John,

I know what you are saying about Cash, but it's hard to pin down. He's just the kind of country star who appeals to rock fans. I like him too, but prefer Merle Haggard, Tom T. Hall, and George Jones.

Still, he's a long way from getting voted off my island. The Sun sides alone would be enough for me to keep him around. Heck, all I need is that descending chromatic guitar into to Home Of The Blues.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind getting some of those old Sun sides on vinyl. That vintage stuff really needs to be heard that way. 60's rock sounds decent enough on CD but I don't think you ever get the same experience with anything earlier than that. I found a couple country box sets on vinyl for 50 cents a piece and I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to classic country on CD again.

"Modern Life" is a great album I think, and I really dig "Country House", "CHarmless Man" and the duet with Françoise Hardy. I saw them in concert that year (1995) and it was fantastic.
Personnally I don't like their late work which I find boring as hell.
Just wanted to point out this.
Albarn is a chameleon. He can do whatever style he likes. The beatlesy pop of Modern Life pleases me.
i am probably th only one here though. Surprised.

And also, I agree with schleuse. Seriousness bores me.
What is serious about life ? A touch of humour is something I really appreciate in my favorite artist's work (Beatles, Wyatt, Brel, Divine Comedy, Springsteen on stage).

Damn you people for voting off my favourite band(and favourite artist),The Smiths. If this competition was done by completely British people,they would have been top 10 for sure

1. Coltrane
2. Bjork
3. Blondie

New:

4. The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin is in my top 20 for the '90s. None of their other albums is even close, for any decade. IMO, Mercury Rev was a much more consistent band, album to album.

5. Al Green - Nobody dislikes the Reverend (recall the scene in Spielberg's Munich) - it's the perfect radio-friendly, thoroughly accessible soul - and his broad appeal will make him a real contender in this game. However, I think he's out of his league in the company of these other R&B giants - Marvin, Otis, Stevie, Curtis, Ray, Sly, Prince, etc. And where the hell is Sam Cooke?

Just like to echo Midaso's point about The Smiths, their lack of support here really surprises me. You're hard pressed to find anyone here in England, even those who weren't born when they split, who doesn't eulogise over their work.

I'll at least third the comments on The Smiths, the best English band bar maybe The Clash to appear in the twenty years after the Beatles split. Looks like another resolutely perfect set of British bands in Blur and Pulp are heading that way as well this week madly when The Police and The Cure are still here. If you want to vote off non American bands first get going on them!

I get the feeling that if we were asked to rank our 20 favourites from the list it would look very different when combined! Not to worry this is a fun exercise!

Same as last week

5 points The Police
4 Sonic Youth
3 Springsteen
2 Simon and Garfunkel
1 Wilco

Coming up fast behind. Lou Reed, Hank Williams, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, The Cure and Nick Cave

Since the Smiths are off, it's safe to start a little discussion on "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" maybe. I never quite understood the appeal of this song. The music is not terribly interesting and the lyrics get boring from the point he reminds us that dying by "your side is such a heavenly way to die" and beyond that I don't see much that can make this song great.

"How Soon Is Now?", "This Charming Man", "What Difference Does It Make?" and several other songs sound way better to me.

A few words about one of my favs, The Smiths:

Since the 80's were weakly represented in the all-time albums poll, it is to be expected that artists from that time have a hard time surviving in this game. So, maybe its not because The Smiths are British, but because they are an 80's band.

I'm not British and the 80's is the decade, where I started to explore pop music. So, my explanation above might not make sense, but it does apply to me.

"There's a light that never goes out" is not my favorite Smiths song either, Neo. Moreover, I think that song doesn't represent the band's music style so well, like e.g. "How Soon Is Now" does.

Personally I find "How Soon Is Now" completely unrepresentative of their sound. It's also usually the song that non-fans really like.

