Discography Rediscovered: Trance to the Sun's "Atrocious Virgin" (2001)

Here I am again with a long overdue installment of Discography Rediscovered, the series in which I look back on older albums in my music collection. This time I'm taking a look at Trance to the Sun's magnificent "Atrocious Virgin".

I happened upon this album by complete and total chance. Working at my college radio station my senior year we received hundreds of albums by various labels in the hopes we'd give some of them airtime. I never had the privilege of listening to these albums, that was handled by higher ups, and frankly I didn't care because all I wanted to play was goth/electro songs I was familiar with anyways.

One day I saw this album sitting in the throw-away bin, someone having given it a listen and decided that it stunk. I saw the cover and something about it grabbed me. I thought it was by a trance group, but the art conveyed a more artful/indie band. I fished it out of the bin, took it back to my dorm room, and discovered one of my favorite albums.

I discovered that Trance to the Sun are very much not a trance group. Instead it's akin to goth rock but with more electronics and a heavy dose of psychadelic rock, with a bit of a shoegazing vibe. The center of the band is the intriguingly named Ashkelon Sain, with various females on vocals depending on album (this album features Ingrid Blue on vocals). Atrocious Virgin, I would learn, was to be the last album by this group.

Apparently the band had been around for most of the 90s but I'd never heard of them. In fact, most people in the 'goth' scene aren't very familiar with them either, and it's virtually impossible to find their albums, even through file-sharing sites (alas I'll probably never get my hands on the"Florakleptononomy" live album).

Back to the album. It's a perfectly crafted album with dense layers of music. The songs vary from energetic rockers such as "Thistle Lurid" to slow, plodding instrumentals (such as "Icicle Song" which comes immediately after, and perfectly compliments, the former track). The whole thing is held together beautifully by Ingrid Blue's lyrics. She sounds like Lewis Carroll's Alice gone all dark and moody. While I love Blue's lyrics and voice, I could see this as a point of contention for some. If you're not into moody goth lyrics pondering death, with vocals that at times sound like a little girl (see reference to Alice above), and at times which are hard to discern, I could understand not liking them.

The production on the album is also quite a feat. The liner notes state that the album was recorded and put together over the space of a year, but you could never tell. There's something Ashkelon Sain has done here that makes the album sound like it was recorded live right in front of you in the studio. It's really phenomenal.

I'm a sucker for long, drawn out songs with multiple movements (such as Jim Steinman produced Sisters of Mercy albums), and Atrocious Virgin does not disappoint. The final track, "Song of the Silent Crew" clocks in at an impressive 17 minutes, with parts ranging from goth rock, to drum circles, and back to psychadelic rock. In short, the song would be great to drop acid to.

However, my favorite track, at a mere 11 minutes long, is "Horse Head Lake". Taking a good five minutes just to get to the first verse, Horse Head Lake is a terrific odyssey of sound, from the opening strums of the guitar, to a short spoken segment by whom I presume is Mr. Sain, to Ingrid Blue's lyrics, to the ending minute consisting of the sound of distant rain, this is just such a fantastic piece of music. Alas, the only version I can find online is a condensed version that drops those first five minutes, listen to it here.

If my review hasn't piqued your interest, then maybe Tom Schulte from AMG will. He writes, "Trance to the Sun continues where the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd left off. A dense swirl of guitar dissonance, synth, and drum machine lying under the haunting voice of Ingrid Blue... this is an audiophile psychedelic comeback experience worthy of comparison to Pink Floyd's Meddle." Since I'm not nearly as familiar with Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd as some of the folks here at this blog, I'll leave you to decide... if you can actually find the damn album (and speaking of Pink Floyd, here's a cover off a previous album of Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun). Regardless, this is really one of my favorite albums in my collection, one I keep coming back to again and again.

Recommended tracks you can actually listen to:
Sleeping with the Natives
Thistle Lurid
Horse Head Lake (short cut)
Homewrecker (live)

AMG Guy Strikes Again!

