Shooting the Breeze - Solitary Confinement

Hi everyone! Welcome to the newest feature at Dr. P’s, Shooting the Breeze. In this column we pose a question to our esteemed panel and a brief response, usually two or three paragraphs, ensues. And now, without further Apu (“I have been zinged and I love it!”), here is today’s question:

If you were convicted of a rather horrible crime (God forbid) and placed in solitary confinement, which three albums would you want to have with you?

John Lacey

In coming up with my picks for this question, I briefly considered just picking one of my favorite bands and going all Pink Floyd. I soon realized, however, in a dark cell by myself for years on end, that I would eventually go insane that way even faster than I would otherwise. So I thought a little bit and came up with some better examples.

The first record I’d want is Talib Kweli & DJ HiTek’s Train of Thought. I figure that in a cold, damp cell I’d need a little rhythm to break up the monotony. HiTek’s beats are infectious and Kweli’s lyrics are direct and sober, but very hopeful. And hope is something I imagine you can’t get enough of if you’re facing a stretch in the big house. This would be my “life-affirming” pick.

Next, I’d pick the Black Crowes’ Amorica, because it’s a kick-ass rock record where every song is fantastic and I could just sit back and enjoy it. It’s one of my favorite albums anyway, and I see no reason why I wouldn’t like it just the same in the can.

Finally, I’d take Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts of the Great Highway. I’d hope that if I was guilty of some heinous act, I’d want to reflect on it and figure out where it all went wrong. There’s no better record for reflection and regrets than this. Not only that, but at times it’s incredibly beautiful, and what prisoner couldn’t use a few rays of sunshine?

Sean Stak

Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti. Yes, I know this is a double-album but it has far less than the typical number of tracks one would find on your average double-album. This 1975 offering provides the listener with the full range of Led Zeppelin adjectives: dark, bluesy, heavy, and, most importantly, genuine. All of this is accomplished while remaining incredibly accessible and thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. Side three’s (or Disc 2, whichever you prefer) “Down by the Seaside” is a perfect representation of later-Zeppelin blues offerings and it remains upbeat and positive (see: solitary confinement) as the tempo bounces back and forth.

Jay-Z – The Black Album. Not The Blueprint? Not Reasonable Doubt? While the aforementioned records are obviously classics, I feel as though this hip-hop masterpiece is better suited for solitary confinement as it is a celebration of Mr. Carter’s life & career (As you all know this was supposed to be his last record before taking over as CEO & President of Def Jam. This obviously did not happen and I am incredibly thankful for that.) This album is ridiculously good in terms of both lyrical delivery and production. What I enjoy so much about this record is that Jay employed a wide range of producers – including but not limited to Rick Rubin, Just Blaze, The Neptunes, Kanye West – and this gives the record a breath of fresh air with every track.

The White Stripes – De Stijl. While Jay-Z is certainly my favorite rapper, Jack White is, by far, my favorite musician of all time and to me, this record showcases him in all of his guitar glory (Get Behind Me Satan show cases Jack in all of his glory as he plays more instruments than I can count throughout the course of the album). De Stijl is stripped down, raw, heavy, bluesy, shredding, rock and roll. "Little Bird" features one of the dirtiest guitar parts in Jack’s entire catalogue while the lyrics stay surprisingly even-keel. Even though Meg White has the easiest job in rock and roll, I love Jack White so much and this is my personal favorite recording he has ever put out and that is why it is on my list.

Honorable mentions: Blind Melon – Soup; Neil Young – MTV Unplugged; Phish – Farmhouse; Wilco – Being There; Lupe Fiasco – The Cool; Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique

Danny Baxter

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

If I were to be devoid of human contact, I would want some "pretty" rock. Singer Jeff Tweedy's songwriting was particularly helmed in at this point in Wilco's storied career. There is a great juxtaposition of beauty (the violins in "Jesus, etc.") and noise (the beginning of "I am Trying to Break your Heart") on this album. I think that the music is balanced out by Tweedy's particularly human delivery. I mean human in that he truly conveys the emotions he is singing about - without coming across as forced or corny. It is a deep record...it may make you nod your head, but you mostly are using your head to think when listening to it. I think this would be a great record to have if I was going to be alone for a long time because repeated listens greatly reward the listener.

