THE YEAR 2002 : a number that was too symmetrical for its own good. A time of ups and downs, fear and loathing, bombs and babes. After the mean motor scooter called 2001, we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and said hello to the "new guitar rock revolution." Garage rock, despite predictions of a timely demise, was alive. Media watchers danced as prefab poppers burned, baby, burned – or got busy recasting themselves as mature solo artists. Electroclash found a name for itself and immediately lost credibility. When the smoke wafted away, it became clear: it was Nelly's world, and Jennifer Lopez had become the queen of earth, sky, and all media.

As for all of us at the Bay Guardian – it was getting hot out there, so we took off all our clothes. It was more comfortable, easier to assess the damage and eye the future. So here we are, naked, in confessional mode. It better be an improvement over this sorry excuse for 12 months. Happy new year everyone.

Soaking up the atmosphere

By Mosi Reeves

The scene at Slim's on Tuesday, Sept. 24, was akin to a drunken high school homecoming game. The only problem was that I am a 27-year-old music journalist who graduated from high school more than a decade ago. And as I waited for indie hip-hop sex symbol Sean "Slug" Daley of Minneapolis rap group Atmosphere to take the stage, I began to feel like the guy at the nightclub who looks too old to be there.

It wasn't the first time it had happened. This was the year I began to realize that I've seen far too many shows; heard far too many bands, rappers, DJs, and singers fluff notes, forget rhymes, and train-wreck on the turntables; and listened to one too many derivative songs. I've grown jaded and restless, and I've learned that I can no longer solely subsist on music in general, and hip-hop in particular, to emotionally and spiritually enrich my life.

But maturity hasn't killed my passion for live music: it has made me bold and reckless. Nowadays, when I go to hear a DJ spin records or see a live performance, I treat the experience as if it were my last. I pick apart each performer as if I were Simon Cowell on American Idol, stirring up a shitstorm of opinions inside my brain or, worse yet, dishing them out to a hapless bystander. I dance arrhythmically to the faintest hint of a beat. I chant along and pump my fist to the chorus of any song, no matter how lame. Against all odds, I've become a veritable Candide of the nightlife scene and have learned how to enjoy myself on my own terms.

So all was not lost on that fall evening. After all, Slug's performance at Slim's was no ordinary indie rap concert played in front of hoodie-wearing scenesters. It was reminiscent of a rock concert, or the rap megatours that occasionally make their way to the Bay Area. When Slug, accompanied by Murs of the Los Angeles rap collective Living Legends and Cincinnati rapper-producer Blueprint, strutted out to the strains of Atmosphere's "Modern Man's Hustle," girls in the crowd squealed while the guys hooted and hollered. A smile crept across my face.

The show itself was nothing spectacular. While Slug's and Murs's plaintive, sample-based music blared over the sound system, the two animatedly rapped, each playing hype man for the other on solo efforts like Murs's propulsive, drum-laden "24 Hrs. w/a G" and Slug's soulful "Woman with the Tattooed Hands." Both had trouble enunciating their words for everyone to hear, and their movements around the stage seemed wild and sloppy.

So I instead focused my attention on the audience around me. Save for Bas-1 and DJ Anna, I didn't recognize anyone. Amazingly, many of the kids rapped along verbatim to Atmosphere songs such as "Between the Lines" and its chorus, "I just might just kill somebody." They even knew the lyrics to Murs's subterranean hit "Murs Rules the World."

When I ventured backstage after the show, Murs confided that he was ailing from the flu; Slug was equally sick, sounding hoarse and sipping quietly from a water bottle. Blueprint, for his part, is merely a fledgling artist with little of the "road warrior" experience Slug and Murs have built over the past several years. This was his first national tour, and he seemed happy to be there.

Getting older means you know the past wasn't that different from the present. Remember those "Unsigned and Hella Broke" blowouts the Living Legends used to throw at Maritime Hall? Most of the kids who attended those concerts knew little about hip-hop history beyond what they heard on the radio, Run DMC, and Wild Style. Still, I imagine the Living Legends inspired such loyalty because we felt they were just like us. Young, broke as fuck, and with seemingly few career prospects, they helped create a raw, underground culture out of what little resources they had.

Now Slug is doing the same thing, albeit to a new audience and for substantially more money. He's a pinup star for "emo-hop" and has garnered loving profiles in Spin for his confessional yet defensive rhymes about relationships, even though the Legends have covered similar creative territory in relative anonymity for years. But the connections between the two generations are there: Murs is part of the Living Legends crew and Slug's modeled his career on that of the Legends.

The whole scene caused Bas-1 to remark to me that groups such as the Living Legends and Atmosphere were becoming the new Grateful Dead. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Top 10 hip-hop albums

• Daedelus, Invention (EFA)

• Scarface, The Fix (Def Jam)

• J-Live, All of the Above (Coup D'Etat)

• People under the Stairs, O.S.T. (Om)

• Edan, Primitive Plus (Lewis)

• Fat Jon the Ample Soul Physician, Wave Motion (Mush)

• Mr. Lif, I Phantom (Definitive Jux)

• Definitive Jux Presents II (Definitive Jux)

• Qwel, The Rubber Duckie Experiment (Galapagos4)

• Boom Bip, Seed to Sun (Lex)

M.R.

Live evil

By Kimberly Chun

For me, music has always been tied to the live performance experience. Sure, growing up in Hawaii, I did my share of sitting in the car, marinating in whatever was on AM pop or AOR rock radio, because that was about all you could get on the island early on, unless Al Harrington or Kalapana floated your boogie board. I twirled round the living room memorizing the Grease soundtrack, ABBA songs, and later, first-wave punk, but the live music has always been garens ball barens in my book, bra. Pre-Radio Free Hawaii sucked, vinyl was harder to find, and concerts were even rarer. So from my first rock show (Zombie Birdhouse-era Iggy Pop returning to his shredded shock rock roots at the Coconut Shack in Honolulu) to my most recent (Beck and the Flaming Lips, happily rambling, moonwalking, and indulging in duets of, yipes, "You're the One That I Want," at the Paramount in Oakland), I've been strangely happy that I've seen them all. Despite the ringing in my ears. You just have to think of that persistent little hum as a souvenir of sorts – something that lasts long after those concert Ts are worn out – your reward after standing a bit too close to the stacks at Cheap Trick, Helmet, the Swans, My Bloody Valentine, the Fucking Champs....

But that's my problem. In any case, like many working stiffs, my concertgoing has fallen by the wayside, especially this year, post-layoff and amid the scramble for a livelihood. I blame it all on the fact that I have to make a living, which, at the time, translated into a newsy night job on the outer edges of the Bay Area, way the hell east over the hills. At first I tried to catch the last few songs of late-night sets, but after a while that seemed futile: shows tend to begin and end efficiently on the dot nowadays. Everybody else has to go to work the next morning to keep the job they should feel damned grateful to have, and I seemed to be the sole freak sitting and spinning on the swing shift. I carefully choose my battles, my days off, and they inevitably translated into concerts that I knew I could count on – or that would perhaps never happen again.

So I must confess my most memorable musical moment of 2002 wasn't some smoking-hot underground party or a secret, warehouse high/low noise show – it was seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at the Warfield in April.

Yeah, Cave can be embarrassing. He's made a career out of sour notes and embracing his inner hambone. On record he's gone slow and soft. His band cops riffs from the Doors. He can be a big vain dork, and he continues to hang onto his mullet with music critic-like doggedness. And Jesus Christ in a chicken basket, he's a classic rock star, with all the accessories: squats, model wife, Berlin, heroin. But you have to love anyone who will continue to embrace the corn with absolutely no irony, swathing it all with a sense of showmanship that would do the Pelvis proud.

Irony has always been my biggest problem with Bay Area bands. I enjoy a good har-dee-har-har as much as the next chucklehead, but what some people read as playfulness, I read as a lack of commitment to music, an unwillingness to let the tuneage stand on its own, be experienced and even be judged, without gimmicks, dribble glasses, and plastic turds. That was all plenty real in Cave's case – too real, if you count the woman who O.D.'d in a stinky, public way that night.

He may never play that old Birthday Party classic "Big Jesus Trash Can" live again, but between the sweet, sober moments, he mined that song's chaotic, cacophonous vein with "From Her to Eternity" and "Jack the Ripper." Murder ballads, old English folk ditties, countrypolitan flourishes, and the occasional, churning, hell-bent for lather psych-out – Cave kneed good taste in the groin every time he rushed the stage like a cadaverous cross between a depression-era preacher, a '70s-style crooner, and a mildewy '80s-period goth/new romantic, spanning several decades of punk, rock, and schlock. When someone in the audience extended a hand during "Red Right Hand," the singer grabbed him and held on several beats longer than everyone expected. Dark yet unweighted by negativity, he was still willing to be scary, though his performance had a strange clarity, a light transparency.

