Comments on: 500: 1-16 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16 Lollards in the high church of low culture Sun, 15 Oct 2023 09:57:53 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: vinylscot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-557176 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:07:33 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-557176 Above comment should have read “Is “Rawhide” really Scott Walker’s best song in the past 30 years?” Almost everything on “Tilt” and a few tracks on “The Drift” are better. (Just thought I’d clear that up to save someone pointing out that so many of his tracks are more than 30 years old..)

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By: vinylscot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-557081 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:56:51 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-557081 Enjoyed your brief comments on most of 1-16, Tom. Hope you can keep going all the way to 500!

It inspired me to spoil the surprise and find out what the other 484 are, and unfortunately I find it to be rather uninspiring and more than a little obtuse (I admit that perhaps reading the book, rather than the list on its own could possibly help, especially with regard to how the songs were picked)

As the rather over-critical reviewer on Amazon suggests, there will be gullible people out there who will buy this book and base their views on the music of the last 30 years on its content.

I find this sad, especially with the ready availability of music making it so much easier to make your own mind up!

I’ve always thought that way, and liked much that was scorned by others (ELO, Cheap Trick, JJ72, Supernaturals, etc.etc.) while positively despising some of the music put forward by critics as “Indispensable” (“Forever Changes”, Tim Buckley, Nick bloody Drake, and so on)

The list is OK for bringing attention to some songs you may not know, possibly due to one’s age or the American slant to the list, but that’s all it is, a starting point.

It is also rather annoying, having lived through all this, that the practice of separating the genres leads you to think they’ve missed something out in their chronological(ish) list, only to find they’ve put it in under a different genre. (Did the genre-splitting result in quotas and/or tokenism? – e.g must there be 50 folky songs to make up the quota even though maybe only 25 are among the top 500 songs? Is “Rawhide” really Scott Walker’s best song, or was there just a space available in a genre for it?)

It is in no way commercially or aesthetically the best 500 songs of the past 30 years. I can see no way anyone could argue otherwise.

(I’m actually quite surprised at Pitchfork calling the book that – perhaps it is tongue-in-cheek, which would be more in keeping with the ethos of the site, in which case most of what I’ve written above may be bollocks!)

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By: Izzy https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556888 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:58:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556888 ‘Psycho Killer’ just came on shuffle – I’d never noticed that gag before. Tom, you have enhanced my life. Excellent stuff!

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556753 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:44:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556753 Where would you put punk in relation to shapeshifting stylization? Seems to me that there’s a lot of it through ’78, not so much afterwards.

Would a disbelief in the power of Music also be a disbelief in the existence of Cool? Either you locate Cool somewhere outside of Music and its countercultures/subcultures or you have a very ambivalent attitude towards the notion of Cool altogether. Of course, “cool” may be the Superword par excellence, even more than “punk” is, since it’s hard to think of cool as being anything other than a step outside yourself into a better perspective, so cool always recedes with the horizon. Cool is likely to be local and ephemeral. I don’t particularly see Lester or Johnny as having located cool within themselves, though they don’t necessarily have a lot of say in the matter.

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556742 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:12:12 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556742 “falsely” is unclear in 14: does it mean “dishonestly” or “deludedly” or “deliberately ambiguously” (probably all three at difft times, with early roxy and soulboy-era bowie the place where it gets to be all three at once, maybe)

Probably more “deludedly”; I think there’s a genuine attempt to assert control over style by saying it’s there for our manipulation but we are too fast to get trapped into any style; so we’re using style, it’s not using us. I think Bowie especially was very haunted by the failure of the ’60s to create new styles that remained viable; I wouldn’t say that the failure of ’60s ideals is particularly at play for Stansfield and Girls Aloud and Winehouse. Um, I wonder where Madonna would land in all this?

