To "rock fans", what is meant to be the canonical, everyone can agree on, album of the decade?

I don't think I know any average stoner rock dudes my age tbh unless you count the kids who still listen to Dave Matthews Band

Albums of the 90s = I love the 90s

This connection seems weak. Part of their canonical status derives from the fact that they're considered "timeless," whereas I Love the '90s suggests a "lol 90s" attitude toward something.

contenderizer uve been saying lots of good stuff. my main point wz that the choices one makes in order to become a rockist and in order to become an average rock fan are parallel to the point of being nearly identical, save that option #1 involves more reading and opinions and stuff...why shouldnt average stoner dudes be rockists? that was all i was saying...

yeah but making them rep for a decade works against their canon timelessness

(xpost to jay)

even though I am a college-age male rock fan I am totally out of touch with what the average college-age male rock fan listens to. my friends all listen to different things it seems like.

1 Kid A
2 Speakerboxx/Love Below
3 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4 Elephant
5 some MIA album

dark horse: Silent Shout

― Drugs A. Money

serious? cuz one of the fun things about this thread is trying to draw (or vaguely imply) some totally indefensible line in the sand between "rock albums, specifically" and the larger pop context that those so-called rock albums occur in. the fact that this game is impossible but can still be played is the challenging, interesting part.

i say that cuz i think what yr. doing is more like listing a big tent pazz/jop canon, with some radio rockist emphasis, rolling stone style. a much less tricky prospect, and on that level i'm with you. throw in the marshall mathers LP, discovery, rock steady, maybe a WTF drone metal album for texture, et voila.

BUT WHAT R THE ROCK RECORDS? (check the guy's rock record)

yeah but making them rep for a decade works against their canon timelessness

Well, there's a difference between "best album of the decade" vs. "album most representative of the decade." I guess I thought we were talking primarily about the former.

the choices one makes in order to become a rockist and in order to become an average rock fan are parallel to the point of being nearly identical, save that option #1 involves more reading and opinions and stuff.

Sure, but what it comes down to for me is whether we're trying to identify this decade's Nevermind or this decade's Dirt.

jay was talking abt canon...right now tha top 5 list is what i thought was most likely to go canon...for the most part all I've been trying to do is find cool maybe-overlooked rock records and building up some buzz for them for the inevitable end-of-decade poll, lest they get forgotten...i've been dropping hints of making a end-of-decade list around these parts for a little while now; i'm wondering if Dom wasnt taking the piss out of me when he fired up this lulzthread...

is there something inherently rockist about defining a decade with a couple of albums?

― Drugs A. Money

not necessarily. what i've been doing here is trying to suss out (project, imagine) what ppl a few years/decades down the line will think of the 00s, think of "rock", think of the relationship btwn the 2, and how they'll solidify those conceptions in a canon. it's not a totally imaginary enterprise, cuz you can see the groundwork for future understandings being laid in the now.

that's why i've been trying to maintain some kind of critical distance, to de-emphasize what i think the decade "should" be remembered for (what it would be remembered for if everybody was as smart & perspicacitated as me), and to concentrate instead on observable history-creep.

also jay: lotsa Dirt fans are Nevermind fans (and vice versa; Dirt's a pretty good record*)

*(tho I'm wondering if its a pop record; it gets by mainly on its radio-ready singles...)

contenderizer you might be right...sry if most of my rock-isnt-a-word bs rhetoric is sucking the fun out of the thread...

I remember in 2001 VH1 was all like "Creed: the future of rock???"

The death knell of being able to answer this question honestly must have come well before OK Computer cos that record is okay at best and it's still considered a touchstone

Well, there's a difference between "best album of the decade" vs. "album most representative of the decade. I guess I thought we were talking primarily about the former.

― jaymc

see, i'm coming at this from a very different direction. although it's relevant, i'm not talking about or the former AT ALL. i'm sort of talking about the latter, but primarily in terms of how "the canon" will conceptualize the decade, influencing the selection of represeners. in making my case for kid A, i leaned heavily on why i think it's representative -- but i did this only to suggest that this built-in representativeness gives it a leg up in the canonization process.

I remember in 2001 VH1 was all like "Creed: the future of rock???"

― on some charter shit no doubt (Curt1s Stephens), Thursday, February 19, 2009 1:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no they werent

vidz or it didnt happen

the list contenderizer posted earlier is pretty OTM - think viva la vida prob belongs on there too

maybe it was 2000

also jay: lotsa Dirt fans are Nevermind fans (and vice versa; Dirt's a pretty good record*)

Oh, no doubt. I'm not claiming these are separate groups, nor even implying anything about the quality of each record, just that one is canonized and the other isn't, for better or worse.

I don't remember exactly what was said but I remember the words "future of rock music" were spoken over a vid of Scott Stapp in full-on Christ mode soaring over the crowd with 3d revolving camera effects and dramatic guitar wranglin'

damn I'm actually getting nostalgic for those early '00s music video gimmicks now

I'm not claiming these are separate groups, nor even implying anything about the quality of each record, just that one is canonized and the other isn't, for better or worse.

