The Noiseboy Online

The Druids of Stonehenge — do they make the cut?

Ever since my freshman year of high school I’ve been on a quest to create my own personal “best of rock” compilation. My first attempt came on the heels of inheriting my older brothers’ record collections, which meant I finally had access to the catalogs of The Police, Dire Straits, and Led Zep. In response to what at the time seemed like a somewhat comprehensive influx of rock music into my collection, I tried to compile a list of the Top 500 All-Time Rock Songs, a concept that is utterly silly for even the Christgaus of the world. I had to have a recorded version of this list, which meant that I had to of course own the songs I was selecting. That meant an awkward, incredibly limited hodgepodge of mainstream rock crap, from then-current radio staples like Extreme and Bon Jovi to AC/DC, from old Aerosmith to “new” Aerosmith. Luckily, time has swallowed both the list and the 15 or so cassette tapes that made up the compilation. But time has not taken away my desire to chronicle my tastes.

Nowadays that urge manifests itself in fun, sometimes clever compilations (like the Songs About Girls 3CD mix) or end-of-the-year Best of CDs. But as of late I’ve been kicking the tires on another overwhelmingly ambitious project, a 100-song, four CD mix of my personal fave “garage rock” songs from pre-1970. I haven’t actually began to seriously research the mix, but I’m certain that it would be much more significant than a combination of the two Nuggets boxes. Otherwise, what would be the point?

While the comp would no doubt frustrate me to no end, it would nonetheless be a challenging project that I’m sure would feel dated to me the minute I completed it (hopefully far less so than the Top 500 comp of 18 years ago, though; just a year after compiling that list I discovered the Chili Peppers and my world tilted on its axis). The frustrations for the garage rock comp would come as a result of being limited to just 100 songs. To most, I’m sure that seems like a lot of room to maneuver, but I’ve got so many records that feature garage rock from around the globe — not to mention like 20 volumes of the Rubble series and countless other garage series comps — that I could easily do a USA and non-USA Top 100 (a la the Nuggets model). I don’t want to do that, however; I want to force myself to make stupid decisions, to narrow down my favorite Druids of Stonehenge songs from three to the one that could make the cut, or to mandate that no more than three Kinks songs can make the list. Then, after deciding which 100 songs cut the rug, I’d have to actually order them 100 down to 1. That process on its own could take me a month.

My question to you is, “Am I crazy?” Would you actually listen to a 100-song comp of my fave garage rockers? I mean, do you even ever listen to Nuggets, assuming you own it? And does it sound largely obvious and deficient to you, as it does to me? Give me some direction here folks.