I think the like is reliable for many of you. So who are your top 10 artists of all time? Who do you really listen to? Whose music do you give to again and again ended the form of your life? Here's my list, in no specific order.
1. Bob Seger. I put him here for one album: Live Bullet. No other album has been a fundamental role of my musical life for so long.
When I was first becoming truly aware of particular music in the mid 70s, Live Bullet was on at our house (when my dad and my comrade and I were living together after my parents divorced) practically every waking moment. To this day I take every scratch, every pop and hiss, every riff on this album burned into my brain. I think it the greatest album of the rock era.
2. Rush. Like Seger, they are here for being such a ubiquitous component of my musical life for so long. I think sitting in my mom's house listening to my brother's 2112 album on his old record player when I was 10 days old and only being blown off by it. I think sitting up all night at a friend's house time after time listening to All the World's a Point and Permanent Waves. And then, of course, along came Moving Pictures. They have remained a seminal band for me, a set whose music I get returned to again and again for more than 30 years.
3. Sting, with or without the Police. I was in high schooling in the former 80s before discovering The Law and at start I didn't much like for it. Synchronicity is what actually got my attention (not for the vastly overrated and overplayed Every Breath You Read but for almost every other song) and from there I went back and drop in bed with their earliest material.
And then Sting went alone and launched into his experimentation with a ring of mainly jazz musicians and turned out one great album after another (until recently; the lowest couple albums have done nothing for me). I loved Bring On the Dark and I loved Dream of the Dark Turtles and Nothing Alike the Sun, which were the soundtrack to my college and debate coaching days in the former 80s. And so there are Soul Cages and Ten Summoners Tales, his two best albums.
Yes, Sting is a megalomaniac and a first-class asshole (and I don't mean that on intelligence reports but on the actual experiences of a quaker who worked now with him). But he's also, in my opinion, the finest songwriter of his time. The fact that he's able to reinterpret his songs again and again in markedly different ways testifies to his brilliance. He has continued to be one of my most consistent musical companions since I was in high school.
4. James Taylor. Seen him many, many times in concert. I lean to mind to him in the autumn, for some reason. Still the smoothest and most soothing voice in music.
5. Bruce Hornsby. Everyone knows his one big hit, The Way It Is. What about people don't love is that he's put out a serial of superb albums since then that have gotten very little airplay. He does music for adults, deftly incorporating different musical genres into his own unique sound.
6. Vinx. This is possibly biased because I am now lucky enough to visit him a friend, but always since I first heard him 20 days ago his music has been a perpetual presence in my life. One of the most singular and powerful voices you'll always hear - imagine Bobby McFerrin crossed with Otis Redding. This is prehistoric pop, like Fred Flintstone in a jazz society with vapours and funk mixing with African and Caribbean rhythms.
7. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. Another obscure one, and a relative latecomer. I first ascertained them when they were called the Refreshments about 12 days ago. Roger is the Southwest's answer to Springsteen, writing lyrics that are total of clever turns of word and big stories. And their last shows are nothing short of incredible.
8. Frank Sinatra. There are two kinds of mass in the world - those who get Sinatra and those who don't. And if you don't, there's nothing I can do to excuse it to you so you will. A legend. An icon. And the greatest vocalist of pop music ever.
9. Wynton Marsalis. The beginning of many jazz artists to get my vision and keep control of it. The greatest jazz player and composer of the final 39 years. Black Codes (From the Underground), Soul Gestures in Southern Blue, and Blue Interlude alone puts him in the pantheon of outstanding players and composers.
10. Eric Clapton. No one has done it so good for so long, ten after decade of heavy music adding up to a catalogue that is unacceptable to top.
Honorable mentions: Living Color, Rage Against the Machine, Iron Maiden, Genesis, Guns and Roses, Peter Gabriel, Yes, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Dave Matthews Band.
Your list?
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