I am slowly compiling a list of my favorite 999 albums from 1951 to the present, playing by the same rules as the 99 albums list (no best-of compilations, etc). I'm doing this a year at a time. This is the second shortlist: my 1999 top fifty (the first twenty to twenty-five will probably make the final list). 1998 through 2000 was the most intensely obsessive stretch of new music listening in my life; this list may be the peak of albums that make people go "who the hell is that"? Yet in these three years I was more aware than ever of all the albums I didn't and couldn't hear, all the new music I couldn't follow. Many -- most -- of the albums in rateyourmusic's top fifty are ones I never heard, or heard once, or heard one song from. When Sonicnet got eviscerated by MTV and I lost my job professionally keeping up with new music, I abruptly gave up on digging for new music on my own, letting stuff come to me more than I pursued it; since then most of my active searching has been through the past, and there are far fewer obscurities on my new music lists.
Choosing among the top three in 1999 is one of the toughest decisions for me in any year:
1999
- The Dismemberment Plan, Emergency & I
- Of Montreal, The Gay Parade
- Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
- Lilys, The Three Way
- Fiona Apple, When the Pawn...
- Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
- Self, Breakfast with Girls
- Randy Newman, Bad Love
- Applesaucer, Applesaucer
- The Vandermark 5, Simpatico
- The Negro Problem, Joys & Concerns
- Abigail Grush, The Phantom Beat
- Kristeen Young, Enemy
- Bis, Social Dancing
- Dave Holland Quintet, Prime Directive
- Les Savy Fav, The Cat and the Cobra
- R. Stevie Moore, The Future Is Worse than the Past
- Shannon Wright, Flightsafety
- Wilco, Summerteeth
- Opeth, Still Life
- Pinback, Pinback
- Sam Prekop, Sam Prekop
- Joel Forrester & People Like Us, Believe It
- Lamb, Fear of Fours
- Joe Henry, Fuse
- Greg Brown, One Night
(a live album, but the songs are mostly otherwise unrecorded; originally issued on vinyl in 1982, but the cd resissue is the complete show.)
- Archer Prewitt, White Sky
- We, Square Root of Negative One
- Built to Spill, Keep It Like a Secret
- The Roots, Things Fall Apart
- Friends of Dean Martinez, Atardecer
- Jason Falkner, Can You Still Feel?
- The Beta Band, The Beta Band
- The Aluminum Group, Pedals
- The Olivia Tremor Control, Black Foliage
- U.S. Maple, Talker
- Owsley, Owsley
- Hovercraft, Experiment Below
- Blinker the Star, August Everywhere
- Etienne Charry, 36 Erreurs
- April March, Chrominance Decoder
- Prince Paul, A Prince Among Thieves
- The Music Tapes, First Imaginary Symphony for Nomad
- XTC, Apple Venus, Volume One
- The Science Group, A Mere Coincidence
- Oneida, Enemy Hogs
- Kristin Hersh, Sky Motel
- Clare Cooper, Valentine
- Steve Coleman & Five Elements, The Sonic Language of Myth
- Clive Gregson, Happy Hour
I have 13 of these (I used to have the Beta Band cd, but have since discarded it). 1999-2004 were my big new-music years. You're quite right when you say "Yet in these three years I was more aware than ever of all the albums I didn’t and couldn’t hear, all the new music I couldn’t follow." I have way too many cds and yet a palpable sense of the music I can't and won't be able to ever hear (and yet would no doubt love!). I have around 100 cds that were released in 1999, and yet haven't even heard of plenty of these (Lilys? The Science Group? Self? April March? Owsley? etc.).
Tell me about Opeth. I've heard of them. This is metal, no?
Scraps
I can't tell you much. They are metal -- Swedish progressive death metal -- and I only know their stuff because of a coworker who made me listen to them (and the amazing Meshuggah). They're proggy enough, and eclectic enough, to overcome my prejudice against the death metal sound.
Since 1999 is right around the year that my musical life coalesced into about what it is now, I'm surprised how few of these I've even heard of.
And seeing the April March CD there reminds me of how weirdly, frustratingly hard to find it was at the time. I still don't have it.
Scraps
Funny, I think that was the first April March I found. Others were far more difficult, to say nothing of bands she was in.
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