A Perfectly Cromulent Blog - beating dead horses since July, 2003.
In my earlier entry concerning Rolling Stone's Top 500 album listing, kodi made a comment about the number of "greatest hits" albums that made the list. I always considered it cheating to put such albums on a "Top n" list - either you have one album that's worthy on its own merits, or you don't. Even so, I imagine any big list of all-time greats would have a few anthologies. "Besides," I thought to myself as I went through the grocery store checkout with my own copy of the issue tonight, "How bad could it be?"
Holy underwear. The best thing you can say is that no greatest hits compilations made the top 20. Beyond that, it's pretty ridiculous. 45 of the remaining 480 albums are hit collections or career anthologies (#225 is the 10-disc Hank Williams retrospective). I wouldn't point this out, except why bother having Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits at #60, when There's a Riot Goin' On and Stand both made the list separately? Why not just call the list the "Top 455" instead of including albums that don't have any sort of thematic element?
I'm not including live albums in the above count, as they usually include lesser known songs along with the band's top singles. And At Budokan by Cheap Trick rocks the house, boyee.
Other notes:
Hip-hop barely cracks the Top 50, with Public Enemy's It Take a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back clocking in at #48. After that, there's a surprisingly decent sampling including Run-DMC, N.W.A., A Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Dre, Eric B and Rakim, De La Soul, Outkast, The Wu-Tang Clan, EPMD, and BDP.
If you like country, you've got Hank Williams Sr. (the highest ranked at #129), Willie Nelson (The Red-Headed Stranger and Stardust), Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Lucinda Williams, Merle Haggard, and Loretta Lynn. One could stretch the category to include CSNY or the Byrds, but I won't.
It would be Big Fat Fun to go on at annoying length about the perceived outrages resulting from a purely subjective list put together by a bunch of music industry blowhards - because that would make so much sense - but I'll simply focus on the following tidbits:
+ The Replacements have two albums on the list (Tim and Let It Be), which is cool.
+ Uncle Tupelo, Warren Zevon, Wilco, the Flaming Lips, Whiskeytown, and Townes Van Zandt all failed to make the list. This means, according to RS voters, Cyndi Lauper, Beck, Portishead, and Janet Jackson are all qualitatively better. Which is bullshit.
+ George Michael's Faith (#480) is "greater" than Steve Earle's Guitar Town (#489).
+ Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation (#329) isn't up to par with Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (#327). By default, neither are Damaged by Black Flag (#340), Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis (#356), Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen, or Rum Sodomy and the Lash by the Pogues (#445), to name but a few. "Interesting theory," as Abe Simpson would say.
Finally, after reading lists like this for the better part of 20 years, I have become convinced of the following things:
+ Nobody but music journalists give a shit about the following artists: Moby Grape, Television, Love, Captain Beefheart, Todd Rundgren, and Jackson Browne.
+ Lou Reed is horribly overrated. I'll give you the Velvet Underground albums (Nico and Loaded, anyway), but I've listened to Transformer and Berlin and frankly, they aren't that good. Must be a New York thing.
+ You can argue for U2's The Joshua Tree's placement at #26, but there is no way All That You Can't Leave Behind (#139) deserves to rank ahead of War (#221).
+ I like that Kraftwerk made the list (Trans-Europe Express is #253), but it's the only electronica aside from two Massive Attack albums,The Downward Spiral by NIN, and (I guess) Violator by Depeche Mode (#342).
Not many goths on the staff at Rolling Stone, by the looks of it. Joy Division's Closer is dutifully included at #157, but I was half expecting some Sisters of Mercy, at least.
Finally, what's the most telling evidence that this list is a bunch of crap? No Shatner.
I think Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison was the highest ranked country album at No. 88.
I am not a music journalist, but I do give a shit about Jackson Browne. But then I've always been a lonely, depressive fellow, so maybe that accounts for it.
"Nobody but music journalists give a shit about the following artists: Moby Grape, Television, Love, Captain Beefheart, Todd Rundgren, and Jackson Browne."
Ain't that the friggin truth
Speaking for the southern rock contingent, where the blue blazes is 'Eat a Peach'?