Here are some of the albums I’ve been listening to lately: Patti Smith’s Horses (1975), Bjork’s Debut (1993), and Nico’s Chelsea Girl (1967).

No, I haven’t given up on current music—this year’s crop of albums, from Passion Pit to Grizzly Bear, from Pasta Groove to Outerhope—is, quite frankly, excellent. And I’m not on some all-girl record-sampling rampage through pop music history—at least, not exactly. This latest listening spree is because I am now, among other things, a men’s magazine editor.

Ever since I started showing up in the staff boxes of regular publications, I’ve largely been associated with music magazines—I worked on PULP, co-founded BURN, was Editor-in-Chief of Pulse.ph. This year, though, I became the Editor-at-Large of the newly-revamped UNO magazine, which consists of, as the tagline we came up with goes, “Dispatches for the Discerning Man.”

One of our regular features, under the pop-culture section we’ve dubbed Blaster, is called “Takeoff”—it’s at the beginning of each issue, and it’s where we devote a page to a woman who is not necessarily a model or actress or in some other public-figure profession, but a writer or artist or perhaps lawyer or scientist, etc., who also happens to be, well, a pleasure to look at. Thanks to Executive Editor Erwin Romulo and myself, however, it also happens to be a secret music feature, of sorts. Basically, the visual concept for each shoot is based on an album cover.

We shot surf instructor Lor Lapus like PJ Harvey, sculptor Nina Laurel like Bjork, poet Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta like Patti Smith and, just recently, fictionist Kit Kwe like the tragic and elegant Nico. It’s a lot of fun, actually. And under the main feature, we have the music-related footnote, where we discuss the album and relate it to our subject. For example, here’s Mookie’s:

Patti Smith was a poet before she was a singer, a fact that informs and invigorates her 1975 album Horses, a rock record of unique and lasting power. Though Mookie says she “Hasn’t given Horses a listen in years,” it is not far-fetched to say that the two share some concerns. “Desire, its various forms and incarnations,” Mookie names as her major influence, writing-wise; on Smith’s part, her debut album has songs about sex and redemption and fire-exhaling horses and is marked by “apocalyptic romanticism,” as Robert Christgau puts it. The intersection of poetry and rock music is something Mookie knows well, as lead singer for Big However—with words adapted from other people’s poems and of course Mookie’s originals, their songs have a unique power of their own.

And here’s the “footnote” for the feature on brilliant young artist Nina Laurel:

Swan-wearing, Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk Gudmundsdottir’s 1993 album Debut was described by Gary Mulholland as evoking “seventeen types of joy. Maybe eighteen. Who’s counting?” A deft blend of the emotional and the electronic, of experimental and accessible, it marked a turning point in pop music, winning over a wider audience than one might have expected. Asked about Debut, Nina Laurel cited “Big Time Sensuality” as her favorite song off the album, and quoted the following lyrics as being particularly relevant to her now: “I can sense it, something is about to happen, something important, it’s coming up. I don’t know my future after this weekend, and i just don’t want to.”

It’s a great little way to gain a little more insight into these women we admire, and of course to call attention to some classic albums (and a great excuse for me to load said albums into my mp3 player and spend hours re-listening to them).

Now, if I can just find a tiny toy piano and a sturdy wooden box about three feet to a side, maybe we can finally recreate Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes cover...

Photo of Mookie by Paul Mondok. Photo of Nina by Shawn Yao. See Nina’s portfolio at ninalaurel.multiply.com. Send questions and comments to Luis at thekingofnothingtodo@yahoo.com.