Albums I Listed to in July

I stole this idea from Wil Pfeiffer over at X-Ray Spex, except instead of movies, mine will be music, and specifically, 15-ish albums from the same genre. So while this will never be all I listened to in any given month, I'll try to group together things that make sense to group together. 

Or, in the case of the below, "sense," because I don't think anyone with much of it would have lined up any of the below for sonic consumption. In some cases as we'll see, that's a shame; in others, well, I can't argue.

What deteriorated my sense and sensibilities for such things was basically sustained consumption of hair metal in the 80s. Something I've spent no small amount of time exploring in these pages. (See here, here, or here, for example.) In addition to all that - and to my nightly dose of Dial MTV, which was ruled by hair metal during this time - from 1987-1990 (probably a little beyond that, actually) I read a lot of stuff like:

"Who's shreddin'? Unh, dude?" was the question (or questions, I guess) that forever drove me to these things. occupied a lot of my mental landscape during those years. I couldn't play guitar worth a damn - still can't, really - but I liked to know who was the month's "hot" guitarist and I argued with people about who was truly the shred king and who was just flash and a big poser.

These magazines had many ads that have stuck with me over the years.

But moreso than these were the albums advertised on the inside cover, above.

I got to thinking about these inside-front-cover albums a few months back and decided to track them down. I only had a vague idea of what I was going for - "80s shred metal that would have been advertised in Guitar Player in 1988" more or less. Each thing led to something else. It was an interesting month. I wouldn't exactly recommend it to anyone - unless of course you spent the same amount of time looking over that front inside cover and thinking about all as I did in the waning years of hair metal.

With regard to this particular hair metal wheelhouse - call it shreddin'/ neoclassical, whatever you like - all my needs were met, then and now, by Joe Satriani, so I never really branched out as I otherwise would have. His music hits all the notes of the genre that appeal to me: intense cinema of the mind, rocking out, great use of his gear, videogame Sonic-type runs, some serene beauty like here or here, rocking out again,  sonata form run amok, dreamscape type stuff, atmosphere, atmosphere, and more atmosphere). 

I suspect, though - and this is no disrespect to Satriani or anyone, really - it's a first-through-the-door thing. Whomever first formed your impression of the genre is whom you think of as the calibration of the bunch. (Was that ever a name for a metal album, Calibrator? It should have been. Or a ZZ Top album, maybe.) Anyway, mine was Satriani.

Still going strong, although shorn of the "hair" part of hair metal these days. (In truth, he never really fit into "hair metal" but hey.) Still rocking that Ibanez - no other guitar embodies the genre quite the same.)

Was he the high point of the genre? Was it "Mr. Scary" by Dokken? Images and Words by Dream Theater? "Play With Me" by Extreme?" Any/ all of the below? Yaaaaaaaaaaah! You tell me yours after I tell you mine. Let us begin! 15-ish Hair Shreddin' Albums I Listened to in July, alphabetical order, cominatcha'.

1.

Kind of a busy logo, eh? It definitely has that junior high back of your covered textbook sort of feel to it.

Albums Listened To: No Parole from Rock and Roll (1983), Disturbing the Peace (1985), and Dangerous Games (1986). 

Alcatrazz was a bizarre band. Best known as a proving ground for two shredders (Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai) who went on to bigger and better things, they were an odd fusion of sensibilities, or perhaps an insensible fusion of sensibilities, is a better way to put it. (The title track from No Parole encompasses all of them. As does the next one. But more on that in a second.) I never listened to them in the 80s, but I knew of them thanks to my old buddy Jay. He let me borrow his copy of Disturbing the Peace so I could make a copy of the lovely little Vai showcase on side 2. (Thanks to Eat 'Em and Smile and the movie Crossroads, I was a huge Vai fan. Other Vai fans might find it interesting to first hear the coda from Flex-Able's "Little Green Men" debuted here on "Wire and Wood".) I don't recall ever listening to the rest of it - or anything else by them - at the time.

Primarily the brainchild of Graham Bonnet, one of the most hair metal-y singers of the 80s, which is to say of all time.

I didn't know what to make of these guys. They were of their era; the confusion I felt listening to it now would not have existed in 1986 or 1987 in my old bedroom with the cassette going. I might not have liked it, but I'd have understood it - this is just what metal did. In 2018, though, I must've did a slow-turn and wtf-face at least a dozen times during Disturbing the Peace alone.

