The cure for The Cure? Staring at the Sea, of course!

I have now heard every Cure album ever and, almost to a song, I couldn't find a single album track that I'd place on a desert island playlist. For a non-goth like me who runs on pop/punk concision and disco sybaritism, Staring at the Sea: The Singles (the CD version of Standing on a Beach), plus a few items detailed below, is all I'll ever need. (If you're already seething, then hie thee to Anthony Miccio's blog who has more tender ears for the band. Do note, though, that he's ignored live albums so I do too. I also forewent remixes but downed all five hours of Join the Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978–2001 (The Fiction Years) so slack could be cut.) 

On one level, this is a me problem. I encountered "All Cats are Grey" (from Faith) in Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern and found it so seductive that I figured it was my problem that I'd never excavated something equally seductive from their non-hit oeuvre, hence this project. If I just listened hard enough, then I'd be able to fall for almost anything unknown to me, right? But on another level, this is a them problem combined with a format problem. The Cure's discography is testament to the album as an inefficient music delivery system. Brutal to acknowledge but many acts don't have 30-40 minutes of compelling music in their oeuvres much less per long player. And when CDs granted artists the possibility of 79 minutes of self-expression, the tax on our attention grows to unconscionable proportions. For the Cure, the advent of the CD couldn't come soon enough; 12 inches of vinyl were too tight a corral for Robert Smith & Co's gothic caterwaul so that when CDs became the norm, the boys were quick to abandon quality controls. Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987) and Disintegration (1989) clock in at 74:35 and 71:45 respectively, upping the ante for those of us who'd already heard them as too slow to get to the point. How was I going to find another "All Cats are Grey" without a Bob Stanley shaving off all the top-heavy filler?

I didn't have the financial or technological wherewithal to roam through the haunted catacombs of their discography as a teenager in the mid-1980s, making it easier to consider myself a huge Cure fan. The only album I owned was 1983's Japanese Whispers which 13-year-old me had no clue was a compilation. My high-school friend Lisa's VHS of Staring at the Sea: The Images passed through so many hands, mine included, that I doubt the poor gal had possession of it for two full years. I watched all 17 videos reverently, allowing those to stand in for the six albums I couldn't afford/hear. But by the time of college in the late 1980s, I was learning about rockism and listening to the canon which left little time for the Cure. I snagged a vinyl copy of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me for cheap likely because no one wanted two 12"s of bloat in 1988. I didn't hear Disintegration (or anything else I'd missed) until years later; I was too busy with Janet Jackson. 

I don't want to go through each album with too fine a comb, preferring to keep thing as positive as possible. My desert island playlist would augment the ace Boys Don't Cry compilation with the "I'm a Cult Hero"/"I Dig You" 7" from Cult Hero, a Cure side project. "I Dig You" just might be the quintessential post-punk song - post because it dances so well, punk because they let a postman sing it (both songs are appended to the 2005 CD Deluxe Edition bonus disc of Seventeen Seconds). Some might deem Japanese Whispers a ripoff at a merciful 28:27 (although perhaps it was budget-priced, Cure scholars?). But it allowed me to retain affection for a song like "The Dream" which would've gotten lost on an album of even ten more minutes in length. And the one track where I would've welcomed seven-plus minutes, the disco-at-last "The Walk," comes in at an infuriating 3:30. I couldn't even find a contemporary 12" mix of the thing (although do check out the nifty 2006 Infusion mix). I'd like to spend more time with Pornography which was faster and noisier than I remembered. There’s an extreme, uncompromising ethos to its glumness that makes me want to listen harder. I'm weirdly okay with the run from "Last Dance" to "Prayers for Rain" on Disintegration but cannot stand ILM fave "Plainsong." I was nervous by how much I perked up while listening to The Cure (2004), lending the impression that my tastes are truly screwball. But Miccio has kind words for it and Smith is in remarkable voice throughout (check out the American Idol-ready yelps of "Lost").

So Staring at the Sea plus the Cult Hero single plus a 7-minute "The Walk" plus stray tracks taking up a short second disc. Is that so bad? (It is?)

