Disclaimer: I am 46 years old and I very rarely listen to new music and I avoid leaving my home as much as possible. This means that much of what I’m aware of comes through my Facebook feed, which everyone knows is designed to make you keep scrolling, so I’m becoming less intelligent and my world is shrinking. If the reader feels my top ten things reflect myopia, tunnel vision, or the ramblings of an old man with his head up his ass, I’m sure you’re right. So here goes:
1) Terrifying cop videos.
This is where the facebook newsfeed/feedback loop really kicks in for me. I don’t intend to start discussing the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases BUT there’s a reason why Spike Lee filmed a fictional version of the murder of Eric Garner back in 1989 in his classic “Do The Right Thing”. Back in 1989, you’d have to live in the world Spike Lee lived in to be aware that cops killing black men when it wasn’t necessary “was a thing”. So most everyone has seen the Eric Garner video but my Facebook feed (again, niche marketed to me, and I have all these anti-American pinko “friends” posting this shit all the time) has been coughing up countless videos of cops acting fucked up, and bullying and threatening, using undue force, threatening people at gunpoint inappropriately and behaving as evil machines rather than people. It used to be the case that if you were a very consistently meek and unnoticeable person you’d never be aware that cops could do such things. Here’s one of my personal favorites that resulted in a relatively “happy ending”.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiJbHiQTe2c#t=17
So now the squares gotta face it: cops are no less scary than the “criminal element” they purport to protect you from. Many of us have known this all our lives. So I think this trend of filming cops acting like Nazi Stormtroopers and posting it online is good for society. There is starting to be more of a real dialogue, and this is an example of how the new surveillance culture cutsboth ways.
DOWNLOAD: Bring the Noise MP3 by Public Enemy from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
2) Delightful animal videos.
No one has time to click on every one of them but my personal experience is they always make me happy and are the perfect antidote to the aforementioned terrifying cop videos. Here’s a recent favorite:
DOWNLOAD SOME RECENT FAVES AS A WALLPAPER.
3) Ace Calling [link]
Seriously you grumpy punks, John Houlihan from Live from the Barrage went to town on this NY exclusive FB Meme with some 800 group members. Think WFMU meets Howard Stern and that is what their Friday night podcast is like. The meme might be better but it’s the podcast is our favorite of the low-brow.
Correction: Kurt Gottschalk started the group but Houli invited us but he still gets credit for making it a thing – plus we think the podcast is the tits (yea we just said that). Not everything needs to be linear. -Ed
4) Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey is gonna have a hard time beating 2014 for his own personal best year. He’s a big muscular guy who was sooooo skinny in the AIDS movie and he’s an easy going southern party guy who portrayed an absolutely convincing functional alcoholic nihilistic genius ex-cop on the coolest new cable show. Alright, alright alright!
5) True Detective
This is my kind of TV. The coolest weirdest most intense artsy fartsy television show since Twin Peaks. This show actually caused me to start posting shit on Facebook, my theories about it and insights and whatnot. Slippery fucking slope.
6) Breaking Bad
Vince Gilligan and his posse really did this right. As of now, I believe Breaking Bad is the most perfect cable long form storytelling multiple season television show ever made. They never made a bad move and ended it in a way that was utterly satisfying. Best series ending since that HBO show about the family that ran a funeral home.
7) Tom Petty “Hypnotic Eye”
Maybe there are new people playing this kind of seriously deeply righteous tradational guitar driven rock and roll and I’m oblivious to it, please refer back to my disclaimer. If you haven’t dug into this and have ever liked Tom Petty in your life, listen to the whole thing for free right now. Mike Campbell dominates this album, more than usual, even. This album makes this year’s Black Keys album sound like Taylor Swift. And I like the Black Keys and have no problem with T.S. either.
8) Prince “ART OFFICIAL AGE”
Sort of the same deal as with Petty. Pick whatever the last time a Prince album totally blew you away and I’ll tell you this is his best thing since that album. For me it’s his best since the “unpronounceable symbol” album that opened with “My Name Is Prince”. And I sucked up the one hundred or so albums he made between that one and this one. For me what makes this album great is it just reeks and oozes of everything that has made Prince the greatest singular talent on Earth for the entirety of his recording career. Underrated.
9) Nick Cave
Nick Cave may well be the most consistently right on the money “cool” artist ever. The album he put out this year, “Push the Sky Away” is great as usual but live he’s proving to be the new Bowie as far as I’m concerned. Specifically, he has a surplus of the quality of poise that Bowie has, which is an exceedingly rare trait among rock and roll frontmen, even the greatest of which tend to be organ grinder monkeys (the Jagger/Tyler tradition). At the same time, much of his greatness is expressed through the group mind of the amazingly powerful and sensitive and idiosyncratic Bad Seeds. Bowie in his best eras had a similar thing going, where the band gets Bowie’s intention/vibe and fucking runs with it and jams the shit out of it. You want dynamics? There’s no greater range of moods, rhythms and volumes than a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds concert. I was fortunate to catch their show last summer at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. A truly magical night. Here’s an audience filmed thing from that. Dig the reaching hands and think about the end of the Ziggy Stardust concert film:
10) Scott Walker and Sunn 0))) “Soused”
I’m a long time Scott Walker fan but this was the one release I heard this year that blew my mind by not sounding like anything else I ever heard, yet hooking me in with the traditional elements of a beautiful voice, great melodies and instrumental hooks. If you’re curious you should read Tim Sommer’s piece on this, I agree with every word he says, but I’m not smarticulate (my neologism) enough to cough up this level of analysis:
And here’s the”single”:
2014? Could have been worse. 2015 holds some promise. I have total faith that “Better Call Saul” will deliver the goods at the very high standard of quality we’ve come to expect from Vince Gilligan and company. Also, my favorite fresh and current band, Radiohead, is working on a new album, so 2015 may well be a Radiohead year. My new year’s resolution is to tweet. Have a happy.
LIKE, CLICKBATE AND CARRY ON BELOW.
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