I never did like Rolling Stone…
Say what you want to say (and hang for your hollow ways!), but the reason I can dismiss America’s largest music magazine so freely and without a guilty conscience lies rooted in Rolling Stone’s disturbingly exceptional ability to spread ignorance among teenage music geeks and generationally biased adults everywhere. Their followers think they’re still reading about the greatest music being put out today, but the truth is that the magazine that claims to be printing “all the news that fits” is too goddamn nearsighted and confident in their tunnel-vision reporting antics to catch most of what’s relevant about the last twenty years of music. Still, I have to give them credit for compiling their mammoth “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list. It was pretty ballsy of them. Okay- maybe it was a wee bit arrogant, but it was the kind of Wayne-Coyne-covering-Dark-Side-of-the-Moon-ballsy-arrogence that I like (the kind that makes Werner Herzog cream himself).
I was drawn to this project because like Mike Natale I’m a little obsessed with lists. However, I tend to side with the film critic / recently converted Blog enthusiast who I abnormally obsess over, Roger Ebert*, when it comes to organizing them.
I too am a sophomore film major at C.W. Post who like any self-effacing acid-gobbling punk rocker with too much free time happens to enjoy feeding my brain music until it feels as though it’s going to burst. I made my picture the album cover of Wolf Parade’s "Apologies to the Queen Mary" in an effort to kill my ego. It was either that or a picture of Wayne Coyne’s face covered in blood. God bless the Lips.
*I have a problem when it comes to gushing over Ebert. I’m sorry but I really respect how fair the guy is. He believes a good list, whether it contains movies or albums, should be a celebration of the selected titles (as opposed to a competition). For that reason, I enjoy shamelessly violating the age-old custom of numbering lists in an arbitrary effort to claim one album is “better” than another. I think it’s ridiculous to say an album is more a #1 than a #2 or #3.The point is that the album is great and it deserves notice. Mike and I would like to think we’re filtering Rolling Stone’s list through our own critical lenses, which you in turn can filter through your own. Your feedback is more than welcome.
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