On 04/07/2012 04:23 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Someone once put it like this - This is the first time in history where,
> in principle, 100% of all the crap, and 100% of all the truly great
> works, could potentially continue to exist into the next generation.
> Previously, about 50% of the great works survived, but so did roughly
> 50% of the complete crap.
>
> So, yeah, I am sure you can find "last century" music, if you only look
> at sources that have already filtered out the tone deaf, unpopular, and
> just plain bad, music, that is, apparently, better than an average
> sampling of today's. Its just a false comparison, unless you either
> "unfilter" the prior centuries music, or you add filters to the current
> music, to put them in parity. Odds are, most people haven't even "heard
> of" the truly horrible music from the last century, because no one
> listens to it, even though a few people have "saved it", instead of some
> better work, which they had no interest in keeping.

Heh. Sampling bias.

So I guess the thing to do is to try to track down 18 truly great tracks 
from this century.

(I'm tempted to say "the debut album from The Baseballs" and call it a 
day... but that's a tad lazy.)

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