Focused on Incarnation

June 30th will come and go. 

And it'll be like we were never there.

~

At the turn of the 20th Century, gentleman farmers took their leave in the Northernmost confines of Philadelphia County.  Here, Whartons and Wilsons retreated from the bustle of the city to relax on their country estates.  It was a quiet life of leisure, removed from an increasingly cramped Center City.  However, amongst the rolling hills and tranquil fields, change was afoot. 

As the city spread northward, the wealthy gave way to the working class.   In 1908, the Whartons gifted their 23 acres to the city as a Christmas present.  Those 23 acres would become Fisher Park.  By 1925 many of the estates had been abandoned, as their owners took to the Main Line.  The village that remained, mostly inhabited by German immigrants, took on the name of the demolished Wilson estate -- Olney (for the non-Philadelphians of you, that's AHL-uhn-ee).

The immigrants took jobs at places like Heintz Manufacturing, which opened a factory in the neighborhood in 1921.  They opened businesses along 5th Street.  They built blocks upon blocks of row homes.  They went to movies at the Colney and the Rockland (the former of which had, upon  its 1925 opening, the largest seating capacity of any theatre in the world).  They built schools.  The new denizens of Olney were industrious.  They were close-knit.  And many of them were Catholic.

In April, 1900, seeing the northward growth, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia split off the Northern end of St. Veronica's parish, creating a new one -- St. Justin's -- Olney's first.  Based at 2nd and Tabor, the parish bought a parcel of land at 5th and Lindley the following year and renamed itself Incarnation of Our Lord.  The new community flourished. 

Again, Olney's one constant, change, visited.

With jobs plentiful, new streets and houses, thriving businesses and varied entertainment and recreational opportunities, Olney was one of the more desirable sections of the city in the first half of the 20th Century.  As the Germans established themselves and improved their circumstances, they moved beyond the menial, entry-level jobs, progressing into management or operating their own businesses.

Enter the Irish.

Still widely -- and in many cases openly -- discriminated against, the Irish would take the jobs no one else wanted.  With the paving of US Route 1, the Northeast Boulevard (which hadn't yet been renamed in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt), the road to the middle class was literally opened to the new wave of immigrants.  In Olney they found a better life, surrounded by fellow Catholics.

Olney started to become what it is to this day, a melting pot of cultures.  With the Irish came the Polish, the Italians, the Czechs.  And so started what also continues to this day: the clashing of those cultures.  The Germans looked on in dismay as their neighborhood was overrun with newcomers.  Some moved, some stayed, swallowed in the avalanche of influx.  Little by little, the German theaters and business closed.  New ones took their place, but the German identity was more or less lost.  Still, their parish remained.  It now had a convent and school.  It held dances and picnics, processions and pot lucks. It was like home.  Businesses and neighbors came and went, but through it all, that stone building at 5th and Lindley beckoned them back.  It was home.  Families may have moved on but they still came back to bury their dead, to baptize their children.  To remember their roots. 

The growth and prosperity of Olney during the first quarter of the 20th Century was mirrored by that of its first Catholic parish.  In 1916, Incarnation ceded half of the territory acquired form St. Veronica's, to form a new parish, St. Henry's.*  In 1923, St. Ambrose was born of the Eastern section of the growing parish.  A year later, everything North from Olney Avenue to the city limits became St. Helena's.  Over the next several decades, people continued to move into Olney and its parishes continued to thrive.  This growth culminated in 1956, with the construction of Cardinal Dougherty High school which, by 1965 was the largest Catholic high school in the world, with an enrollment of over 6,000 students.

Olney had arrived.

*St. Henry's parish closed in 1993, being absorbed in its entirety, back into Incarnation.

~

For most of its history, Philadelphia has been an incredibly segregated city.  This goes beyond the typical black/white/brown segregation you see in some places.  In Philadelphia, segregation was an art form.  In Philadelphia, you had Irish neighborhoods, Polish neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, Italian neighborhoods, Greek neighborhoods -- and the lines of demarcation were pretty set.  You crossed a street and you knew exactly whose neighborhood you had entered.  A lot of that isn't the case any longer, as white flight has pretty much decimated the city.  But when I was born, in 1969, it was alive and well.  Olney though, has always been a bit of an anomaly, in that, after that first wave of immigrants, it's always been a melting pot where, eventually, the newcomers were welcomed.  As long as they were white.  Unfortunately, racism was also alive and well in the Olney I inhabited as a boy.

Another thing specific to Philadelphia is that its Catholics are extremely parochial.  If you ask a Philadelphia Catholic where he's from, and he knows you're also Catholic, he'll more than likely answer with his parish.  If he's not sure if you're Catholic, he'll say what section of the city it is in which he resides -- then he'll still probably say the parish.  The parish is more than just a geographical area drawn on a map to a Philadelphia Catholic.  The parish is an essential part of who he is.  There's no "shopping for a church", no picking and choosing which school you'll send your child to.  You don't join a parish -- you're born into it. I grew up assuming that's just how it was to be Catholic.  My first inclination that we were different was when I was five or six and started to understand days of the week and realized that, when we were down the shore (in the Diocese of Camden), we were allowed to go to mass on Saturday night and have it count for Sunday.  You see, in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, vigil mass, as it is called, was not permitted until sometime in the 1990's.  Many of the changes of Vatican II were very late arriving to Philadelphia.  Some still haven't taken hold.

The last few decades of the 20th Century would bring change that could neither be foreseen nor forestalled.

