Chris Smith is a music journalist and professor of cultural criticism at the University of British Columbia. In his most recent book, 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, 
he presents his opinion of the albums that changed music - we know you may disagree and Smith addresses this issue below. Be sure to check back tomorrow for a look at this book through music videos.
What is this human obsession with lists? What is the source of our compulsion to compare, to rank, to lord one work of art just inches over another when their differences can barely be defined? Is it genetic? Is it cultural? If vervet moneys had opposable digits and the intelligence to use them, would they strap on giant foam rubber “We’re #1” fingers and taunt the other species at the watering hole?
These were the questions I asked in December, 2007, when I embarked on a two-year project naming the 100 Greatest Albums of all time in a weekly column for the Vancouver Sun. I had been involved in the Rolling Stone list machine as a music critic in the late 1990s, and in 2006 published my fourth book, 100 Albums That Changed Popular Music.
The answer to my soul-searching inquiry was an unexpectedly satisfying copout: “Who cares?” It’s fun to make lists, and as philosophers from Aristotle to Saussure have noted, we understand things by virtue of their contrasting relationships to their peers. So if the Hendrix’s groundbreaking Are You Experienced was forbidden access to the top of the charts by the Beatles’ Sgt Peppers, then the takeaway detail isn’t that it was Number 2, but that it wasn’t Number 1.
But my book eschewed such hierarchal contrast, instead detailing these albums in chronological order to show how each album influenced (and was influenced by) its peers (hence the book’s emphasis on the most “important” albums rather that the “greatest.”) The Sun editors, however, insisted on a “countdown” list, so the readers could follow along for two years, each week coming one step closer to “the world’s greatest album.” The problem is, I don’t believe such a thing exists—while enough objective data can be gathered to loosely construct a list of the “most influential” albums, the notion of “greatest” albums infuses the equation with subjective criteria based on individual aesthetics, thus changing the nature of the criteria from person to person. (The same is true of all such ranking systems, whether they rate your favorite albums, movies, politicians, or family members).
The solution was simple: surrender to subjectivity. We titled the column “100 Albums You Have to Own,” and told our readers: “Agreeing or disagreeing with our picks is beside the point—write us a letter, rant to your friends, or sit down and make your own list. Great works of art invite such engagement, and we hope these will catch your ear. We only ask you to listen.”
Ultimately, I believe, such lists do serve a vital purpose as a stepping off point for critical engagement with a work of art—provided the author is honest about his intentions and criteria. My second favorite part of the entire process is discussing my selections with readers who object to my choices. My favorite part, of course, is ranking their objections.
One of t
he many upsides to being a publicist is getting to attend launch parties for our books. Of course, organizing them is hard work, but the night itself can be a lot of fun. We OUP-UK publicists were last week at what is shaping up to be our party of the season for the launch of Winston Fletcher’s Powers of Persuasion: The Inside Story of British Advertising, which publishes here later this week. Below are some photos from the event.
Yesterday we posted a piece written by Winston Fletcher for OUPblog on when the British led the world in advertising.
Held at London’s incredibly beautiful Somerset House, we had a wonderful turn out including many of the great and the good from Britain’s ad-land, past and present. Winston gave an excellent speech where he confessed that though he had reached the top of his profession - he is the only person to have been both the Chairman of the Advertising Association and the President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising - he didn’t work for long in the creative side of the business. ‘Why?’, you ask. Well, when he did work in the creative side, he was the one who came up with the strapline “Have no fear, your piles will disappear!” for a campaign. He then decided he was better suited to the business side of advertising.
Also in attendance was former government Culture Secretary Chris Smith who is the current Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority. He is pictured below with Winston Fletcher.
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Memorial Day Weekend brought a trip to the Finger Lakes to visit family on Canandaigua and Keuka Lakes, both lovely and swimming with activity (and both warmer than Lake Champlain, I might add!). Weekend highlights include:
- Shopping with Mom and Sis in a belated Mother's Day celebration.
- Eating an ice cream cone every day.
- Catching three fish.
- Joyfully watching J and E play with rowdy, fun cousins.
- Laughing at husband and brother-in-law wearing wet suits to help install dock (no pictures...even though they were entertaining).
- Visiting the grave site of one of my main characters in SPITFIRE...
My historical novel SPITFIRE has two main characters - a fictional 12-year-old girl who disguises herself as a boy to fight in a Revolutionary War naval battle on Lake Champlain, and a real 12-year-old boy who was a documented crew member on board one of the vessels in the Battle of Valcour Island. His name is Pascal de Angelis, and after that battle, he went on to do some privateering as the Revolution continued, spent some time in a British prison, and ultimately, settled down to found a village in Oneida County, NY. That village, Holland Patent, is along Route 365 -- one of the roads that leads from my house on Lake Champlain to our parents' homes in the Finger Lakes.
On Saturday, we stopped in Holland Patent to visit Pascal, who is buried in a cemetery not far from his old house. It's the first time I've been there since I spent a day at the Holland Patent Free Library, researching his life as I prepared to write SPITFIRE more than five years ago. It's also the first time my family has been with me to "meet" Pascal. It was like introducing them to an old friend.
Today, Holland Patent is a pretty community with tree-lined streets and friendly people who are passionate about remembering their past. The village green showcases a memorial to veterans, dating all the way back to the American Revolution.
P.C.J. is our Pascal. (The CJ stands for Charles Joseph. His son shared the same name.)
If you keep driving along Route 365 through town, you come to the house where Pascal de Angelis lived when the village first began. It's easy for me to imagine the spirited young boy from SPITFIRE growing old here with his wife Elizabeth and their children.
Not far from the house is the cemetery where Pascal and his family are buried. It is truly a lovely resting place, full of tall old trees and creeping vines, and Pascal is surrounded by family and early villagers in this place that he made his home.
This cemetery is beautifully tended, but somehow the flag that marks the graves of veterans had fallen down and blown from Pascal's grave. I'm not family, but I feel like I know him well enough that it bothered me, so I made sure it was back in the ground, secure, before we left.
It may sound silly, but I told him abou