So it made some kind of crazy sense that while everything seemed to be breaking down outside and fear in all its forms – either hinging on death, dictators, or the great yawning, horrifyingly oblivious unknown – raged outside, this man appeared to have chased the demons out of his life, as well as that room. It was a roller-coaster year of mixed signals and emotions – whether it was watching the latest moves by the Bush administration, studying the horror show of an election, gnawing your fingers to the bone over the dangerous game played by Arafat and Sharon, or reading the endless stories about missing and murdered girls as Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones planted itself at the top of the best-seller fiction charts. It was a year of lost innocence, for all the post-Boomer generations – X, Y, Mary-Kate and Ashley – alike. So the fact that a malevolent old dog like Cave could go through hell and back and still thrash around like he was just a kid – eager and evil enough to grasp at greatness like a fallen angel, finding beauty in terror and willing even to be terrible – was just about enough for the moment.

Kimberly Chun's totally random top 10 (in no particular order)

1. Various artists, Red Hot and Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti (MCA)

2. Neko Case, Blacklisted (Bloodshot)

3. Hot Snakes, Suicide Invoice (Swami)

4. Comet Gain, Realistes (Kill Rock Stars)

5. Hives, Veni Vidi Vicious (Burning Heart/Gearhead/Epitaph/Warner Bros.)

6. Kills, Black Rooster (Dim Mak)

7. Otis Taylor, Respect the Dead (Northern Blues)

8. Archer Prewitt, Three (Thrill Jockey)

9. Numbers, Numbers Life (Tigerbeat6)

10. Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf (Interscope)

Am I missing something?

By M.P. Klier

From the looks of things, it's OK, even hip, not to follow the traditional rules of popular music anymore. So this year I thought for sure my ears would be ringing with the merry unclassifiable hum of no-holds-barred chords breaking through the sound of environmental recordings, homemade instruments, keyboard fantasies, and a field day of all the noises a mixer and ProTools could loop, of music that pushed the envelope and not listeners' patience.

But I found the sound of things quite different – meaning the same. For too many of the reviews I read touting the "experimental soundscapes" or "so-good-they-can't-be-described songs" of the (plural noun), the actual product left me wondering what all the fuss was about. Have I seen too many "contemporary music" concerts at Mills College? Is my attention span glaringly deficient? Am I "Curmudgeon's Corner" personified? Perhaps. Still, I really do want to hear something new that excites me to the core, whether experimental, rock, or classical, lyrically or instrumentally.... I'm not picky about the media, but I am about the sound – and there's too much out there to pass the time with "medium well."

The latest by some of my old favorites fell into that category, in particular the new Beck and Melvins CDs: the former I traded in after one-and-a-half listens, knowing I would never find the humor I loved in his earlier work ("Steve Threw Up"!) or ever be inspired by its moroseness (not that I don't love a good dose of gloom and doom or break-up drama, but please break it up a bit); the latter seemed more tepid than the Melvins' pummelings of yore (not that Dale's drumming could ever be called tepid, just that I expected they would reach into the upper echelons of what they already do so well), but I'm gonna keep it because I'm a completist and the old-school Halloween masks on the insert are amazing. And then there were the variously hyped newbies: I kept waiting for something to happen on Sigur Rós's (), but felt like I was trapped in a coolly designed elevator; I heard one track each by the Vines, Doves, Coldplay, Beth Orton, and, oh how the mighty have fallen, Marianne Faithful on the free EMI "new music sampler," and that was more than enough; I expect Hot Hot Heat is better live, and while I loved how Conor Oberst sampled language tapes on Bright Eyes' Every Day and Every Night, I found his latest album painful.

Again, it's probably just me and my marginal tastes. And I do have hope, like winning Lotto, that I will gamble the $15 or so on some of the CDs mentioned in the space surrounding this and in other year-end lists in other publications and they will pan out to be exactly what I'm looking for in left and right speakers. I've already found proof in the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (though, yes, we realize ... some day ... we'll die), Lightning Bolt's Ride the Skies, and Desaparecidos' lovely Read Music/Speak Spanish.

What moved me most this year was revisiting old stuff – like Gary Numan, Pere Ubu, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Andre Popp, Chrome, Charlie Christensen, Bongwater, Janitor Joe, Spike Jones, Glenn Gould, Ween – and hearing bands that have a sense of humor about the state of music in general, including Zeke Sheck, whose recent show at Amnesia worked out dance beats and a purposely obnoxious trombone player; Spider Compass Good Crime Band, a vulture costume-wearing keyboard duo who sound like Stock, Hausen, and Walkman meets the spider version of Them; and Häns Grüsel's Kränkenkabinet, a rotating cast of characters (in which I occasionally tap dance) that plays über-animated versions of Black Forest "folk tunes." As Gillian Welch sang, "Time's a revelator," and it really does fly when you think of all you've heard ... or does it, when you think of all you haven't? If Julius Caesar hadn't gotten his way back in 46 B.C., we wouldn't be looking at music in terms of 2002 releases or shows; we'd be saying here we are now, what's next?

Top 10 things that restored my faith in music (in alphabetical order)

1. Big Techno Werewolves, as part of the Mission Creek Music Festival at Adobe Books, dressed to the nines and with a washtub-bass player who's electrifying

2. Black Dice (especially finding Beaches and Canyons for $2.95 at Amoeba Music)

3. Caroliner – the bull returns to the Great American Music Hall

4. Jucifer, for rockin' pretty and hard

5. Lil' Pocketknife, at Galia as part of Ladyfest Bay Area – never has an overhead projector been put to such musical use

6. Matt Ingalls's solo clarinet concert at Tuva Space, for blowing (ahem) away everyone who thought solo improv concerts are boring

7. "Messiaen Marathon," at Grace Cathedral, eight hours of pure organ bliss played by Paul Jacobs

8.Simply seeing footage of John Cage receiving an honorary "doctor of all the arts" degree from Cal Arts in 1986 wearing a novelty headband with sparkly green hearts, in West Coast Story: Frontiers of New Music, at the Castro Theatre

9. Toxic Beach's free experimental music shows in the shadow of power plant plumes and abandoned Muni cars, occasionally attended by sea lions

10. Victory at Sea's The Good Night, for simplicity and lyrical beauty

MPK

They've got the beat

By Jimmy Draper

I can't say I blamed my friend for being annoyed, but I didn't feel bad when she chastised me for excusing myself from our Sunday-night phone calls so I could tune into The Anna Nicole Smith Show.

It'd been months since our weekly conversations about boys and bands had turned into a series of long-winded Bush rants, and no matter how much we strategized, exchanged facts, and debated whether all those obnoxious e-mail petitions actually make a difference, I'd hang up feeling slightly more hopeless about it all. It was a year in which so much made me wanna lose my lunch, and I couldn't stomach the idea of futilely rehashing my fears and frustrations about the future anymore. I wanted to ignore it, to involve myself in a world where the most distressing news was the arrival of Bobby Trendy and his helter-skelter decorating skills. I'd fought the good fight and, I reasoned, needed a break.

It wasn't long before I wanted to fuck shit up again, thankfully, and while they can't take all the credit for bringing me back to my senses, Sleater-Kinney certainly got me away from the boob tube. Every night for weeks I'd pop One Beat into my Walkman and head out on hour-long walks to clear my head. By the time I'd crisscross the Mission District and end up at the top of Dolores Park listening to "Combat Rock," "Faraway," and "Step Aside," visions of political coups, street riots, and shabbily xeroxed antiwar flyers danced in my head as I wondered why there weren't more bands willing to engage in the discussion.

I'd think about the Quails, about Bratmobile's "Shop for America," and about that interview last summer wherein guitarist-vocalist Carrie Brownstein describes One Beat as "trying to uncover some hope or meaning in a time that's very, very bleak." It was during those late-night strolls that Sleater-Kinney suddenly made 2002 a lot less bleak, reminding me that resistance can come in just keeping your chin up: "These times are troubled, these times are tough," vocalist-guitarist Corin Tucker wails on "Step Aside," a Motown shakedown that's as much a call to arms as it is a call to the dance floor. "There's more to come but you can't give up!"

That song took on even more urgency less than a week before Election Day, when Sleater-Kinney performed it live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Appearing tentative at first, then suddenly sounding as explosive as they could from within a TV screen, Brownstein, Tucker, and drummer Janet Weiss asked viewers to "shake a tail for peace and love," pleading with their friends, family, and fans to make them feel alive again.

I don't know how many people actually stay up to see musical guests on the talk-show circuit, but I never deluded myself into thinking the performance would rock the vote all the way to the left. It didn't matter, though. So much left me feeling defeated these past 11 months that the very fact that my fave band was willing to take a risk, to voice what so many of us felt and needed to hear, on national television, days before Nov. 5, made real change seem more plausible than any of the campaign billboards had done all fall.

"When violence rules the world outside and the headlines make me want to cry," Tucker sang that night, wildly shaking her head like a go-go girl who refused to shut up and make way for what many people had come to think of as post-Sept. 11's necessary crackdown on civil rights, "It's not the time to just keep quiet, speak up one time to the beat!"

Top 10

1. No Doubt, "Hella Good," on Rock Steady (Interscope)

2. The Quails

3. Stereo Total at the Hemlock Tavern

4. Foxy Brown's MTV Real World Las Vegas promos

5. Kylie Minogue's U.S. breakthrough

6. Gravy Train!!!! at the Hush Hush Lounge

7. Missy Elliott, Under Construction

8. Eminem's bare bottom in 8 Mile

9. Mary Timony, The Golden Dove

10. Kelly Osbourne

J.D.

