The Great Southeast Music Hall was a legendary Atlanta music venue at least a decade before my time. The list of acts to play that stage is legendary. The most famous has to be the Sex Pistols show on January 5, 1978… but the venue is really known for hosting acts that would one day become huge. In the 1970s, you could go to Great Southeast Music Hall and for 3 or 4 bucks see “nobodies” like Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett or Lynyrd Skynyrd. Even if they were known – like Jim Croce, Muddy Waters or Linda Ronstadt – chances were good that there wouldn’t be much of a crowd (the official maximum capacity was only 500).
One night in the mid 1970s, Steve Martin and Martin Mull were supposed to do a double-bill as “The Steve Martin Mull Show”. Local legend Darryl Rhoades describes it:
“Steve had a college date on a Thursday night so they brought in Tom Waits for that show and Martin asked if I wanted to set in so I played drums with Jonny Hibbert on sax and Keith Christopher on bass with Martin on guitar and Tom on piano. That was one of my more pleasant memories at the Music Hall.”
The best part is, only around 14 people bought tickets, so the two Martins cut the show short and invited everyone – the crowd and venue employees – to the nearby Express Lanes bowling alley, where Martin and Mull bought several pitchers of beer and rented a couple lanes for the rest of the evening.
Can you imagine how cool that would have been? How much geek cred would you have with your “I saw Martin Mull open for a pickup band with Steve Martin and Tom Waits and only 13 other people showed up, so they took us bowling and bought pitchers of beer!” story?
NEAT FACT: Jonny Hibbert played sax, but is mostly known for starting Atlanta-based label Hib-Tone Records. The label only ever released four singles. Three of them were pretty forgettable… but the other one was R.E.M.’s first version of “Radio Free Europe”.
NEAT FACT 2: Keith Christopher was a founding member (and namesake) of a short-lived Atlanta band called “Keith and the Satellites”. After several personnel changes (including Keith’s departure) they renamed themselves “The Georgia Satellites”.
This is a gospel record called “The Joy Of Knowing Jesus” by The Revelaires. Normally, old gospel records sell for anywhere from 25¢ to $5, max. However, this particular record usually sells for $450-$1,100.
Why? Because one day in late 1983 or early 1984, at the now-demolished Reflection Sound studios here in lovely Charlotte, North Carolina, frustrated music producer Don Dixon happened to hand this record to R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. The rest of the band was working on a song, but Stipe didn’t have lyrics yet. In fact, he had a raging case of writer’s block. Dixon asked him to just sing the liner notes off the back of the LP over a recording of the new song, in hopes that it would get his creative juices going.
The song eventually became “7 Chinese Bros.”, the lead track from R.E.M.’s second LP, Reckoning. Dixon kept the version with Stipe singing the liner notes; it’s called “Voice of Harold” and it’s available on R.E.M.’s 1987 B-sides collection, Dead Letter Office:
In 1982, no one knew if Compact Discs were going to be a flop or fad or just something audiophiles with $1,000 stereos bought. Music retail was dominated by independent shops and regional chains back then, and they were loathe to spend tens of thousands on new display racks on a format that might tank.
So record companies introduced the longbox. For most of the 80s and into the early 90s, CDs were sold in long cardboard boxes:
Some folks say the longbox was to “help endcap marketing” with big graphics or “to cut down on shoplifting” by making it harder to stuff into your trousers undetected.
The longbox did help those 2 things, but its primary use was for display in stores. Two longboxes side by side were exactly 12″x12″, the same size as an LP. So record stores could display them in existing LP bins and not have to order special CD bins. And they could transition from LPs to CDs (or back again) simply by altering the ratios of each format from the distributor when ordering.
Ironically, some artists (especially R.E.M.) loudly decried the waste of cardboard longboxes were. So they were largely ditched. Some places switched to lockable, reusable plastic versions… but most just broke down and bought all new display cases instead. So hard to tell what was the bigger waste: all that cardboard, or all the particle board that made CD bins.
I mentioned R.E.M. because their album “Out of Time” was due for release in ’91, but there was a feud between R.E.M. (who were ADAMANTLY against it coming out in a longbox) and their record label (who genuinely didn’t have time to come up with an alternative).
Virgin Records US executive Jeff Ayeroff was pissed by censorship of 2 Live Crew and so formed “Rock the Vote” to get young adults to register to vote. The campaign was pretty famous in its day: seems like all the big stars made “Rock the Vote” public service announcements, which were heavily promoted on MTV.
