The Best TV Schedule Of All Time

I've been recovering from a short period of being deathly ill, and while the first 36 hours were pretty rough, the last 48 have been a lot of "well, it hurts to move, but if I stay right here I'm doing fine." So I've had a little bit of free time. I thought I'd share it with you on my new project.

The object was to create the greatest possible TV schedule of all-time. The rules were simple:

1. All TV programs had to be placed on their original network.
2. All TV programs had to be put into a time slot they had once inhabited during their original run. Shows cannot be moved, nor the start times fudged, in any way.

So the point was not to select the best 100 shows, but to create the best TV schedule from TV schedules that had already existed, as if I went through a stack of TV Guides with scissors and tape.

I was also curious if there were spots that certain networks never tried to fill, or used to compete in and then gave up on. NBC was once famed for their consistently formidable Thursday night comedy block (it's okay-ish now) - if that's where their efforts have focused, where have they turned a blind eye? (Mondays at 10 PM, for one thing.)

When I created this, I tried to decide how it would best be experienced, should it become real.

Option A: I have my memory of all these shows be wiped, then start the TV season in September with the first season of all these shows. But that didn't seem right. A couple of these shows only got one season, and some of the others got a lot of seasons, but they didn't really get rolling until season three or four (this is often true of comedies. "Cheers," for instance).

So my next thought was Option B: I should pick out the best season of each show for this. But that didn't work either. I wasn't intimately acquainted with a lot of these shows - I set out to make the best schedule, not my own personal viewing wish list - so I wasn't qualified to guess which season would be best for each show. I planned on doing some research on this afterwards to figure that out, though, until I hit on:

Option C: I still get my memory of these shows erased, but first, reality-be-damned, they all start recording new episodes immediately, as if the show had never existed before. I'm not saying they reboot the franchises, I just say the shows simply reappear, with the original casts and crew and sets and time period and what-have-you, but now all in glorious high-definition. What's more, I pick out directions for all of them. Because, let's be honest, I could fix some of these shows. I know things. I'm savvy. Shows that were great and don't need to be touched get a free pass, shows that were great but lost something over time get a return to glory, and shows that were good but could have been better get some new blood.

One quick note - While the Big Three have had the privilege of broadcasting shows for well over 50 years, newer networks like Fox and the CW have had less time, and so less options for me to pick from. Therefore, I combined the CW with its two forebears (UPN and the WB) and called it one network, which seemed to be playing fair enough. I also made no bones about the quality of programming that has appeared on these networks since they began. If they've never tried to broadcast anything worthwhile after 10 PM, I'm not going to give them any credit.

Sunday

Alright, Sunday night has become a little bit of a throwaway in recent years, but that wasn't always the case, so there's some quality to be had here. However, changes need to be made. First, "Alias" must return to its early season glory, so let's get J.J. Abrams back as showrunner and bang things out. What's more, he also has to run CBS' "Mission: Impossible," since he did such a bang-up job on directing MI:3. Even better, Tom Cruise and Phillip Seymour Hoffman have to come with him.

Ed Sullivan, not-dead and in the prime of his career, will run his show in 2009, working with modern bands and comics who grew up idolizing him, but the Smothers Brothers will still operate in the sixties and seventies. Steve Martin will return to the writing staff and be named head writer. Likewise, Conan O'Brien will return as head writer of "The Simpsons," and Brad Bird will direct all the episodes.

"The West Wing" will start their run over, but Moira Kelly will never be hired - instead, Emily Procter will be introduced as Republican Ainsley Hayes in the third or fourth episode, and David Caruso will be executed in the street (not in the show, in real life) so that no one can start "CSI: Miami" and take her away from the show. Aaron Sorkin will naturally return to write all the episodes, and no one will ever give him cocaine.

"Psych" will return to network television, but be given a network budget to play with, and Rachel Leigh Cook's character will start having a recurring role. Jessica Biel will return to "7th Heaven," bringing Justin Timberlake with her. Her character will become overwhelming embarrassed when Timberlake forms a hip-hop/beatbox act with her father. Also, zombies are added.

Monday

ABC regains the rights to "Monday Night Football." They broadcast the best game, every week, which is selected the week before and not months in advance, so we see the best possible rivalry instead of Browns vs. Bengals in mid-November. Joe Buck is in no way involved.

"The Rifleman" takes on both John Ford and Quentin Tarantino as executive producers. Modern-day Ron Howard directs all of "The Andy Griffith Show." Old-school Ron Howard still stars.

We finally meet the goddamn mother.

"Northern Exposure" gets an added boost of quirk when Rob Morrow's "Numb3rs" co-star, David Krumholtz, joins the cast. Also, Judd Hirsch, just because. "House" combines his original team with his newer team, though Kal Penn still dies a messy and memorable death somewhere midseason (John Cho and Neil Patrick Harris both guest star as 'voices from his past'). There is at least one episode where Hugh Laurie, Robert Sean Leonard, and Lisa Edelstein do nothing but sit in a room together and say witty and acerbic things to each other.

On "24," the series starts over. For once, Kiefer Sutherland dies and gets resuscitated exactly zero times during the season. Elisha Cuthbert shows up and looks very hot for a little while, then dies a clear and irrevocable death so that she can never come back again. Dennis Haysbert returns as President, but it's revealed that he's also his character from "The Unit," and he and Sutherland go off and kick some terrorist tail together. The Chinese are never involved, and no one ever gets amnesia.

