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He’s Making A List, He’s Checking It Twice

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Over on Uncle Wheaty’s Uncut magazine “200 Greatest Albums of All Time” thread, people are getting hot under the collar re. the pointlessness (or otherwise) of lists in general.

But without lists the music magazine industry (certainly the Dad Rock arm) would grind to a halt. No matter how much we may snort with derision when another yawn-inducing inventory pops up, we all secretly enjoy reading them and feel smug when our favourites are right up there with a bullet, or feign indifference when something we wouldn’t give house-room to is showered with plaudits.

Now read on…

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Comments

  1. Where would Mojo, Uncut and the rest be without their regular monthly “100 Best Dylan/Beatles/Floyd/Zeppelin Songs” enumerations? I’ll tell you where. Up the Audit Bureau of Circulations shit creek without a paddle, or in the dumpster of magazine history, along with our beloved Word and other publications who refused to play the nostalgia game.

    Lists have become a thriving industry in themselves now of course, with every bookshop offering a shelf-straining selection of volumes dealing in the “best” movies, records, concerts, guitar solos, cars, dogs, pubs, whatever.

    Some of these books carry unwieldy titles like “1000 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”. Before you die? What kind of horrible, ugly terminology is that? And those last three words are redundant anyway. You’re hardly going to listen to them AFTER you die, are you? Unless they have a massive record library in Valhalla with MC-Odin on the wheels of steel, perhaps.

    Like Monty Python’s Anne Elk (Miss) I have a theory about all this list-making palaver. I’m suggesting it’s because with almost 60 years’ worth of pop music to draw on (more if you want to include jazz, blues and folk), very few people buying/downloading/streaming music today know what they “should” be listening to. This lack of knowledge creates an anxiety void which can only be filled by some know-all telling them what’s good and bad.

    Those my age are lucky, I suppose. I was born in 1950, so could neatly lock into the fading years of the first wave of rock & roll and have been able to put every subsequent musical trend, genre, band and major pop/rock event in its correct chronological mental pigeonhole ever since.

    But what about those who were born in the 70s, 80s and 90s? How are they supposed to know what is the best Vertigo swirl label prog album, or where John Martyn learned his guitar style from?

    What were the finest Island pink label albums and where is the critical cut-off point for Deram and Harvest? What are essential John Mayall LPs and when did he stop being relevant?

    What records were Deep Purple listening to which caused them to invent Heavy Metal? (OOAA). How are kids supposed to know all this stuff without being spoon-fed information via endless lists?

    Of course, the internet has played a huge part too. Go into any vintage record store today and you’ll see people tapping away furiously on smart phones while browsing the racks. This used to puzzle me, but then the penny dropped – ah they’re searching the net for information about some decades-old LP or other they’ve never heard of, but quite like the look of the band name and/or sleeve design.

    So, lists. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re here to stay and the older pop music gets, the more we’ll need them. Imagine you have primary school-age kids today. 20 years from now, how are they going to know what the essential Sleaford Mods tracks are? Or which Arctic Monkeys box sets are worth buying (excluding the 24 disc BBC Anthology, natch, which will be automatically installed on the Windows 15 chip in your frontal lobe at birth).

    Lists, that’s how.

  2. 1950? Stripling.

    I think we know where the critical cutoff point for Deram is, don’t we?

    But yes, as one who was getting mildly exercise (definitely not hot under the collar) about the pointlessness of lists, I’m sure you’re right.

  3. Great stuff, Johnny. I was born in 1969, so the various “Listener’s Guide” articles that started to appear in placed lie Q and Vox in the early 90s were useful for me as I started to explore the back catalogues of people like the Stones and the Beach Boys. The reviews of the various CD reissues were also helpful.

    I found the lists less helpful though, and eventually got sick of them. I used to buy Q Magazine every month from about 1988 through to 2002 or so. I remember when I stopped. They had on the cover yet another one of their “100 Greatest Gigs/Albums/Singles of All Time!” splashes. I flicked through the article, decided that I could have written it myself and left it on the newstand. Never went back.

    • Thanks Hawky. Q was great when it started and for a while had the field almost to itself with the quite brilliant Tom Hibbert working alongside the equally fine scribes Hepworth, Ellen and DuNoyer.

      For a while you’d get longform pieces on, say, the Spice Girls or Pet Shop Boys rubbing shoulders with multipage articles on Rory Gallagher or John Martyn. It couldn’t last and so Mojo was created to handle the “serious” stuff, leaving Q to concentrate on the more lightweight material.

