• The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. 1-3 by Robert Caro.  The 4th volume arrives in the spring, but it since it has been 10 years since the previous book I thought I might reread them all before diving into the new one.
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  This has been recommended by a couple of friends, and it is free for Kindle owners, so I thought I would give it a shot.  So far I don’t care for it — I’ll give it a couple of more chapters before I pull the plug.  (Update:  When grabbing the link from Wikipedia I noticed that this book is classified as young adult, which I had already suspected due to the excessive & annoying amount of exposition — the leash just got shorter.)
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.  I usually try to read one work of classic fiction each year.  This selection was inspired by Jonathan Franzen’s recent essay in  the New Yorker.
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.  Ninety-five percent of my reading is nonfiction, so it is unusual to see three novels on this list.  This book has always intrigued me — many end-of-the-century lists ranked it among the best novels of the 2oth century, and it was largely written while Foster was a professor here in Bloomington.  Also inspired by Franzen’s New Yorker essay.

Any other suggestions?

Incidentally, I the motivation for this post was that I rented Stop Making Sense on Blu-ray this weekend — it is a great, great movie on DVD or Blu-ray.  In fact, it was the first DVD that I ever bought.

Send us back Da Vinci then we don’t have to ponder 
The maddening smile of La Giaconda

– “Damnation’s Cellar“

Around the first of the year I had an idea to post an album review every week or two. This would satisfy two goals. First, it would get me back in the semi-regular posting habit. Second, it would force me to explore some of the dustier corners of my iTunes library. I wanted to develop the deep familiarity with these neglected albums in the same way that I did with my favorite albums as a kid.

The first album I chose was Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975). It is a great album, and commonly regarded as the Elton’s final great album from his prime years. It is just what you would expect from Elton at his best: great melodies, clever song construction and razor sharp lyrics from from Bernie Taupin. I just love it. I’m so glad that I’ve “discovered” Elton’s classic recordings — his best years were a little before my musical awakening. (Elton’s recent work is not my cup of tea, with the exception of The Union (2010), perhaps the best album he’s put out since Brown Dirt Cowboy. It really sounds like the Elton of old.)

I listened to Brown Dirt Cowboy every day for two weeks, but I still didn’t feel that musical intimacy that I did with some my favorite albums from my youth. I think the problem is in the way the I (and most people) now listen to music: on the iPod at the office or gym, on the computer or in my car during short commutes. We’re snacking on musical hors d’oeuvres, not ingesting a fully satisfying artistic meal. When I was a kid I would listen to a new record beginning to end — several times — without distraction while I studied the album artwork and liner notes — a luxury of youth I suppose. I owned that music emotionally and intellectually in a way I don’t think is possible with my current way of listening to music. I’ll probably continue to post reviews semi-regularly, but I don’t think I’ll achieve my goal of getting new albums under my skin the way I did 25 years ago.

Top Ten

Amazon has one of my all-time favorite albums for $5 this month, so I tweeted about it. One my tweeps asked about my top ten, so I decided to post a list. I used to do this all the time — it was an easy way to crank out an article and it did force me to think a little about what music I like and why I like it. Keep in mind that if I did this list tomorrow it might be totally different, and even contradictory. I don’t put much thought into it — I made a list of all my favorites that came to mind in about 2 minutes. That came to 12 albums — I threw out Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and U2′s Joshua Tree (1987). But tomorrow they might make the list . . .

1. Exile on Main Street (1972) – The Rolling Stones. I still remember vividly the first time I heard this record — if I would have been standing I think my knees would have buckled.
2. Stop Making Sense (1984) – Talking Heads. As a rule live rock and roll albums are awful. This is a spectacular exception to that rule. It is my favorite Heads album. Incidentally the concert film is not to be missed — a great movie that transcends its genre.
3. Physical Graffiti (1975) – Led Zeppelin. Detractors call it unfocused, fans call it eclectic. Well, it is a bit unfocused, but I love it. It could maybe have been pared down to a single LP, but I’m not sure what I would have thrown out. The first two sides might be the best straight up rock and roll of the Seventies.
4. London Calling (1979) – The Clash. I wouldn’t change a thing about it — even the album cover is perfect.
5. Revolver (1966) – The Beatles. Every pop recording released prior to Revolver sounds ancient to my uneducated ears. The boys really pushed music forward a decade or two with this one.
6. Low (1977) – David Bowie. My tastes are pretty conventional, but this is an exception — I don’t even think many Bowie fans would rate this one so highly. I loved it from the first note — a really great sense of musical time and place.
7. Pet Sounds (1966) – The Beach Boys. I told you my tastes were pretty conventional — you’ll find this one on almost every critic’s top ten list, and for a reason: It is the masterpiece of a true musical genius.
8. Who’s Next (1971) – The Who. I could put any one of about a half dozen Who albums on this list — they’re all great. Please note that the bonus tracks on the 1995 re-release are essential for Who fans.
9. Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) – Steely Dan. I’m a relatively new fan of the Dan — they came into my iTunes library by way of marriage, and they kept turning up on my playlists. That is something of a feat — I’m pretty set in my musical ways. Fagen and Becker truly great songwriters.
10. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) – Bruce Springsteen. “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” I could put 5 or 6 Springsteen albums on this list, but this is the one I listen to most consistently.

