Continued from Part I

When compiling the list of my favorite fifty albums of all time (not the “best,” remember, but my favorite), I went through some very serious teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling. Sadly, these albums below did not make my list of the top fifty, but they’re definitely in the next fifty. So somewhere floating around the realm of theoretical things is my list of favorite 100 albums of all time. I don’t know the order, but these are numbers 51 – 100, in alphabetical order, unranked. Remember, only one album per artist; so if an artist has an album on this list, a separate album by that same artist is not in my top fifty.

OK, here we go:

3rd Bass – Derelicts of Dialect

White New York rappers 3rd Bass had a terrific debut album, The Cactus Album, from 1989, but I came to know them from this second and final record. Pop Goes the Weasel was a big hit, and it talked a lot of shit about fellow white rapper Vanilla Ice, but the rest of the album is solid from start to finish – as is The Cactus Album – and MC Serch‘s Return of the Product. There are about three white rap acts I like: Beastie Boys, Kid Rock (his politics are fucked up, I know) and 3rd Bass. This album got a lot of play in my first years in Sacramento in the early ’90’s. My homie Angus liked them too.

Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Cold Roses

As you have heard or will hear me say over and over, it has taken me way too long to finish this project, four years and counting. I thought it would take just a couple/few months. An interesting part of my procrastination is that new albums have come to me in the intervening four years and left a indelibly deep imprint on my soul. Although I haven’t spent decades with these new records, they honestly can’t be left off The Leftovers list simply because of their recency. I shall call these “The New Leftovers!”

I had to kick some really good records off this Leftovers list to make room for “The New Leftovers” Some were easy decisions (Edie Brickell, sorry Mrs. Simon), and others were really hard (Nine Inch Nails‘ Pretty Hate Machine… ouch!) but I just couldn’t deny that because some albums hit me hard for a summer, they couldn’t justifiably be ranked in my 51st through 100th favorites of all time. These “New Leftovers” can.

The first of the “New Leftovers” I’m writing about is Cold Roses by Ryan Adams & The Cardinals. I went through an Alt Country/Americana phase in the 00’s, and enjoyed a lot of music by Whiskeytown, Son Volt, and the Old 97’s, among others. It didn’t all stick, although I certainly appreciate those other bands (and others in that genre will come up later in this project). Cold Roses was among my very favorite albums during that time, released in 2005, but I eventually moved on to other things and kind of forgot about it. But I picked it up on vinyl at some point in the last four years, and it hit me *really* hard. It’s one of my most played albums, usually visiting my turntable at least every 90 days or so. The songs are haunting, lovely, rollicking, and heartbreaking all at the same time. “Magnolia Mountain” kicks things off, and it sounds like a ballad from the early 20th century, if not the 19th. Adams’ lyrics will slay you, especially in tracks like “Sweet Illusions,” “When Will You Come Back Home,” and “How Do You Keep Love Alive.” It’s country, it’s rock, it’s folk, it’s all those things wrapped up in one. It’s a gorgeous album, and one that I cannot recommend highly enough to fans of this genre.

Arrested Development – 3 Years, 5 Months, and 2 Days in the Life of…

Some incredible, positive, upbeat hip hop from 1992. This band never recaptured the brilliance of their debut record, although they made a shitload more. I had this album on repeat for a long time during my years at UC Davis, acquired it on vinyl within the last couple of years, and it completely holds up. It’s a beautiful, fun, dynamic, awe-inspiring record that is always a great hang.

Belle and Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister

Another of my “New Leftovers,” I debated whether to include this in the top 100 here, knowing it was displacing some other record (if you must know, Elton John‘s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, an undeniably great album.) But Belle & Sebastian came to me just in the last few years after literally decades of producing incredible pop/rock music. Never huge stars, but always revered by hipsters, I couldn’t get my head around them until my oldest son Vincent – who has excellent and eclectic tastes in music – turned me on to this record and I got hooked instantly. It’s pure pop greatness: lots of members in the band – which includes both men and women – and rollicking songs which are funny and sad all at once, they remind me a bit of The Beautiful South. This is an amazing record that is always the antidote to the “What should I play?” question.

Big Audio Dynamite – Megatop Phoenix

This is the amazing, underrated, maybe not-too-well-known 1989 album by the band fronted by Mick Jones, The Clash‘s lead guitarist and co-founder. Their 1991 album, The Globe, is probably better known, as it produced possibly their only hit: “Rush.” But Megatop is an incredible album from start to finish. It’s part pop, dance, rock, weirdo-fun. Such a strange record, but it reminds me of driving around Los Angeles in my 1979 Chevy Malibu that I bought off my friend Eric for $800. It was a good car, and got me to work and back – from North Hollywood to Pasadena – for a year or two. I went on a recent mini-B.A.D. run because I had been watching Deadwood on the treadmill at the gym, and one of the show’s characters, Mr. Wu, brought me back 30 years to the intro to this album’s hypnotic track, Dragon Town:

Mr. Wu no longer has the laundry…you’d have to say the business was a flop

I spent a few weeks with Megatop and The Globe after that, and was extremely happy. That’s the power of music. A simple phrase, a name, a character on a TV show, can remind you of a lyric, and then before you know it you’re down a deep rabbit hole with a band that you loved 30 years ago.

The Breeders – Pod

Quite a hard one here. The Breeders obviously get a separate entry from Pixies, which – surprise! – don’t make the Leftovers list because they’re in my top 50. Last Splash is also a good candidate for my favorite Breeders record, and truthfully, 2018’s All Nerve, has been on pretty regular play on my turntable at my V Street apartment, then at my 20th Street house, ever since. I had seen The Breeders a time or two in the past, but my son Henry and I saw them at The Masonic in San Francisco front and center a few years ago, and it was one of the greatest concerts of my life. Still, when pressed to choose my favorite all time Breeders album, I have to go with their debut, Pod.

Cake – Motorcade of Generosity

Such a terrific record, and although Cake is a great band, my feeling is this first album of theirs captured their heart and soul more than their subsequent releases, however strong. Part of the Cake-love, of course, is their Sacramento roots. Having seen them play house parties and art galleries, then The Cattle Club, and eventually on to some level of global acclaim is gratifying. Their quirky, honest music never fails to bring a smile, and this record epitomizes mid 90’s Sacramento for me.