The National - Alligator

Being by yourself can be lonely. Especially if you are being FORCED to be alone due to some heinous crime. I think that I would want some "bouncy" rock. I would want something that would keep my feet tapping, yet still keeping the gears turning like they were for YHF. The album is laden with memorable melodies and infectious rhythms. Matt Berninger's Lyrics convey a beautiful sense of blue collar depression in a white collar job. If I was going to be alone and depressed, I would want to be alone and listening to The National. Their music has a quality of redemption that would keep spirits high during this alone time.

They Might Be Giants - Flood

This is an album that makes me happy. I heard it for the first time when i was nine years old. Listening to it now, I hear a lot more depth in the lyrics than when i was a child. Whenever I hear anything from this album, I instantly begin to sing along and feel better. This would be a clutch album to have in solitary confinement. It takes the "bouncy" quality of national and provides more playful lyrics. This album would be the drunken ying to YHF's sobering yang.

Jon “Hoss” Pitts

Wilco
Being There
1996

Before they became diet-coke dad-rockers and were penning the score to the Volkswagen Spring 2008 TV Ad Campaign, Wilco's studio work meant something. Serving as Tweedy’s greatest musical foil since the Tupelo days, Jay Bennett makes his Wilco debut and helps balance the band create a pleasant balance where Americana meets psychedelia. No song better epitomizes this juxtaposition then opener “Misunderstood”, where Tweedy has finally gotten over his Farrar-complex and has reached a new level of maturity in his writing. I’ve been known to stomp my fight to a “Monday” encore and a Nels Cline solo, but this record is almost like A.M. if it contained any introspection, or Sky Blue Sky with a set of balls. It is the first great Wilco record and the only one I need.

Sun Kil Moon
Ghosts Of The Great Highway
2003

Sun Kil Moon, aka the Red House Painters on opiates, released 2003s Ghosts of the Great Highway to much underground acclaim, and for good reason. Inspiring a new generation of college-radio listeners to wear flannel, this record is the best thing to carry Ohio since Eddie George. Crazy Horse inspired guitar fuzz meets contemplative lyrical musings to create Americana bliss. Frontman and primary member Mark Kozelek is at his best on “Glen Tipton”, mixing melancholy words and minor chords over images of English glam-metal and 1950s boxing legends. “Salvador Sanchez” is best listened to alone and on a cloudy day, so this album works for my confinement.

Okkervil River
Black Sheep Boy
2005

An ambitious and sprawling concept album about a 1960’s cult folk-heroes trials and tribulations with heroin addiction, Black Sheep Boy is the album that convinced the world that Will Sheff was something more than just another whiny prep-school English major from New England writing songs on an acoustic guitar. Death, love, rape, and addiction all collide into a mixture of emotional chaos that makes for one turbulent record. Whether Sheff is personifying love as a fortress of stone or substance abuse in a sheep’s reliance on the herd, Black Sheep Boy is an adventure that you can’t resist coming back to.

Mike Keefe

Thinking about solitary confinement is an odd thing. On the one hand, I’d like to believe that I’d be clever enough to avoid incarceration should I ever resolve to commit some sort of serious crime. On the other hand, if I found myself behind bars, you can rest assured that I would do something so preposterous that the warden would have no choice but to stick me in the hole, far away from the hoi polloi, their improvised toothbrush-shanks and unsupervised gang showers. [Although I shudder to think about what exactly that unspeakable act would be, I envision something along the lines of a cell-size, shit-on-concrete rendering of Guernica.] Anywho, my three albums: The Band- Music from Big Pink (1968); Johnny Cash- At Folsom Prison (1968); and Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track (1977).

