Us bloggers are always happy to borrow or to latch on to ideas from other bloggers. Or to plaigiarise or steal ideas if you are feeling less charitable.
So with an almighty nod to the Robster's 50 Songs to Take to my Grave series, I give you 50 Americana Albums You Should Hear Before You Die over the next 50 Saturdays
Most of you know that this is pretty much my music of choice. Also most if not all of the artists and many of the songs will have appeared on these pages before.
Here are the rules (such as they are) and the methodolgy.
There will only be one album per act permitted.If it was my top 50 this would not necessarily have been the case.
An act can only appear once although it is permissable for someone to appear as a solo act and as part of a band. This will happen on a couple of occasions.
No Best Ofs or compilations permitted.
One day in November I went through the Americana shelves and selected just over 50 albums for this series and after some soul searching narrowed the list to 50.
I then used a random number programme to allocate them a weekly slot so it is not a countdown and the order does not mean that one is better than another.
It was also at a point of time. It may well have been different the week before or after. There will be no changes although this has left me with a moral dilema which I will share with you in due course.
It also means that No Other by Gene Clark will not feature as I only got it recently. It would certainly have been included if I was drawing up the list today. But what to leave out?
Gene Clark - Lady of the North
Does Americana an all-encompassing genre that includes country, western, and country&western?
ReplyDeleteis not does
DeleteNo
ReplyDeleteThere is a seperate Americana section on the shelves.
They are blue, all others are white
I realise that it's not a part of the actual series and that it's not a competition, but I can't help feeling that kicking off with a tune from the virtually perfect 'No Other' can't help but put everything that follows at an extreme disadvantage. Really looking forward finding out what you have up your sleeve for the next 50 weeks though.
ReplyDeleteAgreed Swede
DeleteI've no idea why it took me so long to getting round to buying it.
It is an exceptional album
Looking forward to seeing how many of these I recognise.
ReplyDeleteA good few I suspect
DeleteBetter define 'Americana' first. Rather vague term. Like the idea though. Wonder what DBT's album you'll pick for instance, I can never choose between The Dirty South, Southern Rock Opera or Brighter Than Creation's Dark.
ReplyDeleteThe vaguer the better.
DeleteThe criteria is whether they are on my Americana shelves.
The DBTs were considered, but did they make the final 50?
Great idea for a thread as is the random number allocation - a neat way of making your 'non-competitive' followers wait until next Christmas before launching in with their "What?!!!&%$$£!!! you didn't pick X, Y or Z? Are you mad?" vitriol. Haha
ReplyDeleteThat's the plan Spence!
Delete