ere's the annotated version of my non-classical DIDs. (This concept came from Radio 4's long-running programme of the same name.) As much as I love the ephemeral quality of the 7" single, I think great LPs should have entirely different artistic goals. In other words, LPs shouldn't necessarily be albums of immediately catchy series of songs simply compiled together. More often than not, they should be coherent musical statements that can establish themes, sentiments, or atmospheres which are sustained through the duration of the work. I would also like to point out that I hope no one would ever be forced to endure such an unspeakably cruel and unusual punishment of selecting merely ten records. If I were ever stranded on a desert island with only ten records, I'd rather blow my brains out and splatter it all over the place.

01 STAN GETZ/ JOÃO GILBERTO featuring ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM - Getz / Gilberto (M.G.M. 1964)
Producer: Creed Taylor. As the definitive bossa nova LP, with songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim and a young Phil Ramone on the boards, this game-changing record may actually be appropriate for a desert island. While it's only a little over 33 minutes, this album opened up entire new worlds for me, musically. I originally discovered this recording when an undergrad friend, Paul Martinez, inadvertently left his cassette tape copy of it in my portable stereo. Needless to say, it took me awhile to return his tape to him.

02 THE BEATLES - Revolver (Parlophone 1966)
Producer: George Martin. This one hit me when I was in grade 8. In spring of 1986, I had a serious bout of Beatlemania that virtually drove my parents crazy, even though they had originally introduced them to me. For about eight weeks, it was nothing but Beatles for me, day and night. If I wasn't listening to them, I was reading about them or talking about them. Although I had recovered, I'm still very much in love with them, and needless to say, it's rather difficult to make a selection from their catalogue. This coherent but still musically diverse and adventurous LP is from my favourite period of the Beatles. Unlike the bloated Sgt. Pepper which also used a wide variety of instruments, tapes, and experimentation, this one still rocked and actually sounded very disciplined and unpretentious. Somehow it feels tighter and meatier. Perhaps more than any other Beatles record, this one has the most distinctive sound, and most tracks on it don't resemble ones on any other record. "Tomorrow never knows," probably my favourite Beatles track, closes the album.

03 THE BEATLES - The Beatles (Apple 1968)
Producer: George Martin. Between these four sides, there's more than enough material assemble The Beatles' greatest LP. However, because of the fact that Revolver had better chosen songs and less filler, that record ultimately became my favourite. The White Album feels all over the place. It's uneven. Actually, there's a lot of crap here. With the exception of "Rocky Raccoon," Paul is in top form here. Oddly enough, John's contributions to this record are somewhat more mixed. On one hand, you've got some of The Beatles' best with his "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and "Dear Prudence," on the other, you get "Revolution 9", which may feel indulgent to many. Last but not least, George Harrison's contributions to this album are all quite strong. Points for the first truly stupendous album cover in the history of rock.

04 ROLLING STONES - Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones 1972)
Producer: The Glimmer Twins. This time it was in the ninth grade, and I pretty much went through the same fever for them as I did previously with the Beatles. Exile was the classic recorded-in-the-south-of-France album. This recording was one of the reasons why I fell for them. At the peak of their creative power, the Stones recorded so many astounding LPs between '68 and '72, starting with Beggar's Banquet, continuing with Let It Bleed in '69, Sticky Fingers in '71, and ending with this one. All these records were bluesy, daring, decadent, sleazy, somewhat dark in terms of themes, but ultimately all fun and very sexy. The Stones at their baddest. Mick was at his sexiest. Rock clichés were at their best. Think lots of endless lines of cocaine, heroin, fags, alcohol, groupies, hookers, orgies, trashed posh hotel rooms, the limousines, the private jets, the stadium tours. By the way, choosing this one was extremely difficult, especially considering that Beggar's was probably a more coherent work. However, there are four sides here instead of two, and what's on them are mostly awesome. Great house-cleaning record. Remember to play loud.

05 TALKING HEADS - Remain in Light (Sire 1980)
Producer: Brian Eno. This record still sounds pretty fresh today, and judging from the music alone would make it rather hard to tell when it was originally recorded. This is partly because the funky sound incorporating heavily from African polyrhythms and perhaps even Middle Eastern influences, flavoured by Jon Hassell. Along with Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, this LP helped to stimulate my interest in music from other parts of the world. Points for a cool sleeve by Tibor Kalman's M & Co.

