Shortly after launching this rock raft of a blog, I proposed that we create a consensus Top 50 Essential Rock and Roll Albums. Something of a canon for Rock Remnant aficionados, and also a source of referral cash if we ever develop some traffic here.

As these things do, however, this project was quickly reduced to a playground of competing visions of what we were trying to do. Some of this was technical (I limited my list to one appearance per artist, Lawr allowed no compilations or best ofs), and some of this turned on taste. I picked 50 elpees that I hope demonstrated the breadth of rock, from juju to conjunto to rap to rock and pop, while others picked the albums they’d take with them to the proverbial desert island.

But perhaps the most interesting twist was Moyer’s vehemence against folky girls on the top albums list, a discussion that soon became a referendum on whether Joni Mitchell was rock or not.

That’s a discussion we may have on this site some day in more detail, but for now we have Hole’s take on Clouds…