December 10 2004

11:10 pm. Tim here. Trying to find a piece of paper. It's a piece of paper that had my favorite albums of 2004 on it. We at Record Archive -- where Improv Tim's alter ego works -- take our end-of-year top tens very seriously.

And I was happy because I spent all year with a little scrap of paper in my wallet on which I had written all the albums I would, sometime in far-off December, whittle away into a list of ten. Fantomas. Vernon Reid. Prince's surprising MUSICOLOGY. The Hives, Beastie Boys, and Handsome Boy Modeling School.

So I took that scrap of paper and bought some pizza and sat down with a clean sheet of paper and had at it. I cut out the Beastie Boys; not very good, when you really think about it. And Prince? Well, there were ten other records I liked more than that one.

It's kinda like Papa Jones tells Indiana: I wrote the final top ten list down so I wouldn't have to remember them. I think it went something like this:

1) U2, HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB
2) The Hives, TYRANNASAURUS HIVES
3) Ministry, HOUSES OF THE MOLE
4)

4)

4)

Nuts.