Outside of the occasional Youtube link to a sweet song, I rarely dedicate much space here to music I enjoy unequivocally. Unironically discussing matters of taste on the Internet is a tricky thing since it opens you up for all sorts of criticism from those who might deem your opinions lame or lousy or somehow philistine.

But I can say without shame that Beck is awesome. When I was 14, my dad drove me and a friend to Lollapalooza on Randall’s Island, then sat in the grandstand in khaki pants reading a Smithsonian and looking like the world’s worst undercover narc.

I went down near the front to catch the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, then figured I’d stay up there for Beck just because I thought “Loser” was a pretty cool song. But it turned out Beck could bring it, dancing and playing guitar, rapping and singing, everything.

Then Odelay came out the next year — the one with “Where It’s At” and “Devil’s Haircut” — and swiftly became one of my favorite albums ever, as it remains.

It’s always hard to quantify exactly what I like about music since music’s such an innately abstract thing. But with Beck, I’m pretty sure the thing I most appreciate is his control over the medium.

This is a common thread among my heroes in all art forms: Kurt Vonnegut, Johan Santana, Prince, Charlie Kaufman. They all exhibit a sense of manipulation, like puppet masters pulling strings, demonstrating complete command over their output. Not just creative minds, creative masterminds.

Check out “Nicotine and Gravy,” from the wildly underrated Midnite Vultures. The payoff near the end is one of my favorite musical moments. Oh, by the way, the main part and the double-time part sync up perfectly, because I’m Beck and I’m just this good at making music, so now I’m going to drop it on you all at once.

To quote the great Bob Slydell, I celebrate the guy’s entire collection. I don’t really listen to Beck’s newer stuff as much as the amazing three-album run from 1996-2001, but I’m willing to defer to Beck on matters of taste. If Beck thinks the stuff on Modern Guilt was good enough to publish, it’s probably pretty awesome, even if it doesn’t appeal to me that much.

Also, another cool thing about Beck is this Latin version of “Jackass:”

Alex Belth mentioned the late-period Zeppelin song “Fool in the Rain” in one of his Subway Series live blogs, and wrote how all the girls in his high school loved it. Same with the girls in my high school, and a lot of the guys, too.

And who could blame them? It’s a catchy song, and about as accessible as anything Zeppelin put out. I happen to enjoy John Bonham’s work on the track — not his flashiest performance by a longshot, but a great example of some truly musical drumming. Plus the samba breakdown is neat, and Jimmy Page’s solo features perhaps the best use of an octave pedal in a guitar solo.

After I read Alex’s post I thought about the song and I realized something: The ironic twist in the lyrics at the end of the song must make so little sense to the high-school kids of today.

If you’re unfamiliar, the singer describes his love for someone. He’s standing on the corner in the rain, waiting to meet the lover in question, and growing frustrated and depressed as he waits. Then, in a straight O. Henry ending, he realizes he’s standing on the wrong block.

No one waits for anyone on corners anymore. Today, Robert Plant could just text the person to say he went into a local bar to wait out the storm. Crisis averted, silly rock-god hair dry, running in rain unnecessary.

So I wonder if the song resonates the same way for a generation of people who have never had to wait out on a corner to meet a date. I’ve actually done that, a bunch of times. Today’s high-school and college-aged kids never have. Certainly they can still appreciate a good song with a catchy riff, but I wonder if “Fool in the Rain” seems obsolete to them, some ancient relic.

People my age and older tend to bristle when we hear of newish songs including references to email or texts or cell phones or whatever. It feels like modern technologies should have no place in the rock and roll lexicon, probably at least partly because so many contemporary rock bands essentially imitate their forebears and stunt the development of the entire genre.

That’s stupid, though. Love songs (obviously) have always and will always detail relationships, so if today’s relationships feature a bunch of devices Robert Plant never had access to in his heyday, there’s no reason today’s young Robert Plants should avoid mentioning them in songs. Today’s fool in the rain just forget to charge his phone before he left the house.

I have to confess that I’m kind of fascinated by R. Kelly. I can never tell if he’s some great genius whose accomplishments I don’t quite understand and and whose greatness won’t be recognized until long after he’s passed, or if he’s just one of the least self-aware human beings on the planet.

And for some bizarre reason, I can’t pull myself away. One time I watched all 22 chapters of Trapped in the Closet in one sitting. Today, I transcribed the lyrics to his “Sign of a Victory,” one of the anthems for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and quite possibly the worst song ever recorded. I couldn’t find them online, and I wanted to have them all written down for posterity.

