Sunday , Nov 22 2009

NEW!

Will change tomorrow.

UPDATE 1 July: Somehow I left off FUCKING Motorhead. This oversight has been rectified. I dropped Boston Chinks, an inclusion I can't really justify no matter how awesome their 5 released songs and road time as Jay Reatard's back-up band are .

At first I though it was a lame idea. "Just another time waster that will re-enforce the canon and produce predictable results" I thought smugly to myself. Then I started writing up lists.

245+ artists later and I'm still rolling as one of the main contributors to the The RYM Artists Top 10. What follows is a guide to my own personal contributions to the project, which mostly serves as a personal reference tool (for those "what is my 8th favourite Eugenius song again?" kind of moments), although, looking at my creepy obsessiveness all laid out in black and white in front of me frankly makes me a bit queasy.

Kudos go out to the tireless kabouter for all the work he puts into this project.

I was a bit of a late-starter on this one too. That's kind of how I roll - I like to see how things pan out before I jump on. Some people say it's an avoidance of risk, I just like to think of it as pragmatism.

The Rough Guide itself has taken on a life of its own at RYM, become as much a part of this site as anything. While the number of regular participants are a small army of hardcores, the project itself has become the single most popular reference guide on this site.

I participate in the Rough Guide for two reasons, I like to vote on shit, and it helps me sort out my thoughts on why I appreciate the artists that I'm voting on. I don't always submit a quote, but when I do I try to capture the impact of what the artist has given me. In some very small way, I fell like I'm "giving back" to the music I love.

Included are the five songs, album (if applicable) and quote (if any) I submitted for the Rough Guide artist polled thus far. Anything bolded made the Rough Guide final cut and appears on the list under the artist's entry.

Kudos go out to the one and only grendel71 for shepherding this massive project.

Cheers to all the Replacements fans on RYM.

(This shitter is in progress but PM me if I've missed you. Those already on the list are encouraged to submit a quote as well.)

Lol, disco.

My interest in Glam Rock is fairly recent. If I could pin-point the springboard moment it was probably dancing to Sweet's "Teenage Rampage" at a house party in the summer of '03. For me, Glam is the great missing link between the Garage Rock of the '60s and Punk. It was a return to simple, primal form that often doesn't get credit for keeping rock & roll alive while jam bands, blues "virtuosos" and pompous proggers were doing their best to kill it. One of the great myths of rock & roll is that music sucked in the '70s until Punk came along. This list aims to disprove this fallacy.

Some notes:
-Glam is a singles-centric genre, and while most of the songs on here are singles, I decided to not restrict eligibility for this list to record company whims. It would rule out "Needle in the Camel's Eye," for one thing.

-I suppose the primary function of the list is to expose someone who might just be getting into the genre to the gems that I've discovered as a glam neophyte. I do not claim to be any kind of expert in this genre. Before you get all riled up over who might be missing, note that while I'm aware of and enjoy several prototypical glam artists, there are some which I have yet to become familiar enough with to single out particular songs for inclusion in this list. I'm still scrounging around, listening and re-listening, and in fact, this list in intended as a sort of learning experience. I welcome suggestions of all kinds. I expect this list to change over time.

-I consider the starting point of the genre to be David Bowie's "Space Odyssey" in 1969. I think Glam was basically dead by the end of the '70s, but I'm not going to restrict this list solely to the groups of the 71-75 heyday. Revivalist stuff is eligible, although I think the most interesting Glam rock was very much a product of its time.

-The rankings aren't hard and fast. There are songs ranked lower that I "like" better than other songs ranked higher. The pure "glamminess" of a song was also taken into account. Everything's relative and fairly interchangeable.

-Still awake? Then enjoy...

This list (and this one) are based on the liner notes I wrote up for my (perhaps) final submission for a monthly mixtape/CD club I attended regularly in Vancouver.

Compiling a supposed "history" of a musical
genre begs the question of definition right
off the bat.  Most musicians (and most
artists) who are remotely serious about what
they do resist most attempts to pigeonhole
their work, and rightfully so, and definition
often engenders rules and boundaries, and
rock & roll is supposed to be about breaking
rules right?

The weird thing about power pop is that it's
intrinsically rule-bound.  It's not just rock
& roll, but a specific kind of rock & roll.
Power pop has often got the short shrift
critically, if only because of its overtures
to a more commercial sound.  Power pop often
gets mistakenly dismissed as a watered-down
form of punk.  

Power pop bands are often short-lived.  Those
that experience commercial success often have
trouble perpetuating it, constantly battling
fickle audiences and critics.  Several of the
bands included on this comp. have distressingly
tragic stories behind them.  While any band
with remotely arty pretensions can seemingly
go on forever, even long after they should have,
most power pop bands simply implode after a
few years.  It would seem the pressure of
writing consistently good, memorable, hooky
songs gets to be too much after a while.  

Therein lies the ultimate contradiction of
power pop.  These are not relentlessly dour
songs.  While often melancholy, these are songs
meant to be sung-along to.  These are the songs
you dance to when life gets to you.  More than
anything, these are the songs of life, where
the little hooks, harmonies and lyrical truisms
remind us of the ephemeral nature of what it
takes to get through.  Power pop reveals our
essence in three and a half minutes (or less).

Disc 2 of a two-disc mix.  Go here for more info.  

Power pop's ascendancy and infiltration into the
mainstream in the late '70s came at a price.  The
fickle record buying public made it unfashionable.  
Like a lot of good things, power pop died out in
the '80s, but the seeds planted by punk rock were
sewed by tiny cadres of independent music fans who
embraced scenes and sub-cultures that were simply
more interesting than what the radio had to offer.  
The end of the decade would see, as it already had
with surf and garage, a revivalist movement that
would make cult heroes out of Big Star, and bring
power pop to a new audience.

A few years ago I created a double-CD set of what I considered to be the definitive power pop tracks. I put both lists up here and here at RYM and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The problem with the lists is that they are by no means complete since I only had room for two CDs worth of songs.

The purpose of this list is to recognize bands that were omitted from the two compilation CDs. I also wanted to recognize the fact that power pop is still being made today and keep a running, open list. Please enjoy, and suggestions are more than welcome.

Records recommended in the 'Get to Thee Garage' thread.  A starting point for neophytes.

or, The Greatest Movie Films of the Cinema Year-by-year

[But first, some needless exposition]

Long, looooooooong before I got obsessive about music, I was obsessive about film.  I've been the token "movie guy" amongst friends and associates for more than half my life.  In the late '90s and early '00s I'd rountinely see about 250-300 films a year.  I've backed off a bit now, after coming to the realisation that sitting in the dark by oneself for two hours is somewhat, er, anti-social.  

That said, I still have a cinema jones, so why not share it with the (RYM) world?  What follows is my all-time canon.  These are the absolute best films ever made.  I've done a Top 10 for each year, and also listed worthy also-rans alphabetically (for years that I've yet to see ten great films lists are strictly alphabetical).    

UPDATES & ADDITIONS:

2009: A Serious Man, Inglorious Basterds
2007: Encounters at the End of the World
1990: Wild at Heart dropped from the Top 10; Miller's Crossing reinstated.
1964: Fistful of Dollars (re-viewing)
1959: Imitation of Life (re-viewing)
1943: Sahara

Where quality is job one.

A brief chronological history of the highlights of my karaoke career.