Kind of Blue makes Zagat's Top 10 (FWIW)

[Pete C]

'Born To Run' tops Zagat music survey


NEW YORK (Billboard) --Bruce Springsteen's 1975 breakthrough album "Born To Run" (Columbia) ranks No. 1 on the most popular albums list in Zagat Survey's first Music Guide.

Best known for its surveys of restaurants, hotels and other leisure pursuits in major cities, Zagat queried more than 10,000 listeners to create a list of the 1,000 top albums of all time, as well as dozens of other tallies across more than 20 genres and eight decades of music.

Four albums by the Beatles, two by U2, another by Springsteen and releases by Miles Davis and Pink Floyd round out Zagat's top 10 most popular albums.

"Born To Run," which peaked at No. 3 and spent 110 weeks on Billboard's album chart, is also on top of the rock and classic rock lists and No. 5 on Zagat's overall quality tally. Springsteen & the E Street Band rank eighth on the list of most influential artists, which is led by the Beatles.

Davis' 1959 release "Kind of Blue" (Columbia/Legacy), No. 6 on the most popular list, is the No. 1 album for overall quality and the top jazz album.

The top hip-hop album is Public Enemy's 1988 classic "It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back" (Def Jam). The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's 1972 set "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" leads country albums, Massive Attack's "Protection" ranks as the favorite electronica set and Howlin' Wolf's "Moanin' in the Moonlight" is at the front of the blues class.

"We knew this survey would be especially challenging since musical taste is so personal and top picks of all time stir passionate arguments," publishers Tim and Nina Zagat said in a statement. "To our delight, participants showcased their tastes with a depth of knowledge that stands up to the most critical musical ear -- these are people who know chapter and verse on their preferred genres and they avidly shared memories and associations that their favorite recordings evoke."

The Zagat survey found that fans listen to music 24 hours each week, more than five of which is conducted on computers and MP3 players. Participants spend an average $343 per year on music to stock an average collection of 516 titles; 53 percent download music from the Internet and 55 percent burn their own CDs.



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Copyright 2003 Reuters.

[Gentle Giant]

Finally! Some legitimate recognition for this album!


[Tongue so far into cheek I'm frenching my own tonsils.]

[Gary Sisco]

Two U2 albums (no less) make the top ten?

Things are worse than I thought ...

[clinthopson]

Zagat is the People's Choice of the raters.

[Rob C]

You just can't front on the PE record, though.

And KOB isn't my favorite jazz record of all-time, but I'm not going to complain about its popularity, either. Friends, it could be so, so much worse....

[Jazzooo]

How weird that they did a survey, and K.O.B. was discovered to be not just in the top 10 of those who participated, but also voted number #1 in overall quality...and here, on a jazz BBS, there are people who aren't pleased.

[mke]

Originally posted by Jazzooo
How weird that they did a survey, and K.O.B. was discovered to be not just in the top 10 of those who participated, but also voted number #1 in overall quality...and here, on a jazz BBS, there are people who aren't pleased.

I don't think anyone is actively displeased, but rather, nonplussed.

The only other place I had ever heard of Zagat's was in "American Psycho" (the book). I managed to more or less work out what it was, but wasn't sure whether it really existed or not.

[Jazzooo]

"I don't think anyone is actively displeased, but rather, nonplussed."

Well, that's better! No, I'm being facetious--why even nonplussed about it? They surveyed people and people told us what albums they love. It's just information, and I find it positive information that with all of the crap foisted on us day after day, decade after decade, that a survey--not of jazz loyalists--has these results.

"The only other place I had ever heard of Zagat's was in "American Psycho" (the book). I managed to more or less work out what it was, but wasn't sure whether it really existed or not."

Not knowing about it shouldn't be a reflection of anything other than...not knowing about it. Zagat's is a rating system, primarily for restaurants at this time, simply collects customer comments and publish them. They are available for most major cities in the world.

[Jonny Miner]

Nonplussed means, more or less, "plussed".

Actually, there is a lot more genuine quality music cited here than I would have expected from a random selection of the American public.

I would expect Kind of Blue to top the jazz list. But I would have never expected Howlin' Wolf's "Moaning in the Moonlight" to top the blues list. At best, I would have thought that something like Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood would be chosen, at worst something like Papa Chubby.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken and It Takes a Nation of Millions... are also great choices for country and rap.