So last Wednesday I attended my second Richie Unterberger "rare '60s rock and roll film clip" presentation, and oh man, let me tell you. This time he focused exclusively on clips from the British Invasion, and his goal was to demonstrate, through chronological employment of the clips, how quickly and creatively the British pop scene shifted from early 1964 to mid-1967. And my did he ever. In fact, having realized that he'd assembled such a brutal fusillade of clips, he opted to play them all without interruption for two hours straight and bump the question-and-answer period to the end. Unlike last month's collection, it seems to me that this batch was genuinely rare, as I have not been able to find very many of these clips on YouTube, or at least in not nearly the same quality. Before he began, he stated something to the effect of this: "Let me just say that at first you might be finding a lot of these performers on the cute or the quaint side and you might be wondering why we're even bothering to still talk about this movement more than 40 years later, but hang in there, because once we get to about the 25-minute mark you're going to notice the nature of the music become much darker and edgier in almost no time flat." His final comments cut to the heart of the matter: "I think it's fair to say that, without the British Invasion, our world would be...a much less enjoyable place."

He started and ended, shockingly, with the Beatles. The first clip of the night was of the Beatles performing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" for an Ed Sullivan dress rehearsal. Watching the clip, I somehow became filled with this powerful but bizarre notion that, as I looked back and forth between each of the four Beatles, it was as if I was really looking at one person. Because I have become so familiar with each of them, I think they appear to me as a complete entity unto itself. As potent of a personality match as other bands might be, they simply do not have this same effect.

Then came the cheesy clips: The Dave Clark Five, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Peter & Gordon, and the impressively dated Freddie & The Dreamers, among others. All of a sudden: The Rolling Stones. Richie played a clip of their first American television appearance, where they were introduced by host Dean Martin, who obviously thought they were atrocious and pretty much said so. But you could tell they were the only other band up to that point, beside The Beatles, who really had it. Mick looked great, Keith looked great, Brian looked great, and Bill and Charlie just looked like...Bill and Charlie. They played "Not Fade Away" and "I Just Want To Make Love To You." I can't imagine how shocking this performance must have been to those innocent young American girls who were seeing The Rolling Stones for the first time.

After that it was straight-up hard rock that would have broken Gerry's pacemaker: The Animal's "House of the Rising Sun," The Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night," The Yardbirds' "For Your Love," and so on. We got Petula Clark ("Downtown"), Manfred Mann ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy), the pre-prog Moody Blues ("Go Now"), a young Tom Jones, a young Van Morrison singing with Them, and the Nashville Teens, who weren't from Nashville at all.

As soon as we came to Procol Harum's 1967 hit "A Whiter Shade of Pale," though, the whole mood of the program changed. This was the point where pop music really began abandoning the love song entirely (which I think was a great move, personally). The second-to-last clip, of Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine," was probably my favorite clip out of them all, both because of its placement in the evening's narrative and because of the considerable merits of the clip itself. Since I associate Pink Floyd with a whole other era, it's fascinating to realize that they became famous just as The Beatles were achieving their psychedelic peak. So to see the clip be shown right before the clip of The Beatles performing "All You Need Is Love" via satellite was to suggest almost a changing of the guard. In fact, watching the "All You Need Is Love" clip immediately after the Pink Floyd clip, I almost felt like The Beatles seemed pompous and self-important. I mean, come on, who is John Lennon to tell me that all I need is love? What the fuck does he know about love anyway? Now hear me straight, I haven't been invaded by pod people and I'm not knocking The Beatles, but I think at this stage in my life I might be more in tune with the spirit of Pink Floyd than the spirit of the Fab Four.

Speaking of: this is one clip I was able to find. What I loved about it in the program was how it stood out from all the other clips that had come before. It was a uniquely bizarre clip representing the beginnings of a uniquely bizarre band. I think this Hans Keller fellow must have been told before he came to the studio that night that he would be participating in a discussion on Kant and Schopenhauer. Little did he know what he was getting himself into!

