Since This Magazine Began, 1968-2008.

Scarce on new lists that have been posted, so I figured I'd post this.

Here are the musical works cited:

Velvet Underground, Velvet Underground (1969)
Patti Smith, Horses (1975)
The Ramones, The Ramones (1976)
Television, Marquee Moon (1977)
Suicide, Suicide (1977)
Blondie, Parallel Lines (1978)
Willie Colon-Ruben Blades, Siembra (1978)
Chic, C'est Chic (1978)
Various Artists, No New York (1978)
Instant Funk, "I Got My Mind Made Up (Larry Lavan remix)," 1979
Talking Heads, Remain in Light (1980)
The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms (1980)
Various, "Wild Style" soundtrack (1983)
Madonna, Madonna (1983)
Rammelzee Vs. K-Rob, Beat Bop (1983)
Run D.M.C., Run D.M.C. (1984)
Arthur Russell, World of Echo (1986)
Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation (1988)
Beastie Boys, Paul's Boutique (1989)
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet (1990)
Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993
Nas, Illmatic (1994)
The Notorious B.I.G., Ready to Die (1994)
Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs (1999)
Moby, Play (1999)- this one is designated as "The Argument Starter"
The Steokes, Is This It (2001)
Jay-Z, The Blueprint (2001)
LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem (2005)

Thre also are 12 Jazz selections posted after that, that I can type up t a later point.

cool list!

what's really interesting are the gaps

1969-1975
1994-1999
2001-2005

NYC= drugs and gangs. Yep, that's a good definition.

there are enough acclaimed works on the list, that wouldn't really fall into that. :)

And what difference wouldit make if they did? Drugs are synonymous with rock and roll, anyways (not that everyone in the industry does em, obviously)

Very interesting...although it would be more interesting if it didn't start with 1968. (Live at the Apollo, anyone?)

The thing is, for about the first half of this period, you couldn't have paid me to live in New York. For most of the 1970s and 1980s, the city was an absolute sinkhole.

Before 1965, and after about 1990, I NY.

(That's the first smiley I've ever used on this forum. Probably the last, too.)

Well, 1968 was the year the magzine started, so it was kinda stuck with the years span. :)

schleuse, didn't you say you lived here at some point?

yeah, these days the drugs & gangs thing is more fitting of baltimore, oakland, new orleans, detroit, dc, etc...meth doesn't seem to have really caught on here yet, thank god

weird things going on in nyc these days...for instance, within a block of my house i have a crackhouse, a french bistro, a barbershop and a matzoh bakery

i like to say that i wish the city had more edge/grit/sleaze, but honestly it's nice to be able to walk around late at night and not worry about getting mugged (for the most part)...by all accounts prince was right on the money when he sang about a guy "high on crack / totin' a machine gun" in the '80s

here's my list of 30 quintessential new york movies (i had to cut some and probably totally forgot about or haven't seen some others, so feel free to add)

in chronological order...

King Kong (Schoedsack/Cooper, 1933)
Angels with Dirty Faces (Curtiz, 1938)
Force of Evil (Polonsky, 1948)
Little Fugitive (Engel, 1953)
On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
The Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
Portrait of Jason (Clarke, 1967)
Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969)
The Landlord (Ashby, 1970)
The French Connection (Friedkin, 1971)
Serpico (Lumet, 1973)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Sargent, 1973)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977)
Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
The Warriors (Hill, 1979)
Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981)
Wolfen (Wadleigh, 1981)
The Brother from Another Planet (Sayles, 1984)
Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
Once Upon a Time in America (Leone, 1984)
After Hours (Scorsese, 1985)
Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
Vampire's Kiss (Bierman, 1989)
King of New York (Ferrara, 1990)
Clockers (Lee, 1995)
Dark Days (Singer, 2000)
Downtown 81 (Bertoglio, 2000)
25th Hour (Lee, 2002)

Greg, I lived way out on Long Island--I was in grad school at Stony Brook. But my brother lived in the city at that time, and I went in to visit him once or twice a month...that was 1995-97.

I'm (sometimes) more nervous walking down the street in Houston now than I was in the Boogie Down then.

Remind me where in the city you live?

Shadows or Basket Case, maybe. but then again the 30 you're offering make a pretty tough competition though. city:movie:jealous, nj...

Not knocking it, but would this list have been posted here at AM if Madonna wasn't on it?

jell rot...!

how many times have I said that I seek out lists where Madonna's included. There's no bones about that, and I don't see anything wrong with that- do you? :) Especially since a lot of lists include her in some fashion, anyways.

I picked up New York magazine, because it was a nice issue celebrating the publication's 40th anniversary. So, I posted it. And, like I said, the number of all-time lists (lists period) posted lately has been rather scarce.

it definitely has become somewhat family-oritned, espeiclaly Times Square. Since Madge was mentioned, she recently said how NYC is still full of amazing energy, but that the 80s had more of it in terms of the art/music world than we're seeing today, and I think she's right- it was just a different time back then, and now nothing's realy standing out in terms of up-and-coming, underground goods, stuff like that.

I was born in Brooklyn, lived there for 6 years total of my life. I love going to Manhattan, because there is an energy/culture there that you don't find in most places (even if it is cleaned up a bit compared to how it used to be).

schleuse, i'm on the south side of williamsburg, near the intersection of broadway and union, if you know the area (the JMZ runs over broadway) - just across the williamsburg bridge from the lower east side, which i think was probably the cool place to be when you were here - now it's all bridge & tunnel crowd. i don't think williamsburg became the place to be until the very end of the '90s, which means the cycle is almost up - rents are skyrocketing and high-rises are popping up all over the place, especially on the brooklyn side of the east river, so "the scene" is spreading away from wburg and farther into brooklyn - bushwick, bed-stuy, ridgewood (queens), etc. most of the crowd seems to be from the midwest and the south, people seeking big city thrills. new englanders like me are hard to come by - seems like most of them headed up to vermont to do the hippie thing. i still love it here, though. the restaurants and bars keep me around, not to mention the all the concert venues and repertory movie theaters.

netjade - actually, the word on the street here is that berlin is now the cool place to be. or has that too run its course? (you're a kolner, nicht wahr?) re: movies, definitely shadows. is basket case a new york movie? i've completely forgotten.

Greg, I spent the last week in Berlin at my boyfriend's appartment to provide some hot or not so new information to you: the Capital STILL tries capturing sequels of its 1922ish heydays by producing squirrel balls which allegedly are heavily demanded by hazelnuts, while Cologne however hasn't managed to overcome the Watusi yet. which means a tie in KUHLness according to the concepts of most of other cultures.
but then... more news to follow, nj.

PS: somehow, whenever people talk about some dystopian early 1980s, pre-giulianiesque n.y.c. impressions, freezed location shots of Basket Case come to my mind... thus..