06 BRIAN ENO - Ambient 4- On Land (Editions EG 1982)
Producer: Brian Eno. Like John Cage, Eno has taught me how to listen to music as well as the world around me. To compile this list, I faced a difficult choice between On Land and Music for Airports. Both releases are groundbreaking records with a timeless sound. (His ambient works from the 1970s haven't aged at all.) Like many of his ambient recordings, this is a LP which can be enjoyed on various levels. It can serve as discreet and pleasant background musical wallpaper which can be ignored when necessary. On the other hand, it can also be a complex work to be examined and deconstructed carefully and repeatedly with headphones. The hypnotic record was aimed to evoke a distinct sense of place, an imaginary environment defined by dense textures amid a somewhat ominous but beautiful sonic landscape punctuated by downright spooky passages. Similar to other releases in his ambient / discreet series, this record should be played at low volumes. It's also great with flu medication.

07 ROXY MUSIC - Avalon (EG 1982)
Producer: Rhett Davies and Roxy Music. Lester Bangs once derided Roxy as "the triumph of artifice," an unwitting compliment which may explain why Britain has traditionally managed to export complex, nuanced, or totally far-out, ironically-slanted, art-rock that most Americans often fail to appreciate. Along with Bowie and T. Rex, Roxy brought badly needed wit and glamour to the scruffy, provincial, and Neanderthal atmosphere that permeated the rock world in the eraly 1970s. Hell, we can still use a bit more glamour these days! Leading the glitter revolution, their album packaging even gave credits for hair, make-up, fashion, and art direction. When Roxy first broke, they were staggeringly alien, queer, and so very British. In fact, they could only have come out of Britain, and nowhere else. Being an avid Anglophile myself, I love them even more for it. On the other hand, Americans in the 1970s were still too dumb to understand or appreciate Roxy, and the public instead went crazy for the likes of the Eagles, Supertramp, Kiss, Alice Cooper, etc. To some extent, this is still the case; just compare the contents of Spin or Rolling Stone to NME or other British magazines. Pop music in America is still moribund. Anyway, pop music doesn't get any more polished than this record. Artistically evolving rapidly ever since their debut in 1972, Roxy went on to create some truly amazing records without contributions from Brian Eno. While many feel that this record was a betrayal of the experimentation of the early 1970s, Roxy was always about ever searching for new sounds and textures. This record was the culmination of all those years of evolution and refinement. On this record Bryan Ferry finally perfected his distinctive lush, broody, and very textured but still somewhat funky sound he pretty much has stayed with ever since. When listening to this you can't help but feel amazed by how smooth, perfect, and elegant everything is. It sounds quite posh. You might be in heaven.

08 BEASTIE BOYS - Paul's Boutique (Capitol 1989)
Producer: The Dust Brothers. Being an artsy fartsy teenager, I was initially annoyed with License to Ill, but this record won me over and made me a Beastie fanatic. This is the Sgt. Pepper of sampling (even though it's a much better record than Pepper). Immensely intriguing for pop culture junkies like me, this witty, bratty but literate, densely-textured, and eclectic sampling tour-de-force is a Beastie-LP you can actually dance to. This is the record that made me worship the Beasties as the gods they really are. With this psychedelic bouillabaisse, they earned their right as the ultimate arbiters of what's cool. It's kind of hard to explain exactly why, but Paul's Boutique is also one of those litmus tests (other examples being films like Raising Arizona and Blade Runner) where you play it to people to get their reactions to determine whether or not you want to be friends with them. I reckon this may have something to do with the fact that ultimately, it's a hip-hop record, albeit with as much 20th century pop culture crammed in as possible. While it's light years away from mainstream, gangsta hip-hop records in terms of the degree of wit, cultural literacy, and manic creativity utilised, it's nonetheless still a rap record. The Beasties don't sing on this record. Fortunately, hip-hop still offends parents and squares, even when performed by Jewish kids. Compared to almost any other genre on the music market, it's still not completely legit. Even people who think they're hipsters often avoid hip-hop like a plague. They may pretend to like the Beasties, but they would probably and quickly flee from any form of rap whenever they can. That's why ultimately hip-hop is so fucking cool. This is the way to be trangressively chic among your hipster friends. Oh yeah, great panoramic sleeve.

