The ILM 1980s Anti-Rolling Stone Canon (FREE PUSSY RIOT) Rock Poll Results - ALBUMS! Top 20! ends today

but another big album by a big band on SST fails to make the top 20 and is up next

I would be stunned if children of god did not finish in the top 400

xp

Tom Troccoli's Dog? xp

Wished I brought a laptop on the plane to follow this. Basically the soundtrack to my college daze - Melvins, Mudhoney, Fugazi, Buttholes, My Bloody Valentine, Pixies. I was actually hugely disappointed with Doolittle when it came out. It's grown on me gradually, but still prefer Surfer Rosa. Great memories of getting the Melvins to play in front of our student union in 1990, seeing Mudhoney in a tiny room by U of MN, Pixies at 7th St. Entry in '88, Fugazi in some sort of warehouse in Mpls on an intensely hot summer night. Heading to north woods, gotta run.

Zen Arcade

the Minutemen never made a bad record, but Double Nickels never felt like it deserved the honor of being considered their best rec. I applaud the perversity of band built around minute-long songs releasing a 43-track monster, never mind a nominally hardcore band doing so, but the record feels less epic than padded. their strength resides in brevity, and f/me The Punch Line is the obvious pick. trying to reward the band w/ill-fitting AOR honors, picking in rote fashion their longest rec as their best, never quite made sense to me. that being said, I realize that a lot of people love it, and the Minutemen generally deserve all the compliments tossed their way.

zen arcade feels more padded than double nickels tbh

22 Hüsker Dü - Flip Your Wig 1638 Points, 26 Votes, One #1
http://www.slaytracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/tumblr_lcoihpfQLC1qdbq5l.jpeg
http://open.spotify.com/album/64ww8DQgkLRSFTUjNg0v47

absolutely xpost

I don't think I actually listened to all of Double Nickels until voting closed. It's great obv. Voted for fIREHOSE.

man did I hate flip your wig, and "makes no sense at all" was in non-stop rotation on the local college radio station

21 Trouble - Psalm 9 1656 Points, 24 Votes, One #1
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dlMIuPXi_r0/SxXJMGOjYTI/AAAAAAAAAeU/3o7WFurqhMo/s1600/Psalm+9.jpg

One of my high placed votes here.

Think we will just finish it all off today rather than finishing tomorrow. Everyone ok with that?

If so could jjj edit thread to top 20 finishing today

and perhaps sund4r could post a recap while i get my dinner?

zen arcade feels more padded than double nickels tbh

Zen Arcade is definitely padded, and another rec that should be 1/2 as long, but b/c it's an early rec, the band's ferocious moments really carry it through the dreck. I don't want to turn this into a Minutemen-bashing rant, though, b/c I love the band, and there are some great fucking songs on DNOTD.

yes!

xp

Direct Link to poll recap & full results

i support finishing it today

Thanks sund4r. The early Trouble albums are not on Spotify sadly but I urge you all to go listen to it or buy it!

If you wanna make predictions while I go eat then here's the nominations list to see what might make it apart from sonic youth

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnhCoxm3ycEQdG5RMmdwVlM0TkNlWnVSb3JDY3pDOXc&pli=1#gid=0

i'm off to see holy motors but looking forward to catching the end of this later.

20 Godflesh - Streetcleaner 1663 Points, 26 Votes, One #1
http://midnightpunk.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/1000x1000.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/6q7llDIB5lVTHmGpwTHxnK

Great, great record but their live shows were always the thing.

oh ha i forgot that hadnt shown up yet

really? saw them in the early 90s w/ napalm death and they were kind of boring.

xp

I think (and hope) that Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me places highly.

Nothings Shocking as well.

