Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I barely had enough time or energy to make these, much less write about them.  Still, they’re done and in the hands of their recipients, so I’m going to at least get a blog post out of them.

As always, these are mixes that represent an intersection of what I think the recipients would like and what I reviewed here on MPL in 2009.  Whether the music was released in 2009 is irrelevant, and in fact very little of it was.  Eligible contributing CDs run from The Nields’ If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now to A Man About A Horse’s Does Not Exist.

These mixes suck. Hard.  Cuz of that lack-of-time-and-energy thing. And because my busy year gave me fewer songs from which to choose.

Volume K
1. Stand Up Comedy - U2
2. Postcards - The Cutters
3. Government Center - Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
4. Twa Recruiting Sergeants - The Old Triangle
5. Girlfiend In A Coma - The Smiths
6. Sex Euro and Evils Pop - Messer Chups
7. Wouldn’t Mama Be Proud? - Elliott Smith
8. Catch A Collapsing Star - The Mendoza Line
9. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers
10. Does This Mean You’re Moving On? - The Airborne Toxic Event
11. Seven Years Gone - Quasi
12. Just To Know You’ve Been Dreaming - Will Johnson
13. Such Great Heights - Iron And Wine
14. The Wrestler - Bruce Springsteen
15. Heavier Than 3 Lbs. - A Man About A Horse
16. Carry On - Spacehog
17. Let Me In - R.E.M.
18. St. Teresa - Joan Osborne
19. (Love Is) The Tender Trap - Frank Sinatra
20. How Deep Is Your Love - The Bad Plus

Volume S
1. 9 To 5 - Dolly Parton
2. Li Li - The Cutters
3. Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event
4. Barracuda - The Bad Plus
5. Our Haunt - Palomar
6. Wolfman’s Brother - Phish
7. Crazy Baby - Joan Osborne
8. Will The Night - Low
9. Aase’s Death - Grieg
10. Belated Promise Ring - Iron And Wine
11. Then I Met You - The Proclaimers
12. How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
13. L.A. - Elliott Smith
14. Strangers Out Of The Blue - St. Thomas
15. Try For The Sun - The Old Triangle
16. Preface - Vincent & Mr. Green
17. Mainstreaming - Kaada
18. Flor de Leis - Slow Dazzle
19. Hopeless Bird - A Man About A Horse

2009 MPL awards to follow.

Given that all the other lists of this sort come out on December 1, I’m two months late with this.  But we’ve been over the reasons for that.

This is the second annual MPL’s top ten CD list.  2009, however, was relatively light on the CD reviews, due mostly to busy spring and fall quarters, reviewing massive collections like Beethoven’s symphonies and Melvins v. Minneapolis, and spending a lot of my time reviewing Wagner’s Ring.  As a result, I only reviewed six CDs that came out in 2009.

So here they are, MPL’s top ten six albums of 2009:

4.5 lunchboxes:
1) The Bad Plus: For All I Care

4 lunchboxes:
2) Iron And Wine: Around The Well

3.5 lunchboxes (in no particular order):
3) U2: No Line On The Horizon
4) Melvins: Pick Your Battles, Live in Berkeley 1989/Boston 2008

2 lunchboxes: (in no particular order):
5) Bruce Springsteen: Working On A Dream
6) Covered, A Revolution In Sound: Warner Bros. Records

Last year I reviewed 10 2008 albums that received four or more lunchboxes.  In 2009 I only reviewed two that achieved that score.  And 2009 didn’t have a single five lunchbox album, at least not that got reviewed here and, really, did it even happen if it didn’t get reviewed here?  Sucks to be 2009.  But of course that’s been covered elsewhere.  At least Melvins made the top ten list two years running.

We are pleased to finally reveal the official Miss Piggy Lunchbox 2008 Mixes. In 2007 I made two CDs, one for each sister-in-law. This year I masochistically added four more mixes for a total of six: one for my three siblings-in-law, two for good friends, and one for My Baby’s best friend who has crazy similar tastes in music to me.

