Yoko Ono is one of my greatest inspirations, a true artist in every fiber of her being. Her words have symbolically marked my mixtapes, and her book, Grapefruit, sits always on my desk at work.
She is 83 today, and still making daring music that puts most artists a quarter of her age to shame. Here’s hoping there’s more to come.
In November of 1980, a few days before John Lennon untimely death on December 8, photographer Allan Tannenbaum had unique and total access to Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, who were emerging from five years of seclusion, ready to release a new album, “Double Fantasy.” Many of the photographs never released before are now in the book “John & Yoko, A new York Love Story”, release by Insight Editions, November 2007.///John Lennon and Yoko Ono during filming of the “Starting Over” video.
11 years ago, this song became one of my favorite things ever, for an entire summer and a little bit longer. Part of LCD Soundsystem‘s self titled debut, it ended the bonus disc collecting their massive dance singles. Yr City’s A Sucker is absolutely unfuckwithable.
Any one of the lengthy tunes on that disc could be held up as the vanguard of 00’s disco punk, from hipster lament Losing My Edge to ecstatic rave-up Yeah. Every single one is a club stomping classic, packed with more funky swing than entire albums’ worth of dance music. This one, though. Yr City’s A Sucker always stayed ringing in my head longest.
It wasn’t just the fact that it was the final track; it’s the point where the record’s sarcastic hedonism curdles into a nihilistic snarl. But a sense of humor creeps in, the whole endeavor played for laughs. It’s the band laughing at its own shtick while still kicking in high gear.
I hear a lot of great music almost every day, and it really adds up. I might not be rich or famous, but my life is wealthy with incredible music. I want to make everyone else as wealthy, too. Every single year, there are so many great albums that I’d recommend anyone, far more than I’d feel comfortable putting on a top ten list.
So here we are, my “honorable mention” list of 2015 albums. Every one of these albums are worth your time. Unlike my top list, they appear in the order that I heard them.
2015 was an incredible year for music, full of surprises and second comings, weird new genres and unbelievable evolutions of existing sounds. Of course, every year is great for music as long as you’re open to new sounds. That’s how this whole thing works.
Every year, I enjoy writing down my favorites as I go along, adding them to a simple text file on my laptop. Sometimes I add stars to the albums when I realize I’m completely mad for them. For some albums, this means I find myself listening day after day, racking up dozens of plays. For others, this means that I’m struck so deeply on an emotional, intellectual, or even physical level that I can’t bring myself to listen again for a few days. Both experiences bring lasting rewards, especially when considered in the long view. This is why I love looking back and appreciating the permanent impact from these powerful pieces of music.
As it turned out, this year’s list included over twenty starred albums. I left a handful for my Best of 2015 Honorable Mention list, but the rest were simply indispensable. My list would not be complete without all of these albums.
So please, read on and enjoy. These are the 17 best albums of 2015.
Today is Don Cherry‘s birthday. He would have been 79 years old. To celebrate the inimitable jazz explorer’s life, I’m sharing my favorite album of his.
Here’s Brown Rice streaming in full. It’s one of the most warmly engaging releases of the entire free jazz universe and, as such, is a great entry point for those who have yet to experience the furthest reaches of the genre.
I’m always hearing music from outside my window. I live near a lot of bars, and my downtown has become a sort of motorcycle Mecca in the summertime, so I often hear classic rock or country blasting into my open windows before an open-throttle roar into the dark. It’s usually crap that I tune out, but just now I heard this song.
It’s Let It Whip, by Dazz Band, and it’s one of those songs you know even if you don’t realize it. Even better, it made me think about how fantastic it is that funk is making an oblique comeback in the cultural consciousness.
I heard the bass line echoing through the full row of windows I’ve got cracked open on this balmy 70 degree night in late September, and sprung to attention. It’s one of my favorite funk tunes but I couldn’t place the name. Where did I first hear it? Probably a Grand Theft Auto game, I think. Since you’ve seen the video above, you know the answer is yes.
I’m feeling so thankful for Dam-Funk and his ambassadorship of the entire funk genre. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know if I would have ever taken a leap back into the sounds of Zapp, Cameo, and Funkadelic. The weirdest thing is, once I cracked open these sounds I realized that funk had been with me all along. I’d been living and breathing the familiar beats my entire life, influenced by movies and the radio I’d mainlined as a child, without ever explicitly focusing on the genre as something I’m passionate about.
There’s something inherently cheesy about a lot of funk, and that’s something that a lot of people have to get over before they can engage it head on. Funk is an incredibly earnest genre, and in our current culture that’s kind of an embarrassing, abrasive feeling to convey. It’s the opposite of comfortable detachment, in a lot of ways, and that just feels weird when you’re not used to it. But once you let it in and enjoy it on its own aesthetic and emotional terms, this is music to keep warm to.
Right now, I couldn’t be more glad that I’m a believer in funk. 2015 has been a banner year for the genre, infusing one of the biggest albums of the year from end-to -end with a hard-fought riot-funk edge and being shot into the sky in neon fireworks proclaiming its vitality. The latter was Dam-Funk’s very own Invite The Light, a triple LP that continues to be my most-listened album in months, and the former was the absolutely monumental To Pimp A Butterfly, from Kendrick Lamar. As an independent entity, it might be more of an endangered species among current music genres, but the essence of funk has once again blown fresh life into hip-hop and jazz alike.
EDIT: I seriously hope you clicked that Cameo link above, because the video for Candy is some seriously bonkers hypnagogic dreamstuff. Just watch it, I’m making it super easy:
There are some tracks that get me hyped as hell, ready to go, no matter what. N.W.A. made one of them.
The year was 1989 and it was the final single for Straight Outta Compton. In a new twist from the group that dropped Fuck The Police, it’s a mainly upbeat tune centered on a classic soul rock sample, featuring virtually no profanity.
Not only is the song all about positivity, being real, and doing what you love, it’s got one of the most famously (and hilariously) disingenuous lines that I’ve ever heard. Witness Dr. Dre rapping:
I still express yo I don’t smoke weed or sess
cuz it’s known to give a brother brain damage
This is the guy whose debut album was titled The Chronic. His next album had a flat black cover with only a pot leaf on it. At the time it probably sounded like a respectability ploy, but almost 30 years later, it just feels like a good joke. I used to cruise around getting high with friends after school, and we’d all shout along to the lyric while blasting the album as loud as we could. Now that I’m old, I just do the shouting at home, thank you.
Also I found this great picture of the group from 1989, an outtake from an LA Times feature written at the height of their popularity. It’s crazy to think that Easy E, the charismatic man out front, would be dead a few years later. Even crazier to think that Ice Cube would be playing the put-upon father in a family film a decade after that. Even crazier still to think that Dr. Dre, the shy face in the back center of the photo and lone rapper on this track, would be a billionaire another 10 years down the line.
This just reminded me that I totally missed out on seeing Straight Outta Compton in theaters this summer. Did you see it? I’ve heard good things, and I’ve got high hopes, bolstered by this tune right now!
Optimistic Underground 