I mean, take this one, "The Stripper." Without clicking on the link, you'd probably get a certain idea of what the song might sound like or what its themes might be. And yet, when you hear it, nothing really adds up. It's not a "surprising" take on the material - well, I suppose it is, literally, quite that. But it's a damn peculiar angle of approach. Or how about "God Blessed Video"? There's a lot of 80s in that video. But moreover... I mean, what? What kind of idea for a song is that? And is that the right way to get at whatever message you're trying to get at? WTF is going on here? Alcatrazz prompted that reaction from me a lot, listening to these. ("Bigfoot," "General Hospital," "Mercy," "Too Young to Die, Too Drunk To Live" - all of them.)

One thing I learned this month: "released only in Japan" "only big in Japan" "moved to Japan in 2000-something" all feature prominently in the bios of ex-neoclassical folks. I guess that's where the shredders of the 20th century (and the Alcatrazzes) all went to die (or live forever) in the 21st.

Two last things: (1) Eddie Kramer must have been blasted out of his ever-loving mind on various substances or pharmaceuticals or both while producing Disturbing the Peace, and (2) on some other level of the Tower, "Ohaya Tokyo" was the theme song for The Drew Carey Show. (That's a play on the chorus and "Ohio" - sorry, kinda lame joke but it made me laugh through several edits of this post, so hey.)

2.

(1989)

Holy moley that cover! Wow. It was the 80s, though - no cheap shots from me. He seems to have done pretty good for himself in the years since. And really, cover aside, which puts it into a very specific section at the record store, this is a perfectly legit album.

I recall there being some kind of "I Have Seen the Future of Metal..."-esque ad campaign around this album, although my memory might be exaggerating it. I never heard it at the time. So, first time impressions in July 2018 were: 

- Clocking in at a cool 30:37? Good deal.

- Very much in that Vai/ Satriani tone and production mode. Had I heard this prior to hearing Satriani there's a chance (chronologically incorrect as it would be) I'd call things Saraceno-esque as a descriptor instead of Satriani-esque.

- "Remember When" is pretty cool.

3.

Albums Listened To: Speed Metal Symphony (1987) Go Off! (1988) Jason Becker - Perpetual Burn (1988), Marty Friedman - Dragon's Kiss (1988) 

Hey now! Okay, here is the one purchase I actually made from that aforementioned inside-cover of Guitar World. I was 13 in 1987, so this was the age of cutting lawns and such. I remember giving the cash to my Mom and her writing a check to Shrapnel Records. I wish I still had a copy of that check. Anyway, mail order was so magical to me when I was 13 or 14. Internet kids will never understand the same way I'll never understand not having grown up in a party line household or with an outhouse.

Magical mail order reverie aside, I didn't like it much when I was 13 and didn't like it much now. ("Concerto" is pretty good roller-coaster music, maybe. Some awesome amusement park flume ride or something. Or maybe some dingy street fair one - that might fit better, with the threat of electroction or fatal accident or vomit.) I listened to a couple of tracks of Go Off! and nothing really clicked. 

As for the axemen of the band, I liked their solo debuts -

a little more but nothing that really grabbed me. Marty Friedman ended up in Megadeth for a fairly long stretch. Jason Becker took Vai's place in the David Lee Roth Band, but ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) sidelined his performing career. He still seems to be releasing music, though, which is good to hear. Marty moved to Japan and has been cranking out music year after year.

4.

Racer X was kind of an awesome name. I remember wanting to hear these guys so bad - and another metal one from the same era, TT Quick, whose Metal of Honor I did own - and crank - back in the day. Unfortunately, these guys didn't do it for me hearing them for the first time in 2018. I had to jettison Street Lethal (1986) about 3/4s of the way through. Second Heat (1987) is an improvement but still a mess. ("Moonage Daydream," wow, though. So wrong. There are some "Yaaaah!" metal-harmonies randomly applied throughout that greatly amuse me, though. I like how they couldn't figure out how to do the flute-stuff in the middle of the song in a metal fashion, so they just omitted it altogether.)

Technical Difficulties, though, isn't a bad little metal album at all. Guess they just needed a couple of warm-ups - can't blame them for that. "17th Moon" is pretty rocking; "Phallic tractor" (!!) likewise. ("Barney's film had heart, but "Phallic Tractor" had a phallic tractor.") Too bad it came out in 1999 and not in the 80s.

5.

There's a lot of cross-over in this genre. Kotzen joined Poison (as did Blues Saraceno at one point), and later he replaced Paul Gilbert (from Racer X) in Mr. Big. He also collaborated with Greg Howe, also a Sharpnel Records signatory, and released all told something like a gazillion records. Good on ya, Mr. Kotzen.