Camper Van Beethoven – Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart

This is a cassette that I got used at The Beat when they were still on H Street, before they moved to Folsom Blvd., and before the old Newbert’s Hardware spot (now BevMo) on J Street, and before they went out of business. I played it constantly driving around Sacramento before I had any friends up here in this city, and they were one of those bands that kind of helped break me out of classic rock doldrums and realize rock and roll could be funky, could have some horns, and could have weird vocals. “Turquoise Jewelry,” the “O Death” cover, “Eye of Fatima,” “Tania”…there’s not a dud on the record. I never liked Cracker as much as Camper, even though I saw Cracker a couple times: once acoustically in said Beat Records on J Street, and once opening for John Hiatt at The Crest. For me, it was always Camper. (Monks of Doom were OK.)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – No More Shall We Part

A haunting masterpiece that barely slipped out of the top 50 and into the leftovers section. I don’t claim to know Nick Cave’s stuff very well. He’s been prolific, but I really only know this album, Let Love In, and maybe The Boatman’s Call and Henry’s Dream a bit. But this one never, ever fails to grip you by the shirt, throw you down, and make you love it so much you can’t stand it. Cave, like Tom Waits, is a storyteller at heart. That he’s also a brilliant songwriter and musician is just unfair. And glorious.

Consolidated – Friendly Fascism

I don’t remember exactly how I got hip to Consolidated, but it must have had to do with Mathieu and Randy. This Bay Area hip hop / industrial outfit lasted a small handful of records before disbanding, and although I never saw them live, they were famous for letting audience members come onstage during their gigs to speak their truths into the microphone, whether they were challenging the band’s ultra-leftist politics or just had something weird to say. Still, the message takes a back seat to the music, and this album is a tour de force of danceable, rappable, groovable righteousness. Their eponymous first album, The Myth of Rock, and Play More Music are also worthy places to start with Consolidated. This cassette was absolutely early 90’s Sacramento, driving around in my Honda Civic with Randy, Mathieu, and whichever other weirdos were around.

The Cure – Disintegration

I’m listening to Disintegration on double LP 180 gram vinyl as I type this, and there’s a case to be made that The Cure are one of the ten best bands to ever come out of Britain. Maybe top five. The Cure almost didn’t make this list, because the cassette I overplayed as a teenager was Standing on a Beach – The Singles, which breaks my stupid “no greatest hits” rules. But since I bought Disintegration on vinyl a couple years ago, it has become absolute staple in my turntable rotation. Ethereal and hypnotic, it may ultimately be their finest work, despite it coming a bit later in their career in 1989. It’s a serious record. When you put it on, you know some serious shit is going down. Such beautiful music, such heartfelt feeling embedded in every song. Every track is about heartbreak and longing, and the music itself is sad, but it retains the pop elements that brought The Cure to fame in the decade before Disintegration‘s release. It’s the perfect record for a glass of red wine on a winter’s night.

Mark Curry – It’s Only Time

When I turned 23, my friends threw me a surprise birthday party at The Velvet Elvis where a bunch of them lived. The Velvet was a warehouse on 28th Street south of T in Midtown Sacramento, before anyone called it Midtown. Everything on The Grid (another new name) was just “Downtown.” The Velvet didn’t have heat, or air, or a proper kitchen. My friends smuggled in a hotplate and a fridge, and threw up some cheap drywall into the cavernous warehouse to form separate rooms. Each roommate paid $200, as I recall. I never lived there, but my girlfriend and all my best friends did. I spent a LOT of rent-free nights there. We froze in the winter and broiled in the summer, and played poker until the sun came up. When they threw me the surprise birthday party, they all pitched in a dollar and bought me Sacramento’s own Mark Curry’s debut CD. It’s a truly phenomenal collection of heartbreaking bluesy rock tracks. You all should listen to it.

The Dark Whatever – Alien Plant Farm

I have a LOT to say about this little-known gem. Anthony Jaeger is The Dark Whatever, and he’s a close friend of a close friend of mine, Jeff. If I recall correctly, Anthony plays just about all the instruments on this record. He is truly one of the most talented musicians and songwriters I’ve had the privilege to know personally. This album is flawless, and hard to classify: rock, funk, folk, freak-folk, psychedelic, honky tonk. Strange that these myriad styles blend so smoothly from one song to the next, but they do.

One of my favorite tracks from this album is “Faster Than You Can Say Things Can Change,” a cyclical title and chorus (things can change, faster than you can say “things can change”) that I took one way, but I believe the songwriter may have taken another. I listened to this album on heavy repeat during the summer of 2018. It was a very odd summer, the last one I was married. Things seemed very good in my life right during that period (dummy!), but fatalist that I am, I was always wary of the proverbial other shoe dropping. Fitness, career, marriage, healthy children, all of this can be taken away in a flash. I’ve seen it happen countless time with loved ones. But at this moment, the summer of 2018 when my life was good, I was grateful for the good things in my life, and painfully aware how much things can change, faster than you can say. And then they did.

But I survived, and all my loved ones did too, thankfully. And I’m happy to say we’re all still surviving and thriving. I didn’t know it was impending at the time, but The Dark Whatever warned me that things can change, faster than you can say “things can change.”

I talked to Jeff about this experience, and what the song meant to me. He said that I had it all wrong, it was about being all fucked up, and having optimism that things could potentially change, faster than you can say. That kind of blew my mind. And that’s what a great album does for you, right? It blows your mind. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Anthony perform on street corners, in small clubs and open mics, and I truly believe he is one of the most gifted musicians and songwriters walking around today. I hope one day the world discovers that.

