Towards a General Theory of Everything: Rolling Stone 2008 Top 50 ... has got to be kidding me!

What It Is We're Doing Here

This is a place where I post anything my friends and I feel is relevant to the music we like. The kind of music in question can be seen pretty easily by checking out the playlists posted. I post a playlist every month and regular record reviews. By regular I mean 'when I get the chance'.

It is my sincere hope that any reviews or commentary you read here will not remind you at all of reviews you can read in Rolling Stone or Pitchfork or NME or any number of other professional music reviewers.

Why? Because for the most part, those reviews are just really, really boring and they kill the fun of music. No one (aside from guys who write those reviews) sits around with their friends and mentions how 'the deeply melodic tempo shifts emanating from the counter-intuitive and soulfully rhythmic jazz fusion guitar lifts us to incomparable ...'

Incomparable heights of bullshit, maybe. Not gonna happen here. (I didn't tell you this, but I still visit Pitchfork every day, but only for the articles, yeah.)

It would be a lie if I said there will be respect for a variety of musical tastes here, there will be no such thing. Some music, no matter how popular it is, just sucks. That doesn't mean this is a haven of indie rock snobbery by any means. There's plenty of well-regarded indie shit out there that is just fucking awful. Grizzly Bear, I'm pointing at you and nodding my head.

Really there are no limits to the kind of music we'll listen to, so anything goes. Forward on anything worthy that has not been discussed in enough detail.

If we miss something newsworthy or get something wrong, let us know. If you agree or disagree with an opinion here, let us know. It will not change said opinion, but you will probably feel better than if you kept it in. So go ahead.

How I Rate Music

When I post my thoughts on a record, I use the standard 1-5 stars format for a couple of reasons: 1) It works just as well as anything else and 2) Most people use an iPod, I rate my songs on my iPod, the iPod has a 1-5 star ratings system and therefore it's a common language to both of us.

Here is how I define my ratings:

5 Stars: Totally awesome. A great song. Permanent favorite. Think 'Fans' by Kings of Leon (before the hairstylists), 'Mahgeeta' by MMJ, 'Fight Test' by the Flaming Lips, that sort of thing. A rare rating, though.

4 Stars: Very good. I'll listen to this song again and again, I'm happy I bought it, I will refer to it in conversation as 'one of the songs I like on that album'.

3 Stars: Just OK. Nothing wrong here, it's just not that memorable and maybe if I listened to it three or four times I'd like it, but if it was really that good, I shouldn't have to, so that brings us full circle and therefore it is 'Just OK'.

2 Stars: Irritating. A bad song. This rating means something is really wrong here, and perhaps we should sit down.

1 Star: A sin against music. Why did you record this? Do you not have any friends who listened to this with you and said 'Wow, this is incredibly, incredibly bad'? This is the kind of song that totally pisses me off when I hear it.

A few songs almost automatically fall into 1 or 2 star category, in particular the trend gaining popularity with bands to once again put one minute snippets of music or horrible noise on an album. Spiritualized, I am talking to YOU. 'Harmony 6 (Glockenspiel)'? I mean, fuck you.

How I Make Playlists

Any 4 or 5 star song usually ends up on a monthly playlist. If an album is so good that it has more than three or four songs that warrant being added to a playlist (ie Windmill, Deer Tick), I'll space the songs out and put them on a subsequent month's playlist.

Playlists are generally 35 songs or so. Any more than that and you'll just never listen to some of them, any less and you'll just get bored because there's not enough music. I realize this makes no sense, I really just needed an arbitrary cutoff, so 35 it is.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Rolling Stone 2008 Top 50 ... has got to be kidding me!

Check this out. Rolling Stone: Are these guys even pretending at being serious any more? Ever get the feeling they have people working for them who are like your friend's dad who tries to be cool by throwing out random references to youth culture that he is supposedly into, only you know there's just no goddamn way he really is?

It's not easy to pick a top 50 of anything. I'm doing it for my 2008 list now. But some of this is a joke. I dug Rolling Stone when I was a kid (pretty sure I was a subscriber age 6-12) rediscovering all of the bands my old man always liked, the classic rockers I needn't list, and then one day when I was teenager I was reading it and realized they had no clue what was really going on any more. They were totally detached from musical and political reality and they sort of became irrelevant to me.

For some reason lately without having read it I thought they had gotten back on the horse, but some of the selection below seems to invalidate that thought completely.

Mellencamp? Top 5? Who knew? Who knew he had an album out? Who knew he had any credibility after those incredibly annoying 'This Is Our Country' ads?

Coldplay? I don't need to go further here.

Guns n Roses' Chinese Democracy as #12? Did you listen to it? You didn't, right? Nah, I knew you didn't. Enjoy that Dr. Pepper, though.

Duffy? (Duffy!)

Taylor Swift? The album is 'Fearless' and they write 'She should have called it Peerless'. Newsflash to corduroy sport jacket wearing record reviewer guy: She will never bang you. Ever. So just tell the truth.

Jonas Brothers? I mean, this is just INFURIATING. Who has input into this? This has to be an inside joke, correct? Please tell me this is so.

Here's my point: If you're a reviewer, and by that I mean anyone from the guy on the next barstool to a writer for RS, when you recommend something, it should be one or both of the following:

1) something you would be willing to put on at a party with all of your friends over,

2) something you would seriously listen to at home just hanging out.

TELL ME HOW THE JONAS BROTHERS FIT EITHER BILL.

You cannot.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Your first problem is reading Rolling Stone.; December 12, 2008 at 9:21 AM

Towards a General Theory of Everything