As for these two, they're fun enough. Hit play on this one and you know what to expect. This kind of song takes me back; I associate it with malls and the Dream Machine arcade and summertime. That might not be you; if not, you probably associate it with some far part of town you neither understand nor want to be in. And ditto for "Spider Legs" which reminds me of Ratt, which makes me think this one needs a little Stephen Pearcy. Something few ever have reason to write.

As for Fever Dream (1990), some of the licks and grooves are cool, but the songs/ vocals/ lyrics never quite gel for me. Too many entries in this genre sound like that "Let's Fighting Love" song from South Park to me. But that's not Richie Kotzen's fault.

6.

(1982)

This doesn't quite fit the shredder/neoclassical theme I have going, but I revisited it and wanted to update the official Dog Star Omnibus take on the band. I have previously stated publicly that they are basically the prototype of so much of the decade that followed, sort of a hair metal equivalent of the National Security Action Memo that Oliver Stone purports to have started the Vietnam War in JFK. Listening to it again, though, it made me think it's really only four songs that are this ("Kept Me Coming", "When I'm With You", "Mama Baby", and "Give Me Rock and Roll"); the rest is more or less not so distinguished.  

And, really, of those, there were multiple precedents, such as (quite loudly and clearly) Rainbow and Foreigner on "Mama Baby." So, I've got to walk back my earlier accliam. Perfectly fine hair metal from an unfortunately-named band, but the missing link between 70s metal and 80s it is not. 

Still, if you wanted to nail down the Hair Metal era as making the most sense between "When I'm With You" when it was released (82) and when it hit number one (89), I'd probably agree.

7.

(1983)

Steeler put out one album - this one - and was fronted by Ron Keel. They had All-Roads-Lead-To-Yngwie for one album (this) before he left for Alcatrazz and before he went solo. Ron Keel is a metal radio guy now, last I checked, but his post-Steeler project was Keel. They had one song ("The Right to Rock.") I can remember seeing on Headbanger's Ball once or twice, but for the most part they, like Steeler, were pretty much unknowns to me in the 80s.

As for this album, or really any album like it, it's the kind of fun-but-terrible record you want to be very careful about showing anyone. Like your favorite conspiracy theory or collection of Chick Tracts, bringing it up in the wrong company will forever exile you to "kook"land in the eyes of those in the room with you. Somewhere down the line even the soundest of your opinions will be tarred by that brush.

Luckily we're among friends here! What could go wrong on the internet?

Anyway, it's really not the greatest album. "Hot on Your Heels" is a shop demonstration of shred guitar, "Serenade" one (that no one really needed) for the metal falsetto. Someday Dog Star Omnibus is going to go to an All-Opera format, and we'll talk about the castrati and the works in the repertoire written for them (or for contra-tenors now, like Philip Glass' Akhenaten.) Until then we have "Serenade."

8.

I enjoyed both Edge of Insanity (1986) and Maximum Security (1987). I should probably stress: these guys were practically teenagers when they did all this stuff. They were on the other side of adolescence than I was, i.e. just leaving it as I was entering it, but for a confused moment we saw each other across a crowded room of Aquanet and dry ice.

"The Witch and the Priest" deserves credit for anticipating how so much 21st century Iron Maiden was going to sound. At least to one man in 1986, it seemed perfectly obvious; good on ya, Tony. "No Place in Time" is not so bad, either; the right movie soundtrack comes along, you got yourself a stew.

I never heard either of these back in the day. I wish I could get my 14 year old self to get wicked into it via time travel suggestion. (Squints... outstretches hand... computer hum... eyeballs vibrating...)

9.

Vandenburg: Vandenburg (1982) and Heading for a Storm (1983)

I can remember some black and white (so it must have been Blast) article I read about Andrian Vandenburg prior to his joining Whitesnake. (Whitesnake? Yep, just looked him up. Apparently he has a band called "Vandenberg's Moonkings" too, which is pretty awesome. The name - no idea about the music. Maybe next July.) -For some reason I always think of these guys as bigger than they were. Blast/ Hit Parader/ Circus had that effect on me. If they were in there, I just sort of assumed they were bigtime. Later, I realized these magazines were written by the bands' publicists. Or while doing lines with them, I have no idea.