What’s so good about “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”? For me the swooning emulated strings are anything but boring, as is the musical nod to Hitch Hike / There She Goes Again at the start. It’s very easy to view the song as an unrequited love song, many indeed speculate that it’s about Marr I’ll offer a different interpretation that song is about the character wants to see people and wants to see life and the light that never goes out isn’t that of a lovers during the bizarre car-crash suicide but in fact his bedroom light that never goes out as he never leaves it. Despite attempts to meet people he’s constantly aware that it’s not his home and he’s welcome no more

"There's a light that never goes out" is not my favorite Smiths song either, Neo. Moreover, I think that song doesn't represent the band's music style so well, like e.g. "How Soon Is Now" does.

Really? I don't think any other Smiths song is even close to the wall of guitar sound of "How Soon Is Now".

I really like "How Soon Is Now", but it was probably wise of them to not do more songs like that. They simply reached perfection in their first attempt.

I too am sorry to see The Smiths go. As a whole, I think the music of the 1980s is under-appreciated as compared to other decades (but a revival may be coming, people). One thing I really like about The Smiths is the brilliant guitar work of Johnny Marr, especially on the underrated album Meat is Murder (which suffers from an insufferable title track). Another thing I like about the music, as I hear it on the discs (and not based on all of the outside information) is how funny Morrissey is. Schleuse and Anthony were just having a little debate about the value (or lack) of self-parody. I don't think anybody did it better than Morrissey. On one level he was deathly serious--enough to appeal to dramatic fifteen-year-old girls. But on another level there was some very keen self-paraody going on (Girlfriend In A Coma? A double-decker bus? backscrubber?) I don't know, but I always hear a little humor in all of their stuff. Sorry to see them gone, but at least they outlasted The Replacements.

I know this kind of post belongs in the other thread, but things were rolling here.

Finally, fans of "serious" music can take solace in the fact that Bono and Stipe are still alive and well as representatives of the 1980s.

Well, if the White Stripes and Pavement had to go, I'm glad I could help take the Smiths down with them. Come on people, the Cure have been hanging by a thread far too long.


1) The Cure - What are they the cure for exactly? A good time?
2) Nick Cave - I don't mind the gloomy Aussie, but not minding someone doesn't keep them on the island.
3) Ray Charles - Hit the Road, Ray.
4) Leonard Cohen - I couldn't be more neutral on this guy if I was from Switzerland.
5) John Coltrane - While I admire jazz from a distance, I've never enjoyed it enough to cozy up to it.

I recently had an epiphany over 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'. The band had long been one of my top 5, and I really liked the song, but I was listening to The Queen Is Dead on a tedious bus journey, and when I got to TIAL..., it blew me away. I think perhaps the strings come through better on earphones than they do through speakers, because never before had they grabbed me so. It probably now is my favourite track of theirs, whereas previously it'd been 'Bigmouth...', 'How Soon Is Now' or 'Stop Me...'.

1. Blondie 5 pts : Totally out of place here
2. Talking Heads 4 pts : it is funny because, when it comes to bands I don't cherish, I often pick songs or albums that the fans throw away (i.e. "Modern Life Is Rubbish"). Still my favorite Heads song : the road to nowhere, more straightforward, with an excellent accordion riff
3. PJ Harvey, 3 pts : I still love the woman, find her very sexy, admires her for her courage (to sing about women's sexual desires especially "Rid of me"), for her ability to change her sound. but (of course there's a but), I'm not a fan of the music; Not melodic enough for me ?
4. Joy Division, 2 pts : I have mixed feelings for JD. Side B of "Closer" is beautiful, eerie, dramatic, moody. But they were also originators of cold wave, a sound associated to the '80s and that I really don't like (that's why I repetedly voted the Smiths)

from here I'll pick groups that I really like and respect

5. the Pixies, 1 pt : a great pop/punk band, with a distinctive sound and really good songs like "here comes your man". my favorite album (not yours ? ) : Bossanova.
I'm sorry but I like straightforward music (hope I'm not the only one on this forum).