09 PET SHOP BOYS - Behaviour (Parlophone 1990)
Producer: Pet Shop Boys and Harold Faltermeyer. This is the album that turned me from mere enthusiastic fan of the Pet Shop Boys to an acolyte who considers them as a way of life. This collection may also be the first batch of songs which I actually identified with in terms of their lyrics. For instance, "This must be the place I waited years to leave" tells how I feel about my hometown in southern California when I left it for university. Partly because there aren't any immediately catchy hits on this record (except for 'So hard', which probably has the best bridge ever performed on a pop single), it took months after its initial release for me to fully appreciate this album, which unlike all other PSB records before or since, has a warm, subtle, quiet, shimmering feel of bubbling analogue synthesisers, as well as the familiar immaculately-produced sound. Contributions by Angelo Badalementi, the Balanescu Quartet, and Johnny Marr made this an even richer stew. All this seem quite apt for the melancholy themes conveyed in Behaviour: loss, grief, schoolboy angst, jealousy, and more loss. Achingly beautiful, the record became an understanding companion during my first semester away from home. Points for the minimalist Mark Farrow sleeve and packaging.

10 RADIOHEAD - OK Computer (Parlophone 1997)
Producer: Nigel Godrich and Radiohead. The Beatles notwithstanding, it's rather hard for me to acknowledge that my tastes sometimes match those of millions of people around the world. I guess I'm elitist, and I'm a bit ashamed to love things like American cheese, iceberg lettuce, or pop groups as popular as Radiohead. Great, I share the same taste as millions of idiots around the world. What's worse with being a Radiohead fan is that those millions of idiots out there who also like Radiohead probably think they're somehow smarter and more sophisticated than the average Joe. They think their music is somehow more serious and worthy. To me, that's much worse than sharing love for the likes of the Backstreet Boys. At least most of their fans don't consider what they're listening to as high art. Not only do I share musical preferences with millions of idiots, but also millions of highfalutin idiots who are putting on airs. That totally makes me sick. My life would be much simpler if I'm content with being just a Britney Spears or Westlife fan.

Anyway, it took me forever to like this one. ('Like' or even 'love' are such inadequate words to describe one's feelings toward this recording.) It seems that records that ultimnately prove to be the most worthwhile also demand the most (particularly patience) from the listener. Initially I was expecting "Creep" or perhaps even "Fake Plastic Trees." Nothing here is as immediately catchy, and I ignored it for months. I wasn't convinced. It was too prog rock for me. To me it simply wasn't good, tight pop music(like The Bends), and it remains that way. The record is indeed something else, a more sublime artifact. It's still a relatively difficult and pretentious record (technically, Parlophone had released it as a double vinyl album), and I'm not sure if I enjoy listening to it. However, its themes and scope will grow on you. Month after month, people always had great things to say about it. When I was a DJ at KALX and before I totally fell for the record, I used to just play the single "Karma Police" on the air, and I pretty much ignored the rest of the album. However, my wildly diverse colleagues at the station would always comment on how awesome the entire OK Computer was whenever they see me select the album for airplay. This was no small feat since musical tastes at the station are incredibly diverse and overwhelmingly indie. It's so rare that a major label record from a well-known mainstream rock band would attract such universal admiration from such a disparate group of people. Since the testimonials found in the media as well as from acquaintances whose opinions I respected were overwhelmingly positive, I decided to give it another try. I gave in to peer pressure. I subsequently made an effort to give it a serious consideration, and it stayed in my CD player for weeks. Then one day it suddenly hit me. I finally got it. As much as I love music, somehow I rarely connect with it on an emotional level (if ever, even when it comes to my favourite artists). Like that other record whoch took me forever to love (Behaviour), this record manages to do that somehow. Unlike any other record I have come across, this one has really struck a nerve. You revel in Thom's unrelenting nausea at our fucked-up world. It's a demanding work that demands a lot from you. Totally give in to it. In the end, you'll be glad you did.

ere are my next ten all-time favourite pop records, if you're curious.

13 February 2000

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