats and the techno that used four-to-the-floor--and the Profile liner notes helped clue me in, with DJ DB pleading for unity among the fracturing massive. But at that point, I had no idea there was any such thing--I just wanted to hear more of it.

I mean, this was a time when Rozalla was being called "the queen of rave"! Rozalla--does anyone even remember her? Of course not, because the same thing happened to her that happened to loads of those artists--they signed to a major, which, having no idea what else to do with them, made them record a bunch of shitty mid-tempo R&B in hopes of a mainstream crossover that was never going to occur since they'd already been tarred with the "rave" brush (yeah right R&B or pop radio wanted anything with that taint--isn't that shit for stupid suburban kids on drugs who dress funny?) and promptly watched them die on the vine. I know this because I bought Everybody's Free, the album, the day it came out because I'd fallen for the singles and figured that this, this would be the album that brought rave overground. Obviously I changed my mind the minute I heard the thing. But what led me to this is simple: I was 17 and extremely naive; I was also wildly romantic, a condition that caused me to think like an A&R person. Seriously, the next time you see someone on ILM that looks/writes suspiciously like a record company flak about some new artist . . . well, they probably are, but keep in mind that there exist some teenagers who believe what they see on TV/read it the prints--even on blogs now--and want fervently for someone to "come along and united everything" or whatever; God knows I did when I was younger, yep, despite my talk here, there, and in the SOTT book I was King Rockist for years and years that way, figuring something/someone was gonna come along that Everyone Would Love and Erase All Musical Boundaries and Then There Would Be World Peace.

Really--I actually believed this! Even a month ago this would have been embarrassing to think about much less mention in public. But maybe it's because I'm in my hometown (albeit in a hotel room in a neighborhood I stopped spending any time in long before breaking up with the woman I was dating who worked/attended school around here) and my niece's birth has me all open and reflective that my earlier ardor seems less misguided than I long suspected it was. I don't mean so much in a "oh, how embarrassing, I was into that" kind of way--if anything, I've flaunted my dorkier passions as long as I've been able to. (My standard answer for the age-old "What do you listen to?" question is still "Cheesy rave music." It's a rather puerile answer, of course, and pretty stupid-sounding even if it were true, which it's obviously not, but at this point it's ingrained, and I should really get out of the habit, though I still think it beats "Oh, all kinds of stuff" on nearly every occasion.) But I do shudder a lot when I think of the kind of tunnel vision I would get about things; it's not that I cared about what I did, it's that it was completely impossible to understand how other people didn't, too, not to mention the fact that hip-hop's second golden era passed me by almost completely as a result of being force-fed G. Love & Special Sauce and/or wolfing down, um, Rozalla, however briefly, instead of figuring out that Nas or Biggie were any good at all until long after the fact.

Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I'd imagine Rozalla would have had any kind of future if she'd "stayed underground," either, but at least then she might have become something more in the Official Rave History Book than a footnote and/or cautionary tale. But whenever history is written the writer has to leave something out; things just get too damn unwieldy otherwise. And since we're talking about Simon and Gen E/Energy Flash here, it makes sense to understand that Simon probably figured out the whole "Queen of Rave" thing was a transparent marketing ploy a lot earlier than I could have given the circs. But this DFP helps me understand a little bit better why Rozalla might have been a candidate for the title--because for me at 17, dreaming of the nightlife I'd come to embrace and then abandon (though I did have a good time w/Pete Scholtes at the Eagle the other night, seeing Bob Mould and Rich Morel spin, maybe I'm not so jaded and old after all . . . ), and for the DJs/dance salespeople that put her between Reese Project and The Riot EP on their big list, such differences were trivial. They only presented themselves as different in retrospect. That's why early rave was, is, such a blessed time--it felt like anything went, or could go.

