MUSIC

Ironically, although I have dedicated my life to the interpretation and teaching of literature, I enjoy music more than reading. I hungrily accumulate and listen to music. I also play the piano, guitar (electric and acoustic) and keyboard. Since I was in middle school, I have enjoyed writing music, or, what I call pop pieces or what two different friends described as “popsidoodles” and “rinky-tink.” I suppose the closest I could generically describe the music I make is twee or chamber pop.

On my top five favorite Beatles songs.

I suppose like every other so-called cultured, artsy-fartsy person, I adore The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Bob Dylan, and their myriad hybrids. A few years ago, a gift of If You’re Feeling Sinister, turned me on to Belle and Sebastian.

Also, I listen to copious amounts of Ravel, Faure (particularly his chamber music), Mozart and Bach. I have an affinity for requiems, and recall driving to Kennedy Airport listening to Faure’s for the first time and crying the entire way.

The 1960s Album in the MacSinclair Canon.

What I think are the greatest albums from the Beatle’s era . . . or at least the albums I like the most. I’ll continue to add, and eventually break the list up into different contexts just for the hell of it. (Don’t we all like lists?)

1. Revolver. The Beatles. If you could only own two Beatles albums, this should be one of them.

2. Rubber Soul. The Beatles. I guess this album and Revolver could swap the number one and two positions, depending upon the mood you're in.

3. Village Greene Preservation Society. Perhaps the best Kinks alblum, and the greatest collection of pastoral baroque pop songs ever.

3. Village Greene Preservation Society. The Kinks. Perhaps the best Kinks alblum, and the greatest collection of pastoral baroque pop songs ever. Get the three CD deluxe collection; you'll get not just the original album, but a ton of incredible rare and unreleased songs from this period, 1967-69.

4. Flowers. The Rolling Stones. Their most underrated album of the 60s. One moment raw, another gorgeous.

In incredible 1966, four albums changed pop. Pet Sounds, Revolver, Aftermath and this one.

5. Face to Face. The Kinks. In amazing 1966, four albums changed pop. Pet Sounds, Revolver, Aftermath and this one by the Kinks, Face to Face. It is arguably the first concept album.

6. Bringing it all Back Home. Bob Dylan. I never tire of side one. Ever.

6b. Blonde on Blonde. A double album can't get much better than this, despite the horrendous opening song.

6a. Highway 61 Revisited. Yes, I am cheating a bit by subcategorizing three albums, but they strike me as the Dylan trilogy of excellence. "Ballad of a Thin Man" remains haunting no matter how many times I hear it.

7. Sell Out. The Who. The re-released CD with bonus tracks and jingles makes this not just one of the greatest 60s albums ever, EVER, but I think one of the best rerelease CD of bonus tracks ever. It seems to flesh out and almost complete Pete Townsends's original and incomplete album of 1967. If you do not have it, and you like pop, concept albums, mod, satire, goofy sixties novelty, a range of music from rock, to psychedelia, to heart wrenching ballads, don't walk, run to your computer and buy it immediately from Amazon, or wherever. NOW.

8. Something Else. The Kinks. Zagat's Guide to Music claims all Britpop begins here. Whether that is true or not, this is the album which began my odyssey through the wonderful treasure of 1965-1970 Kinks. Bitter-sweet songs of small patches of life in snapshot, it ends with hands down, in the top five of most beautiful ballads of the 60s, "Waterloo Sunset."

9. Forever Changes. Love. One of the few albums that self-consciously tries to be psychedelic and succeeds. So many others have failed. It is just a shame that this group could not produce more material as polished and drop dead gorgeous as this.

10. Zombie Heaven. The Zombies. This group is in a league of their own. They never really tried to compete with the rest of the British Invasion, making their own incredibly complex and polished music. Perhaps it's cheating to put a compilation on the list, but this has to be the best, most complete box set ever produced. It not only has every song, version, rarity they ever recorded, there is not a dud in the crowd. If you don't dish out the $$ for this, get Odyssey and Oracle, their last but great masterpiece from 1969. Like the Who's Sell Out, if you don't have it, don't just sit there. GET IT!

11. Sergent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles. No, I didn't forget this one. For those of you who buy into the chatter that it's overrated, read Lee Emerick's chapter on the making of the album in his book Here, There and Everywhere. "A Day in the Life" alone puts this on any, um, well, top 11, in my book.

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