I see Linda Ray posted her Top 10 with a 100-point breakdown earlier, so here's my Village Voice poll entry, with some comments. Taking a long hard look at what I really loved: '98 ALBUMS 1. Sherry Rich & Courtesy Move -- Sherry Rich & Courtesy Move (Rubber/BMG Australia) -- 18 points. 2. Billy Bragg & Wilco -- Mermaid Avenue (Elektra) -- 13 points. While melodic pop did come crawling back into favor later in the year on rock radio, it really hacked me off that there was no room on the airwaves -- apart from a few Americana stations, NPR programs and "modern twang" shows -- for the accessible wonders of Australian singer Sherry Rich's album or "Mermaid Avenue," two side projects of the roots-rock band Wilco. Millions of people were denied the opportunity to hear and maybe even love, as I did, Rich's perfect, hooky country pop, especially the single "Polite Kisses," or Billy Bragg and the boys' drunken call-and-response reading of Woody Guthrie's "Walt Whitman's Niece," or Jeff Tweedy's beautiful renderings of Guthrie's "California Stars" and "One By One." 3. Amy Rigby: Middlescence (Koch International) -- 13 points. 4. Duane Jarvis: Far From Perfect (Watermelon) -- 12 points. Amy Rigby and Duane Jarvis both reveal more about themselves than a busload of Paulas and Alanises, and, more important, they know how to be self-loathing *and* entertaining at the same time. 5. Bruce Springsteen: Tracks (Columbia box set) -- 9 points. Hey, "Tracks" is really a reissue -- pass it on. I resent listing His Remastered Bruceness as "new" (and I'm sure many of my peers feel the same about La Bob's "Live 1966") as it prevents me from doing justice to one of my deserving also-rans of 1998, as I take this maddeningly silly annual enterprise pretty damned seriously ... and apparently never met a promo I didn't like. So everyone should just go buy the '98 releases by Varnaline, Jonathan Richman, Robbie Fulks, Eels, Richard X. Heyman, You Am I, Golden Smog, Myracle Brah, The Silos, Cheri Knight, Greg Trooper, Marshall Crenshaw (another "new?" quandary over unearthed demos), The Bottle Rockets, The Hangdogs, NRBQ, Absinthe, Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach, Barenaked Ladies, Mike Peters, Candyskins, Sheryl Crow, Marah (OK, it's from '97), The Gourds, Todd Snider, Pete Droge, Dan Bern, Lucinda Williams, Fastball, Retsin, Pee Shy, Mike Ireland & Holler, The Slackers, Mercury Rev, Tuatara, Flat Duo Jets, B.B. King, Cosy Sheridan, Hadden Sayers, Geoff Muldaur, Dave Alvin, Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Firesign Theatre, Chris von Sneidern, Neil Finn, John Wesley Harding, Lambchop, Steve Poltz, Lyle Lovett, R.E.M. and Vic Chesnutt. And I'm sure I'm leaving someone out. 6. Son Volt: Wide Swing Tremolo (Warner Brothers) -- 9 points. (I got this too late in the year for my newspaper coverage, but loved it enough to re-prioritize my Top 10) 7. The Posies -- Success (PopLlama) -- 8 points. Bookending and ending a career that began with "Failure" on this same Seattle indie label, "Success" is a graceful exit for The Posies, and this underappreciated, too-pop-for-the-'90s (let alone Seattle) band's best effort -- which makes me more than a little sad that Auer and Stringfellow may only appear to us again in the writing credits of a Swirl 360 song. 8. Jennie Stearns: Angel With a Broken Wing (Bloom Productions) -- 7 points. A sublime roots-folk singer-songwriter who's just as evocative and emotional as Lucinda Williams, so she gets my Lucinda votes. 9. The Knack -- Zoom (Rhino) -- 6 points. >From adenoidal teen-aged misogyny to a mature, gorgeous "Rubber Soul" for the '90s -- who knew? I never would have imagined that one of my favorite albums of the year would be by one of the two bands I loved to hate nearly 20 years ago -- and that one of my favorite shows would be by the other, Cheap Trick. Ah, survivors. 10. Beck: Mutations (DGC) -- 5 points. Hey, I really did like it that much. I know it will score big in the final tally, but I'm not merely conforming here. REISSUES 1. Tommy Keene: Songs From the Film (Geffen) 2. Randy Newman: Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman (Rhino/Warner-Reprise Archives) 3. Whiskeytown: Faithless Street (Outpost) 4. The Long Ryders: Looking for Lewis and Clark: The Long Ryders Anthology (Chronicles) 5. NRBQ: Tapdancin' Bats -- The Anniversary Edition (Rounder) SINGLES: 1. Whiskeytown: Highway 145 (Bloodshot) (-- a split single of car songs, b/w Neko Case & The Sadies "My '63") 2. New Radicals: You Get What You Give (MCA) 3. Lincoln: Blow (London) 4. U2: Sweetest Thing (new single version) (Island) 5. Fastball: Fire Escape (Hollywood) 6. Beck: Tropicalia (DGC) 7. Wes Cunningham: So It Goes (Warner Bros.) 8. Sheryl Crow: My Favorite Mistake (A&M) 9. Lucinda Williams: Right in Time (Mercury) 10. Barenaked Ladies: One Week (Reprise) Well, that's it. When you can only pick 25 items, you invariably have to leave something out. A highlight of early '98 was the promo Wilco EP, mid-year brought the True West Big Boot reissue, and in December I got a tape of the Continental Drifters. All pretty cool, and keepers. Thanks to the P1/P2 lists for helping to inform some of my listening tastes this year... particularly for tipping me to Sherry Rich. As usual I went out on a limb on my No. 1 choice (last year it was Steve Wynn), but when something is your absolute favorite album of the year, screw what everybody else expects. Dan NP: Wilco live at Ziggy's into Joe Jackson Jumpin' Jive Live
