The best of the first 1/3 of the decade

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Tomorrow we'll be precisely 1/3 of the way through the decade I vainly call the 20-ohs, which is as good an occasion as any for short-term nostalgia. So choose your own criteria and state your top ten musical artists of the 1/3 decade (or use a less geeky alternative form), if you please.

1. Eminem
2. Sleater-Kinney
3. Lucinda Williams
4. PJ Harvey
5. Bob Dylan
6. Sonic Youth
7. Youssou N'Dour
8. Daft Punk
9. Freelance Hellraiser
10. OutKast

(So predictable I shouldn't have to explain them?)

― b.R.A.d. (Brad), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:29 (twenty-two years ago)

a third already? craaaap....ok then, these are my favourites (as opposed to who i think has been the most 'important' or 'relevant')

Felix The Housekatt
Basement Jaxx
Broadcast
The Avalanches
The Streets
2 Many DJs
Daft Punk
Goldfrapp
Ladytron
Richard X

― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:43 (twenty-two years ago)

This decade is doomed. DOOMED!!!

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, it's a personal thing, but for my head that's a sorry looking list - although I can't really think of how to improve it. Maybe:

Chicks on Speed
Peaches
Fumiya Tanaka (haha, obscure one you've never heard of)
Surgeon
Regis
DJ T-1000
The Casanovas (wait, they've yet to happen ouside Australia)
Tatu of course
Part Chimp
Liars

Criterion: do I like them?

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:55 (twenty-two years ago)

the Casanovas?!?!?! are you shittin' me?

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

goddammit, I was so going to do this thread tomorrow! except I was going to do top 33 albums of the first 1/3rd.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Colin, isnt a good chunk of that music from 90's artists? The whole Subvoice/Downwards/Pure Sonik/hard drumtrack sound seems very 1996 to me.

― Mike Taylor (mjt), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Al, I hope you now realise the advantages of living in my timezone. Anyway, this is less r*ckist, at least in theory.

― b.R.A.d. (Brad), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:26 (twenty-two years ago)

1. Travis
2. Doves
3. Coldplay
4. Super Furry Animals
5. Electric Soft Parade
6. XTC
7. Depeche Mode
8. Flaming Lips
9. Peter Gabriel
10.Jayhawks

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:38 (twenty-two years ago)

JIm, I love them, I'm sorry. They're not intelligent enopugh for Melbourne are they? They're dumb enough for Sydney.

Mike, Surgeon and Regis still release music, unless they died and no-one told me. To say something is 'very 1996' is very 2001.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

They're not intelligent enopugh for Melbourne are they?

you're definitely overestimating the current Melbourne scene there ;)

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Hahaha! They're dumb and they rock, and their clips are unbelievably cheap. Maybe I'm just fondly reminded of ACDC. My girlfriend likes them too, she really knows her balls-out rock and won't settle for anything less. Come on Jim, cut me some slack mate! I'm allowed the occasional lapse in taste surely?

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 1 May 2003 00:52 (twenty-two years ago)

nar it's not a lapse really - hey if they're good enough for Alan McGee they should be good enough for me! (disclaimer: not always true, cf. El Vez, One Lady Owner..)

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:02 (twenty-two years ago)

best album of the decade so far: Desaparecidos, Read Music/Speak Spanish.
best song: Modest Mouse, "So Much Beauty In Dirt"
best bonafide single: Outkast, "B.O.B."
best bonafide single if 2000 isn't really THIS decade: Vines, "Get Free"

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Colin, Are you in Australia?

― Mike Taylor (mjt), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:21 (twenty-two years ago)

alphabetically:

Basement Jaxx
Coldplay
The Flaming Lips
Dave Matthews
OutKast
Primal Scream
The Streets
Super Furry Animals
Ween
whoever it was that did all those Boom Selection mixes

ALBUM OF THE DECADE SO FAR: Coldplay - Parachutes
SINGLE OF THE DECADE SO FAR: OutKast - "Bombs Over Baghdad"
VIDEO OF THE DECADE SO FAR: Fatboy Slim - "Weapon of Choice"

― Evan (Evan), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:34 (twenty-two years ago)

00 stuff:

Metro Area
DFA/LCD Soundsystem
The Rapture
Le Tigre
DeepChord
Mr. De
Soledad Brothers
White Stripes
Brendan Benson
Clipse
Model 600
Los Hermanos
Ludacris

But to be perfectly honest, I feel like I have dropped out of contemporary music in a sense. I am finding myself less and less interested in what is currently happening in music. I don't know if this is due to my age, due to my being less involved with music scenes, or just due to the current cultural climate in general. Thanks to Soulseek my musical horizons are extremely broad, but I am not finding anything current that is speaking to me in a vital way. I am mainly going back and finding more "new" old music.

Is this happening to anyone else?

― Mike Taylor (mjt), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:41 (twenty-two years ago)

yes. me. i'm rediscovering Australian 'underground' music from the 70s and 80s and i dig it far more than anything new i'm hearing lately..

