My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (5) Graceland - Paul Simon

[This is the sixth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Paul Simon followed up Hearts and Bones – the biggest flop of his career - with Graceland, which catapulted his star beyond even the heights he experienced as Art Garfunkel's secret mustache. The album was recorded in apartheid-era South Africa in an act of apolitical musical outreach; it nonetheless drew the ire of the UN and ANC, each of whom condemned Simon's breach of the prevailing cultural embargo. The album's mythology is subsumed by its political context, to which the virtual entirety of the official making-of documentary Under African Skies is devoted. As usual, this unfortunately glosses over what made the album truly special to begin with. Graceland was not only the original mainstream world fusion album, it remains unsurpassed 3 decades later in pure vitality. Paul Simon emerged from his messy divorce from Carrie Fisher with a remarkable, incisive set of lyrics, delivered in some of the best performances of his career. The music, meanwhile, was carefully edited down (mostly) from studio jams directed by Simon himself. These infuse the proceedings with a palpable feeling of discovery: that of an already accomplished artist being exposed, in real time, to an entirely fresh musical vocabulary. And indeed, many of the album's most magical moments are borne of instruments alone, from the storied accordion-and-drums opening bars to the ethereal coda of "Under African Skies." (It helps that he found musicians to perform with so uniformly outstanding as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and bassist Bakithi Kumalo.) Graceland remains touching at such a remove from the collapse of apartheid because it's simultaneously a man's lonely journey through personal turmoil and his being opened up to new, reinvigorating worlds of experience. It remains not only the pinnacle of Paul Simon's career, but an enduring testament to our shared humanity.

254-54 (82.4675%)

The 2017 Warriors were a hyperbolic sportswriter's dream: the first apparent champions in league history simultaneously good enough to ruin basketball and bad enough to be beaten by just about every previous title winner. Of course, the year's storylines were dominated by Kevin Durant's arrival from Oklahoma City. When the season ended on Monday in a second title in three years, the Warriors had tallied more wins in three seasons than any prior team, completed the winningest playoff run in league history, and most remarkably of all, capped a season in which they won 67 games almost as an afterthought. Throughout the year, fans and columnists nationwide downplayed Durant and his team, whose accomplishments invariably would be sullied by their audacious choice to mutually improve. History may bear these arguments out. Several points are nonetheless worth considering in the meantime.

KD

Kevin Durant's decision to join the Warriors was predicated on the team's culture and style of play, both of which are built primarily around selflessness. [1] In the better part of a decade spent as the NBA's preeminent bridesmaid, Oklahoma City failed to add the talent of three future Hall of Famers up to even the sum of its parts, much less anything greater. The Thunder ran a system so impossibly static that pundits somehow felt obligated to ask if consummate teammate Kevin Durant would prove able to share the basketball. Unleashed in Oakland, Durant revealed the breadth of his offensive talents with an efficiency unknown even to him, all while emerging as one of the league's most versatile lockdown defenders. Though he publicly credited Draymond Green and the coaching staff with improving his defensive approach, Durant plainly benefitted from being surrounded by an offense able – and more importantly, willing – to facilitate for him. Freed to take as few as seven field goal attempts in a game (if not called on for more), Durant hounded passing lanes and guarded the basket with ferocity. That a past MVP and 7-time All-Star even had a next level is shocking enough; Durant was wise to recognize the untapped potential few others would dared to have suggested existed.

