I have been a little buried as of late....apologies... 40 songs that changed the world, what the hell does that mean if your list includes whole lotta love by led zep and louie louie , god only knows...
If it is just great songs then the list is shiit, if its songs that had a geopolitical impact on the world then the list shows a limited amount of global awareness ( ie i want to hold your hand...baby one more time)
in short I think the list is just out there to annoy people like me who actually care about music and thus it could generate blog discussions ( sort of like Tim Perlicks reviews )
In short , its so stupid I cant be bothered to respond to it ( except for this lengthy response of course)
ps I think it may be my turn for a cd club event, I am thinking May ...I will post a date shortly, so if there are any of you away mid may let me know

Yeah, the Run DMC/Aerosmith selection tells you what Rolling Stone is attempting to do with its selections from the last twenty years: pinpoint the time that a hip/hop song hit the radar of an aging white boomer magazine. Apparently, it only took another 5 years and and another rap group collaborating with a group of white musicians to rock the RS world once again, with Public Enemy's 'Bring da Noise' another selection on their list. Having been thus twice introduced to the concept of rap, they then get kinda cocky, dropping even the salutory 'Dr.' for Dre in their next hip-hop entry, another selection which falls way short of being earth moving.

Not to suggest that the good folks at RS are racist, just clueless. What's irritating with lists like these is the presumptive employment of the personal plural: we were all moved by these songs, weren't we? No, actually, anybody who was listening to music at the time would have figured out rap as a musical phenomenon far earlier than 1986.

btw...got a new ipod, 4x the size of the previous one. and while i'm unconvinced that anybody needs to walk around with 15,000 songs in their hand, it's good to have options.

Sorry for the lack of bloggin'....speaking of which, do you remember Stuart? He was a pretty good bloke eh?

Some epochal non-negotiables for me would be

The Who - My Generation
The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man / Eight Miles High
The Clash - London Calling
Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives

I could easily remove half of what they've listed....it is a TERrible list in my view. Run DMC Aerosmith? Bloody baffling.

I can't explain (which reminds...why no Who song?) why 'Just Like Heaven' would be one of those ground breaking songs because I don't think it's a ground breaking, or world changing song in any sense of the word, I just think it's a beautiful song, which takes me back to my adolescent days, when lyrics like "And found myself alone above a raging sea/that stole the only girl I loved/and drowned her deep inside of me" seemed sad, poetic, and profound. I'd go further to say it isn't even the Cure's best song, an honour I think you'd agree goes to 'In Between Days'. Still, it was nice to see that some other group of people dig 'Just Like Heaven' as much if not more than me.

Lists like this obviously say a lot more about their creators than they do about the artists referenced therein. I'm sure that a Pitchfork list would contain equally annoying selections, but mostly because they'd go out of their way to highlight the most obscure songs released in the past 4 decades. The Rolling Stone list confirms to me that they probably stopped being relevant as a music publication is the mid-1980s.

Glad you can hum the Black Flag song, though. I'd like you to do so at some point in the near future.

On an unrelated sad note, my ipod, which I've had for 3+ years, is gone. Sometime between early Sunday morning, when I arrived in Dallas, and yesterday afternoon, when I discovered it was missing, I either misplaced it, left it somewhere, dropped it, or allowed someone to take it from me. No matter, it is gone. And while I will eventually (or maybe even soon) get a new, sleeker, shinier, smaller one with a bigger hard drive and more bells and whistles, I will miss it. I can honestly say that I've listened to more new music, tolerated many long stretches of travel, and blocked out hours of inane cellphone banter on the streetcar, because of that device. Goodbye my little shiny white plastic and chrome friend. I hope that your new master enjoys you as much as I did.

You might wish that you had never asked the question re Black Flag as I am a horrible singer by any standard but I do know the TV Party song quite well as it was on the Repo Man soundtrack which I bought after seeing the movie twice at the local Hamilton rep cinema back in the day. Not that I'm saying it's a groundbreaking song by any means. Although the movie certainly had a notable effect on my direction in cinema viewing.

As for the egregious omissions that is a mugs game isn't it? The songs that changed my life over the last 40 years bear little if any resemblance to this list and I'm sure each of you would say the same. If I had to choose specific tracks here that would fall into that category then let's go with tracks 5, 12, 15, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30, 36, and 37.

I remember hearing "What Difference Does it Make" by the Smiths and it certainly wasn't their most popular ditty but it was the first song I'd ever heard by the band and I was absolutely floored. Here was a song that spoke directly to me and changed the world as I knew and experienced it. And I think that's the key for any "life changing" song and it has little to do with lists or what the critics think or even what any of you think.

