Easy Come Easy Gaughin

I wrote a blog post last year about my attempt to classify the 100 greatest artists of the 21st century. You can review the criteria here

http://gaughin.edublogs.org/2006/12/09/reading-the-musical-zeitgeist/

I am going to try to update that list every year in December. Here’s the updated list from 1 through 100, along with each artist’s position on the chart from last year.

Apologies in advance to “The Kid.”

1-Tom Waits-1

2-Iron and Wine-7

3-Spoon-9

4-The White Stripes-5

5-David Holmes-2

6-Super Furry Animals-3

7-Low-14

8-Radiohead-40

9-Lambchop-4

10-Sleater-Kinney-6

11-LCD Soundsystem-new

12-Ghostface Killah-49

13-Sufjan Stevens-8

14-Outkast-10

15-Basement Jaxx-11

16-The New Pornographers-13

17-Dizzee Rascal-26

18-Of Montreal-37

19-Wilco-16

20-Elliott Smith-61

21-Bob Dylan-15

22-The Streets-17

23-PJ Harvey-82

24-Mogwai-18

25-Ron Sexsmith-19

26-Arab Strap-20

27-Sigur Ros-29

28-Drive-By Truckers-22

29-My Morning Jacket-21

30-Kanye West-41

31-Missy Elliott-24

32-Four Tet-25

33-Bruce Springsteen-23

34-Blur-27

35-Boards of Canada-28

36-Bjork-47

37-The Decemberists-32

38-The Hold Steady-30

39-Bonnie Prince Billy-33

40-The Arcade Fire-new

41-Talking Heads-35

42-Blood Brothers-36

43-Devandra Banhart-31

44-MIA-new

45-Animal Collective-81

46-Neko Case-39

47-Les Savy Fav-new

48-J Dilla-12

49-The National-new

50-Nas-99

51-Elbow-45

52-The Flaming Lips-42

53-The Go-Betweens-44

54-Wire-43

55-Broadcast-46

56-Nick Cave-48

57-Bill Frisell-50

58-Cat Power-53

59-NERD-51

60-Oneida-52

61-The Clash-54

62-Jay-Z-new

63-OOIOO-55

64-The Pernice Brothers-57

65-Queens Of the Stone Age-84

66-The Roots-56

67-The Mendoza Line-new

68-Smog-58

69-System of a Down-59

70-Books-62

71-Franz Ferdinand-60

72-Built To Spill-65

73-Hayden-64

74-M Ward-63

75-David Kilgour-66

76-Lightning Bolt-68

77-Los Lobos-69

78-Candi Staton-70

79-TV On the Radio-67

80-The Clientele-new

81-Ted Leo-new

82-Stephen Malkmus-71

83-Richard Thompson-new

84-Xiu Xiu-72

85-Lucinda Williams-38

86-Led Zeppelin-74

87-Loretta Lynn-73

88-Vince Gill-75

89-Junior Boys-76

90-Nick Lowe-new

91-Okkervil River-new

92-Solomon Burke-77

93-Damien Jurado-78

94-Steve Earle-88

95-Dungen-new

96-Richard Hawley-79

97-Hood-83

98-The Magnetic Fields-80

99-The Shins-new

100-Broken Social Scene-86

Of course, with so many new adds to the list, the same number of bands/artists must have fallen out. Those are Akron/Family (fallen to 112), Joseph Arthur (130), The Bad Plus (123), Beulah (104), Califone (109), The Constantines (106), Destroyer (107), Matmos (101), Mission of Burma (120), Mr Lif (108), Josh Rouse (103), Saint Etienne (114), The Strokes (111), and Ali Farka Toure (115).

Better luck in 2008, artists struggling to be significant!!!

Juliette Lewis, the rocker

The actress

After playing small roles, typical teenage-daughter sort of things in film and TV, she exploded with an Oscar nomination in the really icky remake of Cape Fear (which got savage brutality just right, and, in retrospect, hardly anything else.) Over the next 2 years, she played the younger love interest to Woody Allen, and in a nice turn for his films, essentially outgrew him emotionally (which I guess could be argued for Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan as well, although her baby-doll voice made it difficult to imagine she had out-matured him. She basically just ran away.)

Lewis was the female lead in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, and got to play the part she really wanted in real life, a Patti Smith/PJ Harvey type rocker in Strange Days.

And then, apparently, conventional Hollywood wisdom caught up with her. While certainly not unattractive, she’s not many people’s idea of a Hollywood pin-up starlet. You might see posters of her in hipster indie video and record stores (yes kids, in the middle 90s there actually were video stores other than Blockbuster,) but you weren’t going to find her plastered up on the walls of the Sigma Chi house; Walmart wasn’t going to be featuring the Juliette Lewis Collection as a loss leader.

So she works less frequently, and often is limited to very marginal background characters, like in Starsky and Hutch and Old School. She’ll get a nice indie role occasionally; the recent Aurora Borealis was a nice turn. But she seems to be focused more on becoming the sort of singer she portrayed in Strange Days. Her band, Juliette and the Licks, get pretty good press; they get to play a lot of festivals, and she’s had a few marginal hits in Europe. And dang if the clips on Youtube don’t look like they might have been fun before I got closer to the Depends crowd than to the dormitory gang.

Ten best roles

10) Renegade 9) Aurora Borealis 8) Hysterical Blindness 7) Some Girl 6) Strange Days 5) Natural Born Killers 4) Kalifornia 3) What’s Eating Gilbert Grape 2) That Night 1) Husbands and Wives

PS, it’s not a mistake that I’ve left off Cape Fear. I saw it again recently, and outside of sort of grudgingly accepting that DeNiro’s level of savagery was truly masterful in a “why don’t you fledgeling actors really dig into what he’s doing here…..with your teeth”, it’s not NEAR the top of Scorsese’s work.

Percentile score

84.27

Drew Barrymore

She’s not my favorite, but in the right movie (like The Wedding Singer) she can be an acceptable support for the main action. She was HORRIBLE in the recent song movie with Hugh Grant (who makes the worst movies of any major star lately.) She’s basically Sandra Bullock minus the mysterious gaze plus a little bit of borderline skeezy eroticism.
Ten best roles

10) Poison Ivy 9) Never Been Kissed 8) Home Fries 7) Ever After 6) The Wedding Singer 5) Charlie’s Angels 4) ET 3) Confessions Of a Dangerous Mind 2) 50 First Dates 1) Fever Pitch

Percentile rating

86.28

Katie Holmes

I come not to praise the Queen of the Galactice Confederacy, but I’m not ready to bury her either. Katie Holmes gets a lot of rippage for her bad fit in Batman Begins, and it’s true, when she tries to play the femme fatale type, as she did in that film, and to a lesser degree in Thank You For Smoking, she can come off looking pretty silly. But if you’ve seen her playing roles that are more human than archetype, as she does in Go, and The Wonder Boys, and especially the vastly underrated Pieces of April (which features a sickly sweet ending that should have been so out of left field that it scuttled what came before it, but the crowd of 5 or 6 people I saw it with all agreed that it actually pulled a potential Hallmark card moment off with almost a sort of grace, by showing the moment, but then ending the movie rather than trying to explain or dwell on it,) there are clearly parts for which her solid middle-American sweetness is perfect for. Or was, until Theta Maximum 5002 got hold of her.

Ten best roles

10) Phone Booth 9) The Singing Detective 8) Abandon 7) First Daughter 6) The Gift 5) DIsturbing Behavior 4) Go 3) Wonder Boys 2) Batman Begins 1) Pieces of April

Percentile rating

75.28