Still in a most list-ful mood, but this round-up certainly wasn’t a very easy one to compile, I’ll have everyone know. The pickin’s were extremely, uh, thin, to say the very least.

Nevertheless (or should I say Nevermind)…..

Number One: Mark Johnson - 12 in a room (1992)
Powerful pop most firmly rooted within the Brill Building anteroom.

Two: Cowsills - Global (1998)
America’s once-and-forever First Family of Song leave no Partridge unspurned.

Three: Brian Wilson - Sweet Insanity (1991)
Just to make sure the Nineties weren’t ALL Pet Sounds re-issues.

Four: Dave Rave Group - Valentino’s Pirates (1992)
Wherein the former Soviet Union signs its first Western act, then promptly dissolves.

Five: Johnny Cash - American Recordings (1994)
Rick Rubin produces a Johnny we thought only Sam Phillips could.

Six: Tiny Tim - Rock (1993)
Includes possibly definitive readings of “Eve of Destruction” and “Rebel Yell,” I kid you not.

Seven: Puffy - Jet CD (1998)
Oh-so-effortlessly crosses ABBA, Sabbath, and Who’s Next …and all by way of Jellyfish.

Eight: Monkees - Justus (1996)
Those Prefabs go out on a very high note (which, I’ll have you know, they played ALL BY THEMSELVES).

Nine: Shane Faubert - San Blass (1993)
Former head Cheepskate most definitely goes for baroque.

Ten: NRBQ - You Gotta Be Loose (1998)
Proof very positive: The greatest live r-n-r band In The World.

Eleven: Evaporators - I Gotta Rash (1998)
Before Ali G, Baba Booey, and most definitely Tenacious D.

Twelve: Neil Young - Arc (1991)
Truly too cool – not to mention loud – for (many) words.

Thirteen: Go-Nuts - The World’s Greatest Super Hero Snak Rock And Gorilla Entertainment Revue (1997)
For once, the title says it all.

Fourteen: High Llamas - Gideon Gaye (1994)
More than filling that cavernous sonic gap between SMiLE and the XTC reunion.

Fifteen: Blue Shadows - Lucky To Me (1995)
Hank Williams visits The Cavern by way of Big Pink.

Sixteen: Mojo Nixon - Gadzooks!!! (1997)
Includes “Bring Me The Head of David Geffen” …and then some.

Seventeen: James Richard Oliver -
The Mud, The Blood and The Beer (1998)
alt. Country with a capital “Oh!”

Eighteen: Chesterfield Kings -
Surfin’ Rampage (1997)
Upstate New York’s finest give their Stones cloning a rest whilst hanging all ten.

Nineteen: Jandek - Twelfth Apostle (1993)
So many Jandek albums; so little space.

I've been procrastinating for the better part of a year, but I'm finally ready to announce that I'm head over heels for Natalie Gordon, the extraordinarily talented singer, songwriter, and guitarist for Sacramento's Agent Ribbons.  So groovy and gorgeous is she that it didn't take long for her to officially become my local celebrity crush (although the comely lass who works at a nearby Newsbeat is pretty darn worthy as well.)  Here, take a gander and you'll see what I mean:

Yeah, she's a doll alright, but you ain't gonna hear her music just by staring at her. That's why I'm here to let you know that Agent Ribbons' debut release On Time Travel and Romance has given Sacramento another reason to be proud of its homegrown musicians. It all began when Natalie befriended Lauren Hess in a downtown used record store (which happens to be the very same store featured on the cover of DJ Shadow's magnum opus Entroducing . . .  )  This meeting of minds gave Natalie a renewed interest in her musical ambitions and inspired her to form a band (à la Art Brut) with Lauren sitting in on drums. Agent Ribbons has a decidedly retro sound thanks to Natalie's focus on vaudeville, cabaret, and blues traditions in her songs, but she still manages to put a contemporary spin on everything she touches. Writing stories about looking for love after death and running off to join the circus, Natalie has a talent for dishing out the whimsy without ever sounding overly cute.  And her vocal on "Birds and Bees" is so hypnotically sensuous that it's become a permanent fixture on my profile on MySpace. Natalie and Lauren welcomed violinist Naomi Cherie into the mix in 2009 and recorded a forthcoming follow-up called Chateau Crone, so it seems they're all set to prove they're not just one-trick ponies. Sadly, the ladies haven't been able to make ends meet in their hometown and will be moving to Austin this year with the hope of greater success. With Natalie's promise of frequent visits to Sacramento, I wish them all the luck in the world!

