Gail Worley and Worleygig.com Present The 2011 Pop Culture Top Ten!

Best Album: Manraze, PunkFunkRootsRock. Take guitarist Phil Collen from Def Leppard and team him up with drummer Paul Cook from The Sex Pistols and add Simon Laffy, the bassist from Phil’s former Glam band, Girl (because every power trio needs a bassist), and you’ve got a record that sounds, well, like a raunchier version of Def Leppard! We especially love Phil’s Lemmy impersonation on “Over My Dead Body.” Record of The Year!

Best Game Show: The Kostabi Show, where a panel of three Art critics and/or celebrities compete to title the works of modernist painter Mark Kostabi for cash awards, while a jury votes on which title suits the painting best. I got to be a member of the jury for a taping this past summer and went home with $6 more that I had when I got there, plus a Kostabi coffee table book signed by Mark. Bonus: free pizza! Kostabi, who is an accomplished pianist, also released a swell modern classical CD, The Spectre of Modernism, this year, which has been in heavy rotation on my iPod for ages now.

Best Beatles Thing: Dave Depper’s Ram Project, an authentically covered version of Paul McCartney’s second solo album complete with off-key Linda-esque backing vocals! So good!

Best Rock Book: Nick Kent’s Apathy For The Devil, a memoir of the British rock critic’s life and career in the 1970s, which I certainly would have loved to have lived myself, save for the messy heroin addiction part.

Best Fashion-Related Museum Exhibit: Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty at the Met, which set all kinds of ridiculous attendance records and was just insane. Insane!

Best Eighties Goth Homage: Chris Connelly’s Artificial Madness. David Bowie Meets Killing Joke Plus Bauhaus with a little Ministry on the side. Homage!

Best Rock Documentary: Fix, The Ministry Movie. Best Rock Documentary, ever, actually.

Best Seventies Southern Rock: Sheep Dogs, Five Easy Pieces EP. Bonus points to the band for their fan-winning appearance on the most recent season of Bravo’s Project Runway!

Reality TV (Competition): Top Chef, because Celebrity Chefs are the new Rock Stars!

Pop Culture as Art: The Suckadelic Art Toy Universe Retrospective and Pop Up Store at Boo Hooray Gallery (NYC). The judges and critics on the second season of Work Of Art didn’t really dig the SuckLord’s artwork too much, but his parodies of Star Wars toys served up with a serious side of snark made for one of the most subversive and hilariously memorable art shows of the year!

– Gail Worley

Please read my blog daily at http://www.worleygig.com