The Warriors

The aforementioned questions about whether or not Kevin Durant could fit into the Warrior system were put to rest within weeks of his taking the court. Those who did find fault with the Warriors agreeing to sign Durant were concerned less with Xs-and-Os and more with the team's unwillingness to man up and win on their own terms. Though this argument fails to ring quite true in light of past contenders who acquired superstars in successful pursuit of a missing piece (e.g., Malone, Rodman, or even Love), it's worth considering that with the exception of LeBron James [2], KD is the greatest player in history acquired by free agency. It's better, then, to think of the move as the obvious culmination of what I already described two years ago as the best roster engineering in basketball. Since the 2012 Draft in particular, Bob Myers and the rest of the front office have nearly a perfect track record in free agency, drafts, and trades. 2017's roster changes exemplified these decisions even beyond the obvious choice of signing Durant. David West replaced Mo Speights seamlessly. Zaza Pachulia provided the team a body in the low post when it was needed. Most impressively, JaVale McGee joined Shaun Livingston on the Warriors' reclamation list of players who finally reached the potential that the league had seemingly been robbed of. Even if Durant was Bob Myers' (and Draymond Green's) masterstroke, it would not have been possible had not Myers already created the NBA's best working environment – a team whose dynamic (and potential) was so clearly worth enduring an entire year of unrelenting criticism from most people in the world of basketball.

NBA History

11 teams have won NBA titles since 1980. Prior to these Warriors' first title, in the preceding 35 years the trophy had belonged to only 9 teams. 6 franchises traded titles in 31 out of 35 of those years; in other words, correcting for what amounted to anomalies, the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, Bulls, Spurs, and Heat had averaged 5.17 championships apiece within recent memory. Remarkably, in their quest to destroy parity within basketball, the Warriors and Cavaliers have slightly improved an average franchise's historical likelihood of winning a title. That, of course, is a meaningless but suggestive statistic. It's more telling to think back on the emotional legacy of recent decades of professional basketball. The 1980s belonged to Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers, more or less alone. Literal-minded fans might point to the titles of the Bad Boy Pistons or the '83 76ers [3]; few would even claim to think about the unfulfilled potential of young Hakeem's Rockets or anyone else. The 1990s belonged to the Bulls, and anyone claiming to wish that Michael Jordan hadn't skipped baseball and played in more NBA Finals is either an Orlando Magic fan or a liar. [4] Dominance in basketball is not only old news, it's one of the most cherished aspects of the sport's lore. What's easy to forget is that it didn't feel that way at the time: take the immortal Bulls, whose 72 win season was partially explained away in 1996 as a byproduct of expansion, or MJ himself, who stopped receiving MVPs only because people grew tired of him winning every year.

My takeaway from the above, as an openly biased fan enjoying his just desserts after 2 decades of unrelenting mediocrity, is that these Warriors are good for basketball. They have unlocked the full potential of three generational talents [5] and nearly a dozen other high-caliber players. Their managers and coaches have in every other respect enabled one of the most overwhelming runs in the history of American sport. And between them all, they have shown the way towards a brand of basketball befitting the unprecedented levels of talent and athleticism with which the NBA finds itself endowed. It would benefit both non-Warrior fans and the sport itself if other teams across the league found a way to follow suit; in the meantime, the Warriors fully deserve to reap what they have sown.

"Kind of Blue" and Album Sequencing

Previous posts have detailed my interest in musical formats and the effort put into programming music to the structures of those media. In this, the LP reigned supreme, as both the longest-lived format of aural media and – having a flip side – the one most obviously allowing for divvying up music thematically. Famous examples include the symmetrical halves of Led Zeppelin IV and the asymmetrical halves of What's Going On; the Abbey Road medley and the Purple Rain live suite. An example less frequently discussed is an album I've often referenced, yet somehow never written about in detail.

Kind of Blue was released in 1959 to warm (if less than overwhelming) critical and commercial success. It has sold continuously since then and become universally acclaimed. At least 260 variants of Kind of Blue have been released worldwide, yet bizarrely few have done full justice to the album's potential. All releases until 1992 were mastered with Side A at the incorrect speed and pitch, while most releases since 1997 have tacked the excellent alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" immediately after the original, creating substantial redundancy in a fairly short album. Thankfully, Kind of Blue is now widely available as a 5-track album with all songs playing at their intended speed. The results are sublime, substantiating Jimmy Cobb's famous assertion that the album "must have been made in heaven."

