Is It Really The Best Album of the Year?

I feel that I am one of the last people in the world to download entire albums. In our single serving world, the $.99 song purchase rules.

When I buy music, I listen to the whole album at least once front to back. I am still searching for that next great album. The truly great artist and the truly great album have a story to tell. It doesn't always have to be a concept album like a Flaming Lips or Drive-By Truckers (well, like the ones they used to do). Nor does it have to be an over the top political album like Neil Young.

Rather, a great album can weave a patchwork that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. There's a difference between an album and a bunch of songs that I like - and there's nothing wrong with the later. To me, I can have my iPod shuffle all songs by the White Stripes, the Black Keys, Jay Z, and good times invariably ensue.

But you can't shuffle great albums. Can you imagine Abbey Road starting with anything other than "Come Together"?

Or how about Exile on Main Street not starting with “Rocks Off”?

Or for hip hop fans, try this one for size … Imagine The Low End Theory starting with "Jazz" and finishing with "Skypager" instead of starting with the stripped down bass line of "Excursions" and finishing with the lyrical orgy of "Scenario"?

Here were a few albums in 2006 that I thought had a story to tell …

Beck - The Information – I either love or hate Beck albums – but you have to say that each one is an album, and you either love or hate the whole shooting match. I guess that Beck feels like I do about music and technology – it’s has made it totally different. So he plays with technology in each track of The Information, and then delivers what I feel is a big F U to the technology-enabled, single-serving consumption of music with a mishmash of songs in his last track.

The Coup - Pick a Bigger Weapon –The Coup can weave political statements with joyous, smooth fun about life in a way that resonates with how I feel these days … from “Uncle Sam ain’t the baker, he is the butcher/ We’re all on Punk’d with Ashton Kutcher” to “Ijustwannalayaroundalldayinbedwithyou”, to “I want to laugh, love, f***, and drink liquor, and help make a revolution come quicker.” And yes, there is enough there for the head boppers to get their fill of beats and guest appearances on tracks like “My Favorite Mutiny," where Talib Kweli and Black Thought shine.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times – It’s easy to pick a Dylan album, isn’t it? But this isn't an exercise in paying homage to a comeback king, especially in the shadows of other recent and forthcoming comebacks by so many (New York Dolls, The Who, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Pixies, The Fugees). What drew me to this album is that it's the anti-comeback. You get a musically impressionistic insight into his life these days from the album. Before I read the interview in Rolling Stone, I could get that he really embraces his elder status. He’s not trying to “comeback” or recreate something that has long since past. For instance, compare this album’s tale of a salve loving owner in “Nettie Moore” to the judgmentally righteous tone and lyrics of “The Ballad of Hattie Carroll.” If you want to hear a unique musical story of a legend’s life – this is it. And you just gotta love a guy who is 65 who’s sends a semi-creepy shout out to Alicia Keys.

Joanna Newsom – Ys – This album was hard for me to listen to. It was like reading Kant for me. I’ve listened to it about a dozen times and I am still trying to soak in the poetry and the harp and the zangytwangy voice of hers. But there’s a story there. Like Kant, I am still trying to digest it all. Like Kant, it is dense, thoughtful, insightful, and appreciated by few.

The Roots – Game Theory -- They really need no notes. If you don’t like them, then you have bad taste in hip hop. Perhaps bad taste in music -- and they get the album thing. In fact, the one of the best "Best Album" lists IMHO was from ?love himself ...

Happy listening, everyone. And please ... listen to the whole album.

The most unexpected upgrade a.k.a. more fun in Subarus

I typically rent the cheapest class of car possible when I travel. When I travel alone on business, I really couldn’t care if I drive a Kia or a Jag. I stepped to the Columbus Hertz desk this Monday and I was a bit beside myself when the agent handed me the keys.

A Subaru. In fact, a Subaru Forrester S.

Yes, for IGSMTOMM faithful, it was the same car that I crashed on Christmas with my son in it. I thought it was the damndest thing.

Was it that improbable? I mean, I have been upgraded dozens of times before and haven’t thought anything of it. Why was this time different?

I don’t believe in fate, and lean closer to the free will side of the world. But there I stood standing like Earl Hickey, asking karma why she would do such a thing?

I got in the car and drove to my friend Andy’s house tentatively at first. I gingerly steered and accelerated the car around I-670 until I built faith again. Faith in the car. Faith in my driving. The car is fun. I got back on the proverbial horse. Lesson learned.

