The complete set of essays, more or less in one place. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die…Or Not* | Black Sunshine Media.
There was one morning I woke up in 1992 and I felt like I’d been asleep for a couple of years. Right here, right now, at this very moment, I think the 1001 Albums list should end and start over. The book and list should be split into two volumes. It’s got nothing to do […]
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Rock Over London, Rock On Wesley Willis
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wouldn’t mind, take a minute out of your day in remembrance of Wesley Willis, who would have been 52 today, and definitely would have whooped the camel’s ass in celebration. Rock Over London, Rock On Wesley Willis.
Comparatively speaking, we’re going to breeze through this period. There’s a revolution of sorts on the horizon. At this point, recording artists are either making records that sell, or they aren’t making records. There will be fewer suggested alternatives simply because 1001 AYMHBYD already named most of the Must Hear records. You could almost skip […]
If 1985-86 is a dead zone for Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, then 1987-88 is a black hole. Mainstream popular music was more about hairspray and pastel colors than artistic achievement. How bad was music in 1987? It was Bruce Willis – The Return of Bruno bad. It was Whitesnake and Tawny Kitaen […]
Dedicated to my brother, Bobby Camp (1969-2015) who introduced me to more bands than I can count. Frank Zappa (among others) once said something along the lines of writing about music is like dancing about architecture. That’s wrong. If listening to music is an experience, then writing about said experience is just as valid as […]
To be honest, I didn’t know what the hell was going on in 1983-84, and I was hoping that 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die was going to bring some clarity to my confusion. Generally speaking, the self-awareness of a 16-year-old boy is limited to his immediate sight and grasp. At least, that’s […]
It was seven years ago this week that I arrived in Taipei with a Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook, a suitcase and a laptop. The only people I “knew” in town were my former landlord’s parents, whom I’d met several times during their visits to San Francisco. They were super nice people, but the language barrier […]
Every so often, it’s important to stop, take a look around, stare out the window for a while, change the channel, get up and stretch your legs. The last four years in popular music have witnessed a series of sea changes, which ultimately sank a bunch of ships. The disco backlash has reached critical mass, […]
1979-1980 is the first period of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die…Or Not in which I had heard every record prior to writing the associated essay. In some cases, I was listening to the record for only the second time, but there were no surprises, only disappointments and hasty generalizations. On the other […]
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