"Heroes" starts over from scratch, but someone writes them a truly awesome season finale. The show never comes back again. "Studio 60" starts over after the pilot and no one ever talks about politics ever again. Matthew Perry and Sarah Paulson agree just to disagree about whether God is real or not. Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler write all the sketches seen on the show.

The casts of "Everybody Hates Chris" and "Aliens In America" switch locations, just for fun.

Tuesday

First of all: no one jumps over a shark.

Next, "Sports Night" combines its cast and the sharp writing of Aaron Sorkin with oversight from ESPN executives, giving the show a more frantic, realistic pace. The show will tie in to real sports events, actual sports stars will guest from time to time, and Clark Gregg will join the cast full-time.

David Caruso will re-join the cast of NYPD Blue, then be executed in the street again.

Every episode of M*A*S*H will feature Alan Alda flying away in helicopters while Mike Farrell leaves him messages formed from piles of rocks.

Tuesdays at 9 will be "The Simon Baker Hour," with interspersed episodes of "The Guardian" and "The Mentalist." Eventually, those two shows will combine, and Simon Baker will attempt to win drug cases with the defense "I just know that he's not telling the truth" and a boyish wink at the judge.

On "American Idol," the top 12 will be Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Adam Lambert, Jordin Sparks, Kris Allen, Blake Lewis, Fantasia Barrino, Jennifer Hudson, Elliot Yamin, Allison Iraheta, and just for fun, Kellie Pickler or Sanjaya. Kara will not be judging, Simon will pay attention the whole season, and someone will spike Paula's drink every night.

No one will let Bailey start drinking, ever.

"News Radio" features the original cast, including Phil Hartman, but the show moves to Cincinnati to compete with "WKRP." It also subtracts some Dave Thomas kvetching. "Scrubs" features both Heather Graham and Tom Cavanaugh as permanent guest stars, and Brendan Fraser keeps popping back up as the dead brother only John C. McGinley can see. Zach Braff still goes off and makes Garden State, but this time he doesn't get a big head when he comes back.

"Remington Steele" just becomes James Bond, but weekly.

No Dean, no Logan, no Jess, no Christopher. These Gilmore Girls have terrible taste. Jared Padelecki is allowed to return only if it is revealed he was secretly his character from "Supernatural" this whole time, and he, Sean Gunn, and Liza Weil start a werewolf-hunting team, at which point it is revealed that Edward Herrman is a werewolf (I always suspected it).

"Veronica Mars" gets a complete free pass, on the condition that we get lots of Percy Daggs III.

Wednesday

"Pushing Daisies" gets complete freedom from network control, and Bryan Turner is allowed to run the show however he wants. However, Barry Sonnenfeld has to direct every episode. "The Johnny Cash Show" becomes essentially a weekly live Johnny and June Cash show, with guest spots from modern artists playing with Cash. Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson guest-host.

Chris Rock is added to the cast of "All In The Family." Paul Greengrass is named executive producer of "Hawaii Five-O." The results show of "American Idol" moves back to half an hour. There's a group number, a music video, Simon says something smarmy, and we find out the results. That's it.

"The OC" starts over, but this time Olivia Wilde is a full time cast member, and Mischa Barton isn't on the show at all. The show features Peter Gallagher and Kelly Rowan and almost no other adults. Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson get together and stay together, and hang out saying witty things to a surly Ben McKenzie.

"Law & Order" stays "Law & Order," and doesn't become "Law & Order: Useless Spinoff." Mariska Hargitay, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Jeff Goldblum all leave their spinoffs and join the cast.

I couldn't decide between "Felicity" or "Roswell," so I decided to combine the two. Now Felicity goes to college and discovers her identity in the very spot where aliens established contact with the Earth. Kind of a teen dramedy/sci-fi show, with big special effects. Fortunately, J.J. Abrams is named showrunner. Keri Russell, Greg Grunberg, and all the hot people from "Roswell" star. Especially Shiri Appleby.

Thursday

"The Odd Couple" stars Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Done. Clive Anderson mercifully returns as host of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" "Lost" starts over, is told "you have 100 episodes to solve this thing. Go." Nikki and Paolo never show up, and no one ever tries to teach us the secret of Jack's tattoos. J.J. Abrams also has to return as showrunner.

Andy Garcia and Sean Connery reprise their movie roles in the TV version of "The Untouchables." Kevin Costner does not.

Someone shows Alfred Hitchcock, who was a practical joke player of disturbing intensity, a tape of one of those hidden camera scare shows and just says "you can do stuff like this on television now," then leaves the room. Hitchcock is given a gigantic budget and no oversight whatsoever.

Nobody on "Friends" ever has a baby, or tries to have a baby. They instead are forced to adopt "Seinfeld's" 'no hugging, no learning' policy. "The Office" spends three seasons trying to keep Pam and Jim apart. At the end of season three, they finally get together, and the show ends.

