I'm a bit late to the game with Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums Of All Time List, it would seem. There appears to be lots of debate already about why the list is bad, why Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band is rot, why Rolling Stone is irrelevant, and all that jazz. But anyway, here goes nothing. I probably sound like an old bogey stuck in the past. Of course, that's hardly possible, given that I wasn't born to see either the 60s or 70s. And, right up front, the disclaimer - I'm not as well versed with current music as I am with music of days gone by.

One of the chief complaints is that the list is heavily skewed towards albums from the '60s and the '70s. It's easy to see that the top 100 is occupied by virtually only stuff from this era, so it seems like there's a valid issue here. But here's the problem - was the music from the era really better than music of this day and age? The answer, of course, is "Define 'better'". As George Starostin put it, it is possible to be objective when reviewing music (or art, for that matter), provided we define a set of criteria that are subjectively chosen. I like that argument, I really do. So what does that mean? Essentially, what most of us eventually agree upon - that "top 100" lists are, at the end of the day, pointless. You may rank Trout Mask Replica #1 because you value how Beefheart didn't give a damn about music conventions, and because you see sanity among the madness. Yet I can just as well rank any of the early Beatles albums #1 because I value pop-hooks and melodies. Different criteria, different results.

Of course, the issue of "which criteria is best" is a bit facetious, because you can't really say that any one intelligently chosen set is better than the other. When I say "intelligently chosen", I don't mean a set that conforms to my own views - it's a set of criteria which are logical to judge music by. If I were to make my top 100 list based on how many instruments were used on the album, it wouldn't be a particularly intelligent criteria. Sure, I could do it, and have a whale of a time. For that matter, I could judge albums based on how long the opening track is. It's just that such lists couldn't be taken seriously at all. But by combining different criteria, and considering each of them, I suppose one can try to appease everyone in some way. Having said that then, it should follow that one can't really make a definite pronouncement on the list without first trying to see what the people who created it look for in an album. Historical importance? Complexity? Listenability? Rather, it would seem that the big issue is over what these criteria were. It seems that this argument is a bit futile, because if you want to define a 'great' album, you're defining it using your own interpretation of greatness.

But on to the matter of music of the past vs. music of the present. How is it better (i.e. by what criteria is it better)? Let me count the ways. The biggest problem with rock today is that there isn't really too much originality. It all seems to be a rehash of the stuff that the "rock legends" did 30 odd years ago. But the problem here is that there's only so much that you can accomplish with rock music - and sadly, it would appear that the limit is reached. It isn't likely that there will be anything revolutionary like there was back in the day. Sure, you have new genres popping up everyday, like nu-metal and God knows what else, but it doesn't seem like they will take us anywhere substantially new. The well of ideas has run dry. Rock, as I see it, is dead, in that it can't radically redefine itself anymore, at least not in a way that is interesting (but that's subjective, so I mean of course interesting to me).

Related to that is I suppose influence. There are a lot of excellent genre-defining albums, but then again you have albums that actually transcend such details and influence the whole of rock music. Case in point, Dylan's early works, which showed that rock music needn't have banal lyrics to "work", and that artists could actually express themselves in a way other than their instruments. Sgt. Pepper showed once and for all that rock music could be taken seriously. Of course, there are positive and negative influences - Zeppelin inadvertantly inspired hordes of uninspired heavy metal bands, although they themselves weren't a bad band. I don't think music of the last few years has seen any major influential albums that affect the whole of rock music - usually they're only genre-influencing efforts (which are still commendable).

But surely just originality and influence isn't reason enough for Sgt. Pepper and friends to be "better" than ? I don't know, it's hard to pin down why I think it is the case. Albums like that, they were wildly original and creative and, dare I say it, they make you believe that the artist is a genius. Albums like that were, probably for a multitude of reason, interesting. Not that any album from the 60s is better than a current album, of course - I'm restricting the discussion to nice/good/very good albums of the 60s. It just doesn't seem like you're going to be able to get another concept album like Days Of Future Passed, a confessional Plastic Ono Band, an insane Velvet Underground. Of course, I mean that I don't think we will get any of these things in a way that interests me. What's missing? I don't know. A lot of things, I guess, but I just don't know. All things considered, your tastes are as good as mine - it's just the little issue of past vs. present that I often worry about, because there's only so much music that was made in those times; and soon, it will run out for me.

I guess I just wasn't made for these times.