Ayeroff saved the day when he got R.E.M. to allow Out of Time to come out in a longbox if it included a detachable postcard petitioning Congress for the Motor Voter bill and if Warner Brothers promised to come up with a “solution” to the longbox issue before the release of R.E.M.’s next album:
Both things were successful: Rock The Vote’s petition generated tens of thousands of responses, which were displayed in mail bags on the floor or the US Senate. And with other Motor Voter campaigns pushing, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993… and longboxes quietly went away.
First off, my apologies this is SOOOOO late. December was once my slowest work month, but over the past few years it seems like more and more personal events are filling what used to be the empty December space in my calendar.
This year in particular, I had a lot of “health issues”. I put that in quotes because I’m fine. I had a minor outpatient surgery in mid-December and am 100% back from that. But ever since my insurance switched me to a new network last May, these new doctors been VERY proactive in checking me out. For example, since I’m a former smoker, they wanted a chest CT scan… which I did last week, and which came back fine. Point is, I’ve been doing A LOT of this kind of stuff the past couple months.
Aaaaaanyway, musically 2024 was much like 2023 for me… I loved tons of individual tracks, but as far as whole albums go… not so much. I do think I like this year’s Top 10 albums more than last years, though: according to Last.fm I listened to many of this year’s albums more than their corresponding album last year!
So let’s get to it: below are my ten favorite albums of 2024. The list comes from my Last.fm stats generally; I almost always tinker with the specific order of the albums. After that are the honorable mentions, followed by the “Band of the Year”, “Song of the Year”, “Live Song of the Year” and the raw data from Last.fm.
My Top Albums of 2024
10) Emilíana Torrini – Miss Flower – I love Emilíana Torrini SO MUCH you guys! Her 1999 album Love in the Time of Science is easily in my all-time, take ’em to the grave Top 10 list! But her output has always been sporadic. This is her first solo album since 2013’s Tookah! There’s a lot to like here! It’s much more in the “electronica” vein than the “acoustic singer\songwriter” genre she always seems to flirt with. Odd thing is, I like the non-single tracks here way more than the singles. There’s nothing wrong with “Black Lion Lane”, but I think the opener, the dark “Black Water” is so much better! I’m just SO GLAD to have this lady back! Now: COME TO ATLANTA! (Charlotte’s a wish too far, huh?)
9) Fabienne Debarre – Welcome to the Age of Broken Minds – Most years I have at least one “mystery guest”, an artist so unknown that Spotify, Last.fm and Wikipedia have no information about them at all. To many, Fabienne Debarre might be just that person this year… except she’s got deets. She’s a long-time collaborator of Baxter Dury (son of Ian Dury, of “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll” fame). She’s also a longtime member of the well-regarded French band Evergreen. So yeah… maybe you’ve never heard of her, but this is an all-around solid album of European indie synth(-ish)pop. There’s really not a bad track on this one, and I found myself surprised at how often I’d put on the opening track, “Burning” (see below) and would listen to the rest of the album all the way though.
8) The George Kaplan Conspiracy- Polychromatic – So… French Nu-Disco is a thing. This album slaps. It’s the kind of thing you can throw on at a party and forget about, ‘cos there are no ballads or acoustic bits. This is the kind of music you’d hear in a really hip European coffeehouse or lounge. Or on the soundtrack to some hip TV show like You or Killing Eve. Or in Topshop, or whatever place hipster 20 year-old European girls shop at these days. The point is, they’re fun! Give ’em a try!
7) Oxford Drama – The World Is Louder – Oxford Drama are a duo from Wrocław, Poland. They make some really good indie pop tunes! And this is one of those albums that kind of inexplicably sticks around. Like, I’d see it in my library in Spotify and think “sure, let’s hear this song!” but I’d stick around for the whole album! It’s kind of Corrs\Sixpence None The Richer-like at times, so if you dig those bands, check these guys out! I really like them… but then again I’m a guy who “stops liking bands once you need a comma to count their fans”.
6) Cults – To The Ghosts – Founded by San Franciscans in New York City all the way back in 2010, Cults are a mixture of 60s girl bands and gauzy dream pop. But they’re kind of silly, too. They have the same kind of tongue-in-cheek “Oooooo! We’re SCARY!!” thing that The Cramps had so long ago. And it especially comes through in this album (check out that video!). They’re just a lot of fun, and this album just has this incredible “what if Betty Draper was a serial killer?” vibe that I just adore! I don’t understand why this band generally, and this album specifically, aren’t more popular with the GenX crowd. If you watched 120 Minutes, this band is SO for you! Also, these guys covered The Motels’ first LP, and it’s worth tracking that down!
