life's too short.

I'm really, really glad I decided to do this.

I'm realizing now that, despite years of actively vetting the music in my my library, I never seriously sat down and critiqued the music I listened to.  It would come down to "Do I really want this in my library," and too often I gave a nonchalant "Sure, why not."

Case in point: Green River.  A band with an astounding pedigree, leading directly to Pearl Jam and Mudhoney.  Nobody's going to dispute their influence.  But the band itself really isn't that good.  I love Mark Arm, and I think Stone Gossard's a solid guitarist.  Yet those two sounds combined just doesn't work, at all.

Somehow, I've had this band in my library for years.  I have three albums by them that I've listened to multiple times, and they somehow kept making the cut.  But today, when I sat down and really considered whether I wanted Rehab Doll in my library, the answer was a resounding no.

The whole point of this exercise is to eliminate bands like Green River, those "eh" bands that I could take or leave.  If I can't defend it, it's gone.  Life's too short to waste on music like that.

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PLAYLIST:

The Stooges - The Stooges

The Stooges are one of the few bands where the "proto-punk" tag actually applies.  These guys changed everything, and they still don't get enough credit for it.  It's astounding how many times I see first-wave punk guys talk about being into Roxy Music, the Stooges, and not a whole lot else.  Music like that just didn't exist in the early 70s.  And there was definitely no one else like the Stooges.  The scary thing is, they were largely neutered in-studio until Raw Power.  John Cale took a heavy-handed production approach with their debut, most notably in the drawn-out, absurd "We Will Fall," complete with a goddamn viola solo.  This was a band that mic'd household appliances onstage during their early shows, just for the sake of creating noise.  There are plenty of amazing songs to be had--"1969," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "No Fun"--but the best was still to come for the Stooges.  (4.5 stars)

Boss Hog - Whiteout

As absurd as my Jon Spencer worship is, it's still not strong enough to like this album.  Early Boss Hog albums are raw as fuck, somewhere between Pussy Galore and the Blues Explosion, controlled chaos that rivals some of Spencer's work.  But this is clearly Christina's shot at the mainstream, and the result is pretty embarrassing.  Spencer tries to salvage what he can, but this is just too tame to warrant any attention at all, let alone the MTV fame they were aiming for.  (1.5 stars)

Green River - Rehab Doll

See above.  I love Mark Arm, but it's hard to listen to him without that Mudhoney sludge.  (2 stars)

Sentridoh - Free Sentridoh: Songs From Loobiecore

I came to the conclusion last night, halfway through Sebadoh's Freed Man, that I love shitty music.  If you sound like you can barely play your guitar, or you don't care if your 8-track is even on, or if you're just making noise for the sake of listening to it played back at absurd volumes, I'm gonna dig your music.  This is far from Lou's noisier ventures, but it still has that lo-fi shittiness that I need like a fix.  There are good songs to be had, but nothing that compares to even his weakest Sebadoh tracks.  (3.5 stars)

The Dirtbombs - Ultraglide In Black

The Dirtbombs are probably my least favorite Mick Collins band (Blacktop > Gories > Screws > Voltaire Brothers > Dirtbombs), but this album is undeniably a stone-cold classic.  Maybe it's the source material, maybe it was the lineup at the time, but this rocks exponentially harder than anything else the Dirtbombs have put out.  Mick makes each song his own, making it less of a covers album and more of the tribute to his roots he intended it to be.  I'll still take I've Got A Bad Feelin' About This any day, but this is an album that's impossible not to love.  (4.5 stars)

The Jesus & Mary Chain - The Power Of Negative Thinking

Let's get this out of the way now--the Chain only made one great album, and that's Psychocandy.  Plain and simple.  Badlands is fine, Honey's Dead is enjoyable, but they just do not compare to their debut.  Fittingly, the first disc in this set is the best, amounting to a firestorm of Spector-tinged aural terrorism that rivals Psychocandy itself.  It's easy to argue that their sound was toned down considerably in-studio, not unlike the Stooges.  Some of these alternate takes literally sound like the band is collapsing in on itself--which they frequently did, actually.  Once they ditched the fuzz on Badlands, the band became a shell of their former selves, albeit a shell that could still churn out some solid bubblegum pop.  There are some amusing covers to be found ("Alphabet St." is superb), but not too much else to recommend past the first disc.  (3.5 stars)

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CHANGES:

- Clean slate today.  Dropped the bitrate on Power of Negative Thinking to save a little space.

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DELETIONS:

- Boss Hog - Whiteout.  See above.

- Green River.  See above.

- Damien Jurado.  He was selected from the list (#211), but I don't really like the guy that much.  He's a fine singer-songwriter...but there are plenty better.

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ADDITIONS:

- S (#700).  Slowcore/sadcore.  Member of Carissa's Weird.  Added Sadstyle, Puking And Crying, and I'm Not As Good At It As You.

- 50 Cent (#4).  Yes, that 50 Cent.  Added Get Rich Or Die Tryin'.

- The Members (#535).  New Wave/Punk.  Added At The Chelsea Nightclub.