Three Imaginary Boys (1979): B
Boys Don’t Cry (1980): A-minus
Seventeen Seconds (1980): B-minus
Faith (1981): B-minus
Pornography (1982): B
Japanese Whispers (1983): A-minus
The Top (1984): B-minus
The Head On The Door (1985): B
Staring at the Sea: The Singles (1986): A
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987): B-minus 
Disintegration (1989): B-minus
Wish (1992): C+
Wild Mood Swings (1996): C
Bloodflowers (2000): C-minus
Join The Dots: B-Sides & Rarities 1978-2001 (The Fiction Years) (2004): B-minus
The Cure (2004): B
4:13 Dream (2008): C 
Songs of a Lost World (2024): C+

The Byrds are Okay! Is That Okay?

Hello from 2025, (sung to the tune of "Turn! Turn! Turn!") a time after garage punk and punk, after the innovations of James Brown have penetrated down to every funktional cell in our bodies, a time when Chic vies with the Beatles as the greatest English-singing band of the 20th century, a time after disco, house, and techno, and a time when not only The Byrds' Greatest Hits exists but the capacity to create our own Byrds' Greatest Hits exists as well. Hello from a time when it's difficult to recreate the rush that the Byrds provided folks (a word I use advisedly) when almost out of the gate in 1965 the band space traveled to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Mr. Tambourine Man." The Byrds were innovators, that we can still hear. But when critics claim that the band welded Dylan to the Beatles for a brand-new musical fricassee, they neglect to mention that the Byrds exude little of the raucous thrill of the early Beatles, the ones who fused a rump-shaking R&B bottom with crystal-blue harmonizing up top. For instance, Whit Strub is correct when he claims that "the bridge on “You Won’t Have to Cry” threatens to climb a step into straight-up wanna-hold-your-hand-ness." But threaten is all it does - never does one get the sense that a Hollywood Bowlful of girls and boys would start screaming (and, more importantly, dancing) as the band limps back into the verse. 

This means that from their onset, the Byrds were keeping pace with the Beatles, concurrently in their Ordinary Phase during which they were Dylanizing their own music and recording the two worst albums in their discography - Beatles for Sale and Help!, albums which Rolling Stone types have overrated if not flat-out lied about for decades. They're just okay like most Byrds albums ever. Will the Boomer gerontocracy ever allow them to just be okay? In short, why is the Wiki for the inconsequential Byrds reunion album longer than the one for an album better than anything the Byrds ever recorded (Greatest Hits included), Love: Forever Changes?

Digesting the first few albums is not a painful experience, especially since they traffic in a concision that often gives the Ramones competition. But the drastic lack of bottom gets deadening for anyone even remotely boogie-besotted. Feel free to lay this shortcoming at drummer Michael Clarke's feet; the Byrds themselves had no problem dunking on his talent (and before you get too snarky about Clarke's abilities to ground the band, check that link for a grueling letter written by him as he was dying of alcoholism at 47). But it's not as if they kicked out any jams after Clarke left and/or was fired in 1967; it's clear that the Byrds never cared about our butt cheeks. Add harmonies that start to sound samey after a song or three, like ghosts who visit nightly but fail to haunt you, and you have a sound too thin to support their overinflated legend. 

1967's Greatest Hits has rendered the first three albums superfluous, especially Mr. Tambourine Man, the debut, which lends five songs (out of twelve) to Greatest Hits. Keepers include faster fare like "It's No Use," "It Won't Be Wrong," "I See You," and the bonus track "Why," maybe the friendlier take on Dylan's "Spanish Harlem Incident" or "If You're Gone" with its undergirding drone voices. But really - you can make do with Greatest Hits or, if you fancy more concise jangle, the two early-1980s volumes of The Original Singles. 

A measure of how much I don't get this band lies in my appreciation for Younger Than Yesterday, downgraded by both Robert Christgau and Rob Sheffield in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. But David Crosby's "Renaissance Fair" was the best non-Greatest Hits song to date. For once, the harmonies haunt and Chris Hillman's bass leads like they never needed a funky drummer in the first place. Crosby's "Everybody's Been Burned" comes in a scosh less haunting and even Hillman works up some spookiness in the verses of "Thoughts and Words." And while even fans like to rip on Crosby's psychedelic indulgence "Mind Gardens" (in two version on the 1996 CD reissue!), it's no drearier than "2-4-2 Fox Trot (The Lear Jet Song)" from the previous year's Fifth Dimension. 

