Entertainment For Lively Minds
Is anyone else allergic to top tens?
The 'London Calling' thread made me think of this. It's not just Q-mag-style "50 greatest of all time" lists with their implicit ridiculous claims to definitive nailing of the "rock" canon (inevitably with the same embarrasing token 'other' albums like What's Going On and Nation Of Millions) - even the idea of a "my personal top 10 albums" just does not compute with me. My brain just doesn't work like that.
I can understand, say, the Desert Island Discs concept of picking eight records that you wouldn't want to be without, but that will always be flagrantly arbitrary - and actually ranking them in order just fries my synapses. Does anyone else find themselves getting a headache if they start trying to "rank" albums?
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Yeah
I'm getting annoyed with all these lists that really piss me off.
Perhaps if I made a list of them...
Somebody's beaten you to it:
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/qlists.html
I think the rot set in around the mid/late nineties - I remember the Rolling Stone list of "100 greatest" in 1987 became a news story, so similar lists were generated by similar organs over the ensuing years in the hope of raising attention and sales.
They then became something that looked impressive on the cover (and may or may not have boosted sales), and now we're stuck with the bloody things. A clear case of novelty becoming regularity.
Yes.
And not just albums, but songs or bands or singers or anything really. Whether it's 'best' or 'favourite' or however I'm being asked to rank them, I can't give a definitive answer but just what it is for me in that moment. And that will change from one moment to the next, depending on my mood, what I'm doing, who asked, where I am, the weather, etc etc.
and comparing stuff...
... what's the point?
No, it's not about comparing things
- I love comparing things - just about reducing the many-splendoured thrills, memories and associations of listening to favourite records to a place in a list. And I'm not saying it's a BAD thing to do, just that I can't do it.
I remember Mojo..
..starting the trend with their 100 best albums list in 1995. At the time it felt definitive and it certainly pushed me towards some fine albums that I hadn't previously investigated. But as ever its a question of overkill and zillions of lists later they all mean nothing..
But 20 years earlier...
1995?! I remember Capital Radio compiling a list of "100 best singles ever" from listener votes in about 1975. I'm sure if I really searched the boxes in the loft hard enough I could lay my hands on the printed listing they put out at the time.
What are your Top Ten
Top Ten lists?
A side-dish, not the main course
I think it was an ex-Editor of Q that said "men like lists" in the mid-1990s, and it is probably true - they can break up an article and add a bit of context perhaps. Yet when the list itself becomes the story - it smacks of desperation from the magazine's point of view.
"Men make lists"
is a good point - and this links to Simon Baron-Cohen's theory that what we consider "male ways of thinking" can be seen as existing somewhere on the autistic spectrum... If we're gendering these sort of behaviours, I've always been pretty bad at other traditionally "male" things like spatial perception, sense of direction, liking football etc.
Double
post, sorry.
Can I just add my name to the list
of people who don't care for lists. I especially don't care for lists of 'the worst..', or 'here's a list of stuff I hate'. I hate that.
Recent lists are fine. All time lists are not
The end of year lists usually involve a sense of what we might have missed over the year, and the interesting entries are the ones from nowhere, better still if they are backed up with some enthusiastic testimony. Also I can go an entire without bothering about, say, jazz, so pointers are good.
However I am done with All Time lists. They are so predictable : loads of Beatles/Stones/Dylan, high entries for What's Goin'On/Astral Weeks/Born To Run, and more recently U2/Radiohead/REM. Bo-ring. I know it is The Canon, but it needs shaking up from time to time. If a such a list comes out it is more interesting if the voting is published too, preferably with some explanation about why, say, this voter really thinks Marvin Gaye's great album is Here My Dear and just What's Goin' On, like everyone else.
AND...the lists usually ban greatest hits collections and compilations, except, for some reason , Elvis's The Sun Collection. For me, this won't do. The great work of the Beach Boys is on the Greatest Hits, not Pet Sounds, and some of us got into some musics via Nuggets or This Is Soul or the American Graffiti soundtrack. Not everyone's work consists of artistic creation best experienced as a song cycle.