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556735 Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:53:09 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556735 Mark, I think you’re underestimating the extent that the Stones were taken to be hoodlums in ’65 by fans as well as enemies and also the extent to which what they were doing was not considered music (don’t know how many fans were musos but certainly the population at large were not Stones fans anyway and I don’t recall musicianship being the first word that came up in the public discourse about the Rolling Stones). That said, the gap you cite was stronger by ’75, though the Stones weren’t particularly the group that the anti-musos would fixate on (Cream and the Proggers more likely). There was a bit of “can’t play their instruments” in the U.S. aimed at MC5 and Alice Cooper and Grand Funk and Dolls and Stooges and Ramones, though as I recall the divide it was more “they’re showbiz not music” rather than “they’re incompetent not competent.” But then it’s hard to locate the Stones on the anti-showbiz side of the line, or for that matter on the anti-glitter-glam side. And impossible to locate Dolls et al. on an anti-Stones side. (Of course, it was something of an achievement, I’m sure, not to notice that the Sex Pistols were musicians who sounded somewhat like the Stones.)

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556575 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:41:10 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556575 Re #12 and #13 – because of the way the format works (when the music stops, so does the writing – bar correcting typos etc.) you’re getting my bad and sketchy thinking at the same time as my good – so commenting and exposing said thinking is highly worthwhile!

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By: Shooby Dooby Doo Wop - P P U N C H https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556534 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:39:58 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556534 […] while going through The Pitchfork 500 (the first of a series of posts that I hope he can continue): So to distract myself, a summing up (1% of the way in!). Bowie + Pop + Reed + Kraftwerk + Eno = what? Artifice + […]

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By: Mark M https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556521 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:20:16 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556521 Re: 10 – Mr Byrne would be the oddest choice to illustrate the US-UK divide not only because a) he doesn’t code as what the rest of the world perceives as American but b) because technically he’s not American (“I still have a British passport. It’s kind of a point of pride.”)

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556480 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:27:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556480 collapse of confidence: not everywhere in the uk, either — not in all pockets of the counterculture as it fragmented in subcultural tribalism — but the subcultures where the anxiety didn’t at laeast partly hold sway were the ones with a rep at the time for least broad alertness*

ie the soon-to-be-born new wave of british heavy metal!

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556478 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:24:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556478 the stones scared people because they were (in addition to everything else) musicians — part of the fear was a fear of where their allegience lay (in robin carmody’s sense — with american pop culture — as well as in the sense of “with black people”)

the pistols (i think i would argue) scared people because they WEREN’T musicians — or rather, because they appeared to be (unafraid of being taken for) real hoodlums

between these two moments, i think there occurred in the uk (but NOT in the US) a collapse of confidence in the idea of music as a value in itself — hence the glamsters reaching out of music towards other (still reliable, as they felt it) art forms (film and pop art if yr bein kindly; mime and catwalk fashion if yr bein catty)

“falsely” is unclear in 14: does it mean ‘dishonestly” or “deludedly” or “deliberately ambiguously” (probably all three at difft times, with early roxy and soulboy-era bowie the place where it gets to be all three at once, maybe) (in both cases going back over stones territory, yes, but with other realms of would-be mastery being invoked)

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556469 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:11:41 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556469 Stones still pwn the discussion – I think a whole hunk of Bowie and Ramones lyrics are variations on Heart Of Stone Under My Thumb Back Street Girl Street Fighting Man Sympathy For The Devil. I also think the Sex Pistols changed the discussion by being the first group since the Stones to really scare the socks off people (though “change” and “since the Stones” seem to be at odds with each other in that sentence, don’t they?).

What I get from the supposed distance in Bowie and Ferry, not to mention in later years Lisa Stansfield and Girls Aloud and god-help-her Amy Winehouse (who’s a self-consciously mannered performer even if she accidentally crossed the distance between mannerisms and self) is an attempt to falsely claim control over style. Whereas Beyoncé and Mariah may like to project through style that they’re in control, but they don’t claim to a perspective on style, I don’t think.

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556463 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:55:14 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556463 Kraftwerk weren’t cool at the time

Unless you were someone who went to discos or hip-hop clubs or listened to disco radio or read Creem or unless _____.

