I received a few DVDs this Christmas that look back on some classic rock recordings. These discs all contain healthy samplings of the songs from the individual albums, along with interviews of the artists, producers and big-name fans within the industry. Memory love fests with little insights and observations on shiny discs. Old times, good times!

As we embark on another year, and continue to watch the evolution of pop culture branded on cable television, cell phones and computer devices it will be interesting to see what happens to the music industry over the next several years.

At this juncture the album format is all but dead. The rock format died somewhere in the last decade, but the people who noticed were in an age demographic that had no impact on the advertising agencies. Advertising agencies are now the sole creators of popular culture today.

When rock ruled it was frowned upon to advertise in the mainstream. Rock stars became hip by word of mouth, inexpensive concerts and free form FM radio play. Rock flourished in an era of underground excess and decentralization that openly rebelled against corporate suits. Today is all about corporate suits.

Over the years a variety of reputable critics, radio hosts, music television and music magazines have done the obligatory top 100 lists, the countdown to the top of pop. Tastes change over the years, and a sampling of what people consider cool at the outset of one decade changes radically at the dawn of another ten year cycle. The point being, there really is no number one in pop music, but there are important statements of art within the genre that leave lasting imprints on the culture at large.

In my former life, a company I worked for published a great magazine, Pulse!, and offered readers a chance to choose any ten records that they could live with forever on a desert island. Desert Island Discs became a staple, and showcased an amazing breadth of knowledge by the readership of the magazine. In that spirit I offer this silly little exercise I thought would be fun. I couldn't pick just ten, so here is Part One of what I consider to be my 100 Desert Island Discs during rock's magnificent run of fifty plus years. No record is more important than any other. These all Carry The Weight equally.

Elvis Presley was crowned King, but it was Chuck Berry who really drove the the Big 88 down the highway. Chuck defined what a rock record was all about. His vocals and guitar coupled with Johnny Johnson's piano became the most copied sound for better than a decade. Elvis, The Beach Boys, Beatles and Rolling Stones all covered Chuck. Chuck Berry-The Great Twenty-Eight- makes the list with all the hits from Chess Records that Chuck produced from 1955 to 1965. It does not contain his last hit, My Ding-A-Ling, which is okay by me.

Elvis Presley started at Chess, just like Chuck. He was kidnapped by the nefarious "Colonel" Tom Parker, which was not his manager's real name, and brainwashed on some space ship before returning to earth with only his looks left intact. Apparently no one knows "Colonel" Tom's real name, just that he had Elvis working for two-hundred grand a year in Vegas to close out the King's last decade of life. Elvis did make some great records in the 1950s . He makes the cut because I love sci-fi and the box-set, Elvis The King of Rock 'N' Roll The Complete 50's Masters.

Another Chess Artist who comes to my island paradise is Roy Orbison. Roy's vocals have no peer, and his greatest songs still permeate that tragic sense of longing and loneliness that defy time. The All-Time Greatest Hits of Roy Orbison on Monument Records gets the island treatment.

Buddy Holly did not stay on the planet long enough. Too many great ones seldom do. He did make a lasting impression on the rock world. Buddy Holly -A Rock & Roll Collection- gets stuffed into the suitcase. Song stylists still cover his originals.

Ray Charles defies categorization. I call him the best musician-vocalist America ever produced. He did it all, and his legacy is the vast range of great material he sourced and brought to the world. People who say they don't like particular styles of music must never have heard Ray Charles. Ray thought all music had merit, but you had to be able to play it properly. He always did. Ray Charles Genius & Soul The 50th Anniversary Collection from Rhino comes along for the trip.

The Beatles The Collection and The Rolling Stones, both from Mobil Fidelity Labs are essentials for my palm tree house of tunes. These bands were the twin engines of the 1960s. They soared above the crowded field of imitators and innovators for the full decade. It is hard today to fathom the extent of their reach.

The Beatles dominated with movies, arena shows and non-stop tours of the world through 1966 and then created the signature studio albums they are best remembered for today from Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album to Abbey Road and Let It Be. This band covered Buddy Holly, The Shirelles, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Buck Owens and then penned the most original tunes rock had ever heard.

