Melanie at delicate flower fires the first salvo I've seen at Rolling Stone for its latest roster of All-Time Terrificest Albums (they're up to 500). The top 10 list, typically, consists largely of records that came out right around the time I was born:
1. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
3. The Beatles - Revolver
4. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
5. The Beatles - Rubber Soul
6. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
7. Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street
8. The Clash - London Calling
9. Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
10. The Beatles - The White Album
The funny thing is, I remember the Top 100 (or whatever) list from the late '80s: "Sgt. Pepper's" was still #1, "Exile" was #3 and...unless I'm very much mistaken, Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" was #2. I don't have the inclination to burrow through my closet of crap and try to find that particular issue, but it's pretty telling that they couldn't even stay consistent on their top 3. Did Van sleep with Jann Wenner's wife?
Could RS not think up one goddamned album released post-1979 that was deserving of top 10 status? Are the Beatles really that good? We have them to blame for Oasis, after all, and "The White Album" may have a top 10 release buried somewhere in it, but the actual album is far too uneven.
I would've at least expected a sop to Nirvana's "Nevermind," which seems to be the one post-Carter Administration release on which most mainstream critics can agree. I haven't seen the list yet (and I know I'll cave in eventually and buy the issue so I can piss and moan about it in the privacy of my own home), but I, like Melanie, have a hard time believing the Beatles and Dylan constitute 60% of the all-time greats. As far as Dylan goes, at least throw a Woody Guthrie record in there to acknowledge where Mr. Zimmerman got all his ideas.
Slightly off-topic, if you're not reading Melanie's stuff at the Austin Chronicle or the Houston Press, you should be.
Here you are:
http://www.rollingstone.com/features/coverstory/featuregen.asp?pid=2164
Er... "Here's the list." As far as I know, you're not on it.
London Calling was recorded in 1979, but released January 1980.
Nevermind is #17, Astral Weeks is #19.
Here is all you need to know about the list, though:
Coldplay is better than anything Bob Mould ever did.
Further griping:
There are a shocking number of Greatest Hits albums on the list, which is difficult to fathom, much less stomach.
Here's the breakdown of the top 50:
1957-64: 5 albums
1965-69:18 albums
1970-77:18 albums
1980 (London Calling, The Clash, #8)
1982 (Thriller, Michael Jackson, #20)
1987 (The Joshua Tree, U2, #26)
1988 (It Takes a Nation of Millions..., Public Enemy, #48)
1991 (Nevermind, Nirvana, #17)
greatest hits: 4 (that I noticed - may be others.)
Unless I'm missing something, there are only 5 females AT ALL in the top 50. As much love as I have for Nico (#13), Stevie Nicks (#25), Joni Mitchell (#30), Carole King (#36) and Patti Smith (#44)... Yeah, there's no good way to end that sentence. It doesn't get any better in the rest of the top 100 - Aretha Franklin and Sly and the Family Stone each have two entries, and there are some women on Phil Spector's 4 disc "64th greatest album of all time."
It actually gets WORSE after you make it through the top #100. Most startling for me is the fact that Pretty Hate Machine is not one of the 500 greatest albums of all time, but Downward Spiral is #200. Overall, while there's a horrifying LACK of the '80s and '90s in the top 100, there's an equally horrifying abundance of really bad albums from the same period in the bottom 400. (q.v. Coldplay.)
Of course, I am not in the slightest surprised that people consider many of the choices of Rolling Stone since the late 1970s to be wrong.
I have found that, of Joe S. Harrington's Top 100 albums (I mention it because its so well-written only) only 31 are included, and curiously, exactly the same number of British eccentric David Keenan's "The Best Albums Ever...Honest" included.
However, the most telling indictment of Rolling Stone comes not from a professional critic but from an eccentric amateur known as "janitor-x". He believes strongly that the whole business of praising albums from the 60s and 70s is completely wrong, and that professional critics do not understand that music has moved far beyond the "groovy" (as he calls them) sounds of the 1960s. Some typical indictments from "janitor-x" can be found at:
"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002UAU/ref=cm_rev_sort/103-3166585-3536636?show=1&v=glance&vi=customer-reviews&s=music&Go.x=12&Go.y=7", "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006JLX4/ref=cm_rev_sort/103-3166585-3536636?show=1&v=glance&vi=customer-reviews&s=music&Go.x=12&Go.y=7", "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004BZ0N/ref=cm_rev_sort/103-3166585-3536636?show=1&v=glance&vi=customer-reviews&s=music&Go.x=12&Go.y=7" and "http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00004BZ0N/ref=cm_rev_sort/103-3166585-3536636?show=1&v=glance&vi=customer-reviews&s=music&Go.x=12&Go.y=7".
Whilst one might undoubtedly see this "janitor-x" as rather narrow-minded and tough to the point of overlooking many things in the music world, there isobt that for an amateur writer he is extraordinarily intelligent and knowledgeable.
Rolling Stone has always been full of Baby Boomers who think they're the end-all and be-all of taste. It is not a musical magazine for Gen X, much less Gen Y.
I quit reading them when they were insulting about Depeche Mode, and that was about 10 or 11 years ago. Being told my musical taste was only appropriate for an angsty teenager was the last straw in a long series of disappointments with their musical coverage. "MY teenage music is better than YOUR teenage music" is a schoolyard taunt, not an editorial stance.