In earthly terms, Kind of Blue was made at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over two recording dates, on March 2 and April 22, 1959. Side A includes – in order – the album's most famous, most catchy, and most controversial tracks. This at first would not appear to leave much for the flip side to lay claim to. What's more, the tracks were arranged by recording date rather than theme, with Side A recorded on March 2, and Side B (mostly) on April 22; little effort was put into sequencing, as was the industry standard in the late 50s. Yet despite being less famous pieces dropped on the end of what was recorded as just another album, "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches" form the centerpiece of the medium's most indispensable document.

"All Blues" is the longest track on Kind of Blue, and was by all accounts one of the most difficult to record, with a pulsating foundation that called for more than 11 minutes of precision from the rhythm section. Solos lead off with Miles Davis, followed by Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. Each is a master class in effortless playing, with Adderley in particular constraining his boundless energy for his coolest moment on the record. Davis, as usual, delivers an impeccable solo, but steals the show with the coda, returning after an already perfect 11 minutes for a subtle final brushstroke. During and after his lifetime, Miles Davis was set apart from other musicians by a magic that was difficult to pinpont: something that extended beyond his musical sensibilities, his understated technical prowess, or even his legendary cool. This master's touch allowed Davis to consistently assemble the greatest bands in jazz, and elevate even the most familiar standards to new heights. It is nowhere in greater evidence on record than as he guides "All Blues" to a close.

"Flamenco Sketches" sustains its predecessor's atmosphere while dropping its insistent pulse. It epitomizes not only the sound of Kind of Blue, but the mood synonymous with its name. Solos are by Davis, Coltrane, Adderley, Evans, and Davis again. This time, the spotlight belongs to Coltrane, who delivers likely the most pensive solo of his storied career, and among the most beautiful. By the time Evans and Davis have completed their solos, the tune is floating on air, and the album dissolves into the ether off of Jimmy Cobb's drum kit.

Serendipity (or divine intervention) is frequently credited in the Kind of Blue narrative. Admittedly, the circumstances were near ideal: Davis' first great quintet, including his all-time most famous collaborator, playing in jazz's greatest recording studio with Bill Evans as a special guest. Yet it was only with protracted effort that Miles Davis assembled that quintet, and it was specifically for his modal album that he included Evans – a pianist whose impressionist tendencies informed not only the band's ability to tackle the music, but even the liner notes. Fortune's greatest contribution to the finished product may ultimately have been the track order. Within a decade of the album's release, Kind of Blue was on its way to canonization, and consciously arranging LPs had become a major focus in jazz and beyond. Intentionally or otherwise, Kind of Blue's sequencing set an example for every album to follow.

Out of Print Gems: David Hentschel - "Startling Music"

Ringo Starr made his name as the odd Beatle out, pushing through only 2¼ songwriting credits on Beatle albums and playing the lovable loser in all four of the band's non-documentary films. Yet it was Ringo who burst out of the gates to commercial success following the band's dissolution. Armed with a bevy of songs co-written with (or ghostwritten by) his former bandmates – all of whom he alone remained more or less friends with – Ringo routinely charted both albums and singles in the US and UK Top 10 through the end of 1974. In 1975, at the height of his commercial success, Starr followed George Harrison's lead and founded his own record label, Ring O'Records. The label persisted through 1978 but suffered from distribution problems throughout, with releases being handled by Capitol, Polydor, or no one at all. Coupled with Starr's worsening substance abuse and declining commercial prospects, these logistical hurdles meant that only 11 artists would ever record for Ring O'Records, producing a total of 7 LPs and 17 singles.

The label's first release, an LP by British recording engineer David Hentschel, stands as the most meta release in the notably self-referential Beatle universe: a complete instrumental cover of Ringo's most successful album (Ringo), released as Ring O'Records 2320 101 under the punny title Startling Music. Recorded after (but released before) Paul McCartney's instrumental Thrillington, Startling Music is otherwise a unique entry in the extended Beatle discography. Hentschel himself, in addition to having engineered such albums as All Things Must Pass, was a talented synth artist with playing credits including the overture to "Funeral for a Friend" and parts on five Genesis albums. While his friendship with Harrison led him to Starr's record label, his other connections within the industry enabled guest drumming from future bandmate Phil Collins and other instrumental work by session insider Ronnie Caryl.

