What’s the Mercury Prize? Why, it’s only the most baffling, snobbiest and British-iest award in the industry.

The list compiles the organization’s “12 Albums of the Year” before it votes on the top prize winner. It’s open to all genres by artists exclusively based in the U.K.

2008’s 12 Albums of the Year are:

• Adele - 19
• British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
• Burial - Untrue
• Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
• Estelle - Shine
• The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
• Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
• Neon Neon - Stainless Style
• Portico Quartet - Knee Deep in the North Sea
• Robert Plant and Allison Krauss - Raising Sand
• Radiohead - In Rainbows
• Rachel Unthank and the Winterset - The Bairns

What I’ve noticed over the years is that the Mercury Prize voters (whoever they are) always choose a few obscure albums that have no chance of winning, a few “respectable” artists (sometimes the same as ”bigger names” or “perennial critical darlings”) and maybe an album that actually sold a copy or two.

This year’s no-chance album: Burial’s Untrue. The album has no melody, no theme other than creepy, shadowy synths and no real lyrics. It’s essentially faceless. I heard it last December on the recommendation of Pitchfork Media. It was crap.

The perennial critical darlings? Elbow and British Sea Power. Both released great albums this spring, each had less-than-stellar sales despite their greatness, and each have been around long enough to release three or four well-respected albums already. Both of those records will be close to if not listed in my top 10 this year.

The respected artists? Easy. Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand is a no-brainer here. Also, Radiohead’s In Rainbows. The Last Shadowpuppets contains a key member of 2006 Mercury winner Arctic Monkeys.

The others - well, I haven’t heard them yet. Except for Estelle. Her hit “American Boy,” featuring Kanye West, is being played everywhere right now. It’s pleasant and has the decency to have a melody and coherent lyrics.

Who should win?

My head says Radiohead, but that’s an easy choice and the band has made better records than In Rainbows. That doesn’t mean In Rainbows isn’t grand.

I have to go with my heart, for Robert Plant and Allison Krauss. It’s a record anyone can love. It also features two of the best vocalists around in an unexpected pairing, covering old blues, soul and country tunes with T-Bone Burnett in the producer’s chair. It’s also an effortless listen.

But the Mercury voters also like to defy expectations and often award the prize to unknowns. And they often give it to the wrong artist.

Here’s a list of past winners:

• 1992 - Primal Scream, Screamadelica
• 1993 - Suede, Suede
• 1994 - M People, Elegant Slumming
• 1995 - Portishead, Dummy
• 1996 - Pulp, Different Class
• 1997 - Roni Size/Reprazement, New Forms
• 1998 - Gomez, Bring It On
• 1999 - Talvin Singh, OK
• 2000 - Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of Bewilderbeast
• 2001 - PJ Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
• 2002 - Ms Dynamite, A Little Deeper
• 2003 - Dizzee Rascal, Boy in da Corner
• 2004 - Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand
• 2005 - Antony and the Johnsons, I am a Bird Now
• 2006 - Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
• 2007 - Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future

“The Dark Knight” :

$65 million opening day (record).

$155 million opening weekend (record).

$200+ million first week anticipated U.S. box office.

$200 million worldwide so far.

And then there’s Ledger:

“… mad-crazy-blazing brilliant” - Rolling Stone

“It is a towering performance. From his menacing, pencil-packing greeting to Gotham’s Mob fraternity (one of the most economic and effective character introductions ever), to the threat and fire he conjures in exchanges with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s sexy, sophisticated brief and “The Bat-maaan”, to the Sophie’s choice surprises of the third act, he is pure, powerful, immense. A force of fucking nature.” - Empire

“But Ledger’s mesmerizingly damaged agent provocateur is the film’s dark heart, a presence so malevolently unpredictable that it remains palpable even when he’s not on screen.” - TV Guide

“In this, the last performance he completed before his death, Ledger had a maniacal gusto inspired enough to suggest that he might have lived to be as audacious an actor as Marlon Brando, and maybe as great.” - Entertainment Weekly

“This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history.” - TIME

Yeah. He’s that good.