The Rolling Stones have always been the counter weight to the Beatles. The darker shade of blue that specialized at the outset with stunning recreations of America's forgotten blues masters like Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf. Jagger and Richards also wrote definitive rock ballads, anthems and quirky gems that still sound fresh today. They paid homage to their blues heroes by recording at Chess Studios many of the songs from Out Of Their Heads and Rolling Stones Now albums. The bass response for the time was the deepest and most vibrant of the period and still carries bite when played today.

The compilations by Mobil Fidelity are from the English release versions only. During the 1960s the American labels didn't think much of anything coming beyond the immediate US borders. They delayed releases of both bands, shuffled song titles and created whole new albums from songs they had short changed the US consumer. It was a real treat to finally own in the early 80s the original albums from both bands. It convinced me how deep the corruption and greed ran within most of big-biz America. It was never about art or the artist. It was always strictly about the money.

When I pack my bags the Motown Anniversary Collection with the 50 certified number 1 hits will be included. Marvin Gaye, Smoky Robinson & The Miracles, The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Commodores, Four Tops and the rest of this amazing stable of performers will always let me tap my foot and fondly sing along. You cannot stay in a bum mood when these songs burst into your ears.

Rounding out my ten compilations, and first installment (call it the last lay-away plan) for this Desert Island Disc retrospective are two San Francisco band collections, Jefferson Airplane Loves You and Grateful Dead So Many Roads (1965-1995). These bands represented all that psychedelic, anti-establishment and anti-glamour surrealism of the late 1960s. The Dead never changed their philosophy, and blazed on for thirty years doing it strictly their way. You could pick out a bunch of singular albums they released over the years as picks to take along but the overall journey is well represented in this five disc set that covers them from the start and winds up at the end. The Airplane was a noble concept of really talented individuals that died much like the hippie dream in a wash of money, bad drugs and egos. The sound that the Jefferson Airplane made during their six year run was very special, and created a unique mixing of east and west balanced against political protest with balls.

Feel free to comment about your own peculiar versions of rock truth at a desert island address near you.

"Give Peace A Chance."

People celebrate anniversaries of past events in different ways. A lot of people were remembering Pearl Harbor yesterday on its sixty-fifth anniversary. Maybe you put on the Ben Affleck movie from a couple of years ago, or possibly the classic From Here To Eternity, which starred Burt Lancaster, and defined the word kiss for a generation. Maybe you groused that the word infamy has been lost through time.

How time flies, and today is another sad anniversary to commemorate. It really has been twenty-six years to the day that I watched the television reports come first from Monday Night Football's Howard Cosell that John Lennon was dead. I was watching some lame game having some beers discussing Christmas plans with my ex when Howard made the announcement.

In my two-bedroom-apartment Palo Alto-world there was no twenty-four hour news network to view. CNN had only been recently launched that summer(June 1, 1980) and our little provider of cable was fighting with the city of Palo Alto over how cable was going to delivered to the upscale inhabitants of the town. Fortunately with the Iranian hostage crisis Nightline had come into being a little earlier that year (March 24, 1980). Nightline was only twenty minutes in length at the time. It would take another month before Ted got a full 30 minute program but he did a nice job on the fly that evening.

I remember everyone in the small apartment complex coming out into the driveway center and chatting for a good portion of the evening with one another about the tragedy, and, of course, everyone's history with the Beatles. Most of us were in our late twenties or early thirties and equated it with the other assassination traumas from our youth, the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. These three great men were slain having been entrenchments within the political world. The leading pop music icon of the day assassinated seemed even more unbelievable. But at the end of our various discussions we realized what a political force John Lennon had been.

People under thirty years of age today have no conception of how large a figure John Lennon was. There are, of course, all those songs and retro footage of the Fab Four mobbed at every turn. There is quaint movie footage from the silver screen with A Hard Days Night, Help, The Magical Mystery Tour and Let It Be to look at and wonder what all the commotion was about. Fans and the curious also have Beatle documentaries on DVD or in print to peruse as well.

