maupuia calling

I’m been listening over the past few days to Pitchforkmedia’s “Top 200 songs of the 60s“. Actually, for some reason I can only find 199 of them - I haven’t quite got the ID3 tag down pat and so there’s one song floating around on my Ipod that I haven’t tagged like all the others. Oh well!

Anyways .. it’s a pretty cool list. One could always quibble - “Like a rolling stone” NOT at number 1??, no “Wild thing”? - but that’s part of the charm of lists like this. You get to think up how it could vary. And I have to confess to not having heard lots of the songs that I probably should have. Including “Kick Out The Jams” by the MC5, “I Am The Walrus” by the Beatles and, unforgivably now I’ve fallen in love with it, “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. Rated number 1.

On the other hand, I’m reminded, yet again, why I really can’t listen to a Led Zeppelin song all the way through and just pretentious Pink Floyd were.

On the number 24 bus to Miramar Heights tonight I was unequivocally the hippest person as “Sister Ray” came on my Ipod. 17 glorious minutes that ended as I turned the door key to our house.

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I’ve been reading “Rip it up and start again: postpunk 1978 - 1984” by Simon Reynolds. It’s damn good. And one of the central theses - the punk of the Sex Pistols nature was more like the last gasp of “rockism”, albeit a gasp that cleared the way for the genuine newness of post-punk -seems a sound one to me. That said, the chapter on Throbbing Gristle is about a chapter too much. That music I just don’t get.

And I have waiting for my reading pleasure - courtesy of a Father’s day trip into town yesterday with spending money! - “Tomorrow now” by Bruce Sterling and “The paradox of choice” by Barry Schwartz. Am looking forward to them both. Bruce Sterling’s keynote address at South by SouthWest [.mp3] was one of the more moving speeches I’ve ever heard. If you haven’t heard it, go listen. Trust me on this.

And let me know if you want the top 200 songs.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 at 9:55 pm and is filed under music, books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.