"Jimmy goes full 'Merica in his commercial appeal to the greatest generation"

I stand corrected!

Sure, the Nazis felt threatened by modernism in general, because it didn't conform to their worldview. But it's factually incorrect to argue that modern artists (even more specifically: Dadaists and surrealists) were the "first people Hitler targeted" because of some existential threat posed by mockery. The first…

"Bono also cited the exile of Dadaists and surrealists from Nazi Germany, suggesting that these creative critics were considered a threat to the regime."

Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader was one of the very first crushes of my life. I think I was about 4. (It was at least another 12 years till I got the "Easy Rider" joke… probably around the same time I got the Donkey Hodey/Don Quixote joke from Mr. Rogers.)

Heaven Knows I'm Grantham Now

Cheyenne, are you ready to settle the frontier of rock tonight?!!

It's not so much that I know anyone who doesn't like it, but rather that I've tended to get the sense of it being overlooked or dismissed (maybe because One On One tends to be overlooked/underrated?). I'm glad to know I'm not alone in recognizing its perfection!

Love 'em, by god, I surely do. But in every Cheap Trick conversation, I always wonder: am I the only one who really, *really* loves "She's Tight"? It was one of those songs I listened to obsessively when I was about 12, having absolutely no idea how dirty it really was… and now, all these years later, I always…

Oh my god, yes, how could I forget Van Alden! A really strange and brilliant character.

I liked Boardwalk Empire a lot, but I never quite loved it. The writing was frequently too on-the-nose (though it generally got better starting sometime in the second season), and your observation about Nucky being the wrong protagonist is a really good one.

I may have to start watching again, just to yell "Ahh! My buhhole!" at the screen every time he does a bump.

TRUTH. And the only fictional character worth caring about is Lester Grimes, but of course he can only exist as the embodiment of the asshole white guy protagonist's guilt over his thwarted ideals, not as a three-dimensional human being in his own right.

Vinyl had a great premise, undone by its utterly dreadful execution. Bad writing, repulsive protagonist, ridiculous revisionist NY (proto-)punk history, and a Bowie impersonator who couldn't even get the eyebrows right.

The Jam is quite possibly my favorite band of all-time, so I really enjoyed this write-up. My only quibble would be with the idea that "there’s nary a one [of Weller's solo albums] that couldn’t have been a Jam record if Weller had really wanted them to be." In particular, I just don't see Rick Buckler's drumming as…

Yeah, Beat Surrender feels pretty proto-Style Council. They also recorded an early version of "Solid Bond in Your Heart" around the same time, though it didn't wind up being released officially and was instead re-recorded as an early TSC track.

1. Sound Affects
2. All Mod Cons
3. The Gift
4. Setting Sons
5. In the City (though it feels weird that it winds up being ranked this low, because I genuinely love it, and it contains one of my fave Jam deep cuts: "I Got By In Time")
6. This is the Modern World

re: a Bowie cabaret show — from your keyboard to god's ears! That's something I'd love to see. "Time" from Aladdin Sane always struck me as a full-on cabaret torch song, and you're right, so many others would fit the bill. (Good luck with the gig.)

Life on Mars is a great example. There's a clip somewhere of Bowie's long-time pianist Mike Garson dissecting its chord progression and discussing how surprising and unconventional Bowie's songwriting was at a composition level. (And, of course, Garson plays that amazing jazz solo in Aladdin Sane, among too many…

Exactly. I can hear bits of Anthony Newley, the Kinks, Dylan, Velvet Underground, Vince Taylor, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Brecht/Weill, and Jacques Brel by way of Scott Walker in his work, and that's just up through the Ziggy period. There's literally no one else in the history of rock who synthesized that sort…