Shit Your Grandma Liked: The Reverend Dick Picks the Best Albums of the 1950s

I don't know which I like best:
cooking, cleaning, or intercourse.
Cooking, I guess.

I hate Canada Geese.  They're nasty, miserable, filthy, stupid, vicious fucking things and if it wasn't for the demented laws protecting them as some sort of Canadian national symbol, I'd set up a non-profit association whose sole purpose would be to wipe them off the face of the earth forever.

Every Fall they migrate south, but the other day while I was riding my bike along the Seawall here in Vancouver, I noticed they were back, lunging at children, hissing at tourists, and shitting all over the place like the nasty, miserable, filthy, stupid, vicious fucking things they are.  As I passed by a small flock of them and extended my leg so I could give one or two of them a kick in the ass as I zipped by, it occurred to me that their return, though unfortunate, is not without it's upside:

It also means Spring is on its way at last.

Johnny Gill: Yo Bobby,
what you get Whitney
for Valentine's Day?
Bobby Brown: A coffin.
Ralph Tresvant: That's cold, bro.
Bobby: That's my prerogative.

I should have sensed it.  The return of the geese to their nesting grounds on the Seawall coincided almost exactly with the death of Whitney Houston, an event which also had a bit of a Springtimey vibe about it - kind of like when Dorothy's house landed on the witch in the Wizard of Oz and all the Munchkins started to sing and dance around.  For those of you with delicate sensibilities and terrible taste, I apologize, but I really can't get all that weepy about the death of a crackhead millionairess whose music makes my rectums recoil.

Quite frankly, she was dead to me already.

Anyways, with these seasonal themes of growth and change in mind, I've decided to spruce up the look of the Gospel a little bit.  Look closely and you'll note that I've switched the previous black background for a oh-so-slightly different black background.

Chuh-chuh-chuh-changes!

I've also added a new feature called "Dick's Picks," which you can find by scrolling down to the bottom of the page.  Each week, I'll administer a two LP-length dose of the good stuff I keep behind the counter: a recently released album that I think is worth checking out, as well as a forgotten or under-appreciated classic from the past.

I know four inches doesn't sound
like much, but it's thick.

Starting this week with the 1950s, I'm also going to take you bitches on a magic carpet ride through the history of the Long-Player Album.  Though there's obviously a shitload of recorded music prior to the invention of the LP in 1948, when your talking about albums, as I will be, the 1950s are pretty much where it starts.

Though rock acts really didn't start putting out great albums until the mid 1960s, almost immediately, the LP became pretty much the standard format for jazz.  Frank Sinatra also embraced the LP by the midway point in the decade, after Elvis and other rock 'n' roll acts began to eclipse him on the pop singles charts.  The result was a handful of albums that were among pop music's first masterpieces in the format.

Truman: Psst. Hey Joe.  Now that we've carved
the world up between us here, what say
we ditch fatso and go get us some bitches?

Anyways, here goes: the top 10 albums of the 1950s.
















10.  Ravi Shakar: "Three Ragas, 1956"

Song selected: "Raga Jog"

Though unfortunate associations with acid-headed hippies emerge almost as soon as you start listening to Indian classical music, there's actually a good reason why people started going all gaga for raga gurus like Ravi Shankar in the 1960s: he's a full-on shitkicking motherfucker of a sitar player.  No one ever has, is, or likely ever will be any better than him.  I mean, fuck, There are more ideas in what's called the alap or opening, free improvisation section of "Raga Jog" than Jimmy Page or Pete Townsend came up with in their entire lives.  This album probably would have ranked higher, but I had to knock Ravi down a couple of spots for fathering Norah Jones.


9.  Sun Ra & His Arkestra: "Sound Of Joy, 1956"

Song selected: "Ankh"

Sun Ra is one of jazz's great weirdos.  Sometime in the 1950s, he became convinced that he was an extra-terrestrial from Saturn, changed his name to Sun Ra, and developed a world view and personal philosophy that combined Egyptian mythology with some totally crazy-ass space alien shit.  Seriously.  Later on, his music would occasionally sound like it was made by someone suffering from mental health issues, but this earlier effort is just a top-notch, modern, big band swing album, one of the best ever, in fact.  Exquisitely arranged, beautifully performed, richly textured: a great example of swinging, space-ace, bachelor pad music.


8.  Ray Charles: "Ray Charles, 1957"

Song selected: "Sinner's Prayer"

No one sings gospel songs about fucking quite like Ray Charles, and his 1957 debut is one of the best examples of smutty soul I can think of.  It's hard to understand just how subversive a song like "I Got A Woman" or "Hallelujah, I Love Her So" were back in 1957 when they came out: nowadays, it'd be kind of like jacking off in public to a picture of the Virgin Mary.  This album also laid down the blueprint for much of the soul music of the 1960s: groove-oriented, gospel-inflected blues songs about - what else?  Love and sex.  Which for Ray Charles, seem to be pretty much the same thing.


7.  Thelonius Monk: "The Genius of Modern Music, Volume 1, 1952"

Song Selected: "Ruby, My Dear"

It's hard to underestimate the greatness and importance of this album.  For one, this 1952 release by Thelonious Monk is the first masterpiece of the LP format.  It also documents one of the architects of bebop's first recording sessions as a leader.  Not to mention that the album contains the Monk compostions "Off Minor," "Ruby, My Dear," "Well, You Needn't," "Epistrophy," and "'Round About Midnight,"all of which would become standards and among the most recognized tunes in the jazz catalog.  Must-have music for any jazz collection.


6.  Ornette Coleman "The Shape Of Jazz To Come, 1959"

Song selected: "Congeniality"

The release of Ornette Coleman's 1959 Atlantic debut is a watershed moment in the history of jazz.  It is the birth of Free Jazz, a subgenre of hard bop that basically dispenses with the harmonic underpinnings of the music altogether, emphasizing instead the relationship between the melodic lines.  On his previous two releases, the largely ignored "Something Else!" and "Tomorrow Is The Question," Coleman was not entirely successful in realizing his new and altogether game-changing conception.  Both records still retain lingering traces of many of the harmonic and structural elements that Coleman would abandon completely on "The Shape of Jazz To Come."  Coleman's choice of sidemen have a lot to do with both his past failures and newfound success.  He stopped using a pianist after the first album, and in Billy Higgins and Charlie Haden, he finally finds a rhythm section that was open-minded and sensitive enough to follow him and Don Cherry outside the box, without losing touch with reality altogether.  Not all jazz to come would be shaped as Coleman suggests here, but like it or not, the music would never be the same again.