~

From its peak in the 1950's and '60's, Olney had nowhere to go but down.  And did it ever.  The first scourge came via the drug man.  As with many cities across America, the experimentation of the 1960's turned into the outright junkie culture of the '70's.  And with that came crime.  With crime came the urge to pick up stakes and find a better place to live.  And so started the trickling out of the neighborhood.

Next came white flight.  As with any sociological shift, there are myriad reasons for the mass exodus of white folks from cities across America.  The lazy view is to say, "this is what the neighborhood looked like when it was predominately white, and this is what it looks like now", and blame color for the change.  That completely ignores things like economics, education and the effect on property values white flight had.  I often wonder what would have happened had the first family of color on each block been greeted with a pie, instead of, at best, a bunch of For Sale signs springing up within weeks.  The trickle had become a flood.

All the while, unbeknownst to us, our leaders had been failing us in the most horrific of ways.  Of these three contributors, this would be the most lethal to Incarnation, in the end.

~

I was baptized at Incarnation on 7 September 1969, exactly one month after the day I was born.  I went to school there, as did my brother and sister before me.  We three all made our First Reconciliation, received our First Holy Communion and were confirmed there as well.  In July of 1981 I went to the funeral of one of my best friends, 12 year-old John Procopio there.  The following May we buried his father.  Three years later when my own father died, I was outraged that my mother brought him back to her childhood parish and not mine, not the parish in which my father had raised his family, to bury him -- condition of the neighborhood be damned.  In later years though, I came to realize she had simply done that of which I speak here.  In her time of need, her darkest hour, she turned to the one constant in her life -- her St. Francis Xavier.  At Incarnation, I sang in the choir then became an altar boy.  I was, for better or worse, molded into the person I am now by the selfless, tireless Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose job was thankless and whose influence I only realized long after most of them had passed.  I was led spiritually by great men like Father Nelson, Fr. Lynch, who always had a joke for me as I vested him before mass, Father Himsworth, who taught me my first words of Spanish and Father Peter Welsh, whose first assignment out of seminary was to help a group of traumatized 7th graders come to terms with the loss of that classmate.

I was also fortunate enough to have had some great lay teachers.  Mrs. Stango and Ms. Flueher,  Ms. Chesna, a childhood classmate of my mother and Mr. Mulhern, who surely passed up more lucrative opportunities, to teach there for over 30 years.  They all showed me an example of living a Christian life as an adult.  I benefit as much from their life lessons as I do from their scholastic ones to this day.

Growing up in the time and place I did meant having a family of 300 or so.  We went to school together; we worshiped together; we played together; if someone was short at the end of the month or had a bad day at the track and the lights got cut off, we ate together.  And if we got out of line, there were plenty of parents with permission to beat our ass down.  Long before it ever became a punch line, we already had a village raising each and every one of us.

But by the 1980's, things were getting bad.  Folks were moving out of the neighborhood in droves, driving property values down, which in turn lowered the economic threshold one had to meet to buy a house there.  The poorer the neighborhood, the more crime you're going to have.  That, of course, causes more people to sell, driving property values down even lower and continues the downward spiral.  Laying in our room at 4850 N. Lawrence Street at night, my brother and I would count the Route 47 buses on 5th street as we drifted off to sleep.  On the weekends, we'd try to see how many different voice we could hear spilling out of the bar at 5th and Rockland.  As the years progressed, we'd hear the occasional, then regular, beer bottle broken against a wall, or someone's skull.  On (very) rare occasions, we'd hear a gunshot. 

My father's job moved us to South Carolina in the summer of 1984 and I've only been back to the neighborhood a couple of dozen times since, with greater infrequency. I'd drop in to see Mrs. Campbell and grab a slice of Crown Pizza.  I'd maybe pick up a donut at Oteri's but I'd always do two things, regardless of time or season: I'd drive down Lawrence Street and visit Incarnation. 

Sweeny's bar became Nicky's and now even that's gone.  So is Crown and Givnish Funeral Home and Frank's Hardware and just about all of the businesses I remember on 5th Street.  Just about all my neighbors have moved out and there's really nothing left for me in Olney.  Even the Olney Times stopped publishing a few years ago.  I understand how the original German inhabitants of Olney felt when I cruise through these days.  It's like going to a completely different city.  There are boarded up houses and burnt out stores.  There are trash-filled abandoned lots and the graffiti is everywhere.  Everywhere, that is, except from 4th to 5th Streets, along Lindley Avenue.  Even the thugs don't fuck with God.

I've always seen that as somewhat of a sign.  Just like my life may be a mess and my relationship with the Big Guy in tatters, I can always come back home to a clean, safe place.  And it will always be mine.  Much like a parent's home I know I'll never return to live permanently, knowing Incarnation is there has always been of great comfort to me.  Knowing I can always go back home, to her loving embrace has been a constant in my life.

~

I truly believe that in the 1950's, Church leaders sincerely thought they could send wayward priests out to "the farm" to get some counseling, clear their heads, do some praying and simply stop being attracted to young boys.  There was very little understanding of psychology at that time and I believe they thought men such as these could be fixed.  I also believe that the overwhelming majority of men with such proclivities did not become priests in order to gain access to children.  I think they simply thought that since they'd be taking a vow of celibacy, it would simply never be an issue.  It would fix them.

Clearly both of these beliefs were wrong.  When this became clear -- when priests came back from their sabbaticals, were transferred to new parishes and did it again -- Church leaders failed us in a way that can never be fixed.  Christ is nowhere to be found in a cover up.  He is absent in lies.  Christ is not present in hush money.  The men whose duty it was to protect not only our children but our Church as a whole failed.  And the cost has been staggering.

