Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me
Abba, Thank You for The Music
OK, to explain the dead space: I was lost in music. More specifically, I’ve spent most of my free time over the last several months ripping and organizing my music collection using Apple’s iTunes. I started off putting a collection of about 200 CDs into iTunes. It took a couple of weeks to get everything encoded. It took several more weeks to add album art and to get everything labeled and organized. Then came the big events – a 40GB iPod for Christmas and the Rolling Stone issue listing the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The Rolling Stone list came out on December 11, 2003. It both validated and ridiculed my music collection. It elevated guilty pleasures from my collection, like Madonna’s Music, (RS # 452) to the level of high art. On the downside, however, when you find out you own fewer than 20 albums on the list, you start to question your taste in music.
The list is comprehensive, covering all genres of music except classical. It has been criticized for being too centered on music of the 60s (I count 110 albums from the decade), and for excluding rap (I count 28 albums). I tend to agree that the list trends toward music and artists from the 60s and 70s, but I understand how this can be the case. Part of the test of an album’s worthiness is how it holds up over time. In another 20 years the list will surely be different. As for the rap on rap, I don’t see it. Rap comes out ahead of other genres like country (14 albums), and jazz (6 albums), so based purely on numbers it’s hard to find merit in the criticism.
For me the list served as a road map to musical discovery. I started to acquire albums from the list to fill out my collection. I was surprised by how much I liked the early Rolling Stones, particularly Exile on Main Street (RS #7). I’m sure this is sacrilege, but I also was surprised at how funny I thought Bob Dylan sounded (he reminded me of Eddie Murphy doing Buckwheat on SNL). After a few rounds of buying music off of the Rolling Stone list, I now have about 50 of the top albums. Apart from the physical albums, however, I have acquired something much more valuable. I have music!
This is where the iPod has been a gift from God. Thanks to the iPod, my music is accessible. I listen to it in the car, at work, and at home. I listen to music now far more than I ever did when my music was just on CDs. It has added a whole new dimension to my life. So, Apple and Rolling Stone: thank you for the music!
Here is the Rolling Stone list with dates and genres added. Here is the same list in Excel spreadsheet format.
This is ridiculous. Karl Rove may be a legitimate target for political discourse. He’s a public figure, and therefore should expect to be the subject of more offensive speech than his next door neighbors. But this absolutely ridiculous. The weekend protest by National People’s Action, a group supporting an immigrant education bill, carried things into the next realm of political unbelievabilty. The group protested at Karl Rove’s house, which even if they had stayed on the sidewalk seems extreme. Not content with run-of-the-mill extremism, however, the group swarmed over Rove’s yard, pounded on his home’s windows, and demanded a private audience with him. Here’s how the Washington Post described it:
