Ned, let's talk about your 136 Albums of the 90s.

i think these lists of opinion by lots of people are extraordinarily useful in todays music world -- i can only admire Ned's useful hyper-qualified effort here -- i wish that more of people's big lists were so good at qualification, on rationale.

and Ned seems to like participating here, which makes the list potentially 'interactive' (cool) (well that's up to him, all those hyper-qualifications enough volunteering already).

Thank You Ned.

That's not even that great an album. Is Dead is much better. There's nothing whiter than listing 3 Feet High on your hip-hop best-of. Okay, except for listing PM Dawn.

Yer welcome. The list -- which was composed a year before the start of ILX, to give it some context -- was very much a combination of whim and opportunity, but it seems to have lasted as an interesting enough personal document. But yeah, actually talking about every record -- which I did while listening to each specific one as I went -- is I think its best feature in the end.

Oh man.

Weird..."Show Business" is a weak track!? Frankly, I think hip hop hit a peak in the early 90s of flat-out PERFECTION that it has been unable to attain since...I'm not sure how you can dismiss albums like "Hard to Earn," "Illmatic," "Ready to Die," or "The Sun Rises..." as having filler tracks. Sounds sorta crazy to me...that was the peak of the Q-Tip-Large Pro-DJ Premier-Pete Rock production explosion, where the creativity and progressive production of the hip hop albums were achievements unsurpassed today...frankly, I find myself more bored listening to a lot of rock albums from the early 90s - Pearl Jam, RHCP, etc. etc. etc. than I do listening to hip hop. And indie rock, as a general rule, bores me SENSELESS. I do love My Bloody Valentine though.

?

This is quite possibly the most insane thing I've ever read.

I didn't call him a name, I called him wrong-thinking. But if you think that Mascis is kidding, or trying to somehow give us the opposite of what we expect, please elaborate. I think he's a truly sad guy who likes his 70's rock served warm.

Not an either/or question, I think! To me Mascis at his best is commenting on the nature of what Mark S once called "the dangerous and pernicious notion of INFLUENCE" or something along those lines - my Latin professor liked to compare it to INCEST, with the "son" or "daughter" (the "influenced") cannibalizing/"incesting" the "parent" i.e. the source material. What Mascis does/did with his influences is to my ears a really interesting act of reading-out-loud, and often a very sloppy one, which is where some of the irony lies. Not ha-ha irony: I think irony's a much more complex (and, lately, wrongly-derided) trope than just "I said one thing, but I meant another!" For this I blame Alanis Morissette.

(obligatory theory-check: no I don't think Mascis sat down and said "this is what I intend to do, and the world shall marvel at my wit!" rather I think that reading his stuff in ways that take off from the above-outlined possibility are the most interesting readings to give)

In the Sonic Youth sampler album from the mid-1990s (Screaming Fields of Sonic Love?), there's a flyer for a Sonic Youth/BHs/fIREHOSE show that says it's part of the "Sonic Butt Fire Tour".

But her definition of "ironic" was completely different to this!

Sloppier than Neil Young?

This is interesting, but I've never heard irony defined any way other than the dictionary way and the wrong way (facetiousness, coincidence). What exactly makes this cannibalism ironic?

Mind, I am not a giant Mascis fan or anything - I'm not one of those people whose lives were changed by You're Living All Over Me - but I do think he and his body of work are interesting, and not easily dismissable.

It occurs to me I still haven't answered Chris's original question. Hm.

Technically. But did they really?

1 Diamanda Galas – Vena Cava

2 Sonny Sharrock – Ask the Ages

3 Gyorgy Ligeti/Par Norgard – Violin Concertos etc (perf Christina Astrand/Danish NRSO) [mostly for the Ligeti]

4 Fred Frith Guitar Quartet – Ayaya Moses

5 Morton Feldman – Neither (perf Sarah Leonard/Radio Sinfonie Orchester Frankfurt)

6 La Monte Young & the Theatre of Eternal Music Brass Band – The Second Dream of the High-Tension Stepdown Transformer from the Four Dreams of China

7 Evan Parker/Sainkho Namtchylak – Mars Song

8 CCMC – Decisive Moments

9 George Crumb – Makrokosmos Vols I & II (perf Jo Boatright)

10 John Cage – The Seasons (perf Margaret Leng Tan/American Composers Orchestra)

11 Pole – CD1

12 Pan Sonic – A

13 Derek Bailey/Pat Metheny/Gregg Bendian/Paul Wertico – The Sign of 4

14 Ryoji Ikeda - +/-

15 Massive Attack - Mezzanine [largely because of what it soundtracked]

16 Jim O’ Rourke - Scend

17 Pulp – Different Class

18 Lalgudi Jayraman - Violin

19 Ground Zero – Revolutionary Pekinese Opera

20 Goodie Mob – Still Standing

21 Eugene Chadbourne/Paul Lovens – Patrizio: A Suite to the Waters of the World

22 Iancu Dumitrescu – ED MN 1005

23 Kadri Gopalnath - Saxophone

24 Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children

25 Terry Riley – Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band “All Night Flight”

26 Hariprasad Chaurasiya – Ragas Durgawati and Mishra Shivaranjani

27 Eliot Fisk – Sequenza! [pretty much only for the Berio sequenza, which is earth-shattering enough to justify including this. Otherwise I have no need to hear Fisk play traditional classical music. He's kind of brittle and dry, if technically flawless.]

28 Iva Bittova

29 Pat Metheny – Zero Tolerance for Silence

30 Ikue Mori – Garden

31 Diamanda Galas – Malediction and Prayer

32 LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out

33 Missy Elliot – Supa Dupa Fly

34 I. S. O.

35 Aube - Cardiac Strain

36 Dr Chitti Babu - Veena

37 Fushitsusha – Allegorical Misunderstanding

38 Voivod – Angel Rat

39 Fushitsusha – Withdrawe, This Sable Disclosure Ere Devot’d

40 Henry Kaiser/Jim O’Rourke – Tomorrow Knows Where You Live

41 Fred Frith – Quartets

42 Dr Balamuralikrishnan – Carnatic Vocal

43 DJ Shadow - Endtroducing

44 Maryanne Amacher – Sound Characters

45 Tony Conrad w/ Faust – Outside the Dream Syndicate

46 Phill Niblock – Music by Phill Niblock

47 Ryoji Ikeda - 0 [degrees] C

48 My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

49 Main – Motion Pool

50 Arto Lindsay Trio – Aggregates 1-26

51 Magic Hour – No Excess Is Absurd

52 Pixies – Trompe le Monde

53 Portishead - Dummy

54 De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising

55 Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual

56 Iannis Xenakis – Electronic Music

57 Nirvana – In Utero

58 Almighty Trigger Happy - Disturbo

59 Beautifuzz

60 Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream

61 Sonic Youth – Dirty

62 Radiohead – OK Computer

63 Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

64 Endwar – ENON: One Thirsty Afternoon

65 Sonic Youth – Goo

66 The Dismemberment Plan – Emergency and I

67 Shudder to Think – Funeral at the Movies

68 V/A – The Best of Acid Jazz, Vol 2

69 REM – Monster

70 Sonic Youth – Washing Machine [mostly for "The Diamond Sea"]

71 Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger

72 Nirvana – Nevermind

73 Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Return to the 36 Chambers

74 V/A - Downtown Does the Beatles [mostly for the Lydia Lunch, King Missile, Eugene Chadbourne, and Buddha Pest. All the brass band type stuff sucks.]

75 Okara – Months Like Years

76 Smashing Pumpkins - Pisces Iscariot

77 Shotmaker – Mouse Ear Forget Me Not

78 Nirvana – Unplugged In New York

79 Tactile – Inscape

80 Jack Vorvis/Michael Snow – Black and White: Incredible Drums and Piano Duets

81 Sonic Youth – Goodbye 20th Century

82 Sonic Youth/Jim O’Rourke – SYR 3

83 The Magnetic Fields – 69 Love Songs

84 Gorguts – Obscura

85 Superchunk – No Pocky for Kitty

86 Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet [at this point, we get into albums I don't actually listen to much now]

87 Public Enemy – Apocalypse ‘91

88 Kubelka - We're Gonna Do It Like This Now

89 The Magnetic Fields – Get Lost

90 Tori Amos – Under the Pink

91 Fugazi – Steady Diet of Nothing

92 Fugazi – Red Medicine

93 V/A - Firestarter (Century Black compilation)

Dr N Ramani - Fascinating Flute between Magic Hour and Pixies

Henry Threadgill - Makin' a Move and
Marc Ribot - Shoe String Symphonettes between Goo and Dismemberment Plan

Goodie Mob - World Party between Nevermind and ODB

Television's s/t between Unplugged in New York and Tactile [based entirely on pleasant memories from like 5 years ago when I had it]

The Ex - Mudbird Shivers between SYR3 and 69 Love Songs

Susie Ibarra/Assif Tsahar - Home Cookin' between Get Lost and Tori Amos

Anyway, yeah I know I should start another thread or something.

Ned, any chance we'll ever get a 136 Albums of the 80s?