Sadly, with the financial structure of the Catholic Church, those who can least afford it usually end up paying the price.  The Church is kind of like the mafia, in that the money all goes up, with very little coming back down.  The parish pays its vig up to the diocese, the diocese to the archdiocese, the archdiocese to Rome.  So when a diocese gets hit with a huge judgment, Rome ain't paying it -- when we all know good and damned well that they knew exactly what was going on the whole time and can more than afford to pay for their failure in leadership.

Faced with huge liabilities from pedophilia lawsuits and no help coming from Rome, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia did what many other dioceses have done in recent decades -- they decided to close some schools.

And change again swept through Olney.

~

The first domino to fall was Cardinal Dougherty, which, with the Archdiocese's largest physical plant and second-lowest enrollment at 704, was a logical choice for closure.  No one was going to ship their kids into Olney to go to school.  The math just made it impossible to keep it open.

Two years later, 44 elementary schools took the hit.  With St. Henry's no loner in existence and St. Ambrose having closed its school, the choice came down to Incarnation or St. Helena's, as Olney could no longer support two Catholic elementary schools.  Although it had a larger enrollment and longer history, Incarnation also had a much older physical plant, somewhat poorer parishioners and, in what was most likely the determining factor, laid ten blocks deeper into the badlands.  As the Archdiocese had been systematically abandoning North Philadelphia for decades, it came as no surprise that the school closer to the suburbs made the cut and Incarnation was closed, after 99 years of educating Olney's children. Still, the name would live on, as the kids who were moved up 5th Street would be attending St. Helena-Incarnation regional school.  The optimist in me said, "it's ten blocks.  It'll be ok".  The realist in me said, "this will make it a whole lot harder to keep the church open when the nex t round of parish closures comes around."

Sure enough, another panel was commissioned, to study churches in the northern half of Philadelphia and Delaware County, ie: the poorest part of the city and the (relatively) poorest of the three bordering counties.  Even though it was not even included in the list of parishes being reviewed, it was announced on Sunday 2 June 2013 that Incarnation of Our Lord Parish will be closing on 30 June.  The archdiocese had learned form the school closures, where folks had eight months to mount protests and appeals.  This time around, it was four weeks and done.  No appeal.  No questions.  Everything south of Roosevelt Boulevard will go back to where it originally belonged, again becoming part of St. Veronica's, while everything North thereof will be absorbed into St. Helena's.  The archdiocese said that the actual church at Incarnation will remain open as a worship site of St. Helena's.  There'll be weddings and funerals there.  The occasional mass.  But that's just diocese-speak for, "we'll let you bury your dead out of there until we can sell it off". 

Inky as we know it will die on that day.  And Olney will never be the same.

~

Retired NBA player Cuttino Mobley is only six years younger than me.  He also grew up in Olney.  It's a testament to how fast the neighborhood had fallen when, in interviews, he would talk about growing up in a rough, inner-city neighborhood, crime-ridden and violence-infested.  He talked about how basketball was his ticket out.  Mobley attended Incarnation for elementary school and Cardinal Dougherty High School.  Even though we had two entirely different experiences growing up and clearly have different lives as adults, I am connected to him.  He and I both learned about God and the world around us at Incarnation.  When we each think of home, we think of Incarnation.  Regardless of where we go and what we do with the rest of our lives, our foundation was poured at Incarnation.  From the first Germans who held mass at 2nd and Tabor to the people I don't even know who go there every Sunday now, we all share a common heritage, a common lifeline, a union that can never be broken.

The bars and businesses of our youth may be gone.  All the people may have moved on.  When we drive through Olney, Fisher Park (into which no one lacking a death wish would dare set foot) , Oteri's and the Library (operating on what amounts to a part-time schedule, due to budgeting cuts) may be the only things we recognize.  Until now though, Incarnation was always there to welcome us home.  No matter what mistakes we've made, regardless of how far off course we found ourselves, it was all washed away when we went back home.  But very soon it won't be.  We'll carry the lessons we learned and the experiences we lived with us, but we'll never be able to go back.

~

June 30th will come and go. 

And it'll be like we were never there.




Until next time,
Keep the Faith

Focused on Adam and Steve

Gay marriage.

The US Supreme Court is taking their crack at it this week, so why not me?  Here's my take.

I was probably about six or seven years old the day I had my first argument about gay marriage.  It was with Christian Clancy, a kid who lived down the block from me.  I don't remember what started it or how precisely we got there but the essence of it was that he was trying to tell me that if he wanted to marry a boy when he grew up he could, whereas I was insistent that he absolutely could not. 

Then he threw the dad card. 

"Boys cannot marry boys, Christian!"  "Yes they can -- my dad said so."  End of argument.  Even at that young age, I knew that I was never going to win an argument once the dad card was thrown.  I mean, what do you do, call the kid's father a liar?  To what end?  Fisticuffs were frequent enough amongst the kids of Lawrence Street without bringing parents into it -- the surest route to escalation.  So we dropped it and it's actually pretty remarkable that I even remember the incident.

Yet here we, as a nation, are -- damned-near 40 years later, still having the same argument.

Now, my six year-old argument had nothing to do with equality or legality or anything of the sort.  My logic was simply that that's not how things worked.  While I'm sure Christian wasn't on any kind of a social crusade either, from what I can recall of his parents, they were all about peace and love and inclusion and such, and his comments were probably more about '70's acceptance of personal lifestyle choices -- kind of a 'be who you want to be' mentality -- than any actual opinion on gay rights.  I mean, we were little kids.

Fast forward to today and I am a 43 year-old heterosexual, divorced Catholic with friends both gay and straight.  Obviously my thoughts on gay marriage are affected by all of those criteria.