"Cheers" recasts Rhea Pearlman's part. "ER" has a cast of George Clooney, Noah Wyle, Maura Tierney, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle, Julianna Marguilies, Linda Cardellini, Parminder Nagra, Shane West, Jorja Fox, and Busy Phillips. It goes off the air before it tries to do a smallpox scare for a second time.

"Smallville" picks up and moves to Metropolis, and Tom Welling begins his life as a young Superman, finding his way. Brian Singer is named executive producer, and Frank Langella and a young Marlon Brando join the cast.

Friday

Friday night's always been a bit of dumping ground, so this one got trickier.

On "Sabrina," we spend way less time with the aunts and way more time with the talking cat. The characters on "Boy Meets World" never go to college, though we do get that great subplot where Will Friedle goes to LA to become an actor. "Joan of Arcadia" is given a couple of seasons to discover how good a show it can be without everybody yelling at it about low ratings. It also stars the current, better-acting version of Amber Tamblyn as Joan, and Jeremy Renner as God.

I couldn't decide between "Dukes Of Hazzard" and "Moonlight," so in this new show, the Duke Brothers split their time between running from the law and vampire hunting. Likewise, I'm combining "The Love Boat," "Dallas," and "Falcon Crest." I can't even imagine what that would look like, but I would totally watch it.

Fox will run both "Firefly" and "Wonderfalls," and outside of broadcasting the programs will not interfere with either show in any way. It would also be up to the showrunners to decide how the show was marketed, not the Fox advertising department.

8 PM on Friday night for NBC was always a low-brain-cell affair, so I combined "Quantum Leap," "The A-Team," "Knight Rider," "Baywatch," and "Dark Angel." In it, the A-Team drives around in a giant talking Trans Am, fighting hordes of evil slow-motion lifeguards, masterminded by a leather jump-suited Jessica Alba. David Hasselhoff stars in it twice.

Nobody ever kills anybody on "Friday Night Lights." The amount of football played on the show is doubled.

"Star Trek" and "Star Trek: Enterprise" both return. J.J. Abrams is named showrunner for both.

Saturday

If you thought Friday night was bad, Saturday is even worse. These days, the networks literally don't program anything at all on Saturday nights. They just decide a week or two before what old movie or volleyball game they're gonna throw on. Sad.

"The Partridge Family" starts a competitive rivalry with the "Brady Bunch." Hijinks ensue, and everybody laughs and learns a valuable lesson. Then things get violent.

"Lawrence Welk's Dodge Dancing Party" returns to TV, because, oh my God, I can't believe a show was ever named that. David Lynch returns to "Twin Peaks," but Alfred Hitchcock is named executive producer. Gunsmoke is given the HBO "as violent as you wanna be, boys" treatment.

And of course, Fox does nothing but show "COPS" all night. God bless 'em.

Now, admit it - can you find even one thing about that TV season that you would not watch?

My Top 100 Albums Of All-Time: #61-70

70. Gin Blossoms - Outside Looking In (1999)
Gin Blossoms had a number of different hits throughout their career, including a #1 ("Found Out About You"), and two more top-ten hits ("Follow You Down" and "Til I Hear It From You") but to the world at large they're generally considered a one-hit wonder - though weirdly, not for any of their top-ten singles. Instead, the song that springs to everyone's mind is "Hey Jealousy," a song so ubiquitous that a full two years after its release, it still obstinately remained on the Billboard Top 100. In fact, the Gin Blossoms were the first band to usher in that signature 90's alternative-rock sound, writing songs so comfortable and familiar that they would never disappear from radio rotation, even to this day. It's a shame that their songwriter, the oft-soused and troubled guitarist Doug Hopkins, never got to see the waves his music created. He committed suicide in 1993, not long after he was fired from the band, who were so fed up with the music industry that they titled their major label debut New Miserable Experience, which was released to America at large with no fanfare and middling reviews. They had no idea they would end up being the forefathers of a new breed of folk-and-country-infused rock music, eventually giving way to Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket, the Cranberries, and of course Hootie and the Blowfish. The record ended up going multi-platinum, and by the time the third single ("Until I Fall Away") was released, critics had come around and hailed the record as "pure pop goodness."

I didn't discover the band until much later, when I purchased their best-of record, Outside Looking In, which collected both their hit singles and a number of much lesser-known and rarer tracks. It's spotty at times, but the record takes you back to a different time, when modern rock was an untapped commodity and good songwriting was finally coming back into vogue.

Download This: Until I Fall Away, Not Only Numb, Pieces Of The Night, As Long As It Matters

69. Ryan Adams - Demolition (2002)
This is not my favorite Ryan Adams record, as it's mostly filled with songs leftover from the recording sessions of his far superior works, Heartbreaker and Gold, but like any Adams record, it contains a few songs of such rough-hewn perfection that it's impossible not to be bowled over. Like "Desire," later featured in one of the top-ten "West Wing" episodes of all time (season 6's "King Corn"), and the king of all lost-love anthems, "Dear Chicago."