And I'll gladly accept Bruce as the man for rock.


So Americans have good taste after all.

[mke]

Originally posted by Jazzooo
Not knowing about it shouldn't be a reflection of anything other than...not knowing about it.

I didn't intend anything deeper than that.

[Gary Sisco]

Wha? Who said anything about KOB? No surprise, there. It sells half a million a year, consistently. Which is sales on the same level with Bob Marley's "Legend." It's probably the most known jazz album of all. It would have been amazing if any other had been picked, really.

I just thought it strange that two U2 albums were in there. Two? One would have been strange enough, to me.

Well, at least they chose the Boss's best and, arguably, PE's as well.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by John L
So Americans have good taste after all.

I think one of the reasons that Zagat's surveys work at all (I'm talking about the restaurant books) is that it is not really a "People's Choice" or random sampling, but a core respondent list of people who tend to be (at least somewhat) serious and knowledgable about restaurants (and maybe music now). As the Zagats stated, "these are people who know chapter and verse on their preferred genres and they avidly shared memories and associations that their favorite recordings evoke." I'll take that with a grain of salt, but it is still hardly a random sampling or a poll of Boobus Americanus. This kind of guide is good to get a sense of consensus, but I'll always go with a critic whose taste I trust first. In the case of restaurants, I preferred the Access guides when Richard Saul Wurman was running the show.

Maybe Zagat should give up restaurants and shift to music.

After moving to DC, I used the Zagat guide to restaurants for about a month. Then I threw it away. A random sample would have given better average quality and value.

[Jazzooo]

"Wha? Who said anything about KOB? No surprise, there. It sells half a million a year, consistently. Which is sales on the same level with Bob Marley's "Legend." It's probably the most known jazz album of all. It would have been amazing if any other had been picked, really."

Well, it wouldn't be worth talking about if just won the "most popular jazz album" category--it might be the ONLY jazz album that the people could have named from memory! But it was #6 in the "most popular album" category, overall. To me, that's a nice surprise, seeing as the competition was all other albums ever recorded. Popularity is, of course, not exactly the highest achievement for a work of art, but seeing as I respect the work itself, I appreciate the fact that so many people would vote for it as opposed to, say, something that has sold far more units (think Thriller or something like that). I don't believe that K.O.B. is anywhere close to 35 million in sales. Am I wrong about that?

[MRS]

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, baby

[Other Steve]

Originally posted by John L
Actually, there is a lot more genuine quality music cited here than I would have expected from a random selection of the American public.

That's partially due to the fact that the survey started with an initial master list of the 100 greatest albums in any given genre, compiled by an "expert" in that particular field. Those master lists were taken by the Zagat people, vetted by other tastemakers, and then posted online for the general public to actually vote on. That was the stage in which everything received its relative value, with a few more things added and subtracted by popular demand, in order to reach the final result.

[Jazzooo]

"That's partially due to the fact that the survey started with an initial master list of the 100 greatest albums in any given genre, compiled by an "expert" in that particular field. Those master lists were taken by the Zagat people, vetted by other tastemakers, and then posted online for the general public to actually vote on. That was the stage in which everything received its relative value, with a few more things added and subtracted by popular demand, in order to reach the final result."

If that's the case, Other Steve, then I agree with those who say "No big whoop." Sounds like there would have been people voting in each category who had never even heard some of the albums, and were only representing word of mouth. Are you positive about this? If so, it is a departure from Zagat's usual method of operation as I understand it.

[Jazzooo]

I talked to a guy who voted in the Zagats survey, just to see how it was set up. Here is his response:

"Doug,

This all happened about a year ago. I received a card in the mail asking me to participate in a survey. I usually pass on surveys, but for some reason this one seemed to interest me. I's hard for me to remember how it was conducted. I remember that there was a list from A to Z which contained a variety of all types of music. You could select what was on their list, or you could write in as many of your favorite albums that you wanted to. You then had to rate each album in 4 different categories. One- Overall, Two-Songwriting, Three- Musicianship, Four- Production. You then had to pick your 5 top favorite albums of all time based on the combination of all four categories.

