good avatar

thanks

[quote name='undo' date='Aug 16 2006, 05:29 PM' post='166991']
Youth is finally served as REM steps down as the Board's Favorite Band and the Pixies take the title. Yeah, I know this was just the '85-'94 poll, but this is as good of an indicator as any for that.

Kinda predictable, really. Thinking that the Pixies are amazing, man is a phase almost every college student goes through now. Of course, thanks to the internet, now budding indie music fans can go through said phase well before they even start shaving.

Nothing wrong with this, naturally, but I can't help but be bothered by the troubling idea that we've got a generation of cool kids who think that this fun but painfully unimpressive album is the best thing that's ever happened to them... better than Screamadelica, better than Daydream Nation, better than Loveless, better than all hip-hop ever made.

I suppose that if Automatic would have come out on top, I could have just replaced "kids" with "oldsters" in the above rant. But damn, it's been said already: this isn't even the best Pixies album, just their most definitive, possibly. It's certainly worth remembering, and with 42 different people deciding to toss it up on their lists ("oooh, almost forgot Doolittle... ah, there we go") it shows it's in no danger of being forgotten anytime soon. And if it leads kids toward Sonic Youth, Pavement, or the Breeders, then maybe it's useful. But it doesn't hold a candle to half of the stuff in the top 20.




The Pixies are the board's favorite band? That's just ridiculous. Sure they got the number one album here, but so did the Clash in the last 10-year poll and the Clash dominated so much more completely than the Pixies did here. A quick look at the top 100 shows the Pixies weren't even close to having as impressive a showing as R.E.M. -- the band they dethroned? () -- did. After doing a little math, these are the findings:

the Pixies had four albums in the top 100 that totalled 6681 points and
R.E.M. had five albums in the top 75 and those albums added up to 7945 points.

So, R.E.M. (to name just one band -- I could have named others) clearly gets more love than the Pixies on the SOMB -- it's just a bit more spread out. Aside from having a slew of albums in the top 100, Green also finished at #140. And R.E.M. had the numbers five (Murmur) and 35 (Reckoning) albums in the previous poll. Chronic Town also made the 75-84 list.

I'll admit the Pixies are probably one of the favorites of the board -- they're one of my favorites too (the Pixies were high on my 85-94 list). But let's not blow their showing here out of proportion.

That reminds me.
Someone talley up all the albums in the top 250, add up the votes per band, and figure out the top 10 bands - 95-94

Doolittle was pretty high on my list (I think top 15, maybe top 10), but that's just ONE album. R.E.M. almost topped my list, but I wouldn't call them my favorite group - by the same token, I like Hüsker Dü more, but I prefer Murmur over anything they did. Outside of Doolittle, Surfer Rosa, and their early 'demos' (including those issued as their debut EP), I'm not really big on the Pixies' other stuff. A few good songs here and there, but something like Bossanova had a fraction of the impact the previous two had.

Singles

03/09/1988 Pixies Gigantic 93
01/04/1989 Pixies Monkey Gone To Heaven 60
01/07/1989 Pixies Here Comes Your Man 54
28/07/1990 Pixies Velouria 28
10/11/1990 Pixies Dig For Fire 62
08/06/1991 Pixies Planet Of Sound 27

04/10/1997 Pixies Debaser 23

Albums

8 Pixies Doolittle Apr 1989
3 Pixies Bossanova Aug 1990
7 Pixies Trompe Le Monde Oct 1991

28 Pixies Death To The Pixies Oct 1997
20 Pixies Death To The Pixies - Deluxe Edition Oct 1997
16 Pixies Best Of - Wave Of Mutilation May 2004

critics

Come on Pilgrim #19 1987 MM list.
Surfer Rosa #1 MM 1988 list, #10 NME
"Gigantic" #28 NME singles list 1988, #4 MM.
Doolittle #2 MM 1989 list, #4 NME.
"Monkey Gone To Heaven" #1 MM singles list, #22 NME.
Bossanova #11 MM 1990 list, #18 NME
"Velouria" #41 NME singles list 1990
Trompe Le Monde #19 MM 1991 list, #14 NME.
"Planet of Sound" #39 NME singles list 1991

I'm pretty much with bird (though I prefer REM to Husker Du) about the Pixies. Surfer and Doolittle are very good stuff. I'm not huge on most of the rest. It was still great to see these guys live twice in the last couple of years.

