The futility of "definitive" lists

Art asked what I thought of the recent “definitive 200” album list produced by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I suspect that my response will be the same as everyone else: disappointment and incredulity. Lots of “How could they not include XYZ?!”, mixed with a few “What’s THAT piece of junk doing there?.
So yes, there are a bunch of albums that I consider “definitive” that aren’t included, and I can’t really see how they could have been overlooked. (I’ve listed a few below.) But going beyond my own preferences, there are some other problems.
First is the superstar effect. Albums from five artists – the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Bob Dylan – make up 10% of the entire list. Yes, I know that this is supposed to be the list of definitive albums, not of definitive artists, but even so… this concentration reinforces the sense that the list reflects a relatively narrow perspective (in taste and time).
Second, it’s really unfortunate that several entire genres have been overlooked. There’s no folk music. The entire punk phenomenon is reduced to one album (and that one is filed under “Rock”!). What about “jam bands”? There’s no Phish, no Blues Traveler, and the Grateful Dead is (mis)represented by one studio album. There’s nothing from the diverse world of electronica – no ambient, no deep house, no jungle; nothing by Orbital or John Digweed, or Underworld, or the Orb. No industrial. Only one reggae. (On the other hand, there are 17 rap albums and 7 “adult contemporary”.) It’s these categorical omissions that really expose the failure of the project.
Let me finish by listing a few of my own “How could they not include…” candidates. I’ll limit myself to five. Yes, these are all oldies – but then it takes a while for an album to achieve definitive status. (I’m amazed that the list includes several 2004 releases.) Anyway, none of these should be controversial:

  • “Forever Changes” by Love
  • “The Velvet Underground & Nico” by the Velvet Underground
  • “Electric Ladyland” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
  • “The Future” by Leonard Cohen
  • “Hot Rats” by Frank Zappa

Random 10 – obscurity alert

I just ran the usual randomization process to get iTunes to give me a “Random 10” list, and it came up with what is probably the most obscure collection ever. I though of redoing it, but what the heck… there’s no shame in collecting obscure music. So here we go:

  • “Geronimo” by Yann Tiersen (from Black Session)
  • “Look At The Stars” by Weatherman (from Angel Beach Ambient Waves)
  • “Her Majesty’s Trusted Food Taster” by The Tear Garden (from Crystal Mass)
  • “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” by Style Council (from The Collection…)
  • “Musica” by S.O.M. featuring Barbara Mendes (from Buzzin’ Fly Vol.1)
  • “The Sound Of Crying” by Prefab Sprout (from A Life Of Surprises)
  • “Forbidden City” by Electronic (from Raise The Pressure)
  • “You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover” by Saint Etienne (from the U.S. version of Tales From Turnpike House)
  • “Coinleach Glas An Fhomair” by Clannad (from Past Present)
  • “Pressure Us (Junior Dub)” by Sunscreem (from the Pressure Us single)

There are actually some gorgeous tracks here. The Tear Garden is a collaboration between Skinny Puppy and the Legendary Pink Dots, and the combination works really well. Electronic was a short-lived Johnny Marr project, with occasional help from the Pet Shop Boys. And as for “Musica”… What happened was that I recently checked iTunes to find out what I’d been listening to, and I found that a couple of albums had unusually high play counts. One was the Faithless masterpiece “No Roots” (no surprise there), but the other was the “Buzzin’ Fly Vol.2” mix from Ben Watt (of Everything But The Girl). Interesting! I decided to buy the other two CDs in the Buzzin’ Fly collection, and I’ve been really satisfied with the results. Each offers a truly relaxing groove… good music for flying, or walking through the park, or IM-ing, or blogging.

Krysia Kocjan RIP

For fellow Al Stewart fans: Krysia Kocjan died a couple of weeks ago. She worked with Al on a number of his albums, from “Past, Present and Future” to “Indian Summer”. Listen to her work on Al’s Live At The Roxy (the CD reissue of the live tracks from “Indian Summer”).

One year later

One year ago tomorrow, Friday:

Well, after 20.63 years at Sun, I have been caught up in today’s RIF (Reduction In Force). As of 5pm today, I’m out of here.

One year later, I’m living in a new apartment, in a different city, working for a different company, on a different and fascinating collection of problems. And I’m having a blast.
Not surprisingly, one of the dominant qualities of Amazon is the sheer scale of the operation. Normally I encounter this in a relatively abstract way – transactions, servers, gigabytes, bandwidth. Numbers. Numbers on a screen, on a piece of paper. But later this month I’ll get a chance to experience scale, when I visit the Fernley fulfillment center (automated warehouse) in Nevada. Here’s a piece from Business Week about the place.

You need to get out more…..

Here: let me tweak that amino acid receptor protein for you….

Cori Bargmann, a geneticist at the Rockefeller University, has studied two variants of a worm called C elegans, that differ in their feeding pattern. One variant is solitary and seeks its food alone; the other is social and forages in groups. The only difference between the two is one amino acid in an otherwise shared receptor protein. If you move the receptor from a social worm to a solitary worm, it makes the solitary worm social.

Where do you want to go today?

Seattle:
Today: Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 50s to mid 60s. Southeast wind 5 to 15 mph.
Boston:
This Afternoon: Sunny, with a high near 11. Wind chill values between -6 and -11. Blustery, with a northwest wind around 23 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph.

Sullivan on Coulter

Here’s a moving response by Andrew Sullivan to the odious Coulter, and the bigots who support her. Money quote:

What Coulter did, in her callow, empty way, was to accuse John Edwards of not being a real man. To do so, she asserted that gay men are not real men either. The emasculation of men in minority groups is an ancient trope of the vilest bigotry. Why was it wrong, after all, for white men to call African-American men “boys”? Because it robbed them of the dignity of their masculinity. And that’s what Coulter did last Friday to gays. She said – and conservatives applauded – that I and so many others are not men.

Museum of Communications

Here’s a Seattle museum that looks intriguing:

The Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum, now known as The Museum of Communications, is sponsored by Charles B. Hopkins Chapter 30, TelecomPioneers. We are located at 7000 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, Washington, 98108. The museum can be reached on (206) 767-3012 and is open every Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and by appointment other days.

Perhaps some of my Amazon colleagues will be up for a field trip some Tuesday lunchtime.
[Via BoingBoing.]

Ignorance and stupidity is pandemic – but you knew that

First evolution… then geology… now the rotation of the earth. From the bacon-eating atheist Jew:

Saudi Arabia’s commission issued this ‘famed 1974 fatwa — issued by its blind leader at the time, Sheik Abdul Aziz Ben Baz — which declared that the Earth was flat and immobile. In a book issued by the Islamic University of Medina, the sheik argued: “If the earth is rotating, as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom.”‘
In a university book? Don’t count on the cure for cancer coming from an Islamic state.
But don’t expect it come from the American Bible Belt either. Just look at the recent words of Marshall Hall of Cornelia, Ga., is a retired schoolteacher who has spent the last 30 years protesting the teaching of evolution. His books argue not only that Darwin was wrong but also that science has been wrong ever since Copernicus and that the idea of Earth turning is a “carefully crafted Bible-bashing lie.”

If you’re not thoroughly satiated, check out this entertaining demolition job at Good Math, Bad Math.