First and foremost, I believe a clear distinction need be made when having this conversation, between the civil, legal institution of marriage and marriage as recognized by a religious organization.  According to the Church of which I have been a lifelong member, I have never been married, as my wedding did not happen inside a church.  Now, if you ask the State of Texas, they most certainly will say that I was, in fact, married, for seven very misguided months in 1992.  Personally, I do not feel as though I have ever been married, as the sacrament in the Catholic Church I did not receive is far more important to me than the three-minutes my pregnant girlfriend and I spent in front of a judge, in his office, on a Tuesday afternoon.  However, that civil process -- that legal contract into which I entered on that day is exactly that with which the gay marriage debate is concerned.

No one is asking any religious organization to recognize same-sex marriage nor, in my opinion, should they.  The question of gay marriage is strictly a civil, legal, secular one.  As such, I can find absolutely no reason why same sex marriage should not be legalized.

I know the common arguments: allowing homosexuals to marry will lead to a degradation of the sanctity of marriage; it is tantamount to the condoning of illegal activity; it will "normalize" abhorrent behavior.  Let's look at those.   

There is no "sanctity" of marriage in its secular context.  Webster's defines sanctity as, "The state or quality of being holy, sacred, or saintly."  Now, when speaking about marriage within the confines of many religious faiths, this is absolutely something you'd be aiming for.  That's simply not the case when speaking of the civil institution of marriage though.  In its secular context, a marriage is simply a contract between two people.  That contract -- and the ability to legally enter into it -- is all homosexuals are asking for.

Now, if you want to substitute something like, "integrity" in the place of, "sanctity", well, you're still backing the wrong horse.  With over half of all marriages failing, the proliferation of "no fault" states and a virtual elimination of all stigma associated with divorce, I think it's safe to say heterosexuals have done more damage to "traditional marriage" than any homosexual can do.

As to the argument that, since sodomy is illegal in a number of states, legalizing gay marriage will be akin to approving of illegal activity -- if you are of this opinion, you've clearly not read any of the laws you cite.  By this logic, no one -- gay or straight -- in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia or Washington D.C., who also plan on engaging in oral sex with their spouse should be allowed to marry.  It's illegal in those states.  It's also illegal in Virginia to have sex with the lights on and in at least five states to do it in any position other than missionary.  Oh, and in Georgia, you and wifey better not have "toys".  That's a fucking felony!  (Pun unintentional).

The takeaway?  Unless you and your spouse only have sex in the dark, missionary-style, you're probably breaking at least one of the laws upon which you are basing your anti-gay marriage argument.

The other main argument against same-sex marriage is that it will take abhorrent behavior and make it "normal".  You mean like when they let white folk marry "coloreds"?  C'mon.  That's the weakest argument of them all.  It's not like making gay marriage legal will encourage straight people to become gay and marry.  If it were truly nurture over nature, how do you explain the very existence of homosexuals?  If heterosexuality is the "normal" state and two heterosexual people raise a child, how can he be nurtured into homosexuality?  That makes no sense.

This last argument is the one where the lines between folks' religious beliefs and a debate about a civil status get most blurred.   Allowing that bleed-thru is a terrible mistake because the fight for marriage equality is not about changing people's morals.  It is about allowing for some very basic, yet vitally important legal rights.  Among them:

-  The ability to make end-of-life decisions.
-  Estate and Inheritance rights
-  The legal protections afforded spouses with regard to court testimony
-  Insurance and tax benefits of marriage

This is, of course, a very small list but I want to focus on the first item and lay out a scenario.  Having worked as a chaplain, I know this is an absolutely realistic scenario in the State of Texas and imagine it's not an exception in that regard in many others.

Joe and Bob have been together for 25 years, in a committed, monogamous homosexual relationship.  Joe's family never accepted his homosexuality and sadly, he has not spoken with his family for over 20 years.  Joe has cancer.  He and Bob have discussed his end-of-life decisions at great length and Joe has decided he wants no extraordinary measures taken to preserve life should it come to that.  In fact, Joe has completed an advance directive, or "living will", that says just that. 

Joe's condition worsens and he is admitted to the hospital.  It doesn't look like he will make it.  Bob calls Joe's sister Mary, telling her of Joe's status.  Mary flies to Dallas, to be at her brother's bedside, having not seen him in two decades.  She immediately orders Bob removed from the room.  Not being a family member, not being in any way legally related to Joe, Bob's gotta go.  A few minutes later, Joe codes.  Mary tells hospital staff to take all possible measures to keep Joe alive -- in express conflict with not only his wishes but also his advance directive.  Being the closest blood relative, the hospital is compelled to do as she asks.  Joe suffers for another week before finally dying.  Bob does not see him for that entire week and a woman Joe had not spoken to for 20 years was able to completely override everything Joe had discussed with his life partner of 25 years.

This is not some ridiculously exaggerated example.  This is exactly what happens to people every day. 

Opposing same sex marriage is supporting stories like this.  Opposing same sex marriage is supporting the preventing of people to leave their loved one their estate.  Opposing same sex marriage is supporting withholding basic legal rights from an entire class of society.

And it's fucking wrong. 

I don't care what god you pray to.  No one is asking your church, synagogue, temple or mosque to condone same sex marriage. 

Your government absolutely should though.

Focused on the Music, Vol. 7: The Top 10 Albums of 2012

Top 75 New Albums of 2012.


Part VII-- Numbers 10-1:



10.  Americana
Neil Young

When a basketball player is having an exceptionally good night shooting, he'll often throw up a ridiculous shot that on most nights would have no chance of making it into the basket  It's called a heat check.  If it goes in, it's confirmed that dude is, in fact hot that night and can do no wrong.

