Monday, May 5, 2008
The Greatest Ever
I enjoyed reading this testament to the music that has been influential in this young man's life, even though I don't know squat about the songs or the artists that he listed (I haven't read Part I of his list). I mean, I know some of the names, but they are essentially meaningless to me since I have never become familiar with their music. With one rather glaring exception: Song #2 is listed as "the greatest rock and roll song ever recorded" and is "We Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who. Heh. Well, allright! Granted, he qualifies that designation with "at least in my humble non-Rolling Stone opinion" yet it still seems rather ambitious. Having spent most of yesterday evening listening to several hours worth of CSN&Y, Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield, I'd be pretty hard-pressed to pick the "greatest" song even narrowed down to just those musicians - much less the entire genre! Whatever - there's no doubt that The Who was a great band, and Pete Townsend's guitar playing was the stuff of legend - and it's nice to see that, for this fan at least, it is The Greatest.
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5 comments:
Odd list, there. I know precisely four groups on it, and while I'm oh so glad about The Who, putting Rush at the top doesn't fly by me. At least Fly by night would have gone down better.
Well, any list of Greatest Songs that doesn't include Boogaloo Down Broadway is incomplete, in my view. The idea!
"Won't Get Fooled Again" isn't even The Who's best song. (That would be "Who Are You")
I recognize all but four of the groups he mentions, but I'm not all that familiar with the songs he picks out. Except for "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves. Surely, you remember that delightful one-hit-wonder band from 1985-86.
I read Part I of his list too and he starts out promisingly enough with The Beatles, REO Speedwagon and REM. I can also handle Guns N Roses, AC/DC and The Clash. But where we part company in our musical tastes is on punk music. He says the Sex Pistols impressed him early on. I bought their album in college on the recommendation of Rolling Stone (Idiots!!) who ranked it No. 2 on their all-time greatest rock albums list, and found it to be unlistenable. I gave the album away after one listen. It was that bad. Yech!
As for Buffalo Springfield, there was an American band that could have rivaled The Beatles had they been able to stick together longer.
Buffalo Springfield was a great band, and may have been Stephen Stills' best collaboration, but I think Neil Young did his best work with Crazy Horse (Cinnamon Girl, etc.).
Glad you guys at least found the list interesting. These certainly weren't what I think are the best 22 songs ever -- that list would be quite different, although "Won't Get Fooled Again" would be on it. It was more just looking through my music collection for songs that had some history in my life. An admittedly self-indulgent exercise that I hope was at least entertaining.
Thanks for the link.
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