Ragged Clown

It's just a shadow you're seeing that he's chasing…


Jan
5
2010

Quest 500. 1-10.

I am on a quest to listen to the 500 Greatest – according to Rolling Stone – Albums of All Time. I am 30 albums in and have an interim report to file. I’ll cover the highlights.

OK, Sergeant Pepper really is awesome and I can’t quibble about it being  #1. It wouldn’t be my number 1 but I accept that it is a fantastic album. Well done Beatles.

Rolling Stone says

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.

Your White Album was incredible too but I will not accept that five Beatles albums belong in the top 14. That’s madness.

But what is even more crazy is that Pet Sounds is #2.

I love the Beach Boys and I would definitely have a Beach Boys album in my top 500. But not this one. And not at #2.

Rolling Stone says

“Who’s gonna hear this shit?” Beach Boys singer Mike Love asked the band’s resident genius, Brian Wilson, in 1966, as Wilson played him the new songs he was working on. “The ears of a dog?”

It’s not that bad. But still not #2.

At last! Some sense!This is the album that gave Rolling Stone magazine it’s name and I love it. It’s better than all three of the albums above it.

Like a Rolling Stone is the certainly the best song ever but Ballad of a Thin Man is a contender.

Rolling Stone says:

Bruce Springsteen has described the beginning of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the opening song on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, as the “snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.” The response of folk singer Phil Ochs to the entire album was even more rhapsodic. “It’s impossibly good. . . .” he said. “How can a human mind do this?”

The rest of the top 10 is fairly obvious (apart from all those Beatles albums) but wtf is The Clash doing in there?

1. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles

2. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys

3. Revolver, The Beatles

4. Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan

5. Rubber Soul, The Beatles

6. What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye

7. Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones

8. London Calling, The Clash

9. Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan

10. The Beatles (“The White Album”), The Beatles