Seattle Weekly's 2003 year in music issue

The lists are awesome, of course.

(awesome?)

"If it isn't happening to me, it probably is happening" is a classic thing to say. It's probably always been true that to get the most out of pop you have to be prpared to look in places which feel unlikely (at least initially). I enjoyed your piece enormously, Matos and I wish you (lot) were writing about music for the London Evening Standard.

The 6CD mix I found a bit intimidating, partly because there's so much of it I haven't heard that it's hard for me to understand how it hangs together. It occurs to me that if 101 songs = 7.5 hours then the average length of your top hundred tunes is well in excess of four minutes. Bring back brevity! The shorter lists were interesting even if they weren't, y'know, happening to me.

I have instructed my legal team to act swiftly with regard to Mr. Harvell's #14.

no, of course not, but at the same time, the angle could be more educational than was presented in the list.

Which these do, I think. You can always google the names if you want to find out more...

ack. you are not understanding me, tim. i'm saying that a list that is heavily weighted with electronica should at list be aware that some of the readers themselves are not heavily weighted with electronic knowledge. like me.

and when is excitement strictly the domain of the leper colonies? i like excitement for music!

Which these do, I think. You can always google the names if you want to find out more...

but isnt the point of lists to read them, go: 'shit, i like that song, and that song, why crap, i have to get the other stuff mentioned!!!'

So let me get this straight: you're pissed that these lists are full of stuff that are "cliches," stuff you've heard of before, but when they go out and actually list stuff you haven't heard before, you think they're just playing a snobbish game? You're one conflicted dude!

no no no, yer misunderstanding me. i think 'assuming' is a cliche. i like it when lists get me into new things. but i'm just saying the lists might as well be in another language. which sucks for me. : - (

OK, fair enough, but like Tim said, you're on the internet: just type in a band name into the allmusic.com or pitchforkmedia.com or ilxor.com or yahoo.com search functions and you'll get some relatively meaty info about just about anyone.

yeah but i didnt get the excitement or the inspiration to do that because the list used the language of 'preaching to the converted'.

thus my cliche-usage. which says fuck all about the skillz of the writers involved, mind. sigh. it is just a problem i have with music magazines in general, i guess.

I understand, I've been there myself, I've paid thirty bucks for crappy dance imports when I had no idea what they sounded like other than one critic's raving description!

yeah, but the overall set up got me excited and ready to download but the obscurism put me off. who knows! instead i put in groundhogs split and taking of pelham 123 ost.

The shorter CDRs have little bits of writing attached, perhaps that might be a helpful place to start?

I guess I've heard about a third of the long list, I've heard of probably another third and either think it won't be for me or just havren't got round to hearing it. the last third or so I've never heard of. This seems about right to me.

1. A Simple Plan - "Perfect"
2. Dido - "White Flag"
3. Outkast - "Hey Ya"
4. Michelle Branch - "Breath"
5. Metallica - "St. Anger"
6. Clay Aiken - "Invisible"
7. Nickleback - "Someday"
8. Matchbox 20 - "Bright Lights"
9. Cold - "Stupid Girl"
10. Trapt - "Headstrong"
11. Santana feat. Chad Kroeger - "Why Don't You & I?"
12. Jessica Simpson - "With You"
13. Christina Aguilera - "The Voice Within"
14. 3 Doors Down - "Here Without You"

different strokes for different folks, i guess.

Most people read good newspapers to be given perspectives on things they aren't already familiar with, a good broadsheet should be challenging.

None of the lists conflate challenging with obscure, afterall it is just as big a statement for Jess to include R Kelly whom everyone knows as it is for him to put down Wiley whom few readers may have heard.

Honestly, talk about projecting ones own ignorance and willful stupidity onto something! Wouldn't expect much more.

Aside from all that nonsense, I was most surprised by Nate's inclusion of Hardest Button To Button as a dance/rock type track, surely the obvious (perhaps too obvious, but not really since through obviousness you find truth sometimes) choice would be 7 Nation Army!

I heard that played in clubs all year, and there are several remixes aswell. In fact I found it extremely funny that through all Jack White's public announcements of hating electronic music, and through all this toss about the most middlebrow band in the world recording the album covered in actual dust from Jimmy Pages recording studio, and with only animal fat candles for lights and no penicillin etc, that after all this they made A DANCE RECORD.

haha!

the idea that I was deliberately being obscure is total fucking idiocy.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0353/031231_cover_big.php

Yeah, and he chose something from the Re-animator soundtrack!

me, neither. :( (or the Jammer one for that matter)

I love 7NA (though after Jack went all Terry Funk on Jason Stollseimer's eye socket the lyrics are retroactively creepy), but it's still more explicit to me in its '66-'68-era Yardbirds/Jeff Beck/Count Five atmosphere than it is in any sort of club/dance sense (too much slide guitar at the forefront, maybe). "Hardest Button"'s got that uber-minimalist pseudo-bassline (and uber-minimalist everything else -- no solos!) that seems more in tune with the structure of Detroit techno.