This proved to be too much for a number of reasons. First…six mixes? I spent crazy amounts of time I didn’t have on them. I loved doing it, but still, it wore me out. Second, in some ways it wasn’t enough. As I was making the mixes I thought of at least six more people who would have loved an MPL mix from me but didn’t get one. (You know who you are. Sorry.) Consider: even with six My Baby didn’t get one. That’s pretty messed up, and just knowing that much of my audience was going empty-handed exhausted me. Finally, by spreading a mere year’s worth of mix CD candidates over six CDs (I tried to have very few repeats), I was kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel. (Of course, “bottom of the barrel” is something that shouldn’t apply to a mix CD candidate, so since this experience I’ve been more selective of my mixers.) Next year I’m going to do something like two or three mixes and then give more people the version of said mixes that I think they’d like best. I can’t do one version because it is simply unacceptable to give the same gift to my twin sisters-in-law.

Anyway, here are the 2008 mixes. Again, these are mixes that represent an intersection of what I think the recipients would like and what I reviewed here on MPL in 2008.  Whether the music was released in 2008 is irrelevant.  Eligible contributing CDs run from Bauhaus’ 1979-1983, Volume One to Pantera’s Power Metal. Volume letters are the first initial for a sibling-in-law and postal state abbreviations for the other three locations where these mixes ended up.

Volume K
1. Better Already - Northern State (Northern State, with their five lunchbox contribution, ends up appearing six times over five mixes, with only Volume ND missing out.  With that kind of presence, they make a very strong run at 2008 MPL Artist Of The Year.)
2. Close To Me - The Cure (Another strong contender this year, with J-mez’ 4.5 lunchbox greatest hits album contributing four songs over four albums.)
3. Chan Chan - Buena Vista Social Club
4. Love & Pride - Alana Davis
5. Fate Won’t Wait - Terramara (I loved this album…it just had the one mixer, though.)
6. Myxomatosis - Radiohead  (I reviewed almost all of Radiohead’s LPs this year, and it shows, with five songs over four mixes.)
7. Lover’s Greed - Jump, Little Children (With two albums averaging 4.5 lunchboxes, and eight songs over five mixes here (again ND ends up with the shaft), Jump, Little Children is, hands down, MPL’s Artist of the Year for 2008.)
8. Salala - Angelique Kidjo (I shat on this two-lunchbox compilation from KEXP pretty hard, but I obviously loved the mixers, as all four ended up on these mixes.)
9. Stand Together - Beastie Boys
10. Young Folks - Peter, Bjorn, and John (The prior year’s KEXP compilation was a much better album, and it is also well-represented here with all three of its mixers.)
11. We Stand A Chance - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (2008 was a big year for Tom Petty on MPL as The Heartbreakers give us two songs and Mudcrutch adds another two.)
12. Things I’ll Do - Northern State
13. And I Was A Boy From School - Hot Chip
14. Boy With A Coin - Iron And Wine (I loved The Shepherd’s Dog and rewarded it with three songs over three mixes.)
15. Miss Venezuela - Los Amigos Invisibles
16. What’s Victoria’s Secret? - Rick Springfield (Springfield, with his 4.5 lunchbox CD, contributes four tracks over four mixes.)
17. Good Vibrations - Brian Wilson
18. Oh! Darling - The Beatles
19. Datskat - The Roots
20. Lovely Rita - The Nields

Volume S
1. All Down The Line - The Rolling Stones
2. American Girl - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
3. Smoke - Ben Folds Five
4. Cold Brains - Beck
5. Angeldust (Please Come Down) - Jump, Little Children
6. Idle Hands - The Gutter Twins
7. Yr Mangled Heart - The Gossip
8. Beauty Strike - Shudder To Think
9. Pictures Of You - The Cure
10. I’m Free Now - Morphine
11. Cruel - Calexico
12. Lived In Bars - Cat Power
13. Closer To Fine - Indigo Girls
14. Cry Baby - Janis Joplin (Joplin’s Pearl got five lunchboxes and contributes four songs over three mixes.)
15. Sweet Louisiana Sound - Billy Pilgrim
16. Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon
17. Sucka MoFo - Northern State
18. Come Out Clean - Jump, Little Children
19. Mellie’s Coming Over - Letters To Cleo (I hated this album, but it’s only mixer was awesome.)
20. Time Stand Still - Rick Springfield

