Barrel of Fish

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Q mag's Top 100 albums EVAR as voted for by readers - yes yes I KNOW - flicked through it in a garage yesterday, can't find the list online but The Sun has the top 20. Last time it did this in '98 or so Radiohead won, and now Radiohead win again, blimey.

So this confirms what you thought about Q readers, but for seasoned canon-watchers (ahem) it's sort of interesting, the dominance of 90s records and - really intriguing this - nothing post-2002 (remember that in the 98 poll Q readers were hardly shy of voting for recent stuff). What does it suggest?

- not good results for Q, as despite the enormous current boom in new "Q-ish" music the reader's aren't loving it like they loved Britpop, which suggests that fans of Killers, Franz etc. aren't that interested in Q.
- genuine shift in canon, or at least this version of it (dunno if a Mojo survey wd produce remotely similar results, but a Radio 1/2 poll might well). One of the things we clucked about at the time of Britpop was the whole "feeble rerun of 60s" thing, but the 60s have been trounced in this survey. The Q reading demographic firmly and unshakeably believes that music was never better than in 1995-1997.

The History Of Pop Part 11 aka In my imagination there is no hesitation

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If you're like me then you'll be feeling a bit fatigued by your first day back at work. What better way to de-cobweb than with a NOW poll from the first half of 1988: The Year Pop Changed (Again). An intriguing Now, this - a disc and a half of classics rubbing shoulders with barrel scrapings, and then suddenly BANG ZOOM Now goes DANCE CRAZY. Beats! Samples! Sudden eruptions of Slade-style spelling! The best house pun title ever! Spare a thought for Climie Fisher, the victim of sequencing circumstance. Also GOTH ALERT, let's see how the Mish do on this one.

Now 10 saw M/A/R/R/S and "Pump Up The Volume" winning near-universal acclaim, and Europe's "The Final Countdown" wrestle through from the mire of Now 9. Now it's time to once again take up the burden of democracy:

( The names have been changed to protect the innocent )

Debate, despair and debilitation in the comments box pls...