Ye Olde Hit Parade: Wave Goodbye

Editor's note: Ye Olde Hit Parade takes a look back at my favorite songs year by year (starting in 1978, when I really started paying attention to music).

2012: Ty Segall Band - Wave Goodbye

There was a considerable collection of humans who spent 2012 expecting the world to end. I mean, that happens every year, but some interpretations of old Mayan predictions found a belief that some sort of cosmic event would happen to end life as we know it. As we now understand, the end of the world is actually happening right now (I keed, I keed). But in things that actually happened in 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney to win a second term in office. Facebook bought Instagram and went public. Tablets like the iPad became a big seller. Did I mention the world didn't end?

For me, it was a difficult year at work. It was clear the company was having some serious issues with its direction; namely, that direction was the wrong one and the layoffs continued throughout the year. It all culminated in December, when I was called into a colleague's office to find out my entire division had been eliminated. Fortunately, they still needed someone to do my old job and offered it to me. Having no other options, I took it. Turned out to be a good move.

One cool work-related thing was a trip I took to Austin in March. It was the week after South by Southwest, so there were literally no bands in town, which was a bummer. But even though I was by myself, I had a great time eating BBQ, going to cool bars and see movies at the Alamo Drafthouse. In the summer, we drove up to Montreal for a week for a good family vacation. It was a lot different than previous trips to Montreal, which revolved around drinking, hockey and adult entertainment. But it was fun, and little did we know at the time that my oldest would be going to college there (she joins the class of '24 at McGill University this fall).

Commercial radio had been dying a slow, painful death for a while, but in 2012, it hit a crescendo when WFNX went off the air. The station had always been an independent alternative rock station and it was my station of choice pretty much from the early '90s onward. Boston's big rock station WBCN had gone off the air a few years earlier and hard rock station WAAF finally gave up the ghost this past February. But I had stopped listening to commercial radio years before 2012, especially after I got an iPod and then got into podcasts.


It was another year full of interesting music that I was into. Strong indie rock from the likes of Divine Fits, Titus Andronicus, Japandroids, Cloud Nothings, A.C. Newman and METZ. Returns from old favorites like Van Halen, Soundgarden, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Mission of Burma, Bob Mould and Paul Westerberg. Cool new stuff from Torche, Parquet Courts, Golden Gurls, Metric, El-P and Redd Kross. Concerts included: Wild Flag, Mark Lanegan Band, Matthew Sweet, Iron Maiden, Mean Creek/Mellow Bravo/Soccer Mom, Bob Mould, the Afghan Whigs, Sloan, Guillermo Sexo/Johnny Foreigner/Speedy Ortiz/Infinity Girl and the Tragically Hip.



But my favorite song and album came from the Ty Segall Band. Segall is a prolific fellow, releasing three albums in 2012, but my favorite was the scuzz-rock masterpiece Slaughterhouse. Backed by a powerhouse band including the great Mikal Cronin on bass, Segall unleashed a scorching collection of bangers that mix psychedelia with bone-crushing heaviness. "Wave Goodbye" is the best distillation of this formula, a Sabbathy freakout that is guaranteed to get heads nodding vigorously. Thankfully, the subsequent eight years have done nothing to slow Segall down. He's continued to release great and varied music. Seeing him live is the best, though, as you can see by the clip above. I saw him a few years ago in a tiny club and it was intense and almost overwhelming.


Honorable mentions: Ty Segall - "Death"; Divine Fits - "Would That Not Be Nice"; Divine Fits - "My Love Is Real"; Mark Lanegan Band - "The Gravedigger's Song"; Titus Andronicus - "Ecce Homo"; Titus Andronicus - "In a Big City"; Japandroids - "Fire's Highway"; Torche - "Kicking"; The Tragically Hip - "At Transformation"; Neil Young and Crazy Horse - "Walk Like a Giant"; A.C. Newman - "Encyclopedia of Classic Takedowns"; Mission of Burma - "Semi-Pseudo Sort of Plan"; Van Halen - "China Town"; Dinosaur Jr. - "Watch the Corners"; Cloud Nothings - "No Future/No Past"; METZ - "Wasted"; Bob Mould - "Star Machine"; Bob Mould - "The Descent"; Paul Westerberg - "My Road Now"; Shearwater - "You As You Were"; Craig Finn - "Honolulu Blues"; Redd Kross - "Researching the Blues"; Two Gallants - "My Love Won't Wait"; Ladyhawk - "You Read My Mind"; Band of Skulls - "Sweet Sour"; Aimee Mann - "Charmer"; Metric - "The Wanderlust"; David Byrne & St. Vincent - "Who"; The Afghan Whigs - "Lovecrimes"; Gary Clark, Jr. - "Glitter Ain't Gold (Jumpin' for Nothin')"; Guided By Voices - "The Unsinkable Fats Domino"; Golden Gurls - "I Can See the City"; Ceremony - "Hysteria"; Parquet Courts - "Borrowed Time"; The Henry Clay People - "EveryBandWeEverLoved"; El-P - "Drones Over Bklyn"; Soundgarden - "By Crooked Steps"