Random play

By Lynn Rapoport

January The Extra Glenns (John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno) release Martial Arts Weekend, an album full of convincing arguments for staying single, such as "Going to Marrakesh," wherein love is a monster you can't kill and a son of god who rises whether you want him to or not. It's enough to make you wonder why people ever go on dates, much less call each other again.

May Mirah explains why, ratcheting the crush factor a few notches higher at the Hemlock. Some people in this world incite riots; others, sing-alongs. I didn't fall too hard for Advisory Committee, but the wildly romantic "Cold Cold Water" makes up for an album I'll never listen to as incessantly as You Think It's Like This but Really It's Like This. Odd, hilarious opening act the Blow (a.k.a. Khaela Maricich) uses clothesline, butcher paper, and fashion magazine cutouts to get across arguments such as a feminist critique of her uncle's dating habits.

July Skate gang Quality Bad roller-dances onstage during the Donnas' Ladyfest Bay Area set at Mission High School. Some members (such as myself) have previously professed to not being so keen on the group but find the combination of infectious bad-girl vocals and a shiny-smooth stage an ideal literalization of the term "rock 'n' roll." Afterward, a Donna or two express interest in a Q.B. cameo in their next video. Some members are cynical enough not to believe this will come to pass. It doesn't. Ladyfest astonishes those who produced it by breaking even and then some. Proceeds go to three local beneficiaries. Festival organizers pick up their shattered lives.

August Blast First/Mute reissues Liars' They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. Months later the band's infectious vitriol-you-can-dance-to proves the only thing besides massive dosages of Xanax (which no one will prescribe for me) capable of staving off a panic attack during a four-hour Thanksgiving plane ride from San Francisco to Detroit. As it is, I become too irritated, disgusted, pissed off, and hyper to think about inclement weather, engine failure, or suicide bombers.

August Glamorous local trio Dynasty give their debut performance at the Hemlock. The three-song set provokes an outcry for encores, though the brevity of the set is in direct correlation to the breadth of their repertoire. Dynasty graciously reprise their first number. The enthusiastic, undaunted crowd requests a reprise of the reprise – belying the notion that San Francisco has no time for local music.

October The Polyphonic Spree, a two-dozen-member "choral symphonic pop band" led by Tripping Daisy's Tim DeLaughter, perform at the Derby in L.A., and I am briefly overcome by combined sensations of personal well-being and goodwill toward humanity.

November I choke my way through Justin Timberlake's solo album, Justified, think about last year's boy bands, and am reminded of 1979's Disco Demolition Night, when Chicago's Comiskey Park erupted halfway through a doubleheader in a frenzy of disco hatred so passionate that a scheduled antidisco rally turned into a riot, forcing the White Sox to forfeit the game. Records were set on fire (or flung into the stands at other people's heads), and Disco Sucks T-shirts emerged from the flames. If rock and roll really is back on top, how far behind can Boy Bands Suck T-shirts from Hot Topic possibly be?

November Eminem throws me for a loop in 8 Mile. I think it's the hoodie. I now own the soundtrack, know most of the words to both "Stan" and "Lose Yourself." This has been either an important breakthrough or the worst thing that will ever happen to me.

November Tartufi's final night with Pam J. Not a total breakup, but tearful nonetheless. Well, I cried a little, anyway. Good luck to Pam in Korea.

Other highlights Low's Beyond the Pale show and Trust; Devendra Banhart's Oh Me Oh My ... ; Richard Buckner's Impasse; Waycross's Aren't We the Lucky Ones; the Moving Units EP but most particularly "Between Us and Them," played 38 times in one week; U.S. release of A Skin Too Few; Emily Sparks's What Could Not Be Buried; the Vetiver EP; the Half-Seas-Over EP; the Quails' Atmosphere; and any band that got involved in local electoral politics this year in order to tell Gavin Newsom to fuck off.

Cheryl Eddy's most thrilling Michael Jackson moments

1. January: Sales of Invincible (Sony) – released in November 2001 with much fanfare – are not exactly ripping the roof off the record industry. By the end of 2002 sales top off at two million in the United States, four million worldwide.

2. May: MTV News announces Jacko will codirect a feature film, They Cage the Animals at Night. As with his plans to create the "Michael Jackson Thriller Theme Park" in Detroit, build an amusement park in South Korea, spearhead a Jackson 5 reunion album, etc., etc., follow-through on this endeavor is uncertain at this time.

3. June: Jackson lends support to an artists' rights coalition headed by Rev. Al Sharpton and Johnnie Cochran (who helped settle Jacko's molestation charges in the early '90s). Jackson also begins to take jabs at Sony for not promoting Invincible to his satisfaction – although Sony claimed it spent $25 million to push the album, and MTV News pointed out Jacko himself did only two concerts and almost no interviews to support his own product.

4. July: Jackson takes Sharpton and company by surprise when he lashes out at Sony head Tommy Mottola, calling him "mean," "racist," and "very, very, very devilish."

5. July: Jacko slinks off the Sept. 11 bandwagon when it is revealed the release of "What More Can I Give," a charity ditty featuring vocal contributions from Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, and others, was scuttled after the porn-biz background of the song's exec producer came to light. Said producer claims the real reason "What More Can I Give" went AWOL is because Sony didn't want the single to interfere with its promotion of Invincible. The song debuted on a New York radio station in late 2002.

6. July: Jacko cameos as an alien in Men in Black 2, proving lack of ability to distinguish "laughing with" from "laughing at."

7. August: People magazine reports Jackson has fathered a third child (mother unknown), who was revealed to the public at a Siegfried and Roy show in Las Vegas. The infant, named Prince Michael II (not to be confused with Prince Michael I, age five, or Paris Michael, age four), is nicknamed "Number Three" by Jackson.

8. August: At the MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears presents Jackson with a cake, wishing him a happy birthday and saying that for her, he is the artist of the millennium. A confused Jackson appears clutching one of the cake toppers, thanking MTV for giving him the "Artist of the Millennium Award." (He also thanks his mom, his dad, and magician David Blaine.)

9. November: While testifying on his own behalf at a trial concerning canceled concerts, Jacko removes his customary surgical mask on the stand. A courtroom photographer captures a ghoulish image that makes front pages across the globe, accompanied by headlines like "Verdict Grim on Michael Jackson's Nose." Days later, even Jacko pal and noted spoon-bender Uri Gellar is baffled when the King of Pop dangles "Number Three," head obscured by a towel, over his fourth-floor hotel-room balcony in Berlin, sparking international outcry.

10. November: The 20th anniversary of Thriller, one of the best-selling albums of all time, quietly passes.

Rock moves

By Mike McGuirk

One thing that really kind of jumped out at me this past year, with regards to music and records and all, is that I, for one, really prefer '70s rock over everything. I suppose this isn't a revelation really, since I've always known it – I just kind of got away from it a bit with all the experimental music I was hearing this year. One of the things that reminded me was seeing the new print of The Last Waltz at the Castro Theatre this spring and watching the DVD of the same movie on my couch all day yesterday. The DVD has awesome commentaries from Dr. John and Levon Helm and Mavis Staples and the producers of the film and even Greil Marcus, who surprisingly says a lot of cool stuff, although you can actually hear him slipping into that pontificating bullshit voice ("By the end of the song, they're just challenging each other, pushing one another to that great reward, and it is there. It is there for us all.")

Still, this movie makes me cry sometime between when Neil Young sings "Helpless" and the Staples sing "The Weight" and the version the Band does of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," which Levon really tears apart. Why this movie is an emotional experience is over my head. I was eight when it was in theaters, I wasn't a fan of the Band until I was out of my teens, and most of all, there is absolutely no reason a second-generation Irish-Italian New Englander would be moved by a song written from the point of view of a Confederate soldier and performed by Canadians (and one dude from Arkansas, but still). The only explanation I can come up with is that the Band must have been some special people to communicate this sort of power to the generation that follows their own and even the generation after that. And the best part is there's such a warm expression. There's plenty of loss and melancholy, but it's like watching home movies of your family when everyone was young and beautiful. It hurts like hell but in the best way.

On the other hand, I saw the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars live David Bowie movie and decided that guy's a fraud and a hack and Mick Ronson may possibly be the most annoying guitar player ever. I like a good rock move as much as anyone, if not more, but the faces Ronson makes when he plays those little bends and sustained dink notes are just ridiculous. He honestly looks like he's trying to take a dump. But the real problem is Bowie himself: he takes Iggy's shtick, cleans it up, and adds feathers. What the fuck is that? It's taking the Stooges and making them safe for everybody else. I suppose that's good in that it's inclusive, and in a way it validates the Stooges' music by translating it for folks unprepared for it, but, shit, it also says something isn't of any value until it's accepted by a larger, lamer audience. Fuck that. Fuck David Bowie. It's clear throughout the movie that he has no clue at all as to what is cool and what is not cool, and he's as stiff as a board. There is nothing real about it at all. The idea of artificiality being art may have been futuristic and hip at the time, but I think it's depressing. Especially when you put it up against Richard Manuel singing "Shape I'm In."