The only part I couldn’t decipher was the female backup vocals that follow the most predictable key change since “Man in the Mirror.” If anyone can, please let me know in the comments section. Here’s the song:

And here are the lyrics:

I can see the colors of the rainbow
And I can feel the sun on my face
I see the light at the end of the tunnel
And I can feel heaven in this place.

And that’s the sign of a victory
That’s the sign of a victory

I can feel the spirit of the nations
And I can feel my wings riding the wind, yeah
I see the finish line just up ahead now
And I can feel the rising deep within.

That’s the sign of a victory
That’s the sign of a victory

Now I can see the distance of your journey
And how you fought with all your might
You open your eyes to global warming (Ed. Note: Huh?)
And through it all you sacrificed your life.

That’s the sign of a victory
That’s the sign of a victory

If we believe, we can achieve anything
Including the impossible, this I know
So let’s lift up our heads, yeah
And raise the flag, yeah
Scream like you’re born to win
Now let the dance begin!

That’s the sign of a victory
That’s the sign of a victory
That’s the sign of a victory
That’s the sign of a victory

When you keep on fighting
After you’ve lost your strength
That’s the sign of a victory
When darkness is all around you
And you still find your way
That’s the sign of a victory
You’ve got the victory, sing
C’mon and sing!
Lift up your voice and sing
That’s the sign of a victory
Ohhh, that’s the sign of a victory.

I figured they were just posing for their annual holiday card when I first saw this, but apparently this is how the Cour suprême du Canada sits for sessions:

Hat tip to Eric Simon:

Emmis, which owns WRXP (101.9 FM), WRKS (98.7 FM) and WQHT (97.1 FM), says in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may consider selling one of them….

[WRXP] is in the top 10 among 18- to 34-year-olds, but rock stations have always faced an uphill ratings and ad climb here.

What’s pretty certain is that if Emmis does decide to sell, ESPN is interested. ESPN has plenty of cash, and its officials make no secret that they would love to put their all-sports WEPN (now at 1050 AM) on an FM signal.

– David Hinckley, New York Daily News.

I apologize for the lack of a link; I can’t find this story online. I don’t want to transcribe the whole thing, but the article goes on to explain that sports stations are growing increasingly popular on the FM dial.

Thinking about radio too long makes my head hurt. This came up in the comments section not too long ago: There’s free music, just floating about in the air, everywhere. All we need is an inexpensive device to access it.

And for the most part, it sucks. It sucks enough that we launch satellites into space, then pay for subscriptions to access better music in our cars and earphones. Sure, there’s probably some low-frequency electromagnetic waves bouncing around with Led Zeppelin on them near you right now, and that’s awesome, but soon that’ll turn to Phil Collins or something.

Apparently sports stations are getting more popular, and maybe as a member of the sports media that should excite me. It doesn’t, though, because I don’t really like listening to sports-talk nonsense and the sports programming I actually do enjoy on the radio — the games themselves — will always find a home somewhere.

Maybe I’m senselessly nostalgic for the medium and should just give in to always plugging my iPod into the cassette-adaptor thing I have, as I sometimes do. But my iPod only plays music I already know, and I can still remember when I relied on the radio to introduce me to new music.

I heard Sublime’s “Date Rape” for the first time on 92.7 WDRE during its short run of alternative-rock programming in the mid-90s. I bought 40oz. to Freedom the next day, I think, and played it about a million times. (Hasn’t gotten old yet, FWIW.)

Obviously WDRE in “The Underground Network” days wasn’t commercially viable, or at least not as profitable as the Adult Contemporary and Spanish-language channels it would become. Presumably the same is true of 101.9, the only station I know of in the city that plays anything like contemporary rock music, now apparently in jeopardy of turning to ESPN Radio.

And presumably market factors explain why Hot 97 and Power 105 don’t play a ton of great hip-hop and Q104.3 rotates some 100 classic rock songs, over and over again.

I can’t pretend to understand the forces that drive radio or what makes a radio station successful. But it strikes me as either baffling or a massive shame that not a single station on terrestrial radio — the source of so much free music — can manage to consistently play music I’m interested in listening to. That’s not abject snobbery either; I don’t know many people satisfied with tuning into a radio station for their music these days.

I’ve said before probably will again that I’d like my epitaph to say something like, “Here lies the man who saved radio.” Problem is, I have no idea how to do that, nor if radio even needs saving. Maybe I’m just crusty and old, and the people at ClearChannel could care less if I like what they’re putting out. I must not be the target audience.

All I know is it’d be pretty damn frustrating if one of the few halfway decent stations in this market started airing Michael Kay all the time.