It took me forever (i.e., last week) to figure out The Notorious Byrd Brothers and I still think Love's Forever Changes smothers it in a field of poppies. Psychedelia consists of constantly morphing figures and thus requires time to allow for the permutations. Much as I celebrate albums lasting 28:28, The Notorious Byrd Brothers' concision seemed thin and unyielding all over again. But eventually, I realized that Roger McGuinn & Co. were just getting through the permutations more quickly (albeit less heartbreakingly and ominously) than Arthur Lee & Co. did. "Natural Harmony" and, especially, "Draft Morning" document a scary false idol washing up on the Beach Boys' shore.

By contrast, I got Sweetheart of the Rodeo immediately. Due to the vagaries of a pre-Napster/Spotify world, I heard it many years before the other titles and it was quite possibly the first album where I could grasp irony, the band (with Gram Parsons for a hot minute) loving and lovingly joking about country music. In this mode, the best track, even better than the ace Dylan and Parsons songs, is the faithful-but-not take on the Louvin Brothers' "The Christian Life."

And then, after their victory year of 1968, the decline sets in as so often happens with congregations of more than one person. Hyde is a lesser Sweetheart although "Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" would have fit nicely on the latter. It gets the edge over Ballad which is almost entirely covers with originals by such esteemed songwriters as John York and Pamela Polland; all you need is the 2:10 they expend on "Jesus is Just Alright." Preflyte is 25:38 of demos from a band guilty of thinness even at their best, i.e., for scholars only. The live half of the (Untitled) double album is good for doing dishes; the studio half is good for McGuinn/Jacques Levy's "Chestnut Mare."

To gauge how low the Byrds subsequently sunk, one need only listen to the Kim Fowley (let into the den by Skip Battin) co-writes on Byrdmaniax and Farther Along. If you can stomach Fowley, check out the baffling Hollywood Babylon-style report "Citizen Kane" on the former or the equally baffling Coke commercial "America's Great National Pastime" on the latter. Extra points to Byrdmaniax for the cool cover if it tricked at least one metalhead into biting. The 1973 reunion is the nadir, an admission that the congregation no longer meant anything to the principals, most of whom had solo irons in the fire by this point. Two Neil Youngs, one Joni Mitchell, yet another McGuinn/Levy, a couple of desultory Crosbys - they'd be embarrassing if they weren't so dull. 

The one song that kept rolling through my head while listening to this discography was "Outside Chance" by the Turtles of all people. I submit that the Byrds bequeathed far more to popular music than Flo & Eddie & Co. ever did. But "Outside Chance" (co-written by Warren Zevon) bashes harder (thanks to new drummer John Barbata) than almost anything on those first three wildly revered Byrds albums. If that means that the Byrds got to the sound first, then so what? Much as I appreciate an open atrium, eventually I'm going to require a floor to go along with my dwelling.

However demented you find the above, do check out Whit Strub's Byrdstupor blog wherein he endeavors to listen to all Byrds-related recordings ever. Perversely, he hasn't gotten to the 1968 goodies and may never will. Even more perversely, he's not properly worshipful of The Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M, 1969), another album better than anything the Byrds ever recorded. He thinks part of the problem is that Gram Parsons subjugated Chris Hillman (!). He has kind words for the second-worst song, “My Uncle” (!!). And he may prefer subsequent Burrito albums to Gilded (!!!). But cut the man some slack - he's listened to this right-wing Hillman horror. 

Oh and p.s. Hüsker Dü's "Eight Miles High" >>>> the Byrds'.

Grades (all releases on Columbia except where noted):

Mr. Tambourine Man (1965): B-minus (docked a notch for decades of overrating and inutility due to Greatest Hits)

Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965): B

Fifth Dimension (1966): B

Younger Than Yesterday (1967): B+

The Byrds' Greatest Hits (1967): A

The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968): A-minus

Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968): A

Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde (1969): B

Preflyte (Together, 1969): C+

The Ballad of Easy Rider (1969): B-minus

Untitled (1970): C+

Byrdmaniax (1971): C

Farther Along (1971): C

Byrds (Asylum, 1973): C-minus

George Harrison/Ringo Starr discographies, ugh, heard.

