Top 10 Lists

December 22nd, 2006

Fellow Madisonian Ryan over at Muzzle of Bees recently noted that local record shops have released their Best of ‘06 lists and promises one of his own in a couple weeks. Madison rapper and activist El Guante also has a top 10 list up at his blog. (Albeit one laden with sarcasm.) Local music critic Tom Laskin has a look at the year in pop music up as well. Looking at all these lists, I already knew that I didn’t read Pitchfork and then realized that I didn’t recognize the majority of the artists on them and had heard only 1 album mentioned: Neil Young’s Living With War. But I was pleasantly surprised to see Bert Jansch on a few of the lists from B-Side. So I thought it might be fun to make a year-end list of my own when it dawned on me that I hadn’t bought any albums that were released this year, discounting reissues and compilations. So I rectified this situation by purchasing Gob Iron’s Death Songs for the Living yesterday. I am obviously way out of touch with pop music today. And so I’ve taken a slightly different tack for my list.

Top 10 Music-Related Thingies For Me in 2006 In No Particular Order
10) Is Tom Laskin correct? Is Pitchfork Media really “the arbiter of choice for young, college-educated followers of indie rock”?

9) “Why does the Madison music scene suck so much?”

While I’ve never heard Joanna Newsom’s music and it may well be forgotten in 5 years, that a harpist is getting so much press in pop music circles is a good thing.

7) I need to listen to more Mogwai and Bark Psychosis in order to understand just what the hell post-rock is.

6) I’m looking forward to seeing how Madison’s burgeoning Latino population changes the musical landscape here. It’d be great if Madison could spawn the Los Lobos of the Upper Midwest. The band would mix norteño & tejano with rock & polka. Laugh now because you won’t be when Los Quesocabeza is packing Madison Square Garden.

5) Speaking of polka, I discovered this year that Madison is not a polka town.

4) Why will I drive 25 miles to see the Goose Island Ramblers but rarely see a local rock band right here in town?

3) I’d love to see more progressive rock shows here. A cover band (PROG) and a band (The Selfish Gene) whose music arguably nods in that general direction are not enough. Is there a Music Promoter for Dummies book out there? I’d love to have Kopecky play here. It’s not like they have to fly in from the UK – they’re from Racine. My initial impression of their music was that of a cross between Djam Karet and Rush and, while not totally accurate, I’ll stick with it here. I would love it if Porcupine Tree played her next year but that’s not likely to happen. They’d have to bypass Milwaukee and The Twin Cities for that to go down.

2) Hopefully Eric Lipton will continue his tradition of writing stuff that gets in my craw so I can bitch about it here in the pages of UtD.

1) Why all the violence surrounding hip-hop shows here in Madison? The Club Majestic may have discontinued hip-hop nights and curbed the violence on King Street but now we’ll have to wait and see what happens at the Blue Chalk Club. Critics and music bloggers in Madison can argue about the influence of Pitchfork or whether Joanna Newsom will be around in a few months, but any retrospective of the Madison music scene in 2006 should devote some space to the Club Majestic’s hip-hop night and the violence that surrounded it. It likely goes beyond the fate of a musical genre and into the underbelly of Madison itself. If former mayor Paul Soglin is correct with his assertion that the violence on King Street is related to the poverty on Allied Drive, then all of Madison had better take a look at this issue.

Related posts:

1. Up the Downstair in Print
2. A Latin Luther's
3. Polka Redux
4. R.I.P. – Lil' Wally the Polka King
5. Fish's Misplaced Trust