Does this man look high to you?
Later still, I would learn that Dock Ellis and Roberto Clemente had shared more than a uniform and a victory cigar. Ellis, like Clemente, was part of that first generation of post-segregation ballplayers who would not take any shit from Whitey. I reconstructed my image of Dock Ellis — not the soft-tosser getting thwacked around by the Yanks and Royals en route to an early shower, but a fallen ace with a golden, if erratic, right arm and attitude to burn; sort of the Baseball Gods’ dry run for that other Doc who was then all the rage in Gotham.
Old baseball obsessors collect anecdotes like young baseball fanatics collect picture cards. This is how we engage with ballplayers we were too young to watch on television, and, in a more roundabout manner, with the history of an ancient American game: we tell goofy tales about The Time When. Ellis hung up the spikes in 1980; Dock Ellis stories kept right on taking the field. Nothing unusual about that: folks like us will be rehashing Dizzy Dean fables as long as there are other boring seamheads to hear them. But then a truly curious thing happened — Dock Ellis became a site of interest for folks who couldn’t tell a curveball from a bowl of Cheerios. In recent years, Ellis has, as the kids like to say, blown up: musicians sing of him, rock bands are named for him, abstract painters have portrayed him in oil, news tickers clatter on about him, the Baseball Reliquary has enshrined him, hell, even those notorious bandwagon-chasers at NPR elbowed their way into the action. If you’re reading this, you probably know why. On June 12, 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter on LSD. And four years after he retired, he told the world what he’d done.
It is fashionable, I suppose, to claim that the Acid No-No story is one that is bigger than baseball. It is certainly bigger than the baseball player named Dock Ellis. Ellis had an alcohol problem that swallowed his talent; his LSD problem has swallowed his image. You will never see an article about Ellis that doesn’t mention hallucinogens — in fact, most references to the pitcher will be nothing but silly gags. Some celebrate Ellis for his psychedelic experiment, others just make fun of him, but everybody has something clever to say about the Pittsburgh Pirate who was tripping balls while throwing strikes. See, I did it, too. It’s irresistible: Dock Ellis’s name has become a byword for pitching under the influence, and triumphantly, hilariously so. When Ellis died of liver failure a few years ago, Will Leitsch of Deadspin wasn’t the only one treating the Acid No-No as a monumental achievement (all while, you know, crackin’ jokes.) Mainstream press obituary writers sang the same hippie folk song. Right smack in the shadow of the Bonds trial and the Clemens mess, here was a player honest enough to admit that the peak (*giggle*) of his career, the true highpoint (*snicker*), had been chemically-assisted.
But was that really accurate? Not the LSD part; that’s Ellis’s own account of his habits, and there’s no reason to doubt that he really did drop acid and take the hill. Did the drug really help Ellis throw the no-no? Or was it, as some eulogists suggested, an obstacle to the pitcher’s performance, one surmounted against heavy odds? What did the intoxicant do to the athlete? Writers looking to enhance the craziness of the day often point to Ellis’s eight walks and one HBP: he must have been out of control and dangerous! But Dock Ellis always hit batters*; he plunked ten in thirty starts in 1970. And for a genuine staff ace, his walk-to-strikeout ratio was terrible. Ellis wasn’t an overpowering hurler — he relied on movement and deception to retire hitters. It is not unusual for pitchers with Ellis’s profile to have games — even good games — where they’ll issue a walk every inning. For years, we watched Al Leiter and Ron Darling do just that.
Dock Ellis threw the Acid No-No against the Padres at the old San Diego Stadium. When we were growing up, they called it Jack Murphy; after that, Qualcomm bought the naming rights. Whatever handle they slapped on it, it was always a wonderful place to pitch. In the thirty-four years that Jack Murphy Stadium hosted major league ball, there were only three seasons in which the park favored hitters. 1970 wasn’t one of them. That year, the Padres lost 99 games and finished dead last in the National League West. It was only their second season of existence post-expansion; in their inaugural, they’d dropped 110. In ’68, the Padres pulled an absolute rock at their expansion draft, saddling San Diego with a leaden roster that would languish in the cellar for six straight years. Still, there was a legitimate bright spot: Cito Gaston, who hit .318 with 29 home runs in 1970. Gaston was exactly the sort of hitter who’d give Ellis problems — a contact guy smart enough to wait out an inconsistent hurler and jump on a mistake.