Shine On You Crazy Synthesizer Guy

Will all those people clamoring for a full-fledged Pink Floyd reunion finally shut up now? Rick ol' boy, we hardly knew ye.

My personal favorite Rick Wright anecdote: Before drummer Nick Mason published his Floyd memoir Inside Out, he sent copies of the manuscript to each of the other remaining band members for feedback. David Gilmour made a few notes here and there, but mostly agreed with Nick's version of events. Roger Waters wrote all over the manuscript, constantly making corrections and arguing over details. Rick Wright just wrote back saying something along the lines of, "Yeah Nick, looks good to me, honestly, I don't really remember any of it."

Perhaps the keyboardists' demise will call attention to his epic solo output, consisting of "God that must be a solo album" titles like Wet Dream (1978), Broken China (1996), and Identity (1984), a collaboration with Dave Harris released under the band name Zee.

Tom Stoppard on Pink Floyd...sort of

Yoggoth recently called my attention to an article in Vanity Fair by playwright Tom Stoppard about how Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett apparently inspired his latest theatrical effort. I've read the article twice now and I still don't understand what the hell Syd Barrett had to do with his play, but that's neither here nor there. What's interesting (and what Yoggoth knew I would appreciate) is that Tom Stoppard agrees with me that Barrett-era Pink Floyd isn't all that great and he doesn't understand why his friend would call Waters/Gilmour-era Pink Floyd "lugubrious, pretentious." Also, Stoppard's comments about having "no understanding of music, none at all" remind me ever-so-slightly of similarly enthusiastic statements that have come from the mouth of my fellow blogger. Although I've occasionally poked fun at him for his musical naivete, ultimately I agree. Who needs to "understand" music anyway? I say the less understanding the better. Well, maybe it depends. Maybe the best musicians need to find a good balance of understanding and naivete. Actually, that's sort of what Pink Floyd did, come to think of it. Oh yeah!

Pink Floyd: The Wilderness Years (1968-1972) - Part II

Before I give a track-by-track breakdown of my amazingly well-chosen Wilderness Years mix, I'd like to provide a cursory overview of each of the six albums that comprise the Wilderness Years (I've linked the AllMusic reviews to each title):

A Saucerful of Secrets (1968): As Syd Barrett became more and more unreliable, the band initially held hopes that, even if he wasn't able to tour, maybe he would still be able to write studio material a la Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys (and we all know what a great arrangement that was). Eventually even that proved too much to ask for the young Barrett, and suddenly the rest of the band had to slap together a decent follow-up album and hope that nobody noticed their lead singer's almost complete absence. Considering the circumstances under which the album was recorded, then, it's amazing that it's as good as it is. Fortunately for us, the standards for albums at the time meant that even half-assed albums were pretty eclectic and rewarding. Sure it's a hodgepodge, but it's never a boring hodgepodge; not every song is a highlight, but they all at least have something to offer. Rick Wright continues his apparent lead singer duties with the pleasant (if dated) "Remember A Day" and See-Saw," while Waters rumbles his bass for 6 minutes and calls it "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun." The entire band freaks out on the 12-minute title track, and if it seems a bit like album filler, at least it's interesting (also keep in mind that this was still 1968, and that this stuff must have seemed pretty far out at the time - at least with the aid of cough syrup or whatnot). Syd gets his last gasp with the delightfully warped "Jugband Blues," in which he brought a Salvation Army band into the studio and told them to play "whatever you want." Judged as a debut album (which it essentially is), A Saucerful of Secrets is pretty good. I probably like it more than their real debut album.

More (1969): Here's a soundtrack album to a film nobody has seen. While most Pink Floyd fans will agree that the album is wildly inconsistent, with some great highs and some skippable lows, no one actually agrees on which songs are the highs and which songs are the lows. There are at least four or five short instrumental pieces that aren't exactly real songs, but were never meant to be either, so they're enjoyable as such. Let's just say that, for a band that didn't know how to write lyrics yet, soundtracks must have seemed like the perfect career move.