Anyway, this was less shred-y and more classic rock-y / Bad Company-y. "Burning Heart" (at least the chorus) is probably the one you'd remember, if any. They go in a more Honeymoon Suite/ Footloose-y direction on Heading for a Storm. "Welcome to the Club" is an acceptable (though nowhere near the glory of) rewrite of "Torpedo Girl" by Kiss. 

10.

(1985)

Here's one I never knew back in the day but as I was looking stuff up for all the above I kept seeing their name mentioned so I decided to make them part of the proceedings.

Some straight-up mid-80s power metal here. A little Priest-y here and there. How about that end of "Murder"? Muddy production, some swagger for sure, a wonderful kind of overreach here: very metal. This reminds me a lot of Megadeth actually, or W.A.S.P. I'm kicking myself, by the way, for not including either of those bands in July and even considered cheating to pretend I had just so I could throw some on and ramble on about it. It's taken me so long to type up what I did listen to, though, so hey,

Should've given "March or Die" to Anthrax, though. (Not too late, Anthrax!) Not to spend so much time talking about so many other bands. They're still bringing the metal to the masses in 2018. I don't know any of their other stuff; I'm kind of crap with post-80s metal. (Except Maiden.)

11.

Vinnie Moore: Mind's Eye (1986) Time Odyssey (1988)

Here's the guitarist from the above in two albums I remember reading a lot about in Shredder's Weekly back in the day. (Note: this magazine might not exist.) There's a lot of cool videogame music here. I don't mean to give backhanded compliments. But when I hear things like "Message in a Dream," I want to play some Stun Runner. And Stun Runner was awesome! So for me it's not a bad thing to say, but I don't mean to say it's only that, or to ghettoize it in any fashion.

One thing that comes through quite clear is Vinnie had (has, I guess - he's still out there, having joined UFO in 2003) great tone. Tone is basically the ability to play or sustain a note in a memorable, unbroken way. David Gilmour, Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Gary Moore - just a couple of acclaimed tone guys. There's a cover of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on here, which affords the listener the chance to admire Clapton's tone over Vinnie's shoulder.

12.

Vinnie Vincent Invasion: Vinnie Vincent Invasion (1986) VVI (1988)

I didn't get into Kiss until the late 90s, but I somehow was a huge fan of Vinnie Vincent Invasion in 1986 and 1987. Go figure. The first album is such a crazy mess. From the moment the needle drops on "Boyz Are Gonna Rock," a haze of hair metal sleaze descends and envelops the listener like menthol cigarette smoke mixed with Everclear-and-Kool-Aid. A totally rad kid on a BMX flies through the mist overhead, and within three measures, you know everything about how the rest of the album is going to go down: drums/bass basically a metronome, vocals and guitar in open contempt of subtlety and restraint and good sense. Like Quiet Riot on Red Bull and Rob Liefeld comics.

VVI is technically the 2nd Vinnie Vincent Invasion album, but it probably should be considered Slaughter's first album, as many who came before me have pointed out. (Well, "many.") Outside of "Love Kills" (featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pt. 4), the one I remember most is "Dirty Rhythm." I had a total flashback when I was re-acquainted with the couplet "Come together in serenade / pull the pin on my love grenade." Man that makes zero sense. Just none. You can see how the guy got a job with Gene and Paul, though.

And finally:

13.

Yngwie Malmesteen: Rising Force (1984) Live in Leningrad (1989)

"All roads lead to Yngwie," I said to my wife when I was describing this project. "Get me out of this town, then," she said. That cracked me up.

Okay, so here was my 80s timeline with Yngwie Malmsteen:

- My brother had one of those metal compilation albums that had "I See the Light Tonight" on it.
- My buddy Jay - who was a metal Johnny Appleseed of North Smithfield, RI, leaving hair metal cassettes behind him everywhere he went; he was the only person I've ever known who owned the Dudes soundtrack - let me borrow Rising Force (1984). (And Alcatrazz and Racer X now that I think about it. I made a copy and listened to that one an awful lot on the bus in 7th and 8th grade.
- I had Trilogy (1986) and Odyssey (1988) on cassette, as well, but the one I wanted to revisit was Live in Leningrad, which had all the hits from those on it, ("thi-is could be paradise!") so I didn't revisit those.
- 1991-1994: As metal faded from my life (for the time being) every now and again I'd throw on Live in Leningrad. And love it.

"Black Star" is still a pretty awesome slice of the genre to my ears. Anytime the Talib Kweli and Mos Def band has come up I make an Yngwie reference and everyone cringe-hisses. The reaction amuses me. Ah well. In the same way we used to have the Air Drum Band/ Arm Dance Studio at summer camp talent shows, I wish we'd had an air guitar one for this song. Or maybe for the song after it on Rising Force, "Far Beyond the Sun." That's metal air-guitar-face galore right there. Some enterprising young lad or lass needs to make a Bill and Ted montage for that and leave the link in the comments. Please and thank you.

