They're doing it again...


Another top 885 list

Two years ago, WXPN solicited its listeners for the ten songs that would ultimately become the 885 all-time greatest songs. For a week in October, 2004, they suspended their normal programming to play back all 885 songs, as voted on by their listeners, culminating in Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road."

Last year, they did the same thing, just with albums. They played two songs from numbers 885 to 501, three songs from 500 through 26, and the entire album for the last 25. The top album turned out to be the Beatles' Abbey Road.

This year, they are going to start soliciting its listeners for the all-time greatest artists.

Voting hasn't yet begun, and I am only sure of four artists that will make up the ten I'll vote for (and I haven't yet settled on any order). They are Harry Chapin, R.E.M., Tori Amos, and Phil Ochs.

Here are some thoughts that deserve consideration:

Assuming "artist" can mean both individual singers and bands, what is the appropriate relationship between people represented both as a part of a band and as a soloist? All four Beatles are likely to make the final list, both with the Beatles and as soloists. What do we make of "supergroups" that consist of established artists who specifically came together to form a group? (Such as when George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, and Jeff Lynn came together in the 80's to form the Traveling Wilburys?)

What about the mathematics of it all? I can think of scores of artists who put out one or two nearly flawless albums. Contrast that with Bob Dylan, whose library consists of more than 40 albums, but has a few missteps (Self Portrait, Under the Red Sky, and, although some may disagree with me, I also don't like Nashville Skyline and Slow Train Coming). What about artists that didn't release very many albums, but practically defined a genre, such as Portishead, with 'Trip-Hop' music?

Is there a special place for individual artists who died early and whose music was not truly recognized in their lifetime? Otis Redding and Jim Croce come to mind as prime examples of this.

What about the relationship between the music you can buy and the music you can only hear by attending a concert? I don't begrudge any Grateful Dead fans, but it's a fairly safe bet that they're not fans because of their studio albums.

How do we deal with people who wrote the music for others to perform, but seldom performed it themselves? I have no idea how many people have recorded Lieber/Stoller songs.

Then you've got the biggest wild-card of all. This time, we're judging people, whose lives are generally a lot more than their music. Say the name "Bob Geldof" to someone and they are more likely to recognize the name as that of the person who produced the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts, maybe recognize that he played Pink in the movie The Wall, and possibly recognize that he was the front man for the Boomtown Rats. Does his offstage (and out-of-the-studio) altruism warrant placement on the list, even if the man's music itself is probably the least know of his stuff?

More to come once I've decided who to vote for.

Posted: Tue - July 25, 2006 at 06:54 AM          

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