As a final note as much as I love the Cure song perhaps Kyle you can explain to me how it would fall into a "songs that changed the world" category. Can't see how it changed the music scene in any significant way and it was getting close to the best before date for the Cure as a band.

Listless these days? Perhaps it's because we've been listless here for so long.

No more! An invitation to comment on Rolling Stone's list of 40 songs of the past 40 years which "changed the world" (quotes theirs, of course).

While thrilled that one of my (if not the) favourite songs of all time--"Just Like Heaven" by the Cure--makes an appearance, I can't help but think that any list that also includes a song by Britney Spears or Guns and Roses forfeits any and all credibility. What say you all?

I'll admit, I haven't read the rationale for any of these picks so I have no idea why "Strawberry Fields Forever" somehow edges out "Hey Jude" or "Day in the Life" in the life-changing department or if anybody on this esteemed blog panel can hum me a single bar from Black Flag's "TV Party" and the question 'Where are the Pixies?' can be heard at scream-level decibels in my head but....I'll let you lot come up with some more egregious omissions.

I laughed quasi-maniacally for about five minutes when I opened that up, after taking a second to realize you had posted it. Very funny my man.

So, sorry, I've been way too stressed out at work to consider an entry, though as you surmise I have checked a few times (cause that's easy). I even have quite a thing for Ms. Gainsbourg but haven't been able to find the energy to comment. Plus she's married to Yvan Attal which is pretty cool. So...the music sounded pretty good in a French chanteuse way but I'm not sure that I wasn't influenced by those sexy photos with her hair covering her face.

And who in God's name is Grinderman?

Keep up the good posts.

that was an interesting entry, kyle. i think i'd like to listen to it a little bit. yes, she is kind of sexy, but not in the way you typically think of somebody being sexy. i have thoughts about grinderman too but i kind of just feel like keeping it to myself for now. also, i'm really busy right now but keep up the good posts kyle.

far better than listening artists or watching films with 'grind' in the title would be to a listen to a nonconventionally sexy english/french actress sing pretty, cool ballads. you can listen to the charlotte gainsbourg album here or download one of the tracks from the disc. with song titles like 'jamais' and 'tel que tu es', comment pouvez-vous resister?

Stuart, make sure you paste the entire link over the text that appears in the link box (http://). If you paste it after this text, the link includes the http:// twice (the one from your link as well as the one in the box). Alternately, you can just select 'www...' onwards from the page you are copying from and paste it after the http:// that appears in the link box. Just don't duplicate it and it should work fine.

Now that I've bored everyone else, a question, similar to those I've asked of late, which are preoccupied with getting value for my download dollar: Has anybody heard the much-ballyhooed Grinderman disc? The few snippets I've heard online suggest to me that it is a piece of s-h-i-t but critics seem to believe otherwise. Thoughts?

With respects to other artistic projects featuring 'Grind' in the title, may I advise you, if you were contemplating seeing it, to avoid the Tarantino-Rodriguez films released last week. Think ticket buyers for once had it right last weekend. I'll spare you the (literally) gory details but just say that 80 minute movies that could do with 30 minutes of editing really shouldn't be released in the first place.

ok.......now someone is messin w my head.....the link I simply pasted in seems to work...in the past that has never worked for me...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

i give up!!!! sometimes it works , sometimes it doesn't ...what am I doing wrong...step 1)
highlight a chosen word ...step2) hit the icon like cufflinks...step3) paste in the web link...
here is the web link I was trying to make work
http://www.ckln.fm/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=76&Itemid=236

god damn it....one flight up

thats it Marc...Colin Smith...One flight up.....which is the name of a Dextor Gorden album from the 60's I believe.. it is only one morning a week tuesday...you have to check it out to believe it...its pretty great
s

I believe the show you are referring to is Colin Smith's "one flight up" ... the first few years i was listening to the show i actually thought it was called "one flat up" because the guy's accent is so thick! ...but he has a great show if you can stick it through the slow pace of his babble ...who am i to talk about slow babble!

gosh i really do struggle with this link system...lets try again henderson

to sidestep the babes issue ........I picked up Joe hendersons Power to the People the other day after hearing some tracks off this jazz DJ with the greatest voice...Colin??? on 88.1 FM (you have top hear this impossibly low voice talking about jazz) .....anyway back to .....shttp://http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=ADFEAEE4791DDF4AA47720C0803E53C0BA74E006D14EC59D0A354B47C8953E46C30C7FE352BB8A92ECB628EC30D2FD47E11043D7D5EF54E3DE663D3AC1EFA46A383B4102003525FD&sql=10:kxfixq9gldae
After that ill fated electric jazz show at the REX I was surprised by how much I love this disc...Granted it has only occasional electric piano and the rest is pretty well acoustic, but I love that early 70's dig it baby groove...I only have weather report type fusion stuff from this era , so it was great to get into something new , for me anyway....anyone else have something they love in this vein??

more laughs, on a wednesday, which feels like a thursday. figured this would be a good primer for stuart on picking up hot classical babes in bars.