Anyway those are two movies I saw about the music of the '70s. I also watched a documentary about Black Sabbath that they had at Lost Weekend Video, and it was awesome. There was tons of footage of Ozzy and co. in like 1974, playing to kids, and then there's a video from Technical Ecstasy that has drummer Bill Ward singing this lite rock tune. It is fucking great. The other movie I saw was a collection of clips and just random footage of the MC5 they had there at Lost Weekend. Man, those guys really did smoke. You have to see this footage to understand. I got kind of sick of the MC5 thanks to all the idiots trying to emulate them for the past five years, but this movie rejuvenated my love for them. Finally I rented Sun Ra's Space Is the Place, and it was fucking crazy, and I had a hard time paying attention because it's really kind of long. Still I would recommend it, as it's loopy as hell and Sun Ra was just cool.

Top 10

1. Neil Michael Hagerty, Neil Plays That Good Old Rock and Roll (Drag City)

2. Nate Denver's Neck, Prepare to Die (King Crab)

3. Les Rallizes Denudes, Heavier Than a Death in the Family (Ain't Group Sounds)

4. Devendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My ... (Young God)

5. Comets on Fire, Recordings from the Sun (Ba Da Bing!)

6. Flaming Groovies, Slow Death (Norton)

7. 25 Suaves, 1938 (Bulb)

8. Temple of Bon Matin, Who's Got the Biggest Engine? (Bulb)

9. Missy Elliott, Under Construction (Elektra)

10. Argent, "God Gave Rock and Roll to You," on In Deep (Epic)

M.M.

Back 2 the base

By Derk Richardson

Responding to a second rousing encore call from a packed house at Slim's in September, just five days short of the first anniversary of Sept. 11, the Mekons returned to the stage looking drained and slightly giddy.

Sally Timms, who on and off all night had been addressing the crowd with her strange but beguiling mixture of flirtatious charm and disdainful aloofness, asked if the audience really wanted more. Then she acknowledged that the quasilegendary (that is, legendary among critics and a cult following, but registering squat on the commercial pop radar) band had gotten off to a slow start. Either she or Jon Langford attributed the lethargic opening to being tired after hosting a Mekons art show earlier in the evening. They didn't mention that they'd played a long show the night before, nor did they fall back on the excuse of road-weariness in the course of their 25th anniversary tour. During the show, however, when he wasn't tossing out salacious asides about sexy Sally, Langford made plenty of references to being old.

Thankfully, other than those few sluggish tempos and rote vocals at the get-go, this former punk band (gone country, gone rock 'n' roll, gone ethno-electronica, and often gone drunk), this precisely sloppy eight-piece ensemble, neither strolled through the motions nor faked youthful enthusiasm. They rocked with the kind of authenticity that makes live music exciting to ears that too often feel like they're hearing nothing new, even when they're listening to the latest rage.

In Chicago, the band had reportedly divided their songbook into three historical segments that they showcased on successive nights. At Slim's, Langford announced that they'd focused on the early years at the Starry Plough in Berkeley, so for this show they'd concentrate on more recent material. Nonetheless, they ranged through every period, hitting hard on the new OOOH! (Out of Our Heads) and last year's Journey to the End of the Night, and heading back through their mid-'80s classics, covering a Gang of Four song, and reprising the first single released out of Leeds, "Never Been in a Riot."

More than the repertoire, it was honesty that carried the performance. When Langford cut his thumb early in the set and retreated to the downstairs dressing rooms for a bandage, Timms, Tom Greenhalgh, Rico Bell, and the rest seemed genuinely at a loss about how to carry on. When someone from the crowd sent up a round of straight whiskey shots late in the show, the surprisingly sober rockers (once infamous for getting staggeringly smashed on stage) loosened up and dug even deeper into whatever it is that motivates them from within. For the first time in years I spent two hours crushed up close to a nightclub stage and came away feeling more energized than when I walked in.

There is some irony, I grant, in my big rock moment of the year coming from rather long-in-the-tooth warhorses on their silver jubilee campaign. At least it wasn't the Rolling Stones. Although I have to admit to having spent far too much of the past year in the vaults, overindulging in the remastered Stones reissues, The Essential Leonard Cohen, and recently, Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series Volume 5: Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue, that was partly to give myself an alternative sense of déjà entendu to counter the been-here-before (but never quite so forbidding) experience of the homeland security noose being pulled taut by the hands of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Poindexter.

Even so, nothing from the past was quite as potent as the Mekons of the present, raising alarms about "dangerous bibles" and "old familiar vampires ... sucking our power"; warning, "They'll be building up the temple / On the back of the people / Sign of the profit"; and recognizing the culpability of the righteous ("When we say we've had enough / We know we really want more / Everyday is a battle / How we still love the war"). They tell us that now, more than ever, it's "Hard to Be Human Again," but they make us realize it's the only chance we've got.

Top 10 CDs (in alphabetical order)

1. Robin Holcomb, The Big Time (Nonesuch)

2. Joan Jeanrenaud, Metamorphosis (New Albion)

3. Greg Goodman, Mats Gustafsson, George Cremaschi, They Were Gentle and Pretty Pigs (The Beak Doctor)

4. György Ligeti, The Ligeti Project II, Berliner Philharmoniker/Jonathan Nott (Teldec)

5. Maneri Ensemble, Going to Church (Aum Fidelity)

6. Maybe Monday, Digital Wildlife (Winter and Winter)

7. Mekons, OOOH! (Out of Our Heads) (Quarterstick)

8. Nels Cline Singers, Instrumentals (Cryptogramophone)

9. Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet, The Year of the Elephant (Pi)

10. Steve Tibbetts, A Man about a Horse (ECM)

D.R.

Still standing
By Sylvia W. Chan

A year of transit and stillness, and the best musical moments happened in the car and the middle of the night with the world rushing past or fading outside my windows. Of course, there were music-dork thrills and spills scattered throughout 2002. A gorgeously groupie moment chugging Beam from the bottle with the Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd after wangling my way backstage following their show at the Greek Theatre. Getting bitched out by a publicist after using her artist as an example in a story about how neo-soul sucks. Chaka Khan redeeming and reminding why music matters when she sings "What's Going On" in Standing in the Shadows of Motown. But mostly, it was a year about memory, about rushing across bridges and middle-of-the-night freakouts, and then popping the perfect song in, taking long, deep breaths, and remembering to slow down because, yeah, it's overwhelming, but I'm going to get where I'm going no matter what. So this list tracks an inventory of moments – brain-, heart-, soul-, or booty-driven – and though it wasn't the best year in the world for new sounds, we got through it. Keep your fingers crossed for 2003.

Sylvia Chan's sundry 13 – because it's a lucky number in Chinese – in no particular order

1. Aimee Mann, Lost In Space (Superego)

2. Tweet, "Oops (Oh My)," on Southern Hummingbird (Elektra/Asylum)

3. DJ Quik, Under the Influence (Ark 21)

4. Missy Elliott, "Work It," on Under Construction (Elektra/Asylum)

5. Flaming Lips, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Warner Bros.)

6. Various artists, Verve Remixed (Verve)

7. Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head (Capitol)

8. Rahsaan Patterson, "You Make Life So Good," on the Brown Sugar soundtrack (MCA)

9. Cassandra Wilson, "Waters of March," on Belly of the Sun (Blue Note)

10. Erick Sermon featuring Redman, "React," on React (J)

11. Mr. Lif, I Phantom (Definitive Jux)

12. Standing in the Shadows of Motown

13. Blackalicious, "Purest Love" (the version on the advance – why'd y'all have to go and change it?), on Blazing Arrow (MCA/Quannum)

Call the doctors

By Will York

'Is this all there is?" I often ask myself as I read over the year-in-rock reports and critics' top 10 lists that pour in this time each year. There's something mildly depressing about the inevitable attempts to rally around some critically acceptable cause and form a consensus on What Matters in Rock Music Today. Whether it's hallowed yet past-their-prime singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Tom Waits or alterna-yuppie favorites like Beck, Sleater-Kinney, and the HivesStrokesVinesWhiteStripes who are being championed, there is this sense of compromise, as if folks want to get behind something that's at least kinda respectable in order to trick themselves (and, in turn, others) into thinking that present-day big-name rock music isn't as tired and barren as it really is.

I have nothing against any of the above artists – heaven knows, they're all preferable to Creed or Limp Bizkit or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Although, if you believe Rolling Stone, the Chili Peppers' latest album "channels the Californian essence of the Beach Boys" or some other such nonsense. Blasphemy!) But ultimately, when it comes to trying to get excited or even decently informed about the latest marketing – I mean, musical – trends, I fail miserably. I'm perpetually out of touch with what the record-buying public wants. "Electroclash"? Was that a song on Combat Rock? Ryan Adams? I just cannot stand that "Summer of '69" song of his!