Download This: Dear Chicago, Desire, Hallelujah, You Will Always Be The Same

68. Copeland - Beneath Medicine Tree (2003)
I stumbled across this record in college, when it spread like wildfire across campus in the way that albums do in colleges these days (God bless you, MyTunes and loose firewall settings). Beneath Medicine Tree is a great album - the only one the band has ever managed to put together - but it still suffers from the same struggles all their records have: it's frustratingly inconsistent. Copeland knows what their strengths are - a band capable of crafting good, simple, pantingly desperate pop songs - but feel the need to try to punk up the record. The result is a vaguely cohesive mixed bag of songs, all of whom were written as simple acoustic melodies and then re-invented and re-layered, occasionally beyond recognition. When the album works, though, it really works, as with the sad, desperate opener ("Brightest"), or its more epic set pieces ("When Paula Sparks," "California"). Despite its shortcomings, the record plays through from beginning to end awfully well, though it's all too tempting to keep skipping back to the beginning of "California" to hear it over and over again.

Download This: California, When Paula Sparks, Brightest, When Finally Set Free

67. Caedmon's Call - Long Line Of Leavers (2000)
We've crossed a line in this list, since I came to this entry and said "how can this be at #67? I love this record!" Then I scrolled up and realized I couldn't move it any higher than I already had it. We've moved out of records I that I merely enjoy and into records with which I have a real lasting emotional connection. As with this record, which has two songs in heavy contention for my favorite Christian song of all time. By far the most controversial record they ever produced, this album came at the height of Caedmon's popularity, and set off a firestorm of fan protest. How dare they ditch their acoustic jam-style and layer in electric guitars and punchy horn solos? Fortunately for fans, the record Caedmon's chose to reinvent themselves on was also one of the best records they ever produced, an album so solidly written it's near-impossible to skip a track (well, maybe the quavering "Piece Of Glass" gets jumped a time or two). Personally, I'm torn between Derek Webb's deeply personal songs of confession and lost love ("What You Want," "Love Is Different,") and Cliff Young and Ed Cash's alternately catchy pop and elegiac dirges ("Love Alone," "Only One"). But then, the great thing about this record is that you don't have to chose.

Download This: What You Want, Love Alone, Love Is Different, Can't Lose You

66. Coldplay - Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends (2008)
This is the first of two Coldplay albums on this list, which is a little surprising, as I've always been a big Coldplay fan, but they just didn't make what proved to be a pretty tough cut here. What's more surprising is how quickly this album rose to prominence in their catalog for me. It's an album that's so strong that even though it was released at the height of Coldplay backlash, people still haven't been able to pick on the quality of the record since it's just such a beautiful recording. It's funny, but even though Coldplay is maybe the biggest band on the planet, Vida is really an underrated record. Working with superproducer Brian Eno, the band strips back all the pounding, semi-melodic piano and overworked lyrics that weakened X + Y and instead create more subtle orchestrations and a grander musical vision. While songs like "Viva La Vida" and "Lost!" have a clear pop radio sensibility, the album as a whole feels like a cohesive artistic statement. And a damn good one.

Download this: Lost!, Death and All His Friends, Viva La Vida, Life In Technicolor

65. Brave Saint Saturn - The Light Of Things Hoped For (2003)
Here's where doing research for these sorts of lists comes in handy - I discovered while looking this album up that Brave Saint Saturn finally released another record! Originally intended to be a "space trilogy," the band semi-disbanded at around the same time they finished this record (the band being a side project of another band - Five Iron Frenzy - that was disbanding at this time, I imagine it seemed pointless to continue), and so it seemed unlikely that the band would ever finish their "astro-rock odyssey," a term band frontman Reese Roper eventually admitted "doesn't really mean anything." The record was the second in a series about space and the voyage of the atronauts of a mythical Saturn 5 expedition, though the record was mixed with songs of all varieties, including Roper's pointed indictment of his ex-fiancé's sudden betrayal ("Enamel") and his memorial to a dead friend whose faith he admired ("Estrella"). A moody and unforgettable record. I'll be purchasing the follow-up very soon.

Download This: The Sun Also Rises, Estrella, Enamel, Daylight

64. Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler (2006)
Like The Light of Things Hoped For, this album is also part of a trilogy. And I'll just say it: not enough artists do trilogies. There's nothing like an artistic statement that says "I'm not just trying to sell records here, I'm trying to tell you story, and I will take six years to do it if I have to." Now, that's admirable. Yorn followed musicforthemorningafter with Day I Forgot, and then this record, through which we learned that it might not be all that fun to hang out with Pete Yorn for an extended period of time, but if we did we would certainly get an epic song out of our experience. I mean, in Day I Forgot, he writes a song about eating a burrito at a 7-11, for chrissakes. Nightcrawler perfectly fits Yorn's aesthetic, though, since Yorn's songs always seemed written the day after waking up from a particularly epically bad night, the theme of this record fits right in line with that mentality. Nightcrawler seems like a record composed at the exact second that you realize that the girl you came there with would not also be leaving with you. It's somehow at all times angry, depressed, vindictive, pleading, and deeply worshipful, which is not necessarily an easy thing to pull off. What's more, it's awfully consistently good.