The Decemberists – The Crane Wife

My lord, this record. When I dropped my oldest son Vincent off at college, I knew I would be an emotional basket case. Neither his mom nor his stepmom – my wife at the time –  came with me. No dis upon either of them, but this was a father/son adventure, dropping my oldest son off at college and driving back home. I thought long and hard about what album I would listen to while driving home the 90+ minutes from Berkeley to Sacramento, after dropping off your eldest child, this life you witnessed birthed into the world, from the nervous cigarettes waiting for the home pregnancy text to reveal its secret knowledge, to the duplex hunting with a pregnant teenage girlfriend, to the eventual split, and legal bullshit, and remarriage, and half siblings, and parent-teacher conferences, and Little League team coaching, and Sly Park chaperoning, and Jr. High graduations, and midnight E.R. pickups. And now I, I, was dropping this child off at college, the way his stepmom and I once dropped him off at kindergarten, worried that he was a foot smaller and *seemed* two years younger than all the other kids.

Well, I dropped him off at his dorm at UC Berkeley, sat in my car for a few minutes, stunned, put on The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife album, and drove home bawling for 90 minutes. Does that tell you what you need to know about this album, and what it can mean to you? Yeah, it’s that good.

Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy – Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury

Nobody remembers this band, or their ONLY album, but they were an incredible hip hop duo in the early ’90’s. You may have heard of their MC: Michael Franti. Spearhead, anyone? Disposable Heroes were an an amazing hip hop group, with Franti and the other dude, Rono Tse, producing one of the most maddeningly listenable, yet socially conscious, rap records of the 1990’s. I was already a fan when I saw them open for Nirvana, The Breeders, and L7 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1993, just a year before Kurt Cobain‘s death. To this day, it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to in my life. If you’re any kind of fan of 80’s/90’s hip hop, I DEMAND you check them out. Sadly, Spotify tells me you can’t “quite” listen to their whole Hypocrisy album yet. I don’t know about Apple Music. And you need their whole album. I can’t seem to get “California Uber Alles” (because sampling, but WTF? They had an alignment with Jello Biafra and Alternative Tentacles!) nor “Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury” to play, so don’t fuck around until you can get the whole album. Hit me up and I’ll post a link to the MP4’s on Google Drive for you if need be.

Justin Townes Earle – Kids in the Street

I wrote extensively about Justin Townes Earle elsewhere on this site, so I won’t rehash it all here. We tragically lost JTE at the age of 38 in August of 2020 due to a drug overdose. Steve Earle‘s immensely talented son was an unabashed musical genius. His Americana style was fresh, his guitar talent bombastic, his lyrics heartbreaking, and the world just isn’t going to be the same without him.

This was the first JTE album I owned on physical media, a CD that I played in my car over and over, and it includes some of my very favorite songs by the young Nashville legend, such as the title track, “Champaign Corolla,” “Maybe a Moment,” “There Go a Fool,” “15-25,” “Short Hair Woman”…hell, the whole album is flawless. RIP to the real “JT,” an artist that I appreciate more and more each year that we sadly move on without him.

fIREHOSE – If’n

Although this list of the 50 leftovers is alphabetical, I feel like we’ve reached a point where it starts to feel funky. fIREHOSE was the uber-talented, hardest-working-man-in-punk-rock Mike Watt‘s second band after the amazing Minutemen, who’s superlative record Double Nickles on the Dime probably deserves to be on any list more than If’n. But I loved fIREHOSE (must we continue to stylize it that way?) in the 80’s and 90’s, and I cannot remember who turned me onto them, or how, or why. I wasn’t a punk rocker, nor was I deep into alternative/semi-underground music, but I adored this cassette and played it constantly. It holds up to this day, I highly recommend it.

The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

People love Wayne Coyne and The Flaming Lips. I mean they really, really, really love them. I don’t. They’re one of those bands I appreciate, but never quite “got” 100%. Except for this record. Yoshimi is a straight-up masterpiece, from the opening killer, “Fight Test…”

“I thought I was smart / I thought I was right / I thought it better not to fight / I thought there was a virtue in always being cool”

…to the instrumental finale, with amazing pop, rock, and crazily psychedelic offerings in between, this album is a goddam masterpiece. So what do you do when a band you like just a little bit makes one incredible record and 17… other ones? You put it on your 50 leftovers list and move on.

Fruit Bats – Mouthfuls

Another of the “New Leftovers,” I have no memory of when I learned about Fruit Bats, aka Eric D. Johnson, but fell in love with their music, saw them live at Harlow’s, bought the alternative cover Mouthfuls album, and let said album wriggle its way into my very heart and soul. But these things did in fact happen sometime in the last few years. It’s simply the purest kind of pop/alternative music; Matthew Sweet may be a decent comparison, or The Shins or Spoon in a more spiritual way, even though those bands don’t really sound the same. It’s one of those delightful albums whose songs flow easily from one to the next, with powerful lyrics that stay with you long after the album ends.

He has lots of really good albums – including a really interesting cover of Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins in its entirety – and I’m not sure Mouthfuls is even considered one of his best. “When U Love Somebody” is a concert staple of his, inspiring audience singalongs at every show, but none of the rest of the tracks on the record seem to be. I think it’s a shame, because this is an unsung gem of pop/alt from the early aughts that it took me WAY too long to find.

Hair – Original Broadway Cast Recording

The Hair soundtrack is a record that fell out and in and out and in and finally out of my top 50 list. Hair is an unparalleled piece of 60’s spectacle. If you think you know this record, you don’t. Unless you’ve seen the musical, and the film, and listened to the album 800 times before the age of 14 like I did. It’s a comic, tragic, brilliant, devastating ode to 60’s hippie culture, the Vietnam War, and the the beauty and hypocrisy of The Age of Aquarius (aka, The ’60’s). Whatever your feelings about hippies or 60’s music, Hair is all about the songs. The songs, the songs, the songs. Hair was the 60’s Hamilton, but written and performed while it was still fucking occurring. “Easy to be Hard:” gut-wrenching; “I Got My:” hilarious; “Sodomy:” mind-(among other things)-blowing; “Colored Spade:” shocking;  “Let The Sunshine In:” heartbreaking. You could take a course in your local university in the American Studies department about The Sixties, or you could just listen to Hair. Same thing. Yeah, they all get naked on stage, even in small performances in Davis, California. What of it?

