Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

It's amazing how a simple sentiment, with the right intonation and tone can sum up great swathes of emotion and define a movement. When the Replacements semi-crooned the pharse "I Don't Know" in a nonchalant and disenfranchised tone, they managed to perfectly sum up the feelings of a generation. Better than any raging punk rocker, better than an entire punk rock album, that one chorus captured the zietgiest. That feeling of socio political isolation, of emotional displacement, it was utterly perfect, and truth be told it was done with the tongue firmly in cheek, but it was perfect. Pleased To Meet Me was the work of a band who saw genres and stereotypes and rejected them, they scoffed and turned their noses up. The Replacements will always be considered a punk band, but they were so much more, Pleased To Meet Me shows them skipping around stylisitcally with ease, from punk, to rock and roll, to diseffective alternative, to full on balladeering, to big solos; but they never get lost stretching their creative wings because each song is rooted around glorious melodies and delicious witty ironic lyricism.

It must have been remarkable experience listening to this record for the first time back in '87. Who would you have compared them to? Is this punk rock? Or are they influenced by Poison and Kiss or should that be Aerosmith or is it The Misfits, The Clash and the Sex Pistols, but then there's the big ballads; are they the ice cool credible Bryan Adams of punk? Then there's trumpets, and Nite Club Jitters are they America's answer to The Specials? The solos drop from the 70s to the 80s then suddenly go all Buddy Holly on us, then from out of no where they sound like the E Street band. My advice? Give up trying to define The Replacements, just settle for this simply conclusion they are bloody brilliant. Please To Meet Me is a band at the height of its powers, everything this album touches turns to gold, a collection of eleven sublime tracks immediate and varied tracks.

Sometimes you can tell instantly that your listening to a special album by a truly special band from the very first track, this is certainly true of Surfer Rosa. When the thundering drums of Bone Machine kick the song into life your already on the edge of your seat you know this going to be big. Then immediately it's like nothing you've ever heard before, Joey Santiago guitar comes sliding in and it still sounds revolutionary to this day. They may be rocking one note solos but there's a primal thrill to the Pixies guitar lines, it's an audio assualt. Joey Santiago never really gets the respect he's due as a guitarist, sure technically he's nothing special, but his signature sound is perhaps more influencial than any other guitarist of his generation. Alternative acts still try to simulate the primal sound of Surfer Rosa not to mention a little band called Nirvana who were playing particularly close attention. However after the thundering drums and wailing guitar suddenly it drops away and Kim Deal and Frank Black unleash a soft and sweet hook "Your bones got a little machine" and an alternative anthem was born. I'm not going to wax lyrical for too long about the Pixies trade mark sound and it's influence, as I'm sure you've figured out we'll be seeing them again in this list.

As far as Surfer Rosa is concerned its the moment when the Pixies proved that the rough and ready promise of Come On Pilgrim was ready to be fullfilled, with slick rhythms, killer basslines, crunching guitars, some organised chaos and some of the best melody/screamo combinations in rock history. Yet at the heart of this album it was the two HUGE pop moments that proved the Pixies were for real and set them on route to rock and roll legend status. First came Gigantic, Kim Deal's signature ballad, with crunching guitars and a sugary sweet hook about errh...a black dude with a huge wang, then it was Frank Black's turn; he unleashed Where Is My Mind? A song that needs no introduction, it is the definitive Pixies track and a unparrelled festival anthem. It couldn't get better than this, could it?

So come 1983 and the Police were on their last legs, this would be their final record comprised of original materiel, but how would it fair, they had become a band of declining returns after the early brilliance of Next To You, Can't Stand Losing You, Roxanne and Message In A Bottle. Synchronicity would stop the rot and make sure the Police went out with a bang. Make no mistake this was still the Police, the filler boardering complete and utter wank is still there, I challenge all you to find a single positive thing to say about Mother, but for the most part this was an album that showed of the Police as the mature clever and consistant hit makers. Of course this was the album that spawned the worldwide stalker anthem Every Breath You Take which hardly needs introduction or description. It marked a more moody and considered direction for the band. While gloriously slight and shimmering pop gems like Oh My God and Synchronicity Part I liter the album its the tender moments of the (other) two stand out singles King Of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger that steal the show. When Sting's came in with "There's a little black spot on the sun today" you knew it was going to be classic. It's suprising that a band so oft criticised for bland balladry and ska light wankery would finish their career by mastering these dark art forms. I always found it peculiar that a song with such a dark punchline ("I'm always hoping that you'll end this rain, It's my destiny to be the King Of Pain") was built around such a light beat and such a gorgeous harmony, but its this kind of juaxtaposition that not only makes the Police so intriguing but so darn popular too. Synchoronicity starts of like any other hit a miss Police album before going on a truly staggering seven track run of sheer pop genius ending in the sublime Murder By Numbers. So Synchronicity is an apt metaphor for the Police's career, a great start a rocky decline and glorious conclusion.

