236. Bobby Bland: Call on Me
237. Bobby Bland: Ain't Nothin' You Can Do
238. "The Best of Bobby Bland"
239. Bobby "Blue" Bland: Sweet Vibrations
240. The Blasters
241. Blondie
242. Blondie: Parallel Lines
243. Blondie: Eat to the Beat
244. Blood on the Saddle
245. Bloodstone: Unreal
246. Bloodstone: Train Ride to Hollywood
247. The Bobby Bloom Album
248. Kurtis Blow
249. Kurtis Blow: Back by Popular Demand
Mixworthy: "Ain't Nothin' You Can Do," #237; "Hanging on the Telephone," #242;
"Shayla," #243; "Outside Woman," #245; "Montego Bay," #247.
No Kurtis Blow--as I've written before, the most famous early rap (which for me,
like for the great majority of white hip-hop fans, covers everything before Rais-
ing Hell and Licensed to Ill) generally goes right past me. It's either stuff like
"The Breaks" that just sounds really dated to me, or other stuff I've never heard
at all. And if I haven't heard it by now, there's a very good chance that hearing
it for the first time won't make a difference. I'm probably one of the few people
who believe that hip-hop has had a rather astonishing run of getting better and
better all the time. (Let me amend that: I'm one of the few people who write about
music who believes that. There are also the ten million teenagers who bought the 50
Cent album who'd agree.) The 97% of it that's useless is as bad right now as the
worst generic rock imaginable (and getting worse all the time), but the best hip-
hop songs in any given year always strike me as more exciting than the best hip-
hop songs from two or five years ago. "99 Problems" seems even more amazing than
"Get Ur Freak On," which was more amazing than "Fantastic Voyage," which was more
amazing than "It Takes Two," so on and so forth. (I left out "Work It," which was
so good it messes with my theory.) But to try to go back to "The Breaks" and mi-
raculously reimagine the context that made it so interesting and unusual in the
first place--well, I can’t do it. And, as I indicated earlier in connection to
the Beastie Boys, this is not a black/white thing, but rather a function of the
genre: Licensed to Ill sounds almost as dated to me as "The Breaks."
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250. Blow Monkeys: Forbidden Fruit
251. Blow Monkeys & Kym Mazelle: "Wait" 12-inch
252. Blue Jays: Lover's Island
253. Blue Magic
254. Blue Magic: The Magic of the Blue
255. Blue Oyster Cult: Agents of Fortune
256. Blues Magoos: Psychedelic Lollipop
257. Blurt: "White Line Fever" 12-inch
258. Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans: Phil Spector Wall of Sound Vol. 2
259. BoDeans: Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams
260. Bohannon: Insides Out
261. Bohannon: Dance Your Ass Off
262. Bohannon: On My Way
263. Bohannon: Too Hot to Hold
Mixworthy: "Lover's Island," #252; "Sideshow," #253; "(Don't Fear) The Reaper,"
#255; "Queen of My Nights," #256; "My Heart Beats a Little Faster," #258; "Disco
Stomp," #260. Despite what I said earlier about not taking the time to recheck
individual songs, now and again I cheat--had to refresh my memory on the Blue Jays
and Blues Magoos. "Queen of My Nights" is a really pretty "Louie Louie" rip, a
garage-band equivalent of Suicide's "Cheree." Garage bands doing ballads are as
inherently funny as 50 Cent doing ballads.
I once saw Blurt open up for someone at the Concert Hall in the early '80s--likely
either New Order or Public Image. They were, to borrow a phrase from either Bangs
or Christgau, very, very skronky. "White Line Fever" was either their Jan-Michael
Vincent or Ted Nugent tribute, I can't remember which...As great as "(Don't Fear)
The Reaper" is, it's never the first thing I think of when I hear Blue Oyster Cult
mentioned. That would be Damone in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: "No, I don't have
any Blue Oyster Cult. Where were you last week? I was that close to workin' at
7-11..."
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264. Gary U.S. Bonds: Dance 'til Quarter to Three With U.S. Bonds
265. Gary U.S. Bonds: U.S. Bonds Greatest Hits
266. Gary U.S. Bonds: Dedication
267. Boney M: Nightflight to Venus
268. Bongos: Numbers With Wings
269. Sean Bonniwell: The Bonniwell Music Machine
270. Bonzo Dog Band: The Best of the Bonzo's
271. Book of Love
272. Book of Love: Lullaby
273. Chuckii Booker: Chuckii
274. Booker T. & the M.G.'s: Greatest Hits
275. Pat Boone: Moonglow
276. Pat Boone: I'll See You in My Dreams
277. 15 Hits of Pat Boone
Mixworthy: "I Touch Roses," #271; "Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls" and "With a Little
Love," #272; "Time Is Tight," #274. The Booker T. album covers the late '60s, so
no "Green Onions," else I'd list that too. I don't know if Book of Love are under-
rated--whenever they are mentioned, it's by someone who thinks highly of them--but
they're definitely all but forgotten 20 years later.
