Countdown to Ecstasy: 2005 Best-of Music Lists

Oh, joy -- the results are in! Another year comes to a close with another pair of Top 50 lists from Pitchfork, as well as a couple bonus tallies. Not too many surprises here, although certain ranking placements and exemptions suggest the fork slightly modifies its opinion for the end of the year. In October, for instance, the second Broken Social Scene record received an 8.4 rating and a "Best New Music" recommendation -- yet it didn't make the final 50 (whereas Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow, which also received an 8.4, was ranked #38, and The Decemberists' Picaresque, which received an 8.3, was ranked #26). These aren't necessarily inconsistencies. The final list, I presume, is supposed to reflect the consensus of a more general, collaborative opinion and thus stand as a more authoritative, time-tested perspective. The days pass and opinions change. Now that January is on its way, though, clearly the time has come to make up one's mind about whether certain pop records are really as important as one originally thought.

Another thing I noticed was that, in the wake of these lists, there was some grumbling that Pitchfork doesn't know anything about hip-hop. An interesting sentiment and one that seems to come up from time to time -- although I'm the last person qualified to take a stance on the matter. Anyway, I'll save a more detailed commentary for a later post. For now, why not see how the fork's roundup compares with some of the others on the web.

More Best-of-2005 Lists

Metacritic

PopMatters

Stylus Magazine

Information Leafblower

Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise

Said the Gramophone

Insound Employees

And there's many, many more where these came from (though, after a while, they all start to blur together) ...

Some Other Lists that are Probably a Waste of Your Time

Every Local Album Released in Raleigh, NC

Hottest Babes in Indie Rock

USAToday.com's Top 100 People of 2005


Over here, at least people are talking while they list.

Pitchfork and the Idiocy of Lists

Following up on my last post, I'd like to consider a more specific instance in which Pitchfork passes on the opportunity to offer real depth and discussion: 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Throbbing Gristle, album #91 on its list of the Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. This album is described with phrases like "pulverizing factory machinations," "sleazy ambient pulsations" and "dance-of-death hooks," as well as references to William S. Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade -- imagery that not only lacks a definite musical meaning, but also fails to provide any context for the greater cultural atmosphere in which this album was made (at least beyond an unadorned, passing reference to "1979," the year it was released).

If the writer is trying to suggest that the sound of this record is somehow vile and aggressive, then he needs to come out and say so. Then he needs to explain in what way the record accomplishes this effect. (For these are the most basic demands of any critical interpreter!) What instruments are used, and in what way? What is the nature of this ensemble's approach to rhythm, melody, and harmony? If this album employs distortion to challenge the listener's usual perception of song, of tone color and rhythmic foundation, as I suspect it does (because distortion is the basis of most "avant-garde" rock 'n' roll), then what sets it apart from similar experiments by other pop musicians? Is this record really so different from Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music? Or, to frame the question in the context of this list, what separates #91, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, from #83, Raw Power?

The writer has taken for granted that we already have the answers to such questions, a convenient and lazy presumption that is not only the main problem with this blurb, but with most Pitchfork reviews and with rock writing in general: the language is so coy and concerned with its own cleverness, the review winds up ignoring as many relevant details as possible in favor of an attitude or pose. The discourse of indie rock, then, is not about communicating with the world in general, but within a closed circuit of self-declared experts. Which ultimately limits the range of expression to that of a long and usually humorless inside joke.

I mention Throbbing Gristle in particular because I recall that its inclusion on the list initially aroused my curiosity. I recognized the name and had a vague sense of the band's reputation as a founder of the so-called 'industrial music' movement. Throbbing Gristle, it seemed, was one of those bands that hadn't been very relevant in the late-1970s, when it was an active group, but had assumed importance later on, after it had broken up -- once it had been established as influential. Thus I was interested in the establishment of musical legacies and what this process might say about the nature of retrospection. I was also struck by the title, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, which seemed sarcastic and possibly humorous (given that jazz-funk was a popular and rather vapid musical trend circa '79, akin to Muzak, and that this record was, I could only assume, a deafening assault of offensive noise and thus a complete rejection of everything that a jazz-funk hits compilation might represent …). No such explication did I find, however. In fact, this review is one of the least informative things I've ever read.*

So it was a little weird and quite auspicious when my friend, Nick, came into town a couple weeks ago and began recalling his affinity for Throbbing Gristle. Apparently he was a fan in high school and as he talked, I realized that, when compared to Pitchfork's treatment of the band, his experience offers a far more insightful glimpse of Throbbing Gristle's relevance to Generations X and Y.