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 01:43 (twenty-two years ago)

teehee, my friend A. used to knock around w/ the singer (and his brother?) from the casanovas when they were kids...at one family get together when the singer was about 18 and A. was 14, A's mother caught casanova hiding topless behind the door of A's room. a bit worried she took A. aside and told her, saying "A, you'd better go in and check your undies draw, make sure nothing's askew". she did and everything was ok, so finally she just asked him what he was doing in there... it turns out he'd been attracted by the full length mirror in A's room and had been flexing and checking his pecs out while everyone else was distracted eating bbq.

― minna (minna), Thursday, 1 May 2003 02:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Minna, I knew it! I knew the guy was a sharpie! Clearly, born to be a rock tstar. I must add that there's a story in Bon Scott's bio (Clinton Walker I think?) where he was caught doing exactly the same thing.

Jim, I'm doing the same thing. Suddenly getting very interested in The Saints. Also want to rehear the Grong Grong stuff. Also checking out Flaming Groovies, a big influence on the Adelaide stuff.

Mike, yes, that's happening to me too (ie going back to old music). I don't see that as a bad thing. You can seek out and hear new material from the past, new in the sense you haven't heard it before. It refreshes you. In my studio it's all techno, always has been. However, for years now I've been getting excited by stuff OTHER than techno. When I listen to techno, even if it's really astounding, all I hear the engineering skills and techniques and am not really transported. Like a carpenter inspecting a chair. Even from that perspective Regis and Surgeon are extremely impressive. Alchemical even. They both raise and hypnotise demons with alarming confidence.

Model 600 - good choice. Yes I am in Oz, I'm in Sydney.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 1 May 2003 02:17 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm finding the opposite of mike and jim, and yet the same. almost everything sounds good to me know. new stuff, old stuff. everything but the casanovas in fact...

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 1 May 2003 02:19 (twenty-two years ago)

People who listen to lots of music finding that they listen to more old stuff than new stuff SHOCKAH!!!!!!!

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 1 May 2003 03:47 (twenty-two years ago)

yes but it took me a good 15 years of being a hardcore music listener to prefer old stuff to new....

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 03:48 (twenty-two years ago)

What is new anyway? Is it the last year? Or last 10 years?

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 1 May 2003 03:58 (twenty-two years ago)

when you read about it in mojo.

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 1 May 2003 03:59 (twenty-two years ago)

new (to me) = last 2 years

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 03:59 (twenty-two years ago)

oops, sorry, thats old i mean,what my post referred to.

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Seriously though, this phenomenon has been an obviously on-going one for music-fans everywhere for a long time, but a collective hands-up for "who's bored by new music?" often implies that it's the fault of new music when it may just be that, hey, old music is really good too and everyone goes through phases.

Which is obvious to you all anyway, but yeah, so, um...

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:29 (twenty-two years ago)

or maybe jim, colin and mike are old farts.

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:36 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm not even thirty yet!

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but sometimes so obvious you forget it. You get drunk on your own melancholy or something. Even Rumi complains in one of his poems that poetry doesn't do it for him like it used to in his youth. Significantly, however, he says that only now he is no longer infatuated with poetry can he now call himself a master poet. In music terms, it sometimes seems like you can be a fan, hypnotised by the music, or an artist, able to control and create music, but not both at once.

Many musicians have told me that if they love a tune too much, they can't finish it. A certain kind of detachment as one grows older is, well, inevitable and desirable.

It's just organised sound. This dawns on us slowly. We reach a point when we stop asking music to save us, because we know it can't. That is not a teenage attitude. Teenagers stuck in a rut, or in someone elses unimaginative and uninspired view of life as a sentient being, look to music for salvation - which is an appropriate response.

Once music HAS saved you - restored your sense of joy and spotaneity, preserved your inner child from social damage - it can't save yuou any more!

Wow, can you tell I've just had my 3pm espresso? Booyaka!

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Er, I was responding to Tim just then. Yes Gaz, I'm an old fart. But I know I'm younger than you mate!

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:41 (twenty-two years ago)

its actually the old 40+ geezers with their bandanas getting e'ed up an going out clubbin wot listen to all the new music. the kids are into nostalgia...

― gaz (gaz), Thursday, 1 May 2003 04:42 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven months pass...

For each of these artists, we are only referring to music released post-1999:

...

God, I can't think of anyone consistent except for the Scissor Sisters. And it sounds funny to say that out loud.

― Atnevon (Atnevon), Tuesday, 20 April 2004 21:03 (twenty-one years ago)

three years pass...

1. Eminem
2. Sleater-Kinney
3. Lucinda Williams
4. PJ Harvey
5. Bob Dylan
6. Sonic Youth
7. Youssou N'Dour
8. Daft Punk
9. Freelance Hellraiser
10. OutKast

(So predictable I shouldn't have to explain them?)

-- b.R.A.d. (Brad), Wednesday, 30 April 2003 23:29 (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

Can't argue with this.

― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 20 December 2007 11:05 (eighteen years ago)

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