19 Swans - Children Of God 1666 Points, 25 Votes, Three #1s
http://i49.tinypic.com/nechzn.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/3P4unrOsMXF71cHVG3IkeS

I hope that children of god getting 1666 votes appeals to the metalhead inside us all

my #1. TOO LOW!

middle of my ballot, #25

great, great record but I don't listen to it much anymore, overplayed the hell out of it back in the day

likewise. i thin i actually wore it out and then was too worn out to buy it again.

is there a more womb-like song than "in my garden" I ask you

18 Meat Puppets - II 1687 Points, 27 Votes
http://www.silverdisc.com/images/74/760137532613.jpg
http://open.spotify.com/album/1pvIFpV3sw6pq4IYIzzKHo

haha really?

this poll is totally bizarre

hearing "in my garden" for the first time doubly shocking since it came shortly on the heels of public castration is a good idea, one of the most expertly pulled 180's I've borne witness to

my take on Children of God:

early swans was all about brutality, and public castration is the purest distillation. everything gira had done prior was a build-up to that material, and after the wave broke and receded they'd never get back there again. as an absurd reduction of rock's dionysian din to its elemental roots in the suffering of the blues, it exists outside of genre with even a barely tangential relationship to music itself. yet it's so compelling, sounds so massive, hasn't aged at all, and I still haven't heard a more harrowing record. a leviathan.

I agree w/all of this, but I would say that Children of God is the conceptual fork in the road of that build-up. Gira had indeed been building to the idea of pure, physical catharsis, which, as you say, culminated in Public Castration, which is clearly the existential endgame exploration of the power dynamics between performer and listener, tormentor and victim, self-flagellating masochist and the spectator who empowers him, etc. (I think that there’s actually a fairly large dialogue between the two positions, as they symbolize so many other relations outside of the context of music).

Gira’s thematic white whale, however, is obviously power per se, and I think Children of God takes that theme to the metaphysical level, or, really, as far it can go, as it involves ultimate power and ultimate sacrifice/submission. as part of this thematic exploration, the record’s unabashed beauty functions as an analogue to the notion of religion-as-intoxicant, and in a sense explores the aesthetics of prayer (via hypnotic and meditative music). I think the case you make for Public Castration as their best rec is compelling, but I almost feel that in talking about COG I’m discussing a separate peak. I’m also awed by the rec’s ability to include all of this thematic baggage and not descend into prog-rock levels of corn.

but it’s not an either/or thing f/me, and my choice of COG as my #1 pick comes down to the compelling ways the rec spoke to me about power, obsession, control, madness and melancholy when I bought it in ’87. tracks like In My Garden and the revamped version of Blackmail were like shelters from a storm that nonetheless felt uncompromised in their dark acknowledgements, and I’ll Swallow You, Blind Love and Children of God were inspiring in the way that they seemed to ride obsession to a kind of exalted ferocity that felt like a courageous turn away from nihilism. ultimately, COG opened aesthetic and philosophical doors for me that went beyond music at a crucial juncture in my life, and did so w/an impeccable blend of grandeur, power, sadness and delicacy that still astounds. an easy #1 pick.

some dude, avert yr. eyes f/blowhard detour.

I mean they went straight from this
http://youtu.be/yHES9YAGGkU
to this
http://youtu.be/ijIPY-MTClI

and yeah children of god is a major fork that still informs their work today

okay I'm going to take back what I said upthread

Junkyard deserves a high spot. It *is* fucking great. Prayers was always my goto album, I dunno why I never gave Junkyard as much love.

craziness

I think its safe to say the next one is way lower than expected due to tracks poll success

Y&T Open Fire?

oh wait 'tracks poll success' nm

omg wtf is this remix of "our love lies"

can someone pay gira a million dollars to reissue all the 80s albums mastered straight from vinyl pretty please

17 Big Black - Songs About Fucking 1706 Points, 33 Votes
http://www.silverdisc.com/images/00/036172072415.jpg

I still chuckle about watching Gira getting knocked back from entry to one of the Sufjan Steven's auditorium shows at Primavera in 2011. He kinda pleaded with the Spanish girl on the door about how he was someone important and all that and she was having none of it.

I mean they went straight from this
http://youtu.be/yHES9YAGGkU
to this
http://youtu.be/ijIPY-MTClI

yeah, it's just sick what they accomplished w/those two recs.

here's the original (superior) version of "our love lies"

http://youtu.be/gmFrEQzVshQ

Is anyone going to make predictions? instead of waiting until the #3 is posted and saying "oh i knew that would win"

Who is going to be brave? Who will do a jjj and do a ludicrous bet?

I mean they went straight from this
http://youtu.be/yHES9YAGGkU
to this
http://youtu.be/ijIPY-MTClI

yes, but the skin albums came out in the interim which offered a bit of a clue as to other possible directions. "in my garden" could easily have been on "blood, women, roses.