There are some weirdos on this board who think the Pixies' later albums are their best.

Surfer Rosa 5/5
Doolittle 4.5/5
Bossanova 3/5
Trompe Le Monde 3.5/5

I'd say "know" more than "think," but yeah.

Exactly

not true, anyone who likes weezer or the avalanches or the arcade fire in this next poll will funnel their enjoyment of those bands into votes for one album; loads of other artists will have their loyalty split between records.

pixies, pavement, etc,. doesn't prove that vote-splitting doesn't happen-- it just indicates those bands are popular. It still happens, see: the long rem post on this page, or the "everyone voted for teenage riot" comment on the singles list. any band with lots of good records and songs but no definitive favorite/pecking order will suffer compared to any band with only one great song or lp.

I still can't believe people get this excited about Weezer. I see it everyday around here now, but it still baffles me. I wish someone could succintly explain their appeal. All my friends in college were the same way about it, so it's now exactly new. What does this band do that inspires such rabid alliegence?

Guitars, hooks, harmony.

Wow, I was wondering what happened when all the copies we had of Ready To Die were suddenly recalled last spring when I was still working at Borders. I just figured they were about to rerelease it in some new version. But no, and apparently it's still not available as of right now.


^ http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/03/19/123638.php

Sales Of The Notorious B.I.G.'s Debut Album Halted

March 19, 2006
Sterfish

The only album that The Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Christopher Wallace) released before his death was his 1994 debut Ready To Die. Now, thanks to an allegedly unauthorized sample, sales of that album have been halted.

The AP reports that a jury has found in favor of the plaintiff in a lawsuit that puts the hip-hop tradition of "sampling" back into the limelight. Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records, the companies who own the rights to the music of legendary group The Ohio Players, sued Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy LLC, Justin Combs Publishing, and Universal Records claiming that the title song of Ready To Die used a sample from the Ohio Players track "Singing In The Morning" without permission.

The estate of The Notorious B.I.G. was originally sued as well but, was later dropped from the lawsuit. A jury agreed with the companies and on Friday, awarded over $4 million in punitive and direct damages to the two companies. As part of the decision, U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell imposed a sales ban that affects both the song and the entire album in any form. This includes not only physical sales but also Internet downloads and radio play. Even though the ban has been handed down, there is no indication of when the ban will start. Although the original version of the album is out of print on Amazon.com, the remastered edition released in 2004 is still available.

The practice of "sampling," which involves using a portion of an already recorded song to create a new one, has been a part of hip-hop since its inception. Most sampling was done without permission in the early days of hip-hop but various court cases over the years have changed things.

After the release of their debut album 3 Feet High And Rising in 1989, De La Soul was sued by 1960's group The Turtles over the unauthorized use of a loop from their song "You Showed Me" on the interlude "Transmitting Live From Mars." In 1991, Warner Bros. Records lost a lawsuit`regarding Biz Markie's use of a portion of music from the Gilbert O'Sullivan song "Alone Again (Naturally)" on his third album I Need A Haircut. One of the more important decisions involving sampling happened in September 2004 when a federal appeals court ruled that artists must pay for every sample, even if the sample is an unrecognizable snippet. The song that brought about the lawsuit was NWA's "100 Miles And Runnin'" which sampled a three-note guitar riff from the Funkadelic song "Get Off Your Ass And Jam."

This incident involving Ready To Die is not the first time that The Notorious B.I.G. and his record label have been sued over the unauthorized use of a sample. In 1998, Public Enemy's Chuck D sued the estate of The Notorious B.I.G. as well as Bad Boy Records, Arista Records, and the music publishing companies involved regarding the unauthorized use of a sample of Public Enemy's song "Shut 'Em Down." The sample, a vocal of Chuck D counting from 1-10, was used on the song "Ten Crack Commandments." The case was later settled out-of-court.

The album Ready To Die is considered a hip-hop classic in many circles and featured the hit singles "Juicy," "Big Poppa," and "One More Chance." The album's ending track "Suicidal Thoughts" was used in the creation of the song "Hold Ya Head" for The Notorious B.I.G.'s most recent posthumous release, Duets: The Final Chapter.

Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy LLC, Justin Combs Publishing, and Universal Records plan to appeal the decision.

yeah, there was a big hubbub about this maybe a half-year ago. It's pretty ridiculous, though I don't really care since I bought the album when it was last reissued.