I have noticed that the more people are learned, the more they tend to like arty, complex stuff. I noticed that in university, and in my various jobs and student programs in the cultural industry.

that is not my case. Between complex and simple, I TEND to prefer simple, accessible things in which artists express their feelings without interference of any kind. that's why I'm not very familiar with post punk and indie music.

Right ... you got me there, Mitchell and Henrik

I did not mean "How Soon Is Now?", but "What Difference Does It Make?" or basically any other song from their s/t debut album or Hatful of Hollow, being representative for The Smiths' music.

Hmm, I better stop writing nonsense, shut up for a while and get back to work again ...

Re: The Smiths..."There Is a Light" is almost the only reason I never got around to putting them on my ballot. It's basically a rockabilly song (complete with lyrics that evoke James Dean) but on steroids. It's brilliant.

The Smiths seem to belong in a group with Massive Attack--and you can throw the Stone Roses in there too--bands with great influence in the UK but not much currency outside of it (although the Smiths are certainly better known over here than the other two).

Loophole, I assume your final comment is...ironic, given your earlier comments about Bono. I think probably nobody over the age of nine is fooled when Bono tries to parody himself--his heart's just not in it--but Michael Stipe is about as different from Bono in that respect as it's possible to be. He keeps his tongue in his cheek so much that he's gouged a hole in it; sometimes, he can't even sing "Everybody Hurts" without a nudge and a wink.

I agree for The Smiths and Stone Roses being mostly UK-only.
But Massive Attack were big everywhere in Europe.
In France for sure, and in Northern Europe too, I guess ...

I think sometimes UK stands for this side of the ocean and US for the other side. How unrepresentative the UK is of Europe is another matter.

Using UK to describe The Smiths is almost as bad as European. They are resolutely a band from North West England.

Unfortunately there isn't much in the way of non US, UK + Eire artists in the top 100 to consider.

Schleuse,

As you know I really have no use for Bono. My feelings toward R.E.M. are a lot more complex. Sometime around the Life's Rich Pageant/Document era I kind of lowered my view of the band. (Maybe I was trying to be too cool? Who knows.) I still liked them, but they were no longer at the pinnacle of my musical world.

It's not anything against R.E.M.'s music so much as the fact that the EP and first three albums were so good to me that I held R.E.M. to a higher standard than other bands. They really had nowhere to go but down in my eyes. Anyway, I think the main culprit of my semi-disdain for R.E.M. was Stipe. He came across as too self-important for me during that period. I think he started to take his little rock band too seriously and become an artiste. When it comes to the humor/art divide I fall squarely on the humor side of the line. If rock music isn't somewhat funny, I can't stomach it.

So I guess the point of my comment was to lump Stipe in with Bono, but thinking back that's not really fair, because Stipe does have a sense of humor. I just view him through an overly harsh lens. R.E.M. will be on my island a lot longer than U2.

One more thing about the Smiths (in response to Schleuse). I played in a lot of bands in the 1980s and I think the Smiths were one of the most influential "current" groups going (the others in my circle being R.E.M. and the Replacements). The main reason I think was Marr's jangly/twangy guitar playing, which really stood out from the guitar styles of the 1970s and was a lot crisper than what Peter Buck was doing (which I also liked). When you first put Hatful of Hollow on the turntable back in '83 or '84 that guitar sound really jumped out and grabbed you. A lot of the "alternative" bands for the balance of the 1980s followed suit.

For some reason I'm way verbose today. Too much coffee.

Let me clarify: REM and The Replacements were not "in my circle." I meant to say that they were the influential bands amongst my circle of friends (whose bands never it out of the bar-band circuit). The closest we got was a buddy's band touring the NE with the 10,000 maniacs (before they got really popular). The guys from 10,000 maniacs would hang out and drink beer and bitch about Natalie Merchant (another overly-serious artiste of the 1980s).

1) Al Green
2) Curtis Mayfield
3) The Byrds
4) Simon & Garfunkel

and...
5) Ray Charles. It's all getting a bit uncomfortable now, I have a lot of time for Ray Charles, but as our ex-Prime Minister John Major once said, when your back's against the wall, best thing to do is to turn round and start fighting...

