The Pitchfork 500

Ah, Pitchfork. The indie-music site every hipster (myself included) loves to hate. I mean, say what you want about how pretentious or self-aware the writing is, how they tend to use reviews primarily as a platform upon which to display their obscure knowledge of all things underground/pop-culture, or how ass backwards it seems to assign numeric values to one's enjoyment of an art form. Hell, I say that shit all the time.

But we still go back for more, day after day, right? It is the best place I've found for all things indie. I'm also a lot lazier about this stuff than I was in college. Oh man, I used to LOVE Stylus before they went the way of the buffalo a couple years back. And I still remember hitting up about 2 shows every week Freshman year...

Anyway, P4K recently released a monstrosity of a book entitled The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present.

Holy crap.

I'm not going to debate the inclusion/exclusion of songs on this list for several reasons (not the least of which being I can't begin to compete with a collective of music aficionados who do this stuff for a living), but, seriously, Kelly Clarkson? I know Bob Dylan's '80s stuff is, err, questionable, but "Since U Been Gone" over "Love Sick" or "Cold Irons Bound" or "Thunder on the Mountain" or... I don't know, ANYTHING, strikes me as a bit disingenuous.

Anyway, I have little interest in reading the book, but I did manage to get my hands on all 500 mp3s (don't ask: I'm being watched). Divorced from having to read why someone thinks the tracks are great is actually pretty awesome, providing moments of "whoa, nice" and "WTF?!" in equal measure.

Here's the song list from a random blog.

I'm a little over halfway through the 1977-1979 portion right now.

As a curiosity, how many of these songs have you heard? How many of the bands do you know? I'll tell if you do.