5.  Elvis Presley: "Elvis Presley, 1956"

Song Selected: "Blue Moon"


There's probably no album more historically important in the history of pop music than this one.  Elvis Presley's self-titled debut kicks off the rock 'n' roll era, and does so with blue-suede boot to the ass.  People often accuse Elvis of racistly appropriating black culture in order to sell a watered-down version of it to middle America, but that's a bunch of bullshit. This is to confuse him with his pigmentally-challenged imitators and with the suits who got filthy stinking rich peddling his funky white ass to America.  Elvis didn't invent rock 'n' roll, he WAS rock 'n' roll - its living, breathing embodiment.  Equal parts Country, R&B, and Gospel, The King is the real fucking deal.  Long may he reign.

4.  Frank Sinatra: "Songs For Swingin' Lovers, 1956"

Song Selected: "I've Got You Under My Skin"

In the 1950s, Frank Sinatra was the undisputed master of the album.  Between 1955 and 1959, he released 7 or 8 albums that are all fantastic, some dark and depressing: "Only The Lonely," "In The Wee Small Hours," "No One Cares," and "Where Are You?"; others upbeat and swinging: "Come Fly With Me," "Come Dance With Me", and "A Swingin' Affair" to name a few.  My favourite of them all, though is "Songs For Swingin' Lovers."  This is Old Blue Eyes at his rat-packy best: smooth, cool, loose as fuck, and yet in complete and total control.  Few, if any artists have mastered their medium the way Sinatra has the American Songbook.  The best crooner ever.


3.  Charles Mingus: "Mingus Ah Um, 1959"

Song Selected: "Better Git It In Your Soul"

With the possible exception of "The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady," "Mingus Ah Um" is the best, and certainly the most immediately appealing of Charles Mingus' large and excellent body of work.  The album is both musically forward looking and conscious of its history: nodding to past greats like Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton on "An Open Letter To Duke" and "Jelly Roll" while remaining very much a modern and progressive jazz album.  Not at all a bad place to start if you want to check out jazz in general or Mingus in particular and aren't into the skronky shit.


2.  Dave Brubeck Quartet: "Time Out, 1959"

Song Selected: "Take Five"

Largely because of its enormous popularity (Brubeck even graced the cover of Time magazine not long after its release) "Time Out" is often reviled as gimmicky, soulless, and almost self-consciously caucasian.  It's none of the above.  Among Brubeck's innovations here include the use of unusual time signatures like 5/4 and 7/8 as well as experimenting with contemporary avant garde compositional techniques like phasing and minimalism.  Although Miles Davis laid the foundation for the style on "The Birth Of The Cool," Brubeck's work, particularly on this album, along with that of Stan Getz, Chet Baker, and Gerry Mulligan is what became known as West Coast Cool Jazz, a softer, less rhythmic, one might say, loungier version of jazz than the east coast Hard Bop of Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, or Charles Mingus.  This shit is too cool for school, Daddy-O.


1.  Miles Davis: "Kind Of Blue, 1959"

Song Selected: "So What?"

"Kind of Blue" is almost unequivocally cited by jazz-heads as the creme de la creme of the idiom and, quite frankly, I cannot help but concur.  Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the album is that the music on it is completely improvised: the musicians (who included John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb) actually had nothing to work with prior to recording other than some rough sketches of modes that Miles had scribbled down on a napkin before the session.  In terms of what is attainable when a small group of inspired and highly gifted artists gather together to make something beautiful, it is an unparalleled masterpiece.  This is not just the best album of the 50s, or of all time, it is, quite possibly, the greatest music ever created by human beings.  If you don't like it, there's almost undoubtedly something seriously fucking wrong with you.


Make sure to check out the Gospel next week for the top 10 albums of the early sixties (1960-65)

*** DICK'S PICKS *** for the Week of February 19, 2012.

New Release:

John Talabot: "Fin"

Song Selected: "Oro y Sangre"

Imagine your at a club, all fucked up on E, shaking your shit and your glow stick like it ain't no thang, when suddenly the ceiling splits open above you, letting in the blinding brightness of a fierce, Ibiza-like sun.  Indeed, the sunstroke electronica that Spanish DJ, John Talabot creates here almost seems better suited to a day at the beach rather than a night at the club.  "Fin" has a bit of that drugged out, sunshine supermanish feel to it that many, including myself, have found so appealing in the work of artists like DeLorean and Caribou, both of whom are worth checking out if you haven't already.  It may require some chemical supplementation in order to appreciate fully, but "Fin" is still one of the best new releases so far this year.  Although the year is still very, very young.


Past Classic:

Various Artists: "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto"

Song Selected: "Ohude Manikiniki" by Umahlathini Nabo.

That music such as this, so brimming with life and joy, could come gurgling up out of the tyrannical oppression and abject squalor of the apartheid-ravaged townships of South Africa is a testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit as well as of the Mbaqanga beat of Soweto.  Here, hopefulness emerges from a hopeless situation through an authentic and heroic engagement with the things that matter most.  If listening to this compilation of gloriously soulful psalms about life, love, and the struggles that abound does not make you ashamed of our culture's snivelling predilection for bitching and moaning about shit that in the great scheme of things is almost laughably petty, it is only a matter of time before you discover the dark and horrible truth about yourself:

You are a cyborg.

Movin' On Up: Maximum Condo Rock

George: Move it on up, Weezie.
Weezie: Like that, Daddy?
George: That's it...  Yeah... that's it.
You know what Big Poppa likes.

So the two of you are finally ready.  After years of prudent choices, rigid self-control, and saving, saving, saving, you're gonna do it.  You empty your joint account, mortgage yourselves to the hilt, and take the plunge.

