My buddy Kenny just turned me onto the Pitchfork Media Top 100 Albums of the 70s list. While there is a ton of room for argument on their choices, I have to say that this is the best list of this type that I have seen. I probably mainly like it because of the fact that I have a bunch of these records: 57 of them, to be precise. How many do you have?
I acquired almost all of them on vinyl, and each cost less than $1.00 US. This is the beauty of vinyl. But the hideous side is that my needle broke when I moved my turntable upstairs and now I can unlock none of the beautiful music trapped in those spirals.
Speaking of spirals, has anyone ever seen the really awesome Throbbing Gristle “Structuralist Spirals” version of, I think, “Third Annual Report”? Basically, the visible grooves in the record do not coincide with the beginnings and ends of the tracks. The structure was imposed over the content rather than the content dictating the structure. It’s more for thoughts like this that Throbbing Gristle’s “20 Jazz-Funk Greats” is on this list than for the musical talent of the group. TG was all about big-V Vision.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Elliott // Jul 15, 2004 at 6:12 pm
I’ve had twenty-seven of them, and twelve of those have passed through my collection. Notably, I have given up trying to like Led Zeppelin, and gotten all I need from Pink Floyd, thank you very much.
They included the 1977 UK release of “The Clash”, which I have, but I am always on the look out for the ‘79 US record. It has better songs on it, including “Clash City Rockers”, and all the songs are mixed better.
Also, I have listened to “The Big Country” from “More Songs about Buildings and Food” probably a hundred times, and I totally refute the suggestion that it is an indictment of the South. Perhaps the author of that assertion has access to some remark made by one of the artists, which critical praxis, relying on the artist’s statements about the work, I find distasteful. From reading the lyrics, the song might be construed as an indictment of American Living, or Modern Living. From listening to and looking at the album, with its imageless lyrics and its photocollage cover pictures of the band members and the United States, it is more likely an indictment of, or comment on, abstraction.
2 Kenny // Jul 19, 2004 at 10:51 pm
Maybe it’s ‘cause that’s what Mama was playing on the hi-fi while I was my ears were just starting to grow, but my favorite decade in popular music is the 70s, hands down. That’s when the album era and the drugged-out experiments of the late 60s really took shape. But it’s definitly worth checking out Pitchfork’s alternative view of the 80s and 90s as well. As much as anything, it shows how hip hop emerged as the undisputed greatest music of the last 20 years.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/80s
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/top/90s
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