End Of Year Lists
I enjoy the album/tracks of the year lists and with Spotify one can actually check them all out and hear if they are any good but i also have had it with the "Best album of all time " lists....Pet Sounds , Revolver , Stone Roses...yawn.
OK Computer, The Simpsons, Pet Sounds....
A good round of up a year is fine especially if it alerts you to something you've missed, and an un-ordered random list is ok..I love the Best/Worst thing in Word for example. But I despair of top 10s. What I really hate is those top 100s which were the cover story of Q Magazine for most of the 00s. All they do is reinforce these sacred cows and the very idea of trying to decide whether Pet Sounds is better than Hounds of Love is just absurd and reductive. Sergeant Pepper is great, Citizen Kane is great, but being at the top of 'lists' quite a lot...hasn't helped!
The idea, constantly repeated in music press for ten years that OK Computers by The Radioheads is the best album ever made is utterly ludicrous....when did YOU last listen to it?! Ask anyone who was around in the 60s and how many of them would really say Pet Sounds was the best album?
Gauntlet nails it. I don't know what my top 10 is but if I wrote one down now it would be a different one next week. In the time it takes to order a list of favourites I could discover 10 new things I've not heard before which are fab, I know which one I'd rather do.
My mate.
Ken a mucker of mine,makes lists of everything and I mean everything.His list making led to his divorce a few year back.His gaff is covered in scraps of paper covered in lists taped to every surface.Here's a short list of some of his lists.
Favourite sausages.
Dog's names.(he has no dog)
Geometric shapes.
The colour green.
People named Bob he likes.
Shoes.
His favourite corkscrews.
Countries beginning in G.
Drum stick manufacturers.(He bought a drum kit,used it once)
Haircuts.
He may need professional help.His ex thought so.
I'm not a Doctor
But I think his ex is right.
I make lists so I don't forget stuff I need to do. I don't have any of the above lists, though.
What's on his list of "the colour green"?
Just "green"?
The whole list making process just makes me think of bureaucracy for its own sake. It reminds me of the classic Malcom Tucker line about Julius Nicholson "setting up a committee to count the moon".
I know someone like that
He's single.
But he is very self-aware about it and puts it down to some possible connection with dyspraxia. He really is hopeless and wouldn't be able to function without making at least some of those lists. His time management is notoriously bad as it is...
Ken.
If I remember correctly his green list was something like.
Veridian.
Pea.
Emerald.
Mint.
Sea.
Bluey.
Grass.
Their was more but I forget.His latest list,which he pointed out to me only the other night was his favourite remote controls.He is harmless though,just a bit confused.
Q
He should put this to some use and see if there is a job going as features editor at Q Magazine.
The NME lists
The NME did the 100 Greatest singles (they gave away a poster of the list to celebrate) followed not that long after by the 100 Greatest albums c 1975 (or was it the other way round?).
Like A Rolling Stone was the greatest single, but I don't remember for sure what the greatest album was. Possibly Sgt Pepper. Anyone with a better memory than me care to confirm or deny?
Memory almost fine
More NME lists than anyone could ever possibly need here:
http://www.rocklist.net/nme_writers.htm
Sgt Pepper is right. 1974 was the year they did albums it seems. It's gone completely from the list in 1985. Back in at 33 in 1993. Gone again in 2003. Singles lists more interesting I feel. Albums pretty much what you'd expect in terms of trends.
Thanks Sven
As usual this stuff is always out there.
On the all time albums list I'm not sure that they are correct about Goat's Head Soup.
The writers chose the top 99 and there was a competition to pick No 100 by writing a piece on why that album deserved a place. The prize was a juke box.
The winner of the competition was a guy who wrote about Goat's Head Soup, but No 100, by weight of popular vote went to Tubular Bells.
Interesting to see bands like Family and Traffic in there along with Frank Zappa and Todd Rundgren,
The 75 list is the most reliable
when you talk about trends, you're right. The post-1975 lists are a mix of critical received opinion (Pet Sounds top, no Pepper) and current favourites.
In 1975, the revolutionary impact of Sgt Pepper and Blonde on Blonde was still fresh in people's minds.
Easy to see who you would drop from the later lists. There are a few imposters in the 75 list but not as many, I would venture.