I forgot to mention how hard I laughed at your Kool Aid post last night Derek. I was studying time series analyses for CFA (major fucking yawn) and on a "rare" break - and that was a much needed guffaw.

So where is the apparently newfound sense of absurd humour coming from my friend? I'm theorizing either (a) your sister, who is really funny, is posting for you this week while you organize Ciaran's room, or (b) the new-parent sleep deprivation has finally kicked in, yielding a new, nuttier Derek.

take your point about anything that resembles 60s dream-pop automatically being labelled 'wilsonesque' or 'pet sounds like' or 'some other reference to the bb -ish' but in the case of the panda bear disc, the similarities are striking. compare the opening track 'comfy in nautica' (link accomplished, btw, by highlighting the text i want to make a link, clicking on the little globe-with-chain-link-on-top of it icon above this text box' then pasting the link into the URL field and clicking okay) on 'perfect pitch' with say, 'god only knows' or 'wouldn't it be nice' from 'pet sounds' and you'll see (hear?) what i mean.

bang on with procol harum and pink floyd in b.lakes. is it too referential? i've kind of struggled with this question with a few albums released this year that go beyond 'influenced by' to 'striking imitations of'. not sure that the b.lakes fall into the latter category for me, but bands like mahoghany (cocteau twins, joy division), and bloc party ('boys don't cry'/'seventeen seconds' era cure) certainly do. even one of my favourite songs from this year, 'roscoe' from midlake (which you brought to my attention at the last cd club, much obliged) is essentially a perfect meshing of fleetwood mac's 'dreams' with ian thomas' 'painted ladies'. i guess i'm leaning towards the conclusion that if it's done well, who am i to complain? if win butler can channel springsteen, then i guess everybody's doing it, yes?

derek, i knew i'd seen the bjork cover somewhere before. thank you for jogging my memory. does this mean that she'll be busting through walls in that getup every time a group of children starts demanding icelandic pop music? part of me thinks it's an extended april fools joke...surely the web-graphic department at pitchfork generated hoax, yes?

Speaking of BW and his pop legacy, there was quite a nice release by a local band called The Bicycles last year that I came across on a couple of allmusic posts recently which is primo 60's-inspired pop. Really very good. As usual I'm 9 months behind so you've probably all heard this music, either (a) dismissing it as light and trivial or (b) liked it, researched their history, found solo recordings and demos from the bass player they kicked out before they "went big", and Stuart has dated the (presumably female) lead singer.

I was going to link it like the rest of you do, but I've forgotten how, and can't seem to find the toolbar that we had on the old (obviously inferior) version of blogger. Feel free to help me with this one of you techno-competent folks.

Here is the url allmusic that you can cut and paste. How 2002.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:0cfrxqudldke

Just listened to Besnard Lakes all the way through for the first time, and am really enjoying it too. It's a darker, more emphatically psychedelic form of the (popular) psych pop genre. Simple song structures benefiting from rich and varied arrangements - and while there is definitely more than a hint of Da Boys (of Beach), I hear a lot more Moody Blues (on Rides the Rails for ex), Procol Harum, and even some Pink Floyd. Only concern for me (one listen in) is does the music stand up on its own, or is it too referential?

Love the BB's in small doses but think that BW gets a bit too much credit as the touchstone for all dream and psych-pop music of today.

Bjork, god love her, can spout all sorts of drivel about 10,000 years of womanhood, 13 moons etc but the first thing I thought of when I saw this godawful cover was something you only need put your mind back 30 odd years for. Can you say pending lawsuit?

if you thought her choice in oscar apparel was bad...bjork reveals the artwork for her new album. makes me glad i'm getting most of my music electronically these days.

btw, update on last week's downloads:

panda bear 'person pitch': very much digging this release, much more so than 'young prayer' or even the animal collective's 'feels'. that most of it sounds like brian wilson leading a church choir through a series of joyful ovations in a room down the hall detracts not from its hypnotic yet catchy charms.

besnard lakes 'the besnard lakes are the dark horse': also channel brian wilson but in a different way (more guitar for one). also digging large after only two listens.