Ummagumma (1969): Here's a document of a group that really doesn't know what to do with itself, and figures it might as well fart up its own asshole. Ummagumma is a half-live, half-studio double-album set. The live album is pretty terrific, but the truth is, aside from a seriously reworked "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" (which was only previously available as an obscure B-side), it's all old material. With the studio album, they decided to copy the Who's formula of A Quick One While He's Away, and divide up all the songwriting equally among the four members. That's right, drummer Nick Mason gives it a shot with "The Grand Vizier's Party, I-III." Gilmour and Waters come the closest to actually writing real songs, but it's clear that even they still need more practice (although Waters does come up with the memorably titled "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict"). The end effect of the album is basically: "Here's a bunch of stuff we tried." Nevertheless, Pink Floyd still prove that, even when they're not very good, at least they're interesting.

Atom Heart Mother (1970) : Floyd begin smoothing out their rough edges, and as a result they make an album that's pretty even all the way through. The first half is a side-long collaboration with an obscure British composer that doesn't really go anywhere great, but it doesn't go anywhere bad either. The second half consists of a Waters song, a Wright song, a Gilmour song and a whole band song (Nick thankfully wasn't asked to contribute a piece of his own). Surprisingly, Rick Wright comes up with the most enjoyable number, the Kinks rip-off "Summer '68". Waters' folky "If" at first seems like a throwaway, but it improves with repeated listens. Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun" isn't amazing but it's nice. The band ends with the meandering jam "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast," which is exactly what it describes: the sound of their roadie Alan eating breakfast. As Rolling Stone so aptly put it in their 1970 review, "Try freaking out again, Floyd!" In sum, it's an album or fans only - but fans will probably like it.

Meddle (1971): It might have seemed like Floyd had been making genuine albums for the past fews years, but in retrospect, they were pretty much slapping them together. Saucerful was recorded with the line-up in transition, More was a soundtrack album, Ummagumma was half-live, half-studio, and Atom Heart Mother was an orchestral prog rock experiment. Meddle is, for all intents and purposes, the first real post-Barrett Floyd album. That's not to say, however, that it still isn't a Wilderness Years album. The first side is the typical grab-bag, with a Doctor Who-ish instrumental, a lounge jazz number, and a bluesy throwaway sung by Gilmour's dog. Sure, they were still filling up the album space, but they were getting better at it. Side Two's "Echoes," however, is basically where the Wilderness Years end: stylistic chaos gives way to carefully-blended atmospheric and compositional control. Millions of frat boy stoners were waiting around the bend.

Obscured By Clouds (1972): Tossed off in a week, it's hard to believe that this album officially precedes Dark Side of the Moon in the discography. If anything, it really belongs between Atom Heart Mother and Meddle. If you're not expecting too much, this might be the most underrated Floyd album of all; almost every song has a memorable hook and the production is pleasantly warm and pastoral. Most of the lyrics, however, are extremely dopey. Anyone expecting something along the lines of "Did they get you to trade/Your heroes for ghosts/Hot ashes for trees/Hot air for a cool breeze/Cold comfort for change" will be best advised to look elsewhere.

Some other bits and pieces:

Early singles: If you want to witness a band in its actual moment of awkward adolescence, these are worth checking out. As serious attempts at psychedelic pop, "Paintbox," "Julia Dream" and "Point Me at the Sky" are pretty laughable, but they're extremely evocative of late 60s Swinging London. To hear Waters, Wright and Gilmour try to be the next Donovan is a bit like getting your own private glimpse of the universe before it expanded.

Zabriskie Point soundtrack: Floyd also cut a couple of stray tracks for Michelangelo Antonioni's entertainingly clueluess late 60s counterculture movie (in which a rebellious young man answers the phone by saying "Goodbye?"). The highlight is a reworked version of "Care With That Axe, Eugene" with the much-improved title of "Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up."