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You can find Agent Ribbons' On Time Travel and Romance for sale here.

Despite an alarming amount of critical mass to (and by) the contrary, there truly was much, much more worth hearing this decade just past than those big Big Star, Beatle, Bob Dylan and even Neil Young box sets.

No, really!

So then, strictly alphabetically speaking as always, here’s what I spent much of January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2009 listening very closely to…..

Apartment - Sparkle Bicycle
Waikiki Record (2008)

Tatsuya Namai’s radiant pop of the Daniel Johnston-meets-Shonen Knife variety.

Alex Brennan - The Last Smile Of The Pied Piper
xtoalex@hotmail.com (2004)

Hopefully Mr. Brennan will be duly hired to give the Beach Boys’ catalog that Beatles Love treatment when the time inevitably arrives.

Lindsey Buckingham - Under The Skin
Reprise Records (2006)

Once insane, always insane.

Candypants - Candypants
Sympathy For The Record Industry (2000)

Ronnie Spector fronts Elvis’ Attractions …and THEN some!

Casper and the Cookies - The Optimist’s Club
Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records (2006)

What Jason NeSmith and Kay Stanton did on their holidays in New York City.

Cheap Trick - Rockford
Big3 Records (2006)

Remarkably sounding better – and louder – than ever.

Dennis Diken with Bell Sound - Late Music
Cryptovision Records (2009)

The album Brian Wilson has been trying to make since at least 1986.

Johnny Dowd - Wire Flowers: More Songs from the Wrong Side of Memphis
Munich Records (2003)

A sonic sequel to one of the Nineties’ undeniably greatest albums …and artists.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Sony/BMG Music Entertainment (2006)

Edges out Christmas In The Heart by a mere Santa whisker.

Electric Prunes - Feedback
PruneTwang (2006)

Proving you can have your re-heated soufflé and eat it, too.

Tom Jones - Mr. Jones
V2 Music (2003)

Wherein Atomic Jones meets Wyclef Jean …by way of “Black Betty” !

Bill Lloyd - Back To Even
New Boss Sounds (2004)

Fifteen more examples of most potently powerful pop, Nashville-style.

Lolas - Like The Sun
Jam Recordings (2007)

Tim Boykin and his ever-bright l-o-l-a Lolas honestly do make the kind of records you still think Paul McCartney does.

Jack Pedler - Jack Pedler
Race Records (2001)

The sound of the hardest-working drummer in Canada loading all six strings.

The Playmates - Sad Refrain
K.O.G.A. Records (2002)

Forever more than happy to play the Stones against their countrywomen Puffy (AmiYumi)’s Beatles.

Raquel’s Boys - Music For The Girl You Love
Jam Recordings (2004)

Just as if Bobby Fuller and those once Flamin’ Groovies were never ever extinguished.

Jason Ringenberg - A Day At The Farm with Farmer Jason
Yep Roc Records (2003)

The definitive alternative to alternative country.

Simply Saucer - Cyborgs Revisited
Sonic Unyon Recording Company (2003)

The nice, nice noise that simply continues to keep on giving.

Frank Lee Sprague - Merseybeat
Wichita Falls Records (2005)

Exactly as if Brian Epstein had never entered The Cavern.

Tan Sleeve - White Lie Castle
Cheft Worldwide (2000)

Wherein George Harrison and even F. Zappa receive the Bacharach and David by way of Todd Rundgren treatment.

Teenage Head - Teenage Head with Marky Ramone
Sonic Unyon Recording Company (2008)

Canada’s Ramones finally reunited with their very-long-lost brudder.

now,

Bring On the Twenty-Oh-Teens !!!

Best of 2009

New Stuff

Telekinesis! (self-titled) Irresistible power pop, “Coast of Carolina” an instant classic.

The Soundcarriers-Harmonium Soft and breezy with a little electronica thrown in, something like Stereolab/Broadcast but with a more direct nod to soft psych from the ‘60s.

Jah Wobble-"Get Carter" (single) Anyone who knows me knows why I’m interested in this. But, Ted Lewis connections aside, this is an inspired interpretation of a timeless movie theme.

The Flaming Lips-Embryonic A mood-driven record where the overall feel is the point, rather than individual songs; it’s the Lips doing Prog, and they do it in masterly form.

The Clientele-Bonfires on the Heath The same kind of majestic, lush psychedelia that had our jaws dropping when Suburban Light came out nine years ago.

