2023 chickfactor lists, round two

Theresa Kereakes, punk photographer and historian
When I was a kid, I recall reading a column in TV Guide called “Cheers & Jeers,” and I think that’s what 2023 calls for….

Cheers:
The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell.

All my dots connected in this book – California, women writers, inadvertent movers & shakers. The intellectual rigor combined with passion for their respective subject matters from both the author and her subject make this book a must-read. I don’t want it to end. More than a biography, it is a consideration of the times, and how Didion lived and wrote in them.

Maestro – believe it or not! If you know me in real life, you know I am no fan of Bradley Cooper and a huge fan of Leonard Bernstein. With low expectations, I watched it and was not disappointed. I don’t care that Cooper is not Jewish and he wore a prosthetic nose. Movies are smoke and mirrors and if one chooses to criticize on this point, then criticize the superb Irish actor, Liam Neeson for portraying the German Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List. Bottom line: for a mainstream movie featuring the movie star as actor and director, this was most serviceable and Lenny is introduced to a whole new audience.

Tim: Let it Be Edition – The Replacements. My favorite album of 2023 is a reissue of an 80s record, remastered to sound the way it should. It’s perfect.

Eddie Izzard- The Rewind Tour. It was a delightful time hearing the old sketches and how prescient Izzard’s comedy was in the 80s. Dress to Kill is probably still my favorite stand up performance by anyone- seeing a reprise of “Tea & cake or death?” made my night.

The Algonquin Cat – best thing about Midtown Manhattan- the historic hotel has a cat. His name is Hamlet and whenever I am in NYC, I stop by the hotel JUST FOR THE CAT!

Jeers:
War
Barbie – subtle as a flying mallet
Media coverage of Taylor Swift’s dating life
For me, the overall vibe of 2023 is “hurry up 2024,” and I dream of more interesting times.

Papa Slumber’s Lucky 13
01 Joe Armon-Jones & Maxwell Owin – Archetype (Aquarii)
02 Autocamper – You Look Fabulous! (Discontinuous Innovation)
03 Nat Birchall – The Infinite (Ancient Archive of Sound)
04 The Clientele – I Am Not There Anymore (Merge)
05 John Haycock – Dorian Portrait (Second Thoughts Records)
06 Kode9 / Burial – Infirmary / Unknown Summer (Fabric)
07 The Lost Days – In The Store (Speakeasy Studios)
08 Malombo Jazz Makers – Down Lucky’s Way (Tapestry Works)
09 Primal Scream – Reverberations (Travelling In Time) BBC Radio Sessions & Creation Singles 1985-86 (Young Tiki)
10 The Southern University Jazz Ensemble – Goes To Africa With Love (Now Again)
11 Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann – Perform The Compositions Of Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann (Leaving Records)
12 Yaw Evans – The Bits (GD4YA)
13 The Oakland Weekender – great music, great friends, can’t wait to do it again!

Jennifer O’Connor’s favorite records
MeShell Ndegeocello – The Omnichord Real Book (Blue Note)
Steve Gunn & David Moore – Reflections Vol. 1: Let the Moon Be a Planet (RVNG Intl.)
Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru – Jerusalem (Missippippi Records)
Armand Hammer – We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (Fat Possum)
Feist – Multitudes (Polydor)
King Krule – Space Heavy (Matador)
Meg Baird – Furling (Drag City)
Roge – Curyman (Diamond West)
Everything But The Girl – Fuse (Buzzin’ Fly/Virgin)
Mitski – The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We (Dead Oceans)

Michael Azerrad (author): Ten Best Vegetables of 2023
Puntarelle
Castelfranco radicchio
Salad Bowl lettuce
Sugar Snap peas
Leeks
Corn
Shishito peppers
La Ratte fingerling potatoes
Brussels sprouts
Fiddlehead ferns

CF contributor Julie Underwood’s Top 10 Albums: 

1. boygenius – the record
2. Olivia Rodrigo – Guts
3. SZA – SOS
4. Mitski – The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
5. L’Rain – I Killed Your Dog
6. Girl Ray – Prestige
7. The Tubs – Dead Meat
8. The Reds, Pinks and Purples – The Town That Cursed Your Name
9. En Attendant Ana – Principia
10. Jess Williamson – Time Ain’t Accidental

Lyle Hysen (the Royal Arctic Institute, Das Damen):

