The Armpit Collection XV: Period Pieces

Songs for Swingin' Lovers
Pet Sounds
Born to Run
[New Traditionalist Country]
Definitely Maybe
Is This It?

These records might not be the greatest of each decade, but some I'm sure would make it into the arguments. They're common theme is that they each distinctly sound like the time period from which they came. Chronology is a big part of my understanding of music. It helps me to understand a music's purpose, where it's coming from, why, and ultimately it's measure against others.

By the mid fifties, Frank Sinatra was the man (the voice), but inevitably being grounded by a new type of music. This record is bizarre in the sense that it came out around the time Elvis was shakin', yet it's a swingified pop record, and a forerunner in the "concept album" foray.

It took me a while to appreciate Pet Sounds, but finally I did. "God Only Knows" is a devastatingly good pop song. I greatly appreciate Brian Wilson's rethinking of instrumentation in terms of production - something the Beatles did as well.

The Boss culminated rock n roll in 1975. For me, it marks the end of the old, a washing out of some sort. There's blues in Born to Run, but not THE blues. It's different. In musical terms, it's like major - pop - cinematic. There's so much music that came out in 1975, the spectrum was broad, but deeply linked. Born to Run stood in the middle of that, at the apex.

The eighties...honestly, I couldn't find any records I liked from this era, not one to take with me. As we all know, this decade used to be funny and then as we laughed about it in recent years everyone began to take this joke too serious. Lo behold we discovered there was actually good music (the Gen Xers finally got their say)...but it's calling cards aren't really my style. However, as I thought harder, I remembered the country music of my child hood, the traditional, yet finely produced country & western music from a new guard of brilliant songwriters and performers, like Dwight Yoakam and George Strait. I haven't picked a particular record from this era, thus marking a bit of a hole in the Armpit Collection, but stayed tuned for an update.

Brit pop...or was it rock...I'm not sure what it was, I was probably too interested in jerking off at that time. But I listened to the radio and a certain snarling, uber serious, fist pump stuck with me - their first record in all it's glory.

Ahh 2000's, it seems we've spanned the entire latter half of the 20th century in 8 years. One group of cool shitkickers blasted their way through a deep, heavy, thick web of bullshit rock n roll that completely dominated the airwaves in the late nineties/early 2000's. It's a completely American sound that would be heavily emulated for a few years until they were sadly pigeonholed and forgotten, another piece of fabric from the short American attention span - despite the dudes going on to make two more spectacular records - maybe more? Please.