You're in way over your heads and terrified as fuck, but you now have what you've both always wanted: your own domain of neutral taupes and muted pastels.  As you hold hands, glancing about the living room, you note with pleasure how the large framed print of Klimt’s "The Kiss" that you got at Costco picks out the subtle accents in the drapes and carpet.  The new matching couch and loveseat are like the two of you dancing, that is to say, stiff and angular, and conspicuous, despite being colour-coordinated with their equally insipid surroundings.  Both are oriented around an enormous, white, particleboard entertainment centre, which houses a super-sized TV, a leather-bound set of Reader’s Digest condensed novels, and a small assortment of empty, tinted-glass vases, placed strategically about the unit to provide a daring splash of primary colour.  Overall, the room has about as much personality as a wooden Indian, and there isn’t a single item in it that has any real meaning to either of you.  Your pasts have been relegated to the storage locker.  They don't belong here.  The whole place is like this – the bedroom, the one and a half baths, the kitchen – you are now living in an Ikea catalogue.

Now that I bought us the condo,
Denise is considering
having sex with me again. 

And you love it!

You don't have any actual friends anymore, but you're looking forward to having work colleagues and your new neighbours over for an awkward dinner party.

You will cook a pot roast together and splurge on a spinach dip and a cheese platter from Whole Foods.

The wine?  OMG!  Everyone's favourite: Yellow Tail Shiraz!

After dinner entertainment?  Um, Pictionary of course!  Your guests will frickin' flip!

But then suddenly a cloud falls over your giddy planning.

What about the music?

You stare blankly at one one another.

Chris Martin insists Coldplay's next album
will be a edgier, more sexually-charged effort:
less condo, more well-lit basement suite.

Neither of you has listened to music in years.  In fact, you don't really care for it anymore.  It's so... noisy.  But there's always music at dinner parties.  It always used to be Portishead or Coldplay.  Have things changed?  You have no idea.

Panic ensues.  What the fuck are you going to do?

Don't freak, yuppies.  The Reverend Dick was put on the earth to help people, even people like you, and that's exactly what he's going to do.

No, go ahead as long as she's into it,
but watch the rug, would you?  It's Persian.

The most important thing to keep in mind about Condo Rock is that it must be rhythmic, mildly interesting, but utterly inoffensive.  There can be no yelling, no distorted guitars, and no overtly sexual overtones.  Remember, this is an awkward dinner party - not an orgy.  It's often best to avoid music with lyrics altogether, as they can often confuse or even offend your guests.  Light, catchy Electronic music works best.  In a pinch, you can sometimes get away with instrumental funk if you're careful, or soft, neutered rock music.  You know, like Coldplay, but not quite so openly gay.

And when in doubt, keep it caucasian.

There's very few things white people do really well musically, but one of them is making stuff that is mildly pleasant and totally non-threatening.

By the way, the albums listed below are not lame.  Far from it.  But they're great albums that even lame people will like.  Or at least ignore.

Enjoy.



The Incredible Bongo Band: "Bongo Rock!"

Song selected: "Apache"

This great compilation of the best tracks on the two Incredible Bongo Band albums is perhaps the funkiest thing that whitey has ever done.  Michael Viner, an A&R Executive at MGM records, would poach unused studio time in the middle of the night, call up label session musicians, and record bongo-heavy, Latin-tinged versions of rock and R&B songs.  The Bongo Band was also a fucking gold mine of samples for early hip-hop artists like Afrika Bambaataa.  Incredible.


















Air: "Moon Safari"

Song selected: "Remember."

One of my personal favourites.  Soft, groovy, cool but never, ever abrasive, The French band, Air's lushly textured Moon Safari is a gentle masterpiece, one likely do get even the stuffiest dinner guests bobbing their heads like they're giving a poltergeist a blowjob.  Thirteen years after its release, this may still be the best electronic album of all time.  Tres bon.

DJ Shadow: "Endtroducing..."

Song selected: "Building Steam With A Grain Of Sand."

Josh Davis a.k.a., DJ Shadow is well-known as being one of the great "diggers," people who rummage through piles of old records looking for forgotten relics and undiscovered gems.  On this, his 1996 full-length debut, Shadow creates an almost symphonic hip-hop soundscape, not because he uses orchestral instruments, but simply because of the dense layering of his samples and beats.  Be forewarned: Endtroducing... might be just a tad too funky for the condo crowd, and may elicit a raised eyebrow or two from guests and an unhappy frown from your eager-to-please partner.

The Budos Band: "The Budos Band."

Song Selected: "Up From The South."

The Budos are a contemporary instrumental R&B big band whose sound, though by no means revolutionary, is thick, brilliantly arranged, and funky as the dumpster behind a Bangkok fish market.  Their two follow-up LPs simply entitled, The Budos Band II, and The Budos Band III, are of equivalent quality, but my preferential nod goes to this, their self-titled debut, for having just a touch more pep in its hep-cat step.   

Lemon Jelly: "Lost Horizons."

Song Selected: "Closer."

Of Lemon Jelly's three fantastic albums, Lost Horizons is, in my opinion, the best fit for your typical petit-bourgeois dinner party.  LJ's other two albums,  KY and 64 - 95 (which is my favourite, in case you care), have moments on them that are just a touch too raucous and, therefore, may not be entirely condo-appropriate.  No need to rile everyone up and risk a red wine spill on the berber.  Play it safe.  I mean, for Christ's sake, you're home owners now.

Rock Me Sexy Jesus: The Reverend Dick Lays Bare the Smutty Soul of Rock 'n' Roll

Sexy Jesus: What are you crazy bitches doing?
Cray Bitches: Unto you as we would have
you do unto us.

Next week, the big dick playas of the music industry will gather in Los Angeles for their annual self-congratulatory circle jerk.  So today, I decided to check out the official 2012 Grammy Awards website and take a look-see at the nominees.  Surprise surprise, not a single one of the artists on my year's ten best album list were nominated by their peers for the music industry's most prestigious award.  As consolation, I did come away from my browsing experience with some knowledge I didn't have before.