      That was the point where I stopped buying Q and I became a Mojo devotee for many years.

      When Mojo first started it was a magical time for rock writing. They’d print 15-20 page pieces on niche artists such as Viv Stanshall, Frank Zappa or Jethro Tull, not because those artists had new product to promote, but for no other reason than those artists were interesting or important.

      But eventually, in the face of opposition from the now-failed Vox and Select and the still-thriving Uncut, even Mojo became a tiresome treadmill of articles on the same five bands every month and the lists began to take over (as they did in all the big music monthlies, to be fair).

      Now if the likes of David Gilmour is on the cover of anything, you can guarantee it’s because Floyd have dredged up another money-spinning re-release, or he has a solo album out.

    • It’s not so much the lists that I hate, but the sheer laziness in the way they’re presented.

      The Uncut ‘Top 200 Albums’ is an excellent example: many of the albums in the list are simply mentioned, with no accompanying explanation of their strong points, history, standout tracks, etc.

      At a time when magazine circulations continue to fall, it beggars belief that editors think they can get away with such vacuity. If you’re gonna do a list, at least make it worth reading. Put some effort into it.

      I was at Heathrow on Saturday morning with a 13 hour flight ahead of me. I fancied buying a music mag to help kill some time. A flick through Uncut convinced me that I would be wasting my money.

      • I went through a stage of buying classic car mags and it’s exactly the same in their rarified world too.

        Every month was the same:

        For The Beatles read Ferrari 250 GTO (the ultimate car, natch), for Dylan read Aston Martin DB5, for Rolling Stones read Jaguar E-Type and so on down the hierarchy until we reach maybe Frazer-Nash or Hispano-Suiza representing the off-beat Nick Drake or Vashti Bunyan.

        Then perhaps we could have the more prosaic Lotus Cortina or Mini Cooper representing the meat and potatoes bands like Slade or Sweet?

    • Yup, precisely why I stopped getting Mojo. After a couple of list-based issues, I knew if there was one mentioned on the cover there’d be somewhere north of 15 pages of irrelevant non-content taken out of what little content/material was on offer.

  8. From that the more guitar savvy among us can deduce that you sold the mags for between 600 – 700 of the Queen’s sunburnt Aussie dollars depending if you got the model with the pick-up.

    Not a bad price. I’ve sold issue # 1 for $100 in the past but the price drops alarmingly after issue #5.

  10. If I understand correctly, JC actually mentions two theories here. Firstly, that the lists appeal to people who are all too familiar with the content and will read them to have their own taste confirmed / be appalled. Secondly, to appeal to other people who are seeking to be educated.

    So far as Mojo,Uncut, Q etc are concerned I think the first theory applies. Young(er) people who might want the education don’t buy these magazines and everyone who does has probably heard of most things in these lists by now.

  11. Lists are what blokes do and not just in a High Fidelity sense but yes, they * do uses it to justify their opinions or demonstrate knowledge. They are one upmanship and more than Francis Rossi or Rick Parfitt they maintain the status quo.

    This time of year all we get are end of year lists, quickly followed by films, books, records, plays and gigs to catch in the new year.

    That they keep the mag industry going is a cheap excuse as it’s easier to phone up the singer of Bring Me The Horizon and ask what his favourite Bowie tune is than pay a writer for a well researched and thought out original take on Dame Dave.

    Maybe I don’t care anymore what people think is da best whether it be Pet Sounds, Citizen Kate, 1000 Years Of Solitude, The Wire and so on to use it as a measuring stick. It causes debate but I’m tired of those pointless comparisons of apples and oranges.

    I know these lists also help people find new stuff to listen to or things they have missed but is it still a race at this point? You can’t possibly keep up with everything so just go your own way, music isn’t suddenly going to vanish.

    Lists fill space, like this has and like this it really has little consequence

    * No idea why I’m using ‘they ‘ here

  12. It’s an open goal for an editor, cheap and relatively quick to put together, don’t have to deal with pr or record company demands, fills loads of space, will probably get increased ad sales and monthly issue sales, you may even get a couple of interviews with national media on the back of it to explain why Pet Sounds is always named as the greatest album ever made

  13. End of the year lists are a little more fun than the 100 best

    Gregorian chant albums

    Death metal love songs

    Transvestite C & W singers

    I do enjoy those pieces where they ring artists and ask them about their personal faces of the year. Hopefully these are a little quirky and if they mention stuff by their pals that hasn’t had much attention, then all the better.