5) Julia Holter – Something in the Room She Moves – I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a pretentious twat, so here goes: Julia Holter’s music isn’t for everyone. This music exists at the junction of art pop, ambient, avant-garde, experimental and modern classical that’s… difficult to approach in a lot of ways. This isn’t the kind of music you throw on at a party… unless maybe it’s an acid party? But there’s something deep in it, something fundamental, that I really like about it. Holter just resonates with me on a deep level, and this album continues her string of home runs!
2023 was an… unusual year for music. As far as individual tracks go, 2023 was a bumper crop! My Fall 2023 Spotify playlist had to be split in two because there were just SO MANY great songs showing up on Spotify!
But as far as entire albums go? Ehhhhhhh, not so much. I know some of you are thinking “dude, are you CRAZY? 2023 had albums by Caroline Polachek, Lana Del Rey, boygenius, Small Black, Depeche Mode, Alison Goldfrapp, Mitski. 100 gecs, Fever Ray, Sufjan Stevens… we even got a flute record from André 3000!”
I get it. I do. But while I found many, many great new songs this year, full albums seemed to elude me. Which is why I broke one of my longstanding rules this year. Oh yes – there is RULE BREAKING this year!
So let’s get to it: below are my ten favorite albums of 2023. The list comes from my Last.fm stats generally; I almost always tinker with the specific order of the albums. After that are the honorable mentions, followed by the “Band of the Year”, “Song of the Year”, “Live Song of the Year” and the raw data from Last.fm.
My Top Albums of 2023
10) M83 – Fantasy – I’ll be honest: M83 is one of those bands I wish I liked more… especially since Spotify says “French indietronica” is one of my top genres, and these guys (with Daft Punk and Air) basically created the whole thing! Yet, M83 is a band I listen to and like the hits (but wore “Midnight City” into the ground… badly). So, while this is a pretty good LP I’d recommend to anyone, it says something that this year was so slow that a band I’m ultimately kinda “meh” about makes the Top 10.
9) Slowdive – Everything is Alive – Good to have ya back, guys.I don’t know you ended up as THE most evergreen tree in the shoegaze forest, but here we are.
8) Alice et Moi – Photographie – Alice Vannoorenberghe or Alice Vanor for short, or her stage name, Alice et Moi, has released a ton of good singles and EPs. Her song “Éoliennes” was even in a teaser for Netflix’s You:
That’s her music – slow, but with a beat… sexy… European. It’s EXACTLY the kind of music you’d see in a show like You… or a Longchamp commercial. Photographie builds on the success of all those singles, EPs and her debut, 2021’s Drama. But while I like this album, I understand the “it starts to sound ‘samey’ after a while” criticism. Like I said, it’s a slow year for albums.
7) Munya – Jardin – Montreal’s Munya does pretty indie pop, end of story. One of the later tracks on this disc – “Un Deux Trois” – sounds like a parallel universe Madonna, where she ended up French-Canadian and in Montreal in 1983 instead of NYC.
If the French is too much for you, here’s her slightly funky cover of “Bizarre Love Triangle” (LOVE THAT BASS!)
She’s a lot of fun. This album is a lot of fun.
6) Kid Francescoli – Sunset Blue – What’s there to say? All of Kid Francescoli’s albums have made my “Best of” lists, excepting the first two (that predate my lists). And really, why wouldn’t his stuff be here? If “French indietronica” is something you might be into, he’s one of the biggest names. His music is fun, catchy and almost always has a beat. There’s a time and place for slow, almost ambient music… but Kid Francescoli time ain’t it. If you want to feel like you’re hanging out in a hipster lounge in Marseille… this is the artist (and album) for you! And speaking of, Kid (actual name Mathieu Hocine) is from Marseille, and he dedicated this album to the sights, sounds, smells and memories of his hometown. It’s a great album to listen to while walking, and a great album to play for a party. Keep up the FANTASTIC work, sir.
5) Cosmetics – Baby– This is the point in the list where I launch into a tirade about Johnny Jewel. And yeah, it’s a thing: Jewel, musician and producer, broke up Chromatics and ran off many of his labels most talented artists. You may remember the Italians Do It Better band Heaven, who had a indie hit called “Truth or Dare”:
Or, if you saw Chromatics on their 2019 tour, you might have seen Heaven’s lead singer Aja playing synths with Desire. Anyway, I guess as part of the IDIB fallout, she left the label and restarted her previous band, Cosmetics.
It’s just pure synthpop. And not every song works, but I really like them, you guys:
So, if you don’t know me, I collected records in middle and high school… back in the 80s when dinosaurs roamed the earth. In fact, I recently got a new storage solution for my records and went through my core 80s collection for the first time in ages. I posted many of my favorites to my Instagram account – just scroll back a couple months.
