Manu Chao -- PROXIMA ESTACION ESPERANZA (Virgin). "Next station . . . hope." An utterly mesmerizing found-ghost-voice collage, underlying uplifting (love) songs of freedom. I played this CD far more than anything else last year. My favorites are "La Primavera," "Me Gustas Tu," "Merry Blues," "Trapped by Love"/"Le Rendez Vous," and that encircling coda of voices, "Infinita Tristeza." Magical.
	The Detroit Cobras -- LIFE, LOVE AND LEAVING (Sympathy for the Record Industry). Meet the state of the art in explosive R&B girl-group reinterpretation: foul-mouthed fireball diva Rachael Nagy. Boy, can that girl sing! And with straight-ahead drummer Damian Lang and rootsy guitarist Maribel Restrepo, the Cobras are a hot band, too. Nagy really belts it out on uptempo tunes "Hey Sailor," Otis Redding's "Shout Bama Lama" and the delirious "He Did It," then grows sweetly reflective on bluesy ballads "Cry On" and "Let's Forget About the Past."
	The Come Ons -- HIP CHECK! (Sympathy for the Record Industry). Meanwhile, fellow Motor City chanteuse Deanne Iovan is calmer, cooler: the queen of serene. She's mesmerizing on "Mesmerizer," and beguiling on the spare, countryish closing tune, "Dollar in My Pocket." Drummer Patrick Pantano and guitarist Jim Johnson shuffle up some especially groovy grooves: the snappy '60s-dance-party beat of "It's Alright"; the dreamlife juxtapositions of "Keep the Change"; and the album's centerpiece, the languorous revel "Strangelove," with Iovan somberly confessing that she's a "sentimental soldier" and correctly prophesizin' that "you're not going anywhere." 'Cause you're not.
	The Clean -- GETAWAY (Merge). More songs about celestial sunsets. Lotsa beautiful guitar soundscapes, ranging from the Hendrixy to the lo-fi, with radiant shards of guitar in between folkie moments and sprawling mood-osity; some memorable, simple, Velvet-y and Television-ary songs, expanded elaborately. Somewhere between Meat Puppets, Pell Mell and Beck at times, to give a rough idea, perhaps, maybe -- although this stubborn New Zealand band predates 'em all, having started in the late '70s. Look for lead singer David Kilgour's upcoming solo CD, the bucketful of equally fine distractions, A FEATHER IN THE ENGINE.
	Backbiter/Elope -- eponymous split CD (Man's Ruin). More great classic (hard) rock you'll never hear on classic-rock radio. A tantalizing half dozen songs from Backbiter's missing lost second album, on a split with former members of Sweden's Union Carbide Productions doing some nice late-'60s-Brit-style hard rock. I especially dig Backbiter's "Nova," which bolts out of the chute from the instant of the song's first snare shot, then just keeps exploding. Rad guitar playing.
	Ex-Girl -- BACK TO THE MONO KERO! (Ipecac). For all their elaborate costumes, it's the Tokyo trio's spooky a cappella harmonies and non-rock riffs that dazzle. I am especially enchanted by the hypnotizing, rueful weave of voices on "Sasuke," the amped-up newer wave cover "Pop Music," and the hummingbird-blips of "Waving Scientist @ Frog King." Ex-Girl don't sound like (or try to imitate) anyone else, and, yes, they do wear some amazing colorful, kooky clothes onstage. Ex-Girl are as cute as frog-obsessed, vaguely spacy, vegetable-silly avant-garde art-punk-produced-with-occasional-electronic-twisted music ever gets.
