Chart study #3: Mercury - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

sp4cetiger

For my next chart study, I’ll be doing our very own Mercury:

The 100 Greatest Music Albums by Mercury

To start, I want to give a quick run-down of Mercury and my initial impressions of his taste in music. I would have done this for dbz and repo if I’d thought of it, but so it goes.

Anyway, one of the things that really strikes me about Mercury on the forums is his passion. He seems to feel everything very strongly, whether it’s positive or negative, and I think that’s definitely reflected in his taste in music -- the music he loves is often intensely personal and emotionally vulnerable. The simplistic view of his tastes would be in the singer/songwriter tradition, particularly Bob Dylan and his many descendants, but I know Mercury also has a passion for R&B, hip hop, and blues, just to name a few. He seems to connect most frequently with American music (73% of his chart) and I definitely sense a love for Americana, even in some of the non-American artists featured on his chart.

So my first questions, Mercury, are about where you came from. Did you grow up in a city or in the country (or somewhere in between)? Does your family have deep roots in the US? In short, is there anything in your background that helps you to connect with artists like Bob Dylan, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, and Robert Johnson or did the music come first?

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Gender: Female
Age: 38

I always get insecure putting newer things higher up, so it was really cool to see a 2010 album at #1. How long had it been sitting with you before you could put it up there?

Mercury
Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call

Gender: Male
Location: St. Louis

sp4cetiger wrote:

So my first questions, Mercury, are about where you came from. Did you grow up in a city or in the country (or somewhere in between)? Does your family have deep roots in the US? In short, is there anything in your background that helps you to connect with artists like Bob Dylan, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, and Robert Johnson or did the music come first?

Really, it all comes down to Dylan. He's probably the single most influential person in my life, musically or otherwise. So yeah. It's like my tastes to a large degree sprung backward and forward off of Dylan

Blues, Soul, Country, Folk > Dylan < alt country, Americana, Classic rock, even politicized punk, etc

In that ^^^ kinda crappy pseudo-sketch that symbol (<) was not meant to mean "greater than or lesser than". It was to show how Me discovering Dylan was sort of the Big Bang where most of my musical interests sprang.

As for where I'm from, I'm a St. Louis boy. A relatively citified one. My dad was a hippie immigrant from the mountains of West Virginia to St. Louis. He loved classic rock and then he dissented to prog rock and then fusion. He's an interesting character. My mom is full city girl - not a music person at all really.

But as far as cities go, St. Louis definitely has a stake in a bunch of blues, rock and jazz. Also the seminal Alt Country band Uncle Tupelo got their start and rise at a place called Ciceros right here in the Lou just 10 minutes walk from my apartment. So I'm sure perhaps on a more indirect and subconscious level, being from STL aided me getting so into the Music I love now. I don't know really.

I love American music. And I'd say a lot of my favorite musicians seem to have their finger on the pulse, so to speak, of American roots and musical traditions. Whether Dylan or Waits or Townes Van Zandt, or Jeff Tweedy or Lucinda, etc, they all have a great feel for that distinctly traditional American folk aesthetic. A common theme to all of them is that musically they all were/are nicely grounded in traditional folk, deep blues, deep country. At the same time none of those artists were or are strict revivalists or purists. Rather, their bedrock is tradition while as well adding to tradition through their songwriting and experiments.

That's that. I will say I find it more a matter of just where I'm from. I mean, I haven't done extensive listening to the traditional folk backgrounds of French music or British or Irish or Spanish or Mexican music etc. But I'm sure they all have vibrant histories. I know in the US we were blessed with men like Alan Lomax and John Hammond and others that made a HUGE concerted effort to find and record and preserve American tradition in music. I don't know if there was a similar movement or phenomenon for those countries named earlier.
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-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

Mercury
Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call

Gender: Male
Location: St. Louis

secretdad wrote:

I always get insecure putting newer things higher up, so it was really cool to see a 2010 album at #1. How long had it been sitting with you before you could put it up there?

Oh I had probably been obsessing over that album - The Wild Hunt -for a solid 2 years before coming on this site. When I made my first chart I had it number 2 behind London Calling. I had already listened to 100+ times by then. Yeah.