Download This: The Man, Ice Age, Maybe I'm Right, Vampyre, For Us, Undercover

63. Jack Johnson - In Between Dreams (2005)
Jack Johnson isn't just good at what he does, he's effortless at it. He sounds like he lives in a completely different world than I do, and maybe he does. Imagine a world where you wake up on the beach to a perfect day, every day. You wander up and down the shore, the sun gently winking off the water. Your friends come over and you go out surfing, then you kick back in the shade and let the day wash over you, someone quietly strumming a guitar and humming a tune. Sometimes the mood overtakes you and you all join together in a chorus, but most of the time you lay back in the hammock, the sun flickering through the leaves, and just let the music play. The sun goes down, and you wander out by the water with your girl, the moonlight playing off her tanned skin as the stars come out. You fall asleep again on the beach, gazing up at the sky. Now, that's exactly what this album is like.

Download This: Better Together, Do You Remember, Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

62. Black Lab - See The Sun (2005)
To give you an idea of how long I waited for this record: one of the first CDs I ever purchased was Black Lab's Your Body Above Me, which came out in 1997. I had to wait 8 years for a follow-up record, which is an awfully long time for any music fan, and a touch soul-crushing for someone who's fourteen and has just discovered popular music to learn the hard way that it's never good to hear that your favorite new band is having "trouble with their label" (there's not a music fan in the world who doesn't flinch when they hear those words). Incredibly, the record ended up being worth the wait: not nearly as bleak as their first record, See The Sun was simply packed with well-crafted pop rock songs and heart-on-your-sleeve songwriting. Singer Paul Durham pours a honeyed Brit-whine vocal on top of songs of such desperation it's tough not to be drawn in. It's a rare band who entrances you as much at 22 as they do at 14 (take that, Brian Setzer Orchestra!).

Download This: Lonely Boy, Dream In Color, Circus Lights, See The Sun

61. Collective Soul - Dosage (1999)
I've now reached a point where seeing this CD only makes me think of an argument I once had with a friend, who told me he'd been a fan of Collective Soul since "right as they started getting big," which apparently was during this record. The fact that the band had already gone over six times platinum on their previous three records had somehow eluded him. I could not dissuade him of this perspective. In point of fact, this album was a classic "we're a giant band with something to prove" sort of record: their previous record (Disciplined Breakdown, a growly, early 90's sort of grungy rock record) hadn't sold as well, and there was a sense that Collective Soul was one of those 90's bands that had just overstayed their welcome and were on their way out. Instead, they released an album of outrageously catchy arena rock, with crunchy guitars and unmistakably anthemic choruses - the sort of album that re-invents nothing but makes you say as soon as you hear it "oh, yeah, I forgot how much I liked these guys!" Not that the album was necessarily timeless - their biggest hit, "Run," was part of the Varsity Blues soundtrack, a movie that ages faster than soap opera children - but instead remains perfectly of its time, a reminder of how solid late-90's alternative rock really was before Limp Bizkit ruined things for everyone.

Download This: Run, Heavy, Tremble For My Beloved, Crown

My Top 100 Albums Of All Time (#81-90)

I worry that these will get longer as we go, until by the time we’re on #11-20, I’m relating long stories from middle school of crying over lost loves and falling asleep with my headphones on to Ben Folds records. It’s possible that I will end up doing that during this section, actually, so maybe I shouldn’t jinx myself. To business:

90. The New Amsterdams – Never You Mind.
The Get Up Kids were just peaking as a formidable emo force when frontman Matt Pryor launched his second side band, this one a complete departure from both the Get Up Kids electropunk emo sound and Reggie and the Full Effect’s comedic rock take. The New Amsterdams mined a subtle, slow Middle American sound, a weary acoustic profession of heartache accented with the occasional accordian and snare. It was a songwriter’s record, and proved once and for all that Pryor was a songwriter worth noticing. At times uneven, the album was a mission of self-discovery for Pryor, and at it’s highest point – the elegiac “Idaho” or the candid “I Won’t Run Away” – it found him at the top of the emo heap.

89. U2 – The Unforgettable Fire
I’m not sure why this U2 album has always attracted me more than, say, Joshua Tree, or Achtung Baby, but I’ve always felt a stronger connection to it than any other album from the supergroup. Perhaps because it’s the anti-supergroup album, an album about breaking away from being “the next The Who” and picking a different heading. U2 made better albums, but this one is rawer and more honest than any of them. Most of the songs are poetry of uneven meter and sound, the drum sound is looser, the production more atmospheric. Bono would later call the record “a beautifully out-of-focus record, blurred like an impressionist painting, very unlike a billboard or an advertising slogan.” The band’s songs are now so universally revered and eternally overplayed it’s difficult to find a U2 record that feels like anything more than a collection of singles, but The Unforgettable Fire remains cohesive and compelling.

88. Dashboard Confessional – The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most.
The album title alone takes one back to the days of the emo explosion, where unfiltered, overwrought teen angst was a commodity. The bands got louder and bigger as time went on, but Chris Carraba’s acoustic experiment led a charge to the opposite pole. The idea was simple – a little guy with an expressive voice and no range, an acoustic guitar, and lyrics of near-embarrassing honesty and forthrightness. But Carraba’s gift was the universal connection of an open letter to an unfaithful lover over an earnest guitar strum. The name was an appropriate one - the songs weren’t just singable, they were made, designed to be sung with a loud voice and questionable pitch on the long drive home, and I took part in the practice with gusto. It’s rare these days to see emotion displayed truly unironically, and that’s something that emo never really got credit for.