When your back is against the wall you turn around and start fighting? Wouldn't that mean you'd be fighting the wall?

Yep. He wasn't the most inspiring PM this country's had.

Are you sure it wasn't George W. Bush who said that? lol.

No, he would bring the wall to justice, or smoke'em out ...

Actually, he would take it on faith that the wall was not there.

1. (5p) The Police - The Police are so boring, they should be investigated by the internal affairs.

2. (4p) Chuck Berry - Chuck him out of here, please.

3. (3p) Marvin Gaye - Vincent Vega and Marvin's father once said the same thing. What was it? (NB! Bad, cruel joke)

4. (2p) Bob Marley and the Wailers - I don't smoke grass, therefore reggae has no appeal to me.

5. (1p) James Brown - Honestly, I have nothing against black people. Some of my favourite artists are black. That's why I've put white crackers The Police on top :D I won't be voting Public Enemy or Stevie Wonder off very soon, though.

Hmm, tricky one. Was it "A please would be nice" or was it "Royale with cheese" in a really absurd accent.
Just messing, I know the quote you're referring to- you really are a bad, cruel man, Rune.

It was "have you ever given a woman a foot massage?".

I don't smoke grass (anymore (except the exceptions of course) and I still love reggae

R.I.P. to Pavement and Jack and Meg White. My biggest heartbreak is for the loss of Pavement, who I can now reveal are currently my 2d favorite artist. That's right, they left 65 spots too soon in my estimation.

My votes don't change from last week.

1. The Cure
2. Joy Division
3. Van Morrison
4. The Flaming Lips
5. Tom Waits

So who's one better than Pavement?

My #1 is still on the island, so I won't give it away. Probably not a huge surprise if you look at my top-100 albums.

Anyway, my #2 pick for Pavement is admittedly a tenuous one. I just happen to be crushing hard on their music right now. That doesn't change the fact that they should not have left so soon.

I don't understand what you guys have against The Police
Their hits still sound great to me
I don't like Sting but their 1978-83 singles are really good.
They are great musicians, mixing reggae and jazz elements with pop and punk-rock.
But they have one big flaw here and it's called mainstream.
yes, you can hear them on non-college radios...

Maybe because I grew up with them ?

I think because they do the faux reggae and jazz, people hate them. Most of their stuff sounds like a watered down version of great music. They were good musicians but it always sounded like they were trying to replicate something they weren't. It's the same reason I couldn't get into Graceland...it just seems corny coming from the source and it really feels like they are stealing an entire culture even if really they are just paying homage. It's awkward to listen to.

I love Message in a Bottle though so they haven't made my list...yet.

Rock is by essence a fusion of styles.
Mixing elements of blues and country first, then borrowing from every genre.
So I don't think it is a question of stealing cultures.
Seen from 2008, the artists you mention (Police, Paul Simon) might sound a bit dated to your ears (even more because you know the music they refer to), but when their records were out, they made those styles available to mainstream audiences.
Graceland made me discover African music and zydeco when it got out. I was 16 years old and didn't know much about music (well, probably much more than the average 16 year old Joe, but not so much as now, of course)
For The Police, it is a bit different : their hits were huge in the 80's. It's well executed, and I never got the impression that they were playing faux reggae
And The Clash, The Specials and alot of white english bands used reggae influences too. In France, Gainsbourg made a wonderful reggae album he recorded with Sly & Robbie and a bunch of other Jamaican great studio musicians.
i still like a good Police tune, maybe not as much as good old reggae music from Trojan vaults, but i don't place them on the same level

Nicholas, I agree with all you say above about The Police but that isn't enough for me to like them or to stop me throwing them into the sea!

Before I forget:
1)Blondie:Are they still here? Shocking
2)The Police:How did I forget them? Even Synchronicity was a bit patchy...
3)OutKast
4)John Coltrane
5)Nick Cave

The Police are a good band on paper.