Beacuse I can, I am blogging from a coffeeshop at the Mall of America. Alex, my 19-yr-old sister, is across from me reading a book on forensics; Brittany is to my right, and so is Veronica, in a stroller. Veronica is stirring quietly. Brittany just said, "Her umbilical cord fell off today." I thought she said her vocal cord had. "I picked her up, and it was laying on the couch. I said, 'OK.'" I kicked their asses at Scrabble earlier (Super Scrabble, the double-the-tiles/double-the-squares version of the game I got Alex for Christmas last year) and will do so again in about an hour. Update: I did nothing of the sort. Alex beat me in a two-person semi-speed match and Mom beat Alex and myself both afterward. Brittany was tending to Veronica and sat out both games.

Briefly, my laptop conked out yesterday, but it fixed itself last night; I aided it along by burning 20 CD-Rs' worth of MP3s that were clogging the hard drive, then deleting them from the system. It works just fine now. Apologies to all who endured my bitching about it (all six of you, plus miscellaneous folks who saw my irate post before I deleted it at 5 this morning). That means I can work some more on (a) the book proposal and (b) the 2007 page-a-day calendar, which is a lot of fun to plan out--find good songs on paid download sites, jot them down on calendar dates. Repeat 365 times (plus 25 alternates). Time-consuming. Therapeutic. Easy. For a geek like me, a very good time.

Hu-fucking-zzah.

I'm an uncle. My sister Brittany gave birth to my niece Veronica Gabrielle Gomez-Matos 48 hours ago. I visited her for the first time on Saturday afternoon, after arriving in Minneapolis late Friday night; the hospital was/is right nearby the University Avenue Days Inn where I'm staying, which didn't prevent my mom from taking 20 of the scariest minutes of my life to drive there. (Among other infractions, she turned the wrong way onto a wrong way street. Twice.) Veronica is beautiful--looks a lot like her dad, Miguel, but there's some of Brittany there too; she's very strong, can hold her head up fairly well on her back and very well on her stomach, and while the birth was difficult (the baby's head is a little distended on top because they had to use some suction; it'll go down in a matter of days), it was also not problematic in a larger sense. I held her for awhile at the hospital; she's really quiet even when she's hungry. Her eyes are huge, but she didn't open them too much while I was there. We'll see more about that as she gets older. Brittany and Veronica get out of the hospital tomorrow (Sunday) and I'll be headed over to their house (by the Mall*of*America, near Mom's) to visit. Scrabble will be played (not with Veronica). God, I love being on vacation.

How to celebrate all this: go to this, the best ILM thread in ages.

I started playing, against my own better judgement, the new Esthero, Wikked Lil' Grrrls (the title alone . . . ). It opens with (cough) "We R in Need of a Musical ReVoLuTIoN," which opens by dissing Ashanti and then getting histrionic about "getting sick and tired of the shit on the radio" and ranting about how "all I see is Britney on the video" (when did she write this, 2002?) over the post-Avril version of the shitty trip-hop Esthero started out making, meaning the drums are "rock" rather than "downtempo." From the spelling to the sentiment (charges of soullessness toward the big, bad mainstream tend to hold more weight when they're not being lobbed by someone so plainly desperate to join that mainstream--nice Autotuner on the vocal, btw), my shut up shut up shut up button has seldom been pushed this hard. Maybe I don't want to find out how bad the rest is.

Tag, I'm it:

1) Total number of books I've owned
Impossible to know, but probably in the 700 range.

2) The last book I bought
Mentioned this below, but I came home from Portland last weekend w/two shopping bags of books. Among them: the reissued Rock and the Pop Narcotic by Joe Carducci; the two-volume Dian Hanson history of adult men's mags from Taschen, as well as two newly reissued Taschen 25 volumes (20th Century Photography and one that tells the stories behind classic photographs); a three-volume history of jazz from Africa to the '80s that upon closer inspection looks pretty quackish (the writing is pedantic as all fuck, for one); Difford & Tilbrook's Squeeze-catalogue musings (never been a big fan of the band but I do like the book's tone); Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama (on the recommendation of Miccio); others I'm forgetting.

3) The last book I read
Polished off Peter Shapiro's Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco in an all-nighter on Saturday.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order)
Simon Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy
Barry Blinderman, et. al., Keith Haring: Future Primeval
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
Robert Christgau, Any Old Way You Choose It
Andrew Dornenberg & Karen Page, Becoming a Chef

Five more: Keyes, Kate (who I am amazed hasn't gotten this one yet), Life Begins at the Hop, Jon "No, Really, I'm Blogging Again (zzzzz)" Caramanica, and Andy B. Plus anyone else who wants in.