The Raveonettes-In and Out of Control Ramones songs told as ghost stories. This record is both throwaway and brilliant; gets better with each listen.

Reissues and Compilations

New Dawn-There’s a New Dawn Lost classic from 1970 out of the Pacific Northwest. Pothead lyrics and fuzzed-out guitar.

Emitt Rhodes-The Emitt Rhodes Recordings (1969-73) Rhodes is one of the great unheralded songwriters in pop music history; these four albums are gems showcasing sparkling power pop and gentle psychedelia.

The Apples in Stereo-#1 Hits Explosion 16 choices tracks from the Apples recorded output up to this point. Makes you want to do cartwheels while singing along.

Roy Loney & The Phantom Movers-A Hundred Miles an Hour 1978-1989 The one-time Flamin’ Groovies frontman kept the Groovies’ greasy, rockin’ spirit alive with the series of records he made after leaving them.

Spirit-Fresh From the Time Coast: The Best of 1968-77 One of the most innovative bands on the late ‘60s SoCal scene, Randy California and friends continued to make compelling, jazz- and folk-tinged psych into the late ‘70s.

Big Star-Keep an Eye on the Sky A four-CD treasure of recordings done by one of the most influential bands ever. All the stuff from the three main albums, yes, but also a stunning live show from ’73, a handful of revelatory pre-Big Star sessions, and alternate versions that are actually worth hearing.

Nirvana-Live at Reading A great band playing live when at their very peak.

The Paupers-Magic People Psychedelic folk rock from Toronto, 1967. Part Beau Brummels, part Buffalo Springfield, part Lovin’ Spoonful.

Funkadelic-Standing on the Verge (Best Of) Faultess, one-disc best of Funkadelic that covers their full output, 1969-79, early acid rock to later acid disco.

T. Rex-Spaceball (The American Radio Sessions) T. Rex doing spots on American radio, 1971-2.

Best New Album: The Raveonettes-In and Out of Control

Best Reissue: Emitt Rhodes-The Emitt Rhodes Recordings

Best Compilation: (Two-Way Tie) Big Star-Keep an Eye on the Sky; Spirit-Fresh From the Time Coast (Best of 1968-77)

Being eight years old in the Toronto suburbs of 1963, I was at the perfect age – and in the perfect place – to, yes, Meet the Beatles. Because by the time “those four youngsters from Liverpool” hit the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 64, my friends and I had already spent the past six months familiarizing ourselves with John, Paul, George and Ringo’s initial A-sides via Ontario’s mighty 1050 CHUM-AM Radio.

In other words then, the British Beat had no reason to invade Canada. It was invited.

Unlike with our big neighbors to the immediate south you see, each of the Beatles’ earliest discs garnered automatic release on Capitol Records of Canada, beginning right at the beginning with “Love Me Do” in February of ’63 (the version with Ringo on drums, by the way!), and the Canadian Beatle Discography boasts many other rare slices of vintage vinyl totally unique to the genre, and as a result extremely collectable.

For example, the Canadian Beatlemania! album not only sported an identical cover and track line-up, but was released the very same week With the Beatles was in the UK (making it the first Beatle album released anywhere within North America), and its twelve-inch Capitol Canada follow-up, the Twist and Shout album – # 1 on the Canadian charts for ten weeks in early ’64 – was in fact the very first “big record” I ever had the pleasure to have owned.

And what a remarkable record it was: Fourteen action-packed tracks featuring all four – “count ‘em”! – of the band’s first UK 45 top-sides, plus a generous helping of Cavern-baked covers from their homeland debut album Please Please Me. Being too young then to know, and still too young to care if nary a Beatle wrote each and every note or lyric herein, Carole King’s “Chains” stacked so easily around Len/Mac’s similarly George Harri-sung “Do You Want To Know A Secret,” Bacharach and David’s “Baby, It’s You” seamlessly followed John and Paul’s “P.S. I Love You” on T & S Side 2, and the magnificent Arthur Alexander’s “Anna (Go to Him),” which kicked off this entire collection, continues to this day to hold more than its own against any Beatle composition you or even I could mention.

And while Lennon’s wholly larynx-bursting “Twist and Shout” completed the first Beatle album in Great Britain, the ever-inventive Canadian Capitol chose to close its namesake long-player with none other than – wait for it – “She Loves You.” Take that, Sir George Martin! (and tell Dave Dexter, Jr. the news.)