Pink Floyd: The Wilderness Years (1968-1972) - Part I

People often talk about Pink Floyd as if they were just one band that did their Pink Floyd thing and that was pretty much it. But in reality, like the Beatles, Pink Floyd were a long, consistently evolving entity that, by virtue of their own artistic instability, never recorded the same album twice. Most people haven't taken the time to explore their entire output, and until recently, I was one of those people. But in the name of completeness, considering that I call myself a serious fan, I finally decided to listen to every single Pink Floyd album. Instead of confirming the conventional opinion (often voiced by the gleefully ignorant such as myself) that they floundered around in half-baked psychedelic mediocrity until they hit Dark Side of the Moon, what I've discovered has only deepened my absolute, limitless allegiance to the band.

Part of the pleasure and fascination inherent in this period in the band's discography is that most people barely realise it exists. There are millions of hard-core Pink Floyd fans, particularly in America, who've never really felt that they were missing anything. To them, Pink Floyd began with Dark Side of the Moon, and everything before that was just a meaningless prelude. Then there are the snobby, cultish Nuggets fans who worship at the altar of Syd Barrett and heap scorn upon the frat guy masses trying to cue up Dark Side to The Wizard of Oz while stoned because they've never even heard of Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But what about that period between the flame-out of Syd and the ascention of Roger? We know one part of the story, and then we know another part of the story, but what about all those years in between? How did they get from Point A to Point B? Or to paraphrase Tom Waits: "What were they building in there?" Since nobody really knows about this era of the band, and since this period consisted of a relative lack of direction (when compared to the periods before and after), I have dubbed this period "The Wilderness Years."

The Wilderness Years represent a rare occurence in the rock world: namely, a situation where a famous and successful rock band suddenly consisted of four people who hadn't really planned on actually being in charge of a famous and successful rock band. Syd Barrett wasn't just any old member of the group: he was the lead singer and songwriter. It would be like if Pete Townsend went crazy and the other members of the Who suddenly had to cover for him. Forever. In other words, by all rights and privileges, post-Barrett Pink Floyd should have sucked big donkey balls. But talent works in mysterious ways, and by some strange combination of skill, chance, situation and luck, Pink Floyd not only remained a good band, but, in my opinion, actually became a better band.

Nevertheless, as a result of this situation, Pink Floyd spent several years grasping (some would say floundering) with their sense of artistic identity. At first, they tried to do imitation-Syd, but they soon realized that they simply weren't mentally deranged enough to do it right. So then they tried anything and everything, throwing songs at the wall and seeing what stuck. They did Kinks-style music hall pop. They did bad "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"" rip-offs. They did Grateful Dead-style country rock. They did Hendrix knock-offs. They did Nick Drake-esque baroque folk. They did long, meandering sonic freakouts - not so much because they liked doing them, exactly, but probably because they didn't require the band to come up with any actual lyrics. Even Roger Waters at this stage had no idea what the hell he was doing. Often you get the sense that they were just trying to fill up the album space.

So while this means that the era is inconsistent and disjointed, it also means that the era will hold a certain fascination for people who think of Pink Floyd only as the ultra-cautious AOR mega-concept album monsters of the mid-to-late 70s. While that Floyd was meticulously crafted and allowed little room for the chaos typically associated with great rock and roll, the Floyd of the Wilderness Years could be a lot more off-the-cuff and unpredictable (they were a little more Velvet Underground, a little less Eagles). So while most mainstream music fans will probably find the Wilderness Years mostly half-assed and annoying, certain indie rock fans might discover that this is the only Floyd for them. I've always felt that no matter what a person's taste, there is almost always, without fail, at least little bit of Pink Floyd that they will like. Because, contrary to popular belief, Floyd dabbled in a little bit of everything.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the Wilderness Years, for me, was discovering that these guys I thought I knew so well had tried out styles I simply did not associate them with. "What if Waters tried to write a love ballad?," you ask. Turns out he actually did. "What if Gilmour tried to sound like Jimmy Page?" He did. "What if Rick Wright became their lead singer?" For a time, he actually was. Since Pink Floyd were not yet "Pink Floyd" as we know and worship them, they displayed traits and influences at this stage that they would eventually abandon entirely. Instead of being a detriment, it's actually this era's strength. It's like discovering that The Rolling Stones tried to do Sinatra, and didn't suck at it either. Or it's like learning that the boring girl in the cubicle across from you used to be a stripper. Just when you thought you knew Pink Floyd, you realize you didn't know them at all.