But with most views at the past there is the growing chasm of disconnect. The loss of was spreading apart from the reality of is. There is a Lennon/Beatle song, In My Life, that encompasses this truth so completely that on this day I will play it several times. It is from the Rubber Soul album. I might play that a bunch of times today, as well. I will watch the documentary Imagine and cry at the end when Yoko Ono sums it all up, "He was my lover, my friend, my husband, my partner. He was my old soldier who fought with me."

I have tremendous respect for Yoko Ono, and thank her for preserving the legacy of John Lennon. I thank the fates that the torch Lennon carried has not faded, but has been transformed, and that a troubadour from Ireland carries his passion today.

"Give Peace A Chance."

"They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues."

I knew from the moment I heard that song that the geniuses behind Steely Dan, Walter Becker and Donald Fagan, were both college football fans and kindred spirits. The song, Deacon Blues, is off their monumental Aja album that was released in 1977. It has taken the Wake Forest Demon Deacons that long to achieve an outstanding football season (or one with a winning record to be exact) here in 2006. They have a lock on getting a bowl bid, and the higher the better is my thinking for this great college that has been mired in football loserville for almost an eternity.

Any other year and the Demon Deacons are the feel good story of the year. But since they're the Deacons they lose out this season to Rutgers on the feel good side. The Scarlet Knights, who are now very improbably undefeated this season, have stolen the crown of fleeting-football-limelight from the Wake Forest campus for the year. Rutgers, the campus where the first collegiate footbal game was played in America back in 1869, owns the media bragging rights this year by virtue of their victory over the nation's third ranked football team, Louisville, a little more than a week ago. Red seems to always trump blue.

This gets me to the little college rivalry game on the west coast this weekend between USC and Cal. For years this was no rivalry. USC just beat up Cal as part of the football routine in the Pac-10 conference on the way to Trojan championships or bowl bids.

I was a student at Cal in 1975 when Joe Roth and Chuck Muncie led the Bears to a win over USC in Berkeley on the way to their co-championship of the Pac-8, the last conference football title the Golden Bears have seen. They didn't beat USC for another decade when they pulled off an unlikely win, again on the Berkeley campus on November 9, 1985. I remember the day because my youngest son was born early in the morning on that date, and I took my eldest to the game. I remember walking with my son on my shoulders and hearing the private school kids from USC, who had made the trek to the game, comment after the shocking loss on how run down the Berkeley campus looked in comparison to their very expensive private school digs in the heart of Watts.

Just a week ago this Cal-USC game looked epic. Maybe not quite as epic as Ohio State versus Michigan, but just a click down from college football's biggest rivalry. But the Golden Bears weren't so golden in the Arizona sun as they let a two touchdown lead melt like a bad slurpy on warm astro-turf. The huge build up by the national media did not transpire, and the game for most of the country is a second billed afterthought following the featured presentation on the Columbus campus in Ohio.

This should have boded well for Cal, but the Berkeley City Council decided to sue the University this week on the promised retrofit of ancient Memorial Stadium, which the University has promised coach Jeff Tedford. There should have been no local distractions from this game this week by a former player turned mayor in Berkeley. But it happened. The annual USC battle has turned into the Big Game the past several years for Golden Bear fans. Stanford has fallen on real hard football times for the moment, and the Bears resurrection under Jeff Tedford has been almost as miraculous as the stories at Wake Forest and Rutgers this year. This Saturday they play for the roses.

"They got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues."

Dear Bakersfield,

I could not help but notice that you voted the Republican Party line without fail in the 2006 election. I am a little surprised by this development, given the national results of November 7, 2006 that brought about such a major shift of the political dynamic. A shift that occurred in spite of gerrymandered districts that held previously safe seats for incumbents.

I must assume the Republican Party has been very good to Bakersfield over the years. There must be tremendous infrastructure within the city limits coupled with high education standards and a quality of life that insulates the community from the rest of the nation, which has seen wage stagnation, under employment, insurmountable health care costs, increased crime, soaring energy costs and an inabilty to save a penny over these past six years for most of the citizens.

