Oh, Monsieur le Guardian, you are boring us...

BEFORE THEY DIE

finally, a use for that $17,000 i have just lying around.

BEFORE THEY DIE

-- braveclub, Friday, November 16, 2007 1:06 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

[INAPPROPRIATE ZING REDACTED]

no thanks.

good thread title.

Seems like a certain message board is jealous of the Guardian writers' success.

That's prejudging, Dom, not reviewing. But at least it is possible to
justify contempt for an album, especially if it's a sparkling piece of
writing. It is never possible to justify contempt for an audience, unless
we are talking about racists and homophobes and so on. The minute you start
slating readers for their musical tastes, you invite them to take their
custom elsewhere. If they leave the paper because they can't believe we
didn't like the album, then that's their choice, and a bit of an
overreaction. If they leave the paper because they've been told that, by
liking the album, they are a bunch of cretins, then, frankly, who can blame
them? And do you know what? Our livings depend on having readers. Ask
yourself this: do you really want to be Marcello Carlin? I'm not joking. He
might seem like the Big Man on ILX, but if editors rated him enough to want
to give him a decent amount of work, he wouldn't have time to spend his
days posting crap there. If you want to make a career out of journalism,
you'll need to rein in your seeming contempt for mainstream media.

^^^the voice of wisdom, and the voice of success.

I'm confused, was that you talking to yourself?

Lady, if you have to ask...

But seriously Tom, ask yourself this: do you really want to be Marcello Carlin?

I think it was Marcello xxpost

I did enjoy swapping tales of Glen Michael and Thingummyjig with him.

He is the best Glen Michael nostalgia writer on the internet.

I wouldn't say "best", maybe top three.

king boy pato and a goose joint top

If lots of Guardian readers kill themselves in 5 weeks time after completing the list then this will have been worth it.

Palladin.

editor's letter A+ and OTM, would read again.

If this is the new rolling thread for creepy internet dudes obsessing over the Guardian music section, does that mean I can lock the old one?

will read just to check if john harris does 'be here now'.

to be fair, matt, it is a mutual obsession.

If this is the new rolling thread for creepy internet dudes obsessing over the Guardian music section, does that mean I can lock the old one?

-- Matt DC, Friday, 16 November 2007 13:54 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

^^^If we locked every thread just because Mark Grout started a new one to talk about exactly the same thing, ILX would have maybe six threads left.

to be fair, matt, it is a mutual obsession.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, 16 November 2007 13:56 (23 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

ILX and The Guardian is like that Dido video where you think he's a crazy stalker but but BUT WAIT see she's stalking him as well you didn't see that coming huh?

LOL self-hating Guardian readers.

I fear this thread may act as a bellweather for the future journalistic prospects of all British ILM contributors. Clearly the only way to offset this is through a 'Do you really want to be Marcello Carlin?' poll.

Also on ILX:

creepy internet dudes obsessing over football
creepy internet dudes obsessing over Radiohead
creepy internet dudes obsessing over creepy imaginary internet dudettes
creepy internet dudes obsessing over what other creepy internet dudes obsess over

best message board ever

Suggestion: abbreviate to CID

lol at matt thinking he may get invited to do some subbing work on the Guardian if he keeps his Captain Save A Tim Jonze schtick up

jokes bruv

T/S Zing Culture vs Obsessing over Zing Culture vs Obsessing over Obsessing over Zing Culture vs Pots vs Kettles vs Jebus My Head Hurts

Is that pronounced 'Sid' or 'Kid'? It has future flippant pun implications.

http://www.in70mm.com/festival/2007/images/el_cid_2.jpg

Second page of GIS results for "CID":

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/archives/FelixCid.jpghttp://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/archives/FelixCid.jpg

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/archives/FelixCid.jpg

http://www.harvestfair.net/images/cid1.JPG

You couldn't make this one up.

omfg

Ha ha

Which one's ILX and which one's The Guardian?

Paedalo

'it's friiiiidayyyyyy'

Paedalo

10/10

The influential cripples that everyone should be molested by before they die.