Ultimately, for the fan like myself that is sick to death of the famous albums, exploring the Wilderness Years is like suddenly finding six brand new Pink Floyd albums. While I can admit that these albums are not as "good" as the famous ones, I'm more inclined to actually listen to them, because they still have some secrets to give up. Nevertheless, for every hidden gem they threw out there, there's an equal amount of pure wankery. Thus I felt that a compilation would be the best way to show off the virtues of the Wilderness Years, both for myself and for others.

To be continued...

Wish They Were There

Given our recent discussion of "greatest album" lists, I thought I would call attention to another list that caught my attention a few days ago. Actually, it's been around for a while, but only now have I decided to give it greater scrutiny.

Back in 2004, Rolling Stone put together a list of "The Immortals" - their idea, one can assume, of the greatest artists of the popular music era. Back when the list first came out, I thought it was pretty respectable, and quite thorough (with most of my favorite artists making a placement), if not exactly my idea of how I would rank the greatest acts of rock and roll myself. What was interesting about the list, however, was Rolling Stone's decision not to write crappy, pretentious blurbs of their own, but to give other rock artists the chance to write something about one of their favorite acts. Suddenly, instead of being a bunch of snarky posturing from rock critics, the list was a celebration of mutual fandom between other musicians. This gave the list a much more positive, productive dimension, since not only did we want to read about the artist on the list, but we were also curious about what another artist we liked had to say about the artist they were writing about. Thus we got to hear what Elvis Costello thought of the Beatles, what Lou Reed thought of David Bowie, what Peter Buck thought of the Kinks, what Keith Richards thought of Gram Parsons, and what Paul Simon thought of the Everly Brothers, and so on and so on. Obviously this approach was only as fruitful as the artist assigned to do the writing. I'm not sure how interesting it is to hear what John Mayer has to say about Jimi Hendrix, what Flea has to say about Neil Young, what Lenny Kravitz has to say about John Lennon, what Jewel has to say about Joni Mitchell, or what Dave Matthews has to say about Radiohead. But you've gotta take the highs with the lows, I guess.

(You might want to take a good look at the list before you read the rest.)

Anyway, what brought this list under renewed scrunity was a realization I had a few days ago. It had been a while since I'd taken a look at it, and I suddenly became curious to see who they'd picked to write about Pink Floyd, and what that person might have said (given that I've been on a Yoggoth-inspired Pink Floyd kick as of late). But as I scanned the list, a chilling realization dawned on me: Pink Floyd . . . were absent! I checked and I checked again, but out of 100 artists, Pink Floyd were somehow not among them. There must have been some mistake. It was like if one of my best friends suddenly wasn't allowed to graduate high school with me; it kind of takes the fun out of the whole thing. The previously harmless list suddenly took on a sinster, evil aura. I became instantly bummed. How could they have left off Pink Floyd? Who was behind this list anyway? How could they be celebrating all these great bands and not even give at least one spot to Pink Floyd? Was my high opinion of Pink Floyd misplaced? Were they not as universally admired as I had assumed they were? Was I somehow out of touch with the rock canon? I get anguished over a lot of questionable bands I like, but I always figured that I was safe with Pink Floyd; their greatness was not in dispute. But maybe it was. God what a headache. I felt like my whole aesthetic world was crumbling. I had to get to the bottom of this.

I tried to see if there were any other obviously great bands that were missing, as if their absence would further discredit the list. Led Zeppelin? Nope, they were way up there at number 14. The Clash? Maybe Rolling Stone would have been lame enough to leave off The Clash. Nope, they were pretty well-represented at number 30. I inspected the list several times over. Nirvana made it to 27, but no love for Pink Floyd, huh? Aerosmith? The Police? AC/DC? The Eagles? Guns n' Roses? Radiohead? Radiohead wouldn't even exist without Pink Floyd. But there they were, with a loving article by Dave Matthews, while no one was assigned to write an article for Pink Floyd, because THEY WEREN'T ON THE FUCKING LIST.