Do I believe that this was karma? No.

What I do believe is something that I am thinking of as philosophical or spiritual appetite. I think my mind, spirit, (whatever) just knew what it needed. It needed to find a symbol for a lesson. If it wasn’t going to be the Subaru in Columbus, it was going to be my friend Steve who blacked out during a skiing accident and got back up the mountain the next day. If not that, then something else.

I call it “spiritual appetite” because of my father-in-law. He was watching me feed Sean unsuccessfully this past weekend. He knows that Sean’s lack of appetite stresses me out, and just said to me:

“Relax. His body will tell him what he needs, and when he is ready to eat.”

While I haven’t bought into that theory totally yet for Sean, I did think that this had some application to the ideas of karma and randomness. The spiritual and philosophical fuel is all around you, it just requires the right time to set the table ...

... And eat.

I have two jobs

I recently took a job as a part-time pro teaching snowboarding at Mount Snow in Vermont. It's actually made me better at my day job, and wrote a post how on the kasina blog.

I don't normally like to mix my work and personal blogging, but the convergence of these two parts of my lives have led to a lot of thought.

Thinking About Infiniti(y) in a Subaru

So some people have written to ask me more about rolling my car. The story is a simple, but scary one. Man drives car north in rain on Christmas night. Rain turns to sleet, sleet turns to uncontrollable slush (even in a Subaru) and I fishtailed. I couldn't recover, so my car spun 180 across the road and I rolled 90 degrees down into a ditch--not more than 6 feet from a riverbed.

Sean was in the car. He didn't cry at all for about 5 seconds -- the scariest moment of my life. Hands down.

Despite having several James Kim episodes, all was OK. I was rescued by a good Samaritan (who happens to be a fellow instructor at Mt. Snow), and Sean and I escaped without a scratch. In fact, even the Subaru was in pretty decent shape all things considering.

I've learned a lot from the incident; anything problem fixed with money is not a real problem, drive incredibly slow in bad weather (I was doing 30 in a 50 with an AWD car), people are genuinely good and helpful. The thing has kept me up the most is learning how to apply what I call the Infinite Loss Rule, or I think of as just the Infiniti Rule (to put it in proper auto context). Basically, the idea if there is an expected outcome that has infinite loss, it pays to invest infinite resources in its prevention.

I used to deny that such a rule existed. That I just didn't think clearly enough in calculating the odds out and apply it appropriately. That fear got in the way of another complex pot odds calculation.

I was wrong. And perhaps it is silly that I have lived so long and become a parent without fully internalizing it. It's probably common sense to most of you out there.

I know it exists and I felt it. Even world-class tournament poker players face an all-in where they are sure they have the best of it, but still feel compelled to fold. And their kid isn't (directly) at stake. Just money.

Are they cowards? Am I? I am inclined to think no in both cases, though I am inclined to care less about the latter.

I think the key lies in two questions that I don't have the answers to yet:

1. When do you apply the Infinti Rule? If always, you will be paralyzed to stillness. If never, well then you may not get pulled out of that Vermont ditch alive. Or worse.

2. Once you enact it, what is a reasonable prevention? Just how far do you take it? Ask an insurance salesman or watch parents a Babies-R-Us deciding if that $200+ Britax Roundabout is worth it (firsthand I say yes now, but I know I am not a good sample subject).

I don't have any of the answers, but I sure am asking the questions these days.

Trouble on my mind about trouble on my mind

So if you haven't noticed (and judging by my traffic logs, you haven't), I've been a little lax on blogging during the last few months. Part of it is that I got busy, but the other half is that I got writer's block. I guess I do it annually where I start reconsidering the purpose of this blog.

I go through this dilemma about once a year.

I said to myself when I started blogging that I was not going to be just a collection of daily links I think are cool. I think my friend ThatKid said it best during a dinner we had when he said, "I blog so people can just tune in whenever they'd like a get a piece of me."

To be frank, it's hard to do that well. As Malcom Gladwell wrote in a post about Vince Carter and Bill Simmons ... Go ahead, try to do that everyday. Try getting the prose just right day in and day out.

I did get a really nice comment to my Christina Day post recently and these are the types of things that have rejuvenated by desire to write. There's been plenty in my life recently (move to the burbs, I rolled my 1 week old Subaru on Christmas night with my son in it, I have a 2nd job as a snowboarding instructor), so look for a new, revitalized IGSMTOMM coming in the next few days.

Thanks again for reading. Please drop me a line if anything speaks to you.