Disqus - Latest Comments for matoswk

Re: Blue Lines Revisited, 00/20 Vision

matoswk — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:13:35 -0000

"The Rat" is a screaming rock song--actually one of my favorite screaming rock songs of the decade; I have no real issue with its placement on the list. I can't imagine Tom would love it but I could see him admiring it, though I wouldn't guarantee it.

Re: Blue Lines Revisited, aceterrier: tomewing: This is intriguing: is...

matoswk — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:07:47 -0000

I think Abbey Road gets the most classic-rock radio play in the U.S.; it wouldn't surprise me if, in cultural terms, it's become the Beatles' Back in Black or something.

Re: Guilty Displeasure

matoswk — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:30:54 -0000

Probably Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."

Re: The Top 10 Albums Of The 80s So Far (As Seen From 1987)

matoswk — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:22:25 -0000

The key word there is "DJs." Not to mention "VJs"--Gambaccini was, likely for reasons of solidarity, compelled to include all five of the original MTV faces in his survey. (They mostly voted for the Beatles. I believe Nina Blackwood's Top 3 were all Beatles albums.) I think Don Topping made Lionel his No. 1. (The book is at home in Seattle; I'm visiting New York for two months right now.)

"It’s tempting to see this as the first draft of a canon that alt-rock’s success prevented ever really forming": 100% correct. It's a very Dave Marsh construction, this list: the popular-critical acclaim nexus is the crux of a lot of American pre-alt-rock writers' view of where the action was. Marsh always viewed punk as an aberration in this, a "failure" in the U.S. (his word) because it failed to get on the radio or change things as utterly as its partisans claimed it would. It's why 1984 is such a giant year: a lot of the best records were hugely popular, and a lot of huge albums were great critical successes.

Re: Blue Lines Revisited, The "Comment Cesspool"

matoswk — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:00:30 -0000

I knew this had to be from Minneapolis! CJ is a local gossip columnist. And yeah, that list seems just about right for the city (and the internet).

Re: Up From The Grave (hasty notes)

matoswk — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:37:59 -0000

In the U.S., rockwrite didn't come from rock's return (for discussion purposes, the Beatles' 1964 rise) so much as the new seriousness that emerged from other artists picking up on the Beatles and Dylan's more self-conscious ideas, which picked up steam with the San Francisco bands and the Monterey Pop Festival, as did the U.S. rock press. (This is also true of rock writing in the non-rock press, e.g. Robert Christgau on Monterey Pop in Esquire: http://www.robertchristgau.... Crawdaddy! preceded all of this by about a year-and-a-half, debuting in February 1966. So your timeline is basically right, just moved ahead a little bit.