3 Minutes, 49 Seconds

It's that certain time of year when everyone starts naming "the best" things from the past 12 months. I used quotations because of course best is a subjective concept, and even where there's critical consensus it's often a case of monkey-see-monkey-do. So end-of-year (or end-of-decade) lists are not any definitive mark of quality.  Then why make one? Well, mostly I like having an archive to look back on. But more broadly, end-of-year lists are a great way to discover something new. Especially now that music is so easy to access - via YouTube or a streaming service - you can give an album a full listen without paying for it directly. You no longer have to buy blindly, or make a judgement call based on a series of 30-second clips or after standing at a listening booth in a record store for an uncomfortable amount of time (like I used to do).  So, here are the albums I enjoyed the most in 2019: Get Up Kids - Problems Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated ...

Once upon a time one of my favorite things to do on this blog was to unveil my end-of-the-year top ten. It started off as a complicated affair with multiple categories. As time went on it simplified, later becoming not a top ten but a modest list of albums I was happy to have spent my money on. As my attention moved away from the blog, I stopped the tradition altogether. I haven't posted - or even made - a year-end list since 2012. I also used to post the artwork and tracklist for my annual year-end mix, and I have also been remiss in that for the past six years. So, in an attempt to make up for lost time, here's are some freshly-prepared year-end lists and a cataloging of the mixes I made each year. 2013 Jimmy Eat World - Damage Pearl Jam -  Lightning Bolt Tegan and Sara - Heartthrob Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City mix: 1) Jimmy Eat World - "I Will Steal You Back" 2) Ra Ra Riot - "That Much" 3) Divine Fits - "Chained to Lov...

Summer ends Monday, and thus ends my summer of REO Speedwagon. As follows are a few stray and summary thoughts about the band. -Despite their tumultuous history, the band have a very clean discography. Everyone who's gotten obsessive about a group knows the pain and pleasure of hunting down that rare soundtrack appearance, b-side, or solo album. Outside of The Goonies , REO didn't do original songs to soundtracks, and they have no non-album b-sides. They also didn't do solo albums or side projects. And though they clearly had the talent for it, they didn't produce or write for other artists or even really do guest appearances. Kevin Cronin did exactly one solo song, on the soundtrack for the 1989 film Sing . He sang backup on Survivor's 1983 album Caught in the Game , and on one song on Richard Marx's 1989 Repeat Offender album. Gary Richrath co-wrote a song on a Darlene Love album. In 1983 Alan Gratzer played with Eddie Van Halen on Queen guitarist Brian Ma...

Ric Ocasek passed away yesterday, and my heart sank when I saw the news. Don't know what you got 'til its gone and all that, but it's difficult to anticipate whose passing is going to affect you and how, and thinking about it too much is ghoulish anyway. The bottom line is that Ric Ocasek has had an outsize impact on the development of my music fandom, and I hadn't truly reflected on that fact until today. Like my fellow Gen-Xers, I grew up hearing Cars songs as part of the tapestry of everyday life. "Magic" at the waterpark, "Moving in Stereo" in Fast Times at Ridgemont High , "Drive" on a car ride at night (how perfect!), "You Might Think" and "Just What I Needed" at the mall or mini-golf course. I knew all the songs but couldn't name the band. Freshman year of college I conducted an intensive self-education in pop music that started with greatest hits albums by "important" bands. During a rare trip...

Where We Left Off: REO Speedwagon's 1996 album Building the Bridge was their first album not to chart since 1972's  R.E.O./T.W.O. . But their appeal as a live concert draw continued to grow, especially as nostalgia for the 1970s and 1980s built. * While it wasn't quite as long as the wait for Chinese Democracy , REO Speedwagon fans endured an egregious 11 years between Building the Bridge and a new album. All they had to tide them over were two songs on the 1999 Epic compilation The Ballads : "Just For You" (written by Kevin Cronin with Jim Peterik from Survivor) and "Til the River Runs Dry" (by Cronin and singer-songwriter Jimmy Scott). It seems the band had considered themselves retired from recording after the tepid reception to Building a Bridge , but according to Cronin, a 2000 tour with Styx - specifically seeing a new generation of fans singing along with the old songs - lit a fire under the band to start working up new material again. Th...