Wait a minute, though: the June 12, 1970 game was part of a doubleheader. Cito Gaston didn’t play in the game that Ellis pitched. Nor did the starting shortstop or the regular third baseman. Remember that San Diego was an expansion team with no bench to draw upon; they barely squeaked together a corps of starters. Understaffed, the Padres batted Dave Campbell, who finished the season with a .219 average and a stomach-churning .268 OBP, at the top of their lineup. I repeat for emphasis: this was the leadoff man. Punchless Steve Huntz, whose lifetime BA barely cracked the Mendoza Line, hit behind Campbell. Throw in a journeyman centerfielder, a fill-in at short who’d promptly demonstrate he had no business in the majors, and a catcher with eighteen homers in fourteen seasons; dear Padres fan, you’re dead in the water.
So one of the National League’s best young hurlers takes the hill in a pitcher’s park and faces a last-place team running at half-strength. What do you suppose is going to happen? Baseball is a notoriously contrary game, and balls take funny bounces — but if Dock Ellis hadn’t handled the Padres with ease, that would have been a shocker. Zeroes on the scoreboard make a tidy story, but the Acid No-No wasn’t the pinnacle of anything — in fact, it wasn’t even one of the five best games Ellis pitched that year. Two weeks later at Forbes Field, he threw against a Cubs team muscled up with Billy Williams, Johnny Callison, Ron Santo, and Ernie Banks. Ellis went the distance and beat them 2-1. On August 6, he shut out the Phillies, and in the process bested future reactionary Jim Bunning. On July 9, he took the mound at Busch Stadium and fired a two-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals, striking out ten batters. (There was the peak of his 1970 trip, folks.) In thirty starts, Dock Ellis completed nine games and tossed four shutouts. Nothing about the Acid No-No was even slightly out of line with the expectations he’d already set for baseball fans.
What about all the walks? Well, lousy as they were, the Padres did get their free passes that year: catcher, the leftfielder, and the godawful third base fill-in were exactly the sort of hitters who stepped to the plate looking to take four wide. With Gaston getting a blow, pure slugger Nate Colbert was probably the best hitter left in the San Diego lineup: he’d clouted 38 round-trippers that year. Ellis walked him twice. You might say that he saw the catcher’s target as a pizza pie and he was looking to avoid splashing the marinara sauce. More likely he’d identified the one guy in the Padres order who could hurt him, and he’d wisely pitched around the threat. Dock Ellis may have been in touch with the cosmos that day, but his strategic thinking was entirely terrestrial. He did not issue a leadoff pass, most of his walks came with two outs, and he had no qualms about handing over first base with a runner on second. No matter how high he was flying, he remembered to set up the force.
And this brings me back to my initial question, and the one that resonates with contemporary controversies — what effect did the drug have on the athlete? Ellis’s own anecdotal account of the day involves a sense of disassociation on the mound, falling down, diving out of the way of line drives, etcetera. It’s colorful; it’s also misleading. Dock Ellis had three chances — including the second-to-last out of the no-hitter — and he fielded them all flawlessly. By now you probably think I’m missing the point: acid is a mind-expanding chemical that undermines the subject’s ability to accomplish quotidian tasks like hurling the ol’ horsehide, and Ellis’s mastery of the Padres demonstrates his superhuman focus and restraint. Or maybe his dealer slipped him a dud; a blotter nowhere near as potent as the one you and your ex-girlfriend had in college. Me, I’m inclined toward a different interpretation. The pitcher may have been tripping his ass off; he may have been seeing swirly colors and talking back to the little buccaneer on his cap. He may have thought his manager was a salt shaker. But the drug didn’t change his approach. The drug didn’t alter his velocity, his movement, or his concentration. There is no evidence whatsoever in the linescore or boxscore that LSD either impaired or enhanced Dock Ellis’s ability to play baseball.
And what psychedelic explorer could, in his burnt-out heart of hearts, really be surprised? Trips feel like epic voyages while you’re in the midst of them, but the first thing you realize when you come down is that those around you barely noticed you were gone. Maybe they thought you were acting weird, or self-conscious; most likely, they chalked it up to your usual freakitude and went about their business. Those things you were investing with profound symbolic significance?, they were probably the same damn things you always do. The problem with drug tales is always the same: they’re told by a druggie. An intoxicated person is hardly the best judge of the profound effects of his own high. Of course he’s going to overstate the power of the substance. He’s the one under the influence.