Don't you love how those old Rolling Stone Record Guides just had to award a five-star rating to at least one album by each solo Beatle? The perfect scores are a perfect snapshot of early 1970s delusion when fans tried to convince themselves that the dream wasn't quite over yet. In this climate, it'd be difficult to resist George Harrison's de facto debut All Gas Must Pass, three discs of outpourings from the repressed Beatle. Why bearded types still adore the thing today remains a mystery, especially since they tend to ignore the third disc "Apple Jam." Even more baffling are the hosannas showered on Ringo Starr's de facto debut, Ringo. Certainly more fun than All Things Must Pass but can those who deem it a masterpiece really hum "Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" and most of side two on command? (Really?) And those are the five-star albums. (And those are the five-star albums?!?) Hmmm...

So whose discography is worse? It depends. Which route causes you the most pain - a musician following his spiritual muses in order to express himself artistically (George) or one adhering to standardized pop music forms because he really has no other choice (Ringo)? Me, I'll always opt for standardization where at least there's something to grasp - a pleasure in formula, say. When I reach for George's music, I get mashed potatoes smushing through my fingers - shapeless, inefficient for the long haul, requiring some sort of condiment to help it go down, etc. Add vocals worse than Bowie at his most theatrical and oh boy where are those Tums?

That's why I dug Wonderwall Music, Harrison's soundtrack to the 1968 British film Wonderwall - he doesn't sing on it. And if you need some ersatz 1960s party music, voila. Certainly more useful than much of what was to come. Sadly, lack of vocals does nothing for Electronic Sound (1969), 43:50 of George futzing around with his Moog.

As for the man's 1970s, some will insist that there's a gem buried on side two of x. Do not believe these people. There isn't even enough material for a full-length best of and Dark Horse (1974) and Extra Texture (Read All About It) (1975) are two of the very worst albums of all time worth hating.

Somewhere in England (1981) and Gone Troppo (1982) bear the same relation to his discography that Back to the Egg (1979) and McCartney II (1980) do to Macca's  - quirky, new wavey attempts to keep up with the times and as such, his most attractive albums up to that point. In the first instance, Harrison's zeitgeistification was forced on him by Warner Bros., poor guy. Thank gawd, sez I. They allowed the dreadful George Harrison (1979) to happen so I cannot imagine what they vetoed (I know the orphans are out there - please don't tell me where kthxbye). Gone Troppo is pretty awful but hilariously so - from its opening "Gloria" (Laura Brannigan's) synths, it's bound to embarrass Beatlemaniacs, an undeniable pleasure as always.

Cloud Nine (1987) and Brainwashed (2002) are his best albums. For once, Harrison was wrestling with standardized pop music forms but like most of McCartney's 1980s output, Cloud Nine comes off a bit too, well, pro forma. Brainwashed is Cloud Nine knockin' on heaven's door. Recorded as he was deteriorating from cancer and released posthumously, it makes you wonder why he needed death to create something that finally connects so well. Maybe most of us do.

Ringo gets the edge over George because he's funnier. Or at least his albums are, inadvertently so at times. Sentimental Journey (1970) is a laff riot and a hell of a karaoke album. Gimme Ringo desecrating The Great American Songbook with his not-all-that-much-better voice over George's philosophizing any day. Just give it to me two, three times tops. I respond to it much more viscerally than Beacoups of Blues (1970) in which Starr tackles country non-standards. Not that an album of Jimmie Rodgers and George Jones covers would've been classic. But at least I'd recall it more quickly.

Ringo (1973) and Goodnight Vienna (1974) are as classic as this era gets and even there it's strictly stick-to-the singles. And then après ça, le poo poo. From Ringo's Rotogravure (1976) to the Canadian-import-only Old Wave (1983), he's on autopilot. You almost long for some self-expression here. Almost. If you're going to dip into one album from this low point in his career, I'd try Stop and Smell the Roses (1981) which features a decent ska-lite single, "Wrack My Brain," and "You Can't Fight Lightning," a CD bonus track of swampy self-indulgence with guest stars Paul and Linda (and wife Barbara Bach too!).