John Wesley Harding – New Deal

I crossed John Wesley Harding (aka Wesley Stace) off my bucket list a few years back by seeing him perform a short set at Harlow’s opening for Steven Page, the former frontman of Barenaked Ladies. This is one of those shows I went for the opener, but stayed for the headliner, and dug the headliner (but not enough to follow up much. Seeing Josh Ritter open for John Prine made me a John Prine fan, but seeing Stace open for Page didn’t make me a huge Page fan). Stace is a tremendous singer songwriter from Britain; I’ve heard him called kind of a poor man’s Elvis Costello. His New Deal and Here Comes the Groom albums are great additions to anyone’s collection who digs bands like Costello, Squeeze, XTC, Paul Simon, Damien Rice, Ritter…any of these singer-songwritery cats. I implore you to check him out!

Heart – Dreamboat Annie

I really, really got into this record. Heart is a band that, for people my age, you tend to think about a few classic rock radio hits like “Magic Man” or “Crazy on You.” But those two great rockers are just the backbone of this brilliant start-to-finish debut album by the Wilson sisters. It seems kind of like a concept album, with repeating motifs and a rhythmic soft/hard/soft/hard cycle. Their label fucked them over and made them seem like lesbian lovers on the album cover and did other hinky shit, but regardless, this is strong record that I played a lot in my late teens and early 20’s.

Kristen Hersh – Hips and Makers

Kristen Hersh, formerly of the great Throwing Muses (with her stepsister Tanya Donnely of Belly and Breeders fame) made this incredible debut record in the early 90’s, and it’s just stunning from start to finish. Though she never got the due that contemporaries like Sarah MacLachlan, Jewel, Fiona Apple or Tori Amos did, this record deserves to be lauded as a powerhouse of 90’s woman-led folk/rock alubms. “Your Ghost” should be played for the first 100 days after every breakup. “Sundrops,” “Me and My Charms,” “The Cuckoo,” this is a modern masterpiece. That it didn’t make my top 50 doesn’t take anything away from it. If you at all like the other artists mentioned here, this record is a must-get.

Indigo Girls – Indigo Girls

During the time right around when I moved to Sacramento in 1989, somehow I came across some dough and bought a bunch of cassettes all at once, and this was one of them. This album seems like a debut, but apparently it’s their second full-length record. This is a flawless album, not a weak song on it. Their harmonies are perfect, the guitars kickin’, the lyrics intelligent and weighty. This really is a perfect album that I played a lot in my 20’s, and it still holds up today when I pop it on for nostalgia’s sake. (And if you haven’t seen Tig Notaro‘s classic Indigo Girls bit, you should watch her whole 2018 special for this truly weird closer.)

Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking

I don’t know what I can say about Jane’s Addiction except I never saw them live, sadly, and I played this record a lot. I liked a lot of that heavy 80’s/90’s alt rock stuff (Jane’s, Nirvana, Pixies, Urge Overkill) and I was indifferent to a lot of it (Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Oasis). Jane’s kicked ass though, and this first full-length studio album is clearly their best.

Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee

Another of the “New Leftovers,” I really fell in love with Japanese Breakfast within the last year, but I find this album so masterful, and I listen to it so much, it truly deserves to be in my top 100. My son Henry turned me on to this exceptional alternative/pop/rock band, fronted by the gifted singer/songwriter/musician/memoirist Michelle Zauner. We saw them in concert at Ace of Spades, and they were terrific, but I didn’t really know any of the songs. We had a great time but I more or less moved on with my life and didn’t think much about the band afterward. (Truthfully, I was more enamored with the opening act, Sasami, a wild, rocking show which was surprising because the album she was touring for is quite mellow.)

But somewhere in the following few months, and I don’t know how it happened, I absolutely fell in love with Japanese Breakfast, especially the opening track, “Paprika.”

Lucidity came slowly I awoke from dreams of
Untying a great knot
It unraveled like a braid into what seemed
Were thousands of separate strands of fishing lines…
How’s it feel to be at the center of magic
To linger in tones and words?…
How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers
To captivate every heart?…
Oh, it’s a rush

I’m abridging the first verses and chorus of the song, but the words are an incredibly powerful portrayal of what I assume it’s like to be a rock star, singing and playing your heart out while thousands of people dance and bop around and sing along to your music. It must be a rush.

And Zauner’s memoir of growing up with a Korean mother and white American father, as she navigated two cultures and moved back in with her parents as a twenty-something to help support her mother as she dealt with cancer, chemo, radiation, and eventually, death, had me enthralled and in tears. What an amazing young woman, and great band, that I know we’ll hear a lot more from in the decades to come.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Automatic

This is an album of pure awesomeness. It’s hard for me to classify JAMC. They were making music around the same time of other more successful and inferior Jesus bands (Jesus Jones, The Jesus Lizard.) I was fortunate to see JAMC at The Crest in Sacramento back in the 90’s, and they basically came out on stage, said not one word, played for about an hour amidst machine smoke and colored lights, and left. I picked up Automatic on vinyl a couple of years ago, and it sounds fantastic. One could make a case for Honey’s Dead or Psychocandy, but to me, Automatic is a brilliant representation of 90’s alt rock that stands the test of time.

Judas Priest – British Steel

What an incredible metal band, who have been doing their thing since I want to say the early or mid 70’s. Why Priest makes this list and other British metal bands of the same period don’t is not something I can easily explain, except to say that this is a flat out kick ass album from start to finish. I could have chosen Screaming for Vengeance here, or even Defenders of the Faith (which is probably not one of Priest’s top five albums, but it is one of the few albums I bought the day it was released). “Breaking the Law,” “Living After Midnight,” “United,” these are metal anthems. I mean true, iconic anthems. So much so that “Breaking” became Beavis and Butthead‘s theme song. Plus that crazy razor blade on the cover made all our parents freak out.

Kid Rock – Devil Without a Cause

Kid Rock gets a lot of shit for his politics, deservedly so, but musically, he’s one of these guys who – to my mind – made a crapload of albums I didn’t like, and one phenomenal one. From the opening death march of “Bawitaba,” to the unexpectedly sweet closing track “Black Chick, White Guy,” to the sledgehammer rap classics in between (“Cowboy,” “Devil,” “Bullgod,” “Somebody Got to Feel This”), it’s just a badass kick in the face for any hip hop fan. Basically I like three white rap bands: Beastie Boys, 3rd Bass, and this album by Kid Rock. Honorable mention to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and Blood of Abraham.