Rest of Rising Force: "Now Your Ships Have Burned" - wtf? "Evil Eye", man I love that fade out; had a genuine time travel moment hearing that again in 2018. "Icarus" is fantastic. The last part of that should've been utilized in a B-80s movie for a chase/ magic cross-cut scene. And still should! My own personal Stranger Things movie has this for the big montage scene where my character pedals home one step ahead of the evil forces unleashed that he and his friends must somehow defeat. "As Above, So Below" - oh man. Terrible. "Lil Savage" / "Farewell" - I forgot about these. Meh. But for the ones I love, such a classic, Essential-McMolo record.

As for Live in Leningrad, man, did I love "You Don't Remember, I'll Never Forget" back in the day. I honestly forgot how much I listened to Live in Leningrad until revisiting this album. In many ways this solo showcase from the album sums up all the good and bad about shred metal and might be a good one to end on. 

(I do not endorse clicking that link, unless you have some dishes to do or something. 10 minutes of Yngwie might trigger a The Ring type scenario otherwise.)

(That might go for all of these links - too late now, but just in case. May whatever God you believe in take mercy upon your soul. Yaaaaaaaah!)

~

And with that (sound of book closing shut) we probably won't be back to these waters for some time... join us sometime in September for Albums I Listened To in August (genre: orchestral.)  

That Ten (Make That Twenty) Influential Books Thing

Some friends have tagged me in one of these Ten Life-Changing Books things making the rounds on social media. I believe the rules of the game are No Apologies, No Explanations. I can hang with the former but not the latter, so I decided to blog it up here. The more I thought about it, ten grew to twelve, then twenty-five, then settled back to twenty. 

Some rules and caveats. These are not my twenty favorite books - or a list of Twenty Books Everyone Should Read - but an attempt at mapping out the books that altered my trajectory (a) for the better, (b) still so alter. That last one is important. Books that radically changed my worldview but subsequent information and experience rendered less impactful (Howard Zinn, Tom Robbins, Daniel Quinn, The Tao of Pooh, State and Revolution, many others) are not included. Leading me to a different point (c) they had to hold up under questioning. With the exception of number twenty, I've read each book here at least three times. And finally (d) presented in reverse chronological order. I like the idea of working backwards to see how things went from #1 (1983-ish) to #20 (2016). Plotting coordinates on the map of my life.

And away we go!

20.

A wholly absorbing wonderful story with unforgettable characters about the foundation of British Hong Kong. Too much to get into in just a capsule review like this, but a true masterpiece that deftly covers an astonishing amount of ground. Clavell always referred to himself as "only a storyteller" and dismissed fanciful interpretations of his work. I'm willing to take him at this word, there, but if any of his books rise to something more - an insightful take in imperialism and colonization that - miracle of miracles - resists Marxist cliches - it's Tai Pan.

19.

I read sections of it many times while working at the Rhode Island College Writing Center 2000-2003, but I never read it cover to cover until I did the King's Highway business in 2012-2013.

This:

"For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room - no more child's desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship's captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.

"A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity. I got another desk (and) put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three year old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover.

"Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."

had and continues to have a profound effect on how I look at life, art, drink, drugs, writing, personal allocation of time, and external validation. Not just the quote above but the unquoted context around it.

18.

I was a bar manager for the VFW at this point in my life (2009) and we had boxes of donations sitting around the place left over from previous (mis)management. As I was cleaning some of that out, I found this book. For no particular reason I started reading it right there in the room where we had all the donation boxes. Holy moley, what a treasure trove. 

The short story, properly executed, may be my favorite of all written art. (S0 many favorites: Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited", Sam Lipyste's "The Wisdom of the Doulas", "Two Guys and a Girl" by Tobias Wolff, Norman Mailer's "The Language of Men," anything by Bobbie Ann Mason, so many more and still more to come in this countdown) These aren't just properly executed; they're perfectly executed. I literally have not looked at life the same way since reading them. This is not an experience unique to Among the Missing - I basically read in order to look at life a different way - but always appreciated when it occurs. That's magic worth noting, and revisiting.

I've yet to read any more of the man's work, which is ridiculous. I will, though.

17.

Although this is a book about architecture, it explains neatly the situation across a variety of disciplines and arenas.