Volume B
1. Excitable Boy - Warren Zevon
2. Jesus Of Suburbia - Green Day
3. Everything In Its Right Place - Radiohead
4. Razor Love - Neil Young
5. Country Pie - Bob Dylan
6. Buried Alive In The Blues - Janis Joplin
7. Bootleg Flyer - Mudcrutch
8. Rocketship - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
9. Cold War - Northern State
10. The Greatest - Cat Power
11. Tumbling Dice - The Rolling Stones
12. Thursday - Morphine
13. O.P.E.N.E.R - Flat Earth Society
14. Revolution - The Beatles
15. Think About It - Flight Of The Conchords
16. B-13 - Jump, Little Children
17. Read My Mind - The Killers (The Killers have quite a respectable showing here as Sam’s Town contributes three songs over three mixes.)
18. Black Star - Radiohead
19. Trust Me - Janis Joplin
20. Catcher In The Rye - Guns N’ Roses

Volume CA
1. Just Like Heaven - The Cure
2. Touch Me - The Doors
3. One Passenger - Rick Springfield
4. Blow Out - Radiohead
5. Away Away - Northern State
6. Like O, Like H - Tegan And Sara
7. Friendship Ring - Malfunkshun
8. Oceans & Streams - The Black Keys
9. Half Moon - Janis Joplin
10. You Think You’re A Man - The Vaselines
11. Strange Fire - Indigo Girls
12. In Spite Of Me - Morphine
13. Resurrection Fern - Iron And Wine
14. Where Is My Love - Cat Power
15. Explain - Jeremy Enigk
16. Going To A Town - Rufus Wainwright
17. A Te, O Cara, Amor Talora -  Bellini
18. Violent Dreams - Jump, Little Children
19. Walcott - Vampire Weekend (I can’t quite explain how this five lunchbox CD only contributes two songs over two mixes, but I think it had something to do with their horrid live show at Capitol Hill Block Party.)

Volume ND
1. Call Of The Playground - Shudder To Think
2. Random Hearts - Tom Gabel
3. So Did We - ISIS (Some of the first real evidence I felt more free to really rock this mix.)
4. The Stations - The Gutter Twins
5. Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan
6. This Is A Good Street - Mudcrutch
7. Candy - Morphine
8. Anyone Can Play Guitar - Radiohead
9. Gotta Get Over Greta - The Nields
10. Marker In The Sand - Pearl Jam
11. For Reasons Unknown - The Killers
12. Mr. PC - Rick Springfield
13. The Talking Horse - Melvins
14. Halloween In Heaven - Type O Negative (I didn’t really like this disc, either, but this song is so much fun.)
15. Apartment - Qui
16. The Constable’s Headscape - Circus Devils
17. Iodine - Jawbox
18. I Will Not Forget You - Sarah McLachlan  (Again, really rocKEN it here….)
19. Whatsername - Green Day
20. Hiphopopotamus v. Rhymenoceros - Flight Of The Conchords
21. Amputations - Tom Gabel

Volume WA
1. Sunrise - Yeasayer
2. This River Is Wild - The Killers
3. White Tooth Man - Iron And Wine
4. Red Balloons - Carter Tanton
5. All I Need - Radiohead
6. My Guitar - Jump, Little Children
7. Duty Bound - Malfunkshun
8. Sticky Bun - Fluf
9. The Hawk - Melvins
10. Movie Star - Cracker
11. I Won’t Tell - Billy Pilgrim
12. Sister Golden Hair - America
13. Golden Slumbers - The Beatles
14. Good Distance - Northern State
15. Scientists - The Dandy Warhols
16. Too High - Jump, Little Children
17. Mutha’uckas - Flight Of The Conchords
18. Letter To Elise - The Cure
19. I Stand Corrected - Vampire Weekend
20. She - Green Day
21. Spoiler - Jawbox
22. Sabotage - Beastie Boys (Ladies and gentleman, MPL’s 2008 Song of the Year.  As if there was any doubt….)
23. Say Goodnight - Jump, Little Children

And to recap the awards:
Song of the Year - “Sabotage” by Beastie Boys from Ill Communication
Album Of The Year - Magazine by Jump, Little Children
Artist Of The Year - Jump, Little Children

And only three weeks late on this one.  The next one…man, I don’t know when I’ll get that one published.

