It is a sunny day here, warm, and I am happy to report that I am feeling better all the time, and also that my pitch at 33 1/3 is doing well, in that no one has said anything against it yet; indeed people have said they would buy it, which is very nice!

Here are the books I would like to see published, (along with my own, of course):

Blondie - Parallel Lines

Boston - Boston

Fleetwood Mac - Tusk

Aretha Franklin - I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You

Husker Du - Flip Your Wig

Kraftwerk - Computer World

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Queen - Flash Gordon

The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional

(and if they could sneak it in, Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom - I would also like Scott Walker, but don't know what album of his is best to write about yet...)

I don't know if any of these will be published: so much depends on what they figure will sell, the pitches themselves (I am assuming they are all good), etc. (Ten bonus points to anyone who can figure out why I picked that Queen album as opposed to A Night at the Opera, which was also suggested.)

And now, ten albums I would be happy to see pitched that weren't:

13th Floor Elevators, Easter Everywhere

ABC, The Lexicon of Love

Half Man Half Biscuit, Back in the DHSS

The Human League, Dare

Laura Nyro, New York Tendaberry

Run-DMC, Run-DMC

Simple Minds, Sons and Fascination

Sloan, Twice Removed

Stereolab, Emperor Tomato Ketchup

Zombies, Odessey and Oracle

(with apologies to Kid Koala, Eric's Trip, Pet Shop Boys, Act, and most of all Chic, who deserve a book most of all)...

Ah, New Pop. It is so heroic; so big; when I am resting, up to nothing, I think about it. If the Trojan Horse metaphor holds, then there is the first polite knocking on the door (or if you're Adam Ant, two drummers) and then the convincing...it's a gift! No really! Sure you have room! It goes with everything you have already, and it's perfect!...

...and then, of course, the wait. The things that emerged were distracting, arresting, taking the old and new and peripheral and putting them together so they were glamourous and overwhelming. No two were alike, though they had much in common, and after the first wave there were of course those who tried to imitate them, as in the original story when the Trojans dressed as the Greeks to sneak up on them and attack them at close range (it's in Virgil!)...but the New Pop people did not have the ranks of the Greeks, the sheer numbers...

...but like a thorn or thistle, they stuck. Some mutated slightly, but they simply refused to give in, go away. To be let in the door is one thing; to persist is heroic. Even as regular pop music once again gained ground, the New Pop ethic remained, sneaking in when least expected.

So, what was gained? It's not like very much fundamentally changed, after all...

...well, three things: first, that sense given to pop music (via punk) that with enough punctum, anything was possible. This is the hardest thing to get across to labels, who only want things they know will already sell...but it is out there...

...next, lyrics - hard to generalize, I know, but there is something serious and questioning about the lyrics, no matter how they are handled. Cliches are turned against themselves, there is little ease - sometimes it is done by deconstruction, sometimes direct proclamation. New Pop does not do what some want it to do - to be tame, domestic, easily understandable. It is poetical, sexual, extreme...

...and that is because of the singers. I would happily argue that some of the greatest singers, voices, of the 20th century found a home in New Pop; mischievous, octave-jumping, walls of sound all by themselves; seductive, sometimes cutely so but never in teasing way; near-hysterical or deadpan, technically skilled or amateur, it didn't matter - the voices in New Pop could make anyone sit up and take notice, like lightning, a rainbow, a strong bracing refreshing wind...