"The creation of this new type of community (the compound) proved absolutely exhilarating to artists and composers, as well as architects, throughout Europe in the early 20th century. We're independent of the bourgeois society around us! (They became enamored of this term bourgeois.) And superior to it! It was the compounds that produced the sort of avant-gardism that makes up so much of the history of 20th century art. The compounds - whether the Cubists, Fauvists, Futurists, or Secessionists - had a natural tendency to be esoteric, to generate theories and forms that would baffle the bourgeoisie. The most perfect device, they soon discovered, was painting, composing, designing in code. The peculiar genius of early Cubists, such as Braque and Picasso, was not in creating "new ways of seeing," but in creating visual codes for the esoteric theories of the compound.

"Composers, artists, or architects in a compound began to have the instincts of the medieval clergy, much of whose activity was devoted exclusively to separating itself from the mob. For mob, substitute bourgeoisie - and here you have the spirit of avant-gardism in the 20th century. Once inside a compound, an artist became part of the clerisy, to use an old term for the intelligentsia with clerical presumptions."

Essential info for the disingenuous times in which we toil. As is:

16.

Similarly, although this is about events in Baltimore in the 1980s, you can't fully comprehend understand contemporary American cops and robbers (even if you've seen the author's other masterwork, The Wire) until you've read this book. Which is not to say that I, having read it, comprehend things fully - far from it - only that it's a vital piece of the conversation. When books like this exist out there, it's unforgivable to ignore them in favor of the platitudes offered up in such abundance in 2018.

Led Me To: The Corner, Homicide the TV series (a show very much worth your time), a re-evaluation of the movie Clockers, and a renewed and ongoing appreciation of "It Takes Two" by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock.

15.

Space precludes everything I find awesome about A Moveable Feast, but if you want to see a bunch of quotes from it paired with 70s Batman illustrations, I've got you covered. And if you want to see a grown man cry, watch me read this book. 

As for Papa Hemingway, I'll just say this: if you like Hemingway's work in any way, you need to read it. If you're not, you might find it interesting, you might not, but you'll definitely get a hell of a lot clearer sense of the man than anywhere else. Not just a love letter from a friend but a very insightful and ego-free representation of Hemingway's last 20 years.

Fun fact: At the end of his life, Hemingway's insistence that the FBI was bugging his phone led partially to his being committed to the electroshock hospital, and (it is argued in some quarters) it was the electroshock that played a part in his suicide. Of course, now we know, the FBI really was bugging his phone; Hemingway was right! So, thanks, J Edgar Asshole, for directly contributing to an American treasure's blowing his brains out.

14.

A writer (and his hard-drinking Australian friend) try and re-create Cook's travels in the early 21st century. I've read better books on Cook (Captain Cook: The Seaman's Seaman - no jokes please - by Alan Villiers), by Horwitz, too (A Voyage Long and Strange), and in the writer-recreates-famed-figure's-footsteps (many), but this one makes the list as the one that led me to my ongoing Age of Sail preoccupation.

I became a Star Trek fan somewhere around 1980 or so, but it took me to reading this in 2003 to realize how much Roddenberry based so many aspects of TOS on Cook's voyages (and crew, and redshirts.) 

13.

Keillor - even before the an alleged * pattern of sexual misconduct over many years - is a polarizing writer. Whenever I tell fellow English majors (or just heavy readers in general) I'm a Keillor fan, I'd say about half of them react like I just told them I was a flat earther. His long-running Prairie Home Companion on NPR is, to some ears, anathema. I get it, truly. But if there was one book I'd say not only rises above whatever else you think of the guy but is also a worthy contender for American canon, it's Wobegon Boy. 

* "Alleged" not to characterize the complaints as dubious - I have no idea what did or didn't happen. I'm a Keillor fan, though, so I for one would appreciate some sensible closure on the subject.

I read this (or listened to it, rather, on audiocassette) on my 2nd visit to Chicago in 2002. (My 3rd was 2 years later when I moved here). I revisited it (this time on audio-CD) on a recent work trip. Not only does it hold up, it thrives. 

12.

Read this name aloud: Patrul Rinpoche. Patrul Rinpoche? Patrul Rinpoche. 

There! You've just been saved from rebirth in inferior realms. Don't say I didn't do anything for you.

I read this (and Jean-Claude Carrier's book-length interview with the Dalai Lama, Violence and Compassion) a hundred times apiece back in the late 90s. I'd say this spell of Buddhist reading peaked (at least outside the classroom; there was a Zen and the Art of the Literary Experience class still to come) around 2000. Wonderful meditations in here. 