Did you know that he outpaced George in the 1990s (well, so did Sinatra) and has managed five releases over the past decade including 2012's very own Ringo 2012? No? And really, why would you? Whatever their quality, they are of as much consequence as the next Molly Hatchet stop at your state fair. If listen you must, go for Ringo Rama (2003) which is his best album ever. It crunches hard like he just heard of Nirvana and showcases his droll humor in anti-monarchy and pro-Barbara songs.

For the comp below, I reduced their discographies by simply alternating George with Ringo based on the theory that their voices sound better one song at a time. It works...sort of. (See if you can guess who sings what just by the titles.)

Starrison: And I'm Being Generous Here... (Bozelkablog, 2012)

1. Ski-ing    
2. My Sweet Lord      
3. It Don't Come Easy  
4. What Is Life  
5. Early 1970 
6. Give Me Love (Give Me Peace) 
7. Back Off Boogaloo 
8. Don't Let Me Wait Too Long 
9. I'm The Greatest   
10. This Song   
11. Photograph   
12. Crackerbox Palace  
13. You're Sixteen  
14. Love Comes To Everyone    
15. Goodnight Vienna   
16. All Those Years Ago   
17. No No Song  
18. Wake Up My Love     
19. Come on Christmas, Christmas Come On   
20. Got My Mind Set On You   
21. Eye To Eye   
22. Free Drinks    
23. Marwa Blues      

Paul McCartney's discography, heard!

It’s ever so mildly disturbing when it happens but most sane people eventually realize that some Beatles songs flat-out suck. Or, okay, they find it difficult to access the magic heard upon first learning the canon. My epiphany occurred in the midst of the 2009 reissue frenzy. Forget mono vs. stereo – the lads were losing the distinction between serious and complacent at least as early as Rubber Soul. Where once I heard their increasing song lengths as a sign of maturity, now I could feel “You Won’t See Me,” their longest to date, slooooow down to a crawl during the final verse. The only euphoria I experienced chewing on such Revolver bon bons as "Here, There and Everywhere," "Good Day Sunshine," and "Got to Get You into My Life" again came courtesy of nitrous oxide at the dentist two weeks later. The whole of The White Album does indeed exceed the sum of its parts but for once, that’s no compliment; I no longer wanted to hear the parts. "Blackbird," "Rocky Raccoon," and "Mother Nature's Son" suffer folkie fools gladly while "Honey Pie" found its proper home crashed on the shores of Sextette (1978), Mae West’s swan song catasterpiece, in a rendition by Dom Deluise. As for “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” thank gawd there’s no mono version to compare. If there’s a worse Beatles song, please keep it on your bootlegs.

All of which amounted to a long overdue hint to be done with Paul McCartney, a project I’ve avoided until now. The prospect of traipsing through his discography filled me with dread given how I couldn’t stand what little I knew of it. Even something like “Maybe I’m Amazed,” which Macca maniacs judge his first post-Beatles masterpiece, epitomized the man’s lazy fecundity. Maybe you’re amazed, dude? Maybe? Who wants a lover that can’t quite make up his mind, especially one that strains his voice when non-committing?

But therein lies his charm, such as it is. Lazy but productive. Forced but non-committal. Such paradoxes fuel McCartney’s oeuvre, a bank of songs that frustrates more than it amazes. As Taylor Parkes so beautifully puts it:

“They just seem to ignore most of pop's basic obligations. Few of these songs mean anything at all; they're rarely exciting in a purely visceral sense; they never tell a story, or attempt to blow your mind; they're seldom uplifting, or plaintive, or gross. They are utterly useless objects, which seem content simply to exist. This is their (very) peculiar charm.”

Before reading Parkes’ defense, that's precisely how I would've described some of the most shameless pop music from ABBA to diva house. But those artists are out to connect. McCartney's arrows seek no targets. That they sometimes strike a popular nerve is of no consequence because this is the music of a billionaire who need not worry if anyone ever hears his chaos and creation. And however much the facts of his life contradict such a conclusion, that’s how his songs come across. McCartney's influence is thus felt less on pure popsters Alphabeat or even putative Beatles Xeroxes Oasis than on indie anti-socialites like Guided By Voices, Low, Palace, My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, etc.

