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PUMP UP THE VOLUMES

A READERS' GUIDE TO ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: AMERICANA-ZOMBIES.

By Jonathan Valania

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jan. 23, 2002

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Nilsson, Harry: Although he's now best known as John Lennon's drinkin' buddy the night the ex-Beatle affixed a tampon to his forehead in a nightclub during his infamous yearlong lost weekend in Los Angeles in the early '70s, there was time when Nilsson's songwriting outshined his hell-raising.

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Nirvana: What more is there left say? They kicked a hole in the '80s that let the '90s in. We are eternally grateful.

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Orbison, Roy: The sorrow and the pity.

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Os Mutantes: Inspired by the Beatles and smuggled-in news of the burgeoning counterculture in Britain and America, Brazil's Os Mutantes formed in 1966. The music was a glorious sunshine super bossa nova--Starburst guitar psychedelia, warped samba, gossamer harmonies, and the strange bells and whistles of theremins, Moogs and a host of homemade instruments and effects pedals.

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Ozzy: Because even new-school rock snobs sometimes like to act like old-school rock fools.

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Pavement: A band of rock snobs writing songs about being rock snobs.

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Pet Shop Boys: Gay disco drollery by white ex-rock critic Neil Tennant that straight white rock critics can get a hard-on over without embarrassment.

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Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys: If there are many paths to God, this is surely one of them.

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Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow : By 1967, Swingin' London had gone mad--bathed in strobing mod Technicolor, drunk on the Day-Glo ambrosia of psychedelia and frugging to the blare of maximum R&B. Rock 'n' roll was reaching critical mass, outgrowing the three-chord friction of teen angst and expanding into the realm of art. Pop stars, the newly minted aristocracy of turned-on English youth, were now expected to be poets and seers, and the race was on to find strange new sounds to telegraph this strange new state of mind. These are two prime examples.

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"Pink Moon" by Nick Drake: Further proof that the best music isn't on the radio, it's in Volkswagen ads.