“Slow Horses”
“Showing Up”
A History Of Rock Music In 500 Songs
“Godzilla Minus One”
“Eretz Nehederet/A Wonderful County”
“Bun E’s Basement Bootlegs”
Dapper Goose – Buffalo restaurant
Make It Stop by Jim Ruland  
I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast (that is findable!)
The Adventurists by Richard Butner (ok that was 2022)

Thomas Mosher (My Lil Underground label, A Certain Smile):
Top 10 Daycare Plagues we survived this year:
1) Covid (again) [all of us]
2) RSV (all of us)
3) Hand, Foot, and Mouth (Me and Tilly)
4) Influenza A (Me and Tilly so far)
5) Ear Infection (just Tilly)
6) Sinus infection (Me from RSV)
7) double bout of Food Poisoning (Me and Justine)
8) Medication Allergy Rash (Just Tilly)
9) at least half a dozen colds (all of us)
10) there is still 4 days so we will see…

(OG CF cartoonist) Shawn Belschwender’s Best 2023 “New to Me” Reading discoveries:

1. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926). Title character is tired of being a dependable aunt. In midlife, moves to a remote village. Joins a coven. Speaks to the Devil himself and discovers him to be rather stupid, but also, and more importantly, that he will leave her alone. From the Devil, and even the well-meaning, Lolly Willowes wishes to escape.
2. Lynne Tillman. You’ll know whether or not you’ll like Lynne Tillman if you read her “By the Book” in the NYTimes, as I did. I thought it was one of the best of those things they’ve published. This year I picked up and read What Would Lynne Tillman Do? (a collection of her nonfiction, from 2014) and her novel Men and Apparitions (2018), in which she diagnoses us, through her ethnographer narrator, as The Picture People. Men and Apparitions is about images and their place in our lives, and men and their place in the world after/under feminism. Next Tillman book I am going to track down and read: Weird Fucks.

Some of the tracks I listened to the most in 2023:

• “A Sleep With No Dreaming,” k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang, from their album Sing it Loud (2011). Possibly my favorite track on definitely my favorite k.d. lang album, which I think is a tour de force. I got into k.d. lang that first pandemic summer, when I was coming unglued, but it took me until this year to hook on to this album in particular, hard.
• “If I Could Breathe Underwater (feat. Mary Lattimore), Marissa Nadler, from her album The Path of Clouds (2021). I would insist that this is objectively Marissa Nadler’s best song. That it features another of my favorite musicians, Mary Lattimore, is a bonus. I saw Mary Lattimore at The Colony in Woodstock, NY in 2022, and it is one of the concert-going highlights of my life. Anyway, I built a “Summer” playlist around this track and the k.d. lang above, I love them both so much.
• If you want to talk masterpieces, that Purple Mountains album is one, and the death of David Berman is a tragedy, I don’t need to tell you. I listened to “Nights That Won’t Happen” from it the most.
• I was confused when Saint Etienne was at its peak, owing to the Fox Base Alpha album cover, which made them look like they were Camera Obscura only not good (I like Camera Obscura). There was just too much knitwear for me to digest, at the moment. Finally, I downloaded all the Saint Etienne, and now I can’t get enough of “Nothing Can Stop Us.” I was then thrilled to stumble upon the Dusty Springfield track it samples from (“I Can’t Wait Until I See My Baby’s Face”).
• “Au début c’était le début (feat. Bertrand Belin)”, The Limiñanas & Laurent Garnier, from the album De Película (2021). One day, before I die or they die, I wish to travel to France specifically to see The Limiñanas and Bertrand Belin perform, separately or together. If I could only see one, it would be Bertrand Belin. Sadly, I can’t find my fellow Belin Heads in the USA, and Limiñanas freaks are thin on the ground here, so I understand that I have to go to them.
• “Anti-glory” by Horsegirl, from Versions of Modern Performance (2022). Wouldn’t have known about them if Gail O’Hara hadn’t alerted me to their existence. I missed a chance to meet ’em and take their picture, but it was the second pandemic spring and I was in the process of moving and falling fully apart. Are they referencing Conan O’Brien in this? Or the Barbarian? I don’t know what the lyrics mean, but I don’t care too much.
• “Billy Jack,” Curtis Mayfield, from There’s No Place Like America Today (1975). It was written after that embarrassing movie Billy Jack, but it has nothing to do with it. “Ah, it can’t be no fun / Can’t be no fun / To be shot, shot with a handgun.” This is true. Peak Mayfield I’d known nothing about until this year.