Fairly sound article in The Guardian today questioning the future of the ‘rock canon’ – ie it won’t be rock, it won’t be one canon, it won’t be just albums. An intriguing question unanswered is of course how you do draw up any kind of list once the album is not the gold standard.
In the ultimate aggreation of all best albums lists ever Kid A is no 6. I’m with him when he says that’s baffling.
Lots of discussion about how hip-hop has been under-represented in these lists @tiggerlion
Kid A should be higher? Possibly.
Here’s the proof. Rock music is inherently racist and misogynist. A white, male industry, a white, male product, eulogised by a white, male press, apart from a few token gestures. Best album lists have only ever had occasional representation from black and female acts, despite copious examples of great work worthy of inclusion in any top one hundred. Aretha, for example and as mentioned in the article, has produced several albums of undoubted class and quality, yet it was her Greatest Hits that got a mention. There are legions of Soul, R&B, Reggae, Hip-Hop, Blues, Jazz albums *better* than Led Zeppelin IV that are constantly overlooked.
Thank goodness Rock is dead and its press. We can now get on with our lives and just enjoy the music.
(Full disclosure: I love a list and Kid A is easily Radiohead’s best album.)
NME did make Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On no. 1 in 1985, an album I was completely unfamiliar with at the time. That list was also (wilfully?) controversial as it didn’t go overboard on Fab Four efforts. I count 22 or 23 black albums featured which is a decent effort. I think at least in the 60s, with exceptions, the primary expression of recorded black music was indeed on 45 rpm singles.
http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/nme_writers.htm#100_85
I love that in at no. 32 is “Anthology” by Smoky Bacon and the Miracles!
Probably the fault of the website, rather than the NME.
The primary expression of rock and pop was also at 45 rpm (The Kinks and The Who are perfect examples – it is my belief neither of those bands ever got to grips with 33rpm, twenty minutes per side). The truth is that there were masses of superlative albums by black artists in the sixties and seventies. There are box sets of multiple whole albums on Atlantic, Tamla Motown and Philadelphia. Reggae and Dub, almost exclusively by black artists, were at their peak in the seventies.
Is Stevie Wonder in that list, dai? And how many white acts are represented by a greatest hits?
That 1985 list followed lists of the top 100 albums of the 1960s and 1970s and possibly 1950s and 1980s too, but I can’t remember. It’s a shame they are not available. It was those lists that introduced me to What’s Going On, A Love Supreme and Kind Of Blue.
I’ve always rather thought the best albums were the ones that didn’t get into those Top 100s anyway.
“Strange Days” over “The Doors,” “Axis” over “Are You Experienced,” “Velvet Underground” over “VU & Nico” etc.
The article doesn’t address the slavish devotion to “the canon” on the supermarket shelf, and the strange fad among hipsters to buy such albums on vinly in order to play them to other hipsters in awful Shoreditch cafés.
As long as those factors are present I suggest the canon will be considerably more durable than the writer thinks.
The canon is generally pretty dull and predictable, but that’s not the fault of its contributors, rather the inevitable result of “averaging out” the Top 20 (or whatever) lists of a whole group of people. All those lovely obscure delights picked out by one single person get drowned out by the “usual suspects” being picked out as easy choices by three or four contributors.
Far more interesting, for my money are the “personal” Top 20s, where some music-addicted worthy is asked to pick out a selection of their favourites (and, yes, it gets even better if singles and individual tracks are all mixed in with the albums). I’ve made some real left-field discoveries by reading that occasional feature on The Quietus website.
I guess the only conceivably useful purpose of “The Canon” was as a kind of primer for someone just getting into the music of Popular Beat Combos, to answer their plaintive cries of “where do I start?”. Though frankly that purpose is obsolete now that our hypothetical neophyte has the whole of Spotify available to dip into before (if ever) they actually purchase any music.
So it’s hard to see any remaining purpose for The Canon. Except… well, we all love a list to disagree violently with, don’t we?
I can’t help feeling that someone who knows nothing of Popular Beat Music and pleads “Where Do I Start” is probably a musical imbecile and should be told to fuck the fuck off and stop wasting your time.
Hardcore. Like it.
Rock is such a crock of shite as a description, tho’. I used to hate it when my Ma asked me what sort of music I liked, so I would say folk, country, anything but the rock it was probably classed as. Now, 40+ years on I realise I was right, folk and country it is, with now a side-order of blues, jazz and world (incl reggae)* Rock leaves me largely yawning.
*Electronica and “New age” didn’t exist then. Thankfully they do now.
(Well, what do you call classictronica, new classical and all that merging. Slow techno might work, I guess.)
I think I started having problems with Rawk, way back during the despicable “disco sucks” episode. And the older I get the more infantile the posturing of rock lead singers looks to me. So, yeah, folk, electronica, mad instrumental prog-jazz-skronk, and classictronica (yes! Nice term!), plus a whole shitload of oddities, are what float my boat now. Sod the canon.
Although a few items in the ol’ collection probably qualifies for the term (“Beggar’s Banquet,” “Electric Ladyland,” “Arthur”) I like to think I avoid rock like the plague.
The word screams Led Zeppelin.
No Fulham Fallout, no sale.