GOAT music debate stuff

[JerryvonKramer]

Since this didn't come out in the Daily Digests, I'll share it here: my guide to all 35 Bob Dylan albums.

 

http://placetobenation.com/parvs-guide-to-bob-dylans-albums/

 

Looks like Wu-Tang (including all solo LPs) will be next. In about a month.

[JerryvonKramer]

After the Bowie and Dylan album guides, I wanted to write something on the Wu-Tang Clan. Four months later, here is part 1. I've tried to write it for people who aren't into hip-hop at all to help them understand it better. Part 2 will cover the albums.

http://placetobenation.com/parvs-guide-to-the-wu-tang-clan-part-1/

 

Had some PMs of interest about this so thought I'd share here.

[Mr. Lacelle]

I don't want to derail this thread, but I don't think there's any argument at all to put Charles, Brown, Crosby or Armstrong (or indeed Sinatra) in the same conversation as Dylan or the Beatles. I can see real jazz fans making an argument for Miles Davis, but then you're getting into a different ballpark. I have listened to every album by all of the people named there and they are not at Dylan levels peak or otherwise. Beatles are a rare case of only being peak.

If you're not opposed to the idea of country, than Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings certainly belong in the discussion.

[MoS]

Discovered this thread. My two personal favourite "Western" musical acts are The Beatles and Bill Simmons. Close to them would basically be every song Supernatural has ever featured. "Knocking on Heaven's Door", "Smoke on the water", "renegade", and for some inexplicable reason, "Heartbreaker", by Pat Benatar.

 

But I wanted to post this because, while it never surprises me, it does rather make me sad that most hugely passionate and knowledgeable music fans have never heard or know anything about Indian music. I think, to most Americans, Indian music would be "that song in SLumdog Millionaire". And probably Khali's entrance theme, if you're a modern day wrestling fan. India has a tradition of music as diverse and rich as America, I would argue, although of course, it hasn't necessarily touched the peaks of American/British greats.

[supremebve]

So, we are going to act like James Brown isn't the single most important musical act in all of modern music. He is the bridge from Rock, to Soul, to R&B, to Funk, to Hip-Hop. Without him, music sounds completely different than it does now. There are people we can call great for multiple reasons, but there is only one man who built the highway that all modern music drives on.

[elliott]

I just found this thread and figured I'd throw my two cents in.

 

I love Bob Dylan. Have all of his studio albums, a bunch of live recording, Ive seen him live multiple times (as an old man, but still), have books written by him and about him etc etc etc.

 

And I still say Towns van Zandt was better. And Joni Mitchell. There are a bunch of women who deserve to be mentioned.

 

As far as hip hop, I consider Biggie to be insanely overrated. He's not someone I would even consider for a top 10 rappers list. KRS-One is the obvious parallel to Bob Dylan for lots of reasons.

[JerryvonKramer]

I just found this thread and figured I'd throw my two cents in.

 

I love Bob Dylan. Have all of his studio albums, a bunch of live recording, Ive seen him live multiple times (as an old man, but still), have books written by him and about him etc etc etc.

 

And I still say Towns van Zandt was better. And Joni Mitchell.

I absolutely will not get into the debate, but out of interest what makes you say this? Which albums do you consider to be better than Dylan's best albums and why? And which songs? It's a view I've not come across before.

 

If you've not seen it, here's my Dylan guide: http://placetobenation.com/parvs-guide-to-bob-dylans-albums/

 

Also, if you're into hip-hop here's part 1 of my Wu-Tang guide (part 2 maybe by May!): http://placetobenation.com/parvs-guide-to-the-wu-tang-clan-part-1/. If you go to page 7, for fun there's a "depth chart" there where I rank rappers in different catgories. Although, again, no interest in debating.

[elliott]

Without going too super indepth...

 

Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell have always been connected for me. I started listening to them around them same time in my early teens and never looked back. They've pretty much spent the last two decades at or near the top of my favorites list. The parallels are obvious. Anything you can say about Dylan, you can say about Joni. I view them as the female/male versions of each other. Their style, output, peak, longevity, etc is all basically the same with Dylan starting a little earlier and Joni's peak ending a little later. I think Joni wrote the two best albums of the Dylan/Towns/Joni trio with Court & Spark and Blue. Hejira doesn't get the knee jerk "Best Joni album" reaction the other two get from most fans, but the more I listen to it the more I think it is on that level. Hissing on Summer Lawns, For the Roses and Ladies of the Canyon compare well to the 2nd tier "best Dylan Albums."

 

Joni's main disadvantage is that she is Canadian.

 

I discovered Towns probably 5 years after I first started heavily listening to Dylan and Joni and he pretty much hopped right into contention with them. My immediate reaction upon first hearing Towns was "Oh, so he's like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash put together, yes this is for me." He's great for all of the same reasons as Dylan & Joni. When you first start listening to them the first thing that jumps out (at least it did for me) is the songwriting. They are all masterful songwriters. Best of the best. Able to play the roles of storyteller, comedian, realist, activist, etc with ease. When I first started reading about Towns, I learned Bob Dylan was a huge fan, had all of his albums and always wanted to collaborate. Which made perfect sense.