Besides, more than just the placebo effect is working on him. When he swallows the pill, he swallows all the pharmaceutical hogwash along with it. This is because we live in a culture obsessed with self-medication through substance intake. We believe that which we put into our bodies will profoundly alter not merely what we feel, but who we are. One pill makes us larger and one pill makes us small; and the androstenedione on the shelves of the GNC can turn an ordinary Joe Jockstrap into a pace-setting superman. Right now, there are a shocking number of educated baseball writers who believe that we must rip up the last twenty years of the Encyclopedia because some players did drugs. There are those who will refuse to vote Roger Clemens — the winningest pitcher of our lifetime — into the Hall of Fame because of something they believe he injected.
This isn’t fanboy stuff; I hate Roger Clemens, too. But I also hate witch hunts. The same puritans who insist that the record books have been hopelessly skewed by drug use cannot begin to measure any concrete effects that the drugs have had on player performance. Look at the names listed in the Mitchell Report, and try to impose some kind of order or pattern on what you see. You’ll fail. There are guys who were scrubs before the drugs who got better, and guys who were stars before the drugs who got worse. There are players who flamed out of the league, guys who improved dramatically, guys who’d popped their heads up from the minors for an injection only to be sent right back down. There are pitchers whose endurances improved after HGH, and others whose arms fell off and are still rolling around in the dirt. There are superstar outfielders and pine-riders, slugging first basemen and journeyman relievers, banjo hitters and flamethrowers, household names and palookas anonymous even to their own mommas. In short, it is the full panoply of organized baseball, there in its chaotic and unmeasurable splendor. Attribute it all to the drugs if you must. But acknowledge that when you do — when you insist that there’s nothing the drugs can’t do — you’re essentially giving up on pinpointing what the drugs can do. The drug becomes an idol of the worst and most tribal kind: all-powerful and vague, explaining everything and nothing, stealing the agency from the real human actors who make actual history.
It is no great surprise to me that, struggling as we are at the intersection between pharmaceuticals and athletic performance, we’ve become fascinated by the Dock Ellis story. LSD was the scourge of the sixties, but compared to modern compounds made by boffins in secret laboratories, it feels positively innocuous. There’s humorous friction between an American establishment sport played between the lines and a psychedelic chemical taken by counterculture types who desperately wanted to blur them. The irrationalist in me wants to leave the myth alone, and instead sing the ballad of the rogue Pittsburgh Pirate whose abilities were accidentally elevated, or distressed, or scrambled, or something by a hallucinogen. But I can’t. Sick and beleaguered and overmedicated as I am — as we all are — I don’t want to pretend that evidence for chemical performance enhancement exists; not when it doesn’t. Dock Ellis didn’t need a drug to be a terrific pitcher. He didn’t need a drug to be a character. He didn’t need a drug to be a hothead. And he shouldn’t need a drug to be remembered.
Tris McCall, a San Francisco Giants fan, encourages you to take your asterisk and shove it.
