Decade's End II: This Time It's Serious

[koganbot]

All right, if all goes well I'm writing a decade's end music essay for the LVW, though this endeavor will have a breath-taking finish given that, for some reason, Las Vegas ends its decade on December 4 rather than December 31, which means my drop-dead deadline is probably the 1st, if not earlier. And I'm going to be on planes for part of the time between now and then. And I have something else due on the 2nd.

One thing I want is for the essay to allude to the multitude of such essays that my essay could have been but isn't. So you can help me by posting in the comments what you think the story of the decade in music is. Just list one.

In situations like this I wish I did Twitter. If those Twitterers among you wish to ask the question and paste in the answers here, please do.

Comments

[koganbot]

Last night I asked my friend David, and he said, "The explosion of indie rock. MySpace bands undermining what's on the Billboard charts."

"So, what have you been listening to?" I asked.

"Not anything in the last three days. I've been too busy grading papers." He's a philosophy teacher. "I think the last music I listened to was the Stooges."

Both his and my all-time favorite album is Raw Power. It came out when I was 19, which is five years before he was born. It still sounds thrilling whenever I listen, though I really ought to come up with some other official Greatest Album Of All-Time. Raw Power's not warm enough. "Not warm" maybe is the wrong term, like claiming that dynamite isn't warm enough. But not enough emotional vulnerability, or empathy, though I certainly empathize with it. But can I find a warmer album that's as compellingly thrilling?

I ruminate on the conflict between warmth and thrills here: "Having a loving perspective on the tornado storm and being the tornado storm are not mutually exclusive."

(Btw, I and Google can't find working links to Idolator's 2007 poll. I know that some glitch had erased the 2006 poll, but 2007 ought to have been fine. Also, old Pazz & Jops seem to be disappearing from the Voice's site. My Eminem essay in Pazz & Jop 2000 is no longer there, that I can find. Add in the Paper Thin Walls server literally melting, and I fear a plot to eliminate me from the Web.)

[koganbot]

Btw, if you've never heard Raw Power, you need to search for the original Bowie mix, which may no longer be in print; yes, indeed, though that mix is flawed, not loud enough, too murky, it's far better than the new mix Iggy did in the late '90s, which simply destroyed the music's motion in his attempt to make it louder.