Sean Bonniwell was in the Music Machine, as you might guess from #269's title. Hard
to believe, but I had never heard "Talk Talk" even once until I downloaded a best-
of a few months ago. I don't really like it all that much, but they did a great
"Cherry, Cherry"...One person reading this will understand what I mean when I say
that in another place and at another time, I would have felt pressure to say some-
thing about Boney M. I'm very glad that pressure is gone. It was a lot for anyone
to handle. Free at last, free at last--God almighty, free at last.
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278. Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Lonely Avenue
279. David Bowie: Hunky Dory
280. David Bowie: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders
From Mars
281. David Bowie: Pin Ups
282. David Bowie: Station to Station
283. David Bowie: Changesonebowie
284. David Bowie: Low
285. David Bowie: Changestwobowie
286. The Best of the Box Tops
287. Boy George: Sold
288. Boys: Message From the Boys
289. Brains: Electronic Eden
290. Anthony Braxton: For Trio
291. The Best of Bread
Mixworthy: "Kooks" and "Queen Bitch," #279; "Hang On to Yourself" and "Suffragette
City," #280; "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs," #283; "Make It With You" and "Every-
thing I Own," #291. I once put the Boys' "Dial My Heart" on a year-end list, but I
overrated a lot of bubblegummy dance-pop through the late '80s, as people will some-
times do when they've experienced (or think they've experienced) a moment of great
clarity--see Black Flag entry. No need for such reevaluation of Bread's simpy early-
70s folk-pop, however, which obviously continues to cast a giant shadow over the pop
landscape.
The '70s...My convoluted and ever-evolving stance on David Bowie has become a run-
ning joke between Scott Woods and myself. It involves me expending a lot of energy
explaining why David Bowie is one of the most pompous and laughable people who has
ever walked the face of the Earth, and then once every year or so, I experience a
moment of great clarity and announce that such-and-such by Bowie is the most sub-
lime pop song ever, even though I’ve now realized that he's even more pompous and
laughable than I thought he was before. Or something like that--even I'm not sure
anymore. We've gone through this with "Kooks," "Hang On to Yourself," and "Rebel
Rebel," with "Queen Bitch" added to the list after I saw The Life Aquatic With Steve
Zissou a couple of weeks ago. I mean, really—-he's awful...The Anthony Braxton cover
art is worth the price of admission. I'm hoping I can find an image somewhere on-
line to post, but no luck so far. It's like a slightly less cogent version of Matt
Damon's blackboard scribblings in Good Will Hunting. Very good teaching aid: frac-
tions, plane geometry, abstract art, possibly even Egyptian hieroglyphics as part
of the grade 5 Ancient Civilizations unit.
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292. Breaking Circus: The Very Long Fuse
293. Here's Teresa Brewer
294. Brides of Funkenstein: Funk or Walk
295. Brides of Funkenstein: Never Buy Texas From a Cowboy
296. The Brigade: The Dividing Line
297. Johnny Bristol: Bristol's Creme
298. Britny Fox
299. The Brood
300. Arthur Brown: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
301. Bobby Brown: Don't Be Cruel
302. Clifford Brown: The Quintet Vol. 1
303. Clifford Brown and Max Roach: Pure Genius Volume One
304. Dennis Brown: Love Has Found Its Way
305. Foxy Brown: Foxy
Mixworthy: I had "Every Little Step" (#301) high on the same year-end as the Boys'
"Dial My Heart," and even though the joy and youth and sense of self-discovery that
made that record so exciting at the time have probably been, uh, compromised some-
what by Bobby Brown's decade-long mutation into Bobby Blake, I'll give it a pass.
Beyond that, I'm coming up empty. Britny Fox’s haircuts are worth preserving in
some format or another.
Great opening in the liner notes for Arthur Brown: "At first--with Arthur Brown
being lowered by crane on to the stage--it looked like just another piece of zani-
ness. But..." "At first?" "But?" Where could this possibly be headed? Some place
that involves the word "fastish." God save the queen, the fastish regime.