Real Life Rock Top 10

Dec 10, 2001 |

1) Jim Borgman, editorial cartoon (Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec. 1)

In 1963, for the sleeve of "Meet the Beatles" ("With the Beatles" in the U.K.), photographer Robert Freeman pictured John, George and Paul from left to right on top, with Ringo directly below Paul: the left sides of the faces white, the right sides in shadow, then-shockingly long black hair and black turtlenecks isolating the faces against the starkest black background imaginable. All Borgman did was black out the two faces on the left. On the occasion of George Harrison's death, nothing I read, heard or saw came close.

2) Paula Frazer, "Indoor Universe" (Birdman)

The former singer for Tarnation -- which always seemed to imagine itself as the lounge act at Heartbreak Hotel -- still can't crush a fly in her fist. It's not that she won't; she can't close anything all the way. Her orchestrations might be made out of swamp gas; the closer she gets to the objects of her desire, the less substantial they are. Making her way into the vampirish "Stay as You Are" as if she's pushing cobwebs out of her face with every step, she flats on her words as they end a phrase, hesitating, almost stopping. Patrick Main's organ carries her forward like a stick on a stream. You can play the song again and again, waiting for the melody to exhaust itself, to reveal why something so familiar sounds less obvious each time you hear it -- though you might also play it again and again because only three songs later Frazer is singing with a rose clenched in her teeth, which sort of ruins the effect.

3) "Flying Side Kick -- Home Alive Compilation II" (Broken Records)

For this set in support of the self-defense group formed after Seattle musician Mia Zapata was raped and killed while walking home from a show, no quarter is asked and none is given. The Gossip's "I Want It (To Write)" is pure heat, as primitive as an early Rolling Stones track. Amy Ray of Indigo Girls, here with the Butchies, is as always preaching to the converted -- but my God, can she sing! Carrisa's Wierd can't spell "weird" but they can make it, playing male and female voices through a violin until something very distant, very dead, something vaguely pre-Raphaelite, rises out of the music. Every one of the 15 bands here comes up with something unexpected, pushing a little harder, maybe digging into its pile of tapes for something rejected just because, at the time, it didn't seem like anything anyone would want to hear.

4) Hadacol, "It's All in Your Head" (Slewfoot)

This is "Rio Bravo"/Ricky Nelson "So tough he doesn't have to prove it" country from Missouri. The music is warm, unadorned, corny, naked, until a tune beginning "I was standing in the corner/Feeling just like Gerald Ford" opens up like a murder mystery. So of course they drop it right there. You don't listen to Hadacol's songs so much as pass them by, like road signs.

5) Jennifer Saunders, producer, "Absolutely Fabulous" (Comedy Central, Dec. 3)

In a diet-induced delirium, God appears to Edina as Marianne Faithfull, wistfully mooning over what fools these mortals be. But then the Devil arrives -- in the person of Anita Pallenberg in a black-red wig and upholstered horns. It's the siren of "Performance," the absolute '60s ice queen, now looking lined, weathered and wonderful, and plainly having the time of her life -- or eternity, as the case may be. "You gave them vanity," God says of Edina's weight-loss panic. "No," says the Devil. "Self-loathing." As they go for a drink you can tell they were always in it together.

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