Poultry In Motion - A Column By John Moe

See I’ve been very very busy working on this column. Sure it’s taken until late January when most of these came out a month ago, but my task is a heady one. I have become so sick of all these self-righteous music critics putting together their top ten lists or top 100 or top million lists of the 90’s or the century or the millennium and all. I found that the problem with these lists were that they were just following popular opinion all the time! I mean, come on people! There is better music out there than the stupid crap that is fed to you by the US Government operating in a secret Satanic cult including Steve Forbes, Rolling Stone magazine, and the Dixie Chicks. But where are you going to hear about it? Well, my friend, here is where. Where? Here? Huh? Yeah! Really? Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

The Poultry in Motion All-Millennium Top Ten Bestest Music List

10. Kajagoogoo – Demo tape. Long before the runaway (read: sellout city) success of "Too Shy", Limahl and the boys recorded a blistering 3 song demo that you could only get if you were part of the in-crowd early 80’s new wave pop scene. With tight melodies, killer hooks, and stirring lyrics, you could almost hear the hair. It was that good. I know that most of you will never hear this tape. So you’ll have to trust me.

9. Poignant Otter – Look At Me. The ragtag boys and girls of Poignant Otter have put together a phenomenal album currently only available in Bahrain. Only three and a half copies were made of this record but it’s one of the most important pieces of music ever. And you will never hear it.

8. The Quarrymen – Home recording. It would be years before the Beatles would perform and a young McCartney and Lennon were palling around Liverpool in their skiffle group, The Quarrymen. In a spare room, they made a semi-formed pastiche of two nearly completed songs interrupted only by their own inability to remember the words and Paul’s mum telling them to keep it down. Much better than anything made by those sell-out whores, The Beatles.

7. Backstreet Boys – Millennium. Honestly.

6. Aerosmith – Blarghhh (answering machine message). All the energy, nihilism, and out of control party atmosphere that WAS rock in the late 70’s is crystallized in this rambling 38-second message. In this recording, a confused Steven Tyler asks for either a new direction in life or a taco (experts are still divided over which).

5. The Theoretical Pairing of Woody Guthrie and Elvis – first album. The free-wheeling sex appeal and country-meets-blues twang of a young Elvis Presley provided a dynamic counterpoint to the beautiful folk melodies of our guitar-slinging poet laureate in this exciting combination that never actually occurred. Had they ever met and worked together, their first album would have been the best. After that, they would have sold out.

4. Four Teenagers in Bakersfield, CA Who Never Formed A Band – Live. Back in the early 1960’s, America was at a crossroads. Our innocence was over but we had nothing yet to feel guilty about. Kennedy was alive but the clock was ticking. Out in Bakersfield, four young lads, Earl, Russell, Moonpie, and Walter, talked at length about forming a band to express their feeling of longing and to meet chicks. Unfortunately, Earl and Russell joined the Army, Walter went off to college, and no one knows what became of ol’ Moonpie. They never formed that band, never even learned to play instruments or even decided who would play what instrument, but boy they would have been something. Especially live.

3. Several Art Students Who Never Met – Third Album. Austin, Texas was a fertile art community in the late 80’s. And some of the most visionary thinkers were capable of fusing art, music, and performance in a way the world had never seen. Unfortunately, they didn’t know they were capable of that and, like I said, there were a lot of artists at the time and the ones who would have been best at it never actually met each other. They would have gotten it together by their third album. (note: I know these guys are really hot right now on lots of other lists but I’m sorry. They’re just that good.)

2. Giovanni San Carlo – The Magic Monkey. Had he not died of scurvy at age two and a half in 1567, Italian Giovanni San Carlo would have revolutionized the music world and shattered every idea we have of opera. His brilliance would have been realized and then developed and then culminated in a classic work called The Magic Monkey. As it happened, he was born, spent a lot of time looking at his feet, then died.

1. The 1985 Chicago Bears – Still Shufflin’. From the self-evident pronouncement "We are the Bears" to the cutting edge punk rock hairdo of Jim McMahon to the down-home earthiness of William "The Refrigerator" Perry, this band had it all. Though most rock critics praise only the band's hit "Superbowl Shuffle", I prefer the moodiness, the experimentation, and ultimately the transcendent beauty of their 1996 follow-up. Heartbreak, financial ruin, and a disastrously humiliating tour would follow but that does nothing to diminish the most important piece of music from the entire millennium.

I hope you’ll join me next millennium when we do this again.

The Poultry In Motion Archives

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