The Album Review Club - Week #147 - (page 1942) - Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

[Saddleworth2]

Weirdly today's 9320 podcast is about the best musical year. Their picks are 1971, 84 or 91

71 for me.

 

[Saddleworth2]

If it's any consolation, my last nomination had about 30 page debate of best guitarist ever.

Page.

 

[Saddleworth2]

I wouldn't run it as a fixed order - like you said, it would make far more sense for somebody who has a desire to take a certain year to run that.But those of us how enjoy research could do any year, then put forward the best of what's been found (plus the odd personal favourite) and all other contributors will quickly correct them if they've made a glaring omission!

Go for it then Rob. Your suggestion takes my original idea a little further so I’d be happy to contribute as long as 1971 is mine. ;-)

 

[RobMCFC]

Go for it then Rob. Your suggestion takes my original idea a little further so I’d be happy to contribute as long as 1971 is mine. ;-)

I think we can agree that '71 is ring-fenced for you as you were good enough to raise the idea in this thread :)

All that remains to be agreed now is when to start it. We've still got the Blue Moon Cup going on and I've got a busy few months with more holidays and then radiotherapy. My original plan was not to consider any new threads until November because of these reasons, but if other people are helping out maybe we could start sooner.

I'd love to know if there's any way that the mods can grant two or more people the power to edit thread titles because that would be a great help in running all of these thread. I'll ping a PM to MES to ask him before we start a new thread.

But the two of us can take this to PMs from here on out and prevent the threads being clogged up. If anybody else wants to be involved in planning/running of this, feel free to let one of us know and we can add you do any ongoing discussions.

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Thanks everyone for feedback on the 'best year in music' idea.
Of the ten responses I got safe to say that the reaction was mixed with two mainly against the idea and two supportive with caveats.

Taking on your feedback, this is the idea refined a bit:

My Best Year in Music

Write a 'love letter' to your best year in music demonstrating why;
- it was the most creative year in musical history
- it marked a step change in musical direction
- it spawned an extraordinary number of iconic albums
- a pantheon of artists emerged which would dominate music for decades
- or a combination of all of those things.

You can include up to five albums from that year (UK release dates please) which illustrate your proposal as to why it's the strongest in history.

Given the strength of album reviews you guys write I can imagine some very thought provoking and compelling 'love letters'.

The idea would be to run it in stages
1) participants nominate a year asap after launch (no duplicates)
2) they get a week to post their write ups
3) then another week to review the submissions, write up their own summary of what they found and vote for their favourite submission/year other than their own.
Clearly, this is not about listening to every album proposed, many will be well known to this group, more a bit of thinking, reading, listening and then choosing their favourite year/submission.

Most folk (including myself) wanted this on a separate thread but having thought about it more carefully I would like it to be part of this thread at the end of a cycle (replacing the usual guessing game as a one off). This would make sure there was no time contention as this will take time and I don't think it would succeed if launched parallel to the album thread. Also launching as a separate thread runs the risk of it dying a death or attracting large numbers and making the thing unmanageable. Most importantly, if its done as part of this thread it maximises the chances of you all participating and given the high quality evident weekly on here, I just think keeping it on here would make for a far richer outcome.

Anyway, enough from me.
Views?

So are people claiming years now?

The problem is I need to think more. This is is a UK thread but my problem is my year using US release dates is a slam dunk, but using UK release dates splits between two which sucks.

But I love the idea of a "love letter" to a year as a way to approach this!

 

[Coatigan]

As it's broadly similar to yours. I might as well say now that the idea I had a few weeks back was: Rock Evolution.

The way this would work is that for each two-week cycle, one person would pick 5 tracks from a year and people would nominate their own favourites from that year. We'd have the usual discussion but no voting.

This would work in chronological order, starting with the birth of Rock N Roll in 1955, working right up to the present day. i.e, it would be a 3-year project. (Maybe we'd have a pre-section covering everything before 1955 and maybe 1955-1959 could be covered in one session).

The idea of doing it in chronological order would be that we would all get to hear the advances in the order they happened. i.e. when did psychedelic music first appear? What was the effect of punk? What about the advance in synths and the appearance of rap? Did grunge really first appear in 1991 or would somebody come up with a grunge track in 1987 etc.

I'm not saying we should do this instead of your idea, just floating the concept for discussion as it was similar to yours. With the focus being on tracks, it's more easily digestible, but as you say, in your setup, there would be no requirement to listen to whole albums, just sample some songs from each.

I like the idea of doing it chronologically.

I have no real thoughts on album vs tracks at this point.

Maybe the two can go together in some way, not sure

 

[bennyboy]

If it's any consolation, my last nomination had about 30 page debate of best guitarist ever.

No probs with that but can you imagine another 30 comments at least added on to our review club.
Nothing against the best of year but it has to be a separate thread for it to work.All in my opinion off course.

 

[bennyboy]

So are people claiming years now?

The problem is I need to think more. This is is a UK thread but my problem is my year using US release dates is a slam dunk, but using UK release dates splits between two which sucks.

But I love the idea of a "love letter" to a year as a way to approach this!

Oh I'm sure the US Rush release will be just as shit as the UK release.

 

[GornikDaze]

Oh I'm sure the US Rush release will be just as shit as the UK release.

Dog. With. A. Bone. ;)

 

[hilts]

1997 for me please boss

You've spelt 80s wrong