Just got the advances today of the real thing, and haven't read this all yet, but this redux of the Rhino '90s-kitsch box looks pretty diverting.

He's absolutely, completely right about this.

Someone (Jon Landau?) said that seeing Bruce Springsteen in the early '70s was like hearing music for the first time again. That's what listening to Todd Edwards is like for me. I'm playing disc two of Pure Garage Presents Four to the Floor (Warner ESP, 2003) right now, the one he mixed (DJ EZ did the first disc), and it's just kicking my ass all over the room. Which, in this case, is the bedroom of a suite in downtown Portland, OR--I'm here for the weekend, leave early AM tomorrow to get back to Seattle so I can go to work by noon or so. The cut-and-snip aesthetic is in full effect, of course--of the disc's 21 component parts, Edwards produced or remixed 17 of them, so it functions more or less as a third Full On--but it's not simply because it's unusual, it's because it's bursting with live, so vital and effervescent and frisky, this is what I want out of music all the time in whatever form. The 2003 remix of "Never Far From You" sounds way more Cuisinarted than the original, shuffling but not Schaffel-y, and more swirlingly psychedelic, but somehow not disorienting, partly because it's led by the beat and partly because Edwards isn't trying to be alienating. He wants to communicate, not obfuscate.

I came down here for the U.S.E. + Hold Steady show at Berbati's Pan, around the corner from where I'm staying. I saw them Thursday night in Seattle at the Crocodile Cafe, and it was terrific, but I had my reservations. The Hold Steady seemed exhausted and overworked, the tempos were sluggish, Craig Finn's voice was parched, and they missed a couple of marks. But the weight of it was remarkable--playing slower, they sounded heavier than usual, and the house was packed. Unfortunately, the Croc's sound isn't very good and the crowd was full of folks who were there to check out the new phenomenon rather than rock out and/or party down. That was especially true after the Hold Steady finished; half the crowd left before U.S.E., the headliners, went on. I joked at the time that the leavers had to get up early the next morning for their ass-clenching lessons, but that's somewhat unfair to the people who were into it and having a good time. Nevertheless, the Berbati's show on Friday killed the Thursday one; they were simultaneously looser and tighter, with the tempos up and the room full of love and camaraderie. People yelled along w/the lyrics, danced, went crazy; very little of the reserve that typified the Seattle crowd. The same went with U.S.E., with the caveat that the Seattle crowd were getting plenty loose to them, if not as much so as at the Vera Project show I saw in April or any number of other times I've seen them in our shared hometown. But the Berbati's crowd was rabid--screaming along, hopping around like wind-up bunnies, complete idiotic grins on their (our) faces. I've never seen U.S.E. dragged out for an encore before--they usually leave the audience spent, and they might as well have this time too, but it wasn't enough. What's even better is that it wasn't that big a crowd, maybe 100 people total by the time the set ended. They were louder and more demonstrative than any I've seen that band with, or most bands with. That, too, is what doing what I do is for.

Just bought two grocery bags' worth of books at Powell's and Reading Frenzy and Countermedia. I can't wait to dive into them all (and in fact will begin after posting this), but the one that really made me drool was one I didn't buy: Peter Shapiro's new Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco, a copy of which is already on its way. Can. Not. WAIT.

Lynne d Johnson passed this meme to me, and I'm honored, so here goes:

Total volume of music files on my computer: on the laptop's library, 17.77 GB (3,464 songs, 10 days, 42 minutes, 41 seconds) of music, with around 17 GB on my iPod (2,358 songs), which is a 20 GB. I've been meaning to pick up a second iPod lately, btw--I figure a 60 GB (one of the photo ones, which I'd just use for music as I have no camera) would be nice, that way I can keep "the library" on that one and reserve the 20 GB for newer acquisitions.

