I have decided what to listen to at work, the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums. I started at 500 (OutKast) and now I am at 450 (Jackson Browne). I am finding them on Spotify and YouTube. If I can’t get them legally online, I’ll look for them in my collection or the public library.
There are a good number of box sets and anthologies on the list, so I made a decision to listen to at least 1 of the CDs. If I dig it, I will listen to more.
I know this is going to take a long time and I’ll be taking breaks to listen to the Pittsburgh Pirates when baseball starts. But what the hell, I ain’t got anything better to listen too while at work.
I’m slowly doing the same thing with 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die using Spotify. I’m in the middle of the letter “P”; a few of the albums listed are hard to find there, though you can usually find something by the artist.
A few years back I decided to start listening to them in order from number one (and buying the ones I didn’t have). I went through the first 35 or so before I let it slip away. I own the first 70-something.
mmm
Yes, you should let us know what discoveries you are making. I counted at least 10 of my all-faves just from the 50 you’ve already listened to. Probably everyone has a different ten from that list.
I tried to listen to them all a few years back. I quit after a hundred or so, there was just so much stuff that I didn’t care for. I’ve found that using Pandora and Last.fm for music recommendations actually gets me stuff I enjoy. As for critical lists, I think Pitchfork’s Best New Music is more in line with my tastes.
I see John Coltrane and Miles Davis both made the list twice. Rolling Stone made them honorary rocks stars or something? And Louis and Bix and Bird and Slim Gaillard aren’t?
Since The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society didn’t show up until #258 and Laura Nyro’s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession didn’t make it at all, the list is obviously complete horse shit.
I thought it was odd seeing Kanye and Jay-Z and Muddy Waters in there was well and was going to comment, but then I noticed it was top albums, not top rock albums.
I thought about working my way through the list, expose myself to some of that music I’ve never listened to, but someone has deemed to ‘good’, but there’s just too much I’m not interested in and I think I’d lose interest in a hurry. I might still throw a couple of them at a time on a jump drive for when I’m driving. I do spend a decent amount of time in my car.
It’s all relative and personal, isn’t it? For one I have no idea who Laura Nyro is at all. For two, I thought I must really be missing a gem when I’d never heard number 13) The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico. There’s a reason I never heard it; it’s a very mediocre and barely listenable album to me. Number thirteen? :dubious:
People who own all those Beatles and Stones albums would be confused and horrified by the free jazz of A LOVE SUPREME, and GIANT STEPS is a straightforward jazz quartet album with “heads” and traded solos. SKETCHES OF SPAIN seems completely pulled out of someone’s ass…“Concerto de Aranjuez” is a composed, kinda “classical” piece, and Gil Evans’s arrangements are too complex, thick, and lush for folks who aren’t used to him.
I am very surprised, Leaffan, that you weren’t aware of the group. Do you know of Lou Reed?
mmm
ETA: Yeah, I know the Blackhawks, Rangers, Bruins, Red Wings, and Canadiens…now who are these Maple Leafs??
Of course I know Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. I don’t know much of their repertoire and didn’t know anything from the Nico album though. I mean, it’s OK, but not number 13-worthy IMHO.
Yeah, yeah…I tried to start a thread here years ago to talk about Laura Nyro, and got like two responses.
Laura was a performer at the Monterey Pop Festival and a huge underground success in the late '60s with three albums…Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. Several of her songs were big hits for the bands that covered them. But she hated doing publicity, didn’t do interviews, only appeared once on TV, and completely dropped out of the public eye by the early '70s.