― jaymc

not so sure about that. in the overall critical canon, nirvana shines from on high, but in the more contentious rockist trenches, the difference between the two isn't quite as vast.

to put my last post another way, i'm talking about the "best of the decade" and "representative of the decade" as though they're two sides of the same coin. dirt and nevermind have both been canonized, though in different ways.

knee-jerk "yr talkin bout ROCK lolz" thing is weird

but jay did Nevermind only gain access to the rockist canon? I know it's kind of unhip right now to namedrop Nirvana, but certainly their contributions to popular music have been universally acknowledged at least?

or do rockists not like Dirt? is that what ur saying?

knee-jerk "yr talkin bout ROCK lolz" thing is weird

me?

Honestly I think Coldplay are probably the band we're looking for here even if I & other ppl here aren't fans.

no, not u, drugz. just something that's come up here and there on the thread

yeah, Kid A is so representative that it couldn't even win the P&J poll in its year of release.

oh yeah I guess Kid A would probably work too wouldn't it

Collision Course - Linkin Park and Jay-Z

coldplay are a risky call, cuz they not only piss off the die-hards & rockists, they don't enjoy a great deal of critical respect. plus the UK/US divide is pronounced. and again, i think bands that can't manage to establish auras of art/crit-holiness around their work are rarely canonized. this is why nirvana tend to ace out AIC. coldplay don't even get junk-pain cred points.

yeah, Kid A is so representative that it couldn't even win the P&J poll in its year of release.

― Ioannis

kid A is and was divisive. i'm not saying it's THE RECORD OF THE 00s, but i have the feeling that even its divisiveness will only add to its cred in the long run

didn't read thread, but if one were to argue that Nevermind is the canonical rock album of the 90s, I suppose a case could be made for one of the White Stripes' big sellers? Elephant? I'm guessing it doesn't come near the stratospheric numbers that Nevermind did, but I imagine "rock" doesn't move the units it did 15 years ago, either.

the properties of Kid A seem to have been taken by the greater rockcrit mass (pop is a music; rock is a body of criticism) as a sort of guideline of what interesting music sounded like this decade...its relentlesly futurist technological impulse meant that most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble in electrodrizzle*...its strains of anti-music, and anti-song would lend artistic currency to all different types of experimentation in noise and formlessness...hell, it could be said that its lingering devotion to anthemic rock prolley managed to leave a niche for bands like The Killers to attain quasi-cool status, plus Radiohead leaving rock behind meant that Coldplay could sell 5 million albums...

I imagine people could call bullshit on every point i made, and its true...Kid A prolley did not make electronica or noise cool. it's bcz I'm kind of a rock fan that I dont know this, but I do imagine that 95% of the population is at least as ignorant as me, so I imagine that theres a lot of people out there to whom Kid A acted as a way into the decade...

most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble in electrodrizzle

^^ pretty questionable premise imo

prolley; I'm groping for something but I don't think I nailed it in that post

i LOVE elephant, and it seems like one of the few big rock records of the 00s that held up WR2 critical respect and popular attention. plus it is undeniably a ROCK RECORD -- very formalist and even reactionary in its rockist agenda and respect for the canon.

but there are a lot of ways that it just isn't nevermind (or nevermind the bollocks). first, it didn't have a profound influence on rock and pop. if anything, it came at the tail end of a blip in interest in retro-formalist rock, capping a small splash with few ripples. second, as you say, it wasn't a MASSIVE hit. just a strong steady seller that got a lot of press attention at the time. finally, it doesn't really articulate a generational POV. it's a great record, but by no means a rallying cry.

EDIT: and i'm totally on board with drugz' claims about radiohead's influence. said pretty much the same thing sometime yesterday. the phrase "most of the beloved indie albums of the decade would at least dabble" is overstated, but still conveys a useful truth about what's going on now and how radiohead (and beck, and teh flaming lips, and lots of others) laid the groundwork.

kid a does a much better job of satisfying these last 3 demands. it was more influential, a bigger hit, and it seemed to speak as the emotional voice of its moment.

i dont really like Elephant

weird. stuck my "EDIT" in the middle of the post. last paragraph was sposed to come before the one preceding.

to restate: you did nail it, drugz. only problem is that u hyperbolized a bit. and not liking elephant is cool. i'm a garage rock stan from way back, and was so totally on board with the white stripes at that point that they could do no wrong. the fact that they managed to crank out "seven nation army" in the process sealed the deal forever

yeah i like garage rock a lot too...BIG Dirtbombs fan...like a bunch of White Stripes records just not that one...

If Nevermind is the canonical choice of the 90s, what would be the record of the 80s?

Or put in a slightly different way, do we expect every decade to have a single album that has a huge galvanizing effect on the music world the way Nevermind did?

daydream nation?

dare?

VH MCMLXXXIV

eh?

rly?

maybe the 80s were a different world

idk :-/

Thrillerz??

some might not want to call it "rock" butit did huge numbers, had EVH, and sort of legitimaized (?) video & pop/rock synergism?? That's pretty fuckin 80s..

maybe i prefer purple rain