sur la route

This hasn’t auto-imported from Flickr yet so I’m doing it manually, so sorry if it turns up twice :-P I done it :) This is how I spent almost 20 straight days of the past year… the actual running time of this gargantuan playlist is 18.3 days but I listened to a lot of bonus CDs/tracks too along the way which I didn’t feel were needed in the final collection. Last year I made a loose resolution to listen to Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest 500 Albums of All Time before the year was out. It was a tall order, and as we got into Autumn, frankly surprised I was still keeping it up, I changed the deadline to my 30th birthday, tomorrow. Like, I don’t go in for the whole “things to do before you’re 30” thing because it can get depressing, but I guess this was one of those, the best I can offer anyway :) Anyway as I post this I’m up to #492 on the original list (linked above) and I’ll get to #500 before bedtime tonight. They added 8 more albums, condensing some of the old entries, between that list and the publication of the book version, which I will listen to tomorrow. Below are the changes they made between original and book lists, and also some changes I made in the collection pictured. What They Changed Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions was replaced by a larger collection called Sunrise. They removed Robert Johnson’s “King of the Delta Blues” collections, which took up 2 slots, and replaced them with “The Complete Recordings” which contains all that and more. They removed “The Complete Hank Williams” leaving his “40 Greatest Hits”. They removed an Otis Redding collection “Dreams to Remember”. They removed the Greatest Hits of The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, James Brown, and the Mamas and the Papas, all of whom have other albums on list. They removed Meet the Beatles, leaving With the Beatles… they’re really just US/UK versions of the same album with few differences (I’ve used the recently released remaster of With the Beatles) What I Changed I’m glad of how many Greatest Hits collections they swapped out but it still wasn’t enough. My biggest gripe with this list was the number of compilations. They just aren’t albums. I can make exceptions for those who never released songs as albums, like Robert Johnson, eg, but they left in the likes of Elton John’s Greatest Hits, which only actually has 3 songs on it that aren’t on other albums in the list. I replaced it with the albums they come from, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player and Caribou. This of course increased my collection from 500 to 501 titles. I fixed this by combining the Howlin’ Wolf albums into this two pack. Rolling Stone included the similarly packaged Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley as one entry, so I thought this was okay tinkering. I thought it weird they merged the Robert Johnson collections into the more sweeping complete but then removed the Complete Hank Williams in favour of his 40 Greatest Hits. I kept the Complete instead. Maybe it’s just ‘cos I spent so damn long listening to that one (nearly 10 hours, lol). I did the same with the Best of Little Walter, all tracks of which are available on the Complete Chess recordings, and also I replaced the rather slim Neil Diamond collection with the more recent compilation, the 74-track Play Me. There’s no doubt that just about everyone will find some fault with this list. Off the top of my head I can fume “where’s Scott Walker and Janis Ian?!” etc. But I can’t recommend listening to everything on it enough. I’ve found some real gems on it and learned a lot about music history by reading the accompanying book and finding other info about the albums as I listened. I mightn’t agree with close to half of their choices as “Greatest of All Time” but I understand why most of them are there. It’s been an adventure! These will now be confined to one of the old Dell PCs for posterity, save for the 100 or so that I count among my faves too. I’m gonna put the whole lot on my 30GB iPod Video too, I think if I compress them to 128kbps they should fit. I’ll dip back in from time to time and listen again to the ones I know I need to listen to again. Next stop, 1001 albums to listen to before you die? LOL.

This hasn’t auto-imported from Flickr yet so I’m doing it manually, so sorry if it turns up twice :-P

I done it :)

This is how I spent almost 20 straight days of the past year… the actual running time of this gargantuan playlist is 18.3 days but I listened to a lot of bonus CDs/tracks too along the way which I didn’t feel were needed in the final collection.

Last year I made a loose resolution to listen to Rolling Stone magazine’s Greatest 500 Albums of All Time before the year was out. It was a tall order, and as we got into Autumn, frankly surprised I was still keeping it up, I changed the deadline to my 30th birthday, tomorrow. Like, I don’t go in for the whole “things to do before you’re 30” thing because it can get depressing, but I guess this was one of those, the best I can offer anyway :)

Anyway as I post this I’m up to #492 on the original list (linked above) and I’ll get to #500 before bedtime tonight. They added 8 more albums, condensing some of the old entries, between that list and the publication of the book version, which I will listen to tomorrow. Below are the changes they made between original and book lists, and also some changes I made in the collection pictured.

What They Changed

Elvis Presley’s Sun Sessions was replaced by a larger collection called Sunrise. They removed Robert Johnson’s “King of the Delta Blues” collections, which took up 2 slots, and replaced them with “The Complete Recordings” which contains all that and more. They removed “The Complete Hank Williams” leaving his “40 Greatest Hits”. They removed an Otis Redding collection “Dreams to Remember”. They removed the Greatest Hits of The Byrds, Simon and Garfunkel, James Brown, and the Mamas and the Papas, all of whom have other albums on list. They removed Meet the Beatles, leaving With the Beatles… they’re really just US/UK versions of the same album with few differences (I’ve used the recently released remaster of With the Beatles)



What I Changed

I’m glad of how many Greatest Hits collections they swapped out but it still wasn’t enough. My biggest gripe with this list was the number of compilations. They just aren’t albums. I can make exceptions for those who never released songs as albums, like Robert Johnson, eg, but they left in the likes of Elton John’s Greatest Hits, which only actually has 3 songs on it that aren’t on other albums in the list. I replaced it with the albums they come from, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player and Caribou.

This of course increased my collection from 500 to 501 titles. I fixed this by combining the Howlin’ Wolf albums into this two pack. Rolling Stone included the similarly packaged Bo Diddley/Go Bo Diddley as one entry, so I thought this was okay tinkering.

I thought it weird they merged the Robert Johnson collections into the more sweeping complete but then removed the Complete Hank Williams in favour of his 40 Greatest Hits. I kept the Complete instead. Maybe it’s just ‘cos I spent so damn long listening to that one (nearly 10 hours, lol). I did the same with the Best of Little Walter, all tracks of which are available on the Complete Chess recordings, and also I replaced the rather slim Neil Diamond collection with the more recent compilation, the 74-track Play Me.


There’s no doubt that just about everyone will find some fault with this list. Off the top of my head I can fume “where’s Scott Walker and Janis Ian?!” etc. But I can’t recommend listening to everything on it enough. I’ve found some real gems on it and learned a lot about music history by reading the accompanying book and finding other info about the albums as I listened. I mightn’t agree with close to half of their choices as “Greatest of All Time” but I understand why most of them are there. It’s been an adventure!

These will now be confined to one of the old Dell PCs for posterity, save for the 100 or so that I count among my faves too. I’m gonna put the whole lot on my 30GB iPod Video too, I think if I compress them to 128kbps they should fit. I’ll dip back in from time to time and listen again to the ones I know I need to listen to again.

Next stop, 1001 albums to listen to before you die? LOL.