The Bobby Lightfoot First Annual Best Fucking Artist Award: Michael Penn, Winner.

the final tie breaker between Mike and Rufus Wainwright is the song "Slipping My Mind" from Mike's '92 album Free For All. This song is simply so good and so pretty and so talking to you in a language you understand that it wins out even over such titanically talented Rufus tracks as "I Don't Know What It Is", "The Tower Of Learning" and "My Baby".

Penn and Wainwright are both guys who siezed on nepotistic opportunity to sneak some excellence into our lives and if that's what it takes, well, i've always got my dad, Gordon. I'm workin' on some demos, you know? I'm going to play at Sin-e and dad's gonna get some of his buds from MCA and A&M and Seagram's and Frito-Lay in to check out the action. yeah, they're starting a label. Got P-Diddy and Macy Gray and Bobby Lightfoot.

Michael Penn is, all in all, my favorite post-XTC artist. What a god damn nut this guy is. Fucking psycho. Me and Mike once landed in jail one night together on a bad, bad drunk. He accosted this bouncer at the Cocoanut Teaszer on Sunset and I had to jump in and rabbit punch the god damn guy. The bouncer.

No, I'm just kidding. I never met Michael Penn. My existence is nought to him.

I met this guy, though, who gave me a ride on the 5 south of Orange County and I reached for a cigarette and before I knew it he whipped out a 9 mm. and he was all nervous like I was going to pull some heat on him. Holy christ, dude. I just want to get some gas. Yikes. Jumpin' Jehosephat. Holy mother of sweet caroline. Santa Elena de Los Emisiones Nocturnales. Corazon Sagrada de la Verga Caliente y Sabrosa. Cristofuckin' Colona de Canceres. Yuck yuck...

Um, Michael Penn played in Northampton on his first record "March" in '91 and I checked that shit out. He was good. It's really about the songs with this guy. He's a flippin' monster. Michael Penn is pretty much to songwriting what Andy Partridge is to....songwriting. Michael Penn is pretty much to songwriting what I am to the meandering go-nowhere hi-g force Opus of Disbelief and Futile Rage in a World Gone Badly Sideways.

You follow me?

Michael Penn's gift is, in his best songs, to arrange the whole trajectory of the song towards one small moment of perfect pathos and beauty that shines out of the cd player and irradiates you with rays of silky, opalescent memory. God, it's good. It's like pulling your first girlfriend's underwear down in slow motion. Tell me that isn't something you'd pay eighteen bucks to get a combined 45 seconds of.

Consistent to this dude's work is a beautifully constructed thematic backdrop of a Crumbling Old Hollywood. He's rooted to his city with a Runyon-like singlemindedness, spraying cryptic, melancholic strophes and triple-entendres onto a backdrop of fading glory and palm trees. His lyrics can be maddeningly indecipherable at times but you just have to remember he's always basically saying the same thing; life is hard, life is funny, life rocks, here's the deal with me, we should try to be kinder to each other, all that.

What an absolute killer this fucking guy is. If songs were artillery everybody on the planet would have to WATCH THE CHRIST OUT.