Ok you baby boomers. In the immortal words of James Brown...Give It Up or Turn It Loose!!!
Bias At Rolling Stone Magazine

By JIM FUSILLI

Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is now on the newsstands. But if you miss this year's rendition, no worries: The top 21 albums on the list are the same as on Rolling Stone's list from 2003. To call it predictable or a cliché is to let it off easy.

The magazine doesn't publish the criteria for judging what makes an album great, nor does it explain why it chooses 500 instead of 50, or 50,000, but the usual suspects fill out the top 10 slots: four albums by the Beatles, including "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" at No. 1; two by Bob Dylan; and one each by the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye and the Rolling Stones, all released between 1965 and 1972. Rounding out the top 10 is the Clash's "London Calling," the youngster of the bunch: It was issued in the U.S. in early 1980. This affinity for music of an ever-distant past may provide comfort for generationally biased boomer-era rock fans, but for the rest of us, it reinforces the fiction that popular music reached its zenith four decades ago.

The Rolling Stone 500 would be easily dismissed as a marketing stunt were it not for the sad fact that the superiority of boomer-era rock is viewed by some as truth. These folks would agree with what Rolling Stone says about its top album: "'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is the most important rock & roll album ever made"; it is "rock's ultimate declaration of change." No, it is not. It had predecessors that made it possible and that are thus at least as important. And "Sgt. Pepper" brought no greater change to rock and pop music than did subsequent recordings like "Crosby Stills & Nash," "The Ramones," Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," Michael Jackson's "Thriller," Nirvana's "Nevermind," Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet" or Radiohead's "Kid A."

Sweep aside 45 years of almost-unchallenged praise, some of which has nothing to do with its 13 songs and 40 minutes of music, and really listen to "Sgt. Pepper." It is a great rock and pop album. But indisputably better than, say, "Kiko," a 1992 album by Los Lobos, or Björk's 2001 disc "Vespertine"—neither of which is among the Rolling Stone 500? Of course not. But the greatness of "Kiko" and "Vespertine" exist outside the confines of boomer-rock's narrow cultural context.

(By the way, to understand the power of the calcified rock orthodoxy, consider that right now there are folks among us who would say "Sgt. Pepper" is better than "Kiko" and "Vespertine" without having heard the last two.)

A look at the raw numbers shows how the list is skewed toward preserving the boomer-rock myth. Of its 500 albums, 292 were released in the '60s or '70s, a highly improbable 59%. Only 8% of the listed albums were released in this century; only two were issued this decade—and one of those, "Smile" by the Beach Boys, was recorded 46 years ago. The other listed album from the current decade is Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy," which Rolling Stone's panel of "artists, producers, industry executives and journalists" rank at No. 353. Albums by the Yardbirds sit at Nos. 350 and 355.

It is not only newer recordings that get short shrift. The Rolling Stone 500 is especially ugly when it ventures away from the commercial rock and pop canon. It gives lip service to jazz by including six albums: three by Miles Davis, two by John Coltrane and one by Ornette Coleman—the ones some rockers talked about in the '70s. There's no Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and no jazz recorded in the past 43 years. As for country, Hank Williams's "40 Greatest Hits" is down at No. 94 and there's nothing by Jimmie Rodgers. Nor is there anything by Louis Jordan, whose rockin' small-combo jazz ushered in R&B. Africa is represented only by "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto," a boxed set of South African music—meaning no Cesária Evora, Salif Keita, Fela Kuti, Youssou N'Dour or Ali Farka Touré. The closest we get to music from South America is "Getz/Gilberto," a 1964 tribute to samba by Stan Getz and João Gilberto. Gospel music? None. Bluegrass? None. Boomer-era rock and soul artists influenced by gospel and bluegrass? Much, as if to suggest the music isn't valuable until the rock world appropriates it. The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time? Phooey.

In the introduction to the issue, Elton John writes: "In the Sixties and Seventies, you could buy 12 albums a week that were all classics." No you couldn't. Maybe one week a year, especially if you were catching up by buying those you missed. But not every week, not most weeks or even some weeks. Mr. John's memories speak to our sentimental attachment to the music of our youth. It's a powerful thing, but the power often resides in the sentiment rather than the quality of the music. That power can blind us so that we may delude ourselves into believing in the supremacy of one era in music, an era that ended more than 40 years ago.