“The Dark Knight” succeeds at frightening levels, and the bulk of the praise belongs to Ledger. Every time he left the screen, he left me wanting more.

Forget Batman. I want a Joker franchise.

The movie had already taken on mythical proportions in my mind when Heath Ledger died last winter. But now that it’s actually out - and the reviews, most citing his performance as The Joker as magnificent, are largely glowing - well, I start fidgeting just thinking about it.

I just can’t wait to watch him go nuts for 2 1/2 hours, smacking Maggie Gyllenhaal around and making things explode.

It’s not just Ledger I’m excited about.

Christian Bale is the best Batman yet, and watching him pull on a quasi-Patrick Bateman persona (”American Psycho“) to play Bruce Wayne is awfully fun.

Katie Holmes is gone! She stunk up “Batman Begins” with her zero-appeal, blank-eyed seriousness. In her place is Maggie Gyllenhaal, who’s got heaps more charisma and talent to spare.

Aaron Eckhart plays “Harvey Dent.” If you didn’t see him ”Thank You For Smoking,” a film so good not even Katie Holmes could ruin it, you really missed out. One of the best, undersung films in recent memory.

Michael Caine brings his credibility back to the screen, as do Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman. Yeah, so pretty much, an awesome cast.

So will Ledger win a posthumous Oscar? I don’t know. There’s a lot of buzz. I doubt it. If he does, it will be out of pity for his untimely death and for the Oscar-robbing the Academy pulled on him when he didn’t win for “Brokeback Mountain.”

But maybe not. Maybe his performance is really that good.

I can’t wait to find out.

That’s right: All those late-80s goodies will be coming your way in shiny new packages with bonus tracks, all featuring crystal-clear sound. And all on Sept. 23.

For the record, that’s Tim (1986), Pleased to Meet Me (1987), Don’t Tell A Soul (1989) and All Shook Down (1990).

This has been desperately needed for years, at least since my buddy Chandler got me into the band five years ago. The current CD transfers of Tim and Pleased to Meet Me - both chock full of great, great songs - are tinny and washed-out.

Pleased to Meet Me is my favorite, due in large part to this song:

From Pitchfork, here’s the track lists:

Tim:
01 Hold My Life
02 I’ll Buy
03 Kiss Me on the Bus
04 Dose of Thunder
05 Waitress in the Sky
06 Swingin Party
07 Bastards of Young
08 Lay It Down Clown
09 Left of the Dial
10 Little Mascara
11 Here Comes a Regular
12 Can’t Hardly Wait (acoustic, Alex Chilton sessions outtake) [previously unreleased bonus track]
13 Nowhere Is My Home (Alex Chilton sessions outtake) [bonus track]
14 Can’t Hardly Wait (electric, Alex Chilton sessions outtake) [previously unreleased bonus track]
15 Kiss Me on the Bus (Tom Erdelyi demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
16 Waitress in the Sky (outtake, alternate version) [previously unreleased bonus track]
17 Here Comes a Regular (outtake, alternate version) [previously unreleased bonus track]

Pleased to Meet Me:
01 I.O.U.
02 Alex Chilton
03 I Don’t Know
04 Nightclub Jitters
05 The Ledge
06 Never Mind
07 Valentine
08 Shooting Dirty Pool
09 Red Red Wine
10 Skyway
11 Can’t Hardly Wait
12 Birthday Gal (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
13 Valentine (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
14 Bundle Up (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
15 Photo (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
16 Election Day [bonus track]
17 Alex Chilton (alternate version) [previously unreleased bonus track]
18 Kick It In (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
19 Route 66 [bonus track]
20 Tossin’ ‘N’ Turnin’ [bonus track]
21 Can’t Hardly Wait (alternate version) [previously unreleased bonus track]
22 Cool Water [bonus track]

