Another act I regret excluding from the Montauk Madness competition is Fleetwood Mac. I own four of their albums (Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk and Tango in the Night) and I freaking love pretty much everything they do.
This was another unintentional oversight, like the exclusion of Ron Sexsmith. I have to be more careful about this stuff!
While we wait for the tallying of the Montauk Madenss Final Four votes, I’m going to acknowledge a few acts I wish I’d included in the lineup.
As I’ve mentioned, I regret splitting out the solo careers of several artists from their work with bands. Specifically, I should have combined Paul Simon with Simon & Garfunkel, Morrissey with The Smiths, Ben Folds with Ben Folds Five, and David Byrne with Talking Heads. Not only would that have made the voting more straight-forward, it would have opened up four slots.
Our second Final Four matchup is a battle of London lads: Elvis Costello vs. The Beatles.
A nice connection here, as Costello has been a die-hard Beatles fan since he was nine years old and 27 years later teamed up with Paul McCartney to write an excellent batch of songs that both men released on future albums.
Four months after kicking off Montauk Madness (with a Billy Joel song, appropriately), we have arrived at the Final Four. Lots of close calls and blowouts, laughers and hair-pullers, and a lot of entertaining debate culminate in three more votes to decide — well, I’m not sure what we’re deciding. The consensus best artist according to readers of this blog as chosen from a group of 64 bands and soloists I rather haphazardly pulled together?
My initial intention for this series of blogs was just to run through the brackets myself and use the format to conclusively come up with my own favorite artist. I quickly realized that such an approach would be incredibly boring for my readers, who would certainly want a chance to chime in with their own votes.
Hard to believe it’s been 40 years since Talking Heads released its debut album, conveniently titled Talking Heads: 77. Of course, I was five years old in 1977, so it’s not as if I’ve been a fan of the band for that long.
This sound feels unique and new even today, let alone four decades ago. David Byrne and his bandmates were truly trendsetting artists.
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