Where We Left Off: REO Speedwagon, like so many '80s arena rock giants, got chopped up by the early 1990s alternative buzzsaw. Their 1990 album  The Earth, a Small Man, His Dog, and a Chicken  was their worst-performing release in more than a decade. After sticking with the band for two rollercoaster decades, Epic dropped them. * With no label, REO Speedwagon essentially started over in the early 1990s. After a hiatus during which guitarist Dave Amato toured with Cher and Richie Sambora, the band began taking gigs wherever they could get them. They went back to playing clubs and fairs, trying to win fans one show at a time the way they had in the early 1970s. It wasn't easy, and there were times when the future of the band was in serious doubt, but eventually it started to work. Granted, they weren't so much adding new fans as they were reminding older ones they were still around. As singer Kevin Cronin put it in a 1996 interview with the  Orange County Register ...

Where We Left Off: After the release of The Hits in 1988, founding drummer Alan Gratzer and guitarist Gary Richrath quit REO Speedwagon. * According to REO bassist Bruce Hall, there was never any question about whether REO should continue on after losing two key members. He told Malcom Dome, "as long as we had Kevin [Cronin], then we had the man whose voice was the most identifiable part of the band." It sounds a bit mercenary, but then REO's history had always been about survival and moving forward. "Roll with the changes," indeed. According to Cronin, there was a moment of truth where the rest of the band (sans Gratzer, who quit first) might have chosen to stay with him or go with Richrath. This creates a fascinating alternate reality in which REO finds its fourth singer, a new drummer, and once again becomes Richrath's band. But here in our timeline, REO recruited drummer Graham Lear (known for his work with Gino Vannelli) to replace Gratzer. At...

Where we left off: REO Speedwagon's 1987 album Life As We Know It didn't sell up to typical standards, but even worse, cracks were forming in the band's solidarity. * REO Speedwagon have approximately five different career-spanning compilations floating around out there, but 1988's The Hits is the only one I'll be writing about. Why? Well, partly because it features the final two appearances of the band in its classic configuration, and partly because its as sturdily-constructed a hits compilation as you'll ever find.  (It also happens to be the first album by them I owned.  I bought it my freshman year of college, and it served as the soundtrack for no less than three doomed crushes.) I have a set of rules about hits collections that I hold sacred. Namely, that the songs should be presented in chronological order, live versions and remixes should be omitted, and that no new songs should be included.  The Hits violates all of these and yet someho...

You may not know the name Tom Kelly, but I guarantee that you've sung along to songs he wrote.  Born in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1952, Tom moved to Effingham, Illinois when he was 11 years old, just in time to witness the Beatles' debut on Ed Sullivan. Bit by the rock music bug, he joined a local band called the Trifaris, singing and playing bass. His family moved back to Indiana in '66. When Tom finished high school, he decided to go to college in Illinois, but his choice was made based on extracurricular factors, not academic ones. "I started at Eastern [Illinois University] because there was a band,” he told the Effingham Daily News in 2011, “Then I transferred to Southern [Illinois University] because there was another band.”  Champaign, Illinois  Continuing his college hopping, Tom headed closer to home to attend Purdue, and there he had a group called The Gaping Huggers, comprised of former fellow Trifari JC Marshall on drums, and University of Illino...

Where We Left Off: Wheels Are Turnin' was REO Speedwagon's third consecutive multi-million selling album, producing the #1 hit "Can't Fight This Feeling." * Produced by the same team as Wheels Are Turnin' (Cronin, Richrath, Gratzer, and David DeVore), Life As We Know It was recorded while when Kevin Cronin was going through a divorce. He says making the album was a welcome distraction from his family falling apart. At the same time, his relationship with Gary Richrath was fraught with tension. That set of circumstances played a huge part in the album's lyrical content, and knowing the record was the last one for the band's classic line-up makes for an intriguing listen. For example, it's commonly held that "Too Many Girlfriends," a tune about someone running too hot for too long, is Cronin taking a shot at Richrath. This is most evident in the self-referencing line, "he better find the one / he's gonna take on the run...