For example, did you know that Eddie Vedder released an album of ukulele music last year, which got him a Grammy nomination for best folk album?  I sure as fuck didn't.  Rumour has it that on one one track, he's joined by David Lee Roth on recorder and Zach dela Rocha on triangle for a grade five music class-style rendition of "Alive."

Maybe guys, but just barely.

To celebrate her recent Grammy nomination,
Babs had her personal assistant, Ms. Pompon
bring two of the kidnapped children to her.
 And then made them love her in exchange
for food.

I also discovered, much to my dismay, that Barbara Streisand put out a new album last year.  Barbara Streisand?  "Fuck," I thought, "is she alive, too?"

"And if so, why?"

Perhaps even more disturbing than Babs crawling up out of her crypt of cultural irrelevancy to menace humanity with her sounds-of-the-slaughterhouse vocal stylings, is that, instead of constructing a giant, fire-breathing robot to attack and rid the world of her forever like on South Park, the music industry decided to reward her reappearance by giving her a Grammy nod.

What the fuck is the matter with these people?

Um, I don't.

Despite all this, let's face it, watching awards shows can be fun.  It helps us answer important questions like will Christina Aguilera wear a weight-appropriate evening gown?  Or, will Kanye make a caucasian co-presenter uncomfortable by not reading off the teleprompter and ad-libbing a simple-minded political message instead?  Or, perhaps most importantly, will the villainous Kool Moe Dee come out of hiding to renew his feud with longtime foe, and this year's Grammy host, LL Cool J?

Nowadays, such things seem to matter.  Tune in February 12 and find out.

I would, too, but Sunday's masturbate in the bubblebath night for the Reverend Dick.

Anyways, when I've watched these sorts of music awards shows in the past, one thing I've often wondered about is this:

why the winners almost always attribute their victories to God rather than to their own talent?  Or to the executives at their record label putting the fix in?  Or, even to mankind's seemingly insatiable yen for shit?  Why?

The cynic in me wants to chock it up to the desire to pander to an audience of millions, most of whom are believers themselves, but I don't think this is actually what's going on.  Your typical winner appears genuinely convinced that God is personally responsible for his or her success and wants to give credit where credit is due.

After leaving the Holograms,
Nicki Manaj broke her ties
with Jem and Kimber but
took with her their love of pink
and off-kilter sense of style.

This has always struck me as strange.  I mean, even granting the existence of a supreme being, it seems unlikely to me that He'd bother involving Himself in the affairs of say, Nicki Manaj for any reason other than maybe to smote her ass down.

Please God, please kill
that skinny bitch.

Are we to understand that Adele is sitting around right now wondering whether God will bless her with the Record of the Year Grammy for "Rolling In The Deep?"  Or, maybe she's worried that He, like every other man out there, will pick that skinny little bitch, Katy Perry instead?

Don't worry, Adele.  Jesus Christ, girl, look at the year you've had!  You've shot to the top of the pops like a... like a plus-size model to the front of the buffet line!  The big Guy loves this sort of Disney movie shit.  And he loves you, too.

God's on your side, babe.

The boys begin running out of patience
 waiting for the Rohypnol to kick in.

Come to think of it, the mere existence of most of this year's Grammy nominees (and that of most past nominees as well) may, in itself, be a compelling reason NOT to believe in a higher power.  Personally, when I envision a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving creator, it is one without all the terrible things that have plagued us.  It is a world without war, without poverty, without AIDS and spinal meningitis, and most importantly of all,

It is a world without Motley Crue.

But that's not the world we live in.  We live in a world where, for example, one might, without surprise, watch a Gangsta rapper thanking the Lord for the Grammy he just won for a song in which he brags about how many bitches he's infected with gonorrhea.  And in seeming good conscience, to boot.

But why?  Why do our pop stars seem completely oblivious to the dissonance between what they preach from the award show podium and what they practice in their actual work?

I came as the Lamb,
but I return as a member of Megadeth.

One answer is that they're a bunch of fucking hypocrites.  This is true in part, but not the whole story.

The main reason is because American music, which is to say, the Blues, Jazz, Rock 'n' Roll, Country & Western, R&B, and even Hip-Hop, is basically religious music.  And the people who do it well, or at least well enough to become rich and famous from it, tend to get this, whether consciously or not.  Think about other awards shows for a second.  You don't often see people thanking God at the Emmys or at the American Comedy Awards, do you?  Music is different.  That's because God, in his Holy Spirit persona, is the main ingredient in pretty much all American popular music.  The reasons for this are largely historical.  Almost all American music of any importance comes from the South, and the one thing the people on the losing side of the Mason-Dixon line have in common besides their racial animosities and affinity for having sex with immediate family members is the Gospel music of the Baptist and Pentecostal churches.  It is, for lack of a better word, the soul of rock 'n' roll.

Right before his first fall,
Our Lord cried out: "My hands are shaky
and my knees are weak.  I can't seem
to stand on my own two feet."

In his 1968 Comeback Special, no less of an authority than the King of Rock 'n' Roll himself described what he called "our music," as a mixture of rhythm and blues, country, and most importantly, Gospel music.  And it's not just rock 'n' roll that's inspired by Gospel.  This southern church music is the rosetta stone of American musical culture.  You cannot really understand it without it.  In a sense, it IS American music.  It's its essence.  It's where it's foundational aesthetic comes from.  It's in the Blues.  It's in Jazz.  It's in Country & Western music.  And its definitely in R&B, Funk, and by extension, Hip-Hop.  When we talk about music having soul, this is where it comes from.

But there's one other ingredient that Elvis, cagey devil that he was, certainly knew about, but failed to mention.

Sex.

American music is religious music, yes, but with the fucking put back in.  This is the great paradox of the music and has often been a source of torment for its artists.  Jerry Lee Lewis, for example, whose cousin was the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, was convinced of his eternal damnation and throughout his life wobbled between abject despair and an almost Satanic revelry in his uncleansable sinfulness.  Many others abandoned secular music and returned, repentantly, to the bosom of the church: Little Richard, Son House, and Al Green even became ministers.

