LIST: Guilty Pleasures

So here they are, my Top 22 Guilty Pleasures.  For a reminder of what makes these selections oh so guilty go to Guilty as Charged.  And remember, be careful with your pointing and laughing Mr. & Ms. Secretly-listens-to-Chaka Khan.

1. Styx “Paradise Theater” The band was barely fit to lift a Mars bar from the corner store let alone a heavy concept album, thus the spectacular death of "Kilroy Was Here," my first Styx lp.  “Paradise” is a light-concept album drenched in rainy-day sound effects, staccato keyboards and castrated harmonies – just like everything else they ever recorded.  There's not even a hit to hang all the empty grandeur on, no "Come Sail Away" or "Renegade."  And yet it's the album that taught me how to pick out the bass line and sing harmony by ear.  Once I discovered Queen this record became obsolete, but you never forget your first.

2. Harry Connick, Jr. “We Are In Love” This guy is pure Gouda, but he knows how to sweep a gal off her feet, and isn't that what we all want sometimes?  Whether you fancy yourself the sweeper or sweepee this is the disc for it.

3. Yes “90125” If you can listen to "It Can Happen" without adding your own clipped "it-can-hap-pen-to-you; it-can-hap-pen-to-me; it-can-hap-pen-to-eve-ry-one-ev-en-tu-al-ly" then you are a heartless demon.  Lay yourself down at the altar of Prog and be saved / ruined.  I did, see how much sense I make.

4. The Rentals “Return of the Rentals” Weezer bassist in an orgy of 80s synthesizer worship.  "Friends of P" makes even less sense than "Undone (The Sweater Song)" but it isn't nearly as weird.  Or good.  But ohhh, the warm glow of fuzzy synth strings pulsing behind deadpan lines like "Empty, everything's technical; Sterile, and endless..." it's like an electric blanket, really.  You think I'm kidding but I'm not.

5. Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ “Smoke” Unless you spent much time in the southeast between 1985 and 1993 you may not know who these guys are.  Think Black Crowes without the R&B / blues background.  This is their rockin'est, most darkly stoned album with a few political barbs cast at the first Pres. Bush, who had been out office a full year upon the album's release.  Oops.  Still, it's freight train fightin' music and I own the boots.

6. Bad Religion “The Gray Race” If it's expeditive, sanctimonious, pedantic and diaphanous it must be post-"Recipe for Hate" Bad Religion.  So what if every song sounds alike and Prof. Graffin, PhD. (Paleoanthropology) forces big smart words into unnecessary rhymes.  When you're preaching to the choir they already know the tune, so rock on smarty-punks!  And make me feel slightly smarter and politically in tune while you're at it.

7. REM "Green" When I was 13 I told a joke with the word "twat" in the punch line at Thanksgiving dinner.  It's actually nice to have a singular moment in which to store the sum of my awkward years.  Though not as maligned as "Monster," "Green" is a pimply awkward and occasionally perfect Thanksgiving twat joke and I am thusly bound to it forever.

8. Brendan Benson “One Mississippi” Catchy little ditties about drinking tea, holding girlfriends hostage, forced incarceration in mental hospitals, and a grandma who falls victim to a violent and organized insect revolution are the highlights of this album.  That should be incriminating enough.

9. Blink-182 “Enema of the State” Because inside every man there is a 12-year-old boy refusing to grow up; because boogers and farting are awesome; and because fake punk is still better than real bubblegum.  Craptastic!

10. Motley Crue “Dr. Feelgood” See Blink-182 entry, except substitute "15" for "12," "getting wasted" for "boogers," "sexy nurses" for "farting," and "metal" for "punk."  This tape is still in the center console of my truck, right next to Beastie Boys “License to Ill.”  But I swear the tape deck doesn't even work, I just listen to NPR.

