Top 25 Albums of the Decade Part IV

Top 25 Albums of the Decade: Part IV

Funk, Ego, and the decades best Rock.

5. The Arcade Fire – Funeral – Funeral is audio biography of every awkward, lingering, fearful, hopeful, and unresolved emotion of a generation that grew up increasingly digital and detached. The opening chords of Wake Up –  are every bit as powerful and articulate of their generations unique emotional collective as Kurt Cobain’s brooding Smells Like Teen Spirit. Where Nevermind showed the angstful children of Reagans’ America struggling to find what trickled down, Wake Up  is the choiring sound of a generation who grew up social networking, struggling to get degrees – not grow up, and trying desperately to hold on to the emotions they hardly felt before their lives and friends became Myspace pages.
    The Canadian band (named after “Not an actual event, but one I took to be true.” according to the band) formed in tragedy. Funerals name isn’t cryptic; the band was losing family members.
    William Butlers hallowing voice fights gigantic chords and arrangements including a music class worth of instruments. Sounding like all the best parts of Ziggy Stardust – without the space sci-fi theme – Funeral ended up being more about life than death.
Key Tracks: Wake Up, Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), Crown of Love.

6. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – It was rejected by AOL Time-Warner. Producers called it a career killer. The Internet buzzed about it. It was set to be released on September 11^th; then mysteriously delayed. With all the myth, circumstance, and hype surrounding the album it would seem the only way for Jeff Tweedy to live up to the hype was for him to pull a Prometheus.

   Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wasn’t fire. But it’s almost as good.

    Wilco hadn’t been the most advanced band. Tweedy channeled the greats (Dylan, Young, Lennon) with enough pop savvy and folk honesty to matter; but they were just another good band. Foxtrot changed that.

    Wilco stretches simple chord progressions and folk melodies tirelessly over 6 minutes, (I am Trying to Break your Heart) layered with a clutter of charming Pink Floyd style clatter.  Tweedy’s quiet tortured-soul acoustics find new depth with the subtle and constant drums and bright keys on Radio Cure. And, the bands ever improving guitar licks on I’m the Man who Love you.

    We at the Vanguard also respect the way Wilco handled their material. The very reason for our list is to demonstrate examples of good media; albums about, and controlled by, the people who made them. Yankee didn’t have a single, was streamed free online for awhile before release, and even when it was rejected by labels, Wilco didn’t let it change their art.

    And as for it being a career killer, it’s their best selling album to date, and made it to 13^th on the billboard charts – pretty good for an album with no radio friendly tunes.

Key Tracks: Radio Cure, I am Trying to Break Your Heart, Jesus Etc.

 7. OutKast –Stankonia – Not Really hip-hop, rock, pop, or funk, but some kind of cool-breathing Chimera of a group. Outkast played their mad-scientist mix to perfection, putting most other bands who specialized in one of its many flavors to shame. No one pushed the beats better than Bombs over Baghdad (B.O.B) and still flaunted pop like Mrs. Jackson on the same disc. And that was in a decade dominated by pop hooks and beats – that has to mean something…Although not on the album, they also had the best song of the decade with the merit-of- divorce anthem: Hey Ya!

 Key Tracks: B.O.B, Mrs. Jackson, So Fresh So Clean.

8. Kayne West –College Dropout – It may seem a strange comparison, but in a lot of ways Kayne West is like Rivers Cuomo. In the early 1990’s Rock was mostly a merchant of downers (Soundgarden, STP, Alive in Chains), but Cuomo sounded more like Buddy Holly – who dropped his amp. He was singing about D&D, falling in love with lesbians, pen pals...nerdy shit.

Kayne made an album about his salvation (Jesus Walks), the dilemma of modern college life (All Falls Down), and how consuming the rap formula can be (Breathe in Breathe out) in an era where hip hop primary function was making girls dance…nerdy shit – for hip-hop.

    Kayne’s ego is something stratospheric, but it protects him. It takes a lot of confidence to allude to Happy Gilmore.in your hit about finding the son of god. It’s that humor, and quirky ego, that made Kayne the first producer turn rapper – that didn’t suck.

Key Tracks: Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, Breathe in Breathe Out.

9. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells – If The White Stripes sounds like they rock too hard for a two person bad – it’s cause their not. Don’t believe Jack White isn’t conjuring the spirit of Jimmy Page, Bob Dylan, or whatever dead delta blues men he can when he plays.

   “Feel in Love With a Girl” made them mainstream, but Jack’s Guitar (Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground), his holler of a voice (The Citizen Kane Tribute The Union), and his charm (We’re Going to be Friends.) made them the best American band of the decade.

Key Tracks: Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground, Fell in Love with a Girl, Hotel Yorba.

Editorial: Comcast Aplogizes for P2P policy.

Our Stance on Comcast's "Sorry"

    Comcast’s CEO – Brian Roberts – admitted their illegal monitoring and throttling of p2p sites was:  “A mistake.” Roberts pointed at during an address on Capitol Hill last week that Comcast changed their policy without government intervention.  However, the apology and the policy change did come after threats from free media advocacy groups.

   We at the Vanguard don’t accept Roberts apology. For years Comcast as cut connections, or dropped the bandwidth speed to p2p users – and denied it. Now that a Democratic congress supports net neutrally  reform, and consumers groups are starting to gain leverage, they apologize.  

(An assessment from The Vanguards staff, not a news story.)

Mother of Four has File Sharing Fine Cut

Had to pay up to $192,000,000 for 24 songs

    

    The inflation rate from 2006 to 2009 was 6.48%, but for Jammie Thomas it was 872.72%. Thomas uploaded some Green Day and Aerosmith tracks to Kazza in 2005.A year later the RIAA sent the mother of four a cease-and-desist letter with a settlement offer. She refused, and was sued for “unauthorized” file sharing to the tune of $9,250 a song (that’s $220,000.)