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/02.28/photos/19-cid1-450.jpg

http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/PH/CID-06-big.jpg

"There's a cute girl sitting opposite me in the library and I want to ask her for a date. Help me ILE, what do I do?"

http://www.thebabysong.com/cid%201.JPG

Needs to be captioned with a Geir quote.

New look for Steve Goldberg there.

If we locked every thread just because Mark Grout started a new one to talk about exactly the same thing, ILX would have maybe six threads left.

-- Dom Passantino, Friday, 16 November 2007 13:56 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

OK, differences:
1) It's the Guardian, not the Observer Music Mag
2) I don't have an opinion on the guardian's music writers either way. Good luck to them, I say.
3) It's more this old boring "before you die" that I call to question!

It might well raise some fantastic albums that I haven't heard yet, and if that's the majority of the list, wonderful. However, I see that the ad I got in my mail states "only one album per artist, sorry John, Paul, George, Ringo, Jimi, Kurt, Merzbow, Annie, Britney" (or something like that).." Noel, etc...."

So that's it.

OK, carry on.

"Dead! Dead! And never heard "Back to Blonk" by Amy Bedlam!

What makes it even better is that that's from a website called "TheBabySong.com". I really hope that's not some fetish thing.

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/1752/cid8010fcfce2f54fec9a82so1.jpg

Encyclopaedia of racist products.

I did enjoy swapping tales of Glen Michael and Thingummyjig with him.

pffft I used to see Glen Michael all the time. His wife had a restaurant in Prestwick and i would see him all the time on the way to get the school bus.(i have stories about him too that cant be repeated here) And of course Sydney Devine was always seen in Ayr.

I had a quick skim through this today. It was indeed very, very boring, basically <50 word capsule reviews of ~200 albums. Why bother? You might as well just print a list of all the titles, for all the "insight" offered. What a complete waste of space, time and effort.

I don't think this feature is particularly useful to or aimed at IlX0rz tbf.

It was cheering to see Above The Law mentioned in a national newspaper though.

tbh I've found a couple of albums on the list I hadn't heard off and now want to hear but what made me throw the thing in the recycling to-day was that despite having this one album rule and not choosing the obvious Dylan gets a two page spread/huge photo and longest review so far. Dylan, he's such a special case, you can't possibly choose just one album it has to be a triple cd collection...argh.

You can limit yr Dylan to one album, it's just you can't limit Dylan writing to 100 words!

The difficulty I had was in viewing the list as more than the sum of its parts, i.e. I kept thinking: that one's obviously Denselow, that's one's obviously Lex, oh and Lily Allen's in, has to be Rosie Swash, etc etc.

i hope the lex isnt the person who said all saints' first album was a must-hear before you die.

wasn't born when it came out, so doubt it.

the second one is better, also.

Thread's gone downhill rapidly in the last ten posts

can't see a link here so:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/1000albums/0,,2211598,00.html

no revolving paint dream = no credibility as far as i'm concerned...

I quite like that it seems to be just individual choices rather than some so-called consensus-type thing.

But some of the writing, holy shit. Apart from the bafflingly bad punctuation in many of the entries (did they use OCR on a crumpled paper copy or something?), what the hell is up with this?:

The Whatnauts
Message From a Black Man (1996)
The title of this compilation is misleading. Best known for their team-up with the Moments on 1975's sublime single Girls, this Baltimore symphonic soul troupe specialised less in socially conscious R&B, a la Marvin Gaye, and more in submissive-male pleas for affection, such as the US hit I'll Erase Away the Pain.

Clearly, the only message a black man can suitably send is of a socially-conscious nature, set in a properly black musical style.

Also on ILX:

creepy internet dudes obsessing over football
creepy internet dudes obsessing over Radiohead
creepy internet dudes obsessing over creepy imaginary internet dudettes
creepy internet dudes obsessing over what other creepy internet dudes obsess over

-- Noodle Vague, Friday, 16 November 2007 14:00 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

best message board ever

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Friday, 16 November 2007 14:00 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

haha wow

the guardian's albums of the year and their ratings

rip the lex

"I found myself happily singing along with Jeffrey Lewis's 12 Crass Songs while following Nigel Slater's recipe for hot and sticky roast quail"

It's a shame that I wasn't at DiS earlier, because they had this big mass interview where everyone could ask Jeffrey Lewis questions, and he'd draw an answer for them. My question would have been "Like everyone else on the planet, I haven't given a shit about anything you've done since 2002. What have you been doing for the past five years?"