Startling Music is described in the album credits as an "interpretation of the album Ringo," which may be understatement. Where Thrillington was a fairly straight ahead, semi-classical cover, Startling Music is in fits jazzy and funky, but first and foremost, a prog album worthy of its Genesis pedigree. Even the most faithful cover – Ringo's signature solo hit, "Photograph" – is preceded by a Baroque toccata lasting 3:20. Collins is credited with drums/percussion on 6 of the 11 tracks and is tight throughout, while Caryl's guitarwork amplifies the already bombastic arrangements to impressive heights. Ringo himself contributed little to the album and is only credited with finger snaps on "Step Lightly." Nonetheless, thanks largely to the strong melodies inherited from him, Startling Music holds up nicely, even for those unfamiliar with the original album.

Following the collapse of Ring O'Records, the entire catalog fell out of print, dragging Startling Music down with it. Today it stands (along with the first four Splinter albums) as one of the rare projects tied directly to a Beatle to be commercially unavailable. Like Splinter's rich discography, Startling Music deserves and would benefit from a remaster and rerelease; until then, you can download it here.

1990-91 NBA Hoops

The Michael Jordan 90s were an exciting time to be growing up a basketball fan - even a Warriors fan - and basketball card collecting swept through my class around the time we hit 10 years old. I had two regular haunts for buying cards in the late 90s, both of them in the Inner Sunset. The first went out of business not long after I started collecting there, and was soon replaced by the original Craigslist office. Prior to shuttering its doors, this shop had sold an up-to-date inventory that supplied me with nearly all the contemporary cards I owned. My other supplier was down the block, an odds and ends purveyor called the Oriental Art Gallery (profiled here). Unlike the competition it left behind, the Oriental Art Gallery was a cluttered, dimly-lit room with a smell characterized only slightly more by incense than by old merchandise. Untouched by time, sports and entertainment cards from the late 80s were sold as though they'd been released the week before. (See photo - as of 2016, they still are!) My favorite set was 1990-91 NBA Hoops: stately in gray arches on the face, with well-selected stats and biographical trivia on the reverse. The rosters, too, were fascinating to look back on even then, with Dream Teamers suiting up alongside the kind of lumbering relics who within a decade would have no place in the NBA.

At some point, I stopped collecting basketball cards, but the gray arches and soon obsolete team logos were never far from my mind. I recently decided to look into rebuying 1990-91 NBA Hoops and found the whole set on eBay for $8. With the help of the internet, I learned about the set's many variants and oddities. The most notable is #223: Sam Vincent, then playing for the Orlando Magic at the tail end of an unremarkable 7 year career. Hoops' first version of the Vincent card featured a photo taken during a home game against the Bulls, which happened to be the Valentine's Day, 1990 game in which Michael Jordan's jersey was stolen prior to tipoff; the first and only time Jordan wore #12 is immortalized on the obverse of the card. For unknown reasons, this first version of the Vincent card was discontinued and replaced with a generic photo of Vincent dribbling. Other formatting errors and variations are less substantial, and the different versions of each vary in rarity.

In addition to the core 440 cards in the set, Hoops produced an unnumbered All-Rookie Team card featuring David Robinson on the face receiving his Rookie of the Year award, along with four other standout rookies on the reverse: legends Vlade Divac and Tim Hardaway, plus Pooh Richardson and Sherman Douglas. The card was available only by a mail-in offer on the back of packs of cards. The offer expired on July 30, 1991. Two card variants exist - one with only pictures of the four additional rookies on the reverse, and one with abbreviated rookie year stats added for each of the five featured players. The latter is less common. Like all other cards in the set, either version of this one registers just a tick above valueless.