Nevertheless, a rich and uncaring discography has plenty of perverse pleasures to offer. Precious few in the beginning, though, and since I was tackling each album chronologically, this did not bode well for the dozen-plus I had left. Ram works as an album but much to my surprise and the rage of McCartney fanatics, I couldn’t salvage a single song/fragment from McCartney. And the first two Wings joints, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, were as hideous as I’d read. The former gets the nod for general weirdness but the only hope I received from Red Rose Speedway was that Mavis Staples covers “My Love.”

For the rest of the 1970s, I’d say that McCartney’s albums would’ve been better remembered were they EPs. With some minor shuffling, Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, Wings at the Speed of Sound, Back to the Egg could have done without their side twos (leaving London Town a soft rock question mark). Proof that I was listening hard anyway lies in my enthusiasm for Speed’s “The Note You Never Wrote,” inadvertently moving in the manner of a godforsaken DJ Shadow thrift store find which, as a McCartney composition sung by Wings co-founder Denny Laine, it kind of is.

In retrospect, it’s fairly remarkable that Back to the Egg and McCartney II received such bad reviews at the time. Clearly, critics were just fed up with him by 1980, especially with punk and disco to distract them. But I dug Macca’s attempts to wrestle with The Damned (or is that ZZ Top?) (“Spin It On”), Squeeze (“Again And Again And Again”), and Steely Dan c. Aja (“Arrow Through Me”) on Egg. McCartney II is, of course, the album you play for people who hate Paul McCartney because it sounds like Kraftwerk and Brian Eno. Perhaps in an attempt to one up Bowie, The Talking Heads, and Devo, Macca even handled the Enoisms all by his lonesome. The result is far more tuneless than its ever-expanding list of supporters would admit. But it remains captivating throughout. You can almost grasp the adorable image of a 1960s survivor nervously shuffling his feet outside punk-disco clubs in the hopes that “Coming Up” or “Temporary Secretary” will take.

Instead of keeping up with Kid Creole and the Coconuts or Sonic Youth, however, McCartney’s subsequent 1980s output caters a bit too much to the recently christened Adult Contemporary charts. Tug of War, Pipes of Peace, and Flowers in the Dirt trade quirk for classiness. For once, there’s nary an infuriating moment to be found on any of them. Alas, there’s not much excitement either.

But then there’s Press to Play. Much like Bob Dylan’s chronically fascinating 1980s albums, this one is frequently disparaged for tacky production better suited for the end credits to a teen sex comedy. No doubt that’s part of the perverse pleasure I derive from it; never underestimate the power of watching Beatles fans squirm. But it just so happens to include the man’s greatest post-Beatles song.

“Press” is no less disconnected than any other of McCartney composition. He starts by complaining to Linda about “all these people listening in.” Um, hello, Paul, you’re the most successful musician on our planet (no clue as to how popular you are on your own). Of course, we’re listening in! So he takes this as an opportunity to invent a new word for fucking: “When you want me to love you just tell me to press/Right there! That’s it! Yes!” Letting us in on his most private conversation, it’s the most generous song of his career with all the tumult and clutter of Hugh Padgham’s production perfectly evoking Paul’s giddy love for Linda. We even get to hear their orgasm. “Oklahoma was never like this,” gushes Paul in one of pop music’s classic money shots. And here I thought I had the 1980s down. Wonder if there’s something this masterful hiding on a Steve Winwood album.

After the 1980s, a severe downturn. The streamlining that began with Tug of War became more severe with Off the Ground, Flaming Pie, Driving Rain, and Chaos and Creation in the Backyard such that the only song I can recall amongst them is “Driving Rain.” And even there, I’ll take the speedier live version from the otherwise embarrassing Back in the U.S.

That leaves Run Devil Run and Memory Almost Full. It certainly wasn’t preordained that Run Devil Run, an album consisting mostly of covers, would prove his best album, especially given the dreary oldies recastings on Снова в СССР (and his 2012 Great American Songbook bonanza, Kisses on the Bottom, exists mainly to scare Rod Stewart). But he never rocked fiercer nor sang better. "No Other Baby” and “Lonesome Town” were gut-wrenching goodbyes to Linda. And Memory Almost Full registers an uptick in care probably because he wanted to make sure we still loved him when he’s 65.