But wait, there was some hope yet. Where was Creedence Clearwater Revival? Hey. That's a pretty major omission. Some would say that's a worse omission than Pink Floyd. Yeah! No CCR? This list is a joke. And where were Talking Heads? They should have made the cut easily. If Patti Smith and The Stooges made the cut, then Talking Heads should have been a shoo-in. But no Talking Heads. And how about R.E.M.? We get Nine Inch Nails but no R.E.M.? What about Tom Waits? Or Fleetwood Mac? Suddenly my brain had brought the list down a couple of pegs. It wasn't perfect. But still, it was a pretty good list. I mean, if your favorite album didn't make it onto that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame list, it didn't matter at all because that list was ridiculous. But this list was pretty credible. The absence of Pink Floyd still stung.

But what is a list, anyway? What does Rolling Stone know about the greatest acts of the rock era that I don't? Well lucky for us, they tell you who voted. Suddenly it starts to make a little more sense. First of all, a total of 54 people voted on this list. 54 people. That's it. All this list tells you is what 54 people think represents the greatest rock acts of all time. Hardly something to whine about. But now look at the people who voted. It's a pretty interesting crowd, to be sure. But you don't exactly expect Jackson Browne, Dr. John, Jon Landau, Greil Marcus, Bruce Springsteen, Stephen Stills, or Jerry Wexler to be big fans of Pink Floyd, do you? Still, I would have thought that they'd have gathered enough votes from people like The Edge, Kurt Loder, Ric Ocasek, Moby, and Pete Townsend to at least make the top 100. Hell, maybe even Don Henley and Santana would have pitched in as well. I could see it happening. But I guess it wasn't Pink Floyd's night.

Nevertheless, seeing the list of voters led me to formulate some more general observations on the list as a whole:

1) The Generation Gap/Singles Artists vs. Album Artists

The list heavily favors the first generation of early rock and roll and soul stars. Because rock and roll wasn't really an album-oriented medium yet, these artists' recording legacies essentially rest on their singles. One of my biggest criteria for judging the "greatness" of a rock act would be the depth and variety of their recording career. Thus I would not rank essentially singles-driven acts like Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino as highly as I would 60s and 70s artists who have deeper discographies. But I can understand how the second (and in my opinion, better) generation of rock performers would hold the first generation in higher regard than they would their peers or their followers. To them, Chuck Berry and Little Richard laid the whole groundwork for what everyone else did. As such, it is hard to argue with their placement on the list; I can only say that I would not rank them as highly myself. They may have been first, but I don't think they were necessarily the best, or the most eclectic. Chuck Berry had one basic "song" and most of his other songs were just variations on his one main "song." It was a pretty good "song," but I'm not sure it's as musically rewarding as a later act that mastered several different styles. I wonder in 50 years who's music will have deeper appeal - Chuck Berry's or Jimi Hendrix's. Yet to that 60s generation, Chuck Berry could simply not be beat. John Lennon loved Chuck Berry much more than he loved the Beatles. But to me (and I bet most people) the Beatles were just something else entirely. Thus this list reflects the Baby Boomer generation's unease with rock's transition into album-oriented ambitiousness. I think it's all about perspective. It is hard to outright dislike a lot of these early acts (like Howlin' Wolf, Jackie Wilson, Carl Perkins, The Shirelles, Booker T. and the MG's, Ricky Nelson, or the various Motown groups), but even their greatest hits collections sound a little repetitive to modern ears. How high should they be ranked if their legacies rest on a few influential singles? Witness the recent induction of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No one seemed to deny that they were being inducted on the merits of one song alone. Yes, it was a great song, but was that enough to place them up there with bands that had album after album of great songs? I guess it just depends on who's doing the voting. Why don't they just induct The Kingsmen for "Louie Louie"? (Who knows, maybe they will.)

