Posts Tagged ‘Pitchfork 500’

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

CONTEST – The Pitchfork 500

Lists abound at this time of year – hit up Largehearted Boy for the running tally – but Pitchfok has opted to cast a wider net than “best of the year” for their first foray into the world of physical media. They recently released The Pitchfork 500, a 208-page book dedicated to enumerating, as they put it, “the greatest songs from punk to the present”. Which, to them, is 1976 to 2006. Though to make it that much less contentious (how very un-‘Fork), the selections are not ranked or rated.

I’ve only taken a cursory skim through the volume and it looks like a daunting read. I will guarantee you that I’ve not heard the majority of selections here and would be surprised if I’d even heard of many of the acts. Probably the proper way to tackle an endeavour like this would be to sit down with it, one of those encyclopedic streaming/download sites (Pitchfork is using lala.com to assemble a playlist of their selections) and just read and listen. Someday I will sit down and do that. Of course, I also say that someday I will sit down and watch all the commentary tracks in my DVD collection.

But perhaps you’re more interested or industrious than I. Or you’ve got some music geek on your holiday shopping list that you’d prefer to spend $0 on, given the choice. Or you just like free stuff. Whichever, I have one – maybe two, if I decide I’ll never get to reading my copy myself – copies of The Pitchfork 500 to give away, courtesy of Simon & Schuster Canada. But since this is some good stuff and I’ve been giving y’all a free ride of late, I’m going to make you work a bit. To enter, I want you to leave a comment down below (spamproof your email as needed, I need to be able to contact the winner) listing your own 500 50 5 greatest songs from 1976 to 2006. Commentary is not mandatory but obviously encouraged and they don’t have to be the definitive five greatest… just five songs you can heartily endorse. Come on, it’ll be fun! Contest is open to anyone, anywhere, and will close at midnight on December 7.

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