Meanwhile in the seven-inch division, “Please Please Me” actually hit the CFGP Top Forty in Grande Prairie, Alberta in April of ’63, while two of Capitol Canada’s most unique couplings, “All My Loving”/”This Boy” and “Roll Over Beethoven”/”Please Mister Postman,” sold sufficient (smuggled) copies to reach even the American Hot One Hundred a year later. Also, the U.S. Tollie label “Twist and Shout”/”There’s a Place” 45, which soared to Billboard # 2 in April of 1964, was an identically-formed Canadian Capitol Top Ten much, much earlier.

Plus, may I just add that every single one of the above-mentioned original deep-grooved, meticulously mastered Canadian (mono!) pressings put their U.S. counterparts – not to mention even the latest CD incarnations, truth to tell – to total, unequivocal sonic shame. Really!

The moral of this absolutely Fab story then? Good music IS good music, and shall forever remain so, regardless of the size, format, packaging, advertising budget or even country-of-origin of the item in hand.

And of course, any discussion of Lost Grooves that doesn’t contain multiple uses of the word “Beatle” is a discussion I just must immediately bow out from.

P.S., and in closing: Is it only me, or is the Beatles Rock Band animation a tad cheesier than even that of the old Beatles cartoon series?

In early 1980, all must have seemed right in the world of Hilly Michaels.

The New York-based session drummer had a major label record deal with Warner Brothers Records, a top-flight producer in Roy Thomas Baker, and bunch of favorable press coverage about his hot debut album “Calling All Girls.” Best of all, though, was the album itself, which was an effort that actually lived up to its hype and delivered the kind of hook-filled pop songs that other artists could only dream about writing.

But one thing went wrong one the way to bubblegum bliss for the curly-topped drummer-turned-singer. Nobody was going into the record stores to buy the dang album. A few years earlier, Nigel Olsson (“Dancing Shoes”) had successfully made the transition from drummer to singer. So why not Hilly?

There’s probably no single, big reason. Just lots of little ones. The album was released during a period of post-Knack new wave backlash (which would end, but not until 1983). Then there were Michaels’ songs: They may have been a bit too quirky and ironic for the American pop scene then. It would take MTV to bring quirkiness back into pop music a few years later. Ironically, Michaels released a video for the title track which was a vivid cartoon scenario that would have probably caught on had it been released a few years later, when bands like A-Ha were expanding the boundaries of music videos.

Either way, the LP was terrific then and holds up now. It’s filled with jangly, electronic power pop that had critics – and Michaels himself – calling it “fun,” “lightweight,” and “bubblegum.” Well, on the surface, maybe. But like a lot of great bubblegum, the tunes have a neurotic edge that plays off the upbeat music and makes them compelling.

Take the title track. It’s a fast-paced, synth-driven shout-out to women around that world that seems at first blush like an update of Eugene Church’s “Pretty Girls Everywhere.” But lend an ear to the lyrics and they reveal Michaels as an “unhappy” bachelor with all the time and money in the world and no one to spend it on (kind of like the movie “Arthur”).

Other songs also mix melody ’n’ melancholy. “Teenage Days” sure is funny in its depiction of skipping school assemblies, but Michaels reveals his nostalgic bent with the line “all good things must come to an end.” Didn’t Allen Ginsberg call nostalgia a form of depression? In “Shake It and Dance,” Michaels’ girlfriend is too busy shaing her booty to visit lovers’ lane with the poor dude. “Something on Your Mind” (featured in the film “Caddyshack”), finds Michaels pleading with his lover to find out why she’s upset as an oddball, operatic backup chorus trills along.

What makes this music really engaging is the dissonance between lyrics such as these and the hyped up arrangements, which could be described as the Cars on speed (Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes even puts in an appearance). A very motley cast of musicians plays on the album, including Liza Minelli, her stepsister Lorna Luft, actor-singer Ellen Foley, “Saturday Night Live” guitarist G.E. Smith and rocker-turned-disco-dude Dan Hartman (who Michael had once played drums for). Producer Baker makes the album snap, crackle and pop with his usual bag of tricks: Compressed drums, massed backing vocals, and lots of high and low frequencies, but little midrange.

In 1981, just as “Calling All Girls” was filling the cut-out bins, Michaels released a follow-up called “Lumia.” There was so little distribution of this LP that I’ve never even seen it (if someone has it, let me know!). After that, Michaels disappeared back to where ever session musicians go.

Hilly Michael’s two LPs are both out of print, but “Calling All Girls” can be easily found at used record shops.