Top Ten Lists of 2007

By Christian Lipski

This is a list of ten things that blew my doors off in 2007. I may have encountered them in ’06, and I may decide that they’re crap in ’08, but damn it, they’re aces in ’07.

1. The Feeling: This is a music-type band. They are the sweetest rock band since like, the Lovin’ Spoonful or 10cc. You can hear their British-Invasion flag waving proudly in the bouncy beat, in the harmonized epic choruses. Their songwriting gets as close to overuse of the seventh chord as you can without becoming parody. And yes, there are guitar solos, so never you fear, child. Do you want to hear what my heart sounds like? Listen to “Fill My Little World” and “Same Old Stuff” right now. They are love.
2. Portland, Oregon: I just moved here from Los Angeles. It’s the smartest city I’ve ever been to. Not from the abundance of universities, but bookstores: there are a ton of ’em, and most are independent. And also libraries and public transportation and clever cafés and urban growth restrictions and parks. No two bridges across the Willamette River are the same. Beverly Cleary and Chuck Palahniuk are from here. And it’s green. Oh, I’ve never seen so much green. It soaks in through the eyes. And if I can survive the rain, I will be just fine.



3. Transmetropolitan: I bought the trade paperbacks of this comic this year. I knew the artist back in the late eighties and just found this series a few years ago. The book’s got everything I love: futuristic dystopian society, misanthropy, humor, pathos, smoking, a sense of moral outrage, and best of all, vicious revenge against the political monsters who grind the regular citizen into moist paste and then piss on that paste. The art is intricate, with little details everywhere that you can spend hours picking out. And the writing is Warren Ellis, which. . . there you go. Any story with a gun that makes you shit yourself is okay by me.
4. Adrian Belew: He’s basically done all the coolest stuff a guitarist can do. He’s played and sung for King Crimson, and played with Laurie Anderson and David Bowie. There’s something about his voice that makes me want to just listen to it forever. His lyrics frequently orbit around animals and the concept of freedom, which is a nice change. And his guitar work is bananas, from swooping bendy solos to crazed sounds that remind you of tractors having rough sex in an iron foundry. Start with “Young Lions,” the album and the song. If I could figure out how to tattoo a song on my aura, I’d do that one.
5. Ipodomancy: I didn’t coin that word, but I’ll take it. I’m obsessed with playing songs from my iPod in random order, and of course then reading too much into the songs chosen. I created a playlist that will only play my songs once, and then in a random order. It’s like shuffling the tarot cards, only dealing them directly into my earholes. The other day, iPod played Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” followed by her sister Stella’s “The Danger of a Stranger.” What is that: some kind of familial reference? Maybe, because later it played Tori Amos’s “Mother” and then U2’s “Mofo.” O iPod, what are you saying to me?
6. Mashups: Oh, yeah, it ain’t new. I know that. I remember when “Smells Like Booty” and “Stroke of Genius” came out back in the day. I’m just crazy all up in them this year, perhaps more than usual. When a DJ edits two songs together so that chord progression A matches melody B perfectly and you don’t have to squint your ears to ignore the parts that are out of key? Bang zoom. When “Southern Rock vs Werewolves Of London,” for example, takes the guitar riffs from “Sweet Home Alabama” and “More Than A Feeling” and partners them with Zevon’s piano-riff classic, cutting them up a la Madonna’s “Don’t Tell Me” intro, and then mixing in that Madonna song? And then sprinkled at the end are the riffs from “Back In Black” and “Too Much Time On My Hands.” GLORY! Turn it up.
7. Mindless Self-Indulgence: WTF is this band made of? My guess is someone pressure-cooked 8-bit Atari music, disco, electricity, underground sexual practices, metal, vinyl pants, and Attention Deficit Disorder, and then fed the result amphetamines, WHICH WERE THEMSELVES ON COCAINE. Over the Top. Thanks to Amy for dripping this band on me. Try the album The Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, tracks “Clarissa” and “I Hate Jimmy Page.”
8. Electric Six: More than just the “Gay Bar” band. And I really do mean “more” in the quantity sense rather than quality, because if you like that song you’ll be just fine with the rest of the catalog. I wonder how the singer walks around town or the disco with the set of balls he’s got. Every single song is composed of solid bravado layered over self-esteem and topped with a little ego. If you like fire, dancing, nuclear war, and/or any combination of these elements, you will love this band. AND the new album is called I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master. Good God, I love these guys. Super damn fun. From the aforementioned album, tracks “Dance Pattern” and “Lenny Kravitz.”
9. Muse: I won’t take long on this band. They are my favorite band, so I could possibly add them to every “Top Ten” list from 2002 until forever. Queen and Led Zeppelin and Chopin had sex and this is their baby. I love a band that’s not afraid to get all epic-dramatic. I saw them in September here in Portland. You like bands who can do onstage what you hear on the CD? Me too. Oh, start with the album Origin Of Symmetry, the songs “Citizen Erased” and “Bliss.”
10. Scientology: After reading L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? and various other exposés of this organization I realized that you can’t really stand in opposition to something if you don’t know what their viewpoint is, right? Hell, that’s why I read the Bible a couple of years ago. So I’m reading my way through Hubbard’s books, which is difficult because there’s not a clear path of study. The books are legion and are in no specified order, so I’m going chronologically. The more I read, the crazier I think these people are. Yep, just like the Bible. Tons of fun in a “boggle boggle” kind of way.

NEXT: Jessica Melusine’s list

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6