Last CD I bought was . . . : today in Portland (I'm here for the weekend, staying at the schmancy Embassy Suites Hotel, near Berbati's Pan, where U.S.E. and the Hold Steady KICKED EVERYONE'S ASS LAST NIGHT, cough), I bought Mind Fusion Vol. 1 & 2 by Madlib (self-released mixtapes), the Spitkicker Collabos Volume 1: Hosted by De La Soul, Mixed by DJ Ayres & Eleven mixtape, Broken Bootlegs' High Heels & Fat Laces (hip-hop mash-ups from a German DJ), and a double-CD of Stretch Armstrong & Bobbito Garcia's 89.9 FM show from 11/11/93 featuring Kool Keith, O.C., Large Professor, and Monch, all from 360 Vinyl and Clothing, a nearby hip-hop store.

Song playing right now: "Up on the Sun" by the Meat Puppets, on the iPod

Five songs I listen to a lot these days: Elvis Costello's "Suit of Lights" and "I Hope You're Happy Now," the Field's "Love vs. Distance," the Hold Steady's "Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night," and the Decemberists' "We Both Go Down Together."

And in the spirit of Lynne's invitation, which she just posted on her blog w/o alerting any of the folks she chose, I'll do the same w/these folks, chosen more or less at random:
• Thomas Inskeep
• Tom Breihan
• Rachel Shimp
• Candicissima
• Geeta Dayal

The rest of you should, of course, feel free to steal the meme for yourselves whether you were mentioned or not.

My usual problems w/The Believer apply to its new Music Issue--I don't like Danielson Famile to begin with so I haven't dived too deep into Rick Moody's consideration of them, and it's not helped by the fact that if a movie were to be made of his piece a few years back on 69 Love Songs it would have to be subtitled, with the subtitles reading, throughout, "Haha look! They're PAYING me to do this! What a scam! Hahaha!" I should also note that I almost never read fiction so I have no idea what he's like as a novelist; I suspect I'd be put off by that, too, but maybe (hopefully) I'm wrong. (His thing on the National Book Award a couple issues ago wasn't exactly enthralling, either--kind of shrill, actually.)

Q&A's: Best surprise is that John Roderick from the Long Winters, a Seattle band I've never much cared for, is a smart, funny motherfucker I'd love to talk to sometime. (Next time he makes an album, I guess I should, huh?) Carrie Brownstein talking to Karen O is all right; Eric Spitznagel talking to Beck is rather good, they manage to go over fairly standard territory in a surprisingly fresh way, I didn't feel like I'd read that one over and over already. Patton Oswalt and Aimee Mann and a bottle and a half of wine wasn't as self-regarding as I'd feared, which isn't to say it wasn't pretty self-regarding. Steve Almond on Smoosh was charming, mostly because he didn't get cute with the questions.

Essays: Hua Hsu's thing on end-of-history songs from the last days of the Cold War was pretty cool, though I wish he'd expounded more. The piece on the history of the smoking-bananas-can-get-you-high scam is really insightful. Douglas Wolk on the Fall's Peel Sessions box = easy highlight, so much so it's almost embarrassing to bother pointing it out. ("Easy" not because anyone else sucks, but because he's Douglas Wolk, whose job it is to make it look easier than it is.)

Still need to get around to the Susie Suh thing, though I often find James Hunter dense to the point of impenetrability. Haven't read most of the one-pagers, actually. I'll leave non-music content out in the spirit of the issue's selling point (and my specialty). The Singing Drummers thing was fairly amusing, though The Believer's charts have always left me bemused but not much more as a rule.

Played the CD earlier tonight for the first time. First half is quite good--I think I like Spoon's cover of Yo La Tengo's "Decora" more than anything on Gimme Fiction, actually, and I like that record just fine, my amended-by-others Spin grade notwithstanding. Second half drops off considerably. Still, it's free, which certainly doesn't hurt things any, especially since I enjoyed the first half so much.