 

Towns' best advantage is his worst disadvantage. He wasn't as prolific as Dylan or Joni both commercially and in terms of sheer output. Towns doesn't have as many songs/albums as Dylan or Joni. But he has the advantage of never putting out a shitty album. Literally every single one from For the Sake of the Song in 1968 to No Deeper Blue in 1994 was great. The only real negative I could come up with for Towns is that he didn't make more music. He made 10 studio albums and I genuinely think they all range from classic to great. I don't think any of them are just so so or mediocre. I can't say the same for Joni or Dylan.

 

So they're all interconnected for me both in terms of their art and my personal experience with it. I'm like you (and most/all) Dylan fans in that I absolutely hate the "Dylan has a shitty voice" criticism. It isn't just lazy and dumb but for me it misses the point. His voice is great and part of the whole experience. I get that people don't like it. But it works for me and I view it as a positive. But if you asked me if I would rather listen to peak Joni Mitchell sing a song or Bob Dylan sing a song, I'm picking Joni 100 times out of a 100. Replace Joni with Towns and you're getting the same answer.

 

I get thinking Dylan is the best. But I think Dylan, Joni & Towns are virtually the same artist in terms of their strengths. I think Towns has the "No bad albums" advantage over Dylan. Joni's absolute top tier 2 album peak is the best of the 3 and I think she compares well with Dylan in terms of depth of great albums.

 

They'd all be in my top 10.

[JerryvonKramer]

Thanks for detailed answer. Interesting viewpoint. Good impetus for me to pick up the Towns and Joni albums again and try to see them in that same light. In my mind Towns albums are all very good but none at five-star all-time level, but I'm going to try to get reacquainted after this comparison. It is an exciting prospect.

 

For me, as you might suspect from the article, I genuinely see Dylan on the level of a Shakespeare or WB Yeats or Mozart or someone like that, someone who might realistically win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which I don't think is true of any other songwriter living or dead. It's something about that kaleidoscopic melting of the Great American Songbook, and the fact that he had the late trilogy of great albums from Time Out of Mind to Modern Times that puts him completely out of reach for me. I don't really see anyone else touching him lyrically -- which is, of course, a view that is very prevalent among English Lit professors.

[JerryvonKramer]

For those who have been following, part 3 of Top 100 music act list now online (in my sig, faves list not greatest list).

[elliott]

Parv did you ever end up listening to any Towns van Zandt or Joni Mitchell? I've been on a weird Joni Mitchell/Iris Dement/Tom Waits/Aesop Rock kick lately which would probably explain why I am an insane person.

 

edit:

 

And only 4 women in the 100-26 seems basically impossible. I guess 5 if you wanna count the one White Stripe. Put Amy Winehouse #1 and all is forgiven.

 

double edit:

 

Not to totally be a dick and say some nice things, there are a ton of people I really love on here. Always excited to see Gang Starr get love. I totally popped for Girl Talk who I completely forgot about and takes me back to a very specific, hazy and possibly sticky time and place. Violent Femmes is another super cool pick. They gave me free tix to a show on their current tour because they liked the unnecessarily fancy cheese I gave them. Good stuff. Although Kanye over John Lennon makes me want to hit things in a Shawn Michaels over Ric Flair sort of way

[JerryvonKramer]

For those interested, part 4 is up.

[Ricky Jackson]

I do not believe I have ever heard a Bob Dylan song - or if I have I didn't know it was Bob Dylan.Who is the musical equivalent to "I've never seen a Ric Flair match?"Michael Jackson?Led Zeppelin?

This would've been a huge red flag, eh Parv?

[Superstar Sleeze]

Did Ke$ha make the list? Otherwise the entire thing is a sham.

[JerryvonKramer]

Did Ke$ha make the list? Otherwise the entire thing is a sham.

[BrianB]

I'll just bemoan the lack of Miles Davis, though I can understand if you don't like the genre of music not inluding him. Tremendous style diversity, stong peaks at multiple genres and styles, a massive influence that extended well-beyond his classified music genre.

 

I can understand not placing him high if you don;t enjoy the music tremendously, but in terms of innovation, the length of a peak run, influence, consistency, he'd have to be on any list imo. I personally think Jazz rates very highly as an art for music because of how intricate and skilled some of it can be, as well as how key improvisation within certain accepted 'standards' is to doing it well. If you don't like that, I guess that's fine. It all boils down to taste. But Miles was great at doing either one. Either being tyranical to get his talented bandmates to conform to his vision, or getting them to come out and improvise within certain parameters and never reaching the complete disharmony and cacophony of stuff like Free Jazz.

[JerryvonKramer]

With this being a favourites list, my hope was that folks would focus on what is there and why rather than what is missing. I don't doubt the greatness of Davis, he just wasn't for my list. And I can't add a lot of value or insight there.

 

It's less about the rankings and more a list for music fans to discover new stuff or see stuff they already know in a different light. I wouldn't want anyone to lament a placement or an absence.