Anyway, every year KEXP asks its listeners to send in their top ten albums for the year and then lists the top 91 vote getters as it counts them down on the air.  Surprisingly, I actually reviewed more than 10 CDs from 2008 so I went over and voted.

It was a completely onerous process as their write-in functionality didn’t work very well and, despite them listing gobs and gobs and gobs of albums, I had to write in seven of my ten votes.  Come on, KEXP, aren’t you supposed to be diverse?  Okay, I’ll forgive you for not including Terramara, Tom Gabel, and the unreleased pre-master demos of Malfunkshun, but no Rick Springfield, Gutter Twins, or Chinese Democracy?  Get off your high horse, you ass munchers.

Anyway, choosing my top ten was easy because when I sorted the 2008 albums I had reviewed I found that exactly ten received (or would have received) four or more lunchboxes, so there was a nice cut-off there.

You can see KEXP’s list here.  I wouldn’t go look at it, though, as Gutter Twins don’t make the list entirely because they weren’t even on the ballot, I’m sure, because while I can see how they’d look down on such listenable enjoyment as Guns N’ Roses or Rick Springfield and would avoid visceral, no-indie-weenies-allowed rock like Melvins, Gutter Twins fits their sweet spot of huge among young people and obscure to adults that they seem to troll in.  How completely retarded.  Furthermore, KEXP’s #1, Fleet Foxes, doesn’t even break my top ten because it got 3.5 lunchboxes.

Anyway, here are my top ten CDs of 2008:

5 lunchboxes:
1) Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend (This was on the ballot and slots on KEXP’s list at number two.)

4.5 lunchboxes:
2) Rick Springfield: Venus In Overdrive

4 lunchboxes (or would have received at least 4 if I’d rated them) (in no particular order):
3) Terramara: Dust & Fiction
4) Melvins: Nude With Boots
5) Black Keys: Attack & Release (This was on the ballot and slots on KEXP’s list at number 34.)
6) Malfunkshun: Friendship Ring
7) The Gutter Twins: Saturnalia
8) Guns N’ Roses: Chinese Democracy
9) Tom Gabel: Heart Burns
10) Mudhoney: The Lucky Ones (I think this was on the ballot but didn’t make KEXP’s list.)

January 1 - An on-the-scenes report from the leadup to the Iowa caucuses.  We predict Barack Obama wins the presidency based on a block’s worth of lawn signs.

January 2 - I start off in the B’s of J-mez’ collection.

January 6 - My car breaks down and visiting Germans try to keep me from my tow truck, all to save themselves a block of walking.

January 8 - It took me over four years, but I finally listened to all of My Baby’s CDs.

January 15 - I ask “Sabotage” if I can sodomize it.

January 29 - “Never-snow” is coined.

Feburary 4 - My buddy has a Super Bowl ad for the second year in a row.

February 8 - In an early candidate for post of the year, a kid freaks out in his choir recital.

February 27 - My car gets vandalized.  Was that seriously this year?

March 3 - There’s Jagrmeister at My Baby’s office’s holiday party.  That exec has since been fired.  I think the only thing he did was throw the party.

March 28 - We have never-snow number five of the season.  A mark we reached this year on January 2.

March 31 - We get never-snowed on on Opening Day and I am not happy about it.  It still pisses me off to think about it.

March 31 - Schwag!  I am sent Walk The Line to review.

April 16 - Soon to be forgotten, the Seattle PI writes an article about how it always-snows in Seattle in April.

April 22 - What a horrible spring…it just keeps never-snowing.  So much so that I lost count.

