The one in which I come clean with my truly provincial taste in music

I have a twisted relationship with all things listicle. My painfully linear brain likes anything ordered and numbered and easily classified, but the music fan in me knows what a Herculean task it is rank one's favorite records. Not to mention that most best-ofs are rip-offs of last year's best-of with current darlings added.

But I'm hypocrite. And a sheep. So I added my ballot to Pitchfork's People's List.

I realize I'm probably far outside Pitchfork's target audience. Wearing my age on my sleeve, I didn't try to be cool, filling up my list with obscure bands for whom even the too-hip-for-the-room twenty-somethings writing for Pitchfork would approve. I didn't pick records that "should" make the list (no OK Computer anywhere to be seen), but forty albums from the last fifteen years that meant a lot to me, or spoke to me, or altered what I think good music is supposed to be.

The top five are pretty accurate; the rest I filled in arbitrarily. Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is kind of an obvious choice, and I think it's just strange enough that it doesn't smack of any particular era anymore. It has a good, probably now-forgotten story surrounding it (dropped from the original label, went on to score gold status, blah blah blah) along with the weird conspiracy theory that it somehow predicted 9/11 with songs like "Ashes of American Flags," and the "towers" cover. I Am a Bird Now is just gorgeous and I never tire of it, even half-a-decade later. Rufus Wainwright, I could have picked any of his, but Want One is the album I'd want as the soundtrack to my life. Stereo renewed my interest in all things Replacements and laid the foundation for comeback of sorts for Paul Westerberg. Lucinda Williams's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road inspired many a bad karaoke, and I still love her for it. In other words, I chose albums solely for their nostalgic value. I'm pretty okay with that.

The only "rule" I adhered to was to limit one entry per artists. I'm an all-or-nothing fan, so I could have easily listed four Rufus Wainwright record, three of Lucinda's, and so on. Narrowing down 15 years of music to twenty or forty or even one hundred records is harder than it seems, and the late 90s and early 00s are a little over-represented, given that I'm probably at least a decade older than the average Pitchfork reader.

Links & Bits: 10/28/11

Feeling left out of Generations X and Y? How about Generation Catalano?

Feministing's Zerlina talks about Amy Winehouse and the Bystander Effect.

The iPod turns ten. Soon it will want its own iPod.

Bi-Phobia on MTV's Real World

Reread: Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed

Editors Kim Cooper and David Smay can be proud of this collection  of essays on the obscure, unheralded, and just plain unheard music. Rather than reeking of rockist snobbery,  a lot of the choices here just leave you scratching your head (Aaron Carter? Really?), but that's what makes it such an enjoyable read. Anyone can cobble together a list of critic's favorites, but how many people cop to their love of old Muppets records, Kylie Minogue, The Dictators, or Swamp Dogg?

I can't really say I was inspired to pick up any of the music mentioned (scarily enough, I owed more than a few of those records), but as someone who's admittedly spent a good chunk of her life trolling used record stores or dingy old thrifts, I get it. And not to sound like an old fogey, though I guess I have no choice by now, though all but the criminally obscure is available for downloading, nothing can replace the feeling of digging through dusty record bins

Tracing My Musical Lineage: Part One

Reading though some of my old posts, it's obvious I'm fascinated by how people find the music that ultimately defines them, or, at least, defines their taste, and how that "tastes" changes over time. Like a lot of people, I started out enamored of the music of my childhood. Yes, Wham is cheesy, and best appreciated from the safety of ironic distance, but this song still makes me want to dance. (And for better or worse, I cribbed most of my dance moves from George Michael):



At some point, maybe around fourteen, I realized there was more to music than what was on the radio. REM was one of the first bands I knew as "alternative," and one of the only ones at that time to break through the commercial rock barrier. Listening to them for the first time, I had that sense of "I don't what this is, but I think I'm supposed to be part of it."



REM aside, I was not one of those kids who discovered indie rock and fell down the rabbit hole. I still listened to a lot of top forty music, but every once in a while, something would catch my ear that I know under normal circumstances wouldn't have made the cut. And some songs just seemed super-cool at the time:



I'm decidedly not a fan of metal. Faith No More's The Real Thing was the first album I owned that my mom hated, and that was a large part of its appeal. Right now, it just sort of smacks of the time it was released: that weird late-80s twilight when hair metal was dying out, hip hip was exploding, and something was bubbling up to the surface. We just didn't know what it was yet.

Also completely redolent of its time, but for different reasons:



Any of these songs could have appeared on a mixtape I made between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Some of them did, multiple times. Nothing here makes me feel "cool" or like I had an idea what good music was except what sounded good to my ears at the time.

Not Your Older (Or Younger) Sister's 90s

As much as I am starting to get my fill of 90s nostalgia, I'm really enjoying The Real 90s. (Courtesy of 90s woman.) Check out their far too accurate version of 90s fashion. Save for the first few years, I spent most of the 90s as a full-fledged adult, but Adidas track jackets (or oversized black hoodies) and cords were my weekened uniform.

(Something that few people will cop to, though: those first couple years of the decade, before "grunge" was a selling point, fashion consisted of a lot of color-blocking and acid wash worn unironically. At least for those of us in the middle of the country.)

Flashback overkill aside, I am glad that there are a few more voices joining in. What bothers me most about nostalgia culture is who gets to call the shots -- who gets to assign value to the music, television shows, movies, and books of the decade. Most of what I've seen so far presents a very white, straight, middle-class version of 90s girlhood, and that shuts a lot of us out.