Jeff is an ILM lurker and drew me an answer to pass on to you

http://www.atf.gov/kids/graphics/art_contest/dsc_554820%25.jpg

Having had a look at the page that lists EVERY album voted for by all 30 voters in The Guardian's poll, and unless I'm missing a second (and third or more) page, it seems awfully short? And there's a lot of things I'd have expected to be there that don't get a mention AT ALL, Caribou, Electrelane, Patrick Wolf, blah blah. Mind you, I'm surprised by every list every year in terms of what's missing and how much lowest-common-denominator dross gets in - the only list that never really surprised me (and yet surprised me more than any other simultaneously) was the Stylus one. I've really loved a LOT of new music this year, and very little of what I've adored has ended up on these lists.

Not a single one of the Guardian's list is in mine, I think.

I'm delighted with their number 1, interestingly, and also with Battles.

2 Radiohead: In Rainbows
What we said: "It may represent the strongest collection of songs Radiohead have assembled for a decade."
5 stars

= "Thank fuck they stopped with that weird shit." There's no more melody or 'song' on In rainbows than there has been in the previous 3 records.

^ah, I forgot they had Battles. Didn't really like LCD Soundsystem so much, but remember, I don't have a heart. ;-)

HTTT >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In Rainbows, and In Rainbows is by no means a bad record.

And again in here...

The top fifty I submitted to be totted-up for the Stylus poll;

1. Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
2. Electrelane – No Shouts No Calls
3. Caribou – Andorra
4. Battles – Mirrored
5. Acoustic Ladyland – Skinny Grin
6. 65daysofstatic – The Destruction Of Small Ideas
7. LCD Soundsystem – The Sound Of Silver
8. Stars Of The Lid – And The Refinement Of Their Decline
9. Studio – West Coast
10. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
11. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
12. !!! – Myth Takes
13. Six.By Seven – If Symptoms Persist Kill Your Dr
14. Working For A Nuclear Free City – Businessmen And Ghosts
15. Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting 2
16. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
17. Bjork – Volta
18. Apparat – Walls
19. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
20. Menomena – Friend And Foe
21. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
22. The Tuss – Rushup Edge
23. Von Sudenfed – Tromatic Reflexxions
24. Ulrich Schnauss – Goodbye
25. The Clientele – God Save The Clientele
26. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
27. L’imparfait Des Langues – Louis Sclavis
28. Do Make Say Think – You, You’re A History In Rust
29. Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting
30. Ash – Twilight Of The Innocents
31. Strategy – Future Rock
32. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters
33. Miracle Fortress – Five Roses
34. Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus!
35. Pharoahe Monch – Desire
36. Matthew Dear – Asa Breed
37. Fraud – Fraud
38. Floratone – Floratone
39. Siobhan Donaghy – Ghosts
40. Queens Of The Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
41. Radiohead – In Rainbows
42. Grinderman – Grinderman
43. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
44. Basquiat Strings – Basquiat Strings
45. Kanye West – Graduation
46. Rufus Wainwright – Release The Stars
47. Bill Callahan – Woke On A Whaleheart
48. The National – Boxer
49. Phosphorescent – Pride
50. The Good The Bad & The Queen – The Good The Bad & The Queen

In Rainbows is quite a good record, aye, it's just... I don't get the slavishness that follows Radiohead. They don't hit me for a number of reasons. They're like a platonic essence of a modern intelligent rock band, like a committee came up with a scheme and made them, and they have none of the edges or quirks or foibles that might make me fall in love with them. I find it baffling and disheartening and faintly creepy that In Rainbows is default top ten in pretty much EVERY list, individual or amalgam.

Argh why did I even start to read the comments box on the blog

I think "In Rainbows", MUCH more so than "HTTT", has very good individual songs that completely fail to cohere.

What does that mean?

The comments on the Guardian's top 20 for this year are utterly insane' if you tried to respond to every piece of idiocy you'd have 100,000 words in no time.