There are few albums as close to my heart as Music from Big Pink. The first time my ears were saturated in the dripping melancholia of Robbie Robertson’s Tele-via-Leslie in the opening of “Tears of Rage, I was hooked. I have come back to the first two Band albums countless times, and that’s because they are perfect albums. There is an inexplicable intermingling of the earthy and the ethereal in every moment of every song; an elegance so refined in every arrangement, vocal and instrumental. While The Band is more representative of that sepia-toned Americana that is their trademark, Big Pink is the album upon which I built my admiration for the group, and is the one I’d want with me in my cell. In a mere eleven songs, the Band shines a light on the many nooks and crannies intrinsic in the range of complex human emotions—everything from existential despair (“The Weight”) to do-or-die insistence (“This Wheel’s On Fire”), from parental dejection (“Tears of Rage”) to near-inscrutable inanity (“We Can Talk”). Robertson gives one of his two recorded vocal performances and Richard Manuel contributes three tunes. Not to mention that it concludes with the greatest song ever written for a man hoping to transcend his environment: the Dylan-penned, Manuel-sung “I Shall Be Released.”

For better or worse, I associate Johnny Cash with jail because of At Folsom Prison. Maybe this seems like a lame choice—like I’m being too thematic—but really, what better “friend” to have on the inside than the Man In Black when you’re daydreaming about “rich folk in their fancy dinin’ cars” who are “probably drinkin’ coffee and smokin’ big cigars”? The morbid sense of humor that pervades many of the songs is precisely the type of humor you’d have to indulge to stay sane whilst in solitary, and the “boom-chicka-boom” of the Tennessee Three could steamroll you out of any depression. I had initially considered including an album by a female artist in my list, thinking that I’d probably want to be able to at least hear a woman’s voice if I couldn’t actually be with a woman. Ultimately, I just couldn’t settle on an album. The ever-endearing June Carter appears twice on this album, singing with Johnny on “Jackson” and “Give My Love to Rose.” I think those two performances would be enough to sustain me in even the darkest of times.

Sigh, grouse, roll your eyes, mutter expletives. Yeah, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The Brothers Gibb. Because when I’m on the brink of going absofuckinglutelybatshitcrazy I’m going to throw on the Trammps and crank the dirtiest groove known to man: “Disco Inferno.” Then I’ll drive the guards nuts with “Boogies Shoes” and “Jive Talkin.” And I’ll enjoy every second of it.

Matt Steele

If I had to take 3 albums with me to solitary confinement, I'd start with Opeth's My Arms, Your Hearse. I've never heard a better mix of death metal intensity, goth-rock melancholy, and progressive rock instrumentation in my life. This album is an amazing journey, and while it might not even be my favorite Opeth album, it was the first one that I owned and one that always holds a special place for me, and I never get sick of it. Sure, it might make me want to hang myself with a shoelace if I'm in a solitary confinement cell, but this is all hypothetical, right?

Number two, I'd have to go with Metallica's Live Shit: Binge & Purge, which is 3 CDs full of Metallica's classics from 1983-1991, in front of a raucous Mexico City crowd, at the peak of the band's game. This is probably cheating, because it's about the length of 3 albums (and it could have had a lot more songs if they didn't include a boring 18-minute version of "Seek & Destroy" with some awful crowd participation), but it spans most of their classic albums so I'd probably have to choose it.

My third album (another cheat, I suppose) is the Death Row Greatest Hits compilation from 1996. This album has a great span of Dre, Snoop, Pac, and others, and although it could have contained many more hits from the label (no "Regulators"? No "California Love"?), it's a great, diverse span of rap songs from my favorite era in the genre, and it always makes me want to party. Then again, that would probably make me want to hang myself with a shoelace, knowing that I was stuck in a cell by myself and couldn't actually party any more...

Honorable Mentions: Katatonia - Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Cave In - Jupiter, In Flames - The Jester Race, Iron Maiden - Powerslave