	Vice Squad -- LO-FI LIFE (Sudden Death). Turns out Beki Bondage was right about the war machine. Punk . . . metal . . . it's all great rock & roll to me. Faves include "Submerge" and "Lo-Fi Life," which are NOT typical punk/hard rock songs -- and "Where Are They All Now?" and a-cool-and-heavy remake of "Last Rockers," which are indeed punk rockin'. Another great underrated album by a classic English band that's actually getting better in recent years. I also spun Beki Bondage's recent solo album, COLD TURKEY, as often as anything else on this list during the past year. I'm a sucker for her easy way with songs I grew up with, like "Son of a Preacher Man," "Dock of the Bay" and Janis Joplin's "Move Over," music that has some emotional resonance for me, and it's actually a pretty big event that Ms. Bond pulls this off so well, sometimes with a seedy, scarifying howl and other times with an unexpectedly soulful delivery. She kicks out exciting (and rocked up) versions of classics by T. Rex, Marvin Gaye, Gene Vincent, Jimi Hendrix, Thin Lizzy and John Lennon. Clever CD-package design and photos, by the way.
	The Now Time Delegation -- WATCH FOR TODAY (In the Red). Another fireball diva, Riverside-meets-Austin chapter: the BellRays' Lisa Kekaula, in a soul-satisfying side project with Poison 13 guitarist Tim Kerr. I love the powerful covers of the Flirtations' "Nothing But a Heartache," Curtis Mayfield's "Keep On Pushin'" and King Floyd's bluesy interlude "Handle With Care" best, but I also enjoyed many of Kerr's strong, if '60s-derivative, original tunes ("Stand and Deliver," "Little Miss Fortune"). And boy, can that girl sing (redux).
	The Beautys -- THING OF BEAUTY (Cheetah's). Bratty, impertinent punk rants, Muffs-style pop, and impressive, poignant fuzzy surf instros. This week's faves are "Leakerville," "Fuck Evolution," "What Drugs?" and "Only Worse."
	The Dickies -- ALL THIS AND PUPPET STEW (Fat Wreck Chords). It was only a matter of time before celebrity psychologist Leonard Graves Phillips focused his insightful, maliciously probing attention on Courtney Love, abetted by Stan Lee's insidious guitar figure on "He's Courtin' Courtney." Less scary, but also manic and brilliant: "My Pop the Cop," "Howdy Doody in the Woodshed II," "Nobody but Me" and "Marry Me, Ann."
	Dead Moon -- TRASH & BURN (Empty). Timeless garage rockers, sentimental ballads and psychedelic sasquatch howlings. Add up the new greatest hits: "The Way It Is," "40 Miles of Bad Road," "Sabotage," "Shot Away," etc.
	Tijuana No! -- LIVE AT BILBAO, SPAIN (BMG). I suppose I'm biased because I'm quoted raving about the band on the CD booklet, but they really are one of my all-time faves bands of this hemisphere. TJ and L.A. are connected, and California is really a part of Mexico. This first-ever live CD has the band at an interesting time in their career, back in 1996 in the Basque part of Spain, after collaborating with Negu Gorriak's Fermin Muguruza and of course Manu Chao. It's got most of the early hits: a really fast version of the Clash's "Spanish Bombs," Ceci's sweetly desperate and melodic "Pobre de Ti," Teca and Luis' multipart punk epic "Transgresores de la Ley," and the horn-enlivened instrumental "La Vaca." (BILBAO closes with two interesting bonus studio remixes of Tijuana No's more recent Public Enemy-styling, anti-Manifest Destiny rap-metal collaboration with Kid Frost, "Stolen at Gunpoint.") Since there's only one song from the ambitious third studio album, CONTRA REVOLUCION AVENUE, I hope someday the band will release another live album with the later hits "Gente," "Sin Tierra," "Nadie Dijo Nada" and the rarely performed "Somas Mas." But until then, we're fucking lucky to just to have this great live album, especially since Tijuana No recently announced that they're breaking up. No more No?
	W.A.C.O. -- A GAME OF CARDS (True Classical). The Wild Acoustic Chamber Orchestra delight with jaunty marches and bent melodic flourishes, delivered by interlocking strings and dizzying flutes. My fave is the last and I believe oldest song, "Hydra," a glacial and delicately glacial melting of ice and time, about missing friends, who are lost in the crackle of faraway satellite transmissions. Utterly lovely, and not punk in the Marshall-amp sense, but punk because it's defiantly original and untrendy.
