FIFTY IS THE MAGIC NUMBER
Feb 3rd, 2009 by Sean Baite
[ And straight in at number 27, fuck it do I love early 1980s Thursday nights!!.. ]
I have always retained a childish attachment to reverse countdowns of people’s favourite music tracks - it’s most likely the fault of the man pictured above. While looking for a Butthole Surfers track on the web a few posts ago (in order to dedicate it to Dell’s managing director) I came across a Top 50 I hadn’t been aware of until now - Kurt Cobain’s favourite albums as culled from a journal he kept. Seeing as the Central Bank’s sole useful purpose henceforth will be to provide a wind tunnel effect for the mopey emo kids in Nirvana t-shirts clustered around the plaza at its base, I feel forced to put up a small selection of Kurt’s fave music. Please find hereafter a random selection of a track from every ten places or so :
#46 The Wipers - Is This Real ? -
Hometown choice - late 70s group from that West Coast indie/postpunk paradise Portland :
#35 Daniel Johnston - Yip Jump Music -
Track from the man whose life Cobain changed just by wearing a t-shirt on TV :
#22 Young Marble Giants - Credit in the Straight World -
From the nominally Welsh minimalists’ one and only album :
#19 The Saints - Know Your Product -
Australia’s punk pioneers - so youse can all familiarise yourselves with another track by them than ‘I’m Stranded’ -
#04 The Vaselines - Pink EP -
Glaswegians sing that song Cobain covered on MTV’s Unplugged (Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam). So Stephen Pastel gave singing lessons, did he ?
Those of you wishing to read the list of 50 albums backwards to yourselves slowly, it can be found over here
Most of the choices are logical enough listening to the influences in Nirvana’s music. Mention of a few fairly forgotten bands in the list managed to bring a hell of a lot of attention to them, I believe - not that any of their releases became any easier to track down !
I note he only manages to find room for 4 mainstream (R.E.M., Bowie, Beatles, Aerosmith) and 3 black artists (Leadbelly, Public Enemy, Bad Brains).
Enjoy the other 45 tracks over here at dropd24’s YouTube channel Patience will be required, as they aren’t posted in order and, as ever, searching on YouTube is a bit like foreplay in a lift during a power cut…