2) The "Beer Rock" Tendency

I guess when you've got Joe Perry, Rick Rubin, Butch Vig, Slash and ZZ Top voting for the greatest rock artists of all time, you can't expect too much love for Pink Floyd. Instead we get artists like Aerosmith, The Allman Brothers Band, AC/DC, The Eagles, Guns n' Roses, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I like these acts well enough, but I'd drop them all for Floyd. Just listen to Al Kooper talk about Lynyrd Skynyrd: "In 1972, I was searching for a great three-chord band to produce. The radio was logjammed with progressive rock like you wouldn't believe: Yes; Pink Floyd; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Genesis; King Crimson. As a student of rock history, I knew it wouldn't be long before basic rock returned like the cavalry, and I wanted to be leading the charge, albeit behind the scenes." Yes, Prog Rock was getting bloated, but was Southern Rock really what the moment called for? And he lumps Pink Floyd right in there with Yes and Genesis? Lunkhead.

3) Rap

I don't think rock criticism still has any idea what to do with rap. And yet here they are: Public Enemy, Run DMC, Dr. Dre, The Beastie Boys, Eminem, N.W.A., and Tupac. Some of it I like, some of it I've never listened to all that much, but that's sort of beside the point. Do any of these guys deserve to be up there with the best acts of the 60s and 70s? Just because I don't personally like them all that much, does that mean they don't belong on this list? Wouldn't somebody else look at this list and feel that these were the only guys that deserved to be there? Who gets to decide?

4) The Transatlantic Divide

Apparently in England they've got a rather different sense of rock history than we do here (I'm inclined to say that it's a better sense - with much less "Beer Rock" at least). If this list were undertaken by a British magazine (like Mojo), my guess is it would look quite a bit different. Here are some of the artists excluded by the Rolling Stone list that a British magazine would probably include: T.Rex, Queen, ABBA, The Jam, Joy Division, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, The Pixies, Suede, Blur, and Oasis. But with Art Garfunkel voting, these guys didn't stand a chance.

So in the end, what does it all mean? That Americans are dumb? That Baby Boomers lack perspective? Is there a better way to ascertain the significance of individual rock musicians on the artform as a whole? Should we care? Ultimately I think it's a lot easier (and more useful) to compile "greatest album" lists than "greatest artist" lists, because as I've already discussed, the artists themselves are like apples and oranges. Do Al Green and Roxy Music even belong on the same list together? If I like Roxy Music more than I like Al Green, does that really make Al Green any worse? Hell no; Al Green is awesome. He's not even trying to do the same thing. I can see why someone else would think Al Green is better than Roxy Music, even if I don't share that opinion myself. There's probably a bit of a race question hanging in all this somewhere, but I don't even personally feel qualified to tackle it. Maybe Pink Floyd is just more of a white guy's band?

Hell, as far as I know, they're at number 101. In the end, a list is just a list. You could never make one list that would satisfy everybody. It's not like the Periodic Table. "God, Hydrogen is just so overrated." "I can't believe oxygen is only at number 8! WTF?"

Still, I almost wish they left off some of my own personal favorites that actually made the list, like Elton John or Roxy Music, just so that Pink Floyd would be on there. I don't always expect Elton John or Roxy Music to make the cut; but my shared admiration for Pink Floyd is one of the things that I've felt has always tied me, however tenuously, to the rest of humanity. To think that such a bond is an illusion creates within me a deep sense of loneliness. BUT - it is just one list. Even so, it's not enjoyable to realize you have such a different idea of popular music than other people. Pink Floyd so strongly represent my ultimate idea of popular music that to see them excluded almost suggests a clash in values. How could Ricky Nelson speak to someone more deeply than Pink Floyd? What did Ricky Nelson have to say to the world that Pink Floyd didn't? What am I missing? It doesn't matter; I will be vindicated by history.

Come to think of it, I didn't see Pavement on the list either.