Two additional sets of oddities exist, as well. The first includes a variety of uncut strips or sheets of (typically unnumbered) cards given away at games as promotional items. One example was a Taco Bell promotion at the LA Forum, which paired several sets of 3-card strips with a mail-in sweepstakes coupon for Laker tickets or Taco Bell prizes. This contest ran from January 28 to February 28, 1991. The second was a series of 58 Announcer cards, produced in unknown quantities and distributed to the announcers themselves and friends of the company as favors. These are especially uncommon, and uniquely for the set, demand high prices when they do surface.

Acquiring these cards 15+ years after I first collected them has been very enjoyable. On a personal level, it's allowed me to revisit a wonderful facet of my childhood and some of the unusual aspects of San Francisco that are slowly (and sadly) fading away. The observational experience has been similar from the perspective of a lifelong basketball fan: it's a game, and a culture, that for better and for worse has irrevocably changed.

The 1990-91 NBA Hoops set can be seen here. (Images will be added sporadically as I complete the scans.)

The Beatles - "Live at the Hollywood Bowl"

The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl was always the black sheep of the band's core catalog, recorded live at an outdoor stadium at a time when recording equipment struggled to capture live music and pop artists - with one exception - didn't play stadiums. Reviews focused on the audience's continuous wall of screams, melodramatically describing the sound quality as bordering on unlistenable. In reality the Beatles' only sanctioned live album was an invaluable addition to the catalog, proudly (if roughly) showing off the tight, confident rock and roll band that John Lennon, even after the breakup, couldn't resist bragging about.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl is the absolute realization of the material's potential [1]. Sourced from different tapes than the 1977 LP, these digitally manipulated recordings miraculously present a sound that wasn't available to anyone at the Hollywood Bowl, including - or especially - the Beatles. The spacing between instruments, vocals, and crowd noise is comparable to a modern-day equivalent. Giles Martin, in his first solo venture as the Beatles' producer, accomplished what his late father's 1977 liner notes lament having been technically impossible at the time. What has been released in that worthy album's place is the definitive aural document of Beatlemania, preserving the impact of the screams with, at last, less input from the screams themselves.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (6) The Joshua Tree - U2

[This is the fifth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

U2 have always been searchers. Reviews of the band's albums, positive and negative alike, tend to touch on the sense of yearning that pervades the music. It's likely this very restlessness that lends the group its defining peculiarity: no band has ever put out so many great albums without producing any back-to-back. The Joshua Tree is the quintessential U2 album, not because it's definitively their best - Achtung Baby is at least as good - but because it features the band distilling this essence most successfully. The Unforgettable Fire sessions had expanded U2's palate, but most of the resulting music suffered from a lack of structure. Rattle and Hum, meanwhile, featured a bombast that lands on the album's anthemic highlights, but otherwise comes off as obnoxious. The Joshua Tree sharpens the atmospherics of its predecessor while withholding on self-indulgence just enough to almost never become unctuous [1]. Each band member gets a showcase: Bono sings to rafters on "Red Hill Mining Town," Adam Clayton's groove sets the album in motion on "Where the Streets Have No Name," and Larry Mullen Jr.'s thunderous drumming is the high point of "Bullet the Blue Sky." The Edge, meanwhile, dominates The Joshua Tree. The shimmering arpeggios of "Where the Streets Have No Name" were expressly designed to be the ultimate U2 riff, and the claim has stood the test of eight subsequent albums. He almost single-handedly provides the songs with their atmospheres, summoning dread on "Exit," rapture on "Trip Through Your Wires," and (naturally) yearning on "With or Without You" - a song prudently chosen as the lead single, and one that ultimately couldn't help but become the band's signature composition. It was perfectly in character for Bono to announce "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," but The Joshua Tree represents perhaps the only time that U2 ever did just that. Fortunately for everyone else, it wasn't long before they felt compelled to return once more to the drawing board.