The soul of rock 'n' roll?

Those who rocked on, had to maintain a balancing act between the sacred and the profane: the Bible in one hand; their cock in the other.  The American troubadour became a latter-day Rasputin.  A kind of inspired imposter, half con artist, half Real McCoy.  He'd come to your town, preach the Good Word, whip everybody into a frenzy, and then take off in the middle of the night, stinking of cash and poontang, leaving the townfolk wondering, "was any of it even real?", before they ultimately realized that it didn't matter to them one way or the other.  They only wished that he'd come again soon.  

Is it Fake?  Real?  I don't know.  Who fucking cares.  Like Mick Jagger says, "it's only rock 'n' roll (but I like it!).

Anyways, here's a little Godrock for you, kids.

Enjoy.


















Johnny Cash: "God's Gonna Cut You Down."

One of the best things about believing in God is the hope that He will purge the world of fucking assholes.  Jesus may have been all about the love, but his Dad was fucking Old Testament, man.  He'd smote your ass down for masturbating like he did to Onan, or even for just touching his shit like when Uzza handled the ark of the covenant.  The moral is a comforting one for those righteous motherfuckers who still always seem to get the shit end of the stick.  They can look out at their more sinful, successful neighbours and think, watch out fuckers, like Johnny says, "sooner or later God'll cut you down."

The Beach Boys: "God Only Knows."

It's hard to believe now, but in 1965, Brian Wilson's taking the Lord's name in vain in the title of his legendary love song to God was considered radical.  Despite being in violation of the seventh commandment, this is, in my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful pieces of religious music ever written.  

Stevie Wonder: "Evil."

Stevie Wonder personifies the darkness here and sings to it with all the soulful passion of a heartbroken lover to his cruel mistress.  And for Stevie, evil is indeed the cruelest mistress of all, one whose very nature is to destroy both God and Stevie's love.  And in the end, like the cruel mistress that she is, Evil leaves Stevie totally fucking baffled and defeated.

Blind Willie Johnson: "I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole."

Unlike a lot of bluesman, Blind Willie Johnson remained in the church, eventually becoming an ordained minister.  His music brings the sinewy, overtly physical power of the blues slide guitar to what are mostly otherworldly-themed songs of redemption through Christ.  On a sad note, in 1945, the little church in which Blind Willie lived and preached burned to the ground.  Being blind and having nowhere else to go, he stayed there in the ashes, sleeping on a wet mattress until he died of pneumonia.

And people think Stevie Ray Vaughn had the blues?  Give me a fucking break.

Pharoah Sanders: "The Creator Has A Master Plan."

The original version of this piece is over a half an hour long, but this 15 minute version will give you the gist of it.  Sanders is a bit like Coltrane in his mastery of both the super lyrical and super skronky capacities of his instrument.  Where their music differs however, is in Sanders use of sweeping, hypnotically repetitive arrangements from which to set off on his melodic explorations.  Such things take time, much like the Creator's master plan.  Some may find it's slow development boring, but I think this is some super-groovy shit, man.  Give it some time and just let it wash over you.  The Pharoah works in mysterious ways.  

The Finger-Lickin' Good Life: The Reverend's Secret Recipe For Happiness

Cooper: How 'bout that one, Colonel?
Sanders: Yeah, maybe with a one of my
buckets on her head.

Every morning, after I peel off the covers, don my bathrobe, and emerge from my masturbatorium to take on the world, I have this little routine that I go through - a morning ritual, if you will.  First off, I make my way into the kitchen and put on the coffee.  While it's brewing, I go take my morning dump.  This is one of the few areas where I find my creative output to be both prolific and substantive and, after finishing, I often take a moment to gaze upon my work here and despair.  I return, dejected to the kitchen, pour myself a cup o' joe, and then sit down at my computer desk and fire up a menthol.

While I smoke and caffeinate myself, I spew a couple pages of pretentious drivel into my journal, check my email to see if I've received any rejection notices from publishers or chicks on Plenty of Fish, and then try to figure out how long it will take before I run out of money.  After that, I have a few more cups of coffee, five or six more smokes, and by then, I'm jacked up enough on stimulants, self-loathing, and soul-crushing disappointment, to pretty much be ready to start thinking about maybe doing a little actual writing.

Another love connection made possible by POF.

More often than not, though, I get distracted or interrupted prior to dipping my quill.  The phone rings.  Or, someone's posted a link on my Facebook page and I feel obligated to check it out and then I spend a bunch of time trying to come up with some witty comment on it.  Or, I'm tempted to clickity-click the Pornhub tab on my bookmark bar and give myself a little much-needed TLC.  Or, I just keep smoking and drinking coffee until it seems late enough in the day to start smoking and drinking beer.

The other day, though, my routine was interrupted by the piercing shriek of the intercom buzzer.  I got up, hit the access button, opened my door, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a pair of beatifically smiling tweens all dutied up in their Sunday finest.  The male, and thus, leader/spokesman, sported a white, buttoned-all-the-way-up dress shirt tucked into a pair of black slacks.  His female helper monkey was kickin' it all cozy and comfy in a navy-blue cardigan over an ankle-length, floral-print sun dress.

Shit.

Our exchange went as follows:

Little did they know, Caleb and Penny
were mere moments away from the most
terrifying and delicious erotic experience
of their entire lives.  

Male JW: Good morning, sir.  My name is Caleb.  This is my friend, Penny.

Me: Well, hello there, Penny.

Caleb: And how are you doing on this glorious day?

Me: I'm alright.  A little hung-over.

Caleb: Great!  Anyways, we have some good news for you.

Me: Oh yeah?

Caleb: Yes, oh my, yes!  Jesus Christ died for your sins!

Me: Well, hey, thank him for me next time you talk to him.

I'm never overtly rude to the Witnesses.  In fact, I kind of get a kick out of how they go around pissing everyone off.  Nonetheless, they are pests, and I have a sure-fire way of getting rid of them when I'm not in the mood.  I bluntly offer to accept a copy of the Watchtower in exchange for sex, and then I begin undressing as I make my way toward my bedroom.  So far, none of them have ever followed me in there and they're always gone when I come back out.  I'm a man of my word though: if they took me up on it, let me tell you, I'd snatch the Watchtower right out of their hands.