Don’t Tell a Soul:
01 Talent Show
02 Back to Back
03 We’ll Inherit the Earth
04 Achin’ to Be
05 They’re Blind
06 Anywhere’s Better Than Here
07 Asking Me Lies
08 I’ll Be You
09 I Won’t
10 Rock ‘N’ Roll Ghost
11 Darlin’ One
12 Portland [bonus track]
13 Wake Up [bonus track]
14 Cruella DeVille [bonus track]
15 Talent Show (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
16 We’ll Inherit the Earth (mix 1) [previously unreleased bonus track]
17 Date to Church [ft. Tom Waits] [bonus track]
18 We Know the Night (outtake) [previously unreleased bonus track]
19 Gudbuy T’ Jane (Slade cover) (outtake) [previously unreleased bonus track]

All Shook Down:
01 Merry Go Round
02 One Wink at a Time
03 Nobody
04 Bent out of Shape
05 Sadly Beautiful
06 Someone Take the Wheel
07 When It Began
08 All Shook Down
09 Attitude
10 Happy Town
11 Torture
12 My Little Problem
13 The Last
14 When It Began (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
15 Nobody (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
16 One Wink at a Time (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
17 Torture (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
18 Attitude (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
19 Happy Town (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
20 Tiny Paper Plane (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
21 Sadly Beautiful (demo) [previously unreleased bonus track]
22 Kissin’ in Action [bonus track]
23 Ought to Get Love [bonus track]
24 Satellite [bonus track]

From the AP -

“Police were called to the Buffalo Wild Wings in Murrieta at about 1:13 a.m. to investigate a report of “an intoxicated male” urinating outside the bar and causing a disturbance, according to a police statement.

“When they arrived, a 17-year-old girl told police that she was outside when Dick left the bar, walked up, “grabbed her tank top and bra and pulled them down and exposed her breasts,” the statement said.”

Actually, the most surprising thing is that he was hanging out at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Ew. I thought even D-list stars ate better than that.

Ah well, at least he gave us this nugget before he went totally bonkers:

Why wait ? You can see it now. (You know you want to.)

Do the same if you ever want to feel a little better about living in America, too.

I happened upon it late last night and it caught me completely off guard. Watching a man negotiate the sale of a 1-year-old boy at a playground will shock you.

Listening to his father explain that he’s sold his previous children because, under China’s one child policy, he will have to pay thousands to keep his children is devastating.

“I can see where the selling of children as a commodity might be wrong but in my heart I can’t find the reason why.” That’s what the traffiker, who made $3,000 of the 1-year-old’s $12,000 sale, says.

Other parents’ boys simply disappeared - kidnapped, sold into human traffiking - and there’s almost zero chance they’ll ever see their children again. A detective tells them so, but at the same time tells them they can’t give up hope their boy will be found.

I can’t remember the last time I saw something on television that made me get on my knees and pray to God for an intervention. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I did just that.

A once loved, now defunct music web site I loved had a nifty column where writers/critics were subjected to classic or renowned albums for the first time.

I thought it’d be a fitting tribute to Stylus and an amusing way of introducing myself to music I should arguably already be familiar with.

There’s so much stuff out there I’m shockingly unfamiliar with, either out of choice (I have honestly never had the desire to listen to the Sex Pistols) because my immediate reaction to individual songs has been minor annoyance (The Ramones, The Velvet Underground) or just because I just haven’t (Paul Simon’s Graceland, John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On).

Well, I want to fill in these glaring gaps in my musical knowledge. Without confining myself to any one genre, period or mood, I’m ready to explore with an open (OK, maybe a semi-open) mind.

And I say, go ahead and send in suggestions of “classic” or “great” albums - subjective terms - I should know. With the help of Alamance County Public Libraries (and maybe some generous co-workers), “First Impressions” will be off the ground and running.

For the first installment, I’m choosing Beck’s 1994 slacker classic Mellow Gold.