Anyway, I got out of record collecting in the early 90s, when it seemed like CDs had conquered vinyl once and for all. And from 2008 until 2020, I’d buy a record every few years, be it an old favorite or colored vinyl,” just because”.
I really started buying vinyl again in 2022. I’ve ordered maybe a dozen LPs from Europe, and I’ve discovered something: European LP mailers suck. Like, almost all of them. So if you really want a record from Europe, it may be worth your time to see if anyone in the US has it. Not only will shipping be much cheaper from the US than the EU, we here in the US use proper packaging.
This is mailer for a record I ordered from Norway. The center of the mailer had a “tear here” strip, so that’s how I opened it. That part’s SUPPOSED to look bad. But the problem here is that while the cardboard is thick, it’s very soft. It feels like it was made with mostly recycled cardboard. In any case, you can see all the dents and bends the record suffered on the way here. The record arrived with a torn and dented outer sleeve. I emailed the label, who opened a new copy of the LP and mailed me that sleeve. They coulda avoided all that by just using better quality mailers.
Here’s another shot of the Norway mailer, at a slightly different angle, so you can see all the dents, and how thin it is on the side:
And this is the mailer a French company sent my copy of Alice et Moi’s new album, Photographie in. In this case, the cardboard itself is actually quite strong. But again, it’s so thin – thinner than an album sleeve – that it offered little protection, and the sleeve was again damaged in shipment:
I could email the label about the damaged sleeve, but I’ve just learned my lesson and will think long and hard before buying overseas again. Unless it’s Saint Etienne’s Christmas stuff. I’m helpless against their Christmas records.
And speaking of the UK, of the dozen overseas records I’ve ordered, Rough Trade was the only vendor who packaged their LPs well. And I know I only showed you two examples of bad packaging today. But it seems to a Europe-wide thing: I cross my fingers with every overseas order knowing it will be packaged horribly no matter if ordered from Scotland, France, Germany, The Netherlands or Belgium.
And hey… it’s easy to criticize. So tell us, oh wise one, what does a GOOD mailer look like? Well, this is what Polyvinyl Record Company uses here in the US:
That Alvvays LP was shipped between two pieces of thick, study NEW cardboard, surrounded by more thick, study NEW cardboard, and one more layer of thick, study NEW cardboard! You could STOMP on this thing and it wouldn’t hurt the record.
And here’s a mailer from Fat Possum Records out of Oxford, Mississippi. The packaging is similar to Polyvinyl’s and more than adequate for the task. But I just wanted to share their corporate motto, perhaps my all-time favorite: “We’re trying our best”
I screwed around a lot in high school. I was one of those kids who wouldn’t shut up in classes he liked, like history and English. Believe me, few Duluth High students held stronger opinions about the Battle of Hastings and Ezra Pound than I. However, I just.. could… not… stay… awake in classes I disliked, such as… well, most forms of math, honestly. That’s assuming I even showed up at all. After all, can’t you learn more about the human condition in one afternoon at the High Museum than you can in a whole week of Mrs. Pierce’s class?
So, not surprisingly, I had to start my collegiate career at community college.
How long ago was this? It was so long ago that Atlanta still had separate morning and evening newspapers. I mention this because I had to subscribe to the morning paper for 10 weeks for an economics class.
One morning I grabbed my copy of The Atlanta Constitution and drove to school. The traffic gods were kind that morning, so I had plenty of time to pick up a cup of tea at the Student Center. I sat in the near-empty classroom, reading the paper and sipping my builder’s tea. And there I spotted the blurb:
German supermodel Claudia Schiffer will be making an appearance from noon until 2PM at the downtown Macy’s tomorrow to promote her new Guess? perfume.
Me, having clearly learned nothing from screwing around in high school, thought: “I have a female in my life I could buy that perfume for. And meeting Claudia Schiffer sounds like WAY MORE FUN than Algebra 98.” So I went to my first class the next morning, then drove to Macy’s downtown.
The queue wasn’t as long as you might imagine. There were only 30-35 people ahead of me in line, and I wasn’t even trying to rush there. To be honest, Claudia Schiffer was always way down my supermodel list. I always have been, and forever shall be, a Christy Turlington man, with Helena Christensen as my side chick. There certainly wasn’t anything WRONG with Claudia Schiffer. She was just #18 on the list because there were 17 models I thought were prettier. Yes, even Shalom Harlow.