I think Louis means it has good songs but doesn't work as a whole.

I remember Thom Yorke saying a decade ago that having a minidisc influenced the sequencing of OK Computer, cos he could just rearrange the track order at a whim until he was happy with it. Maybe having an iPod influenced this one (and HTTT?). Saying that, I think the trends in sequencing of modern mainstream rock and pop albums in the last five years or so have been utterly fucking stupid and infuriating for the most part.

Also, it doesn't help that the first half is, opening track aside, totally underwhelming. Things only REALLY pick up with 'Faust Arp'.

What are the trends? (xp)

I see, making the first part of your album the weakest = very very stupid

Faust Arp is the WORST rack! And Bodysnatchers is great!

And it was all going so well! You even had 65daysofstatic in your Top 10!

What are the trends? (xp)

Front-loading singles (even more so than usual), paranoid avoidance of 'filler' leading to crushing sameyness / aesthetic consistency (*delete as appt.), lack of dynamic variation across whole album. It's not s=just down to sequencing but also mastering and such. Mainstream albums for the last few years seem designed to be cut-up and played in random order on an iPod, almost.

Faust Arp is fucking rubbish. Nice strings, really nasty fucking repetitive melody and pants lyric.

http://sickmouthy.blogspot.com/2007/10/rainbows.html

“Faust Arp”, for instance, is a brief pastoral illusion, strings like Robert Kirby painted for Nick Drake, guitar playing not like Drake at all, nor melody; instead of melancholy folk we have mechanised repetition in the way Yorke sings, neither essentially or physically beautiful in itself, but thought of as such due to context.

It is also telling that the record's two best moments are essentially Sigur Ros covering a Carole King song and an (admittedly very good) hybrid of HTTT and Talk Talk. They don't seem quite as original as before. And they still LOVE that "She's So Heavy" arpeggio...

"Faust Arp" is the first moment of real variation and change in the record, it breaks the monotony, and sets us up for a vastly superior second half (until the dull, formulaic closer, that is). It sorta proves Nick's latest (very good) point. In itself it isn't amazing, but in context it helps.

grauniad = whitest top 30 ever

30 = 20

"Bodysnatchers" is pretty good, yes, but it's not very exciting, and it preludes a three-song stretch of fair drudgery.

Did anyone happen to see the Sunday Telegraph 'albums of the year' list last Sunday? It was embarrassing in how bad the writing was. Especially the bit about Radiohead.

FWIW I think the sequencing on In Rainbows is pretty much just right, and I get really anal about track orders on albums (yes Amerie album I am looking at you).

Anyway, my personal top 20, late arrivals notwithstanding:

1) Oceansize - Frames
2) 65DOS - The Destruction of Small Ideas
3) Working For A Nuclear Free City - Businessmen And Ghosts
4) Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum
5) Six.BySeven - If Symptoms Persist, Kill Your Doctor
6) The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City
7) Chrome Hoof - Pre-Emptive False Rapture
8) Caribou - Andorra
9) Eluvium - Copia
10) The Young Gods - Super Ready/Fragmente
11) Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
12) Caina - Mourner
13) Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet
14) Studio - West Coast
15) Radiohead - In Rainbows
16) Stars Of The Lid - And Their Refinement Of The Decline
17) Alcest - Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde
18) The Electric Soft Parade - No Need To Be Downhearted
19) Twelve - 03
10) Strategy - Future Rock

I am glad to see you included the Fiery Furnaces even though I have probably not even listened to this album all the way through since I got it.

no mims, no credibility

"Fear of a Blank Planet" is fucking terrible! WTF.

I like it! Except "Sentimental", but that's only 5 minutes long, so we can forgive them that slip-up.

And the Fiery Furnaces album might be their best, I really recommend devoting a few hours to its exploration.

Just purchased: Okkervil River - The Stage Names and Future of The Left - Curses. Any changes to the list will probably come from either or both of them.

"Fear Of a Blank Planet" is OK. And sooooo much better than some album with a very similar name whose title it may have been influenced by....

The Flower Kings' new one is better though.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/aug/01/popandrock1

calm down, the pinefox