I’ve got over 50 years of some somewhat hazy research invested in this topic, so I was rather pleased and unsurprised to see “Close To The Edge” by Yes top the list. But I immediately thought, that’s great, but “The Gates of Delirium” is better. Now I had to see the entire 20. Predictably, there is some Pink Floyd and Zep present, and there’s some stuff in there I wouldn’t salvage from a clean dumpster.
Overall, I was pleased that “Telegraph Road” and the epic “Thick As A Brick” made the list. For me, the glaring omissions are “Cowgirl In The Sand” by Neil Young and (WTF?!?) “In A Gadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly. How would YOU alter the list?
Not gonna dis the Hendrix. I also felt the Allman void, but most of their great stuff only exceeded 10 minutes when played live. I think for this list you need to exclude live versions or “Stairway to Freebird” becomes number 1.
The jam band table just submitted their own list of…50?!?
Seriously, if I were to go there, Quarters by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard contains 4 songs that chime in at 10:10 each. The River is by far the best.
List like that are great for starting discussions: personal taste has much to do with them of course, but how could a list of long songs have Rush and Led Zeppelin but not include Hendrix?!
Agree that ‘Machine Gun’ (Band of Gypsys album version) should be number one: I’ve listened to it at least twice a week for over 50 years and am always stunned by the guitar work and feeling. There are three other versions from those BoG shows - all are very different - but the original release reigns supreme. ‘Red House’ from San Diego 1969 and ‘Hear My Train a Comin’ from Berkeley 1970 are almost as brilliant as pure long blues numbers.
Is Thick as a Brick a ‘song’, or a connected series of pieces, like the Abbey Road medley? It’s certainly a single track. Great cover too, with a rather British naughty crossword.Tull tried it again with ‘A Passion Play’ but it didn’t quite work, IMHO.
Our ABC Classic FM is conducting a poll of the top 100 Classical music works this weekend: it’s highly likely that Beethoven’s 'Choral Symphony" #9 will come up tops again. However, am I alone in thinking that noble sentiment apart, the last movement is an awful din in places?
“Thick as a Brick” is certainly a song, with recurring themes and thoughts. If it were Classical it would likely be broken out into parts, I suppose.
This whole Top 20 premise really becomes pretty nuts when you realize that immediately a handful of people can rattle off dozens and dozens of nominees in pretty short order.
I really liked ‘Thick as a Brick’, although my LP copy got worn out from its being played on my crappy rim drive Garrard turntable too many times! Agreed that lists are nuts, but they can lead to discovering and enjoying new music.
Part of the problem with any list of any kind, whether it’s worst cars, best films, best pop/rock albums etc is balancing the subjective - respondents’ tastes - with what’s ‘good’ in an objective sense.
For example, some people might vote for McDonald’s as a ‘great’ food because they like it so much, but by almost any objective measure it’s not ‘good’ food, being high in salt, fat and sugar. I cannot stand heavy metal or English folk music, but would have to agree that there are songs and albums which objectively are pretty good. However, I wouldn’t nominate them in any poll.