*one last thing about Dock Ellis’s propensity to hit batters, and then I’ll leave you alone until opening day. Ellis is semi-famous among fans of criminal assault with a baseball (and there are many) for plunking three Reds in a row, and attempting to hit two more before getting yanked from the game by his manager. He did this on purpose — he didn’t like the Reds, and he was attempting to motivate his team via violence. This happened on May 1, 1974, just after the Pirates staggered through an awful April. Disturbingly, most discussions of this incident will give Ellis credit for inspiring his ballclub; the Baseball Reliquary says “the strategy worked, the Pirates snapped out of their lethargy to win a division title while the Reds failed to win their division for the first time in three years.” Left unsaid is that the East was weak that year and the West was very strong — the Pirates took their division with 88 wins, while the Reds won 98 and finished second to the Dodgers. More to the point, aggressive behavior did not light a fire under the Pirates: they were 6-13 when Ellis went on his beanball spree, and didn’t reach the .500 mark until three months later. In large part, this was because those same Cincinnati Reds beat their brains in for the remainder of the season. The Pirates finished 1974 with a 3-8 record against the Reds; if they’d played Cincinnati in the postseason, they would’ve been trounced. As for the offender, after getting yanked from the first inning of the May Day game, he did not pitch a single inning against the Reds for the rest of the year. He didn’t pitch a single inning against the Reds in 1975, either. The next time Dock Ellis took the hill against the Reds, he was wearing pinstripes and it was Game Three of the ’76 World Series. Long deferred, revenge could not have been sweeter for Cincinnati: the Big Red Machine sent Ellis to the showers in the fourth inning. Dan Dreissen, whom Dock had plunked in ’74, chased the pitcher from the game with a longball. See, the actual story doesn’t add to the tale of Ellis the triumphant acidhead, but it turns out to be a lot more literary. Unseemly petulance in ’74 was rudely punished in ’76, and right there on the sport’s biggest stage. Rarely is poetic justice delivered with more grace or conviction, and it is a terrible shame that the story has been mangled in order to serve Ellis’s myth. Unchecked hostility was what was bad about Dock Ellis; a thoughtful and intelligent person, he surely would have conceded that. There’s enough in the Ellis story to inspire us. We don’t have to go casting around for ugly anecdotes to retrofit and glorify — especially not when the punchlines are so perfectly tailored to expose Ellis’s faults.
Fall in, fall in, fall in. Wait... or is that fold it, fold it, fold it?
By age eleven, I was already complaining about albums. Seven And The Ragged Tiger; why was that so impenetrable? This wasn’t like Rio, which had been a huge favorite of mine the year before. I knew what those songs were about. “Hungry Like The Wolf” concerned a man who was horny. The title track concerned a woman who was (hopefully) horny. “Save A Prayer” concerned a man and a woman who kinda regretted what they’d done when they were horny. But “the union of the snake is on the rise”? What the hell did that mean?
I asked my cousin. She was seven years older and about to go to art school. If she found my periodic collisions with the new wave amusing, she didn’t let on. Instead, she told me that the “Union Of The Snake” meant whatever I wanted it to mean. This struck me as wholly unsatisfactory. The author — a Mr. LeBon — must be trying to get something across. Otherwise, why was he yelling at me through an amplification device? If we were entering a new world of interpretation where all the power to determine meaning was going to be handed over to the listener, why would anybody bother to write anything in the first place?
Years passed. My cousin became an architect; I became an Olympic pole vaulter. Or something. A consensus slowly developed about the meaning of “Union Of The Snake”: it concerned people who were horny. (And yes, by “consensus”, I mean “a notation on the Wikipedia page”.) Posterity has arrived at an intepretation. Duran Duran gave us a challenge, and we were up for that challenge. Despite the periodic allure of incoherence, we push toward understanding; we’re logocentric like that. So what, I wonder, will posterity make of lyrics such as these?
“Follow, misguide, stand still, disgust, discourage on this breadless weekend ending/ this love’s for gentlemen only, wealthiest gentlemen only/ and now that you’re lonely/ do let do let do let jugulate do let do let do.”
How about these?
“Why are they protecting in Rome?/ If only the necessary silhouette unknown/ join a dissident carried away/ Hide them from the lies and discord/What’s remembered not forgotten/ Come roll the dice for me.”
What about these?
“Don’t say no, you’re breakfast eaten alone/ Sister let go, you’re borderline withdrawn/ Down and lit from the bottom there’s a misfit/ Better than looks/ We’re sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, we’re sick for the big sun/ Alone, though and drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, I realize that too.”
Voters, all of these verses can be heard on your album of the year. I didn’t go mining for meaninglessness; the whole record is like that. Drop the (imaginary) needle anywhere, and you’ll hear lines that sound fabulous, but stubbornly refuse to add up to anything specific, or even general. If my cousin were here, she might tell me that it all means whatever I want it to mean, that the band has been generous to provide me with a canvas wide enough to accommodate whatever fantasies I wanted to project, and that as long as Thomas Mars’s singing is aesthetically pleasing, his songs will always be objects worthy of engagement. Or she might tell me to shut up and dance.
