Second to None (Except for Everyone In First Place)

The general public fires off a myriad of e-mail questions towards the Disco:Very offices once it learns of the year-end free CD offer. In an attempt to quell potential uproar, let's discuss some of these inquiries openly:

1. I just sent you my address--does this mean I can expect to be stalked?
    Only if you want me to. And even then, what's in it for me?

2. The new year began over a week ago--where is my CD already?
    Do I come down to your job and insist you cook my Big Mac faster?

3. I'm with the RIAA.  You're under arrest.
    That's not a question.

4.  What songs were left off the CD, and why?
     The reasons are as varied as the rejects themselves.  Here are a few:

• This track sounds too much like their other songs, only without the pathos.
• This one is even too disco for me.
• Another blogger already picked them as a year-end favorite, and I am a lone wolf.
• They used a flute on a previous song, therefore they must be penalized.
• My fans can only take so many songs in Portuguese in one sitting.
• Sorrowful expressions of ethnic cleansing through song is sooooo 2005.
• She lives six blocks away from me, and I do not pander to friends (again: lone wolf).
• Time constraint, pure and simple (also: ew, she's a widow).
• My fans can only take so many songs recorded on wax cylinder in one sitting.
• Just because it sounds like "Sister Ray" doesn't make it as good as "Sister Ray".
• This resembles Tom Petty a bit too much for comfort.
• When the fey receptionist at my gym doesn't even know this song, this singer's career is dead.

Beatle-Dee, Beatle-Doo

Now that the latest album from Sir Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full is hitting the stores, it's time to revisit the ongoing Beatles Solo Album Invitational to gauge which former Beatle--dead or alive--has produced the most amount of dreadful solo albums during the last 37 years since Yoko Ono viciously broke them up. By looking at the chart, we see that Paul McCartney is still leading the pack, despite the estate of John Lennon continuing to reissue every flatulence his body ever emitted. In order for Ringo Starr to even begin catching up to these two, he'd have to begin releasing--right now!--a completed new album every six months. This would entail working with a songwriter in tandem, one more prolific than he, but sadly, Elvis Costello has already been burned by his previous musical association with McCartney ("Veronica", anyone?). Robert Pollard would be a promising alternative, and--providing he can stay sober--it would be an amusing juxtaposition to hear Pollard's fake British accent singing alongside Starr's fake American one. Meanwhile, the paltry sum of albums generated by George Harrison make him "the quiet Beatle" in more ways than one! His lackadaisical production schedule can be blamed on his Zen/Hindu/Buddhist/pothead approach to life, resulting in a why-bother-to-make-another-worthless-album-
when-I'm-only-going-to-die-and-come-back-as-a-hamster? attitude, though the actual responsibility must be placed upon his ex-wife and children who (unlike The Dragon Lady Ono) appear to have no interest in milking his legacy at all, turning their noses up at the very thought of mining the vaults for valuable excerpts of third-rate demos recorded during his brief but torrid love affair with Jeff Lynne. Instead of organizing benefits for Madonna (i.e., Shanghai Surprise), he should have been endlessly recording his every waking days in an heroic attempt to overcome what now appears to be a sure-fire victory for his arch enemy Paul McCartney.