    Mags are dad or mum rockers. The kids are all reading Pitchfork.

    • Except that Mojo’s trawl of celeb listening this year revealed they’d all pretty much listened to the same critically acclaimed LPs that the music press put in their top 50s etc. This attempt at a collective consensus is more likely to drive me away from the albums, contrary bastard that I am

      • I agree. This year’s bunch did not have many wonderfully obscure suggestions.

        In previous years they’ve had artist naming a whole bunch of weird and wonderful stuff I’d never heard of.

  14. I wonder if the Undertakers Monthly mag have ever published a list along the lines of “100 coffins you must try before you die”

    I once had an internet exchange with David Hepworth about my distaste for the “before you die” stapline and he was quite blasé and/or sanguine about it, explaining that from a magazine editor’s point of view it was a good thing because people simply couldn’t resist dipping into something with that title.

  15. Lists are what you resort to when you’ve nothing interesting to say. The problem the mags had was that once social media kicked off, the big names no longer needed them. You couldn’t get them to pose for a cover shot or sit down for long interviews – they just contacted their audience directly. That’s what scuppered The Word. I remember a desperate attempt to claw back readership with a composite cover with about 40 artists on it, which was linked to a three-issues-for-the-price of-one promotion at Latitude. It went for breadth rather than depth, which is the basis of the lists that infect the print mags and are pretty much the bread and butter of online’s ‘clicks at any cost’ mantra.

    The things that still sell papers are news (impossible in a monthly magazine) unique content (see above) controversy and the scattergun, something-for-everyone tactic. Lists handily combine the last two.

  16. I quite like a “hundred greatest” list, but I prefer it when they show a bit of imagination, even if it does mean some deliberate provocation.

    I don’t really need to see another list with Pet Sounds/Revolver/What’s Going On/OK Computer/Sgt Pepper at the top of it. I would, however, quite like to see a list where someone makes the case for, to give but one example, Electric Warrior being the “greatest” album of all time.

    If all you’re doing is churning out the usual suspects, then I really don’t see the point. If you’ve nothing new to say on a subject, particularly on a subject that is almost entirely subjective, why bother putting fingers to keyboard?

    • Tbf the Afterword list is a little more adventurous. Uncut has yawnsomely included American soul legend Marvin Gaye’s sublime state of the nation address”What’s Going On”. In contrast we went with Northern English ukulele player Marvin Gaye who, during his twilight years experienced an “American Recordings”-style Renaissance. “Never Mind The Fallow Years, It’s Turned Out Nice Again Vols 1 to 3” merely hinting at the greatness of his masterpiece “What’s Goin’ On?” a record made possible by Marvin’s rare form of time-dislocated dementia which allowed him to record ukulele-based covers of hits from the future, some of which – such as The Sultans Of Ping F.C.’s “Where’s Me Jumper?” – concerned subjects Marvin actually lived through and acquired an authentic gravitas, being performed with his trademark high-pitched whine. One of the most played videos in YouTube history is his version of (what would become the Manic Street Preachers’) “Of Walking Abortion”, where the final lines: “The massacred innocent blood stains us all. Who’s responsible? You fucking are.”
      is given much greater power as Marvin, chillingly, winks into the camera.

      And this⬆️ is why it’s never enough to just print a big long list without explanatory paragraphs…

  17. I’d argue that another thing that sells music mags is a broad-ranging reviews section. Particularly if you are interested in new or lesser-known acts. These are even more enjoyable now thanks to the Tube and Spotify as I can get an immediate taste of the artist.

    There are so many fine albums, films and books being produced, it’s easy (despite the AW) for something interesting to pass me by.

  18. They’re two very different things for me: ‘lists’ and ‘lists maquerading as articles in magazines that cost money’. I like the former. They often introduce me to great new music. But I like them as chat between mates, or Afterword bollocks-talking, or a freebie something to glance through while on the loo… the idea of paying to read one is completely ridiculous.

  19. @garyjohn Here’s parochialism in action for you. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine published their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time over several issues.

    For the Australian edition of Rolling Stone, the local publishers did something quite peculiar. They removed several entries from the middle/lower reaches of the list and inserted, seemingly at random, albums by Australian artists such as Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel etc.