Killing Joke – Pandemonium

I never got super heavy into – whatever you want to call it – industrial rock/dance/techno, but this Killing Joke album got heavy play by me in the 90’s when I was living in my 21st and I Street apartment. I spent time with other bands in this general wheelhouse: Wire, Can, Orbital, Kraftwerk, Chemical Brothers, Moby, Einsturzende Neubauten, Skinny Puppy, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Ministry, etc. A couple of these bands appear elsewhere in this project, but most were, sadly, a bit of a phase. (I did see Thrill Kill Kult at Harlow’s in 2019, and that was a real treat!) Anyway, the pounding rhythms on this Killing Joke record, the screaming guitars, the heavy electronics and punishing beats were just what my twenty-something ears needed. This album in particular is a genre-bender, owing possibly more to metal than industrial music. It was literally recorded in the Great Pyramid of Giza, if I remember correctly, and it’s kind of what you expect our alien overlords to sing to us when they finally take over the earth. For a long time you couldn’t even find this album digitally (I don’t know what happened to my CD from the 90’s), but it’s available now, and I even found in sweet double blue/clear vinyl recently at Phono Select here in Sacramento. It’s back in heavy rotation, I’m happy to report.

Lenny Kravitz – Let Love Rule

It’s hard to explain to young people how big this album was when it came out. Number it among the great debut albums, and count it among the albums where the artist played, like, all the instruments. Lenny took the pop/rock world by storm with this record. Who was this black dude with the Jewish name? He’s Roxie Roker from The Jeffersons‘ son? He’s Lisa Bonet‘s husband? Where did this fucker come from? Brilliant record: “Mr. Cab Driver, fuck you, I’m a survivor” among other amazing lyrics and songs. I think of my old friend India when I play this record, whom I hung out with a lot in the late 80’s/early 90’s.

Metallica – (Black Album)

Pure metalheads will say this is the album Metallica sold out on, but it’s the one of theirs I like the best, and played over and over and over, a little bit late to the game, maybe in the mid-to-late 2000’s. I saw Metallica open for Ozzy in 1986, and I like them, but that whole speed metal game wasn’t so much for me. By the Black Album, it seems the band tried to purposely try to tone down a bit, get a tad more melodious, and appeal to a wider base. It worked on me, in spades. This record had plenty of hard edges, but was eminently listenable. While I like Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, they didn’t get the spins this one did.

Ministry – Psalm 69 and My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult – Sexplosion

These two – serendipitously grouped together by pure coincidence of the alphabet – scratch a similar itch. Ministry mainly came to my attention after Lollapalooza 1992, where they did not headline the bill (but were not as low as Pearl Jam), though they rocked the entire crowd at Shoreline‘s socks off. I’ve been a fan of Ministry for a long time, but didn’t see them again until about 2018. Same with Thrill Kill Kult, whom I never saw before 2019 (Although if memory serves, I had tickets to see them at the legendary Cattle Club, but they canceled), decades after their heyday, but whose Sexplosion CD was a mainstay in my rotation in the 90’s. Industrial/metal/dance/kitch…this is great stuff that holds up still.

Nice Boys from New York – Nice Boys from New York

When I was about 17, my brother-in-law bought a used car and he found this cassette in the back seat, so of course he gave it to me. A found cassette from the back seat of a shitty used car? What are the chances it wouldn’t suck? But it didn’t suck. In fact it was amazing. I’ve never met anyone who’s heard of this band, and internet info on them is very scarce. Their heyday, if they ever had one, seemed to be the mid-late ’80’s. The best way to describe them would be rockabilly/rock/folk/pop, I guess. That doesn’t say much, and doesn’t denote anything special or interesting, but you must believe me that this was a great, great record. Here are some random lyrics from memory:

Well, they got a lot of good stuff, at the Safeway…

It’s the same God as Ginger Grant, Linda Blair, oh oh…

My little tiny friend, my Jackie, Jackie Ooh…

For many years I found myself with no way to play that cassette, but its tunes and lyrics often flowed back into my memory. It was semi-early internet days, so I did some research on the band and found that the main guy, or one of the main guys, from the band had passed away, sadly. It didn’t seem like they made much other music under that name, but what little I heard seemed more country, didn’t speak to me the same way as the cassette my brother-in-law had found.

I was able to dig up an email address online – and since the cassette wasn’t available in any other format, I sent a message and told my story: The cassette was found in a car, I love it, how can I buy a CD of the self-titled album? I didn’t hear anything, and soon forgot about it, but arriving in the snail mail a few weeks later was a burned CDR copy of the album, a big sticker that says “Nice Boys From New York” and a typed note of appreciation. (I immediately affixed the sticker to a beach cruiser I had. A mom at the Little League field asked me once: “Who’s that band?” I told her about them a bit. She said “I’ll have to check them out.” I said “YOU LITERALLY CAN’T!”)

So forever I had a digital copy of the album that followed me from iPod to iPod, smartphone to smartphone. Eventually I found the very record on vinyl from someone on the Discogs website, in Italy, and they shipped it to me for about forty American dollars. It never goes more than a few months before landing on my turntable.

I see they have a couple albums on Spotify, but not this self-titled one from 1988 or whenever. I don’t know if these others are any good or not, but this one album is just a perfect, beautiful piece of rock music that fit perfectly into my life in the late 80’s.

Okkervil River – The Stage Names

Another of the New Leftovers, I became obsessed with Okkervil River in 2019. I listened to this album a bit a few years before, and liked it quite a lot, but it took my coming back to it years later to *really* get into it. Will Sheff‘s – the founder and front man – project was always kind of in the back of my mind, and when I learned they were coming to Harlow’s in 2019, I immediately bought a ticket. I realized I didn’t know much of their music too well though, so in a rare moment of preparation I made a Spotify playlist of their most played songs from their current tour. I listened to this playlist religiously, and adored it, so when the gig came around I was right there at the front of the stage, knowing all the songs and singing along with many of them.

Sheff was gracious enough take a photo with a friend and me afterward (I don’t usually do that, but the friend wanted one.) But I gave him my patented sincere handshake and told him how much I appreciated his music and thanked him for bringing such beauty into the world for me and so many others.