But then she finally came out from behind a makeshift curtain. I was a ways from her, but I remember thinking “wow, she’s a lot prettier than I expected… like A LOT prettier!” And, as the line got ever-closer I just COULDN’T BELIEVE how pretty she was. I mean, there were posters of her plastered in almost every direction of the fragrance department. I could look at those posters all day and think, “yeah, that girl’s pretty”, but then to turn my head and actually SEE her? In the flesh? Godammighhty! It was like my blood pressure went up five points every step closer I got to her.
Then the moment finally came: I was THERE, the width of a high school cafeteria-style table across from Claudia Schiffer. Imagine all the love and care and feeding and education and attention it took to make ME. The countless hours of effort of hundreds, perhaps THOUSANDS of people, from doctors and teachers to cafeteria ladies and Vince at the Pleasant Hill Jiffy Lube. All those people, just for me to look Claudia Schiffer dead in the eye and, for want of anything else better to say, said:
“You’re SOOOO PRETTY. I just wanna die!”
My “one chance” with a supermodel, and I sound like Marcia freakin’ Brady telling Jan about a secret crush. Thankfully, rather than look alarmed, she just kind of grinned, I guess secretly celebrating me officially being the 10,000th man she’d turned into a complete pile of helpless Jell-O.
“OK. But… your name… for the shirt?”
“Oh [sheepishly] Jim. J-I-M.”
She signed “To Jim, Claudia Schiffer” on a Guess? t-shirt, smiled and handed it to me. To my credit, I’d recovered enough to prove my German classes weren’t completely useless by giving her a “Tschüs!” then stepped away before making the situation any worse.
2022 was an amazing year for music! I have a gigantic list of great albums that came out this year… and I also had one of the best years ever for concerts, seeing Yumi Zouma and Magdalena Bay in Atlanta, Beach House and Alvvays in Asheville, and Purity Ring and Cannons here in Charlotte! Wow!
Yumi Zouma at Terminal West, Atlanta
Purity Ring at The Fillmore Charlotte
Beach House at Rabbit Rabbit, Asheville
Cannons at Black Box, Charlotte
Alvvays at The Orange Peel, Asheville
Magdalena Bay at Terminal West, Atlanta
Also, my apologies for not getting this out sooner. I wanted to publish it in early December, but life kept interfering (as did the list itself, more on that later). So I planned to get it out the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but one of my clients had a serious, LEVEL-1 DISASTER I had to address. I love billable hours, but didn’t have the “relaxing week of nothing” I was hoping for.
So anyway, below are my ten favorite albums of 2022. The list comes from my Last.fm stats generally; I reserve the right to tinker with the specific order. After that are the honorable mentions, followed by the “Song of the Year”, “Live Song of the Year” and the raw data from Last.fm.
My Top Albums of 2022
10) Lovers Lake – Lovers Lake – It seems like every year I stumble upon a new artist for which there is little to no information. Lovers Lake is that band for 2022. Their Last.fm page just says “if you know anything about this band, add to the wiki!”. Spotify’s bio only lists their socials. I haven’t looked through every post on their Facebook, Insta and Twitter pages, but as yet I haven’t learned anything about them. Where are they from? How many are they? Who knows? But their self-titled debut album is pretty good! It’s heavily influenced by vaporwave, but it’s a well-rounded album with actual instruments – real guitars and basses! There’s lots to love here, if only we knew more about them!
9) Kid Moxie – Better Than Electric – It seems like the #9 spot on my lists is reserved for acts “showing up out of nowhere” every year. And just as Munya’s Voyage to Mars surprised me in 2021, so too did Kid Moxie’s Better Than Electric in 2022. This is a surprisingly solid album, although for some reason it doesn’t include her (pretty awesome) cover of “Creep”.
If you’re looking for a new album to relax or work to, check out this new ambient\modern classical compilation album at Bandcamp. 100% of all proceeds (even Bandcamp fees) will be given to the International Rescue Committee (rescue.org) to support displaced Ukrainian children and families.
BUT WAIT… THERE’S MORE! The album was coordinated by Mint Julep’s Hollie Kenniff, and contains a track from her and her husband (under his “Goldmund” alter-ego). If you buy the album in the next week or so and send a screencap of your receipt to Mint Julep’s Facebook Messenger account, they’ll send you a link to their new, as yet unreleased, covers album. It’s got their take on Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer”, Tears for Fears’ “Shout”, Headphones’ “I Never Wanted You” and more!
That’s TWO ALBUMS for as little as $10! GO! GO! GO! HELP SOME UKRAINIANS AND GET SOME NEW TUNES! DO IT NOW!