Normally at this point, I’d sum everything up with a one-disc distillation. But annoyingly, most of the tracks I considered essential turned out to be the singles anyway. And a two-disc started to look arbitrary. So instead, I decided to honor McCartney’s loopiness and damn history in the process with an alternative Macca timeline/discography. Enjoy!

1970 – Paul McCartney’s first solo album, Ram, is released!  
Ram 
1. "Too Many People"
2. "Ram On"
3. "Dear Boy"
4. "Smile Away"
5. "Monkberry Moon Delight"
6. "Eat at Home"
7. "The Back Seat of My Car"
8. “Another Day”
9. “Oh Woman, Oh Why”

1971 – Wings debuts with bizarre, lopsided 12” single
A: “Mumbo” 22:50 version with members of Can at their funkiest
B: “Dear Friend” (special 3:00 version)

1972 – Again, only one single is released. McCartney chalks up inactivity to having to take out the trash on his farm on the Mull of Kintyre.
A: “My Love” (special guest vocalist Mavis Staples)
B: “C Moon”

1973 -   
Band on the Run 
1. "Band on the Run"           
2. "Jet"           
3. "Bluebird"           
4. "Mrs Vandebilt"           
5. "Let Me Roll It"  
6. "Helen Wheels"
7: "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five"

A: “Live and Let Die”
B: “Hi, Hi, Hi”

1975 –  
Venus and Mars EP
1. "Venus and Mars"                      
2. "Rock Show"                      
3. "Love in Song"                      
4. "Magneto and Titanium Man"
5. "Letting Go"                   
6. "Spirits of Ancient Egypt"                            
7. "Listen to What the Man Said"                   
8. “My Carnival”            

1976 –  
Wings at the Speed of Sound 
1. "Let 'Em In"           
2. "The Note You Never Wrote"
3. "She's My Baby"           
4. "Beware My Love"           
5. "Wino Junko"        
6. "Silly Love Songs"           
7. "Sally G"

McCartney performs on one-off Denny Laine single
A: “Get Off Your Ass and Let ‘em In Your Damn Self!”
B: “Six Day War” (Colonel Bagshot cover)

1978 –  
London Town EP
1. “London Town”
2. “Cafe On The Left Bank”
3. “I’m Carrying”
4. “Backwards Traveller”
5. “With A Little Luck”
6. “Famous Groupies”
7. “Deliver Your Children”
8. “Morse Moose And The Grey Goose”

1979 –  
Back to the Egg EP
1. "Reception"           
2. "Getting Closer"           
3. "We're Open Tonight"           
4. "Spin It On"           
5. "Again and Again and Again"  
6. "Old Siam, Sir"           
7. "Arrow Through Me"           
8. "To You"
9. "Daytime Nighttime Suffering"
10. "Wonderful Christmastime"

1980 –  
McCartney II EP
1. "Coming Up"           
2. "Temporary Secretary"           
3. "Waterfalls"           
4. "Summer's Day Song"          
5. "Darkroom"           
6. "Secret Friend"
7. "Goodnight Tonight"

1982 –  
Tug of War (specially priced EP)
1. “Take It Away”
2. “Ballroom Dancing”
3. “Wanderlust”
4. “Dress Me Up as a Robber”
5. “Ebony and Ivory”

1983 –
A: “Say Say Say”
B: “The Man”

1984 –
A: “No More Lonely Nights” (extended version)
B: “No More Lonely Nights” (special dance mix)

1986 –  
Press to Play EP
1. “Stranglehold”
2. “Good Times Coming/Feel The Sun”
3. “Talk More Talk”
4. “Press”
5. “Pretty Little Head”

1989 –  
Flowers in the Dirt EP
1. "My Brave Face"
2. "You Want Her Too"
3. “We Got Married”
4. “This One”
5. “Ou Est Le Soleil”

1989 – 1999 – McCartney becomes mayor of The Mull of Kintyre

1999 – Run Devil Run!

2001 –
Special one-sided single
A: “Driving Rain (live)”
B: silence

2007 – Memory Almost Full EP
1. "Dance Tonight"
2. "Ever Present Past"
3. "See Your Sunshine"
4. "Gratitude"
5. "The End of the End"
6. "Nod Your Head"

Happy birthday, John.