6) Joshua Clover, "Modest $100 Million Proposals, for Better or Verse" (Village Voice, Nov. 27-Dec. 3)

On the $100 million-plus gift by rejected amateur poet Ruth Lily to Poetry Magazine: After three sensible notions on what to do with the money ("lobby for pro-education candidates," "buy a million poetry books every year and give them away," "free medical coverage to every poet accepted for publication"), Clover pulls out the stops. Such ideas, he says, "would burn a tiny fraction of the bequest: Instead of investing the remainder, Poetry could secede from the Union, purchase the Republic of the Marshall Islands (GDP: $99 million), and appoint their very own poet laureate, who would then meet the U.S. laureate in a battle to the death, wreaking unfathomable destruction across the landscape."

7) "The Jimmy Show," written and directed by Frank Whaley (First Look Pictures)

Whaley as a New Jersey man with a dead-end job who lives for open-mike nights at local comedy clubs, where the heartfelt cry "YOU SUCK!" is the most response he ever gets. Or, Bruce Springsteen, the Bizarro Years.

8) Johnny Cash, "American IV: The Man Comes Around" (American/Lost Highway)

The fourth time around for the Old Man Sings New Guy Songs concept is not too many, especially when so many old songs are part of the show: Could anyone else let the line "Sometimes in the saddle, I used to go gay" from "Streets of Laredo" slip by without a hint of self-consciousness? There are stunning duds, most notably a version of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face)" that reveals how horrible the song actually is (though there's no footnote about how it inspired "Killing Me Softly," which is even worse). Cash does best with a strong melody and a light, insistent beat -- and here, with Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," he goes deeper into the composition than Trent Reznor ever did. As with U2's "One" on his "III," Cash understands the piece as a weight; he assumes it, and then, as you listen, lets it crush him. When "V," "VI" or "VII" comes out posthumously, it won't sound any more posthumous than this.

9) Duke Mitchell, "The Lion," from "'Gimme Dat Harp Boy!' -- The Roots of the Captain" (Ozit Records)

On a label named for the leading lights of London's 1960s underground press, a heroically diverse collection of strange records that prophesied Captain Beefheart -- a word like "influenced" is just too paltry -- a very hot late '50s-early '60s fuzztone stomp. With the fuzztone played by saxophones.

10) Homer Quincy Smith, "I Want Jesus to Talk With Me" ("Tangled Roots," Princeton University, Nov. 23)

At a conference on old-time music, Dean Blackwood of the "raw musics" reissue label Revenant talked about the idea of "phantom artists": people whose names can be found on the labels of old 78s, but about whom nothing is known, including whether the names on the labels are real. He played a 1930 recording by Elvie Thomas, and the 50 or so people in attendance (including Brett and Rennie Sparks of the contemporary country Gothic duo the Handsome Family, whose performance would close the conference, and Tony Glover and John Koerner of the 40-year veteran Twin Cities roots band Koerner Ray & Glover, who had opened the event with their last concert -- guitarist Dave Ray would die six days later) shook their heads in wonder.

Blackwood played a 1926 Paramount release by Homer Quincy Smith and mouths dropped open in shock. "I want Jesus to walk with me" -- a man sings in a slow, measured cadence, making it plain he understands how much he's asking for. The performance begins with the tinny sound of a calliope, which as Smith's voice goes down to the bottom of a mine turns into a huge pipe organ. At the end, Smith lets his voice rise, until it seems a thing in itself, on its way to Jesus, leaving the singer behind. Another participant had prepared a response to Blackwood's presentation, but as an instance of the great game of "Follow that, motherfucker!" I never saw anything like it.

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