87. Stars – Set Yourself On Fire
The album opens on “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead” with a cracked, weathered voice: “when there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.” It’s the sort of moment that launches an overdramatic emo album, but instead a low cello drifts in, then a slow horn intro, then Torquil Campbell’s quiet vocal, and finally Amy Millan’s fragile echo. Setting the world on fire is evidently a refined affair. The album follows the tone of the opener – lush, dramatic indie pop, occasionally anthemic but mostly content to let the songs fade to a single, heartsick note. By the time the album’s closed on the melancholy “Calendar Girl,” it’s become clear that Campbell and Millan have decided that insidiously enduring pop songs are the easiest way to torch the world.

86. Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming
The record is most famous as Dylan’s “Come To Jesus” record, the album he wrote after he became saved. That wildly undersells it, since Slow Train Coming is possibly Dylan’s finest record, save maybe Blood On The Tracks (bring it, Blonde on Blonde fans!). From the slouching insistence of “Gotta Serve Somebody” to the whispering storytelling thump of “Man Gave Name To All The Animals,” much of the album is delivered with a curious dispassion, as if Dylan felt that preaching the Gospel needn’t require raising one’s voice. But when Dylan finally lets the vocal swell into a shout (“Slow Train,” “When You Gonna Wake Up”) it’s thunder on the mountainside. The miraculous thing about this record is not that it’s a “Christian” record by rock music’s greatest songwriter, but rather how sure of himself Dylan sounds. “Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through,” he scolds on “When He Returns.” “How long can you falsify and deny what is real?” There are people in pulpits the world over who don’t preach with that much passion.

85. Chumbawumba – Tubthumper
There it is! You knew we’d get here eventually. The first album I ever went to a record store and purchased was, in fact, Chumbawumba’s Tubthumper, and over the next six months, I listened to it at least twice a day. It’s an interesting record – no one, naturally remembers anything past the ubiquitous single, which is why the rest of the album comes as a shock. Chumbawumba’s music was overarchingly political, focusing on economic disparity and shady British leadership. What made it memorable was that it crossed its hearfelt desire to preach total rebellion with a belief that music should always be sung with one’s fist in the air. It’s two steps sideways from promoting full-on anarchy, and those were small steps, but you don’t have to care about message to appreciate full-throated passion shouted over the heavy thump of a beguiling dance beat.

84. Newsboys – Take Me To Your Leader
I was in seventh grade and sitting on the steps outside school, just a kid with a dream and a CD collection of two (both Jars of Clay records), when a kid offered to sell me a couple CDs for $5. Ten minutes later, I was the proud owner of dc Talk’s Jesus Freak and Newsboys’ Take Me To Your Leader. How do I remember this? Well, for one, I have a freaky long-term memory that remembers every useless story but not what my credit card number is, and also because I played those two records out. The Newsboys went on to implode, first launching an ill-advised attempt to bring back disco, then later growing boorish and perhaps even a touch arrogant, abandoning the immediacy of the live show for the safety of backing tracks. Not that I am bitter or saddened about this. Still, in 1996, they had found that perfect balance between their love of tongue-in-cheek wit and their enthusiasm for a good fuzz-rock sound. Under Steve Taylor's direction (he also wrote the lyrics to all of the best songs) the album was completely unpretentious, committed to being as boisterously fun as possible, faith-driven but without the piousness that would later pervade their recordings. It was a record to be cranked high and sung along to, a record that made the Gospel and its Great Commission seem kinda, well, exciting.

83. Dave Matthews - Some Devil
DMB fans will be disappointed this is the only Dave record that ends up on the list, but I never warmed to any of the band’s records as much as I did his one solo venture. Leaving the jam band mentality behind, Matthews accents his acoustic strums with delicate electric guitars and heads in a darker, more focused direction. Still, he balances the murkier tunes with floating, ephemeral moments of clarity, before plunging back down into depression and drink. It’s no coincidence that the album was written at around the same time Matthews was becoming a father and quitting a lifetime of alcoholism, the songs are all gin-soaked - and all filled with the self-loathing that comes with a full appreciation of that fact. Amidst the strife, Matthews finds himself becoming fully grounded for the first time. If Busted Stuff was Matthews coming to terms with the decisions of his life, Some Devil is his glorious reincarnation.

82. Ben Kweller – Sha Sha
Albums like this one are the reason I love debut records. Sha Sha sounds exactly like what it is: an incredible raw talent given his first chance to make the most of it. The production is loose and the vocals sound like they were recorded at five in the morning, and Kweller plays like a house afire. His later records would be just as good, poppier and better produced, but here Kweller sounds like Kurt Cobain and Rivers Cuomo gave birth to a pianist love-child, swinging wildly between raucous and occasionally lewd fuzz rock anthems and simple, voice-cracking love songs. There’s not a hint of album continuity except in Kweller himself, approaching each song with piano-thumping enthusiasm and singing with operatic effort, as if the microphone is forty feet away and he’s worried it won’t pick him up. Even when he dials it back down, his voice no more than a mutter, you hear the intensity hiding inside the quieter vocals, waiting to get out, until finally he can’t help himself and explodes back to full intensity. It remains one of my favorite debuts, a thrillingly energetic introduction.