That's what this album is. 

Getting his band Crazy Horse back together after more than a decade and a half off, Young wanted the guys to focus on material for their new album, Psychedelic Pill (# 28 in this countdown), so when they got together and started practicing, they didn't play any of their own old material.  Instead, following up on a one-off live performance Young had had with the Dave Matthews Band, in which they covered Oh Susannah (88), Crazy Horse started playing around with old folk songs or, as Young puts it, "songs we all know from kindergarten".  Susannah led to Clementine (116), led to Tom Dula (the name of the real guy Tom Dooley was written about) and the next thing you knew, there was enough material for an album. 

In collecting material from 1619's God Save the Queen (with sthe track's second half comprised of 1831's America [My Country 'tis of Thee]) through 1964's High Flyin' Bird, the band pulls out the lost verses they don't sing to the kiddos, a la the real Grimm's fairy tales and paint a portrait of murder, betrayal and rebellion fitting for the nation it celebrates.  This is Young and the Horse painting a picture of America, warts and all, while turning a children's sing-along into an eight-minute guitar-fest.  In almost every case, the treatment works, with the lone exception being their cover of 1957's Get a Job.  This is in part because guitars and doo wop just don't mix but also because of our natural squeamishness around anything even tangentially related to the television show Sha Na Na, which has always creeped us out in a big way.  Damned thing should've been called Pedophilia: The Musical.

But we digress.

This album proves three things: Good songs will always have a new life if someone takes the time to record them; great bands can make great songs sound fresh; if you work hard, make mistakes -- learn from them -- and live long enough, you will eventually have the professional, personal and financial freedom to do whatever you want.

Just call it a heat check.




9.  Sensational Space Shifters
Robert Plant

Robert Plant's music has taken some interesting roads since the turn of the century.  Having found fame as the front man of one of the most popular bands in history, his place as a rock icon was set.  Beginning in 1999 though, he started exploring more folk and blues material in working with Priory of Brion and a new band he created called The Strange Sensation.  After pairing with Alison Krauss to record a Grammy winning collaboration, he took a step away from recording others' material and recoded an alum of mostly original songs with his Band of Joy which continued to explore the music of the 1920s and 30s US South.  It seemed to be the logical progression of an extremely talented musician: rise to unfathomable fame in his youth, mellow out over the years, explore his roots and kind of ramp it down.  He even married Patty Griffin.  The rocking days were done with.

Not so fast. 

Plant opens this live album with the Bukka White classic Fixin' to Die [Blues] (67) and proceeds to rock the crowd's face off for the next hour and a half.  Having rediscovered his, "big voice", as he says, he uses the hell out of it in this superb 15-song set. 

Mixing in some of his solo material, some reworked stuff from his days in Led Zeppelin and nod to White and other influences, Plant and his band go hard on this record and make  a song like Griffin tune, Ohio (83) shine as a lovely acoustic guitar-driven change of pace.  A strong Whole Lotta Love/Steal Away/Bury My Body medley leads to a finale of Another Tribe, followed by Gallows Pole, leaving the crowd and this listener blown away by a performance we never saw coming.  As recent discoverers of Plant, this serves as a great primer for our initial delving into his catalogue and is the best live album of 2012.



8. Babel
Mumford and Sons

Island Records, in a stroke of genius, released the weakest song on this album as its first single. It didn't matter what song they selected. It was going to be a Top Ten hit and the album was going to sell 100,000 copies in its first week. This is a tried and true record company trick. When an album follows a huge hit, they generally pick a lesser song for the lead single then go with the best track later on to re-launch sales. While I Will Wait (3) is a fine song, it is simply a continuation of that which was heard on Sigh No More. It got them the radio play they wanted and as such was a safe choice.

This album is a modest improvement for a band still feeling its way through almost instant success. The tendency here would have been to kick out a formulatic collection of songs that took no chances and tried to recapture the lightning in the Sigh bottle. And while there is not a great departure, there is some progression into a more arena-worthy sound, paired with a touch more gloss, while maintaining the heart of who they were going into the studio the first time.

Marcus Mumford still has an occasional tendency to turn the most beautiful of lyrics into a misguided mess by over thinking things but that is part of his development as an artist and adds a bit of charm to things. They're not trying to be Coldplay; it's ok to sound a little flawed on occasion. Using acoustic instruments, solid harmonies and real emotion, this music is every bit as personal as their debut album and makes us continue to enjoy the evolution of this band.

In ten years this will likely not be seen as their best album but it will have elements of what will contribute to whatever album that is. That being said, it is still one of the better albums of the year.

Our favorite track: Ghosts That We Knew



7. Observator
The Raveonettes

Battles with clinical depression and a post-back surgery drug addiction, while listening to The Doors are said to be the inspiration for this album.

It's a dark world of hazy riffs, wrecked love and drunken assholes that populate Observator and we love every second of it because underneath all the reverb and stomp pedal action lies truly gifted song writing. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo have been at this for about a decade now and taking their paired vocals and marrying them to superb guitar work and, in a new development, some piano, they continue to expand one of the more comprehensive sounds in music.

Going into the dark corners of despair and angst in Young and Cold, visiting the demons within on The Enemy or visiting the lush inspiration grounds of the Jesus and Mary Chain on album closer Till the End (sic), The Raveonettes continue to be the class of the fuzzy-reverb throwback bands. Sinking with the Sun could have been a hit in 1989 or 2009 and that's what draws us to this album. It hearkens back to a time in our life we thoroughly enjoyed, while pointing out that is wasn't all rainbows and unicorns and, while those were great times we like reminiscing about, we have no interest whatsoever in once again living them.