To make my collection useful I make heavy use of the library management tools built into iTunes, primarily Smart Playlists.  My basic goal is to separate stuff that I listen to regularly (my music), from stuff that I might listen to rarely or not at all (everything else).  Here are the basics of my methodology:

1. Encode everything! Don’t waste your time trying to edit your collection as you encode your CDs.  Hard drive space is cheap, and it is much easier to filter a track out of your library than to go back and encode it later should you want to.
2. Take the time to organize, rate, and categorize everything.  It takes time, but you don’t have to do it all at once.  I keep a couple of Smart Playlists with tracks that have not been rated or categorized into genres.  I also have some manual playlists with stuff that needs my attention (such as duplicates).  I find it useful to keep the album artwork up to date too (more on that later).
3. I have two playlists of music that I want to exclude from my music library.  There is manual playlist (Manual Exclude) that contains stuff like my wife’s music (most of it, anyway), my kids’ music, spoken word content and so on.  There is also a Smart Playlist (Exclude) that includes the Manual Exclude playlist, plus a few categories that I don’t want to bother with: video, podcasts, tracks with fewer than three stars and so on.
4. My Music is a Smart Playlist that includes everything that is not in my Exclude playlist.
5. Most of my other “core” playlists are Smart Playlists built on My Music (the first condition in the Smart Playlist is “playlist is My Music”):  Most Played, Least Played, Not Recently Played, Top Rated, Favorites (Most Played + Top Rated), and so on.  I then build smaller playlists from these core lists.
6. The only time I really use manual playlists (other than in my initial setup) is when I create an On The Go playlists from some tracks or albums that may be on my mind as I’m listening my iPod.
7. I sync everything over to my primary iPod (classic), and stick with my  core playlists and their derivatives, unless I’m just in the mood for a particular album, artist or genre.  For the Shuffle (treadmill or lawn work), I just take a sample of one my core playlists.
8. Multiple Libraries:  iTunes supports multiple libraries and I make use of them.  I have a second library that I maintain for my wife.  She has her own playlists, play counts, ratings and so on.
9. Finally, this may sound a little silly, but I also make use of the album artwork screen saver on my computer.  You would be surprised how often I see something pop up on the screen that just happens to strike my fancy that day.  It is a good way to uncover stuff that might get lost or neglected in a large library.

I hope someone finds this useful.  Let me know if you have any other tips.

If you haven’t had you hands on a Kindle, let me just say that the display is jaw-dropping.  When I showed it around many of my friends and colleagues could hardly believe they were looking at an electronic display.  The text and images are crystal clear.  This makes reading with the Kindle very easy on the eyes — no eyestrain or headaches like you might have with reading a lot of text on backlit LCD devices (I’m looking in your direction, iPhone).  The larger form-factor of the DX is also nice — the smaller Kindle is a little dinky in my opinion.

Another minor flaw is the noticeable 1/8 second hiccup as you turn the page in a document.  This is a little distracting, especially if you have your hands  on a real page-turner (like Dylan’s book, by the way).  Again, this is something that seems like it could be improved in future releases.

I also should also point out that the native PDF support is hit-or-miss.  Since PDF is a page layout standard, the Kindle does not give you any way to reformat the document (font size, paging and so on).  So  some PDFs look great, and others are completely unreadable.  This is disappointing because I envisioned myself downloading a lot of technical documentation which is freely available in PDF.  Some of those sources look fine, but it depends on how the original document is formatted.  However, my primary intention with PDF is to convert plain text documents  (such as Gutenberg texts) into PDF .  This works just fine and gives me a virtually unlimited source of free literature.

So the Kindle is great for most books, but I cannot say the same for newspapers.  Again the problem is in how I am used to reading the paper:  I scan, find an article,  read it, scan some more, skim an article, read part of an article, abandon an uninteresting article, scan and skim some more, and so on.  The Kindle just doesn’t support this style of reading.  I suppose I need to keep at it.  I have about a year’s worth of free 2-week trial subscriptions to get accustomed to it.

Update (5/9/2009):  Together Through Life debuted at #1 on the Billboard album charts.  It is comforting to know that good music can still reach a large audience.

* * *

Bob Dylan understands the challenge of living in his own shadow.  In ‘High Water’ from Love & Theft (2001) he sang of himself:  “As great as you are a man, You’ll never be greater than yourself.”  He  may yet live to eat those words.

In Together Through Life (2009) Dylan continues his remarkable renaissance that began nearly 20 years ago.  No, these recent albums are not as stunningly brilliant and freakishly innovative as the work of his youth — he changed the world once and seems to have no desire to launch another musical revolution.   What Dylan does do is demonstrate a sustained depth, maturity and craftsmanship in his songs that few can match, or even aspire to.

This new album seems more casual and relaxed that much of Dylan’s recent work.  But like all of Dylan’s best work, there is always more than meets the ear on the first few listens.  Dylan is a master songwriter, and the Master crafts every note and word fully conscious of its impact.

Thematically we are reacquainted with many of our old favorites:  Angry Bob (‘It’s All Good’), Bluesy Bob (‘My Wife’s Home Town’, ‘Shake Shake Mama’), Old Cowboy Bob (‘If You Ever Go To Houston’), Forlorn Bob (“Life Is Hard’), among others.  The album has the sound you might expect from a much-better-than-average New Orleans café house band — simple, sometimes understated, but substantial.

I have probably listened to Dylan’s last album (Modern Times – 2006) more than any other album from this decade.  We’ll have to see if this new one has that kind of shelf life.  So far I like its chances.

• I am thankful for my wonderful family.
• I thankful that I lived in the same time that Bob Dylan made music  — he is the greatest artist of our time.
• I am thankful that I get to see Albert Pujols play baseball — he is a once-in-a-generation player.
• I am thankful that I live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.
• I am thankful for Dogfish Head’s 90-Minute IPA.