81. Jack’s Mannequin – Everything In Transit
Lead singer and pianist Andrew McMahon’s work with Something Corporate ranged from the small-thinking and mediocre (“Punk Rock Princess,” “If U C Jordan”) to the expressive and epic (“Konstantine,” “The Astronaut”), with each of his albums packed with songs spread across that gap. It wasn’t until McMahon launched Jack’s Mannequin that he put out his strongest, most cohesive album. Transit is a songwriter’s record, sure, and it’s obviously more of a piano record than anything Something Corporate did (it’s no coincidence that most of their weakest work was whenever they abandoned the piano as a foundation for a song). But it’s also a stronger record both in terms of production and musical prowess; and though it lacks the rawness and accessibility of a So Co record, it also doesn’t sound like a bunch of Southern California kids with guitars. More seasoned players showed up to help (Tommy Lee provided the drumwork on most of the album) and the experience is clear. The biggest difference, though, is that it’s clear that Transit is McMahon’s opportunity to let himself shine. The songs are more personal, the piano fits more cleanly into the mix rather than battling for dominance, and McMahon sounds like he means what he sings. It makes a Something Corporate album sound like a demo record for him – and since there’s a Something Corporate record coming up on this list, you better believe that’s tough for me to say.

My Top 100 Albums Of All Time (#91-100)

I got linked over to A Special Way of Being Afraid’s blog the other day, where he’s at the beginning stages of his list of his 100 Favorite Albums of All Time. It sounded like fun, so I decided to do one myself.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. Things don’t always end up exactly where you think they will when you start putting it together – certain things you think will end up on the top end up all the way on the bottom, or drop off the list entirely. ASWOBA came up with a lot of rules for his list, which I thought was silly, but when I did my list I came up with just as many: no classical, jazz, or opera, no limit to how many albums per artist (let natural selection take its course), no soundtracks, movie scores, compilations, or best-of records. Live albums are occasionally permissible but not encouraged (I ended up with two).

Most importantly, the list had to be accurate; I couldn’t just list a bunch of classic records and pretend that they’re my favorites - I spent 15 minutes trying to jam Blood On The Tracks in there, but I finally had to admit that it was record I've never really owned, as such. It couldn't just be an older artist where I knew a lot of the songs, I had to know the whole record as a cohesive listening experience. It had to span the course of my whole life, the albums I listened to and loved the most, even if putting them in was embarrassing. I let myself judge the records as I saw them now, but I had to put them in the list if they were important enough to me at some point in my life to merit a mention. You better believe that Chumbawumba’s Tubthumper wouldn’t be on the list if I hadn’t listened to it 6,000 times in seventh grade, but I did, and I loved it, so there it is.

On to the first batch!

100. Weezer – Weezer (1994).
I usually tell people that my favorite Weezer album is Pinkerton, like a good hipster, and for a long moment I considered putting The Black and Blue Album here instead (an inventive internet mixdown of this record and Jay-Z's Black Album) but there’s something so compelling and accessible about their debut. It’s not just that it’s a head-to-toe solid album, but in an era of heavy metal worship and grunge retreads, there was a brightness and newness to the record that you can sense, even now. Songs like “Buddy Holly” and “Undone (The Sweater Song)” were the buzz-worthy set pieces, but it’s songs like “Only In Dreams” and “Say It Ain’t So” that carry the hefty emotional punch of the album, and are what make the record still sound fresh and important today.

99. Phantom Planet – The Guest (2002).
Every couple years, another California band explodes on the scene with their own slight adaptation of that sunny, Beach Boys power-pop sound, and Phantom Planet did it better than anyone. It succeeds exactly where it wants to, as a perfect, sunny pop record – the hooky chorus for “California” became the theme song for “The OC,” which is as pop a moment as you could hope for - and then the record pulls you one step deeper. And then, beautifully, pulls you one step deeper than that, until the second half of the album becomes a dark, eerie, trancelike version of the first, to reveal the flipside of happy, empty pop, without ever losing its inherent listenability. Few pop albums in the past twenty years have been simultaneously bright and depressive, and none have done it near so well.

98. Bleach – Bleach (1999).
Bleach is a band that never got its heyday, even in the Christian circles it ran in. Their records were always a foot smarter than they got credit for being. Their time in the limelight faded much too quickly, and it’s a shame they’re gone now, because there’ve been too few bands in Christian rock whose albums have had any sort of staying power. It’s a travesty that bands like Pillar have received so much more press and sold three or four times as many albums than these guys – especially this largely ignored self-titled record, which wavered between simple, affectionate praise and sprawling odes of self-introspection. It’s a transition between the more simple-hearted offerings earlier in their careers and their more complicated later work, with the album opening with a couple straight-ahead rockers before the album slowly develops into a praise record, albeit a raucous praise record, hitting it’s peak on “You,” as singer Dave Baysinger croons “I found what it is I’m missing: you,” before sighing, “I don’t think my heart can take it.” A maturity found nowhere on Pillar’s Fireproof, let’s point out.