They stamped a star on my arm that night, like to show that you are a paid attendee. It was odd though: It was way up my arm, on the inside, closer to the crook of my elbow than to my wrist. I looked at it in the mirror when I got home, and although it was a little faded and blurry, I thought it looked really cool. Three years later I got it tattooed in that exact spot, as an homage to my love of live music in small venues. I don’t always think of Okkervil River when I look at it, but sometimes I do.

I haven’t said much about The Stage Names, but trust me. Sheff has a lot of great albums, but if I’m picking one I’m picking this one. And don’t dare listen without really digesting the lyrics. They’ll break your damn heart.

Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard Of Ozz

My Lord, this album. This album. I probably got into it a year or so after it came out, in seventh grade or thereabouts. It’s an iconic album from start to finish, from the raw opening riffs of “I Don’t Know” to the crashing finish of “Steal Away (The Night).” “Mr. Crowley,” what did go on in your head? “Suicide Solution” never encouraged suicide; it was a lamentation about self-destructive behavior. “Crazy Train” has become an arena sports anthem. It’s just a remarkable heavy metal record. I was just a few years behind being aware of what was going on with Black Sabbath and Ozzy as the Madman left his former band and struck out on his own. It must have been gratifying for Ozzy to have his album reach the stratosphere, where post-Ozzy Black Sabbath never did quite as well without him, despite a fantastic Ronnie James Dio debut in Heaven and Hell just a few months earlier. Tragically, Randy Rhoads, the brilliant young guitarist, who continues to influence metal axemen worldwide, died about a year after Blizzard’s release, but not before recording the almost-as-good Diary of a Madman, at the age of 25. His mom’s music school, Musonia, was around the block from me in North Hollywood. And that’s where my connection with Randy Rhoads ends. I feel badly for his mom. I’m sure she’s long gone by now.

Blizzard makes me think of a boom box, this cassette, Santa Monica beach, Station 17, as a teenager in the mid 80’s. Sneaking beers, smoking weed, cute girls in bikinis, and tripping out that I wasn’t a little kid anymore, but was experiencing this weird, new, next phase of my life.

Parliament – Mothership Connection

There almost aren’t any words for the greatness of this album. I haven’t listened to it in full in a while, but it assuredly holds up like the funky motherfucker it’s always been. It’s hard to believe anyone could groove this hard in 1975, the era of Captain and Tennille, Neil Sedaka, Barry Manilow and America. I went through a funky phase in the early-mid 90’s, where I was listening to a lot of Parliament–Funkadelic, James Brown, and Sly and the Family Stone; this CD was on heavy rotation then. Bootsy Collins is maybe the best bass player of all time, and George Clinton had Maceo Parker from James Brown’s band at that point. I think my favorite part is in during “P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” when George calls out “…David ‘Boowey’…can you imagine Doobie in your funk?” It’s just the best. I don’t know what the hell it means. George Clinton rolls through town every few years and I’ve never seen him. No excuse, a bucket list artist.

Orville Peck – Bronco

Another one of the New Leftovers, and as seems to be a pattern, I have no idea how and where and when I first heard of Orville Peck, but once I found him, I never let go. His real identity is unknown, as he wears a fringed mask that covers his eyes, but you can get a glimpse of a handsome jawline under the garment’s swaying fronds. What he doesn’t hide is the fact that he’s country, he’s gay, and he’s Canadian, maybe not necessarily in that order. His songs are riveting and lonesome and heartbreaking and yearning and celebratory all at the same time. The artist he reminds me of more than anyone is Elvis Presley, with that deep, crooning voice that can suddenly lift and produce the most beautiful ballads. I was an unabashed fan before Bronco came out in 2022, but once it did, wow! It’s been on regular rotation ever since; just an amazing record from start to finish. (A front-of-the-stage view of him and his phenomenal band at Ace of Spades in 2022, just after the release of Bronco, was probably a top ten concert experience for me.) If you ask me at the end of my life to name my top 50 albums, I think Bronco definitely makes the cut. Hell, maybe top ten.

Damien Rice – O

It’s hard to believe this album didn’t crack my top 50, because it is an absolutely GORGEOUS record from the opening strums of “Delicate” – the album really is delicate – to the final notes of the second hidden track (remember hidden tracks?) of his collaborator Lisa Hannigan‘s dark, twisted version of “Silent Night.” I played this album a lot in the early aughts, and I really thought Rice was the second coming of… I don’t even know who? The softer sides of Cat Stevens and Paul Simon? O was his debut album; his next one was decent, and I never cared much for any of his records after that, sadly.

Run DMC – Raising Hell

One of just a handful of hip hop albums on this list, but one of the true greats. The “Walk This Way” collaboration with Aerosmith didn’t do a ton for me, but it is regarded as the first significant rap/rock collaboration, and helped usher hip hop music into mainstream acceptance in both the U.S. and worldwide. For me, the brilliance of this record was in the other tracks: “Peter Piper,” “My Adidas,” “Raising Hell,” “It’s Tricky,” “Hit It Run.” Producers Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin were pure perfection during this time. I challenge any fan of rock music from this era to give Raising Hell a spin and not feel the funkiness down to his or her bones.

Rush – 2112

Hard to pick one Rush album, since they had several that occupied my tape deck regularly in the early to mid 80’s. It’s between 2112 and Moving Pictures (the last of their albums that I cared much about). I landed on 2112 because I virtually never listened to Side 2 of Moving Pictures; side 1 is so epic (“Tom Sawyer,” “Red Barchetta,” “YYZ,” “Limelight”) that I never really had much use for Side 2. In fact, I had to look up which songs are on Side 2 of Moving Pictures while writing this. Now, lots of albums have Side 1s that are a lot stronger than their Side 2s, but a great album holds up all the way through. Led Zeppelin IV is a good example of that. Side 1 of Led Zeppelin IV is one of the all time great rock album sides (so much so, that Fast Times at Ridgemont High‘s Vic Damone implores young Rat to put on Side 1 of Led Zeppelin IV when it’s time to make out. I can vouch for this as an effective tactic for the teens of yesteryear.) But Zeppelin IV‘s Side 2 is incredible, where Rush’s Moving Pictures Side 2 is good, but sadly, somewhat forgettable.