11.5

I thought about including The Psychic Soviet by Ian Sevonius or Society of the Spectacle by Guy DeBord here but decided against it. Well, kind of. 

11.

This is a terrific and moving work. I haven't actually read this one in awhile. I read it a lot in 1998 - 2003 and again in 2006 or 2007. But I've thought about this quote a lot over the years: 

"I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight."

Truth. It makes me wonder, too, what the thirty-eight to (blank) stage is called. It might even be in Anagrams. Homework for myself. 

10.

Here's another I also haven't read in at least 10 years. Many other opinions of mine have evolved in the past decade; I really should read this again to see what I think of it. But its place on this list is assured either way, as it had such a profound effect at the time I read it. The basic ideas it imparted on me I still believe.

I saw this quoted in a review on Goodreads: "[The book] not only explodes some pervasive beliefs, it affords an invigorating reading of American culture through the last three decades." Hear, hear.

9.5

Crikey, almost forgot this one. I paired a bunch of quotes from it (mostly) with Trek photos if such things float your boat. 

9.

Vonnegut was my favorite writer through various stages of late adolescence and throughout my 20s. But, he hasn't held up too well for me since. The exception is this one (and its kinda sorta sequel Timequake) which is a masterpiece. It's been reviewed and analyzed a million ways in a million places by many more mindful than me. You yourself have likely read it; you likely love it.

The first time I read it I was 18, which seems unfathomable to me, not just being 18 but it seems both too old/ too young for me to have first read it. I got it from the North Smithfield Library - the same place from which I checked out The Stand (the Expanded edition) and a dozen other King books only 18 months before - and read most of it in one afternoon in the park directly behind it. 

Well, it's a park now (below) - it was a bit more rough and tumble in 1993. Where that bridge is in the picture( on the right used to be a rotted-away causeway left over from the Industrial Revolution. You used to have to cross it to get to the other side, and there was no fence and lots of loose stones and a precipitous drop. 

Having set the scene to such a tedious degree, there I am propped up against the library side of said-causeway reading Slaughterhouse Five. Dog Star Omnibus has come unstuck in time!

8.

Oops. I read Brief Lives after Slaugherhouse Five, for sure. I screwed up my chronological backwards journey goes. 

If you haven't read Sandman, you're probably sick of hearing people tell you you should read it. I sympathize. My personal advice would be to override your desire to start from the beginning and read these two things: first the Sandman special above-right (collected in Fables and Reflections, tho you can pick up an inexpensive copy of the Special alone easy enough) and then the Brief Lives tpb. 

Orpheus is an ancient story and has been continually rediscovered from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo right down to the present, as this work bears witness. Gaiman adds both a new twist to the old tale and a sequel. It is a pivotal chapter in the whole Sandman saga that Gaiman wove over seventy-odd issues, but it also works completely as a standalone tale. It's that most improbable, once-in-an-age sort of things: a re-invocation of ancient myth in modern guise.

7.

We've reached 1992 in my countdown. I went to URI that fall and went to the bookstore to get my books and walked out with mostly stuff that wasn't on my book syllabus. This was one of those off-syllabus books.

An essential narrative of the American experience, but definitely worth reading for anyone, white or black, American or non-American. It did a number on my head back then - race politics in this country have become so weaponized that it's sometimes difficult to learn about the past without the distorting lens of 21st century narrative. An account like this (or many others, to be sure) told in the author's own voice and free of such a lens is critical.

6.

I couldn't even begin to describe my love of this book. I've read it so many times over the years that every sentence has become a Zen koan that explains why I love anything. I talked about my love of short fiction up there with Among the Missing; it all could very well have come from my love of The Pat Hobby Stories. They are the Pink Panther Strikes Back of literary short fiction. 

"'Authors get a tough break out here,' Pat said sympathetically. 'They don't want authors. They want writers--like me.'"

5.

I can't say Brave New World was my first dystopian-future book I read. Marvel Comics (and 1984, and many others) got to me first, there. It - like War of the Worlds or The Time Machine or another book still to come in our countdown - is a fascinating look at the British Empire looking at itself. The Victorian and Edwardian eras produced such fascinating literature. Very clear-eyed on many of the contradictions of Empire but still maintaining more than a whiff of a completely outdated (to modern eyes) sensibility. 