    As Alan Partridge might say: extraordinary!

    • Rolling Stone also has a Spanish language edition which seems to be quite popular. It’s not all just stuff translated from English. They do have journos writing in Spanish too.

      Which begs the question: what did that list look like when it was published in Lima or the Iberian peninsular?

      Did they throw in some Mecano, Luis Eduardo Aute, Gloria Estefan, Silvio Rodriguez, Juan Luis Guerra etc etc?

  20. Chiz mentioned that news is impossible for a monthly mag. It’s even difficult for a daily paper. The morning after the Paris shootings there was not a word in our morning paper. But I’m sure that their online edition had a lot to say.

    News doesn’t stay new very long these days.

    One way a mag can deal with this is by using Twitter, Facebook or their website to give brief coverage to breaking news. Not much I know, but it shows their finger is somewhere near the pulse.

      • Sorry. I didn’t explain that very clearly.

        Our morning morning paper seems to go to press so early that if is there a (major, unexpected) story which happens mid-evening, it’s unlikely to make it onto the morning edition.

        It’s not quite simple though as there are several editions and I’ve known times where those living in the sticks, have had a different front page from those living in the town centre.

        But, to give a straightforward example, if a famous person pops theirs clogs at 9.00 pm, the morning paper is unlikely to have any tributes, comments etc in their print edition until 36 hours later. By which time it’s all slightly stale news,

  22. I think the theory is right. Born in 1966, I embraced punk precisely because it was new and had no “history” as such. In older company (my brothers in other words) my liking for pop music on TOTP was dismissed as nonsensical pap by wise old owls who had matured to, ooh, the age of 15 – listening to Yes and Genesis and The Who. These bands had substance, a history, a legacy stretching back at least 5 years or so. To a youngster, that’s an age. None of this Here today Gone tomorrow nonsense like Trex or Sparks.

    But I do like these bands nonetheless and I like to know about how these bands came to Be. I love Johnny Concheroo’s writing about such things – and Colin H also, even though I am ashamed to say I cannot name a single MO song but thanks to Colin I have read a great deal about them. Nothing infuriates me more than someone who says they are “obsessed” with (say) ACDC and their knowledge is limited to one or two songs and making that devil horn gesture with their hands. And also informing all and sundry that this is “real music”.

    The lists have a function and they are valued by me, at least. Not so much the 100 best albums of all time (as far as I’m concerned this is mostly Depeche Mode, OMD, Kratwerk, The Beatles and Numan anyway) but a list for 2015 now informs me of names that seem to be prominent and I should cock an ear to if I can be arsed.

  24. Top stuff – I love a list, always have, always will. They just appeal to my borderline OCD view of the world. Plus with a fading memory, a list is the only way I can remember what I am looking for when in a record shop (or indeed any shop).
    Lists have become an industry in themselves, and it ain’t because there is so much stuff out there that needs to be highlighted, My theory (which isn’t Anne Elk’s (Miss)) is that radio, tv, print media and many consumers are lazy and want to get to the cream of the stuff and ignore the potential duffers, or artists they’ve never heard of.

    “How are they supposed to know what is the best Vertigo swirl label prog album, or Pink Label Harvest” by taking a punt and listening to as many as possible.

    People in record stores tapping on Smart Phones – most of ’em are probably looking at ebay trying to see how much they can flog it for. After all, it is vinyl and as we all know vinyl is valuable.

    Lists and books are OK for guidance, but they’re no substitute for your ears or the “emotional reaction / attachment” gained.

    The great thing about Qmojcut lists as that they are always wrong and spark furious debate

    • I like your thinking RD.

      Another angle on the smartphone thing. I’ve also seen people YouTube-ing tracks in record stores as a way of hearing them before they buy.

      It’s amusing seeing them holding their phones up to their ears (on speaker) as the thin, weedy sound competes with the shop sound system and general hubbub.

  25. I quite like lists but agree the format and predictability have spoiled their appeal. However it is still possible to something interesting. Costello did a great list of 500 of his favourite songs/pieces of music for Vanity a few years ago. Not surprisingly it was very eclectic but threw up some pretty good recommendations.
    Then Richard Thompson made an album 1000 years of popular music, He got the idea because a magazine had asked him his favourite songs from last 50 years or whatever and he felt it was an impossible question to answer due to the narrow timeframe.
    So lists created with some imagination can still be fun.