April 24 - Boldly going where nobody else will, my sister-in-law makes me a mix.

May 2 - All my high school wet dreams come to fruition, as I meet one of Malfunkshun’s founding members.

May 5 - I didn’t blog much about it, but no recap of 2008 would be complete without some mention of the miserable experience I had in the class I took in the spring quarter.  I was an asshole (no, I mean a real big asshole) for two months.

May 23 - A rare immediate post, as Clinton suggests somebody might assassinate Obama.  I still haven’t quite got over that one.

June 11- I’ve now lived in Seattle for the rainiest month on record and the coldest June on record.  It was a miserable, miserable spring, and was followed by a nearly completely absent summer.  All expectations for good weather here are completely erased.  365 days a year I expect chilly rain.  I’m never disappointed and only rarely pleasantly surprised.

June 12 - Is it possible I don’t care about baseball?  Continued self-examination reveals the answer is ‘yes, sometimes.’

June 16 - A rhino is born as the world’s rarest attacks a hidden camera.

June 30 - One of the highlights of the year was a trip to my host sister’s wedding in Norway.  The hospitality from all involved was tremendous.

July 28 - I review the greatest weekend of the year: SP20.

August 4 - A Melvins concert.

August 15 - I mourn the death of the American man as Old Spice is disappearing and nobody cares.

August 18 - I have a Thin Mint Blizzard, a culinary experiment topped in 2008 only by the accidental eating of a mint followed by a Twix.  OMG!  THIN MINT TWIX BLIZZARDS!  I call patent pending!

August 21 - My Baby surprises me with a night out on our fourth anniversary.  I don’t deserve her.

August 25 - A zealousness for finishing up the hot dog buns goes too far in what has become an infamous dinner.

August 26 - I’m just going to announce this now: MPL’s album of the year for 2008 (reviewed, not released) was Jump, Little Children’s Magazine from J-mez’ collection.

September 18 - All 2008 recaps have to include the collapse of the economy, and it happened during my otherwise awesome vacation to see baseball in Florida.

October 7 - This year Brewers fans peed their pants.

October 20 - I turn into a one-track wreck as the election approaches.

November 2 - MPL’s first political endorsement: Barack Obama for President.

November 3 - Honestly, it’s hard for me to remember who did what: Tina Fey or Sarah Palin.  That’s how close to Palin Fey was and how ridiculous Palin was.

November 5 - We should endorse more often: Yes We Did.

November 10 - Self-immolation at UW.

November 14 - The next two months are foreshadowed as I completely lose it in a work-related situation.

November 25 - In a year where I struggled to get through a lot of bad CDs, one stands out as the absolute nadir of bad and boring.

December 9 - Chinese Democracy.  Really.

December 10 - I end 2008 in the N’s of J-mez’ collection.

December 17 - It was Year of the Never-snow, goes out with a vengeance.

December 18 - What more could Melvins possibly do?

Happy New Year, everybody. As tradition dictates, here are the year’s highlights and milestones as I saw them on MPL. Let us know what your favorites were in the comments.

January 1 - Fireworks at the Space Needle.

January 6 - I review the second-most unique CD I would review last year.

January 15 - I start the year in the S’s of My Baby’s collection.

January 23 - The first Pearl Jam concert review of the year I do is the 70th in the series.

January 24 - I give up on my Complexity Theory class, effectively giving up on my application to UW’s CSE PhD program.

January 29 - Our first trip of the year to Portland, in which we are awoken in the morning by the roller girls team, still partying from the night before.

February 4 - The Super Bowl. I think there was a football game, but more importantly, MPL friend ST had a couple of spots.

February 8 - I test positive for being allergic to the periodic table.

February 19 - The combination of King Buzzo and Dick Bremer is a brilliant one that I did not see coming, even in my wildest dreams.

March 2 - I complete my app for UW’s Computational Linguistics program and get rejected from their CSE program.

March 22 - We go to SXSW.

March 30 - Peeping Tom gets the award for Best Mike Patton Album I Listened To Last Year.