Sometimes you can tell everything you need to know about an album from the artwork. The sleeve for Nebraska was perfect, shot in monocrhome, its a grainy rough around the edges photo, it's bleak, the sky is covered in thick cloud, the image is dark and haunting, it feels cold and tragic. That picture in many ways does more to describe Nebraska than a million well chosen words could. Take one listen to the albums biggest single the powerful Atlantic City and you should have known something was up, in the back ground gone was the euphoric sax and cheery backing vocals in its stead was the ghostly coos of the backing vocals. It starts tragically enough as Springsteen talks about imfamous mafia killings in Philidelphia, and the tragedy continues to thicken however unlike other Springsteen records there isn't the uplifting endnote of The River; instead solace is found in the desperate hope that "Everything dies baby, that's a fact, well maybe everything that dies someday comes back". Really Bruce, no happy ending? It also features one of my all time favorite Springsteen lines "Down here it's just winners and losers, and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line". It's a work of emotive beauty, and it's no stand out, every second of Nebraska equals its intensity and power.

Nebraska is a stripped down and sparse record, it's Springsteens most intimate and by far his most soulful and tragic. Nebraska is not a studio album, it's a collection of demos that Springsteen recorded and decided to release completely unproduced, and its quite simply one of the greatest decisions he ever made. This is blood and guts music. This for the most part is Springsteen, an accoustic guitar and a harmonica telling some truly heartbreaking tales without a happy ending in site, it's bleak but it's never dreary, this is as thrilling as any record Springsteen has ever released. Springsteen immerses himself in crime and criminality, there's the mafia crime of Atlantic City, the title track sees him telling the first person story of a real life nineteen year old seriel killer. Elsewhere there's tragedy, heartache and even a man awaiting the gallows. It's blue collar, its gritty, in many ways it's classic Springsteen, without the punch and the pizzaz, the spark is instead provided by the strenght and intimacy of the narrative. Nebraska was the third of the three master peices released by Springsteen in the eighties, it's full to the brim with sorrow, it's minimalist, it's bare and it's without doubt the best record he has ever released.

So I decided when I started this list that I was only going to include one Tom Waits album, I'm not sure why exactly, as both Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombones are gorgeous albums, equally deserving of a place in the top 50, yet I chosen in favour as variation, as both records are seen as part of a trilogy, a song writing movement. So why Rain Dogs? It's certainly less concise than Swordfishtrombones, it's all over the place in comparision, Waits lyrics are often barmy to the point of abstraction. Yet it's these factors that make Rain Dogs so special, it's a bloated epic, it's the insane genius that lerks dark within the depths of Tom Waits cranium set free to run wild, and best of all it has the glorious addition of electric guitar to bring some sex to Waits' wild and imaginative arrangements.

It's amazing that a talent so different, so uncommercial and frankly so left field continues to have such a mamoth influences on modern pop music. Norah Jones ripped half the arrangements on her latest album directly from this record, My Chemical Romance continue to indulge their camp musical theatre sides and Mama feels like a rock re-inventions of a track like Tango Until They're Saw, perhaps most suprising of all the Arctic Monkeys brilliant Humbug is heavily influenced by Rain Dogs. Not simply in it's dark and ominous arrangments, but it seems Mr. Turner has been taking notes of Mr. Waits' rich storytelling devices and his creative abstracted metaphors. Yet let us put influences to one side, because while it's remarkable how relevant Rain Dogs continues to be, there is still only one Tom Waits, he is a true original. His arrangements are darker, richer and more fanciful than any of his peers, it's beyond me to list every instrument he employs across this epic undertaking, and yes note to Mr. White I'm afraid Tom beat you to the Marimba. However as spectacular as Waits musical theatre arrangements are, the strenght of his music with always be his raspy smokey delivery and his superb lyricism. Picking out individual lines is fruitless, as Waits' words are intrinsically tied to his arrangements, they are deep emotive stories, that demand your undivided attention. You'll hang on his every word, because Waits is a truly unique and unpredictable, and Rain Dogs is legitimately a timeless classic, and a triumph of individuality and creativity.