Let's Officially Establish (Finally) The Patio Music Hall Of Fame
Also: Reviews of new albums by Olivia Rodrigo and Styrofoam Winos
Thank you for reading Evil Speakers. Look for part four of this month’s series “Catalog Club: The Rolling Stones (1980-89)” on Monday, covering 1986’s “Dirty Work” along with Mick and Keith’s solo records from around that time. To all my paying subscribers — thank you for making this newsletter viable.
Some time maybe three years ago, I started doing this silly thing. I sat on my back patio, and I drank, and I listened to CDs and tapes on my little boombox. All the while I sat with a phone in my hand. Sometimes, I would take one of those compact discs or tapes, snap a photo, and add the caption “Patio Hall Of Fame Album.”
This is hardly profound music criticism, I admit. But it started to catch on. Especially since I was doing a lot of sitting outside and drinking with a phone in my hand those days. Often, people would ask, “What exactly defines a ‘Patio Hall Of Fame’ album?” And I would usually say something glib like, “Whatever I happen to be playing and enjoying at this moment in the sun as I take a stupid photo on my stupid phone.” Only that was pretty much the truth. I had given this enterprise I had spontaneously invented out of boredom and a hunger for social media-supplied dopamine exactly zero thought.
Well, that changes now. Today, I am breaking ground on the official Patio Music Hall Of Fame. Every year around the summer solstice, I will be inducting several Patio Music “ambassadors” who exhibit consistent Patio Music excellence. (Recipients will receive the prestigious Lucky Wilbury Award, which I will explain more fully in a bit.) Also, I will induct several individual albums into the hall, which is located (for now) in an undisclosed location in my backyard.
But before we get to those festivities, I want to finally do the thing that people were sensibly asking for all along. I am going to establish some criteria for what exactly I mean by “Patio Music.” As I see it, there are five essential properties.