Anyway, building up to what this article is actually supposed to be about, this year was full of magical musical moments for me, none of which involved shelling out $18.99 for some overhyped new CD or paying more than five bucks for a ticket (thanks to the occasional freebie). I could devote article-length paeans to probably a good two dozen shows I saw this year – and each show would be more noteworthy than what I could experience in a whole year back home in North Carolina. The honorable mentions include heroic performances by rock-underground troopers 25 Suaves, Hair Police, and Friends Forever at Kimo's; Brocas Helm and the hilarious, crowd-confusing 7000 Dying Rats at the Covered Wagon; and metal gods Nile and Immortal at the sweaty, miserable Pound. I also finally got to see Ornette Coleman play, as well as three amazing shows featuring ever inspiring free-jazz saxophone elder statesman Peter Brötzmann, piped in straight from Germany for the Glenn Spearman Festival in Oakland.

But, in true out-of-step fashion, I am bestowing my personal "year's most memorable musical moment" honor on one of the least newsworthy musical "events," and one I wasn't even witness to. I'm talking about the reunion of the Three Doctors Band, the formerly San Francisco-based quartet whose mid-'90s Back to Basics Live album inexplicably remains one of my all-time favorite LPs. "Inexplicably," I say, because the album was basically a low-stakes conceptual joke by a band whose father act, the Zip Code Rapists, was often described as the "world's most pointless band." (The Three Doctors name derives from a typically shoddy ZCR song, one whose chorus uses the word "fuck" 16 times.)

Back to Basics is an album of mostly weepy and amazingly straight-faced, nonironic covers of songs rescued from thrift store-grade vanity-pressing LPs. A sensitive, longing ballad titled "Phobia" contains the incredible lines "I envision you as naked / Is that why you're so scared?" The depressing country number "Leaving Has Hurt" is one of only two songs I have ever heard by the elusive Russ Saul, who I'm sure would be one of my favorite country singers ever if I could just find more of his stuff. In short, I love this album.

So, needless to say, when I received an e-mail one morning a few weeks ago announcing that the Three Docs would be getting back together, I was excited. There was one catch, though: the reunion was taking place in Venezuela, and not all of the original members were going to be there for the show. OK, none of the original members were going to be there, but according to the Three Docs "organization," the reunion was still official. Hey, if the Platters and Napalm Death can carry on without any original members, then so can the Three Docs.

I'm still waiting on reports of the reunion from new head member Dr. Ramiro, but just trying to fathom how a group of people in Venezuela stumbled on this obscure, unpopular album and brought the "band" – along with "Phobia," "Leaving Has Hurt," and other hits – back to life has kept my brain occupied for longer than it has any right to. I consider the Three Doctors reunion a small victory for the little guy, and it makes me happy – much happier than any fashion-slave garage rocker, mature adult singer-songwriter, or "bad-boy" alt-country dude ever could, that's for sure.

Top 10

1. Beach Boys, all two-fer CD reissues covering 1965 to 1977 (especially the song "A Day in the Life of a Tree") (Capitol)

2. At the Gates, Slaughter of the Soul reissue (Earache)

3. High on Fire, "Razor Hoof," on Surrounded by Thieves (Relapse)

4. Platters, "Try 'N' Understand," on Our Way (Musicor)

5. Black Flag, Who's Got the 10 1/2? (SST)

6. Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin: The Best of Scharpling and Wurster on WFMU (Stereo Laffs)

7. Tim Berne, Science Friction (Screwgun)

8. Agalloch, The Mantle (The End)

9. Sun City Girls, The Handsome Stranger (Abduction)

10. Arcturus, "Kinetic," on The Sham Mirrors (The End)

W.Y.

Lost tapes

By Jeff Chang

Backstage at the Warfield after the DJ Shadow-Lyrics Born-Tino Corp. show in November, DJ Z-Trip was shaking his head. "I was just reading some old URB magazines today, and just laughing at the slang. It was like, 'Yo, I'm chillin' hard on the flimflam!' "

We laughed hard at that. Back then we wanted so hard to represent. And now some of us were there. "It's amazing to look back at how far this has all come," he said.

We were in that kind of a mood. Halfway hiding beneath his baseball cap, DJ Shadow had opened his show by saying, "I'm so proud of my crew. In '93 it was the DNA Lounge, and in '95 it was the Stone and the Justice League. And now here we are, at the Warfield." The reaction was overwhelming – the crowd roaring and me choking back tears and feeling stupid for having a fucking Wonder Years attack in a crowded San Francisco theater.

Long ago when we were all busy building the revolution, Shadow and Lyrics Born and Joyo Velarde were in Davis, Z-Trip was in Tempe, Ariz., and I was in postriot Los Angeles, ardently trying to slay the old dragons with boxes of SoleSides records and a column in URB. We were all attitude-pumped and ice-pick sharp, and we had no time for nostalgia. Although we were in denial about it, we had a clear politic. EPMD gave us our rallying cry: "Strictly underground, keep the crossover."

I started writing about hip-hop nostalgia four or five years ago (just about the same time I decided I didn't want to write in first person anymore). I dealt with it sorta ironically then, but now I'm realizing that I'm living it. You wake up one day and you realize you're part of the "Flashback Fridays" end of the hip-hop generation.

While our kids are Harlem shaking to Benzino, we're mourning Jam Master Jay, seeking comfort from Jill Scott, pining for better days. We're pumping our fists when Chuck D and Warrior King promise not to give the people what they want but what they need. Our ambivalence runs deep. The most nostalgic hit this year, the Clipse's "Grindin'," floods us with equal amounts of satisfaction and discomfort.

We've ceded the underground to young heads who trade MP3s of pale-skinned, faceless, Eminem wanna-bes like we used to trade cassettes of unreleased Freestyle Fellowship cuts. Folks like the Roots, Talib Kweli, and Common – the crews and artists too principled to let themselves become ghosts in the machine – remain hip-hop's leading edge of artistic ambition and a main source of A&R heartburn. But we're no longer sure if we need them like we want the latest lap dance from Just Blaze or the Neptunes.

This year's sole consensus critical album is Scarface's The Fix, a throwback that is less ambitious than instantly familiar. The Geto-Boy-become-ghetto-elder is the kind of dude we'd welcome over for a barbecue before he rolls off to yammer for the kids at the club. The Fix really succeeds because it's an all-ages record.

Nas is now our Dylan, The Lost Tapes our Basement Tapes, "Doo Rags" our "Forever Young." We'll nod in agreement and choke back the tears when we hear him flow: "So where them years go? Where the Old Gold beers and cheers go? But now them shorties here though, so ..." Here was proof that Nas was still a real artist, that he still had a heart beating behind the one-track-for-every-demographic templates his official releases have become. We could suspend the knowledge of what's happened to the revolution we were trying to imagine in our bedrooms.

So some of us are now on MTV (alright, MTV2), playing to sold-out arenas, realizing our dreams after all those years of bad slang and strange fashion, blood dues and linty pockets. And I, who had vowed to banish the word "I" from my writing in order to hold back the years, find myself listening to Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys thinking this must be how it feels to discover Rakim after all that Cam'ron, Tupac after all that Ja Rule. It crumbles that predictable Pavlovian machine pop music feels like it has become. It gives me some kind of stupid hope. It reminds me that enjoying the success of some old friends with 2,500 new ones – some of whose current revolutions will surely mean a lot to me someday – really does beat dying before you get old.

But you know what? Fuck Mick Jagger anyway.

The parent formerly known as DJ Zen's top 10 (as always, in alphabetical order)

1. Blackalicious, Blazing Arrow (Quannum/MCA)

2. DJ Shadow, The Private Press (MCA)

3. Talib Kweli, Quality (Rawkus/MCA)

4. Freddie McGregor, "Uncle Sam," on Anything for You (VP)

5. Mr. Lif, I Phantom (Definitive Jux)

6. Scarface, The Fix (Def Jam)

7. Sean Paul, Dutty Rock (VP/Atlantic)

8. Sizzla, "Solid As a Rock," on Da Real Thing (Digital B/VP)

9. Steinski, Nothing to Fear (Soul Ting)

10. Various artists, Diwali (Greensleeves)

J.C.

Jonathan and Solomon Chang's top 10 (in no particular order)

1. Cam'ron, "Oh Boy," on Come Home with Me (Roc-A-Fella)

2. Missy Elliott, "Work It," on Under Construction (Elektra)

3. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, "Wake Up Everybody," on The Ultimate Blue Notes (Columbia)

4. Lilo and Stitch soundtrack (Disney)

5. Nelly, Nellyville (MCA)

6. Notorious B.I.G., "Hypnotize," on Life after Death (Bad Boy)

7. Steinski, Nothing to Fear (Soul Ting)

8. Eric Sermon featuring Redman, "React," on React (J)

9. Washington Elementary School, "We Are Washington"

10. Bill Withers, "Lean on Me," on Lean on Me (Columbia)

The year that was but then again wasn't

By John O'Neill

Well, it finally happened, or so I'm told. I am of course referring to the garage rock explosion of aught-two, that magic moment when the rightful heirs to the throne of Rock and Roll (still the only music genre that demands capitalization) finally collected their key to the executive washroom. And, almost as important, the moment when yours truly found indication. After a decade and a half of blind devotion, of extolling the virtues of and taking lumps for music's redheaded stepchild, I would finally be exonerated – the guy who was right all along. Victory would be mine!

