The world seems to be awash with Top 100 lists at the moment. First we had the London Observer’s Best 100 British Albums, compiled from the choices of a cast of thousands, and as such leeched of all elements of personal choice to become a kind of lowest-common-denominator consumer guide. Still, it is interesting to see what sits at the forefront of the “culture” at this moment of history: Beatles, Stones and Bowie everywhere, of course, but we like to see “London Calling” at number 3 and, especially, the so-called “Metal Box” at number 10.
Then there were, in rapid succession, the inevitable personal responses from Marcello Carlin and Mark Fisher (links at right). These lists are much more fun, and interesting, because they are highly idiosyncratic and revealing of the person behind them, in a way that something like the Observer list can never be. The thrill of going through a list like this lies in coming across records you would never have expected to see there. In this case, the biggest surprise was to see David Sylvian’s “Blemish” in both Carlin’s and Fisher’s lists. I have only recently acquired it and had been working through a few teething troubles until I now seem to be forming the view that it is going to become a rather important record: it’s nice to have support from persons whose judgment seems in many ways close to one’s own, and who have had more time to warm to a record whose own warmth has not been immediately apparent. (We must also give a wave of the hankie to Carlin, who manages, in his usual fashion, to push things to the level beyond which us mere mortals could reach, by compiling the corresponding list of a person who was the biggest part of his life. Without doubt the saddest list I’ve ever read.)
Then there was Pitchfork’s Best 100 Records of the 1970s, another group effort but in this case a group of like-minded individuals: this list tells you whence the current crop of hipsters are deriving at least a portion of their inspiration. And for someone who pulls many of his own favourites from that benighted decade, it is a joyful stroll through a thicket of personal high spots, criss-crossed by paths never travelled: 1970s Miles; Can; King Crimson. Oh the places you’ll go.
Then there’s Dave Keenan’s Best Records Ever ... Honest, which appeared in the Sunday Herald, and which is both a beautiful wind-up (many of the people featured exist on the far periphery of the known world: Robbie Basho? The Real Kids?) and an effective device for encouraging argument.
I could never put together such a list. For one thing, anything after the first 30 would be almost totally arbitrary. But the main problem is that my brain contains tiny holes through which important bits of information disappear randomly. Example: I forgot to invite Weary, my best friend in the whole world, to my tenth birthday party. Completely forgot. Didn’t even give him a thought, until his mum’s Holden Premier (white with black racing stripes - how envious was I?) appeared around the corner of our house, shortly after the party had started. I didn’t know whether to be excited or embarrassed. I realised that my mum must have seen the error of my ways and invited him herself, and sneakily not told me she had done so. Weary had slipped from my immediate consciousness because his parents had moved him to another school at the start of that year, on account of the radical new teaching methods that had swept through Fish Creek Primary School the year before (which is, and may yet become, another story), but that hardly explains having erased him from memory as if he had never existed. I am clearly going to be trouble in my old age.