Nitpicks will be with us always, but I do admire the magazine on the whole (I've bought every issue since no. 1) and am glad it's around. It's VERY indie-centric, obv., and while that's not an end-of-times kind of thing to me (this week, har har), I wish they'd at least make the effort to broaden it more. Recently, a friend mentioned that he did a Q&A with a well-respected dance-music figure for them, to run at some later point, but I wish it were in this issue--not just because I'm excited to read it, but because the thing is SO DAMN INDIE-ROCK, y'know? I am beyond tired of the assumption that smart people necessarily like indie rock, or that indie rock fans are necessarily smart, or any combination of those things you want to come up with in your spare time. Sure, plenty of indie rock is smart; this year, the Hold Steady and the Mountain Goats have made my thus-far first- and third-favorite albums, and they're both easily enough accomodated by that category. But apart from the still-awe-inspiring (for fans, for readers, for hip-hop lovers, for folks who do interviews at least some of the time and are always trying to bone up and do better, like me in each of those cases) ?uestlove interview by Toure, most of the non-indie-rock interviews with musicians they've run haven't been particularly interesting. (Actually, that's unfair; I'm primarily thinking of Toure's Q&A with Q-Tip, which was everything the ?uestlove one wasn't: plodding, uninspired on both ends, and sort of puzzling, in the sense of, "What did they run this one for? I haven't learned anything interesting here." I may find the Aimee Mann/Patton Oswalt thing a touch precious, but I did come away from it knowing that Mann likes Oscar schwag and that Oswalt has some interesting theories about Democrats needing parental figures, both of which were fairly striking while I was reading it, which is all I can ask for short of timeless literature.)

Nevertheless, there's something disheartening about this narrowness. What about jazz, guys? Matthew Shipp or Jason Moran or James Carter or take-your-pick are fascinating figures who have lots to say from what I've read; get a sympathetic ear to grill 'em and we'd lap it up. Classical, too. Etc. (And hey, maybe I ought to get off my ass and pitch them something along those lines, too, right? Put up or shut up, right, Matos?) Obviously, The Believer isn't a music magazine, and I wouldn't want them to be. (I'd love for someone to come up with the equivalent of it for music, though--and maybe, again, I should put up or shut up.) So yeah, that's what I'd ask for in future Music Issues--that, and I wish they'd made the One-Page Reviews music reviews rather than book reviews, just this once.

Let me amend that last post a bit, just to be extra-gushy overcareful: These are opinions, and they bear no relation to the persons who disagree w/them (most of the time, anyway). I'm still embarrassed at my response to something I read a few days ago that a friend wrote; it wasn't meant maliciously, but for various reasons (the context chiefly among them) I took it really badly, and I ended up just rehashing that feeling rather than trying to explain it clearly. It made me look stupid--not to a lot of people, maybe, but scale isn't the point here. I'm happy to look stupid when it's something that can't be helped--being ignorant about French wine or television programs or where that damn promo went--but there are times when I take my line of work way too personally, and it isn't good for anyone. But most of the time I'm trying to have fun with this thing and hope others are too.

Hopper wants beef, so beef she shall have. (Not real beef, obv., but you knew that.) "Kiss" is easily Prince's best single--the most replayable, the most fun, the slinkiest and most elastic, the most perfect in a whole bunch of ways. That's why I nominated it, and I'll assume that's why Dylan went with it. The last time I checked, "the talking parts of 'Dorothy Parker'" and "the bass-hit of the first 2 seconds of 'I Would Die 4 U'" aren't complete records, and therefore weren't available for nomination, especially when you consider that "Kiss" is like those moments stretched out to three-and-a-half minutes. (There are lots of others, including those, but this is my favorite.) I am moving between trying to figure out which cliches the song contains that JH refers to and snickering at the assertion that it contains any that actually signify as cliches. As for "equivocating and unexplicit," someone must've forgotten to send me the rule-list disqualifying subtlety from the running. Damn you, Hicks! My sympathies for the amount of time Hopper has apparently spent around drunk-ass bride-sisters, though.

The other 49 "MN best" are readable here. I don't agree with them all, either, of course (JH is so so so right about 12 Rods and "Toolmaster of Brainerd"), but arguments are fun when they're not enervating, and for me this is much more the the former than the latter. And I'm eager to hear them all, if I can track them down. (The non-live cuts, at least.)