But I digress. We’re talking about 2112 here. 2112 is one of those albums that just rocks from start to finish. A true progressive gem where the music is more rocking than proggy. As I recall, it tells the album-long tale of a time in the future – the year 2112 – where priests of some weird fascist/controlling order rule the world, and basically all music and art has been banished. Our hero finds an electric guitar hidden in a cave, learns to shred, and leads a rock and roll revolution, destroying “The Temples of Syrinx” and bringing peace to the world. But not before he pays with his own life. Oh yeah, I think he summons down some elders from space – or from Earth’s past, I forget – and as he dies he sees that he has saved the world. Don’t quote me on this. I haven’t listened to the album in years but I think this was the gist of it.

My first car was a 1976 Toyota Corolla that my sister Nicki helped me buy. It was a thousand bucks, and I got my money’s worth out of it. I lived in L.A. at the time, but I bought the car in Sacramento, where I was from, and I would drive it up and down Highway 160 along the river, passing green fields, farm houses, and small towns from the levee road. I’d put on 2112 when I’d start on the highway, play it all the way through, and turn around when it ended, playing it in full again on the way back. That’s how much I loved 2112. I owe it a revisit one of these days.

Final note: Rush is one of those bands I really should have seen live, but didn’t. Looking through this list of fifty leftovers, I’ve seen a little over half of these bands in concert. I had tickets for Rush in 1986 at the Fabulous Forum in L.A., but I was in rehab. I – for some odd reason – had the concert tickets tucked away inside one of my Rush albums. Maybe it was 2112, maybe it was Moving Pictures, maybe it was A Farewell to Kings, or Fly By Night, or Hemispheres. But I couldn’t get a day pass out of rehab for the concert, so I told my mom to look in the Rush album, and give the tickets to my friend Scott Powell (no relation). I don’t know if he bought them or if I gave them to him, but I knew I didn’t want those tickets going to waste. 30+ years later, I’ve still never seen Rush, despite ample opportunities over that time. Maybe it was meant to be.

Social Distortion – Social Distortion

I honestly cannot recall how I got into Social Distortion, but I must have come to them sometime in my 20’s. I absolutely love this 1990 self-titled – their third studio – album. It’s just a pure collection of 10 songs, forty minutes or so of an ass-kicking cornucopia of ripping guitars, pounding drums, driving bass, and Mike Ness’s growl that is both punk and rock in equal measures. I dug their previous album, Prison Bound, and their debut, Mommy’s Little Monster, but this LP is straight-up brilliance. Social D has some detractors in the punk world, as haters are gonna hate any punk or hardcore band that ever makes it big or gets on MTV (see Green Day). But Social D’s first four albums – including 1992’s Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell – hit that coveted four-album run of great albums that very few bands are capable of achieving.

If you look up Social Distortion on Spotify, it shows their most popular songs, in order, as “Story of My Life,” “Ring of Fire” (an amazing cover of the great song popularized by Johnny Cash), and “Ball of Chain,” all from this eponymously titled album. Of course popularity does not a great album make, but in this case, my thinking is along the lines of Spotify’s listeners. The Social Distortion album is a motherfucker of a post-punk Southern California long player.

Scorpions – Animal Magnetism

Oh my God, Scorpions, where do I even begin? Another band with a great run of four-plus amazing albums; such a hard feat to achieve (Lovedrive, Animal Magnetism, Blackout, Love at First Sting). It was incredibly hard to choose my favorite Scorpions album. 1982’s Blackout was the first one I got. Their first hits I ever knew were “No One Like You,” “Can’t Live Without You,” and “Blackout.” 1984’s Love at First Sting was their most popular album, and the one I got next, with incredible bangers like “Still Loving You,” (the undisputed, greatest heavy metal ballad of all time) “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” and “Big City Nights.” Lovedrive, looked at and listened to in hindsight, was probably their best album, period, with the amazing ballad “Holiday” and seven ass-kicking tracks alongside.

But Animal Magnetism. Ah…Animal Magnetism. Not my introduction to Scorpions, and maybe not their greatest record, but my clear favorite. Scorpions are the kings of the metal power ballad, and they have not one, but two of the best ever on this album: “Lady Starlight” and “The Zoo.” (You could argue The Zoo is not a ballad, and you’d be right, but it’s a slower moving jam that has some real punch to it, and if that’s not the definition of a power ballad, what is?) The harder, faster tracks on the album are killer: “Don’t Make No Promises (Your Body Can’t Keep),” “20th Century Man,” “Only a Man” (lot of songs about “man”), “Falling in Love.” Let’s be real, the Scorps fast/metal songs are all pretty great, so it’s kind of hard to distinguish one collection on one album versus another collection on another album. It’s the hard-hitting ballads that set their albums apart. And their four-album run gets no better than Animal Magnetism. My friend Kevin agrees.

Matthew Sweet – Girlfriend

An amazing record, much listened to on CD in the first year or so that I moved to Sacramento. I probably read about Matthew Sweet in Spin magazine and bought the CD upon reading their gushing reviews. (I bought many an album because of magazine reviews, and many I never quite got the appeal of, nor maybe the rest of the world either: The Tragically Hip, Cell, The Pooh Sticks, and Teenage Fanclub come to mind. Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted was a Spin album of the year, but it never quite resonated with me.) I regret not seeing Matthew Sweet at Harlow’s a few years ago. I even had tickets, but it was a Sacramento Republic playoff game, and I thought he was opening for The Dream Syndicate, but apparently it was the other way around and I could have made the gig after all. I also don’t think I had anyone to go with, and as I had just separated from my wife of 20 years, I didn’t much feel like going to a concert by myself. Sweet is a beautiful singer and songwriter, and although he had some good songs on some records after Girlfriend, this album was an incredible piece of work, and to my way of thinking, his best by far. Plus it has Tuesday Weld on the cover, and Richard Lloyd from Television plays guitar on it. Finally, he was a little-known Athens, Georgia scenester and contributor in the 80’s, having been in a side project band with Michael Stipe.

