Robert Gordon's It Came From Memphis is pretty entertaining, too.

Yeah, especially for the Big Star and wrestling aspects. I'm always fascinated by the gonzo recording culture that flourished in Memphis during the seventies. Big Star's 3rd could have only been done in that kind of environment.

I may have missed a mention, but has anyone mentioned Kings of Leon for the southern rock thing? I hear they're a throwback of sorts to that style.

Whoever posted that link to the power pop faves of musicians last week, thank you! I had much fun last night checking out some of those songs. Ah, Cheap Trick. Badfinger! Todd Rundgren!

> Aimee, I'd kind of lean toward doing a 1974 mix since a lot of good music came out that year in multiple genres.

"Let's see... Too Much Too Soon. Okay, only twenty more to go."

ETA: "Oh, yeah: 'The Streak'. That leaves nineteen."

Mix will go on these.

I've been using them, too. My FrankenMix is on one.

See, it'd be really hard to pin down ONE song from each year. And then, like joe boucher pointed out, it might be a song that wasn't from that year. Like "Been Caught Stealing" was one of my songs from 1992, but the album, Ritual de lo Habitual was released in 1990.

So, anybody know anything about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? I've fallen madly in love with their song Maps. Very haunting.

EtA: People who would like to hear the song can go to their official web site. The page will launch a player in a new window, and the first of three songs played will be Maps.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD didn't do much for me, but they were excellent live.

And I'd have an easier time finding one song from each year than finding 30 songs from any one year, especially with the usual mix CD limitations. (No (or very few) duplicate artists, nothing so obvious that people will be sick of it, etc.) I also wouldn't do "my song for the year" rather than "song released that year," because it would just get really confusing. ("I know I was obsessed with the Cure in 10th grade, but did I listen to "Pictures of You" more in 1993 or 1994?" Best to just give up and stick it in the 198?6? slot.)

Big Star's 3rd could have only been done in that kind of environment.

Damn straight. Booker T & The MGs also could have only come from that environment.

Damn straight. Booker T & The MGs also could have only come from that environment.

Yeah, that's why I loved Palmer's book, because you really got a sense of what made Memphis special musically. Have you heard the Memphis Goons, Hayden? Bunch of smartass teenagers in the early 70s who never played out but did a lot of recording with big Beefheart influences. Those recordings came out in the 90s. Actually some legendary Ardent recordings have come out in the last year or so for bands like the Hot Dogs (which we feature in the book) and Rock City (the precursor to Big Star).

Memphis Goons from AMG:

Even if the Memphis Goons weren't a great rock band, they'd be a great rock story. Back in 1969, piano playerRobert Hull, guitarist/bassist Phil Jones, and guitarist/bassist Mike Lantrip were three fellas from the Memphis suburb of Whitehaven, bored jut like plenty of their peers. So they formed a band and adopted new names (Hull was Xavier Tarpit, Jones became Wally Moth, and Lantrip took on Jackass Thompson). But the Goons weren't like the thousands of other garage bands of the era, out playing school dances and parties. No, the Goons' concise and private m.o. went like this: write, practice, record, move on to the next tune. Over the next few years, they captured hundreds of songs on tape. Though the term lo-fi wouldn't emerge for another two decades with bands such as Pavement and Guided By Voices, the Goons created the early blueprint for the sound: raggedy guitar, oddball lyrics, basement-value home recording, and dollops of passion. Not that anyone other than themselves heard it. As the players grew up and started having families, they stopped conducting their sonic experiments. Xavier Tarpit took the pen name Robot Hull and began writing for Creem under Lester Bangs. Eventually he went back to Robert and became an executive producer for Time-Life Music. Then, in 1996, Hull wrote an essay for Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama called "The Original Punks: The Greatest Garage Recordings of the Twentieth Century." Number two on the list (behind a tied number one for the Sonics and the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie") were a band no one had ever heard of called the Memphis Goons. The piece set the stage for Shangri-La to release the Goons' only proper album, Teenage BBQ, later that year. Though the disc collects vintage cuts from reel upon reel of homemade tapes, the band would not be confined to yesteryear. In 1998 they performed a surprisingly inspired show back in Memphis — their first ever.