Brave New World Revisited is something else entirely. More than any other, it opened my mind up to the possibilities of mass conditioning through media and the knowing application of that through the 20th century. My ongoing interest in its radically increased pace in the 21st is a direct result of reading this (entirely by accident) back in 1991.

4.

A ww2 vet becomes involved in a scientific experiment that successfully establishes contact with a mirror Earth on the other side of the sun. Cool idea - like the Mars Needs Woman sort of stories of this era of sci-fi, made somewhat obsolete by improved technologies, but who cares. What has stuck with me over the years is how much reading this book provided me with a useful, Cold-War-specific (alas) morality. 

It's a very moving book that I read every few years. I love updating the film I'd make from it in my head. Same goes for:

3.

I had to read this in 11th grade English, so we're at the 1990-1991 mark here. Here's another one that had a deep and long-lasting effect on my philosophical attitudes. 

I was always spellbound by the whole experience at Shangri-La, and in particular, the attitude of the protagonist, Conway, but there was always something else tugging on my mind about it, too - a darker undercurrent. I finally read a take on it (David Mamet from his book The Secret Knowledge, excerpted below) that spoke to this dichotomy: 

"In this beautiful fantasy, a British civil servant is blown off course and crashes in the Himalayas. He is rescued and taken to a mysterious, inaccessible lamasery in Tibet. Here he discovers a perfect land - all its inhabitants are artists and philosophers, there is no disease, a person can - indeed, live as long as he wishes and there is no want. The people of the Valley for millennia devoted themselves to the care, physical, material, and sexual, of the folks on the Mountain.

"This is a sweet tale by a great storyteller. It is also, less admirably, a fascist tract. For Mr. Hilton's paradise (he understands, if only subconsciously) can exist only if there are slaves. Here we see the progression from good ideas to horror. The sweet ideas are encumbered in execution by the realization that someone, finally, has to do the work; their adamant practice will quite soon reveal this: "Oh, we will need slaves."

"These slaves may be called (various thing) but they are chosen not for their odious qualities but for their supine or defenseless nature. And they are enslaved to allow the elite not only exemption from work but exemption from thought.

"Originally they are enlisted (fellow travelers or "useful idiots") or convinced (taxpayers) in order to allow the ideological and exemption from toil and the malleable exemption from thought. As the money dries up, the ideologues are easily supplanted by tyrants and the malleable chained to their oars. History provides no counter-example. A country which will not work will fall.

"Our hero in Lost Horizon discovers, midway through the book, that it was no accident which led him to the lamasery; he, like all the inhabitants, was originally kidnapped - chosen for his "readiness" to unquestioningly accept this new, changeless, and perfect life."

Mamet's take provides a whole new spin on the last lines of the book, "Do you think he will ever find it?" Is it a subversive book, after all, looking ahead out of empire and past the war on the horizon? Or an eloquent rationalization of it? I have spent a good portion of my life trying to work that out.

As such, not too bad for a meditation given to me 27 years ago. Come to think of it, I'm still thinking about Ivanhoe, too. I guess Mr. Brodeur for 11th Grade English was all right.

2.

Now we skip all the way back to 1984, the actual year not the novel, when I first read this. It was the first reading assignment in a special reading program in Frau Scharnweber's class. We had to traipse across Rhein Main AFB where they then hooked us up to machines and fed us ingenious potions to make us even smarter, levitate objects with our minds, or set them n fire.

Why Flowers? It could easily have been The Stand in the 6th and 7th grade, a few years later. But this was the first book I consciously remember telling people was my favorite book, the one I tried to engage adults about, etc. It's still a great book. I'm probably due for a re-read actually. 

Years and years later I saw the much-heralded movie and was quite disappointed. The movie in my head while reading it is much better. 

1.

Speaking of firsts here are two of the first non-kindergarten-y books I remember reading over and over. 

You ever read The Babysitter's Guide book? It rocks. There are pictures and descriptions in there that I still mentally reference in 2018. I remember looking at this - and Terror Castle - a lot in 1983, so thereabouts is where we end this little reverie.

Terror Castle is one of the best Three Investigators books of them all. I was in love with that series in elementary school. They started making movies based on them a few years back, but the franchise stalled. Too bad. The Terror Castle movie that was made strays signifcantly from the text, but it had its moments. (Ditto for the Skeleton Island one. I actually quite liked that movie, though; they nailed the spirit of it all quite nicely.) 

~

And in the background of at least #s 1-8: comics both newspaper (The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County) and four-color (all the Marvels and half the DCs).

There you have it, my friends. The full story. I'm sorry I can't just answer a question like a normal person.