So in a sense, I guess that you could pick from a list. I just remember typing in a shitload of my own favorite albums. I belive that a lot of these albums that you see in the results are from what people typed in. I don't remember seeing some of these names. "

[mke]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/ar...ic/23SANN.html

The Music Guide: 'Unreadable,' 'Average'
By KELEFA SANNEH

Published: November 23, 2003


Here's a complicated question with a simple answer: What are the 10 best albums of all time?

And here's a simple question with a complicated answer: What are the last 10 albums you listened to?

The first question carries with it all sorts of endless debates about the meaning of "best," and maybe even the meaning of "all time." (On his new album, "1,000 Years of Popular Music," the singer-songwriter Richard Thompson sketches a history of song that begins in 1068.) And yet it's that first question that is likely to generate pretty predictable results: you can expect to hear a lot of talk about blue-chip acts like the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.

The second question should, in theory, generate no debate whatsoever: iPod-enabled listeners, for example, could look up the answer with a few mouse clicks. But assuming you could get people to tell the truth, their responses would be much more unpredictable, revealing all sorts of hidden favorites and subterranean trends.

To create the new Zagat Survey Music Guide, the editors polled more than 10,000 listeners in order to pick the "1,000 top albums of all time." These aren't the albums people really listen to; these are the albums people tell people they listen to. Yes, all the usual suspects turn up: six Beatles albums are included, as well as five Bruce Springsteen albums and three Stevie Wonder albums. It's a sensible list, on the whole, although everyone will have complaints. (My first question: Where's R. Kelly?) But this is also an unreadable book — browsing through it is like being stuck at a party with some self-proclaimed expert whose taste in music is, literally, average.

In this case, "average" doesn't mean mainstream. In the introduction, the editor, Holly George-Warren, allows herself to gloat a little bit: "This guide is almost as interesting for who didn't make it in as for who did. Sorry, Avril, Britney and Mariah." Instead, average means just left of mainstream: the book warmly embraces the musical prejudice that some people call rockism; it eschews the supposed superficiality of mainstream pop in order to savor something older, louder, more authentic.

Of course, when you tell someone what albums you listen to, you're also telling them something about yourself. And the entries themselves, which skillfully string together snippets of listener comments, may make you more curious about the listeners and their agendas than about the CD's themselves. The entry on the singer-guitarist David Bromberg has one listener calling his 1971 self-titled CD "profoundly underrated." Other listeners seem to agree, thereby disproving the point: the album gets an "overall quality" rating of 26 out of 30.

In small doses, this may make for interesting armchair sociology, but it's hard to imagine how anyone would find it useful. If you're a metal fan, you've probably already made up your mind about the "supreme bass playing" on Iron Maiden's 1982 album "Number of the Beast"; if you're not a metal fan, this guide is unlikely to convert you. Each album gets four ratings, on a scale of 1 to 30, for overall quality, songwriting, musicianship and production, but it's hard to think of these numbers — especially the last three categories — as anything more than trivia. It turns out, for example, that Earth Wind & Fire's "That's the Way of the World" and Coldplay's "Rush of Blood to the Head" have exactly the same level of musicianship. Can you guess what level that is? (Hint: it's between 26 and 28.) Do you care?

In the back of the book, there's a "special feature index," which is presumably meant to make the listings more user-friendly but ends up doing exactly the opposite. For example, Samuel Barber, Gloria Estefan and Fatboy Slim all wind up in the "Crossovers" category, information that will no doubt prove invaluable to . . . future Zagat editors. Gorecki is a "one hit wonder," the "Funny Girl" soundtrack is recommended as "work-out music" and Snoop Dogg is listed as "make-out" music. All true, in one way or another, but hardly informative.

It's not quite fair to blame the editors for all of this. Music is a tough subject for a Zagat survey, in part because you don't need to plan a CD-shopping expedition the way you plan a night out. (Mistakes are less expensive, for one thing.) If you're feeling curious, you can get more personalized recommendations in stores, and more detailed recommendations (as well as previews) online.

While the book itself is pretty useless, the list of albums stands as a canon of the most well-respected popular music, circa 2003 — the ones that seem to connote status or taste or intelligence or individuality. No doubt some enterprising sociologist in the future will have a field day with the Zagat Survey Music Guide in particular, and with Zagat in general.

