Kevin Nutt (Sinner's Crossroads) Top Ten of 2006

Here's Kevin Nutt's Top Ten List for 2006. Kevin is the host of the Sinner's Crossroads radio program on WFMU, which is heard on Monday nights from 7-8 PM, and is also available as a podcast. Previously published 2006 DJ Top Tens can be seen here.

1. Bacacay by Wiltold Gombrowicz. (Archipelago Books) Gombrowicz migrated to Argentina from his native Poland before WWII and the stories that make up this amazing collection are named after a street in his adopted home of Buenos Aires.12 stories written during the 1920s that are often absurd, comic, and tragic all at once. A group of lepers on the make, a twelve course meal featuring a main course cadaver, and a sailor cast into the sea to drift till death in a transparent sphere. Odd and glorious.

2. Bear Bryant Funeral Train by Brad Vice. (University of Georgia Press) Superb story collection by a young whipersnapper from Lamar County, Alabama who kinda forgot to properly note that the story "Tuscaloosa Knights" included verbatim sentences from Carl Carmer's 1930's classic Stars Fell on Alabama. But it ain't plagiarism; take my word. Subsequent ballyhoo caused the University of Georgia Press to recall and pulp all copies of the book. So, it's literally impossible to find. Late news is that tiny River City Press will be republishing it later this year.

3. Drowning in Gruel by George Singleton. (Harvest Books) Singleton is a comic master. He never let's up. His stories are funnier than dook.

4. Finding the only known copy of the Five Blind Boys From Alabama's 1950 Gospel label recording of "Better Get a Room in Heaven" [Download MP3] / "Someday We Must Bow Before Him" [Download MP3]. I thought this would make me famous, but I finally realized that there's a really big world out there.

5. Ten Tousand Lives by Ko Un. (Green Integer) Korean poet Ko Un's ongoing project to write a poem describing everyone he has ever met is now close to 25 volumes. These are the first selections to be translated into English, I believe. Full of aching love for we humans.

6. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling. (Penguin Classics) Wonderfully imaginative fairy tales and fables from the pen of the 17th century Chinese author Songling.

7. Kenyan Songs and Strings. (Sharp Wood Records) Some of these recordings came out years ago on an Original Music CD. Simple, spare and haunting East African acoustic guitar pieces.

8. The Secret Lives of Wives by Pietro Aretino. (Hesperus Pess) To me, the most interesting thing about porn films hands down are the scenes in between all the yucky, squishy sex. Instead of editing out all of the non-sex scenes like Joe Matt does, I envision a Nurse Humpers Vol. 2, say, with just the soap and scrub-up shots, you might say. I always notice that the clothes the performers wear -- nurse uniforms or cheerleading outfits, for example -- sometime look as if the Grinch stitched them together. Where do they get those outfits? It's odd and often unsettling. The interesting thing about The Secret Lives of Wives is that it's almost entirely set between the sex. Sure it has its racy bits, but it's mainly concerned with what happens before, after, and around sex. Written in dialogue form, it talks up to the racy parts. I find myself thinking about it quite often. First published in 1534, SLoW says more philosophically about doing it than the Marquis de Sharday.

9. "Liar" by Built to Spill. (Warner / WEA) I can't help it. I die for these thumpy, soaring, jangly pop songs. [Click here to stream Real Audio from the WFMU archives.]

10. "King David's Melody" by Augustus Pablo (Shanachie) My all time favorite record reissued with four extra tracks that fit perfectly with the original eleven. Gorgeous, haunting, and sublime. [Click here to stream Real Audio from the WFMU archives.]

10a. The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets. John Corbett, ed. (WhiteWalls) I'm sure everyone reading this has had the experience of some self-appointed street corner preacher, ranter, home-spun philosopher or psychotic street wanderer hand them a xeroxed print out full of quasi-philosophical / cosmological / theological / political rants. The tradition actually goes back to at least the dawn of printing. I guess one could include Common Sense and all those tracts by the Diggers and Levellers. After Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount first wandered up to Chicago from Birmingham, Alabama and as he was putting together the first pieces of what would become the Arkestra, Blount joined an ad hoc reading group to discuss all things cosmological and what not. Out of these discussions, evidently, grew Sun Ra's unique view of himself and the universe. Sun Ra's public outlet for this early body of thought were printed broadsides he handed out as he preached and lectured on the streets of Chicago. Over the years this literature has gained a legendary mythic status. Only one of the broadsides survived--one given to John Coltrane--and the others were thought forever lost. But in 2000, 46 of these turned up in Chicago and they are collected here. Part poetry, sermon chant and philosophical aphorism, they offer essential insights into Ra's philosophy and worldview.

Comments

[mahendra singh]

hooray for Gombrowicz! hooray for Bruno Schulz! hooray for Raymond Roussel! hooray for Robert Walser! hooray for the truth!