	The Controllers -- self-titled CD (Bacchus Archives/Dionysus). A two-decade-overdue compilation from the classic 1977 L.A. punk band, who never previously released a full album, just a few scattered compilation tracks and a single. Just about everything's here, from "Electric Church" and the sullen, Stooges-ish slow rumble "Suburban Suicide" (about the boredom of sitting around in Van Nuys) to "Do the Uganda" and the first and greatest of the many punk covers of the old Desi Arnaz showstopper, "Jezebel."
	The Chicken Hawks -- HARD HITTING SONGS FOR HARD HIT PEOPLE (Rock and Fucking Roll). The intro of drums into bass into guitar buildup of "Rollin' and Tumblin'" was one of the most exciting beginnings to a rock album last year. I'm also partial to trashy tracks like "101 Blues," "Honky Tonk Girls" and "Should Have Stayed Home (And Done LSD)." Sexy screaming, amped-up rust-bucket racket and slobbering slide-guitar. Equally essential: the Chicken Hawks' simultaneous new split CD with the 440s on Steel Cage Records.
	The Excessories -- PURE POP FOR PUNK PEOPLE (Sympathy for the Record Industry). Going back to her all-too-rare lead-vocal turns in Donovan's Fairies and in the final lineup of Sluts for Hire, Melanie Bruck has always sung these really appealing, innocent-hearted, melodic but rocking punky songs. Her debut album finally fronting her own band is everything we'd hoped for, with yearning and sugary songs about romanting pangs and reading comic books and ditching work and having fun. PURE POP was recorded with Rich Coffee (the Tommyknockers, the Alter Egos, Black Widows, etc.) on lead guitar, drummer Roy Morgan and then-bassist Janet Housden (the Shakes, Redd Kross), and it's a delight.
	Piss Ant -- self-titled CD (GenXtasy). This is an even guiltier pleasure, much sleazier than the Excessories' guileless innocence. Sinister guitar shredding by Dave Foster and intricate, propulsive bass playing by Amy Brandt help make up for some generic lyrics. I love Josi Kat's frenetic vox and the aburd silliness of "Superchick," as well as "Sexx Junkie" and "Murder Highway."
	Various artists -- R.A.F.R. VOLUME 3 (Rock and Fucking Roll Records). A high percentage of great and mostly new/previously unavailable tracks by the Humpers, the Short Fuses, the Chicken Hawks, the Excessories, the Peeps, the Starvations, the BellRays, Mad Daddys, Bellvue, the Hellbenders and Candy Ass, among others.
	The White Stripes -- WHITE BLOOD CELLS (Sympathy for the Record Industry). Although I can live without the God stuff, I do love the Jack White's songwriting, especially the mopey ballads near the end. It's another fine album from a group that almost everybody already knows about, so I'll shut up.

