Recently, Pitchfork writers compiled what they felt were the 200 best songs of the 1960s, a daunting task if ever there were one, given the explosion of cultural production accompanying the ferment of social movements, spontaneous revolts, protracted struggles against regimes of racialized brutality, etc. It's a good list, bust there's some stuff that i find annoying. For instance, Charles Mingus gets on the list with "Solo Dancer" from The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, one of my all time favorite records, but everyone who's ever listened to that album knows that the best part is actually in "Group Dancers," when the kickass flutes come in. And while I'm glad that Jamaican ska and rocksteady songs like Desmond Dekker's incomparable "Israelites" and the more formulaic but nevertheless great "007 (Shanty Town)" make the list (the former in the top 10,) I can't help but wonder if they wouldn't have selected The Paragons' "The Tide Is High" had Blondie not covered it and think that The Skatalites' "Confucius" and Don Drummond's "Man in the Street" should feel a bit slighted. Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" is #3, and that seems about right to me. "God Only Knows" is #1, which i can understand - it's an amazing song and it would probably still give me chills every time i heard it if i had never heard that bizarre Mandy Moore/Michael Stipe cover at the beginning of Saved. My main gripe, for the moment, at least is that "Tracks of My Tears" only comes in at 87. It's not that I don't like Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused," (#11) I just like "Tracks of My Tears" like twelve million times more, and it's certainly a better song than, say, Dick Dale's "Misirlou," which wouldn't factor in had it not been fetishized and resuscitated by Quentin Tarantino, much like John Travolta's career.

Alright, that was a thoroughly useless post. time to read about some communists.

Oh yes - Shana Tova, folks.