[BrianB]

That's fair. I hadn't completed read through all this thread either before posting. I think our musical tastes differ quite a bit from early listenings of your pod, parts 1 and 2 and then reading some of the rest. But that's no fault of your list or anything, Music, maybe more than any art form, is the most subjective because of how it's so dialed into emotions and how certain sounds resonate and register with each individual. FWIW, the choices you made seem well considered and though there are some patterns, it certainly doesn't seem like a by rote list--iow, your choices seem quite individual and particular although in line with some general preferences--I suspect that impression will be only more borne out if/when I listen to the final 2 parts.

[JerryvonKramer]

Thanks Brian. My view on this is that one has to forge one's own path. Explore, discover, figure out where you stand. That's all you can do, and I don't think it happens overnight. With music especially I think it took me years to figure out which bands lauded by the magazines I could safely say weren't for me, and which were -- and even then it's always subject to change. I do give everything a chance and a long chance, at least 1-2 months of sustained immersion if it's someone I'm exploring properly. And that isn't to say a few years down the line I won't try again and maybe something will click that didn't the first time.

 

Some helpful chap on another site has listed out every entry so far. Pretty handy for a quick reference:

 

 

 

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. Lead Belly

22. The Rolling Stones

23. Joanna Newsom

24. Blind Willie McTell

25. Nick Drake

26. The White Stripes / Jack White

27. Iggy Pop / The Stooges

28. Scott Walker

29. The Doors

30. The Notorious B.I.G.

31. Randy Newman

32. The Beach Boys

33. Run the Jewels

34. Harry Nilsson

35. OutKast

36. Paul McCartney

37. Depeche Mode

38. Mississippi Sheiks

39. Pink Floyd

40. Led Zeppelin

41. Joy Division / New Order

42. The Clash

43. Devo

44. Public Enemy

45. The Velvet Underground

46. Steely Dan

47. Son House

48. Sly & The Family Stone

49. Nirvana

50. The Prodigy

51. Golden Gate Quartet

52. Gang Starr

53. Tennessee Ernie Ford

54. Dr. Dre

55. Cole Porter

56. Charley Patton

57. XTC

58. Ella Fitzgerald

59. Merle Travis

60. Minutemen

61. Eric B. & Rakim

62. Bukka White

63. Sparks

64. Nick Lowe

65. Squeeze

66. Skip James

67. Blur

68. Curtis Mayfield

69. Sufjan Stevens

70. Lou Reed

71. Kanye West

72. Blind Willie Johnson

73. Leo Reisman and His Orchestra

74. Booker T. & The M.G.'s

75. John Lennon

76. David Ackles

77. Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell

78. Tim Hardin

79. Jimmy Smith

80. of Montreal

81. Wire

82. Stephen Duffy / The Lilac Time

83. The Troggs

84. Ian Dury & The Blockheads

85. Busta Rhymes

86. Madness

87. George Formby

88. Reverend Charlie Jackson

89. Tim Buckley

90. Peggy Lee

91. Violent Femmes

92. Kurt Vile

93. Monks

94. They Might Be Giants

95. The Meters

96. Louis Prima

97. Vashti Bunyan

98. Al Bowlly

99. Girl Talk

100. Art Brut

 

[JerryvonKramer]

Part 5 is now up.

[flyonthewall2983]

All I have to say is this, 5 pages and no mention of Pink Floyd?

 

[MoS]

Dylan getting a Nobel prize reminded me of this.

[JerryvonKramer]

I was over the moon yesterday at that news. I will share once again my long guide to all Dylan's albums which I tried to design to help people get into him: http://placetobenation.com/parvs-guide-to-bob-dylans-albums/

 

One of only a handful of writers I'd put in the same sort of league as Shakespeare. After my next book, I'm determined that the one after is going to be on Dylan.

[El-P]

Yeah, Bob Dylan is really relevant in 2016. Meanwhile, current Syrian poet Adonis, and I mean *current* in every sense of the word, doesn't get it ? Really ? It's somewhat a travesty actually. But whatever. I mean Obama got the Nobel prize in 2009, so it really means shit. Except some would benefit more from the worldwide media attention (not to mention not being washed up rock'n roll glories from 40 years ago). Senile gibberish hippies indeed, all respect due to Mr Zimmerman. Yeah, whatever.

[JerryvonKramer]

Some of Dylan's strongest work has been in the past fifteen years or so. And he produced some incredible songs in every decade with masterpieces even at seemingly his lowest points (e.g. early 70s, mid-80). To say he isn't relevant or that he didn't deserve his prize somewhat misses the mark, and I'll warrant in a 100 or even 200 years they'll still be writing about Bob Dylan songs. This is the sort of artist that doesn't come around terribly often, not every generation has one. He's a Shakespeare or Dante level of artist with an astonishing body of work. I regularly teach Beckett as well as Pinter, both of whom won the Nobel prize, and I would rank Dylan safely on par with either of them in terms of his overall artistic vision across all his works, if anything he exceeds them because his range is wider.