This is as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

And this is The best songs of the rock and roll era, written , and concerning Updates, Men With Big

Here's the plan. You need the following things.
  1. Some friends
  2. An apartment in Brussels*
  3. Beer*
  4. A £10 voucher for each friend and yourself to buy MP3s
Then each of you takes their £10 voucher and buys what they consider to be the best songs of the rock and roll era as mp3s, and also buys what they consider to be the worst song of the rock and roll era. "The rock and roll era" is sort of vaguely defined to be everything since about 1956 or so. Note that the songs you choose do not have to be rock and roll! The game then is, you show up to your Brussels holiday flat (or wherever you decide to play this, e.g., your own living room), each of you with your songs in tow, and then each of you plays through each of your songs and attempts to justify why they're the best songs of the last fifty(ish) years. Fun things about this game:
  1. You hear a lot of music you haven't heard for ages
  2. You hear a lot of music you've never heard before
  3. You get to be unbelieveably pretentious about why you chose the songs you did
  4. You get to mercilessly beat your friends for making the wrong choices
  5. You can't buy Beatles music from the Amazon mp3 store which means that no-one picks any Beatles songs
  6. You have no idea how bad music can get until you hear everyone's "worst song" choice
It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The songs I chose are presented below, for you to argue about. Feel free to provide your own lists (maybe this should be one of those meme things). I tried to provide a bit of structure (you're not obliged to do this). So I tried to pick a song from each decade and a song from each genre, to cover the full majesty of music since 1960 or so. (No links provided, since we don't have the Ubuntu One Music Store yet, but we will have soon :-))
Pop
Peter Sarstedt - Where Do You Go To, My Lovely
Hip-hop
Run DMC - Walk This Way
Rock
This should have been You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC (on Back in Black, the second best selling album of all time), but you can't buy AC/DC music as mp3s either, so it was Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women by Airbourne, who are basically a note-perfect AC/DC tribute band and really, really good
Indie
Blur - Song 2
Country
Charlie Rich - Behind Closed Doors
Easy Listening
Paul Simon - Still Crazy After All These Years
Elvis (OK, not strictly a "genre", but how can you leave him out?)
Elvis Presley - Return To Sender
60s
Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth
70s
Queen - Seven Seas of Rhye
80s (gets two songs, on account of being a formative decade for my musical tastes)
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms and Michael Jackson - Thriller
90s (ditto)
Sublime - Santeria and Portishead - Roads
00s
The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
And finally, the worst song ever:
Lieutenant Pigeon - Mouldy Old Dough

Comments

Fab

OK, to get some real music on here... ;)

(Changed some genres etc.)

Pop: Men at Work - Land Down Under

Electronic: Wamdue Project - King of my Castle

Reggae: Bob Marley - Redemption Song

Rock: Neil Young - Rockin' in the Free World

Indie: Shirley Grimes - Sweet Rain

Country: The Highwaymen - Highwayman

Folk: John Williamson - A Flag Of Our Own

Soundtrack: Joss Whedon/Sonny Rhodes - The Ballad of Serenity

60s:

Bob Dylan - All Along The Watchtower

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Lodi

70s:

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

Bob Dylan - One More Cup of Coffee

80s:

Sting - Englishman in New York

Dire Straits - Tunnel of Love

90s:

Tina Turner - GoldenEye

Sting - A Thousand Years

00s:

Mark Knopfler - What It Is

Bruce Springsteen - Radio Nowhere

And finally, bonus Bruce Springsteen song since we're already heavily skewed anyway:

Bruce Springsteen - Jungleland

Sess

My Top 12 (yes, I know...):

Portishead - Only You

Portishead - All Mine

Portishead - Roads

Death In Vegas - Hands Around My Throat

Death In Vegas - Diving Horses

Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Pink Floyd - Pigs

The Doors - Riders On The Storm

Alain Bashung - Madame Rêve

Ryuichi Sakamato - Furyo

Sneaker Pimps - Grazes

Moloko - The Only Ones

Lars Gunther

Buy the worst song I know to be played just once? Nah, I'd use TPB.

Tom

Great idea ... although I wish Amazon would not allow buying Mark Knopfler :)

BTW Is is possible that people send me their Amazon selection to my Amazon account so that I can buy them? That would make things a lot easier. I looked but didn't find anything :(

Tom

I just thought of something. As it is now the game is just a pasttime with no winners or losers. Why not vote at the end (your own submissions are tabu) and have 2 winners and 2 losers. Best best song, worst worst song and worst best song and best worst song :)

A small web app for the voting would be cool!