I'm not a huge Police fan but Synchronicity pt. II is enough to convince me they belong here. More than Wilco at least.

Same votes as last week:

1. Bob Marley and the Wailers
2. The Who
3. Simon and Garfunkel
4. Aretha Franklin
5. The Beatles

I would put Yankee Hotel Foxtrot up against any Police album.

Nicolas, how do you come down on the Wilco vs. Police debate?

Moonbeam,

The 16-year old version of me would be very angry about your list! Replace Aretha with Motown (not a big stretch) and you would have a huge chunk of my early 1980s playlist on your boat leaving the island.

Wilco vs Police...

What a strange association !
A singles group vs an album group
I would say these records haven't got the same function
I discovered Police when I was 8 years old, Wilco more than 20 years later ...
I would say Wilco of course, although I don't know them so well (I guess the first complete album I got from them was in 2006)
but they really don't live in the same floor (not even in the same building or the same district) in the vast city of my mind...

Slight change...

1. U2
2. The Police
3. Lou Reed
4. The White Stripes
5. Wilco

Same as before

1. The Byrds
2. Hank Williams
3. Al Green
4. Van Morrison
5. Bob Marley and the Wailers

Hello dere, sonofsamiam.

I don't have a record of you voting for the Police before, so I need an explanation of that.

Also, you voted for the White Stripes, but, sadly, Jack & Meg are already gone...

He's kicking dirt in our WS-adoring faces!

5 points: Chuck Berry - Repeat. Still here, still remaining here for awhile I imagine.

4 points: Ray Charles - Repeat

3 points: Blondie - Repeat

2 point: Parliament/Funkadelic - Bumped up to two points with Jacko out of the running.

1 point: Leonard Cohen - A week ago, I relistened to all my stuff that I have of his, which kept him off my ballot last week. It just wasn't enough to keep him off for too long. Also, this could theoretically be The Police, but I think everyone else has done a satisfactory job making sure they won't be back for more.

Huzzah - The Smiths are gone at last, and I see The Byrds queueing up near the exit too.
This means I am replacing one act this time, and hopefully another next time....

1. Bob Dylan.
2. Van Morrison.
3. Bruce Springsteen.
4. Pixies. (moved up from 5th position after The Smiths' exit)

New:
5. U2. It's getting difficult now, everyone else on e the island I either like, or partially like, or I haven't heard - but I'm not going to vote against anyone I haven't heard, so Wilco is safe from me. U2 are one of those bands who have done a few great songs, quite a few good/ok songs, and lots of godawful overblown pompous rubbish that's up itself. The latter outweighs the good stuff, and so they go on my list.

You seriously prefer all the artists still in the tournament to Bob Dylan? Honestly?

I've always disliked Bob Dylan, from his annoying whiny voice to his "Importance".

I know nobody else will be voting for him anytime soon, but why should I change my list just to go along with what other people are voting out?

By all means you should vote for the artists you like least, I was just wondering if you actually thought he was worse than everyone else on the list.

To really generalize, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen all have a distintive voices, are singer-songwriters, etc. but you prefer them over Bob Dylan? Not attacking you or anything, just wondering.

But they aren't as "important."

Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen offer three of the "best" (or most interesting) vocals in rock history.

With Dylan, I don't find it strange that someone wants to vote him out, as I would have done the same if we did this 10 years ago (before H61R sinked in).

As I would have, Henrik, and for the same reasons Harpo cites: "annoying whiny voice" and "Importance." After I came around on Bob, those two things faded into irrelevance.

Bob's "Importance" was almost entirely bestowed on him in the late 60s and 70s by overeager critics and fans who, once Dylan "went" electric, were desperate to have him validate their love of rock (and, by extension, the tastes of their generation). In other words, it's not SELF-importance (at least no more than you'd find in the average professional performer). I can no longer blame Bob for the overzealousness of his early fans.

As for the annoying whiny voice...nah, I'm tired of that tired argument. In a nutshell: it's not a flaw, it's a feature.

Cave, Waits & Cohen are all far better than Dylan.