META-FIFTY: A Grand, Clunky Announcement

Merry St. Kurt’s Day to one and all! On this very special day, I have a very special announcement for META-SPIEL readers:

The META-FIFTY is coming.

Yes, yes, the excitement is palpable. You don’t even need to know what the META-FIFTY is to know that it’s going to be much too much, and what could be more exciting than much too much?

The META-FIFTY, I am pleased to report, will be fifty posts / entries / essays, each dedicated to a different album*, those albums collectively constituting what you can understand to be the “top” fifty albums that I have to write about.

I’ll get into the long list of caveats, disclaimers, and lesser treasons below. I’d first like to address the why this and why now questions.

This exercise has been a long time in coming. I actually intended to release a mere list of my top 30 albums, but very thoroughly considered, on the occasion of my 30th birthday. And then I had a similar intention on the occasion of my 40th birthday. None of this ever happened. Officially, I am blaming my assistant, who did not actually volunteer to assist with any of this foolishness, but who I have repeatedly informed is the only person suitable to be my assistant in such endeavors. The reason my assistant is getting the blame is because it will make this paragraph very funny to a very small number of people.

META-SPIEL has now been around for a while and I’ve dabbled at times with writing a little more formally about music but could never really come up with how I wanted to go about it. Well, you see, I’ve been kicking around variations on the META-FIFTY in my mind for a while now. In some incarnations I actually thought I would count down 50 albums and would try to do so about one a week straight through to my 50th birthday, essentially requiring a kickoff a year in advance, which so happens to be today. Well, that was too formal, too rigid, and too much self-imposed pressure. But I so like the idea of 50 entries that I’m doing that anyway, on whatever timeline they may come, and without a super-rigid countdown.

I realize that neither of the above paragraphs adequately answers why I would do this, and to that I’ll just directly say, I want to dig deeper and write about things I haven’t written about, and push myself, and give myself an extended exercise to engage in that sort of re-centers me a little bit. On a weekly basis I seem to be upset with myself because I’m not surrounding myself with music as much as I think I ought to, and even when I do, it’s usually at the gym, or it’s… not the way I fully want to. Look: I’m an AOR guy. That’s album-oriented rock, buddy, and don’t you forget it.

So, I’m doing this. Some time in the next week or two you’ll see the first entry. It won’t say #50. I think what I’m going to do is have albums 11-50 just get written about in a sort of random order. And what I like about this is that it lets me really think about what I want to put in 1-10, and it lets me consider what might all fall into 36-50, and how it might include things not even currently on my radar. See, I’m not declaring this to be the list of “greatest” albums. I’m using the word “top” but I’m sort of refusing to elaborate much more upon how that word should be interpreted, except that I’ll say that elements of “top” include how great I think the album is, how important I think the album is generally, how important to me I think the album is… so that an album I leave off the list I’m not necessarily saying I think is worse than the albums that make the list, but rather, maybe, there’s something else about the albums on the list that made me see fit to include them.

Now for some caveats, disclaimers, and lesser treasons.

First, I have self-imposed a rule that no artist will appear on the list twice. This is my rule, so I feel free to bend it as necessary, but this is how to understand it: There might be a Joy Division album, or there might be a New Order album, but there won’t be both, because I’m thinking of “core musicians” when I think of “artists”. Or if that example doesn’t resonate for you, there might be a Dinosaur Jr. album, and there might also be a Sebadoh album, but there won’t be both a Dinosaur Jr. album from when Lou Barlow was in the band and also a Sebadoh album. Or if that’s still not working for you, understand that there will be no more than one album prominently featuring Sammy Hagar.

This rule is necessary to prevent myself from, oh, simply deciding that I’m going to put 9 Neil Young albums on the list and fighting with myself about how to deal with that. Now, maybe I’ll make exceptions for things like guest appearances. Or maybe I won’t. But I want to use the META-FIFTY to spotlight 50 entirely different artists. So, I made the rule.

Second, I may include an EP or two, but not merely a single. There are off the top of my head two prime contenders for “top release” from given artists which were EPs instead of full-length albums and I think this is totally fine.

Third, I am disinclined to include live albums, but in at least one case, my favorite release from the artist in question is a double live album, and I’m not sure how I’m going to parse that right now. Luckily, I have time to figure that out.

Here is the fun thing: I have not started any of the work. I have not attempted recently to put together a list. It’s really easy for me to think through what 20-25 of the albums are likely to be, or at least who 20-25 of the artists will be, and therefore I can start work on some entries without having to have the entire list nailed down. What makes this especially fun is that I am open to feedback now and for much of this journey, and accordingly, I expect participation!

Now, one thing you should know is that this list is overwhelmingly going to consist of white dudes playing rock music. Most of the albums I own are recordings of white men, at least one of whom is primarily playing an electric guitar. I am enamored by a lot of different kinds of music, but I came of age primarily enchanted by power chords, and the reality is that the subgenres that I gravitate to - 90s indie-rock, new wave, post-rock, alternative country, power pop, post-punk, etc. - well, the majority of the bands in those spaces were all or majority white dudes. I openly acknowledge this, and I’m not doing so because I want to beat myself up, but because I think it’s fair to be up front about this, and also because, when I say I expect participation, I mean that I want to be challenged by your feedback. And also this: when I do write about an album that isn’t another band of white dudes with loud guitars, I hope that’ll really pique your interest.

All of this having been said, one of the things which I’m really hoping is that this work will attract more interest and more discussion. I have some probably unrealistic ideas here that META-SPIEL can have a little more activity surrounding it. To that end I’m soliciting feedback not only about content but also about reach. Every time I publish, I post to BlueSky and Facebook, but I’ve stopped posting to Instagram because that has really not seemed worthwhile, and I’m wondering if this series might be occasion to reconsider that.

Anyway! This has been a long post just to talk about something and not actually get into that something. In other words, this has been an exemplar of META-SPIEL. I really hope a lot of you enjoy where this is going to go, and I really hope I don’t burn myself out in the process.

As a bonus treat, to commemorate this very square day, here are a sampling of songs notably featuring the number 49.

We start with Howlin’ Wolf’s “Highway 49”, originally written by Big Joe Williams in 1935 as “49 Highway Blues”. U.S. Route 49 is the main north-south road through the heart of the Mississippi Delta. There are a whole lot of versions of “Highway 49” out there.

An extremely unrelated song which also references U.S. 49 - and which I’ve shared before - is Pere Ubu’s “The Fevered Dream of Hernando De Soto”. Yes, somehow, this is the same highway.

Bob Dylan recorded “Days of ‘49” for Self Portrait, a song about the California gold rush normally credited to Alan Lomax, John Lomax, and Frank Warner, but more properly understood as a traditional folk song that they “collected” and published at some point.

An extremely different song also about the gold rush - sort of - is Pavement’s “My First Mine”, a chestnut which I’m not even sure how it was originally issued, but which found its way onto Westing (by Musket and Sextant):

There are a lot of other songs out there which refer to the year 1949, or maybe a ‘49 Ford, and I’m not going to go into all of that. I’m just going to leave you with what should have been the most obvious song of all:

When I write about albums, should I include YouTube links like this, or should I maybe include Bandcamp links when I can? I’d like to hear from you all about that!