Richard Thompson – Rumor And Sigh

I came to Richard Thompson with this album, maybe ten years or so after it came out in 1991, because my friend Adrienne at work was a big fan. Sadly, I wasn’t really hip to him or Linda Thompson or Fairport Convention or any of it before that. But Rumor and Sigh is a true modern masterpiece, with a perfect combination of lyrics, melody, and musicianship. “Vincent Black Lightning” is Thompson’s most popular song, and one of the true gems of the decade. “Read About Love” is a brilliant explication of yearning for a love one knows nothing about; “Feel So Good” can’t leave you feeling anything but, whether you break somebody’s heart tonight or not; “Don’t Sit on my Jimmy Shands,” “God Loves a Drunk,” there is not a dud on this record. If you’re not a fan of Fightin’ Dick Thompson, do yourself a favor and pick up Rumor and Sigh, on vinyl preferably. (But don’t let your friend sit on it.)

Weezer – Green Album

My friend Jeff and I have had eerily similar arguments about Weezer as Leslie Jones and Matt Damon did on the infamous Saturday Night Live sketch. Although I liked the Blue Album a lot when it came out, I kind of lost track of Weezer for a while after that. I admit their kitschy videos and faux-metal ironic stance turned me off a bit. Still, Blue was a real ass-kicker with great songs. I kind of missed Pinkerton, although I struggled to learn “Butterfly” on the guitar for a while there.

Somewhere in the early 2000’s I realized I had been fallen completely off the grid when it came to listening to – much less discovering – new-to-me music. Consumed with child-raising since 1995, I could probably count on one hand how many CD’s I bought between 1995 and 2002 that were actually released during those years. The most impactful was probably Buena Vista Social Club.

(An aside: in the late ’90’s I was killing time while on a business trip in Southern California, and I went into a record store to buy myself a new CD, which was something I had not done in quite a while. I literally could not find anything to purchase. I already had most of the old music I liked, and I didn’t know what new music to buy. I actually had a Staind CD in my hand for a while. I had heard of them, hadn’t I? Some kind of new version of rock/metal? I liked rock and metal, didn’t I? I carried this CD around the store, thinking “Someone, save me!” I was actually ashamed of myself. I knew this album would be a piece of shit, and that I wouldn’t like it. I felt like I didn’t know music anymore. Finally I happened upon International Superhits by Green Day, a pre-American Idiot compilation album. I wasn’t too familiar with Green Day at that time, and I liked it quite a bit. I eventually came to love American Idiot, but not quite enough to put it in this top 100. Still, Green Day saved me from Staind, and Weezer made sure I never had to look back.)

So the Green Album, alongside Green Day, helped rejuvenate my love of rock music as I entered my 30’s, and it’s been full speed ahead since then. While I came to LOVE Blue, and have also come to like Pinkerton a lot, Green is my ride or die Weezer album. They have some fine, eminently listenable albums after Green as well, but I’ll take both Matt Damon’s and Leslie Jones’ side in the SNL skit. Green is my favorite Weezer album, but Blue is my second favorite.

Green is a pure mix of pop/rock faultlessness. Ten short songs, the entire album is a brisk sub-half hour in length. Each song is catchier and livelier than the last. I understand that Rivers Cuomo went into a funk after Pinkerton‘s initial reception (that sophomore slump, am I right?) and decided to write more poppy, less personal songs for this third album as a big fuck you to, I don’t know, the world? I’m not going to say that lyrically the record speaks to my soul (although Island in the Sun hits hard and can’t help but leave you smiling and singing along) but the infectiousness of the ten tracks demand to be played loudly. I can’t play this album anymore without remembering how Weezer helped me fall back in love with rock music again.

XTC – Skylarking

I didn’t used to know too much about XTC, except that they made a handful of really good records, and that lead man Andy Partridge had mental health issues and was notoriously anxious about performing onstage. Though Mummer and Oranges and Lemons are outstanding records, Skylarking is a little piece of brilliance from 1986 that I feel like continues to influence a certain alt-pop melodic style of British-influcenced rock music to this day. Without XTC there’s no Modest Mouse, and possibly no R.E.M. I want to single out a few songs from the record, but literally every single one is amazing. “Dear God” is probably their best known song, but it’s that rare case – like David Bowie‘s Hunky Dory – where an artist’s best known song is on an album with a bunch of non-hits, but every single song on that album is supremely spectacular.

I recently saw a version of the band called EX-TC at the notorious Harlow‘s, with original drummer Terry Chambers and some other fellows. This band has the blessing of Partridge, and they knocked out all the hits for a rollicking night of rock and roll. Oddly, they didn’t play “Dear God,” so I asked the singer/guitarist about it after the show. Apparently, this three-piece used to be a four-piece with a dedicated vocalist. The guitarist said the old vocalist didn’t like to sing the band’s biggest hit because its controversial nature, so the new version of the band was unpracticed with it. I replied that that was precisely why all their fans love the song, because of its controversial nature . The chap agreed with me, we shook hands, I thanked him for the show and his time, and we went our separate ways, silently cursing that old vocalist.

Yes – Fragile

It’s hard for me to believe this album isn’t in my top 50, because I listened to it on almost constant repeat between the ages of about 12 to 16, but it suffers a bit from burnout bias. I think I listened to it *too* much back then. It is so familiar to me now, even though I don’t listen to the full album anymore than once or twice a decade, and it’s such a particular style of prog-rock, that it just doesn’t do for me the thing it used to. Such heavy bass and enveloping synthesizers (truly, Chris Squire and Rick Wakeman, respectively, were masters of their domains) sounds a little out of place to me today, where other prog legends like Pink Floyd continue to sound fresh. But there’s no denying the technical excellence of this record: the short, individual songs that showcase each band members’ talents, and the longer full-band jams like “Roundabout” – their unquestioningly most popular song, and “Heart of the Sunrise.” It’s a great record by a great band that had a lot of great records, but Yes didn’t quite grow with me the way Bowie, Zeppelin, Floyd, or Sabbath did.

OK, there it was, my 51st through 100th favorite albums of all time, in alphabetical order. If you’ve read my mini-reviews of all these albums, well, I don’t believe you. But I appreciate you anyway. Almost as much as I appreciate this music.

OK, next up: My top fifty albums of all time!