Then I'd fuck the living shit out of them.

Anyways, I was bored, and Penny was kind of hot, so I invited them inside for coffee.  We talked for about 45 minutes, and though I found their worldview to be, for the most part, irrational and quite often repugnant, I was struck by one thing about these two brainwashed dipshits:

They were both deliriously fucking happy.

Following his recent podium appearance
and subsequent endorsement deal,
Tommy's family is now reconsidering
the Foster Care option.

I've often wondered about this.  Why does it sometimes seem like the only genuinely happy people in the world are born again christians and the mentally retarded?  Is happiness nothing more than a kind mental illness or delusion - some sort of incapacity or willful suspension of critical thinking?  Is our only hope for lasting joy and contentment to join a cult or jam a coat-hanger up our noses into our cerebellums?

Don't worry, kids.  The Reverend Dick has got a recipe for this oh-so-elusive dish.  Though the ingredients are rare and often hard to come by, they're out there if you look for them:

Enjoy.

1.  One big, sloppy scoop of Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher."

I'm not really talking about the ugly-on-ugly variety of love here.  I'm talking about genuine, lasting, meaningful connections with one another.  Family, friends, partners, pretty much everybody, with the possible exception of politicians and corporate executives, who as we all know, must be destroyed.

Before embarking on a course of action, ask yourself,

WWJD: What would Jackie do?

He'd preach the fucking love, that's what.  Be like Jackie.

2.  3 Heaping Tbs. of Animal Collective's "My Girls."

A friend of mine once told me that, when he's feeling all low-down and depressed, he asks himself three fundamental questions:

1.  Am I hungry?
2.  Am I cold?
3.  Do I have to piss?

If he can answer "no" to each, then really, how fucking bad can things be?  Wise words.  But, as Animal Collective's Panda Bear knows only too well, sometimes the answer here is "yes."  It sucks to worry about whether you're going to have to quit smoking in order to pay the rent, or to have to take the beer cans back and roll up your pennies so you can get yourself a box a Kraft dinner and a can of tuna.  It's hard to be happy when you're not getting your basic needs met.  We may not want to "seem like (we) care about material things," as Panda Bear puts it, but we all need food, clothing, shelter, and a place to piss.  And we need to be free from the threat of losing these things.      

3.  A pinch of "Let's Lynch The Landlord" by the Dead Kennedys.

Before Jesus came along with his whole turn the other cheek nonsense, the Ancients considered smashing one's enemies to be a virtue.  Too often in life, we find our above-mentioned security being undermined by the forces of evil, personified here by the DKs as a lynch-worthy landlord.  The road to happiness is paved with power and freedom and the obstacles that block our path forward must be removed.  Which is to say, if you see the Man sitting in his tollbooth along the way, don't pay him.  Kill him.

4.  A drizzle of "Full Moon" by Armand Van Helden featuring Common to taste.

As Common so eloquently spits of here, sometimes you just gotta let loose: hit the clubs, get stoned and shitfaced, dance your ass off, lure someone into the bathroom, and fuck like beasts without a condom on.

So to speak.

5.  Garnish with a little "Float On" by Modest Mouse.


Besides love, acceptance is perhaps the most important ingredient of all.  Guess what, kids?  Things are never going to work out exactly the way you want them to.  Sometimes your loved ones abandon you.  Your friends will probably let you down.  The Man will, at times, stand victorious over your fallen form, snickering and chirping derision at you like you're a fucking chump.  The Buddha is too often right when he tells us that life is suffering.  Then again, it may not always be shits and giggles but its not always tears and torment either.  To live well is to cultivate the capacity for both, for the loftiest joys and the deepest of sorrows.  At the end of the day, it really all comes down to how loudly you can howl.

The Greatest American Heroes: The Reverend Dick Picks Music's All Time Best

William Katt: "Met Christopher Reeve,
He told me I'm the Greatest!" 

The other day, I was at the grocery store, trying to figure out a way of turning my last ten bucks into nourishment for a week, when, all of a sudden, "Gettin' Jiggy With It," by Will Smith comes on over the supermarket satellite radio.

Unlike some of the other shoppers, who began to unconsciously shake their ample shit while heaving flat after flat of Mountain Dew, jumbo bags of Doritos, and bulk boxes of Pop Tarts into their already overflowing buggies, my hunger pangs left me in no condition to get jiggy with anything.

But as I stood there in the produce section, trying to stave off the onset of scurvy by covertly gobbling grapes and strawberries, I found myself actually listening to the song for pretty much the first time.  I'd heard it before, I mean, back in '98 when it came out, the song was almost unavoidable.  But I'd never given much thought to the message Big Willie Style was trying to convey.  A starvation-induced reverie ensued.  What was this nebulous "it" he was suggesting we get jiggy with?  For some reason, I just had to know.

As it turns out, it's him.  Will Smith.

And why would we would want to get jiggy with him?  Well, for starters, because all women "wanna bounce with a bruthah that's platinum," Smith asserts.  Also, he has floor seats at Lakers games and can pose effectively with a cigar without even smoking it ("it's for the look, I don't light it").  Still not convinced?  No problem.  Smith counters with his coup de gras:

"Met Ali, he told me, I'm the greatest."

Take it from me,
Parents just don't understand.

This seemed fucked up to me.  My only explanation is that Muhammad Ali's punch-drunkeness must've momentarily got the better of him.  Either that or his plan was to try and fuck Jada Pinkett when The Fresh Prince dumb-danced off to the bathroom to jerk off to his own reflection in the mirror while Jazzy Jeff made scratching noises for him in the background.

Nonetheless, as ridiculous as it was, his bold claim "started making trouble in my neighbourhood," so to speak.  And I found myself wondering:

If not Will Smith, then who?

Who is the greatest?  And why?

I like lists, so I decided to make one.

You may notice a few things about my selections: They're all Americans, most of them are black, and too few of them are women.  Let me explain.