MISCELLANEOUS AWARD WINNERS Sad To See You Go: Joey Ramone, Bianca "Butthole" Halstead, George Harrison, John Lee Hooker, Lance Loud, Willie Stargell, Al's Bar. Glad To See You Come Back: Arthur Lee. Grandest Piano Rambles About Sitting on Sandwiches, World Peace and How There Once Was a Fuh King: Brute Force's sublimely silly recital at Scramarama, downtown Los Angeles, November 3, 2001. Biggest Don't-Care-Who-Sees-Me-Crying-in-a-Nightclub Moment: When the reunited Tex & the Horseheads whipped out that exhilarating hush of maternal recrimination, "Oh Mother," at the Blue Café in Long Beach, California, last fall. Another Reason To Keep Breathing: Urinals ("Skygrifter") and Cheap Trick (title unknown; a creepy ballad with the curiously plucked upstrokes on guitar) both debut in concert haunting new songs that rival their early best. Worst Tragedy: The breakup of Tijuana No. Best of the Newer Wave Bands: Radio Vago, EMA 3. Most Vacant-Seeming Lead Singer Randomly Fiddling With His Bandmates' Amp Settings Onstage During What Turned Out To Be a Thrilling If Atypically Punk Rocking Show: The Fall's Mark E. Smith at the Knitting Factory (Hollywood), November 14, 2001. Best Blondie Tribute CD: HOW MANY BANDS DOES IT TAKE TO SCREW UP A BLONDIE TRIBUTE? (Sympathy for the Record Industry). I liked the variously modish twists by The Space Surfers, The Kirby Grips, Trinket, The Come Ons, L'Alouette, The Short Fuses, The Excessories, Fur, The Kowalskis, Buck, Third Grade Teacher and Skrap, among the many fine cuts. I especially enjoyed the few times the bands stopped being so faithful and respectful to the original Blondie versions, and started shaking things up, as when the Space Surfers wandered far into left-field on their spazzy and slam-bang version of "Heart of Glass." Weirdest Pro Football Lyric in a Mini-Orchestral Love Ballad: "Sentimentally attached to the AFL rules, which do not come back but sporadically in April-time," from W.A.C.O.'s A GAME OF CARDS CD (True Classical Records). And also, Best Orignal Score to a New Ballet by a Mini-Orchestra: W.A.C.O.'s score for "The Selfish Giant" (based on Oscar Wilde's short story, with choreography by Jane Paik). Best Wild New Punk Combo Likely To Be Dead (Literally), Maimed or Hugely Famous by This Time Next Year: The Orphans. Guiltiest Pleasures: The Shakes' Kinks-y version of "Oops, I Did It Again" and those cute Britney Spears stickers in the Ralphs supermarket gumball vending machines. Other keen shows and releases by combos that don't neatly fit into groups of 10: A new 7-inch on Get Hip and a once-a-decade sighting in L.A. of the Cynics, as well as a thrilling reunion of Sean Bonniwell's Music Machine, and disparately enchanting appearances by Nikki & the Corvettes, the Loons, Deniz Tek, Harvey Sid Fisher & the Fisherettes, and the above-mentioned Brute Force at the Scramarama festival at downtown's Palace Theater in November. And the "Class of '77" punk reunion at L.A.'s El Rey theater in December, highlighted by rare appearances from the original Adolescents lineup, who galvanized the entire ballroom; Paul Roessler and K.K., the surviving members of the Screamers, doing aggressive music with just synth and drums that was punk and ominous all the more wicked for not sounding anything like what's now considered traditional punk; Keith Morris reminding all the war-lovin' patriots that the bombing of Afghanistan was just about oil and profits, and nothing noble, nor really about saving the world from terrorism, a welcome message in these gung-ho times (especially a needed counterbalance to Fear's apparently serious "USA, USA" jarhead chanting in between their songs; perhaps they don't get their own jokes in "Let's Have a War"); the reunited Dogs, the mid-'70s missing link between early L.A. punk and the MC5; Cherie Currie & Sandy West tearing into Runaways hits, backed by a foxed-up Abby Travis, decked out in fishnets, tight mini skirt and boots, looking like the Runaways' younger sister, instead of in her usual elegant cabaret-chanteuse guise. I was awed by witnessing Cherie Curie in person for the first time, dazzled by her still pure voice and glam-or-us stage strut and Bowiesque gestures -- "American nights/you kids are SO strange!". Let's not forget the always sizzling guitar work of Mike Palm & Agent Orange; or Stingray, back with a young lineup of the Controllers, with "guest" Kidd Spike not playing guitar any more, just singing, and founding drummer Maddog