Our favorite track: She Owns the Streets (10)



6. Old Ideas
Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen has always lived in those halcyon hours, "when the day has been ransomed/And the night has no right to begin"*. He sings of spirituality, sexuality, despair and isolation with such withering honesty that it is literally impossible for us to diagram the path he takes that ultimately leads his listener to contentment in the present and hope for the future. It would be easy to say it's simply because he's 78 years old and the elderly just have a way of doing that. It would be completely inaccurate however because Cohen has been doing this for over 50 years. It would also do a disservice to what the man has accomplished in the last decade.

In 2004, some eleven years into semi-retirement (his last public appearance had been in 1993), Cohen's daughter discovered her father had inadvertently paid the credit card bill of his business manager, in the amount of $75,000. Tip, meet iceberg. By the end of 2005, Cohen learned that all but $150,000 had been drained from all of his and his charitable foundations' accounts -- and he no longer owned the rights to most of his songs. After pouring his heart and soul into his career, at 70 years old he was essentially broke.

So what did he do? In 2006 he released a book of drawings and poetry that became a best seller. Two years later, at 72, hit the road on a world tour. Dude was literally singing for his supper and has not stopped since. Two live albums were released in 2009 and another in 2010 but this wasn't a straight money grab, as the latest, Songs From the Road is uniformly regarded as a spectacular album. Then, rather than live off the works of his past, here is Cohen, at 78 years old, putting out new material.

An unflinching glance at impending mortality permeates this album, beginning with the first track, Going Home, where Cohen signs of, "Going home without my burden/Going home behind the curtain." It continues and expands to include the loss of his fortune and, more importantly to him, someone he had considered a true friend, in Darkness (175), "I've got no future/I know my days are few/I thought the past would last me/but the darkness got that too." While the hurt is piercing in these tales, the writer never leads us into self-pity or a permanent melancholia. For just when we're on the verge of wallowing, he presents us with a plaintive plea to a lover, "I dreamed about you baby/You were wearin' half your dress/I know you have to hate me/But could you hate me less?"

Ethereal background singing supports the spiritual hymn we knew was coming in Come Healing and in the end that's what this is -- a personal healing for Cohen.  Thankfully, he brought us along for the journey. We have no idea where we will be in our late 70s but we sure as hell hope we're still as invested in life, love, the sacred and the sexual as Leonard Cohen is. Similarly, we don't know how much longer he's going to be with us but whatever wisdom he has left to impart, we want to hear.

Our Favorite track: Show Me the Place (44)

*From Amen.



5. Shields
Grizzly Bear

Our first exposure to Grizzly Bear was burning their 2008 cover of The Crystals' 1962 song He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss), onto CD and giving it to our buddy Ivan on Valentine's that year and watching him freak out as he tried to figure out what we were trying to tell him.  We were saying nothing of course and were just digging freaking him out.

We checked out their catalogue and saw something we love seeing in a band: steady progression.  From their decent initial effort, 2004's Horn of Plenty, to 2006's Yellow House to 2009's Veckatimest, the band continually improved upon the richly-layered, heavily textured sound they were going for.  By that 2009 record, they had almost mastered it.

On this album, they do.  The final piece was strength of lyric.  Until now, Grizzly Bear was an interesting-sounding band but they really had nothing to say, a fact that was brought home in Rolling Stone's review of lead single Sleeping Ute (63), (which predated the release of the album).  The reviewer, clearly not having heard the rest of the album, clearly assumed we were in for more of the usual when he wrote, " What's he going on about?   Bet you won’t mind listening 10 more times to figure it out."  That was the story of listening to Grizzly Bear up until now.

A change in how they write, moving to a more collaborative style has served them well and propelled them into the realm of truly great bands.  It also affected the music on this album as, rather than a constant thematic soundscape, you have songs with multiple movements, originating as acoustic ballads only to turn into distortion-filled psychedelic rockers before doubling back to a synth-laden slow-jam.  Thing is, it all works.  While in the past, the band has come perilously close to over-production, doing things like layering vocals as many as six times over to eliminate imperfections, on this album the flaws show a little.  While creating appreciably more complex music, they've backed off a bit on the board and allowed some of the imperfections to rise to the top.  These production choices lend themselves perfectly to a record that sounds slightly unresolved, in the tradition of a great cathedral never quite completed.

Our favorite track:  Yet Again (87)



4.  Heroes
Willie Nelson

At 79, you never know when a Willie Nelson album might be the last one he releases.  If that were to be the case here, Heroes is a fine manifesto and a fitting farewell.

There's the inexplicably-effective pairing with Snoop Dog and Kris Kristopherson on the ode to weed, Roll Me Up (26); a shout out to his real life heroes on Come on Back Jesus, (where he implores JC to "pick up John Wayne on the way"; he nods at his own mortality with a remake of his own A Horse Called Music, which he sings with Merle Haggard.  Most noteably though, throughout the record, Willie's 23 year-old son, Lukas hovers in the shadows.  With a voice resembling the younger Willie, he chimes in, almost as if to prop up the occasionally fading vocals of dad.  The effect is quite touching and imparts a feeling that perhaps the son has too become one of dad's heroes.

Having long ago secured his finances and legacy, Willie is in the enviable position of recording simply because he enjoys doing so.  Perhaps as an accommodation to age, he has plenty of company on this album.  In addition to those mentioned, he pairs with Billy Joe Shaver, Sheryl Crow, Ray Price and Jamey Johnson, among others.  What you're left with is a vision of Willie sitting on the porch, regaling his buddies with wisdom and wit -- and more than a little pickin'. 

