My Essential 100 Albums: Sort of Taking on the Nolan Dalla Challenge – Part One: a Statement of Purpose

I met Nolan Dalla when I was lucky enough to get hired to cover the 2007 World Series, which since my employer wasn’t allowed any real access or filming capabilities just meant I got to hang around in the press room and write some fun stories that weren’t really news. Now given my circumstances I should have used that time to try and leverage that opportunity into a job with a good poker site. Instead, I mostly decided to see if I could play poker for a living and lost more than the $5000 I was paid to be there.

I spent some fun time with Phil Laak, who is the nicest and most entertaining poker player I’ve ever met, and you can hit the above link to read about it and other stories from that experience.

The time best spent and the most luck I had was meeting Nolan Dalla.

Nolan Dalla was in charge of the press room. He was working very hard. He was very busy. He somehow still made time to talk to me.

People who do not like me will pejoratively call me a know it all. Most will nevertheless have to admit that even if I act that way (and that would be a fair debate) that indeed I know a lot.

Just the other day my mother asked me if there was anything I did not know, and I admitted that in fact I knew nothing about geography. If we play trivial pursuit together, I will get every slice of the pie almost immediately, and then lose to you failing to answer geography questions. Hilariously, my mom randomly mentioned Istanbul, to which I had to admit that I did know something about Istanbul, but the only reason I did was because of this.

Now Nolan knows perhaps more about everything than any single person I’ve ever met. He knows and witnessed epic stories about gambling and pre and post-corporate Las Vegas that he perhaps is the sole keeper of and if and when he is willing to tell those stories. He co-wrote one of the best books I’ve ever read, One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey ‘The Kid’ Ungar, The World’s Greatest Poker Player”.

I asked him two questions about Ungar and he gave me two perfect and in the second case a hilarious answer.

One: I wanted his thoughts on the highly panned Michael Imperioli vehicle “High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story.” which I too thought was bad except for one brilliant gin scene that probably never took place with Pat Morita, that showed both Ungar’s genius and his reckless nature as a gambler. Nolan, which he did not reveal to me, was actually at that time trying to do a better one, and to his credit he did not care about how much money he made on it.

He just wanted a good, well financed movie to actually be made on the subject. Now had nearly anyone else made that claim, I would have called bull shit, but I would never say that about Nolan, because despite the limited time I’ve spent in his presence, in that time I became fully convinced of the man’s true integrity. What he did tell me, which is also telling of his efforts to get that film made in the above link was that he thought that John Leguizamo was the perfect person to portray Stu Ungar.

Two: In his book, you will learn that Stu, who is pretty much by consensus the greatest gin player of all time (although also perhaps the worst hustler of all time) from 1978-1979 entered five gin tournaments and won three. In the other two he placed in the top four, and in one of those he did not win because he did not show up for the semifinal. He was then banned from those gin tournaments. Naively, I asked Nolan how they could ban someone for being too good, and his response, which I am paraphrasing from memory was like I said both funny and sad. “What you have to understand is that those gin tournaments were set up by mostly rich retirees looking mostly to have a good, relaxing time. Stu entered those tournaments and thrashed everyone he played and while doing it he berated his opponents incompetence constantly and as viciously as only he could! So they banned him.”

So I talked to Nolan as much as I could given the amount of time his busy, hard working schedule allowed. Had it been up to me I would have spent the entire time I was there doing nothing, but talking to Nolan and saved over $5,000. Hell, I would have paid him $5,000 dollars for the amount of time he did spend talking to me. He can talk knowledgeably and entertainingly about anything, and if you are indeed fortunate he will do so with you.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were in town to launch off the Cirque du Soleil show “Love,” and we talked a lot about the Beatles, and of course, there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about the Beatles especially with someone who knows and loves them as much as me. We talked about a lot of things and I enjoyed every second of it.

Something even more special me, especially given how many people the man has met in his life and that list easily includes many thousands who have achieved more and been more memorable than me, a few years later I conned my way back into the WSOP press room hoping to see him again. He was there and he instantly remembered me, which was amazing and touched me as much as nearly anything has touched me in my life.