11. Van Halen “Women and Children First” It’s become so fashionable to hate Sammy Hagar that the band's lesser early albums are given a free pass even when they clearly don't stack up to the band’s earth-moving s/t debut, decade-in-rock defining "1984" or even - gasp - "5150."  This one starts out promising more of what you'd expect but it takes a dramatic left turn at the very last minute with the nearly operatic, life-and-love affirming "In a Simple Rhyme," calling the whole "Everybody Wants Some!!" bad-boy whiskey blues thing into question.  Hearing the band drop the girlie mags and break into song on some rooftop ala West Side Story is strangely captivating even today.

12. Sheryl Crow “Tuesday Night Music Club” Remember when she was kinda hot, Carly Simon teeth and all. All I wanted to do was have some fun too, and she seemed like a chic who could hang.  And sell out... cross over... become a VH1 diva... date Lance Armstrong...

13. Phish “Junta” I'll admit it, there is a little neo-hippie in me - more along the lines of wavy-gravy politics than shrooming barefooted in a man-skirt, but granola all the same.  This 2-disc sprawl has the endless Grateful-jazz noodling you get at a live show without the pitfalls of live recordings.  It's Phish at it's most serious and therefore most ridiculous - a good way to get lost.  I sometimes listen to it while cooking.

14. The Donnas “Spend the Night” Rowdy girls are hard to resist, even if they're only kidding.  It comes from years of thinking such people weren't real (I had a very dull social life in high school.)  "Take if Off"?  Okay, if you say so.

15. Dixie Chicks “Fly” It is sooo uncool to like them, or at least it was until they got all uppity about the war.  Now that they're rabidly liberal country music martyrs it's okay to like them, right?  No?

16. Toad the Wet Sprocket “Dulcinea” "Fear" is forgivable, what with "All I Want" and "Walk on the Ocean" being bone fide hits and all.  This follow-up pushes the sensitive, eyebrow knitting white kid emo schtick too far.  And yet I must address that eyebrow knitting emo kid in me from time to time in order to keep him from bringing the rest of us down.

17. Erasure “Pop! The Hits” How can you ever be sad in a world where there are whole albums of swooning electronic dance covers of ABBA songs by effete Englishmen?  How?

18. Spice Girls “Spice” I swear it's not some perverted schoolgirl fantasy thing.  The Baby one gives me the creeps and the Ginger-y one comes on too strong.  Posh is too bony and Scary is clearly trying to compensate for something.  So it's the Sporty one I guess.  Really?  I would have pegged me for a Ginger man.  The fact that I am able to remember their names without having to Google them is sad sad sad.  Sadder than talking to myself mid-blog?  Absolutely.

19. Madonna “Ray of Light” I know what you're thinking and, yes you can totally see her nipples through that white tank top in the video, but at this point who hasn't seen Madonna's nipples.  This can be an intoxicating listen forcing you to gyrate unconsciously in your chair, if you can manage to stay seated at all.  Thank goodness she made "Music" to snap us out of our love affair with her digitally remastered earth mother / dancing diva persona.

20. Joan Osborne “Relish” Millions of people bought this thinking she was all Christian because of that "...what if God was one of us..." bullshit.  They quickly dumped them in a used record bin after realizing that the song was a freak accident on an otherwise solid, blues-infused disc.  She's got that cracked smoker's voice that's so sexy until you hit 40 and start to sound like a bullfrog.

21. Refreshments "Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy" I used to drive a sporty little coup around Boston shouting along to "Banditos" and "Down Together."  Ah yes, nothing says summer of '96 like an open sunroof and escapist guitar-pop.  Or being an idiot.

22. Seal s/t (#2) Not since Meatloaf has there been such a consistently self-serious pop grandstander as Seal, who tugs on every heart string as if he were single handedly raising the Lucitania's anchor.  This could have been a guilt-free, adult contemporary winner if it hadn't been for stupid "Batman Forever" which used "Kiss from a Rose" for its love theme.  Also wins an award for most harmonic overdubs - there is a choir of Seals singing on most songs.

Ordinarily these albums might appear on my Buyer Beware! list, yet I just can't imagine some days without them.