I'm going to speculate that Nick began listening to Throbbing Gristle around 1994 or '95, when he was a teenager in suburban Detroit. Nick was in an all-black phase then: black hooded sweatshirt, black pants, black Doc Martin boots. I think he even dyed his hair black at one point, around the time he moved to West Michigan and I began to get to know him (summer of '96). He'd recently gotten into a bit of trouble for creating a Web site called Glock 3, supposedly the homepage for a gang of violent thugs from Detroit. The mainstream media, however, believed the site was real and started printing stories about street gangs infiltrating the Internet. Nick's parents found out about it when The Washington Post called his mom for a quote.

"I owned 20 Jazz Funk Greats for a few years and then sold it before I went to college, because I just didn't listen to it that much. I was really into these two groups that members of Throbbing Gristle were involved in later: Download and Coil. Superficially, I was into industrial music because it scared the shit out of my mom, it was really noisy, and because no one else (at least at our high school or my previous high school) listened to it.

"It seemed really violent, and incredibly bleak and abrasive and just totally negative in every way: even to the point of rejecting the notion of musicianship (since it was mostly made on computers). On top of that, the sounds were just interesting to me -- samples of rivet guns and machines crushing things and distorted screams and snarls... Plus, the songs that were the most accessible veered towards dance-ability, and for some reason I've always kind of liked dance music."

And so in 165 words, Nick tells us more about Throbbing Gristle than the Pitchfork writer could with 172: that Throbbing Gristle is merely an entry point to a form of excessively negative, alienating music; that this form is called industrial music and is valued for its abrasive sonic palette, Dionysian tendencies, and the cache of its obscurity. We even become aware of industrial music's particular appeal among rebellious adolescents.

It seems to me that Nick should be writing about music. In any case, I think he's earned a coda:

"I bought the Throbbing Gristle CD because I kept reading about how 'seminal' they were, but I remember being pretty unimpressed -- and thinking the music didn't live up to all the great things people were writing about it. As I understand it, most industrial music owes a debt to Lou Reed; not Throbbing Gristle."


*To be fair, the Pitchfork blurb did offer two substantial pieces of information. One is its suggestion that contemporary Throbbing Gristle remixes aren't as successful as the original cuts off 20 Jazz Funk Greats. And the second is a pair of (unanalyzed) Throbbing Gristle lyrics: "Pain is the stimulus of pain"; "I've got a little biscuit tin/ To keep your panties in/ Soiled panties, white panties, school panties, Y-Front panties."


**Brief addendum

A List to End All Lists

This is the site's first significant post. I no longer agree with everything it says, or the way it says it. I offer it to the reader primarily in the spirit of archeology.

In the interest of providing a sense of my musical biases, here are 21 albums I have considered valuable over the years. At this point in my life, several of these records offer little more than nostalgia. Others continue to provide sustenance. Some are relatively recent interests, while others have been in my collection since I was seven or eight years old. I present them in alphabetical order.

As with any list, this one has the potential to become a rather hollow exercise. With that in mind, I’ve included some analysis below the album covers.





A Love Supreme
John Coltrane








And His Mother Called Him Bill
Duke Ellington








Blank Generation
Richard Hell









The Blues and the Abstract Truth
Oliver Nelson







Blues and Roots
Charles Mingus










Conic Sections
Evan Parker









Eat a Peach
The Allman Brothers









Free Jazz
Ornette Coleman









Fun House
The Stooges








It’s Alive
The Ramones








Latin American Suite
Duke Ellington








Layla
Derek and the Dominoes










Made in U.S.A.
The Beach Boys









Meditations
John Coltrane








Midnight Marauders
A Tribe Called Quest









Nevermind
Nirvana










Please Please Me
The Beatles








Rip, Rig, and Panic
Roland Kirk










Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles







Trout Mask Replica
Captain Beefheart








White Blood Cells
The White Stripes






I don’t like record lists. Most of them have ‘Buy It!’ links to Amazon or Insound next to the albums and are hardly more than electronic shopping catalogs. As consumer guides, they may be helpful -- there is a lot of crap out there, and the simplicity of numeric rankings certainly expedites the process of consumption. But for those of us who want more from music than our money’s worth, such lists may fall short. Lists with higher aspirations, meanwhile, are usually so adrift in generalizations, there’s little hope of perceiving the context they claim to present.

A good example is this list by the College Media Journal (CMJ), of the 25 Most Influential Artists of the Last 25 Years. Seriously, how on earth does one interpret the assertion that Ani Difranco is the 22nd most influential artist of the last quarter century? I am told that she has had a “stable 15-year career” that is “proof positive that you can build a cottage industry out of tape-dubbing and CD-R-burning.” But hadn’t the Grateful Dead already proven this almost thirty years ago, when Ani Difranco was still in grade school? Personally, I’m more inclined to assert the significance of Difranco and her label, Righteous Babe Records, in terms of feminism, but to do so would require a Master’s Thesis, not a paragraph. In any case, the list isn’t really concerned with the particular merits of its artists; it wants only names and numbers. This is about inclusion and exclusion, which is why the instructions to CMJ’s list encourage us to debate whether certain artists have been left out unfairly. Rock ‘n’ roll, after all, is a popularity contest, every bit as crooked as the ones from middle school. The list is simply a posting of the ballot results.