For a few reasons: First, and most crucially, Brent Lancaster let me borrow it; secondly is I admire Beck and adore several of his albums (Odelay, Mutations, Sea Change) but never ventured back far enough for “the album that contained ‘Loser’”.

Third - and this is the dig - it’s an album I remember people talking about, a lot. Even in junior high (hell that it was), popular and unpopular alike were impressed by this guy’s garbled poetry (”shave your face with some mace in the dark…”). Kurt Cobain was the one everybody respected but I remember few, if any, fervent discussion of his lyrics despite the endless idol worship. Nirvana was easy to admire but tough to have fun with. That was the point - there was a good bit to dig into but you kinda needed to do it alone.

On the other hand, Beck got our attention with his words - and not words explicitly about sex or love or angst-on-sleeve antics - and his playfulness. ”Loser” was the antithesis of the gripy grunge of the time:  enjoyable, tongue-in-cheek randomness.

So, my visit with this touchstone of 1994 is long overdue. Time to rewind my mind back to the days of Ace of Base, “Friends” and the waning days of grunge.

I’m pushing play.

Beck - Mellow Gold

1. Loser

This is still as fresh as I remember it being. That trippy sitar riff and the “Soy un perdidor” chorus as strange as ever. Favorite part, instrumental break: ”I’m a driver. I’m a winner. Things are going to change. I can feel it.” It’s not surprising that this was a hit.

2. Pay No Mind (Snoozer)

“Give the finger to the rock ‘n roll singer as he’s dancing upon your paycheck.”

Yeah. That’s pretty awesome. It actually made me laugh out loud. I’m not sure when the last time that happened while listening to music was.

3. Fuckin’ with my Head (Mountain Dew Rock)

This is actually more like blues than I expected. Beck’s definitely become a better singer as the years have gone by. It’s hard to imagine this same guy - aping black bluesmen of the 40s and 50s - singing the Prince-like “Debra” some five years later.

4. Whiskeydone, Hotel City 1997

Man! This is the kind of dirge they just don’t write anymore. Birds chirping, drugged sounding, totally crazy.

“She could talk to squirells/ Coming back from the convalescent home.”

5. Soul Suckin’ Jerk

This is the first thing I haven’t liked. It’s a bit throwaway and easy compared to everything else here. The drum solo is pretty cool, though. Hmmm. Electro for the ending.

6. Truckdrivin’ Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)

Rock on four-track recorder, rock on.

7. Sweet Sunshine

I now understand all the comparisons the Eels get to Beck. Something about this rhythm reminds me of “Come Together” by The Beatles. At this point, the novelty of all the noise is beginning to wear off. I’m just wondering how much I would listen to this on my own time. It’s easy to see how much he improved his writing and method by the time he got to Odelay in 1996.

8. Beercan

Finally - a beat and comprehensible lyrics and a melody. Welcome relief. And another funny lyric, paired with affected vocals.

Yeah, this is awesome. Like Saturday morning cartoons on acid. His voice sounds like Brent doing his old lady (Mozelle Williams?) routine.

9. Steal My Body Home

Another stoner dirge. Nice Indian flourishes. The drum kick-in at 4 minutes saves it. KAZOO, benches!

10. Nitemare Hippy Girl

Blur tried to do this on its 1997 album. They didn’t quiiiite get there.

11. Mutherfuker

HAHA! Once again, this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.

12. Blackhole

More Indian music (mmmm, Indian food….) and this ones kinda pretty.

It reminds me of that pre-school song we used to sing about the gray squirrel. “Gray squirrel, gray squirrel, shake your bushy tail …”

13 - Ooooh, hidden track!

Pac-man on acid. Thanks, Beck.

So, 45 minutes have passed.

Yeah, that was pretty good. Would I give it 5 stars? Probably not. Would I listen to it again? Yeah, definitely.