I will say I'm a super impulsive chartster. Like I have no problem listening to an album 1 or 2 times and (if I'm floored by it or fully under its sway) sticking it on my chart just like that. Im just not very systematic or undecided on stuff like that most of the time.
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-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

Last edited by Mercury on 10/29/2014 17:18; edited 1 time in total

craola
crayon master

Location: pdx

secretdad wrote:

I always get insecure putting newer things higher up, so it was really cool to see a 2010 album at #1. How long had it been sitting with you before you could put it up there?

On a related note, I tend to feel weird about putting super low ranked albums on my chart (though I don't know if the rating would hinder me in the end). Was there any hesitation in throwing John Mayer's Continuum or Circle Jerks' Group Sex on your chart?
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Mercury
Turn your back on the pay-you-back last call

Gender: Male
Location: St. Louis

craola wrote:

On a related note, I tend to feel weird about putting super low ranked albums on my chart (though I don't know if the rating would hinder me in the end). Was there any hesitation in throwing John Mayer's Continuum or Circle Jerks' Group Sex on your chart?

Not really. Those 2 albums have been on my chart since day 1. And my only worry on Mayer was being cyber raped by some John Mayer bitches on here. Once I became more acquainted to BEA and saw that was unlikely to happen I was all good. Smile

no but seriously I feel "Continuum" is phenomenal! I mean in so many ways. So no problem there. As for Group Sex - that is a milestone album in the history of punk. So although it's perhaps ranked low here, I chalk that up as people's loss.

One thing I've discovered is that in every genre and subgenre there are MANY absolute stone cold classics. When you make a general ranking like here on BEA then you are liable to get strange phenomena where an album that is undeniably one of the seminal albums ever within some musical circle is ranked outside the top 2000 or 5000 or whatever on here. Examples being the Damned's "Machine Gun Etiquette". To any punk fans tha is every bit the album "London Calling" is. But for some reason it just didn't get the right press or distribution or major press back up so it is given relatively short shrift. Relatively forgotten. I say relatively because it's still a relatively iconic album to many.

And there are many examples obviously. Wherever you have a totally essential classic in a genre you can find 10 others equally great but relatively overlooked.

Okay, that's about all I can say on that.
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-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

RepoMan

Mercury wrote:

As for Group Sex - that is a milestone album in the history of punk.

One thing I've discovered is that in every genre and subgenre there are MANY absolute stone cold classics. When you make a general ranking like here on BEA then you are liable to get strange phenomena where an album that is undeniably one of the seminal albums ever is ranked outside the top 2000 or 5000 or whatever on here.

so true. For instance, my overall chart probably doesn't have a single album in it that isn't considered seminal for its particular genre despite the fact many albums in it rank outside the top 2000/5000. There's just that many great albums out there.

Group Sex is easily a top ten punk album of all time and one my all time faves.

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Mercury,

Are there any records on your chart that you would say are there more for sentimental reasons than based around your current tastes?

I think this is something many of us wrestle with. The Rancid album is specifically what made me think about this. It was an album that was very much a part of my life when I was younger, and still have strong attachments to despite having little desire to listen to it anymore unless seeking nostalgia.
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ah Mercury. Definitely one of my favorite charts. I love how there's a clear focus on Americana roots and American music traditions, but it expands well beyond the (mostly rooted in folk & various forms of blues) guitar records, moving into soul, punk, some excellent ambient selections, and equally excellent hip-hop works. Definitely a chart boasting one of the most distinct personalities. I suppose my question would be, where did your musical discovery begin (I imagine somewhere with blues and various forms of folk), and how did you eventually land at a deep appreciation for pieces of music that have little (if anything) to do with that which makes up the core of your chart? (namely the ambient albums scattered throughout -especially those in the top ten- but also hip-hop and soul to a lesser extent)

RockyRaccoon
Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Maryland

Moderator

So I'm curious about something. I recall a time when The War On Drugs' Lost In The Dream occupied your #1 spot. Now it's all the way down in the 40s. What changed?
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