I wasn't sure exactly what this vindication would feel like – maybe like something out of an old western, when, after vanquishing the bad guy and saving the town, I'd lean against the fence post in the cool of the evening, feeling the contentment that comes with job well done. Perhaps it would be a semisweet moment of actualization, during which I would realize a corner had been turned and garage rock was all grown up. It didn't need me looking over its shoulder, jumping in to save its skin the moment things got ugly. I would just sneak out the back door without saying good-bye, jump a tramp steamer, and sail off into the sunset with the understanding that it was all done out of love. We would cross paths again, but I'd move on to championing some other cause – Buddy Greco as the greatest unrecognized lounge singer, or something.

But the moment never came to pass. I had been flimflammed by my one true love. The garage movement is rolling ahead full-steam alright, only it turns out I've been left behind! What happened I cannot say for sure. I think while I was busy trying to put the whole White Stripes thing into proper context, mutineers like the Hives and the Strokes and some other phony one-syllable bands snuck up from behind and pitched me over the side. "Get hot or go home" is the maxim by which the new breed lives, and there is no room for sentimental fools digging beyond the word Stooges on the list of influences. So I had to go. And while I feel a little bad about how things went down, it's for the better, cuz all I was doing was complaining. I suppose it's the same old story: anytime a scene blows up, it's the shittiest bands (usually the best looking or the ones with great stage moves) who hook a free ride out of the musical ghetto. This should not come as a startling revelation, but somehow I thought it would be different with garage rock – it was so honest and unpretentious and easy. It never occurred to me there would be claim-jumpers in my own camp.

So, greatest music highlight of the past year? Fuck that. I'm all heated up and looking for revenge. Forget about the genre giants garage rock has decided to spit on. History will even that score. And as long as great local bands like the SLA, the Flakes, the Sermon, the Rock and Roll Adventure Kids, and the Coachwhips are being denied a piece of the corporate pie, I've got something to fight for. Next year is going to be the best round yet.

Top 10 albums in semi-order

1. Flamin' Groovies, Slow Death (Norton)

2. Neko Case, Blacklisted (Bloodshot)

3. Mekons, OOOH! (Out of Our Heads) (Quaterstick)

4. Crybabies, How the Other Half Lives (Dino)

5. Comets on Fire, Field Recordings from the Sun (Bada Bing!)

6. Camper Van Beethoven, Tusk (Pitch-a-Tent)

7. Forty-Fives, Fight Dirty (Yep Roc)

8. Solomon Burke, Don't Give Up on Me (Fat Possum)

9. James Galway, A Song of Home (RCA)

10. Dukes of Hamburg, Some Folk (Gearhead)

J.O.

Top 10 least-needed rereleases/rarities albums

1. Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Transit Authority (Rhino)

2. Chicago, Chicago II (Rhino)

3. Chicago, Chicago III (Rhino)

4. Chicago, Chicago IV (Ditto)

5. Chicago, Chicago V (Wino)

6. Chicago, Chicago VI (Crap-Tone)

7. Hellacopters, some horrid singles collection (Gearhead)

8. Chicago, Chicago VII (Sub Poop)

9. Grand Funk Railroad, We're an American Band (Capitol)

10. Chicago, Chicago VIII (Uck-fay Ou-yay Upid-stay Onsumer-cay)

J.O.

The wages of fun

By George Chen

Last year sucked. Hooray for 2002. I don't know if things have actually improved or gotten worse for any of you, but I seem to have done OK, although the documentation I have is shoddy. A few days into January, I ended up playing drums on "Hound Dog" behind eXtreme Elvis at the Stork Club. A few days later, I got a neck injury at work right before my insurance was supposed to kick in. I could blame the Elvis drummer curse, but maybe it was just time to cut my losses and quit working.

The rest of the year was all about under-the-table survival. Compared to the eight W-2 forms I had to calculate last year, all I really had to show the feds was the job I'd quit. It wasn't a very stable existence, but there's sneaky joy in being off the radar. I'm tempting fate by bragging about it in print, and yes, I do get paid to write for this here paper, but in the overall scheme of things I am not contributing to the gross national product. With the Defense Department working on a civilian tracking system, Total Information Awareness, the lesson of this year is that it's best to not draw attention to yourself.

Likewise, it's hard to identify a "legitimate" musical representation of this year. As far as private, at-home listening habits, most of my picks are older releases. I don't get records like Beck's latest in the mail. My musical memory of 2002 is marked by tactile, olfactory, and visual overload. In any case, there are chunks of the year floating back to me – nights at Kimo's with the likes of Nazti Skinz, Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre, Fast Forward, Jerk with a Bomb, Total Shutdown, and Friends Forever. Matt Shapiro let me set up the first show for Lil' Pocketknife there, and I pulled double duty as one of her security ninjas. Friends Forever played outside on Polk Street, a blur of firecrackers, a giant inflated tarp, and a smoke-filled VW van with lasers streaming out of it. OK, that last part might be an exaggeration, but it felt like lasers. Reports regarding the closure of Kimo's may have been slightly exaggerated, but to me Shapiro's laissez-faire booking policies made that place the somewhat scummy den of magic that it was.

Last month, with a few Bay Area folks, I made a trek up to the Portland Arctics Festival at the Disjecta gallery, and the surprises of that trip were the Branca-gone-grind quartet Sleetmute Nightmute and Bellingham, Wash.'s Reeks and the Wrecks. After a papier-mâché igloo got busted and Styrofoam peanuts rained on the Lowdown, Jonny X and the Groadies powered through a black-light Santa-suit serenade. It was fun to forget about the demands of homework and deadlines and pretend for a weekend that life is all about music and breakfast.

On the other end of the legitimacy spectrum, Sonic Youth curated All Tomorrow's Parties in Los Angeles this spring. Locals like Deerhoof and Erase Errata played alongside the sadly departed Unwound. Other highlights were Quix*o*tic, Aphex Twin, Satan's Tornade, and Cannibal Ox. It was the best L.A. experience I've had, which is saying quite a lot, as they're usually kind of miserable. The shows started to become a big blur, but it was exciting to see some of my favorite bands thrust into the limelight.

Ambiguity toward the legitimate is part of the wonder of the "Bay Area Now 3" show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where the local artists represented seem to have been plucked from a random cross-section of the Mission District. That's not a dis – at this moment there's a high concentration of good shit being done in the Bay Area in art and music, and probably just as much in political activism, robot building, barbecuing, and teaching.

Keeping track of things always comes in handy, but sometimes it's better to live in the moment than to place bets on what will last. When I get my W-2 for 2002, I'll have trouble recalling exactly what happened between January and now, but some things are best left unquantified.

Top 10

• Friends Forever at Kimo's

• Mission of Burma at the Fillmore

• Portland Arctics Festival

• Mr. Show at the Warfield

• All Tomorrow's Parties at UCLA

• Deerhoof, Reveille (Kill Rock Stars)

• Noise Camp with Princess Dragonmom at Balazo

• El-P and Aesop Rock at the Great American Music Hall

• Total Shutdown, Reflections (Thin the Herd)

• Avey Tare, Panda Bear, and Geologist at Edinburgh Castle

G.C.

Take it to the stage

By Hua Hsu

Being a critic in the culture industry entitles you to a lot of good (free records and shows, really huge promotional T-shirts, the occasional junket) and a little bad. The worst part: the music sounds a lot worse from backstage. This may sound trite, but considering one's motive for getting into the profession in the first place (it surely ain't the pay), realizing that the skin and mechanics are superugly up-close can be quite a blow to the well-intentioned.

Even the sourest kid sees reason in trusting three chords and the truth or beats, rhymes, and life. As a teenager, horny for change and down for whatever, I regarded artists with a special, distant, wide-eyed reverence we're taught to reserve for elected officials and religious icons. Once that distance is breached, though, you discover that so-and-so isn't as righteous as billed, such-and-such is really an embittered cur like the rest of us, or that one guy isn't actually deep – he's just stoned all the time. Down below, as fool's gold streams from the sky, nobody notices that our heroes and villains are only temporary, deeply impressionable markers of finicky winds, flagging to the left and right in predictable pursuit of image or dollars or maybe both. Performance is everywhere, not just onstage or on record, and it makes you wonder what it is you believed in the first place.

I interviewed a lot of rappers this year who had never been interviewed before, and as a result I've watched a lot of fresh-faced young cats no older than me in the process of becoming, of growing into their britches. It's beautiful. I've met mothers and driven around in cars that probably cost these guys their whole label advance. I've eaten and reminisced at childhood diners that had nothing to do with my childhood and helped shop for children I'll probably never meet. I don't want to call it a Pandora's box, but these are dudes who've yet to cross over to the jaded, lazy side of the street. They're docked at that split second before it all goes bad, before they cynically realize the game is rigged and the few righteous swim hard upstream. There's hope yet left in their eyes.

One of my assignments was to profile Killer Mike, a beefy, imposing gust of a man best known for his lewd cameo verses on Outkast's Stankonia. The interview was to take place at the Tweeter Center on the Boston date of the summer's Smokin' Grooves tour. My expectations were low, and I was more excited to see the show and meet up with some friends; interviewing the up-and-coming Mr. Killer was honestly an afterthought.

