some historical perspective

in recent discussions about my top 20 i've made no secret of my feelings of ambivalence about this year's offerings. to be sure, i've listened to plenty of good music but I wonder how much of could consider great. i was looking for some perspective and referred back to my file from 2k4, hoping that the distance of four years would reveal some clues. i found that and more.

the thing is, that year we didn't really do a top 20. everyone was given 100 points to allocate and there were a bunch of rules (hmm, trying to think where those might have come from...) regarding the maximum points that could be assigned to an album and how many albums had to receive at least one point, I cannot remember the exact strictures, but the idea wasn't one that stuck, even though clancy would probably approve of revisiting as he said that 10 albums seemed a bit much. in true chicago tradition, he should sell the rights to ranking of 10 albums to an interested party. those things are fucking valuable.

anywho, in 2k4 I ended up with 2 albums to which i only assigned 2 points, and I think that both of them are better than pretty much everything from this year. the albums in question are Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse and Morrissey - You Are the Quarry. there certainly is no guitar based album that sounds as good to me as Sonic Nurse and Morrissey's bag of vocal hooks in that album stand up against any pop/rock formatted stuff from this year. right now i have added both albums to the "party shuffle" playlist that runs almost continually in the front room (now wireless!). midway through sonic nurse and so far so great.