115 lunatic pop fans voted in the twentieth edition of our annual poll. Most of the regulars sounded off, and we even managed to grow the pie a little. But several of my favorite voters sent their regrets this year. Omar Velez, a Poll participant since ‘02, confessed that he was unable to get with pop music in 2009. He wasn’t the only one. A recurring theme among your replies was that the Animal Collectivisation of critically-acclaimed college rock had pushed out literate songwriters in favor of neo-hippie auteurs who favor pure abstraction. This new music was emotionally remote; detached; it didn’t make sense.
Me, I’m okay with Merriwether Post Pavilion. On a fair day, you might even get me to admit that, much as I dig Okkervil River and Fiery Furnaces and double-album sets about the fifty states, college rock in the mid-’00s might have gotten a bit too bookish for its own good. If we’re going through an overcorrection, that’s just how the pendulum swings. You might see the name of our winner and throw up your hands; this result might confirm everything you suspected about pop’s devolution into sweet-sounding and gorgeously-reverbed gobbledygook. Don’t give up. Fashions change, and pop music isn’t abstract art. The Rock Subdivision of the Congressional Budget Office confirms that 2009 was as deep into the thicket of incoherence as we’re likely to go, and that meaningful lyrics will be on the road to recovery by the third quarter of 2010. In the meantime, you can remember ‘09 by this sparkling and sharply-performed collection of, well…, of songs about nothin’.
1.) Phoenix — Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (270)
2.) The Decemberists — The Hazards Of Love (233)
3.) Metric — Fantasies (230)
4.) Neko Case — Middle Cyclone (220)
5.) Girls — Album (218)
Our number two album got beat up pretty badly on the playground this year, but Critics Poll voters don’t forget their favorites. A few brave souls did list Phoenix and the Decemberists, but for most, it was one or the other. Honestly, I can’t think of two ‘09 college rock albums with less in common — one is polyglot, ponderously literary, theatrical, brave, bombastic, and backward-looking, while the other is precise, elliptical to the point of incomprehensibility, brief, safe, insouciant, and modern as the MOMA.
For a glittering moment there, I thought Metric might win, and I was all set to write a two-fisted introductory essay about a real independent band. It’ll have to wait. I believe it is in our contract to put a Pornographer or two in our top ten. Since voters deemed Carl Newman’s latest insufficiently exciting, Neko Case is doing the honors in ‘09. Middle Cyclone bested Fox Confessor’s fifth-place finish in Poll XVIII; she remains a good bet to win the Poll outright one of these years.
6.) Dirty Projectors — Bitte Orca (210)
7.) Why? — Eskimo Snow (203)
8.) The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart — The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (199)
9.) Camera Obscura — My Maudlin Career (179)
9.) God Help The Girl — God Help The Girl (179)
The cute pop section, plus Yoni Wolf’s latest collection of wrist-slitters. Tracyanne Campbell and company nearly missed top honors in ‘06 with Let’s Get Out Of This Country; Poll voters weren’t quite as enthusiastic about My Maudlin Career, but Camera Obscura still managed to tie former mentor (and fellow Glaswegian) Stuart Murdoch. Meanwhile, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart blew by both of them. This is sure to outrage the old-timers, but remember that Belle & Sebastian were originally accused of ripping off Nick Drake and Donovan. Kip Berman is a tight songwriter; I just wish I could make out what he’s saying. Right, not in 2009: the year the pop kids put the pillow over the microphone. Ride it out — even grunge didn’t last forever.
11.) Yo La Tengo — Popular Songs (175)
12.) Grizzly Bear — Veckatimest (163)
13.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs — It’s Blitz (161)
14.) The Clientele — Bonfires On The Heath (142)
15.) The Fiery Furnaces — I’m Going Away (140)
I remember sneaking into Maxwell’s as a teenager to watch Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley make an unholy racket. This was pre-McNew, and they didn’t really know what they were doing yet, but all the elements were there: the ridiculous guitar sound, the personality, the sense of humor, the knack for pop melody coupled with the threat of going Sister Ray at the drop of a drumstick. Two decades later, they’re still the band that all the kids want to imitate. Nobody from the late Eighties has aged any better, or with any more dignity — not even Sonic Youth. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs feel like newcomers by comparison, but they’re stage veterans too; the star alumni of NYC’s heralded class of ‘01, and blessed with one of the very few unstoppable singers in college rock. Nice to see Alisdair MacLean back after missing the chart altogether with God Save The Clientele. I’m not sure Bonfires On The Heath is all that much of an improvement, but they’ve managed to work Mel Draisey in a little better.