sadly MIA; the redoubtable Crowd, stirring up the pit for what seemed like a five-minute blast of old songs. Even George Hurley & Mike Watt (more like the class of 1980) got back together to run through some Minutemen songs together, sounding stark and effective as a two-piece. It was better without some lame guest guitarist filling in for the late D. Boon; D.'s vacancy, his space, was part of the angular, driving, structure, and it was a revelation to remember that this was almost what the Minutemen used to sound like. I couldn't keep my eyes off sultry co-host Pleasant Gehman, baited and mocked the gullible macho punks in between sets, pretending to explain punk to them, dissing them cuz they were too late for the real thing, and laughing under a resulting hail of ice and thrown cups and objects and insults, her hair somehow looking perfect all the while, even when the louts nailed her. A chain of handcuffs provocatively encircled her waist, and she nonchalantly fingered the cuffs as she swaggered back and forth, taking her time, so easily pissing off the rubes who wanted to kill her. With her willingness to upset the nostalgia cart (and finally the promoters did cart her off and took her microphone away!), Pleasant instigated the most accurately punk-rock performance of all. Other highlights I heard and/or saw live and liked last year: that DMX video with the run-on, insistent blur of words about jail and prisons and life and death and everything in between; the Orphans; the revitalized Saccharine Trust; Biblical Proof of UFOs, with the song of the year, "You Would If You Loved Me" (a tune so catchy that even Backbiter took to covering, and they usually only play stuff by Roky Erikson and the Who); severe instrumentalist saboteurs Bratty & Jackass; the eternal Cheap Trick, even temporarily without Bun E. Carlos; the reclusive and cantankerous Simon Stokes; the Angoras; Julieta Venegas; the Jet Boys getting naked at staid Spaceland; Alejandro Escovedo; Barbara Manning & the Go-Luckys; the Dagons; and also the Dragons; the dueling synths of EMA 3; yes, I did enjoy Britney Spears' seductive "Slave 4 U," even if I still wish she'd stop lip-synching in concert and enough with all the commericals, don't superstars have enough money yet?; the Hangmen live in real life; the Urinals; Earle Scruggs on the David Letterman show; Tammy Faye Starlite & the Angels of Mercy; overhere/hearing bits of Bjork's music, and being shamelessly delighted with her imaginative fairy-tale-pretty white swan dress she showed off at the Academy Awards. And Project K's few live appearances; the Vibrators slumming it at Head Line record store in Hollywood, baby, baby; the Evaporators; Tom Watson & the Best of All; climbing down the hill from Griffith Observatory to eavesdrop on the Go-Go's (who closed with a sugary version of "I Wanna Be Sedated," a tribute to Joey Ramone), from behind the trees and back fence of the outdoor Greek Theater; finally hearing Kathy Valentine's other band, the sinuously powerful Delphines, on CD, though I haven't caught up to 'em live yet. Fun with ropes indeed. And: catching another wild, bodies-tumbling-in-air Union 13 set at the Troubadour; Pigmy Love Circus; Texas Terri & the Stiff Ones; several shows by the back-in-action Humpers & those squabbling siblings, the Vice Principals; Joey Shithead of DOA strumming anarcoustic rabble-rousing anti-WTO tunes at Spaceland; the Stitches, drinking their way to punk paradise and sometimes sounding as good live as their records; the subversive rebel DJs (spinning Sparks, Dead Kennedys, Misfits, Soft Boys, the Specials, lotsa ska, Crass and Devo, in heavy rotation), at Pirate Cat Radio, which I can pick up between ELA and Hollywood on my van's radio; the return of Pointy Kitty; and, finally, several good punk bands I was able to catch on my monthlong vacation to Como and Milano, Italy in May (especially the legendary and long-lived Rappresaglia and scuzzy, dog-hating up-and-comers the Crooks). A few of my friends think that the groups on my annual Top 10 lists tend to be too obscure, but I'm not intentionally trying to be elitist or mysterious or different from the pro critics. Although I liked the work of a few reasonably well-known musicians (Bjork, Manu Chao, the White Stripes), the great majority of the music I loved came, for various reasons, from overlooked and unknown performers. There was a lot of good music last year, if you were lucky and hungry enough to find it.