    4 years after her original case, she got a retrial. It didn’t go any better and she was forced to pay the staggering sum of 1.92 million. Songs are 99¢ on iTunes. 

    But Thomas’s case came in three acts. Thomas filed a motion railing against the court’s decision. Thomas claimed her ruling was unconstitutional (1.92m being disproportionate) and the evidence used against her was inadmissible do to wiretapping violations.

   The motion called for a retrial with suppressed evidence, a reduction in damages to $18,000, or just outright removal of statuary damages. Thomas final won- mostly.

    On January, 25, 2010 a Minnesota Judge adjusted the fine to a more realistic $54,000. A fine she still doesn’t intend to pay. "It's easier for me to wrap my brain around $54,000 than $1.92 million," Thomas told a local Minnesota radio show. "Obviously, I still won't be able to come up with 54 grand to pay this off. But that's a decision that I, right at this moment, I still don't have to make."

Axis and Allies, Jan 18, 2010.

Allies

 1. Google – The undisputed king of the virtual world has begun it’s stare down with one of the emerging powers of the real world: China. For sometime China has demanded Google censor search results on topics such as Thiamin Square. Google has complied.

    However, after China’s recent assault on the email accounts of Human Rights advocates in the country, Google has flexed its moral muscle and revoked its services.

    Although it is unlikely that China will back down – at least not quickly or easily – Google’s actions are a bold first step. Other major sites, such as eBay, have had similar spats with China. In those cases however, the companies simply outsourced their services, instead of denying them.

    The Vanguard applauds Google’s strength in being the first major company to stand up to China’s Human Rights violations as well as being a proponent of an uncensored internet.

2. Alan Ellies  - The Internets second largest file proliferating site – Oink – had its lead engineer acquitted on Thursday by a unanimous jury. Alan Ellies is the first person to be prosecuted in the UK for filling sharing. His case marks a new precedent for the digital movement in the UK, and may result in the death of the Digital Economy Bill currently being debated in Parliament. 

A spokesman for the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) said of the verdict, “It’s hugely disappointing. The Defendant made nearly £200,000 by exploiting other people’s work without permission. The case shows that artist and music companies need better protection”

   We disagree. The BPI is essentially a coalition of the four major recording companies (Warner Music, EMI, Sony, and Universal), the same companies who have already been accused of price fixing this week, and do not have a good track record for paying their artist a fair percentage of record and ticket sales.  

   If the people who’s culture produce the art do not have fair access to the media it produces, The Vanguard will continue to support the Robin Hooding of that media.

3.  Sam Raimi - When Sony tried to wrestle director Sam Raimi (Spider-Man 1-3) into a 2011 release date for 4, he walked. Raimi hated the screenplay and wanted the villain to be the Vulture (played by John Malkovich.) We applaud Raimi for sticking with his Spider-man 4, not Sony’s. So thanks Raimi, we didn’t need this again: 

 Axis

 1. The RIAA - The Recording Industry of America is trying to pressure the FCC to lax its stance on net neutrally and allow for policing of file-sharing sites. If the FCC acts on the comments made by the RIAA, they may change the rules on how they govern ISP and their network traffic.  An exert of the RIAA’s comments:

         “Peer-to-peer file-sharing services -- a favorite means of unlawfully stealing copyrighted material -- represent a huge portion of the traffic on the Internet today. Based on recent estimates, peer-to-peer file-sharing applications represent over 20% of the total bytes that traverse the Internet and 17% of the bandwidth used during peak hours. Moreover, in an average month, the top 1% of subscribers account for 25% of total Internet traffic, and 40% of the upstream traffic; over 46% of top subscribers' traffic comes from file-sharing applications. So too in the mobile context, where, by recent estimates, peer-to-peer file-sharing is the "single largest factor leading to cell congestion," taking up 21% of bandwidth on the average cell and 42% in the top 5% of cells. Put bluntly, huge amounts of the Internet's bandwidth are tied up in unlawful traffic. Piracy wastes scarce network resources and crowds out legitimate uses of the network. It costs more to bring broadband to additional areas because of this inflated bandwidth usage. As we, along with our partners launch music services depending on higher bandwidth, we have a particularly strong interest in ensuring an Internet in which media applications -- which, unlike file-sharing applications, have a low tolerance for network delay - can function smoothly and without the network congestion caused by piracy-inflated traffic.”  

Even if the FCC dose compromise its net neutrally ethics, the A.D.C appeals court may determine they lack the authority to implement such regulation. This is due to the Comcast case - discussed last Axis and Allies - where Comcast  was forced to settle a claim they regulated use of Bittorrent.

2.The  BPI -  As mentioned earlier, there is a bill in British Parliament designed by the media oligarchy to police file-sharing. The bill has cross party support – simply meaning the purse strings of the BPI are non-partisan.

Aside from out obvious complaints, the bill does more than simply limit P2P files sharing. The process of regulating these sites would be in the hands of the record labels, and film studios themselves. They would even have the power to force internet providers to cut off service to its members at their discretion.

   As the bill is written, the burden of proof is on the accused; Pretty backwards.

The kicker: the prices of the regulation will be paid for by the people, with a £2 per month fee!

3.   Bono The U2 front man doesn’t like it that you downloaded your copy of Joshua Tree for your special edition U2 iPod. We think that is kinda lame, so here you go Bono.

   He claims it isn't about his bottom line, he is sticking up for the little guy. That idea is getting harder to protect however with more and more bands using filesharing as a way to make a name for themselves. We think it worked out OK for The Arctic Monkeys.