To my surprise, Mike turned out to be one of the warmest, most thoughtful people I've met in ages. The sound of Outkast's set bled through the thin walls of his tiny backstage cubicle as we talked about Nietzsche, Portishead, and everything in between. Dude was genuinely excited, anxiously chatty and nervous enough to miss his cue to get onstage – the opening bars of Outkast's "The Whole World." "Shit, that's us. We gotta go," he muttered coolly. Before I had a chance to ask what he meant by "we," we were high-stepping through the backstage maze toward the Tweeter Center stage. Security stopped me short, my half-hearted claim that I was Killer Mike's assistant notwithstanding. Mike sauntered through the curtains, grabbed his microphone, ripped his verses and reappeared minutes later. "Aw man," he snapped. "I wanted to get you onstage! You got to check this out! What happened?"

He was even more excited than I was, and we were like two 14-year-old kids living out the kind of backyard neon fantasy you're allowed before cynicism and politics set in. We wrapped up the interview, stole some of Outkast's Coronas, and as I was packing up, he defiantly proclaimed that we were going back: "I am going to get you onstage." He waved me through security, cleared a path through the stage curtain and deposited me in the corner. The lights were off and I couldn't see a thing, but the sound of thousands of screaming kids surrounded me, made me feel safe. As I blindly dug through my bag for my camera, everything happened at once: lights, confetti, dancers, band, and the unmistakable intro to the show's finale, Outkast's "Bombs over Baghdad."

Those who truly hate once truly loved, and those who are cynical were once the truest and most strident of believers. Standing a few feet from Dre, Big Boi, Mike, the band, and the rest of Outkast's crew as they joyfully blazed through the free association blitzkrieg of "B.O.B.," I was reminded of everything I believed in, everything about music and art I loved enough to want to get closer to. The creator acts in funny ways, and a philosophical, far from apathetic 22-year-old hedonist named Killer Mike was a funny messenger. But for that moment I was reminded that there's transcendence to be found in small things, gestures; there's strange beauty in strange places. There's pleasure, art, pride, and showmanship. And there's always a reason to stay a believer, even with the possibility of bombs over real Baghdad.

The sporting life

1. Cal 30, Stanford 7 – Jesus (in Cleats) Saves!

2. The Clipse, "Grindin'," on Lord Willin' (Star Trak)

3. The Rapture, "House of Jealous Lovers" (DFA)

4. Buckethead on MTV

5. Hawaiian Little League

6. Scarface, "Guess Who's Back?," on The Fix (Def Jam)

7. Steinski, Nothing to Fear (Soul Ting)

8. The Roots and Cody ChesnuTT, "Seed (2.0)," on The Headphone Masterpiece (Ready, Set – Go!)

9. Dusty and the Giants – the People's Champion

10. Sonic Youth, Murray Street (DGC)

H.H.

Blind my date

By Sarah Han

Most everyone who's been on a blind date will tell you that you're better off not going. And anyone who's been on a blind date that's been broadcast on TV will probably double that advice, that is, if they're even willing to come out of hiding to talk about it.

But being a huge fan of TV dating shows (Blind Date, Elimidate, Dismissed, Temptation Island), I decided to check my ego and appear on a very special episode of Burn My Eye! (www.burnmyeye.com), a cable-access show devoted to the local rock, experimental, post-everything music scene.

I had heard about the idea a few weeks before from George Chen, a key member of the Burn collective (and a Bay Guardian contributor), but this was before it had become a reality. A friend and I had joked that we'd be on the episode together: a double-dating duo of annoying girls who'd snap gum, ask lame questions about sex, and be aggressively competitive. And my friend John, thinking I'd be too shy to do it, offered me $25 if I appeared on the show. This dare was all the encouragement I needed. But it wasn't until I got a confirmation e-mail from George about being on the show that I realized I was knee-deep in the shit I was talking. I could already feel my face burning with embarrassment, and I wasn't even in front of the camera yet.

The e-mailed instructions were very vague about what was to happen on the show. All that the participants knew was that we were to converge at the Uptown. At 8 p.m. sharp, Kristy from Lil' Pocketknife and I were the only ones there, or so we thought. A moment later Kristy spied O.S.T. at the pool table and giggled furiously, saying, "Oh, my God! We're going to go on a date with O.S.T.!"

The minutes passed, and George finally showed up. I asked him what the plan was, and he admitted, "I don't even know yet." I knew at that moment the night was going to be a disaster.

More people started showing up, including my friend Justine (who I had recruited to join me in my humiliation), Burn My Eye! camera people (who seemed to outnumber the participants), and the rest of the cast – for a grand total of six girls and three boys. Supposedly, there was a surplus of boys lined up for the show, but by the time we were all supposed to meet, they had started dropping like flies. Maybe they knew something the rest of us didn't, but should've, known.

But what were we even thinking? Although this was supposed to be a blind-date show, most of the people already knew one another, if not by name, at least by sight. It was a pathetic testament to how small the local music scenes really are. And it made me even sadder for myself, a single female who would have to duke it out with at least one other girl (who is probably a friend) to get a date with a boy who likes the same records. It just doesn't seem worth the trouble, or the competition.

Even though we all kind of knew one another, I think everyone was as nervous and weirded out about the whole experience as I was. The girls only talked to the girls. The boys stood around with their hands in their pockets, not talking to anyone. It was junior high school all over again.

The first attempt to make a love connection came from O.S.T. In a truly Bachelor moment, he had slyly bought each girl a long-stemmed rose from a woman walking around the bar with a bucketful. But we didn't even know they were from him until the lady told us, and instead of using this moment as an icebreaker, all of us girls just kept talking among ourselves.

George had the brilliant idea of recruiting two random men from the bar to even out the number of men and women. The two guys were Burning Man types, probably in their 30s – the kind of guys who would ride kooky bikes they constructed themselves and have the audacity to ask something like, "Hey, man, did you burn this year?" They were drunk, and they saw us girls and probably thought we were as drunk as they were – that maybe they'd have a chance at snatch that night. All of us girls avoided them like the plague.

When we finally left the Uptown, we walked over to Adobe Bookstore, which was hosting an art reception. It was probably the worst idea of the night, at least from the standpoint of someone who wanted the Burn My Date! to actually work. Still with no game plan, we were released into an environment where we could easily hide among friends and in between book aisles or else just disappear into the crowd. As soon as we got there, this is exactly what happened. Half of the participants were nowhere to be seen.

The show finally ended when George and his crew got tired and bored of following us around. The participants were asked to give concluding statements: who we liked the best and what we thought of our "dates."

After the filming stopped, I heard the guys had decided all of the girls were lesbians and that was why they hadn't made any moves. Fittingly, most of the girls, without knowing this, had selected another girl as the ultimate pick of the litter. And so, no numbers or kisses were exchanged, but we all knew we'd see one another at the next show sometime the following week – and we'd all pretend the night had never happened.

Top 10

1. Friends Forever outside of Kimo's

2. Lil' Pocketknife

3. Gravy Train!!!! and a very naked Brontez

4. Hightower versus a cappella at the Natoma Street block party

5. All of Deerhoof's shows and all of Satomi's dance moves

6. Sweatiest man in America: Zach Hill from Hella

7. Getting a leg warmer caught in a guitar tuning peg during Canaries Kept Quiet Kill

8. Pink and Brown, R.I.P.

9. Cock E.S.P.'s 45-second-long set at the Hemlock, during which everyone in the audience got beer thrown in their faces.

10. Seeing an ex getting his glasses knocked off in the Lightning Bolt DVD – too bad he didn't get knocked out.

S.H.

The signals stay with you

By Oliver Wang

The journey begins in Chicago, Memorial Day weekend. It's me with friends Justin and Matt, starting a weeklong record-shopping trek through the Midwest. The road trip is a time-honored tradition among obsessive collectors guided by the alluring myth that somewhere out there is a store that no one has shopped in since 1974, stocked with mint copies of rare soul and jazz 45s and LPs. It's largely a pipe dream, but hell, any excuse to live out of cheap motels and eat bad food in pursuit of vinyl appeals to a bunch of city slickers like ourselves. Motel 6 and Waffle House, here we come!

Our rental car lacks a CD player, and none of us has the foresight to bring actual cassette tapes. By default the radio becomes our constant companion, and we often gauge our location based on the strength of the reception as we leave or get near to the big cities. Driving away from Chicago, headed southeast toward Indianapolis, we're shepherded by one of the greatest radio hours in my recollection.

The beauty of radio is that each new song brings the promise of unexpected pleasure. There've been many times when I was lulled into drowsiness by a dull drive only to be jolted back to alertness when just the right song came on. That doesn't happen with a CD or tape if you already know what's next. It's all about the unpredictability of the playlist, and though radio has become far more homogenous in these days of Clear Channel media monopolies and Ja Rule remixes, the potential for surprise is still present.