A short history of Fiery finishes: breakup album I’m Going Away at #15, proggy Widow City at #8 in ‘07, long-distance lament Bitter Tea at #12 in ‘06, audacious Rehearsing My Choir at #13 in ‘05, byzantine Blueberry Boat at #7 in ‘04, Gallowsbird’s Bark with 22 votes in 2003. We didn’t know them then. We got to know them.
16.) Flaming Lips — Embryonic (139)
17.) Animal Collective — Merriwether Post Pavilion (134)
17.) Charlotte Hatherley — New Worlds (134)
19.) Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 — Goodnight Oslo (121)
19.) The Antlers — Hospice (121)
Yes, I do think there is something wrong — something terribly wrong — with the publicist-driven rush to judgment that put Merriwether Post Pavilion atop establishment year-end lists. Yes, it was creepy to hear in January ‘09 that the consensus favorite for album of the year had already been released, and even creepier in December ‘09 to find that, amidst thousands upon thousands of ‘09 albums, that consensus had held up. But that’s an institutional problem, and one that doesn’t have to affect you if you don’t want it to. You don’t have to sit there and swallow the PR; you can grab a frisbee and run around in the park instead. Moreover, it’s completely unfair to blame the Animal Collective themselves for their agent, or for their connections, or for the ‘net groupthink that their business managers and label folks at Domino Records were able to exploit. That’s what they’re there for: it’s all showbiz, and if you can get a little Lisztomania going, all the better for your clients. Metacritic junkies will be irritated to see the Collective tied with Charlotte Hatherley on this poll; I much prefer Hatherley and you might, too, but it’s not like she’s any more emotionally accessible than Avey Tare and Noah Lennox are. The backlash has become every bit as predictable and excessive as the hyperbole, and knowing industry people, I’ll bet you the backlash was an anticipated part of the hype. If you’re looking for a clear-headed alternative to the druggy electro-drum-circle that college rock is becoming, you might take my advice and engage with contemporary pop-punk. These emo kids may be annoying, but they’re not rhyming for the sake of riddling.
21.) Future Of The Left — Travels With Myself And Another (120)
22.) Mos Def — The Ecstatic (119)
23.) The XX — xx (118)
24.) The Harlem Shakes — Technicolor Health (114)
25.) A.C. Newman — Get Guilty (111)
26.) Say Anything — Say Anything (108)
27.) Art Brut — Art Brut vs. Satan (105)
28.) Lady Gaga — The Fame Monster (103)
29.) We Were Promised Jetpacks — These Four Walls (100)
30.) Real Estate — Real Estate (99)
30.) Atlas Sound — Logos (99)
Gosh, who invited Lady Gaga to the sausage fest? Check out this cacophany of white guys shouting: Lexy Beniam going over Niagara falls, Max Bemis reading aloud from his Chick tracts, studious Carl Newman touring the museum, terrified Adam Thompson of the Jetpacks howling about sinking ships and broken clocks and his refusal to investigate his attic, pugnacious Eddie Argos toasting his fellow drunks, agitated Andy Falkous shouting at the devil and muttering about prison movies. Nobody here but Romy Croft to keep the pop star company.
In ‘06, it looked as if rap music was mounting a poll comeback — Fishscale, Hell Hath No Fury, and The Game all made the top 20. Between them, Ghost and the Clipse scored 403 points that year. They both put out albums in 2009, too. Collective point total: 25. The highest scoring hip-hop album on this year’s Poll — Mos Def’s Ecstatic — sounds nothing like a contemporary American rap record. The big mainstream releases — Jay-Z, 50, Gucci Mane, Rick Ross, Snoop — went nowhere on the Poll. I have high hopes for Distant Relatives, the upcoming collaboration between Nas and Damian Marley; I hope people are still listening.
