Week 10: Top Ten Music Related Stuff of 2006

I’ve never been one for top of whatever lists. On the beach my top record of the 80s might be the Cars Candy-O, but in the Texas summer it might be the Buttholes Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis (on a related side note it took me until 1998 in NYC when I heard some radio DJ jokingly, I think, auctioning the eyeball from Davis’ socket to figure out what that title meant). Anyways, the point is that my taste is malleable at best, fickle at worst. So it’s difficult to make ‘best of’ lists. This is why I am doing just that, making a ‘best of 2006’ list. And so, in no particular order except the order in which they came to mind, here’s my top music related stuff of 2006.

So this week’s post is dedicated to myself, cause I can.

1. My yearly nano-retreat into notes and sheet music yielded very pleasurable results in 2006. I learned how to play the Law and Order theme on the guitar. So now I’m looking to make a guest appearance on the show playing the song on the guitar.
2. Kilian and Tricia. Rock ‘n’ roll hosts of the year for being such amazing hosts to New Town Drunks on the road. Kilian’s band Churchbus couldn’t have been more fun to play with in Chicago and Cleveland, even if Erin (the organist/singer) hadn’t showed us how he could move his monstrous Hammond Organ all by himself. Churchbus led us to great clubs, great people and they even let our Michelle play drunken trumpet with them. These guys play some mean soul music. Tricia also took some great live and road photographs, and Kilian recorded us in his Sunken Monastery basement studio and even played some lap steel on one song. And as if that wasn’t enough, another of Kilian’s bands, The Latest put out a great record in 2006. I would put it opposite Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby on a cassette so I could play it on my handheld recorder on a wintry beach while sipping on some bourbon, it’s that nice.
3. Ramon and Rosa: Ramon set up this NAP blog. Now going on its tenth week, it constantly teeters on the edge of self-destruction, and yet it remains highly addictive, maybe for those same reasons. But more than that Ramon and Rosa are also on this list for being an awesome rock ‘n’ roll couple. He is still working on taming (or maybe untaming?) the beast that has become the Linus Pauling Quartet. While Rosa keeps busy getting into some seemingly very dangerous situations to take her photographs of the Houston rock youth (and others not so youthy). They both are active in various aspects of their music community and the fact that they are parents makes it all that much more inspiring.
4. Nylon string guitars: They are not just for Willie and south of the border music anymore.

   Jose Gonzales (seen above), Rodrigo y Gabriela, and others (meaning me on a much smaller and weaker way) are showing American audiences some of the possibilities for the percussive, piano like overtones that nylon strings can pull out of a small soft bodied guitar.

5. At the top of the list of best dives to play at has got to be The Empty Glass., in Charleston, West Virginia. I can’t emphasize how awesome everyone is that is associated with this bar. The sound system is the best I’ve heard, not because the equipment was that great, but because the soundman was so attentive. The first time we played there, we felt like we lived there and had known all these people for years. By the second time we played there we were locals. Best bar west of The Cave.
6. Music on television. The Ovation Network has some killer programming, including documentaries on everyone from Shostakovich to Dizzy Gillespie to Astor Piazzola, concerts by everyone from Shane MacGowan to Nina Simone, the Jules Holland Shows, and several mini-series such as Rhythm of Life and Popular Song: Soundtrack of the Century. None of it is too radical or groundbreaking but it helps fill out some of the gaps while still being television, and at times it can be quite amazing. Watching Leonard Cohen on the Jules Holland show made my hair stand on end. This channel is almost as good as Comedy Central but with music.
7. The Avett Brothers. I’m not going to talk about them since next week’s post is going to be about them.
8. Fun with music: Our side project, Generous Whore, annoyed almost everyone at their one performance with our Casio driven Latin sleaze and a triple female vocal attack. It was the closest thing to Santa Esmeralda since Santa Esmeralda. There were also some fun comedy shenanigans when comedian Jermondo invited me on stage to play hillbilly guitar and f*ck with his timing while he tried to sing funny songs. And of course there was the performance the mrs. and me put on at Rudz in Houston. Me totally wasted, she totally sober and recently impregnated. It was totally entertaining, to me of course, as all this stuff is since this is my top 10.
9. Playing with Hamell on Trial when he was touring behind his new record, Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs, turned out to have been both appropriate and sort of prophetic since we were already on the way to being parents, though we didn’t know it at the time.
10. Friends I talk to on a regular to semi-regular basis continued to put out records I enjoy. It’s pretty cool being able to ask the actual artists some of the questions I might have about an arrangement, a recording technique, a lyric, equipment, a live performance, or any other of the many questions that pop into my head when I listen to stuff I like (live or on record). Twilighter, Randy Whitt, Puritan Rodeo, Dexter Romweber, SNMNMNM, Jule Brown, The Spinns (RIP), Southern Culture on the Skids, and The Moaners, among others, all put out great records last year. It’s a pleasure to be able to count them among my peers.