The History Of Rock Part Alpha and Omega aka You Got No Secrets To Conceal

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I've still not decided (see yesterday evening's poll) about what to do with the P&J results, but it struck me reading epicharmus' suggestion of a poll of polls (the very thought!) that it's frustrating the the Village Voice didn't do singles/tracks polls before 1979. How can the opinion of Poptimists towards older music be best assessed?

Not like this, probably. What we have here is a poll based on the most recent Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs Of All Time. I ran out of patience after a mere 45 songs so this is the much-pored-over cream of the "rock canon" in its single-tracked form (not in 'singles form' - a few weighty album numbers sneak in). I removed the tracks that also appeared in Pazz and Jop polls, for comparability purposes with the gigantic spreadsheet. In practise this was only THREE songs - can anyone guess which they were (without peeking at rollingstone.com)?

Anyway I thought it would be interesting to get some poptimists perspectives on the 'rock canon' as it has been handed down to us by J Wenner Esq and friends.

You get FIFTEEN picks from an inapt 45 tracks.


[Poll #907822]


The second 'week in pop' poll will appear tomorrow, for the selfish reason that I can listen to a few of the tracks in it before then.

Comments

Re: Info For The Lex

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

For once you're not wrong. There are some real gems here (old soul classiX0r) but for every grebt song there is a piece of utter dross next to it.

Re: Info For The Lex

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Which kind of begs the question why rock writers get rock and pop 'wrong' and soul 'right' - or are they getting soul wrong too but we don't know enough to have got bored with the canon?

Soul Bowl Mole Foal

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

We certainly haven't covered much soul in the poptimist polls - I grew up on Atlantic/Motown stuff as graciousviv played me plenty of it when I was a nipper so I can't imagine life without Aretha/Otis/Martha etc. I could do a 'best soul album in teh world... ever!' poll and find out what everyone else thinks!

I don't really know enough about music critic history (perhaps I should go on Xgau's course!) to say why - were they all big r4ci4lists?

Re: Info For The Lex

[koganbot]

Wait, they got soul horribly horribly horribly wrong as well. Even more than they got rock and pop wrong. But not as badly wrong as they got reggae. Will post about this below. (That said, there are just scads and scads of great songs to tick on this list. But some godawful ones as well.)

Re: Info For The Lex

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I think they might have got soul "wrong" as well but the worst of commercially successful soul tends to be at least reasonably OK, generally? I haven't heard a few of the soul ones here.

Re: Info For The Lex

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

eg, The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill as a token r&b or hip-hop album gets both of those genres completely "wrong" - BUT it is still a terrific album.

Re: Info For The Lex

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah the scare quotes were designed to hint that I'm not sure they did get soul right. I think Marvin's and Curtis' and Sam Cooke's songs here are OK, but there seems to be a sense of soul being validated somehow by its socio-political content.

Re: Info For The Lex

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

yes, it seems to be that typical favouring of "conscious" black music, really...