    • The story is that it was coming up to the millennium and Playboy asked a number of artists, including Richard Thompson, to submit their choice of songs of the last 1000 years.

      RT correctly guessed that what Playboy REALLY wanted was a list of songs from the second half of the 20th century.

      Instead he took Playboy at their word and compiled a list of songs from the period 1068–2001.

      Needless to say, Playboy didn’t publish RT’s list, but he recorded them for an album (only available through his website at first) and a tour with some different tracks. The tour spawned a CD + DVD which was sold through normal channels.

      Track listing of original CD version
      1.”Sumer Is Icumen In” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      2.”King Henry V’s Conquest of France” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      3.”When I Am Laid In Earth” (Henry Purcell, arr. by Thompson)
      4.”So Ben Mi C’ha Bon Tempo” (Orazio Vecchi, arr. by Thompson)
      5.”Shenandoah” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      6.”Blackleg Miner” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      7.”Waiting at the Church” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      8.”Trafalgar Square” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      9.”There Is Beauty in the Bellow” (from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, arr. by Thompson)
      10.”Why Have My Loved Ones Gone?” (Stephen Foster, arr. by Thompson)
      11.”Old Rocking Chair’s Got Me” (Hoagy Carmichael)
      12.”Orange-Coloured Sky” (Milton DeLugg/William Stein)
      13.”Cry Me a River” (Arthur Hamilton)
      14.”Drinking Wine Spo-dee-o-dee” (Stick McGhee/J. Mayo Williams)
      15.”The Fool” (Lee Hazlewood)
      16.”A Legal Matter” (Pete Townshend)
      17.”Tempted” (Glenn Tilbrook/Chris Difford)
      18.”Kiss” (Prince)
      19.”Oops!… I Did It Again” (Max Martin/Rami Yacoub)
      20.”Sam Hall” (unknown, arr. by Thompson)
      21.”Money, Money, Money” (Benny Andersson/Björn Ulvaeus)
      22.”It Won’t Be Long” (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
      23.”Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt” (trad., arr. by Thompson) – introduced as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, but actually a medieval-style version of Britney Spears’ “Oops!… I Did It Again”

      Track listing of 2CD/DVD version

      (recorded at a different show)
      1.”Sumer Is Icumen In” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      2.”King Henry” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      3.”So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo” (Orazio Vecchi, arr. by Thompson)
      4.”Bonnie St. Johnstone” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      5.”O Sleep Fond Fancy” (Thomas Morley)
      6.”Remember O Thou Man” (Thomas Ravenscroft)
      7.”Shenandoah” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      8.”Blackleg Miner” (trad., arr. by Thompson)
      9.”I Live in Trafalgar Square” (C.W. Murphy)
      10.”There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast” (from The Mikado) (W.S. Gilbert/Arthur Sullivan, arr. by Thompson)
      11.”Java Jive” (Ben Oakland/Milton Drake)
      12.”Night and Day” (Cole Porter)
      13.”Orange-Coloured Sky” (Milton DeLugg/William Stein)
      14.”Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” (Granville “Stick” McGhee/J. Mayo Williams)
      15.”A-11″ (Hank Cochran)
      16.”See My Friends” (Ray Davies)
      17.”Friday on My Mind” (George Young/Harry Vanda)
      18.”Tempted” (Chris Difford/Glenn Tilbrook)
      19.”Oops!… I Did It Again” (Max Martin/Rami Yacoub)
      20.”Cry Me A River” (Arthur Hamilton)
      21.”1985″ (Jaret Reddick/John Allen/Mitchell Scherr)
      22.”Sam Hall” (trad., arr. by Thompson)

      • Interestingly I have the first cd that was sold on his website and also saw him perform the concert and neither of the lists printed above were fully adhered too. He definitely didn’t play Friday on my mind when I saw him and pretty sure he played a different Ray Davies song. Ca plane pour moi may also have featured – I know it was in earlier solo sets and pretty sure it was here too but don’t quote me on that.

  27. Alas, I’ve stood behind too many 20/30 somethings, record bag over the shoulder, hanging from a wispy beard in Oxfam Shops (and that’s just the girlfriend), while they look earnestly at a Spandau Ballet piece of ‘vinyl’ priced at £15, to want to give them any clues at all!

    If I did, following the demise of sit-com in this country, where on earth would I get a belly laugh of a rainy Tuesday.

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