Swiss Rock Superduo, Myron's
recent, awe-inspring performance at
Saul Silverstein's Bar Mitzvah in Utica
was topped only by Uncle Shlomo's
stirring rendition of "Don't Worry Be Happy."

When it comes to pop music, the United States is well, Will Smith and the rest of us are Jazzy Jeffs making scratching noises in the background while he jerks off.  Out of the dank soil of racism, economic oppression, and a thoroughgoing "You don't like it?  Fuck you"-type attitude, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has somehow managed to sprout musical greatness the way more civilized countries like say, Switzerland and Canada breed mediocrity.  I really don't know what else to chock it up to other than the resilience and spiritual depth of the people who created its musical legacy, i.e., the African Americans the pilgrims enslaved and persecuted, but never managed to beat the life out of.

British Prime Minister, David Cameron
during a recent fundraising event
at Boreham House, Essex.

For comparison's sake, the Brits are a similarly bigoted and plutocratic people, but they're also a bunch of perverts and copycats and their contribution to pop music reflects this.  Eric Clapton's not a bluesman, he's a thief.  The Beatles' music is great for associating wishy-washy revolutionary sentiment or the universal healing power of love with a particular sneaker or soft drink choice, but that's about it.  And despite their uncanny capacity to mesmerize morons, the only lasting marks Led Zeppelin has left are those on the bodies of the groupies they've abused, and on the walls of the Holiday Inns they've abused them in.

The women-issue is a little different.  The music industry has pretty much never permitted women to assume any role other than that of singer.  Moreover, the list of women who've had any creative control whatsoever in the writing, arranging, and producing of their material is shockingly small.  As a result, the industry basically disposes of them as soon as their tits start to sag: not exactly a recipe for greatness or a lasting career.

Anyways, here are, in my humble opinion, the Greatest of All Time.

Enjoy.

1.  Miles Davis.

Song selected: "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess.

Despite his dastardly penchant for throwing bitches down the stairs in a drug-addled, misogynistic frenzy, Miles Davis is, hands down, the greatest of all time.  Four times for the better (and once for the worse), Davis, as sideman, collaborator, or full-fledged leader, revolutionized his chosen idiom.  That's right.  Count 'em.  Five fucking times!  Nobody else on this list did this more than twice.  He played with Charlie Parker on the Savoy and Dial sessions that birthed Bebop.  With Gil Evans as midwife, he squeezed out "the birth of the cool," Cool Jazz, that is.  On Kind of Blue, often regarded as the greatest album of all time, he and Bill Evans invented Modal Jazz.  His large ensemble work on In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew set the blueprint for fusion.  And those are just some of the highlights.  Virtually all of Davis' work, with the exception of his embarrassingly shitty 80s output (which helped spawn Smooth and Pop Jazz cultural criminals like Kenny G and the bubonic John Tesh), is capable of evoking stunned astonishment in all but the seriously hearing-impaired.

Albums to check out:

Selecting even a small group of albums from Davis' vast and awesome oeuvre is kind of like picking which Playboy Bunnies to sneak off into the grotto with during a party at Hef's house, but here goes:  Birth of the Cool, Walkin', Sketches of Spain, Kind of Blue, In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, On The Corner, all of which are sublime masterpieces that should be a part of everyone's music collection.

2. James Brown.

Song selected: "People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul" from the Motherlode compilation.

Along with being one of the major players in the emergence of Soul as a form distinct from straight-ahead blues, James Brown, along with his band, the JBs, invented funk.  That's right.  He invented funk.  For that alone, he should be worshipped as a god in his native land and never should have been sent to prison for leading cops on a multi-state car chase with an underaged girl riding shotgun.  Jesus Christ, the man was all fucked up on PCP at the time.  Can't a soul brother, even the Soul Brother No. 1 get a break in this country?  Apparently not.  Although by the late-seventies, his creative juices had begun to dry up, he'd already left the world an astonishing body of work.  He remained an amazing live act right up to the end.  I saw him live a year or so before he died and he was still doing splits and shit.  The guy was like 70 years old.  When my grandma was 70, she was dropping her cigarettes on herself, lighting herself on fire, and not even noticing.  Hot Pants!

Albums to check out:

James Brown had the irritating tendency to throw a hit or two onto a record along with a bunch of unrelated material, but his enormous discography has plenty of highlights: Live At The Apollo, The Payback, Sex Machine, Black Caesar, Hot Pants, Hell.  The Motherlode and In The Jungle Groove compilations are also fantastic collections of his funky seventies shit.

3.  Aretha Franklin.

Song selected: "A Change Is Gonna Come" from I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You.

With the exception of the Beatles, no other artist has achieved the degree of universal critical acclaimed and widespread popular appeal as Aretha Franklin.  This is why she's won more grammys than any other female artist besides Alison Krauss.  (No really, Alison Krauss has the most grammys: 22.  Aretha has 18.  How the fuck did that happen?)  Anyways, unless you're a member of the Ku Klux Klan or severely mentally retarded, you either already love Aretha, or will after even the briefest exposure to her music.  Aretha is the most authentic, most emotionally honest, most soulful, and most powerful of all vocalists.  She's the Queen of Soul, for Christ's sake, and not only because she stands supreme in the genre, but because she's the reigning monarch of all those who have one.  The greatest singer who ever lived.  

Albums to check out: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You, Lady Soul, Soul '69, Young Gifted And Black.

4.  Ramones / The Velvet Underground (tie)

Songs selected: "Beat On The Brat" from Ramones and "What Goes On" from The Velvet Underground.