The notion of a musical survey is nevertheless intriguing, and it would be useful if someone got around to asking the simple question to get the complicated answer: What are people actually listening to? To be thorough, you'd have to include not only the albums people buy and the songs they download and the radio stations they listen to, but the theme music they hear on television, the snippets they hear blaring out of passing cars, the off-key renditions their friends sing. A survey like that would make an even lousier consumer guide than this one, but it would come a lot closer to capturing the cacophonous world that most listeners have learned to live in, learned to negotiate, maybe even learned to love.

[Jazzooo]

"The notion of a musical survey is nevertheless intriguing, and it would be useful if someone got around to asking the simple question to get the complicated answer: What are people actually listening to? To be thorough, you'd have to include not only the albums people buy and the songs they download and the radio stations they listen to, but the theme music they hear on television, the snippets they hear blaring out of passing cars, the off-key renditions their friends sing. A survey like that would make an even lousier consumer guide than this one, but it would come a lot closer to capturing the cacophonous world that most listeners have learned to live in, learned to negotiate, maybe even learned to love."

There are some nice points in this commentary, but mostly I just view it as another example of how much money people can make off of criticizing someone else's efforts in lieu of actually coming up with their own good idea. As the writer comes close to admitting himself, the survey he describes above would be stupid and pointless.

[mke]

Originally posted by Jazzooo
As the writer comes close to admitting himself

I'd assume Kelefa was a girl's name.

[Other Steve]

Originally posted by mke
I'd assume Kelefa was a girl's name.

Nope. Definitely a male writer.

This particular article was accompanied by companion pieces on the theater and film guides, which were similarly dismissed. There was also an overarching article that talked about why the Zagat people had wanted to expand into these fields to begin with.

The primary article was the one that revealed the fact that instead of dealing with an potentially unlimited pool (like the restaurant guides), these particular guides were limited to a top number of 2,000 entries from which to choose. While write-in votes were indeed accepted, statistically it seems unlikely that the roadmap truly changed so much. So when Sanneh says that the records listed here "aren't the albums people really listen to; these are the albums people tell people they listen to," it might be more valid to suggest that, to some degree, they're the records that people are told they ought to be listening to.

[stonemonkts]

I'm probably a snob for writing this, but what could one possibly expect to come out of a cultural guide which basically polls the general populice? I'd expect some true classics but mostly mediocre pop junk. The classics would certainly contain generally accepted ones, and as the article suggested, some not ever experienced.

I do believe the Dining Guide to be a moderately useful guide for places to try, at least that's been my experience especially in NY when you know the cuisine and neighborhood. But Zagat is making a mistake piublishing the cultural guides, IMO. It may as well be People Magazine's poll, or whichever mainstream rag you care to name. Not the same value as the Dining Guide.

[Jazzooo]

"I'm probably a snob for writing this, but what could one possibly expect to come out of a cultural guide which basically polls the general populice? I'd expect some true classics but mostly mediocre pop junk. "

Right...except that that didn't really seem to happen imo. Have you seen the list? You might not agree with all of the choices in every style, but then again, who says you have to agree with or know what others consider "classics" in every style? I don't. The whole concept of "classics" a bit simpleminded of course, and yes, it has a People Magazine feel to it. But even still much of the list looked pretty intelligent to me. I think true fans of each genre would probably find a lot they agreed with, within their genre. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

"The primary article was the one that revealed the fact that instead of dealing with an potentially unlimited pool (like the restaurant guides), these particular guides were limited to a top number of 2,000 entries from which to choose. While write-in votes were indeed accepted, statistically it seems unlikely that the roadmap truly changed so much."

This has been known since the day I heard about this, a couple of weeks ago. An article I read said that about 40% of the winners were write-ins, but I can't say whether this is true or not.

" So when Sanneh says that the records listed here "aren't the albums people really listen to; these are the albums people tell people they listen to," it might be more valid to suggest that, to some degree, they're the records that people are told they ought to be listening to."

It could be both things. I mean, other than the fact that you might object to such a list in the first place, do you really object to Kind of Blue being on any list of the Top 100 Classic Recordings of the 20th century? If it hadn't been on there, I would have written it in myself.