Catching up on my letter writing

[koganbot]

Dear male dudes in the Black Eyed Peas,

There is only one person in your group who can sing, and you are not she.

Sincerely,

A Fan


Dear male singer dude in the xx,

There may not be anyone in your group who can sing, but if there were, it would most assuredly never be you.

Sincerely,

Frank

Comments

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as far as I know, all the tracks on the Benny album (discounting a couple remixes at the end at least) are old ones. His is one of two albums in my P&J top ten (the other being Death's) consisting of old music. And as I've said elsewhere, if I was going to be really honest about the 10 2009 albums I've listened to and enjoyed the most this year, my list would be almost [i]all[/i] reissues of older stuff.

But I decided that Benny qualified for the following reasons: (1) I never even heard his name before this 2009, when a couple old German hits of his jumped out of a pile of old German vinyl K-Tel-like compilations that Metal Mike Saunders mailed me last winter; (2) He has seemingly had no previous visibility whatsoever in the U.S., a fact somewhat changed by his best-of album's presence on sites like Rhapsody -- which is the only place I've actually listened to it -- and Amazon; (3) his best-of was better than any of the [i]other[/i] reissues by other artists I heard in 2009; and (4) there were no albums of new music that I considered good enough to deserve to occupy the cherished #1 spot on my list, but his album was.

Death's album (recorded in the early '70s in Detroit) was not actually my second favorite reissue of the year (in fact, it might not even be among my ten favorite reissues of the year!), but I decided to vote for it anyway because (1) almost all the music on it was previously unreleased in any form, even in the '70s; (2) the record was publicized enough -- including a full page in the NY Times by Mike Rubin -- to qualify as an actual phenomenon in 2009; and mostly (3) other people are likely to vote for the record too, and it might even have a chance of placing on the overall Pazz & Jop list.

Also worth noting, maybe, is that this is the first year ever in which I have never actually seen physical copies of the top two albums on my P&J list -- namely Benny and Scooter, the latter of which I've also only listened to on Rhapsody. (I also only actually own physical copies of three singles on my singles list -- Jamey Johnson and White Wizzard, both on their albums, and Busy Signal on that Greensleeves dancehall compilation. In fact, as far as I know, Das Racist's single does not even exist in physical form at all, even as a track on an album. "Beam Me Up Scotty" is a mixtape track, I guess.)

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Though duh, I actually do sort of "own" physical copies of "Pizza Hut" and "Scotty" and "Runaway" on CD-Rs of the famed Frank's Eardrums series, if that counts. (And those CD-Rs usually get a lot play in the car, fwiw.)

Another thing working in Benny's favor, fwiw, is that my 17-month-old daughter Annika's favorite song is "Witch Doctor." Which in turn puts Benny's update "Skateboard (Uh-Ah-Ah)" more in the realm of currency this year, in our house anyway.

[koganbot]

Oh yeah, now I'm remembering who Death are.