Music geek alert: "All Songs" Best of 2009

I'm a music geek but the four folks behind NPR's "All Songs Considered" are geeks beyond all measurement. I say that with love.

That geekiness is in evidence in "ASC's" best-of 2009 podcast, which includes some fun categories like biggest surprise, best artists not previously featured on "ASC," and more. You'll likely hear lots of great music for the first time. You'll also hear the four hosts fawning over more than a few little-known artists/poets, so much so I wondered whether they were purposely ruling out top nods to anyone who ever had a sniff of commercial radio, let alone a mainstream magazine article.

Overall, I found this year's "ASC" choices soft. Too much mopey soft pop-rock and not enough bite and volume. Co-host Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney fame, offered up one of the few songs with an electric guitar, but even she seemed to favor the more acoustic stuff.

More in line with my tastes is the All Songs Considered Listener Picks, which are not so far afield and which have a bit more bite overall.

Music criticism at its worst

Oh my goodness, what a weird trip.

Just got through listening to an audiobook version of “Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis,” Warren Zanes’ installment in the “Thirty Three and a Third” series of books in which people of note examine classic albums.

Zanes, best known as a member of the early 80s country-punkers Del Fuegos and currently a suit at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, idolizes this famous Southern soul album, in which the diva Springfield collides with the rough power of 1968 Memphis.

So far, so good.

Unfortunately, his examination of the album ends almost as soon as it starts. 

Zanes offers up some great background on the factors fueling an amazing album (including Jerry Wexler and Chip Moman’s production mastery) but for the most part, he’s is off on a variety of head-scratching tangents. Zanes fancies himself as a seasoned interpretative historian but I felt as if someone had slipped me some bad Hunter S. Thompson outtakes.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The Rock N Roll Hall of Fame seems to welcome self-indulgent tripe. 

"You're Gonna Miss Me"

“You’re Gonna Miss Me” is a terrific documentary capturing the ups and downs of Roky Erickson, whose stardom with The 13th Floor Elevators quickly devolved into drugs and schizophrenia.

The movie is harsh, capturing a dazed Erickson living in squalid conditions with his mother, who seems equally disconnected from reality. The father and four other brothers are equally bitter and troubled, although one brother -- a successful classical musician -- gains legal custody of Roky, only to then experience his own financial and emotional challenges in trying to “restore” the Roky of old.

It’s like watching a train wreck: painful to see but hard to look away. I'll never listen to "You're Gonna Miss Me" -- a classic garage rocker -- the same way again.