And like any wise person, Nelson knows there is very little original wisdom in the world.  The majority of what we know, we learned form someone else.  That being the case, he sees the value in sharing the words of others, as evidenced by his cover of Pearl Jam's Just Breathe, Tom Waits' Come on Up to the House and Coldplay's The Scientist.  (although, it should be noted that the first time we listened to the record through, we liked every song except it, even before realizing it provenance). 

Similarly, Nelson understands taking a second look at things can also be beneficial, such as on the aforementioned Horse and the Willie/Lucas/Price reworking of his own Cold War with You. 

Collectively, this serves as a superb Willie's last Stand if it ends up being so, with the reins being passed on to the capable hands of Lukas, who wrote or co-wrote five of the tracks here.  Then again, Willie's likely to outlive us all.



3.  Wrecking Ball
Bruce Springsteen

"From Chicago to New Orleans/From the muscle to the bone/From the shotgun shack to the SuperDome/We needed help but the cavalry stayed home/there ain't no one hearing the bugle blown"

In a world where corporations are people, It's every man for himself in 21st Century America and if you are looking to the government -- or anyone else -- to save you, you are fucked.  The social contract that existed in the first half of the last century, whereby a mutual loyalty was mutually beneficial has been replaced by a system where enough is never enough and no one owes you shit.

That's the theme of this album, in all its harrowing detail.  From opening track We Take Care of Our Own (2), through the final fadeout of American Land, Springsteen paints a damning portrait of the world in which we live.  It is populated by the "rich man up on banker's hill" looking down on the Shackled and Drawn, a Jack of All Trades, who wants to, "find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight". 

He laments Death to My Hometown (13), in a natural sequel to 1984's My Hometown.  This time around though, there's no happy ending, no ride down the avenue with his boy on his lap, telling him it will all be ok.  No, this time there's only the stark realization that, "Just as sure as the hand of God/They brought death to my hometown."  This leads to the personal and national tones of This Depression (101). 

Even when he trying to find hope or defiance, Bruce can't seem to find much and needs to call on older material than never made it onto an album.  Wrecking Ball stands in the face of the chaos and screams, "If you got the guts mister/If you've got the balls/If you think it's your time/Step to the line/Bring on your wrecking ball".  As the rest of the album makes perfectly clear though, the wrecking has already been done.

In classic Springsteen anthem style, Bruce sings of the Land of Hope and Dreams (47) but even this is tinged with sadness, as it contains the last musical notes ever played by Clarence Clemons.  The Big Man stroked out the night after laying down the track, eventually dying.  It eerily parallels the theme of this album and the death of the American dream.

Despite being a vocal (and obvious) Democrat, this is not Bruce railing against the right.  The firmament of American society has cracked and may never recover.  This fissure has manifested itself in runaway capitalism and finger-pointing politics but at heart, all of society's failures find their root in the individual.  Similarly, so will the solutions.  The spaghetti western We are Alive  alludes to railroad workers, MLK and Mexican immigrants, with a core Springsteen populist message of survival despite the obstacles thrown our way. 

That's the American spirit and, despite the crushing blows it has been dealt over the last decade, this remains the American Land, where  even though, "They died building the railroads/They worked to bones and skin/They died in the fields and factories/Names scattered in the wind", the fact remains that, "There's diamonds in the sidewalk, the gutters lined in song/There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man."

That note is as positive as the record gets and it mirrors how most people view where we are.  We will be ok and things will get better but none of the social institutions we looked to in the past century will be there this time around.  This time, we're on our own.  We will take care of our own or we will perish.



2.  Most of My Heroes Still Don't Appear on No Stamp
Public Enemy

"At the age I'm at now/If I can't teach/I shouldn't even open my mouth to speak".  So sayeth elder statesman Chuck D on Rltlk. 

That's right, Public Enemy is serving as the voice of reason in the hip hop world.  They look across the musical landscape they pioneered and they see a bunch of entitled, untalented wannabees who are more focused on misogyny and stackin' paper than they are on anything even closely resembling art.  And it pisses them off.

Whether one has agreed with their words or not, Public Enemy has always stood for something.  Their greatness has always been in their passion.  This album makes it clear that they remain firmly committed to the success of the young black male.  That doesn't mean refusing to change with the times, as Chuck raps, "I ain't mad at evolution/But I stand for revolution" on Get Up Stand Up (24), while blasting the results of that evolution, "How many more times we gotta hear that lame line/"I'm inspirin' 'em'"/To do what/Grow better weed and get higher than 'em/Feed the needy-ass greedy buyer in 'em/Be the same damned dog but to finer women?"  Enough already -- it's time for the hip hop "artists" of today to grow the fuck up.  The indictments flow on tracks like Catch the Thrown (a clear swipe at Jay Z and Kanye West) that expands the field of fire to include Corporate America: "Feed the people/Fight the power/Fix the poor/But that 1% done shut the door".  It's standard PE populist ranting but that doesn't make it any less earnest.  With killer hooks, well-selected collaborations and their usual superb production, this album also sounds completely fresh, which is pretty amazing for a group that is celebrating its 25th anniversary. 

Reveling in their place on, "the senior circuit", Chuck and Flav go past the artists in whom they are so disappointed, taking their case right to the fans, asking, "Is your mind, body, soul/Is it better from it?/Tell me why do ya'll love it/Songs meant to send you to prison/Bids to influence a million and a half kids".  Their appraisal of the current state of hip hop is scathing and one we have been waiting for someone to have the balls to say for years now.  Thing is, Public Enemy is probably the only group that could pull this off.  Their relative lack of success outside their group (aside from Flavor Flav's ridiculous reality shows) allows them to retain the street cred they have built up, so when they blast the kids, they don't come off as embittered sell-outs.