I haven’t been in his presence since that day. Facebook, as evil as it is, is still the best way for me to find and keep in touch with people who were once and are still now special to me, and it’s let me keep up with Nolan, so no matter how much of my personal data they’ve accumulated and used for evil purposes, I have that and to me it’s been worth it.

Nolan has a great blog , I’m sure it gets way more hits than mine, which it should. Nolan is going to do a long range project in which he picks his list of 100 essential albums and will apparently go into detail explaining why they are essential, which I’m sure he will do exceptionally. To my great honor he dared me to do the same.

Now “essential” album lists are fine, it’s mostly something a guy from Esquire will compile with much research from the internet, and probably will include a lot of albums that writer has never heard. Nolan and I could likely make our list in a closet with no internet access off the top of our heads. Yes, I’m jealous that the people who write these lists often do so with much internet research over a frenzied few days, while I usually just write about what I dig from the years I scoured libraries reading things on microfilm and spending money I barely had to listen and decide on my own with my own ears.

Now as to essential, that’s a hard word for me to define. Historical impact or quality is one question I’d ponder, but in the end it will be what is essential to me.

I know a ton of music going back to at least 1900. Nolan didn’t specify genre, but I don’t listen to classical (too many different versions of the same masterworks that vary in quality based on which recording of it you hear and who did it), jazz (I know a lot, but there is indeed a lot and I mostly just know what I love the best. A a guy once asked me what the consensus best jazz album of all time was and when I said “Kind of Blue,” he thought I said “Kind of Blew.” My favorite Jazz album? John Coltane’s “Giant Steps,” and I had to listen to it at least 15 times before I understood  and really hear it properly.)

So I will mostly concentrate on what I know best post Elvis rock and roll, pop, rhythm and blues, and anything that may have emanated from it which will include rap.

I won’t do long reviews because, I’ve been really busy lately and I do that all the time.

Here is a crucial admission that most hipster music snobs like me will not make. I have gaps.

Enough of the right people have told me that Tom Waits is brilliant and as such it must be true, but I can not name a single Tom Waits song off the top of my head.

This will make my dear friend Nolan’s head explode. One of my favorite songs ever is “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m in Heaven When You Smile)” by Van Morrison. I once lost a $100 dollar bet because I refused to believe that the word “fantabulous” was in the song “Moondance” (I came very close to winning that $100 dollars back, but Leon Lett went Leon Lett and Don Beebe was there to make me pay for it). Worst of all, please Nolan put away the gun, I have not heard a single song off of “Astral Weeks.”

I have never had the courage to listen to “Trout Mask Replica,” just as I’ve never had the courage to attempt to conquer the novel “Naked Lunch.” I just don’t get Frank Zappa and have not put in the work to try.

I like many Velvet Underground songs (“Femme Fatale” is likely my favorite), but to me VU and Steely Dan (none of whose songs I like) are the two most overrated bands in rock history. Whether Steely Dan is even rock is irrelevant to me.

I hate everything the Grateful Dead ever recorded and indeed everything ever recorded by a fan at one of their endlessly boring shows, one of which I did see.

I have no use for whatever for is considered to be a “Jam” band. I’m a pop guy mostly even when it comes to the more complex recordings by the artists I love. I’ve often said that “A Day in the Life” is not 1000 times better or even obviously better than “Please Please Me” simply because it took 1000 times longer to record.

I love a lot of Neil Young songs (“Only Love Can Break You’re Heart” is my favorite), but again a big gap I have so I can’t name an album.

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” is maybe the most significant release of the eras I will be discussing but it won’t be here, and I love almost all of it.

Purists will not pick compilations, but I think they are often the best representation of an artist’s work so I will try to pick what I consider the best of the lot and in many cases it may just be the one I grew up on. If I had to say which albums turned me on to the Beatles, it would be their non-official Red and Blue compilations, which may or may not exist anymore.

So I’ll start first with my favorite artists and see how many I come up with. This list has numbers, but those numbers do not imply a ranking.

My warning for reading any list like this by a writer. There is a Godwin’s Law. The second you see the word “seminal” appear you should immediately stop reading.