The first caucasians on the list and for good reason.  They represent the first time whitey didn't just steal his shit from his darker-hued countrymen, scrub it free of all soul and substance, and proudly market it to the masses as his own discovery.  The music of these two bands is basically the Illiad and the Odyssey of all things Alternative and the sonic blueprint they set down is one of the main reasons your parents don't like your music.  Why?  Because unlike pretty much everything that came before it, this music is not rooted in the blues.  As such, it represents a new and authentic place for white kids to start other than by ripping off Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters.  Though the alt-tsunami hasn't entirely washed away the encrusted filth of Zeppelinism and Prog-Rock pretension like a deluge from on high, it has, over time, severely dilapidated the temple of Rock and driven its denizens into the high hills of cultural irrelevancy.  On a personal note, the advent of the music of these two bands upon my dark suburban world affected me like being knocked on his ass on the road to Damascus affected the apostle Paul.  New Vistas of previously unimagined possibilities suddenly splayed out before me like a thousand dollar hooker, and I knew, right then and there, that things would never be the same.

Albums to check out:

Ramones - Ramones, Ramones Leave Home, Rocket To Russia, Pleasant Dreams.

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground Live 1969, Loaded.

5.  Ornette Coleman.

Song selected: "Lonely Woman" from The Shape Of Jazz To Come.

There are few artists in the history of American blues-based music more important than Ornette Coleman.  His early work represents a kind of Gotterdammerung for jazz as a progressive form.  Prior to Coleman, one could characterize jazz as developing along a continuum where progress was understood largely in terms of the expansion of the harmonic possibilities implicit in the American pop or blues song.  Coleman, however, dispensed with harmony as a structural requirement of the music altogether.  Throughout his long and diverse career, he has explored the notion that it is the direct interaction between the melodic lines of the individual performers, rather than their relationship to to a preconceived harmony that makes music what it is.  In a way, his work has stressed the primacy of the actual over the metaphysical, the thing itself over its explanatory apparatus.  Coleman, thus, offers the "revolutionary" suggestion that the best way to make music that is fully real is to focus on reality.

Albums to check out: The Shape of Jazz to Come, Dancing In Your Head, Ornette!, Ornette On Tenor.

6.  John Fahey.

Song selected: "Sunflower River Blues" from Death Chants, Breakdowns, And Military Waltzes.

A somewhat idiosyncratic selection, I admit, but no one has ever inspired in me quite the awe and envy of another man's skills quite as much as John Fahey.  Fahey's prowess, however, had nothing to do with the effect-laden histrionics or fingertip gymnastics that meatheads find so drool-inducing in the work of Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen.  What Fahey explored was the poetic rather than the heroic capacities of his instrument.  On most of his albums, he simply sat down in front of a microphone with his acoustic guitar and took you on an aural journey through the history of American folk and blues-based music.  One capable of blowing all but the most shit-clogged of minds.  Fuck Jimi, Fahey's greatest guitarist of all time.

Albums to check out: Death Chants, Breakdowns, And Military Waltzes, Blind Joe Death, Dance of Death And Other Plantation Favorites, The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party.

7.  John Coltrane

Song selected: "Quartet: Acknowledgment" from A Love Supreme.

Once he got off the smack and high on God, Coltrane spent the remainder of his unfortunately short life giving thanks and praise to the Lord above for revealing to him a new vision of reality, one in which the divine power of love permeates every aspect of being.  The results, like pretty much all of Coltrane's work, is at times tender, lyrical, and sublimely beautiful, and at others, ferocious, skronky delvings into another world.  In any case, whether your listening to the earlier, secular, smack-head 'Trane or the later, more sanctified version, the music itself offers a more compelling case for the existence of a higher power than the entire corpus of Scholastic Theology.  Regardless of whether its source is celestial or terrestrial, that Coltrane's music is inspired is difficult to deny.

Albums to check out: A Love Supreme, Ole, Live At The Village Vanguard, Giant Steps, My Favorite Things.

8.  Captain Beefheart

Song selected: "Owed T'Alex" from Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).

It so happens that I lost my virginity to Captain Beefheart.  Hmmm... That didn't come out right.  I  mean, I lost my virginity while his music was playing in the background.  Anyways, I don't think I'd recommend it as a sure-fire way of getting your ladyfriend or gentleman caller in the mood.  That is, of course, unless they happen to get turned on by the sound of a Howlin' Wolf impersonator barking surrealist poetry over an harshly angular, free-jazzy accompaniment.  But the Captain's music is so much more than this.  In a sense, he may be the only truly great caucasian bluesman.  He reminds me of some of the very early Mississippi Delta musicians who sang largely for themselves in a wholly personal, idiosyncratic voice before the music got co-opted by the music industry, and formalized and homogenized soon after.  Like them, Beefheart never achieved the success and recognition that his genius should have afforded him and, eventually, he gave up and turned to oil painting.  Our loss.

Albums to check out: Safe As Milk, Trout Mask Replica, Clear Spot, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).

9.  Son House

Song selected: "Death Letter Blues." This is a great video of Son House performing this Delta Blues masterpiece.

The steaming cesspool of poverty and hatred that is the Mississippi Delta has probably produced more musical greats than any other place on earth.  Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James, Bukka White, and Muddy Waters, just to name a few.  But the greatest of them all is Son House.  He's the shit.  To see this solitary man here, sitting on a chair in a suit and Colonel Sanders tie, writhing in seeming agony as he frets, bottlenecks, and basically pounds the fuck out of his National while howling his tale of truth and woe is to see the living manifestation of the blues in all its frenetic, hypertensive glory.    

Albums to check out: Son House's work mostly preceded the advent of the LP but there's tons of great compilations out there: Delta Blues, Preachin' The Blues, Heroes of the Blues, Son House: Revisted.

10.  Al Green

Song selected: "Here I Am Baby (Come And Take Me)" from Call Me.

Combined with a well-prepared seafood penne and a nice merlot, the sexy, soulful stylings of Al Green are almost guaranteed to get you laid.  Indeed, no one harnesses the power of the Holy Spirit in the single-minded pursuit of sexual conquest with quite the righteous audacity or supple touch of the Reverend Al Green.  The Higher Power of this ordained minister and divinely-inspired apostle of the poontang, however, is one that even the most faithless among us cannot help but wanna get down on our knees and pray to.  He only wants to "take you by the hand, hold you, squeeze you, lie down next to you, love you, Heeee-hee, Heeee-hee... Yeeeeaaaah!"

Albums to check out: Let's Stay Together, The Belle Album, Green Is Blues, Al Green Is Love.