While society, racism and oppression by The Man are also given attention here, our takeaway is an articulate statement on the drek that popular music has become and the effects is has on the kids who listen to it.  The end result is, to us, the most important album of 2012, if not the absolute best.

With spoken-word interludes between songs, PE credits the civil rights pioneers who have led the way.  It's a unique way of getting the recognition out there and is very effective.  Amongst those listed are the expected, (Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez) and the obscure, (Cynthia McKinney, Dorothy Height, Colores Huerta).  The inclusion, however, of cop killer Wesley Cook in and of itself eliminates the possibility of making this album the top record of the year.  While we can appreciate that they are probably making a statement about capital punishment and race relations in general, the truth is that Cook killed a Philadelphia police officer in cold blood, in front of an eyewitness.  He doesn't deserve to mentioned in the same breath as the true heroes that don't appear on no stamp. 



1.  Handwritten
The Gaslight Anthem

"I'm in love with the way you're in love with the night/And it travels from heart to hand to pen/Every word handwritten."*

Clearly we bought a lot of music in 2012.  Some of it has been fantastic.  Some of it has been dreadful.  What though makes for the best?  For us it takes something that transcends a mere enjoyable listening experience.  There are albums that have great music.  Some have insightful, intelligent lyrics that make us think.  Others have flawless musical execution or phenomenal production.  In rare cases, an album has all of that.  Still, that doesn't necessarily make a record the best. 

For that designation, an album has to have an added layer of importance to us -- something very much like love.  We need to hear the right words, with the right music, at the right time and be open to it.  It all has to click at the right time and for us, this album did.  For us to consider an album to be an album of the year, we have to believe that in ten years, when we sit down and listen to it, it will take us back to a very specific place and time. 

We remember spending about 30 bucks on the Wildwood boardwalk in the summer of 1986 to win a copy of Billy Joel's The Bridge, a week before it was to be released.  Listening to it now, it's not very good but it was the first full album of new material of his that was released after we became a fan.  We then remember racing back to the place we were staying, only to realize there was no record player.  Somehow, some guy who, for the life of us, we can remember nothing about, other than he was and old dude -- maybe even 30! -- and clearly a Billy Joel fan, ended up scoring a cassette of it and we listened to it about 35 times that night.  We remember nothing else of that summer after our father died except that afternoon and night down the Jersey shore.

Similarly, we remember our girlfriend at that time giving us copy of George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice, Vol I, as we left for the Gulf War.  Until we were able to get into downtown Jeddah and score some bootlegs, it was the only cassette we had to listen to.  The war ended fairly quickly and the relationship shortly thereafter but whenever we hear the opening notes of lead track Praying for Time, we're a 21 year-old kid in the dessert, missing the girl he loves.

There are not necessarily any watershed moments happening in our life right now, (not that we'd really know that until a few years from now anyway), but that doesn't mean we are without touch stones.  This album is one.

Whether it was the pre-release single 45 (23) comparing a record to failed love or the superb lyrics of the title track (5) that are carried throughout the record, the first time we listened to this album we knew it would be a part of us forever.  Much like Springsteen before them, The Gaslight Anthem takes a look around, sees the ordinary and explores it anyway.  Real protagonists with real hearts and entirely human reactions to the situations life hands them.  50s and 60s beats with the occasional soaring chorus, they are New Jersey through and through. 

While Brian Fallon's writing explores emotion, particularly the pain of love lost or simply missed, he stops short of full-on emo when he asks, "What can I keep for myself if I tell you my Hell?", on Too Much Blood. 

His recent Tom Waits-inspired side project The Horrible Crowes creeps into his full time gig here and there, particularly on Here Comes My Man and the album's final track, National Anthem, which was likely a Crowes leftover.  With lyrics like, "With everything discovered just waiting to be known/What's left for God to teach us from his throne/And who will forgive us when He's gone?", these influences only serve to enrich a truly straightforward rock 'n roll album of the finest order. 

The deluxe version of the album includes a pretty cool cover of Nirvana's Sliver and a take on You Got Lucky that just might be better than Tom Petty's original.  In addition to these, the deluxe version contains two additional originals: acoustic ballad Teenage Rebellion, and Blue Dahlia, the latter of which we still cannot believe got cut from the album.  That kind of discipline though is what helps make this record so superb: they came in, said what they had to say and got out, without dumping a bunch of what they considered filler on us.  (Still, how can you not include a song with lyrics like, "I met you between the wax and the needle/In the words of my favorite song."?)  Arugh!

Sentiments like that had us from the start and make The Gaslight Anthem's Handwritten the Number One album of 2012.  If you have a Spotify account, you can stream the entire album here.  If not, we've linked each track below (and we apologize in advance for the lyric videos.  We hate them too but trying to find a copy of the studio version of a song for which there is no official video often leaves one with limited options).  Additionally, our Top 100 songs of 2012 Spotify playlist can be heard here.

1)  45
2) Handwritten
3) Here Comes My Man
4) Mulholland Drive
5) Keepsake
6) Too Much Blood
7) Howl
8) Biloxi Parish
9) Desire
10) Mae
11) National Anthem
Bonus 1: Blue Dahlia
Bonus 2: Sliver
Bonus 3: You Got Lucky 
Bonus 4: Teenage Rebellion (unavailable online for linking)

*From the title track.


Previous: 75-61, 60-51, 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11.



May you and those you love have a happy, healthy and blessed 2013.

Until next time,
Keep the Faith

-Gary and the editorial panel (of one).