Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

1,111 greatest records you probably haven’t already heard

99. range life

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“Because it’s true. If you want to accomplish anything of value in this thing called life, you really do have to pay your dues before you pay the rent, even if you’re deep into your thirties before you realize what this actually means. That We Have Higher Obligations To The Cosmos Than Mere Survival – any cockroach can pull off survival. And if you don’t grasp this, don’t go calling yourself an artist. At least, I think that’s what’s going on here. Because the Pavement crowd were definitely artists, seeing the middle 1990s for the colossal screw-up they were – the demise of so-called grunge, the co-option of pretty much everything that had felt so fresh and necessary barely three years previous, the crooked rain falling in prolonged deluge, smelling of sewage and other assorted poisons … and yet, beauty to be found in strangest, least likely of places. And truth … even if you’re a Smashing Pumpkins or Stone Temple Pilot fan. Damn, I love this song. Forget everything else I just wrote. It just feels like smoking strong marijuana and drinking good beer. In the rain. Who needs more?” (Philip Random)

Certain Songs #1490: Pavement – “Range Life”

100. this is the sea

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“Because sometimes the music just needs to be BIG. And who better to lay it all down than the band that put a name to such stuff, The Waterboys, who yes, as a matter of fact, were more relevant than U2 in the power and passion realm come the mid-1980s. Because in main man Mike Scott, they had a proper a poet on board, and thus more colours, clearer visions, greater incision. At least that was the argument a few months ago. This Is The Sea (album and song) versus The Unforgettable Fire (album and song), both high water marks, no doubt, but Waterboys had more of it, whatever it is, because water beats fire every time. I guess. What I can easily say now, many years after the fact, is that the album (and band) that still speaks to me is the outfit that Mr. Scott put together way back when, because unlike U2, he found a way to haul on the reins at just the right moment, stopped the whole mad and beautiful thing from charging off into the abyss of fame and ridiculousness which, I figure, mainly meant not losing focus, making sure the music and poetry that infused it remained bigger than all other concerns. Or something like that. Because like the song says, this ain’t no brook, no creek, no river even, this is this, as big as it gets. Bigger than words anyway.” (Philip Random)

101. the impossible dream

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“A friend of mine wrote a movie around this one that never got made (like all the best movies). Sort of Goin Down The Road, the mid-80s post-punk version, two smartass losers stumbling around big and small town Canada, having shambolic adventures. Toward the end, they find themselves drinking their sorrows in a low rent piano bar, some guy doing half-assed lounge takes on various standards in the background. Until one of our heroes decides f*** it, he slips the guy his last twenty bucks, requests his favourite song, The Impossible Dream. And it turns out the piano guy is no less than Scott Walker himself, in all of his strange and obtuse mid-80s glory, so of course, he nails the song with all due power and nuance, the big dream never being more impossible than it was in say, 1985, and thus all the more reason to dream it — to right the unrightable wrong, to reach the unreachable star, no matter how hopeless, how far … because we’re humans with souls, it’s our duty. I think. Anyway, it would’ve been a great scene in a great movie.” (Philip Random)

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102. cold

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“Because sometimes passion isn’t hot at all, it’s cold, freezing even, and few have ever captured this as profoundly as The Cure on the album known as Pornography. Which showed up in my life just in time to find me edging back from a prolonged season in the abyss. I guess these days, you’d just say I was depressed. But nah, it was deeper than that, and colder, all that time lost in a void the size of Antarctica, knowing I could just lay down any old time and be gone, yet ultimately choosing not to. Like that Robert Frost poem about the snowy evening — still miles to go before I’d sleep. And there on the soundtrack of the movie I was only beginning to realize I was in, was Cold pounding home the truth that yes, in fact, I was very much on the gods’ straight and narrow path, which only appeared so crooked and convoluted because my filters were so f***ed up, the right music at the right time always being a good straightener.” (Philip Random)

103. sex bomb

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“The album is called Generic. The contents are anything but, the band known as Flipper being one of those outfits that weren’t exactly punk, except what else could they be, except maybe one of the all time essential party outfits? With Sex Bomb my particular go-to for those times when the party really does need to last all night long even if there aren’t chemicals in your blood, just too much alcohol and perhaps marijuana and sloppy stupid eruptions of fun, un-focus, glory even … as we all throw in, do our part to keep this mad world at least in some loose connection with its axis (or maybe the opposite). I do recall thinking this, some late 80s punk party, in the basement of the place they called the Sewer View. A few bands had played, maybe even the Evaporators, but now it was just some guy’s party tape. Probably mine.” (Philip Random)

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104. pretty vacant

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Because it’s the f***ing Sex Pistols, arguably the greatest rock and roll band of all time, at their most pop, such as it is. Pretty Vacant being the one you could find on a mixtape with the likes of Elvis Costello, The Who, The Doors, The Cars even, without offending anyone.  Certainly no one you didn’t want to be offending. Based on an Abba song apparently.

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