<i>cant hear innervisions and songs and talking book without feeling its heart FM.</i>
I don't know what heart FM is. A radio station?
Anyway, one thought I have in relation to canon vs. non-canon is, I think canonical records almost have an extra hurdle to jump, inasmuch as they become so familiar simply by osmosis, which discourages actual listening in favor of judging things by their context (in other words, don't let some cheesy radio station blind you to the wonder of stevie). I wonder how the Allen Touissant record would stand up if you heard it all the time, rather than just when you pull it out of your carefully curated collection. I listened to it again last night, and I like it, it's nice, but I can think of twenty soul albums that beat it.
<i>did you slsk all this stuff or something joe? i was alarmed with the speed with which you seemed to have tabs on it all!</i>
I did. I also bought a number of the CDs already tho. Including the Neu, unfortunately. So I'll be trying hard to see the genius of that.
<i>i mean, with the greatest of respect, this is all kid's stuff.</i>
And with the greatest of respect, about half of it is only kid's stuff to a small amount of people who spend large amounts of spare time obsessively chasing down music on vinyl. That's fine with me! It just makes me laugh when you talk as if you'd put together a Q magazine list. Actually, I think Keenan's was more mainstream than yours.
<i>havent got a clue what you're saying here! there's just no getting around the greatness of that music...</i>
Oh, I love all those records. Well, not the White Album so much, but anyway. My point is, while I don't doubt the sincerity of your choices, I think inevitably when anyone puts together a list like this there is a self-consciousness about what it's going to look like and a certain amount of thought put into how the different records play off against each other. So while something like the Implog functions as an element of surprise and a testament to the breadth of your listening and free-thinking willingness to get behind something very few people have heard of, a light sprinkling of classic rock shows that you're also not afraid to like things that "everybody" likes and that you have the ability to bring discerning opinions to bear on the no-brainer stuff.
<i>the jbs *is* james brown. you're fumbling around here a bit...</i>
Uh, trust me, I know who the JBs are. My point is, the idea that James Brown's backing band, while completely wonderful, made a better record than any of the many amazing albums under his own name which he is a far more dominant presence on, is kind of... funny. I find there are always a few filler grooves on the JBs albums alongside the seminal much-sampled stuff. The anti-obscurantist obscurantist choice here would probably be one of James' more overlooked 70s things, like Mind Power or something. I've always been partial to In the Jungle Groove, although you'd probably consider that kid's stuff ;o)
ANYWAY, as I already said I think it's a wonderful list and the fact that I bothered to listen to a lot of the stuff I hadn't heard before, and argue about it, is testament to that.