32.) Tori Amos — Abnormally Attracted To Sin (98)
33.) St. Vincent — Actor (95)
34.) Lights — The Listening (93)
34.) Passion Pit — Manners (93)
36.) Raekwon — Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2 (88)
37.) Screaming Females — Power Move (80)
37.) The Roadside Graves — My Son’s Home (80)
39.) Fever Ray – Fever Ray (76)
40.) Dear Landlord — Dream Homes (75)
40.) Amy X. Neuburg — The Secret Language Of Subways (75)
Ah, see, that’s where all the girls are hanging out. There’s a contingent of hardcore Tori Amos fans among Poll voters, and I should know, since I’ve chaired this committee in the past. But defections (to St. Vincent?) have taken their toll: The Beekeeper finished at #19 in ‘05, American Doll Posse at #21 in ‘07, and Abnormally Attracted To Sin slips to #32. The Antlers had the best polling debut, but I’m more excited about the emergence of Valerie “Lights” Poxleitner. Kelly Clarkson ought to do some of her songs (maybe “Face Up”?) and make everybody involved a zillion dollars.
The Roadside Graves and The Screaming Females may have left the basements and beer halls of Central Jersey behind, but the state’s backstreets still claim them both. Real Estate was our highest-polling local, though very little of their support came from Jersey. In any case, they all trounced famous out-of-towner Bruce Springsteen, whose 107th-place finish was his worst ever on a Critics Poll. Predictably, Garden State voters were most inclined to back Yo La Tengo; New Yorkers were disproportionately partial to The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. Also, there’s one every year — Bill Callahan only got five votes, but they were all #1s and #2s. (Correction! Matt Sirinides just wrote to remind me he had Callahan at #7. What can I say?, it was late at night and I read the number wrong. Just call me Joe Screw-up. I double-checked, and I was relieved to see that I’d counted the votes right.) Finally, I’d like to mention that I was both pleased and embarrassed by your votes for Let The Night Fall. I like it too, but c’mon, you know I can’t count those. Everybody already thinks I’m insufferably arrogant; why make a bad situation worse? I come in peace.
Other albums recieving #1 votes:
- A.A. Bondy — When The Devil’s Loose
- Alicia Keys – The Element Of Freedom
- A Place To Bury Strangers — Exploding Head
- Avett Brothers — I And Love And You
- Bill Callahan — Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
- Bobby Vacant & The Weary — Tear Back The Night
- Bob Dylan — Christmas In The Heart
- Crabs On Banjo — Siren Song Sycle
- Empire Of The Sun — Walking On A Dream
- Fall Of Efrafa — Inle
- Hockey — Mind Chaos
- Jeffrey Lewis — ‘Em Are I
- Joel Plaskett — Three
- Julie Doiron — I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
- K’naan — Troubadour
- Lily Allen — It’s Not Me, It’s You
- Love Songs — Another Guaranteed 40 Minute Music Set
- Lucero — 1372 Overton Park
- Marshmallow Coast — Phreak Phantasy
- Moore Bros. — Aptos
- MUSE — The Resistance
- Music Go Music — Expressions
- New York Dolls — Cause I Sez So
- Obits — I Blame You
- Regina Spektor — Far
- Rihanna — Rated R
- Slaughterhouse – Slaughterhouse
- Sunset Rubdown — Dragonslayer
- The Furious Seasons — Thank You For Saturday
- The Love Language — The Love Language
- The Winter Sounds — Church Of The Haunted South
- Toby Goodshank — Baked Naturals/Johnny’s Democracy
- Trembling Bells — Carbeth
- Windsor For The Derby — How We Lost
Okay, tune in tomorrow for singles, and the accompanying essay, Wednesday for miscellaneous categories, Thursday for my own ballot, and Friday for my closing thoughts.
Let The Night Fall will be released on Tuesday, December 8th, but the record release show won’t happen until a week and a half later. Maybe I’m a mysterious contrarian, or maybe I just want to give you some time to learn the new songs.
The release event will be held at Pianos (158 Ludlow Street) in Manhattan on Friday, December 18th. The still-unnamed Tris McCall band takes the stage at 9PM. I’m pleased to announce that Palomar will also be on the bill. We’re keeping it in the family, so to speak. I’ll be giving away copies of Let The Night Fall to all attendees. While supplies last, of course; they should last awhile. See you there?
I didn’t buy my first compact disc until I was 25 years old. I still don’t have an MP3 player. You could call me old-fashioned, or just idiotic. But I’m also concerned about reception, and I try as hard as I can to sequence and package my records thoughtfully. So if, in lieu of a stream of digital files, you want a physical copy of the Let The Night Fall CD, I’ll be thrilled to get you one.