97. 3 Door Down – The Better Life (2000).
Now, this would be the first instance of an album I’d drop off the list if I could get away with being dishonest. I don’t know if there was ever really a point where it was cool to like 3 Doors Down (I think there was a month or two where it was a legitimate thing), but it’s certainly not cool now. Their albums tailed off pretty abruptly, so past this debut it’s all diminishing returns, but truth be told this was quite an introduction. Straight-ahead rock with a crunchy pop sound, The Better Life never missteps from the iconic opening drum line on “Kryptonite” to its plaintive closer “So I Need You.” The Better Life wasn’t the best album of 2000, but it was its most re-listenable.

96. Rufus Wainwright – Want One (2003).
No one’s weirder than Wainwright, and that’s what we all love about him. He always sounds like he’s never listened to any of the same records that most people have, so his albums sound like a weird cross between his dad (quirky singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III) his mom (folk singer Kate McGarrigle) and Il Trovatore. Sometimes it's charming, sometimes off-putting, sometimes both at the same time, but Wainwright has never been better than he was on this record. His first album to really swing for the fences (and you get the sense his fences are further away then most), Wainwright writes an relationship album jam packed with both full-on operatic stylings and folky asides, ending up with a sound completely unique to him. While his previous albums would ignore his homosexuality, and his later albums head-on address it, Want One was the first and only record where Wainwright seemed comfortable with it, writing the sort of brilliant, unconventional album that makes you understand why he’s heralded as "the Gay Messiah" within the gay community.

95. Bleu – Redhead (2003).
Bleu (the stage name for William James McAulley III) is a Boston singer-songwriter who appeared briefly in the national spotlight for one very short second before disappearing permanently, but he left behind one very good record. Dripping with Southie belligerence, McAulley’s vocals are so sweet that they can’t help but belie his confident swagger, and you can hear his self-loathing that his hardened exterior reads a little too “West Side Story” to be taken seriously. In fact, much of Redhead deals with the stripping away of McAulley’s carefully cultivated image, and he digs into his head and doesn’t seem to like what he finds. The album slides from simple, fondly-remembered moments (“Searching For The Satellites”) to obsession (“Watching You Sleep”) to heartbreak (“Somebody Else”) to aimless depression (“You Know, I Know, You Know”) until finally, on the album’s closer (“3’s A Charm”), McAulley finally picks his head back up. It’s a thrill to hear him stumble his way to transformation.

94. Explosions In The Sky – All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone (2007). Someone’s commented to me that simply playing Explosions while doing anything – cooking eggs, doing laundry, taking the dogs for a run – turns whatever it is into a near-religious experience. I couldn’t agree more, the most mundane event seems powerful when it’s scored this dramatically; check out any episode of “Friday Night Lights” to see it in action. As good as their work is on FNL, though, it’s their follow-up here that really brings the muscle. Instrumental rock bands don’t get a lot of play in general, but these guys are so good that the other video editor at my job and I had to make a pact that we weren’t going to use them to score our videos anymore because we couldn’t help but keep using them for everything.

93. Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American (2001).
Jimmy Eat World has released more than one memorable album, but Bleed American is the one that really sticks. Dropped by Capitol Records a few years earlier, the band had been touring Europe on their own dime and discovered that they were a pretty good band when they didn’t let labels mess with what they were doing. Bleed American (renamed Jimmy Eat World after 9/11) is simultaneously a love letter to their influences (Motley Crue, Tommy James, and The Promise Ring all get a shout-out in “A Praise Chorus”) and a coming-out party. The album was a cobbled-together collection of the best songs they ever wrote, but under hipster superproducer Mark Trombino’s direction, it feels all of one piece – a power-pop emo album that wears its heart on its sleeve, and ultimately a stronger record than many of their influences every managed themselves (I’m looking at you, Sunny Day Real Estate).

92. Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News (2004). There are some bands who understand melody and just choose to ignore it, and Modest Mouse always fell into that category before this. Wildly up and down, they were the sort of band capable of crafting lovely, floating pop nuggets that would make the Flaming Lips salivate, but would rather snarl at the world over dissonant bass lines. It wasn’t until Good News that they decided to do both at the same time, ending up with an album that bounces from anthemic frothy pop numbers (“The World At Large,” “Float On”) to growly tunes wishing misery and perhaps death on former lovers (“Satin In A Coffin”). The tone in singer Isaac Brock’s voice hints at tongue-in-cheek without ever letting you know if he’s really this angry or just pretending, but maybe it’s just he knows the songs are so good you’re not going to care one way or another.

91. Nirvana – Unplugged In New York (1994).
Five months after recording this performance, Kurt Cobain would be dead. Much has been made over this final album, and appropriately so – the band played only one of their hits (“Come As You Are”), played covers of songs by bands most people had never heard of, recorded each of their songs in one take, and after closing with a heart-stopping cover of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” Cobain turned down an invitation to do an encore, saying “I’ll never top that last song.” On a stage decorated with candle and a glass chandelier (Cobain requested both, wanting the staging to feel like a funeral parlor), the band stripped back its trademark buzzy angst into raw, introspective pain. When the album was released on CD, one reviewer noted “The problem with Unplugged albums tends to be that, given that their original identity is as a video, you feel that you are not having the whole experience without something to watch. In Nirvana's case, that is actually an advantage, because this particular whole experience is too intense to have over and over again.” Not so the album, which lends itself to constant repeat listening, particularly Cobain’s chilled-out version of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World,” a version so sad he completely outdoes Bowie at his own game.