Alistair Munro

"Walk this Way" was written and recorded by Aerosmith, the second time they recorded it, Run DMC were guests, not the other way around :(

Yes I'm a pedantic miserable git!

iain

Your Run DMC choice says "I know nothing about hiphop"

sil

iain: if you say so. I chose a track that puts a smile on my face. They can't all be Nation of Millions, you know.

iain

Sk8r Boi by Avril Lavigne puts a smile in my face but I wouldn't say it was one of the best songs of the last 50 years. Admittedly you made it up, but the game isn't about what songs you like but the BEST songs of the last 53 years. You can't start changing the rules once someone points out how much your choices suck (I'll not even comment on Dire Straits)

And about Nation of Millions: either

a) You rank Nations of Millions as better hiphop than Walk This Way, and if so, why didn't you put a song off it as the best hip hop track of the last 50 years

b) you're attempting to show your knowledge of the hip-hop genre by namedropping another well known group. Even my mother knows who Public Enemy are. Go on google for a more obscure reference.

This is a good game. I love being a music snob.

I also think having the fixed structure is a good way to do it.

Tom (Orangeaurochs)

Tom (the other one): I think we considered the whole voting thing, but it was all too complicated after all the beers (see point 3 above). Also, my phone lols at the idea of accessing the web, let alone these new fangled apps. We assembled a few facts, which I am now a bit hazy on. Only one song turned up twice: 'Gimme gimme gimme' by Abba (so is de-facto winner); I think Elvis turned up on everyone's list, or on at least three: it was the most popular artist anyway. I'll stick my list up at some point too.

Sil: I keep singing that Sublime song in my head, although I can't agree that it was sublime as such. Perhaps if it was stripped of its ska-punk accompaniment it might work better.

Best songs of the rock and roll era (Belgium ; 1) « Aurlog

[...] the GPSOE’s recent expedition to Brussels, Stuart very kindly gave me, Tim,  Andy, and himself £10 Amazon vouchers each to buy what we thought were [...]

Thumper

Curious that your "indie" choice is a cheap pastiche of contemporary US alt rock, and as such curiously unrepresentative of Britpop.

"Worst" is actually the most interesting one here. There are so many different ways in which a song can fail, after all.

- Chris

G.

Glad to see that the rules have been retrospectively altered to include songs before 1956- though unfortunately my Elvis selection dates from 1954 and so is still invalid.

Musical flumps | as days pass by, by Stuart Langridge

[...] a certain amount of commentary on my best songs of the rock-and-roll era list. One of the reasons I was looking forward to posting it was that there’d likely be some [...]

Duncan Lock

You can do better than that for an Elvis number! How about 'Burning Love' - or, if you want to be sneaky, how about 'I Washed my Hands in Muddy Water' - this gets you your country track as well.

Philip

In response to your must try harder post, here is my list. It should be said that this is by no means definitive and I am likely to change my mind the second I hit the submit button :)

Pop: OutKast - Hey Ya!

Hip-hop: Deltron 3030 – Positive Contact

Rock: Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows

Indie: The Stone Roses - I Am the Resurrection

Country: Alison Krauss & Union Station - The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn

Easy listening: Lighthouse Family - High

Elvis: Elvis Presley – Return To Sender (SNAP!)

60s: The Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

70s: T.Rex - Get It On

80s: Grandmaster & Melle Mel - White Lines

90s: The Beta Band - Dry the Rain

00s: The Chemical Brothers - Believe

Worst song evar: Céline Dion - My Heart Will Go On (should be banned from karaoke, for obvious reasons!)

Dean

Sublime stripped of ska-punk sound? Would there be anything left?

Angel

Burn Down the Parliament by The Herd. One of the BEST hip hop songs EVER!

Check out the chorus:

burn down a parliament we burn down a flag

burn down a liar like we burn ounce bag

and the dutch oven cooks with the smoke that was grabbed

so the fire flew fast and the flame licked the red rag

Daeng Bo

I only care about one category -- rock -- and only one song -- Runnin' with the Devil off of Van Halen's debut album.

That is all. ;)

Daeng

p.s. Thanks for this.

Dave Morley

Worst number 1 of all times is another fun game you'll be amased at the crap that made it to number 1

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