Send seven dollars — check or cash, I don’t care — to:
Tris McCall
314 4th Street, #6
Jersey City, NJ 07302
I’ll put your copy in the mail immediately. Probably a cute note from me, too.
Or you can go to the music page and purchase yourself some space-age digital tracks. This absolves you of the responsibility of listening to the whole album: you can pick and choose the songs you want. Eventually, I’m going to have my entire back catalog available for track-by-track digital purchase, which pains me a little, but there’s no sense in fighting the future. I guess. Meanwhile, you can still get physical copies of Shootout At The Sugar Factory, If One Of These Bottles Should Happen To Fall, and I’m Assuming You’re All In Bands by writing to me.
For a limited time (and isn’t all time limited?), you can purchase any two Tris McCall albums for ten bucks. If you buy three, it’ll cost you $13. All four — the Tris McCall Grand Slam Package — will set you back a mere $15. Think of it as a box set, only without the box. Makes a great Christmas present for a disgraced politician.
Okay, that’s enough Billy Mays tribute for one crisp autumn morning. If you’re insolvent, or scraping out the bottom of the trust fund, OR if you’re just one of those “information wants to be free” types, drop me a line, and we’ll negotiate something. Since I’d rather spam my ideas all over the country than eat, I can’t imagine I’ll drive too hard a bargain.
It’s been two years in the making, and now it’s finally done. Let The Night Fall is different from other Tris McCall albums, and not just because all Tris McCall albums are different. As anybody who has ever worked with me will tell you, I am notoriously lax about standards: when in doubt, I churn it out, and leave it to you guys to tell me whether my confidence in my audience — and in myself — is misplaced. This time around, I actually applied some quality control. Whole takes were scrapped, parts were re-used; I forced myself to correct the mistakes I could and camouflage those I couldn’t. Rock law requires that all citizens of indie nation go for it, big time, at least once during their run. Here’s my shot at it: the best I had in the ranch.
Let The Night Fall is a classic piano pop-rock album, or as close to a classic piano pop-rock album as a wimpy, declasse Jersey smartass is likely to get. The sound and style of the record owes more to Steely Dan, Genesis, Elton John, Billy Joel, and Graham Parker than it does to anything fashionable. There are fewer rap references on this one, but all allusions to “Maybe I’m Amazed” and Plastic Ono Band are intentional. I’ve made no attempt to disguise my sources: I spent 2009 with “Carry On My Wayward Son” stuck in my head, and now my problem is yours. If you’re accustomed to the conventions of contemporary college rock, you might be taken aback (only momentarily, I hope) by what we’ve attempted here.
I wouldn’t have been able to make Let The Night Fall without the help of my friends, but Tris McCall & A Million Different people this is not. There are a few notable guest stars on the record — Mayor Healy helps out on the “Sunrise Route 7″ backing vocals, for instance! — but otherwise, expect the same loony cast of characters I’ve been foisting on you for the last few years. My Teenage Stride plays on one song; we traded instruments and did the title track as The Consultants. We reconstituted the rhythm section of KaPow! for a couple of cuts. The Overlord Community Choir decorates many of these tracks, and George helped me engineer three impromptu sessions (one in his kitchen). The fearsome Jun Takeshta stopped by Melody Lanes to take a legit heavy metal solo on “Midnight”. Matt Hyams of The Vitamen and Japan Seoul handles bass on a pair of songs, and Lelan Estes of Cropduster plays on four more. Matt Houser is all over the record, contributing his usual Houseriffic stuff. Travis Harrison at Serious Business committed some of the basics to (simulated) tape. It is Jay Braun’s customary job to impose a little order on the roiling chaos that is me; I am pleased to report that he discharged his responsibilities with characteristic poise, patience, and good judgment.
If you want to know who played what, I understand — I always want to, too. All the sleeve notes are tucked away elsewhere on this website. But for once, individual credits aren’t relevant: among other things, I attempted an honest self-appraisal on Let The Night Fall, and the album really does reflect what my life sounds like. If you’ve put up with me so far, I have to believe you’ll find the record endearing. As always, thank you for listening to these stories.