Really, though, who cares that Metallica and the Cure were left off this list? We lose sight of the bigger issue when we worry over such petty distinctions. This list promises insight into the last twenty-five years of rock ‘n’ roll, so I want to know what’s made those last twenty-five years different and unique. Anything? All I see here are buzzwords (jangle, dugga-dugga, screamo) and undefined expressions (college rock, alternative rock, anti-music) that are either made up or stated with such reluctance that they require quotation marks. I mean, does CMJ believe in “alternative rock” or not? The whole exercise just seems staged and capricious.

And I get this feeling from just about every list I look at. Pitchfork has at least realized that the Internet offers space for sincere examination, even if it rarely offers much insight. Generally, Pitchfork’s lack of depth is compensated with an excess of content. Consider the following: the Top 100 Albums of the 1970s, the Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, the Top 100 Albums of the 1990s.

Each of these lists could be considered thorough, if largely in a completist, buyer’s-guide sort of way. I often feel like they miss the point entirely. Take the 1970s list. This list is not representative of the records that were important to people in the 1970s. That list would seem tacky and dated. This is a new list for modern people, augmented with all sorts of records that, thirty years ago, were remarkably obscure and/or didn’t resonate with many listeners, either critics or fans. In the same way, this list is also a terribly unreliable indication of which 1970s records will be considered important ten or twenty years from now (if any). This list belongs exclusively to a certain point in time (early-2000s) and the value system of a particular group of people (indie-rock fans and the Pitchfork staff). Unfortunately, there is little acknowledgement of this in the explanations that accompany each album, most of which are written in the same confused, dubious language used by CMJ.

The introduction to the list does mention “casualties,” those musicians expected to make the list who didn’t: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Patti Smith, Ornette Coleman, etc. Here, with such prominent exclusions, I actually feel let down that Pitchfork doesn’t offer any speculation. Did these musicians simply not put out any single, great albums? Is their music no longer suited to the needs of today’s rock audience? What makes the albums that were included on the list more relevant than those that were not? No one can ascertain what the 1970s mean to us, today, without also considering what they meant to the people who were living through them, then. Why might certain parts of the culture continue to resonate with young people, as opposed to other parts? What sorts of distortions are being made in the service of our contemporary needs? Trying to construe the answers to such questions from Pitchfork’s list and its accompanying explanations can only lead to frustration.

Same goes for the 1980s and 1990s lists. Pitchfork has actually released two lists for the 1990s, one from (I presume) early 2000 and the more recent one. The introduction to the second 90s list says that “a lot has changed.” It refers to “revisionism” and includes another set of casualties: Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, The Roots, Snoop Dogg etc. But it doesn’t seem interested in what Pitchfork’s apparently great shift in perspective might mean, or why it took place so fast. The introduction suggests that part of the change may be due to a turnover in staff. What of the rest, though? My feeling is that, on the whole, the lists aren’t that different. Each list’s Top 10 has seven records in common with the other, and they both include the same two Pavement albums. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel shoots from #85 to #4. Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips wasn’t on the original list and now it’s #3. Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos fell from #8 all the way off the list. These are fairly minor aesthetic changes, though. For the most part, the new list presents the same basic indie rock philosophy as the one from five years ago.

The subtlety of these changes is not totally insignificant. In fact, it’s necessary for the subculture to survive. This is why hipsters are always “over” whatever trend you just discovered. If they weren’t, there would never be any new trends. Pitchfork, then, must update its lists every few years if it’s going to remain relevant as a tastemaker, even if all it’s doing is spicing up a well-established flavor. (Just for kicks: the angle I can take on the two 90s lists, at least without a more scientific comparison, is that, between Bonny “Prince” Billy and Neutral Milk Hotel, the revised Top Ten suggests a new emphasis on folky-type singer-songwriter guys who emote.)

If it seems I am asking too much of the list, I suppose that’s the point. The list is reductive by nature and I may simply be fooling myself whenever I look to one with the hope that it will expand my knowledge. My own list, of course, is no better than ones discussed above -- although I’ll save the discussion of its various faults for a later, follow-up post.


*I have yet to follow up on this post directly. But the trajectory of ideas, first hinted at here, may be pursued through the following entries:

Pitchfork and the Idiocy of Lists
Coming Attractions: More of the List, and More
Countdown to Ecstasy: 2005 Best-of Music Lists
Pitchfork, the 60s, and our Interminable Commodity Culture: Part I
The List is a Fucking T-Shirt
This Blows: YouTube, Mp3 Blogs, and How to Hype a New Band (as in, The Blow)