On this particular Friday night, some nameless DJ is manning the turntables and starts dropping bombs on us, silencing the car as we listen in respectful awe. The first gem is Scarface's "Guess Who's Back?" It's the first time I hear the song, and it sounds incredible, starting with the sharp, pinging piano, and then that unbelievably viscous bass line riddim rolls in. I'm not even a dancehall fan, but Kanye West's beat has me wanting to yell in patois with my finger cocked to the sky.

Then the DJ sets off another one: Freeway's "Line 'Em Up." Whereas "Guess Who's Back?" pulls at you from below, "Line 'Em Up" is pure in-yo'-face aggression as producer Just Blaze throws down a two-bar guitar loop resurrected from some grime-slathered blues album or the like. We're driving a Ford Neon or some other shit American model that only rental agencies buy, but you'd think we were hitting the I-65 with a X5, Blaze's 80 bpm converting into an imagined 340 hp.

There are some other great tunes – Foxy Brown's slick ode to haute couture, "Stylin'," and Big Tymers' hilariously self-promotional "Still Fly" – but then comes the money shot. Out of nowhere the DJ begins playing a random instrumental, and we hear these words being blended over the top: "Nowwwww ... in my younger days I used to sport a shag / When I went to school I carried lunch in a bag ..."

Complete pandemonium breaks out in the car. As we listen to Pharcyde's "Passin' Me By" a cappella, a tanker truck could be exploding in front of us and we wouldn't notice or care. All we know is that somewhere, 2,000 miles from home, driving in darkness toward a destination none of us has been to before, we're having the time of our lives, reciting lyrics memorized almost 10 years back.

In the time since tuning in to this Chicago station, we've probably traversed at least 100 miles, but it's all passed in the blink of a beat. Eventually, as the darkened landscape of rural Indiana pulls us in deeper, the signal fades to a static hiss. We fumble around for some other station, but the moment is gone. We simply ride out the remainder of the drive in silence, the afterglow of our auditory experience gradually dissipating as the dim lights from Indianapolis beckon us onward.

Top 10

1. Anything produced by the Neptunes (almost)

2. Common, Electric Circus (MCA)

3. DJ Shadow's Private Press concert v. 2.0

4. Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism

5. Jurassic 5, Power in Numbers (Interscope)

6. Mr. Lif, I Phantom (Definitive Jux)

7. Scarface, The Fix (Def Jam)

8. Standing in the Shadows of Motown

9. Steinski, Nothing to Fear (Soul Ting)

10. Wax Poetics issues 1-3

O.W.

Vivian Host's top 10, in no particular order

1. Tracy and the Plastics and Erase Errata at Bottom of the Hill. Math punk meets indie dance in the best way. Wynn Greenwood's one-woman band is electropunk as it was meant to be.

2. The Faint, Danse Macabre (Saddle Creek). Blasé robot anthems from the different dimension of Omaha, Neb. Burned up the clubs and my home stereo.

3. Gritty new 2-step garage. U.K. heads took the emphasis off the R&B fluff for a second, creating the oddest mix of house, jungle, and distortion in the land. DJ Zinc, Sirus, and Narrows get the props.

4. Bis, Plastique Nouveau (SpinArt). Bis smartly enlist this year's electro all-stars – Adult., Tommie Sunshine – to remix their sweet synth pop into digestible nextro wave. Listen over and over.

5. U.K. rap comes back. Roots Manuva kick-starts the phenomenon, acts like the Streets and Fallacy and Fusion finish it off. From proto-jiggy shit to stoned grooves, the U.K. presents a full range of fresh-ass beats that – gasp – sound deliciously un-American.

6. Warehouse parties. Even if rave didn't come back, at least renegade parties did. From the Fool's excellent rager behind the Beauty Bar in April to the Tenderloft's consistently good events, underground parties were where it was at. No surprise, since most of the major clubs have gone south with mainstream music policies.

7. Ed Rush and Optical at Caliente. The end of Eklektic left a huge void in the drum 'n' bass scene, but at least the final party was a rager. Ed Rush and Opty tore it up in fine style with MC Ryme Tyme, and the punters wouldn't let 'em leave the stage.

8. The Bangs at the Fillmore. The Bangs blew headliners Sleater-Kinney out of the water with their twist on the classic punk formula. Post-riot grrrl fabulousness without the whiny shit.

9. Disco and house meet drum 'n' bass. After years of dark, dreary techno, drum 'n' bass stepped into the light, with artists such as High Contrast, Marcus Intalex, and Sonic purveying uplifting tunes touched with beautiful chords and vocals. The return of mellow drum 'n' bass? Hardly. This stuff was backed by serious dance-floor beats.

10. The Neptunes. Pop became the new underground thanks to the Neptunes, who managed to make Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and even the two-bit Clipse sound damn good. Incorporating rock, '80s, and techno into their production made it sound novel, and Pharrell – despite overplaying the trucker-hat fad – looked damn hot doing it.

Peter Nicholson's random 10

• Best label compilation: Songs Inspired by Life and Movement (Clairaudience)

• Best soundtrack for flunking anger management: Amon Tobin, Out from Out Where (Ninja Tune)

• Best artist name: Fat Jon the Ample Soul Physician

• Most ho-hum mix by an S.F. DJ: Mark Farina, Mushroom Jazz 4 (Om)

• Best sofa-surfing single by an S.F. DJ: DJ Josh, Ezelle E.P. (Slo-Rise)

• Worst cover art: DJ Josh, Ezelle E.P. (Slo-Rise)

• Album worth the wait: Jazzanova, In Between (JCR)

• Album not really worth the wait: 4hero, Creating Patterns (Talkin' Loud)

• Best ex-S.F. label: Ubiquity

• Most anticipated S.F. 2003 release: Afro-Mystik's album (Om)

Victor Krummenacher's top 10

1. Carla Bozulich performing "The Red Headed Stranger" at Cafe du Nord. She's still working on the recording, but this show at Du Nord was fantastic. Backed by the Nels Cline Singers, Carla did a tour de force interpretation of the Willie Nelson classic, proving what a versatile visionary she can be.

2. Aimee Mann, Lost in Space (Superego). Bachelor No. 2 was really good – this is even better. Great recording, great delivery, and some of the best observances of L.A. since Joni Mitchell was at her prime in the '70s.

3. Linda Thompson, Fashionably Late (Rounder). After a 14-year absence, Thompson makes a beautiful little record that reminds us all what a great singer she was and how good a sad song can feel.

4. Elvis Costello, When I Was Cruel (Universal). Not quite the return to form it was billed as, his latest recording is pretty damn good nonetheless. Great ensemble playing, and bassist Davey Faragher does a phenomenal Bruce Thomas impression.

5. The Mekons, OOOH! (Out of Our Heads) (Quarterstick). Just in time for the coming crusades, the Mekons take on religion. Thank, er, ... God?

6. Robin Holcomb, The Big Time (Nonesuch). Pianist and songwriter Holcomb returns with her first vocal recording in 10 years, a great batch of subtle and complex songs with masterful accompaniment by husband Wayne Horvitz and guitarist Bill Frisell.

7. Jimmy McDonough's Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. Ever the control freak, Neil Young owns the copyright to his authorized biography, and it seemed strange that when it was published, all the news elements of the fan site Hyper Rust (www.hyperrust.org) suddenly went dark. The book is one giant headfuck of writer Jimmy McDonough, courtesy of Young himself. Shakey is so fascinating and often unflattering that it's a wonder Young let it come out at all. At times it seems like McDonough isn't really as much of a Neil fan as he claims to be, but perhaps that happens when you crawl too far inside the head of your self-proclaimed idol. No real answers to the Neil Young puzzle here, but it's a fun ride nonetheless (especially if you've ever worked either as a journalist or a musician).

8. Waycross, Aren't We the Lucky Ones (Waycross). The second record by locals Waycross is a realization of sorts. Caroleen Beaty's great vocals, Doug Hilsinger's great production work, and solid support by the band shows what you can do recording in your living room in 2002.

9. Cassandra Wilson, Belly of the Sun (Blue Note). Wilson hits the Mississippi Delta ... fluently, deliberately, beautifully. She hits a home run, too.

10. Bob Dylan, anything ... Dylan continues to fuck with everyone in a time-honored tradition. Last seen singing "Brown Sugar" at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, he was impeccably dressed, played a cool electric piano, and had some foot action going on, but one couldn't figure out if it was good (his band, as always, rocked, but now Charlie Sexton has quit ...) or bad. Was he pulling one over on us, or was he embarrassing himself? Perhaps it was a little of both?

Deborah Giattina's top 10 albums

1. Deerhoof, Reveille (5RC). Hearing that album this year was an experience, I imagine, on par with seeing the Who play at London's Marquee club sometime in 1964.

2. Steel Pole Bath Tub, Unlistenable (0 to 1)

3. Numbers, Numbers Life (Tigerbeat6)

4. Quails, Atmosphere (Inconvenient)

5. Total Shutdown, Reflections (Thin the Herd)

6. Mates of State, Our Constant Concern (Polyvinyl)

7. Davendra Banhart, Oh Me Oh My ... (Young God)

8. Bart Davenport, Bart Davenport (Paris Caramel)

9. Crack: We Are Rock, Silent Fantasy (Tigerbeat6)

10. Nate Denver's Neck, Prepare to Die (Anchor and Hope)