Hearing this for the first time with an artist I’m so familiar with gives me the opportunity of hindsight: You can hear him really exploring and finding his voice. It’s fearless in a lot of ways - there’s no stab at writing an epic crowdpleaser, there’s not even really an attempt at defining anything about the times. It’s a genuine, flawed record. The middle has a serious slump after those first four, wonderful songs.

He was never this loose again. Odelay was much more focused and melody-driven. It’s also the better for it. After that, he genre skipped for a couple years and then got serious for Sea Change. His recent attempts at a return to his early style have felt forced and unmemorable, if solid.

The best songs here - “Loser,” “Beercan,” “Pay No Mind (Snoozer)” - hold up effortlessly. Like the artist who crafted them during his best moments, they’re still captivating and funny and willfully weird.

So detached. So drugged (or that’s what they’d like us to believe). So not interested in popularity or what’s in style (again: what they’d like us to believe).

I gave into the Dandys about a decade ago, when one of their videos caught my eye and a band I was in began covering their biggest American hit. But even then, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I actually met the band on the street, or if I actually knew them, our dislike for each other would be explosive.

Courtney Taylor is one of the most egotistical frontmen in rock. Few frontmen try as hard as he does to seem witty, dispassionate and cool. Spraying his lyrics with drug references (heroin, speed, coke, various other pills, and - of course! - pot) and all the trendy chicks he beds in the hipster scene.

But beneath all that gasping effort is a pretty good band.

The Dandies have been confounding expectations since the mid-’90s, releasing one scattershot, messy album after another. Dandys Rule OK? was the formative debut, full of promise. They nearly fulfilled that promise on 1997’s The Dandy Warhols Come Down and the druggie anthem, “Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” - a shimmering slice of faux-’60s psychedelia and ’70s A.M. bubblegum.

They hit the bigtime with 13 Tales of Urban Bohemia in 2000, a trippy, sprawling album that melded the Stones and Sonic Youth and birthed at least five classic songs (”Bohemian Like You” chiefest among them).

Not wishing to hold onto fans, they took a sharp turn in 2003 with Welcome to the Monkey House that saw them mining ’80s New Wave nostalgia with members of Duran Duran and producer Nile Rodgers. “We Used to Be Friends” and “You Were the Last High” sounded like late-’70s Bowie on crank.

Then came “Dig”: The music documentary to end all music documentaries. The Dandys are followed, along with rivals Brian Jonestown Massacre, for six years, from 1995 to about 2002. If you want to watch how messed up and nasty things can get when you’re scraping by and attempting to claw your way to the top, it’s worth a watch.

Best moment: lead singer Courtney Taylor recounting his meeting with Sire Records exec Seymour Stein, during which he told the mogul, “I sneeze and hits come out.” To which Stein quickly replied, “Sire Records will be happy to provide you with tissues.”

After that, on the cusp of some semblance of mainstream acceptance, the Dandys released their least-focused and weakest set of songs, Odditorium or Warlords of Mars. The single, “Smoke It” would barely have made the cut as an album track on the other albums.

Well, with another commercial flop under their belts, the Dandys are back in 2008 releasing a free album from their own web site.

… Earth to the Dandy Warhols is their best end-to-end album since 13 Tales of Urban Bohemia. It’s also a good approximation of everything they’ve done so far: shoegaze, glam, ironic slabs of disco, new wave and country.

Nothing’s really changed. More references to the women Courtney Taylor’s sleeping with, an echo of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” on “The World Come On,” and explicit instructions on how to separate the stems and seeds from the weed in “Mis Amigos.”

 OK, “Valerie Yum” is terrible!

But it’s still more consistent than anything from them in about eight years. And when a band’s peaks are as high as the Dandys’, that’s saying something.

So what if those reasons come while dressed as a pre-teen orphan girl lipsynching? This is the most inspirational vid I’ve seen since the “Yes We Can” Obama clip.

Watch and believe. (the written captions are a little salty - might not be safe for all workplaces)