April 7 - Friend of MPL Ginevra takes me up on my Mix CD Challenge.

April 9 - I go to Boston to celebrate friend of MPL’s doctoral defense and meet the jerkiest bartender of all time.

April 18 - This ATM sign was popular.

April 20 - Davis Square, Porter Square, whatever…this sign in one of them was also popular.

April 24 - April was crazy busy, and it continued right through to early July.

May 21 - My Baby orders me to buy a Wii.

June 7 - Chuck Klosterman writes my biography, except makes it entertaining.

June 8 - Nintendogs was a much tougher experience for me than I was led to believe it would be.

June 9 - Kobayashi v. Giant Bear. Best thing ever? Probably.

June 15 - I was going to give this its own post, but screw it. Even though it was part of a box set, the whole thing was there, so Willie Nelson’s Phases and Stages is MPL’s Album of the Year for 2007, which is, of course, chosen not from albums released in 2007 but from those I reviewed on MPL in 2007.

July 4 - Woodpecker!’s F-hole was runner up for MPL’s Album of the Year for 2007, and was actually released in 2007. It really is that good, folks.

July 17 - This picture of My Baby’s dog Tank is probably the best picture of the year.

July 19 - I mercifully finish the Pearl Jam series. 72 concerts, approximately 149 CDs, and nearly four years after the worst purchase of my life.

July 20 - I break up with the Cardinals and Red Sox, another heartbreaking moment of the summer.

August 2 - A moment of seriousness for MPL as I-35W collapses and I cannot turn away. Incidentally, I would bond with other estranged Minnesotans over this moment and what it meant to be elsewhere when it happened throughout the year.

August 3 - In one moment, the Celtics become the best team in the NBA, the Timberwolves become the worst, and the NBA ceases to exist for me.

August 7 - Easily the most unique CD I heard this year, and probably the most unique I have ever heard, too.

August 10 - We were in the Fremont Solstice Parade.

August 14 - I meet Twins legend Dan Gladden.

August 19 - King of Kong may have been the best movie I saw all year.

August 21 - My Baby and I celebrate our third anniversary with slightly augmented vows.

August 31 - We go to the Kwik-E-Mart.

September 6 - We go to the Twin Cities for Labor Day weekend.

September 7 - We celebrate our anniversary on Orcas Island, and I have probably the worst glass of wine in my life.

September 22 - This guy turns out to be an agent of the Jimmy Kimmel show, but his performance next to OJ’s lawyer is still brilliant.

Somewhere in here I started a Master’s program at UW.

October 13 - We go to New York and friend of MPL J-mez sends me over 100 CDs. For free.

October 24 - The Sox and I hook up for the postseason.

October 29 - In three of the past four World Series, one of my teams has emerged victorious.

December 6 - In a year of Seattle weather obsession, this is the absolute highlight.

December 18 - I end the year in the Y’s of My Baby’s collection.

December 26 - MPL’s 2007 mixes. I was going to do a best song of 2007, but now I probably won’t. Frontrunners were “Dim all the Lights” (Donna Summer), “Like Sonny” (John Coltrane), “Andy” (The Affair), “Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)” (Three Dog Night), “Cruiser’s Combo” (The Short Fuses), “I’m Falling In Love Again,” “Pretend I Never Happened” (Willie Nelson), “Fullerton,” “8 Miles & 2.5 Inches,” “How Perfect,” “So You’re The Guy Who’s Going To Marry My Ex-Girlfriend” (Woodpecker!), “Anywhere (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix Vocal)” (Beth Orton), “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything” (Barry White), “Wish You Well,” “Harlem,” “Use Me Up” (Bill Withers), “Slip Away” (Clarence Carter), “Seeing Other People” (Belle and Sebastian), “We’re Not Alone” (Peeping Tom), “Breed,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit (Butch Vig Mix)” (Nirvana), “Going Blind,” “Set Me Straight/DCH” (Melvins), “Man of Constant Sorrow” (Soggy Bottom Boys feat. Dan Tyminksi), and “Carnt Sleep” (Saint Etienne).  All of those songs are extraordinary.