So a good friend of mine has this boomer asshole at his firm (homeboy's favorite band is Cream), and this man, so I am told, has issued a challenge. He, like so many of his enormous voting block of Beatles-loving compatriots, thinks that their generation has created the only credible music of the modern era, and he has asked me to back up my disagreement with five albums. He has promised to listen to all five, and I, or rather my good friend, would like your advice. Which albums, my dearest men, do you think embody the intrigue of our wayward generation? How can we make this man say, "I was SO wrong... how can I go on living such a lie?"
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
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4 comments:
Shouldn't it be something easy like "OK Computer" or "It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" or "Nevermind" or "The Clash" or some fucking U2 album? Hell, why not even throw in Huey Lewis and the News. Cream? Fuck you.
The gauntlet has been thrown, eh? Were I to face this daunting challenge, here is what would come to mind first:
1. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing - even if he doesn't admit defeat on this one, it showcases somthing that has no analog in the Cream-era.
2. Radiohead - I lean toward Kid A, but that's just me.
3. Bjork - Homogenic or Post
4. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antartica
5. OutKast - Aquemini (sans "Mamacita" if possible)
The premise of the challenge is flawed. We don't experience music in a vacuum. Music is entangled with our experiences, and as such can take on this weird sort of Pavlovian importance in our lives.
No one who was at Woodstock or saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and had his life shaped by those experiences in the context of the upheavals of the 1960's can sit down and listen to OK, Computer and consider it objectively. It's impossible. I think John Lennon was a unique genius, but for God's sake, someone who loves Cream is thinking with his heart and his heart alone. That kind of unjustifiable, inarticulable love transcends reason. Tell your friend to reject the terms. As Homer Simpson once said, if you can't do it the first time, give up. It's too hard.
That said: Off the top of my head, I'd nominate Tribe's Midnight Marauders, Mos' Black on Both Sides, Arcade Fire's Funeral (I know it's hard to admit, but they're that good), Belle & Sebastian's The Boy with the Arab Strap, REM's Green, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane, The Cure's Disintegration, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville (even if it's not amazing, it's pretty great, and is a complete response to the Stones' album), The Magnetic Fieds' 69 Love Songs, The Pixie's Death to the Pixies, and I can't come up with just an album for the Smiths or New Order. And fuck all y'all if you're going to hate on me; ain't none of you bitches comment on my posts.
Dear Mr. Streets -
Your point is very well taken, and I believe that I have mischaracterized the project here. I meant in no way to question said lawyer's musical taste or to malign his preference set. I only meant to disprove him in his contention that our generation had nothing to offer musically. And in this, I think that the albums posted will do quite nicely. I think that I will add Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted to the list, though not because I think it their best.
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