Where are you locating “cool”? If you mean “people who think hard and publish their thoughts,” if that’s not Lester in ’77 then I don’t know who it is – in any event, among the Fusion-Creem people and also Xgau at the Voice it’s been a given since the mid-Sixties that you don’t simply dismiss or ignore the stuff that doesn’t register as Rock and Significant, so in ’77 you’re not overlooking Fleetwood Mac or Donna Summer or Kraftwerk or the Emotions or Rod Stewart etc. no matter what you think of them, and without such refusal to overlook you don’t get punk (coined as a musical term in Fusion and Creem in ’70-’71 by Nick Tosches and Dave Marsh, respectively).

And you already know this, so I wonder why you bandy the problematic term “cool” as if it weren’t problematic?

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556458 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:44:01 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556458 “meaning it” is less about BEING the thing than it is about “giving a comedy-free performance” as the thing* — byrne is (arguably) less of a counter-examples than the ramones are

*ie, if you compare robert de niro as a mafioso in the godfather with steve martin as a mafioso in my blue heaven — in “meang it” terms, de niro is and martin isn’t

(that said i remember fondly a tony parsons interview with the ramones in which he argued that, yes yes they are only jokily playing at being pinheads, nevertheless PINHEADS IS WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE)

(also: i still rather agree with koganbot that the “meaning it” poles are more complex than merely US vs UK)

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By: Simon https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556451 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:25:05 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556451 Don’t know if you’re aware, but Garry Mulholland’s This Is Uncool worked on pretty much the same idea as Pitchfork’s book – 500 songs from “punk and disco” to publication (1976 to, I think, 2003) with each summarised and put into context. It’s always been available on Amazon, and likely still available in good bookshop chains.

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By: koganbot https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556449 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:22:01 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556449 In regard to Americans meaning it and the Brits not:

It’s possible that David Byrne wasn’t actually a psycho killer.

It’s possible that the Ramones’ music isn’t simple and immediate. Also, apparently no one in the band belonged to the SS.

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By: Alan https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556425 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:32:32 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556425 #7 – the 3GB you are looking for. clues:
pie
rat
bay
search
pitchfork

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556418 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:21:04 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556418 Haha I think that is my and my wife’s Xmas present shopping. Guess which one her mum is getting. :)

There is a torrent of the songs doing the rounds. A small indie goblin informs me that a few of the songs are the wrong versions though.

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By: lonepilgrim https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556416 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:16:38 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556416 re #1 I wish the songs would wend my way….

The ‘book’ link in the original post took me to Amazon where I was inormed that people buying the book had also bought the Mamma Mia DVD which sounds slightly incongrous.

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556381 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:48:37 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556381 Re. #4: This instalment cuts off just before the disco section – the book is designed in chronological sections filled with roughly genre-fied chunks. So there is disco (and reggae and hip-hop and pop and all sorts) to come.

(I had intended to get into the disco bit but the phone rang!)

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556379 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:38:20 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556379 probably as well to distinguish between the US and the UK context — my guess would be that the US was much more a context of neglect here than the UK

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By: Martin Skidmore https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556377 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:37:18 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556377 This is mostly key music in my life – I was 17 when punk broke here, and saw lots of these bands live on their first tours (three in a row there in one show – Clash, Buzzcocks, Subway Sect). I would find it almost impossible to think freshly about these acts and tracks. I do think the book’s selection sounds very dodgy indeed, in that it seems to be ignoring disco, for instance.

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556372 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:30:24 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556372 OK! It’s been ages since I read it but that Bangs Kraftwerk piece has a contrarian air to it, not that Bangs didn’t see the things he saw in Kraftwerk, but that if anyone else had been seeing them he wouldn’t have been so gleeful about pointing them out. It’s a piece that seemed to me to come from a context of neglect.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556369 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:27:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556369 cranks possibly, but Kwerk were NOT considered negligeable — cf eg lester bangs’s 1975 kraftwerkfeature — and in 1978 “the man-machine” was given lead LP review treatment in nme, and paid considerable respectful attention in sounds (which was culturing the most advanced “post-punk” at that time)

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By: Alan https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/12/500-1-16/comment-page-1#comment-556334 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:47:52 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=12958#comment-556334 (I’ll sort out that series sidebar glitch later BTW)

I started doing this exact same thing last night! SOMEHOW i found a collection of all 500 songs neatly packed up for me and i put the first 100 on my ipod this morning.

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