I read with interest your former Republican Congressman, Bill Thomas, had created a windfall for Bakersfield and Kern County with a huge federal road improvement package earmarked for his constituents over the objections of many other California legislators. This windfall, in the sum of nearly $800 million dollars, could be had by passing a half cent sales tax increase that would guarantee this magnanimous bequest and give to the city and county almost two billion dollars in road improvement money. As I understand from last night's results things are so good in your town you declined the gift by voting down the tax. Yes, things must be very good indeed throughout Bakersfield and all of Kern County to dismiss such a sum.

I must surmise that the widespread intellectual might of the community played a major role in pointing out the many pitfalls associated with partnering with the federal government on contracts. This partnering has been catastrophic for the Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton over the past several years. These two government partners along with the Oil industry see such high profits coupled with their large subsidies they actually may have to pay earnings taxes at some point. The citizens in Bakersfield all deserve a big pat on the back for a job well done by avoiding any government entanglements.

I realize with all the money the Republican Party has given to Bakersfield historically, it will be an easy task to have the highways contructed to your city's unusally high quality standard. I look forward to driving my sports car through your seamless interchanges to the many fine shopping centers throughout the town.

It must be nice to live in a city that serves as the model for the rest of America and is not subjected to the vagaries of political whim. No government help or intervention necessary for all the bright people in Bakerfield. I'm sure those large agricultural giants in the southern San Joaquin Valley take no government handouts and pay their college graduate harvesters tremendous wages and benefits. I picture bucolic rural colleges of agri-genetics set on pristine grounds all paid through the benevolence of corporate responsibility.

Bakersfield needs to tell this dramatic post-election story that the rest of the nation got it all wrong. While nearly all of California voted for the Democratic Party candidates and moderate Republicans, Bakersfield was leading the charge to self reliance and independence from government by voting for the very extreme right wing entrants for every elected office.

"Bakersfield, life as it should be?"

Maybe someone, apart from Danny Devito, might remember the movie Other People's Money. It was about new ideas versus old ones, about money for money's sake pitted against money for community's sake. It was one of Gregory Peck's last roles. He played the owner of a small wire and cable company. His company looks like a great bargain for corporate raider, Larry the Liquidator who is played by Danny DeVito. The film is a morality play of how things used to be in American business set against how things are today. This film is always a good watch and absolutely instructional.

The above introduction brings me to Gottschalks Inc., headquarted in Fresno, CA. Gottschalks is a smallish department store chain that has turned a profit the last two years of over $5 million. It's stock hit a low in 2003 at just above a buck a share but now is at over ten dollars per share and has seen comp sales gains the last several months leading into the Holiday season. This not Target, WalMart or Federated that we are talking about here. Just a western regional department store chain with about 73 stores total.

With the above information one would think things were on the upswing at Gottschalks, with good corporate leadership in place and both stock and sales on the rise, but you would be wrong.

Thesis Capital Management has come out this month with very critical remarks about the company. In a very recent letter, Thesis Capital Management dressed down Gottschalks stock performance as "appalling when compared to its department store peer group."

Thesis Capital Management owns less than 5% of Gottschalks currently.

"The profit growth is anemic ... and because of that, the stock price has been all over the place," weighed in Brian Hamilton, senior analyst with ProfitCents, a financial information service.

See you later Gottschalks. It was nice to have you in the southern San Joaquin Valley for those 100 years but with your comapny now viable, we can destroy your credibilty with paid off analyst jive, lower your stock price to buy in cheap and then merge or sell outright. This way we reap big profits, put a lot people out of work and create lots of vacant buildings in moderate sized cities throughout the western United States.

Thanks, Thesis Capital Management. Now go fuck yourself!

I can only ask, what was Mark Foley thinking all those years? A gay Republican is an oxymoron. Someone that stupid was bound to get into trouble. How does any gay person who is not related to Dick Cheney sign up with the Republican Party? Doesn't anyone read the Party platforms any longer? Or is there a world of Mark Foleys, so illiterate and dumbed down by little "big-tent" sound bites, that understanding and honesty float beyond comprehension?

A new blog with a new name, Bako-Bits, sprinkles musings and rantings about our current tragicomic world on the finest bed of green for you alone.