Kulchur Archive!
These are the culture pages. Try to show a little respect. They're still under construction though.
I've been deeply involved in 20th Century culture for quite a while, which is a good thing since I'm writing a 12 volume novel cycle on the subject. 20th Century Bohemians and Angels.
I thought I might make some kind of broad archive of the arts here, but it looks like a lot of typing.
Still, imagine if you could find almost everything cultural of importance in one place to explore. Wow.
Nobody with sense would ever get out of bed anymore.
As it happens, I already have a bunch of stuff on the subject which, while not definitive, is at least a start. So I'll post it here now and then invite people to volunteer to complete these lists.
Let's face it, there's a lot of culture out there now, and somebody has to sort it. Not Google.
Everything is becoming very fragmented now that the age of mass media is over, and people are becoming so eclectic in taste that they can hardly discuss anything with anyone else. Personally I own 5 cds of Pygmies singing, every time I bring it up people roll their eyes. Cartoon friends can be so bitchy.
Below you can find archive lists of Music, Movies and Books. I also love Art, but that's a hard list to find.
Oh and cheeses are fantastic too, but who wants to study a list like that?
I realize you're much too sophisticated a person for a critical list, even an extensive one, but these aren't regular lists, these are extra special ones. Lists that might actually be valuable to someone less sophisticated than you.
Read further instead of rolling your eyes and you'll see why.
They're not made by individuals. Like you with your quirks and your prejudices. This is data.
If you're using any of the lists, don't worry too much about where anything falls on any individual list. Anything mentioned on them is pretty good, and anything on more than one list is definitely worth investigating. Art is a matter of personal preference, it's not a horse race.
These culture lists are primarily here to guide the young and newly awakened towards what has been found critically valuable in the past.
And to amuse the cynical and old and make them splutter with indignation that their favorites have been missed by those idiots.
That's all. Art should be fun.
Of the lists below my special favorite is the Jazzlist, take a look at it and you'll see what a really well made cultural archive looks like.
One day I'd like to do this kind of extensive archive for Rock too. And Blues. Also perhaps a World and a Classical Music list even. Omg maybe a Pygmy Greatest Hits list!
And I'd really like a huge critical list of important paintings and visual art works. If anyone has such a thing, then please send me it!
Here below are the archive lists I already have which are available via their links:
These lists are derived from cumulative critical opinion generally.
I'm not really interested in individual taste, superb though I'm sure yours is. I know mine is divine, but it's not for everyone, which is what I'd like these archive lists to be.
So don't send me your personal list of 1000 Great Headbanging Albums please. What I need is data analysis.
Jazz List
This is where to start if you want to explore jazz but find it daunting to begin. It's a really remarkable archive and it will give you immediate easy access to the best of jazz.
It's also as perfect a model for a cultural archive as you'll ever see. It was compiled from every jazz critic's book in the history of the world. Not by me.
Unfortunately it is 40 pages long and therefore not complete yet. When I say not complete, I mean I only have the first page done. But omg what a page!
It has the critical best of all jazz, and by the time you listen to all of that, you'll be someone else who is much more cool and fabulous. You'll be so swinging that you won't mind waiting for me to get the rest organized.
Cinema List
These lists are from the American Film Institute (AFI). Also a list of the 1000 best reviewed films ever made, which was created by the collected cinema critics of a very well known and authoritative newspaper based in New York. I'm not saying it was the Times, but it wasn't the Post.
See all the movies before you start telling me how to improve the list.
Literature List
These lists of the best of 20th Century fiction come from various sources, some more authoritative than others.
I didn't include the Harry Potter Fan Club list. Boy those kids can vote!
Harry Potter came out on top btw.
Rock List
These are a few different rock lists. I can't say I really agree with them wholeheartedly. Perhaps half-heartedly.
Despite what everyone says, I think it's pretty clear that the 1970s were the great age of rock. Not the 60s.
Also that rock dropped dead as a cultural force somewhere in the early-mid 1980s. And it was visibly ill before that.
It's doing a little better at the moment, with a lot of new bands, but it's just not the same..
Art List
This list doesn't exist. Art critics can agree on nothing except that they hate each other.
If you have the lists which have been previously published by respected publications, please send me them.
I'm especially interested in the one done in 2004 for the Turner Prize.
In that list 500 British art experts voted Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), as the most influential art work of all time.
Some of this list is here. Critical Art
Cheese List
Well somebody asked! Don't say I'm not responsive.
This is an archive of 5000 hi-res photographs of the world's cheeses.
They will all download into your computer over a period of 3 months.
Just leave your computer on and don't use it for that time in case you interrupt the download.
Lee Vidor's Record Collection
I love music, I play it all day long here at the Cyberland Mansion. While I write, which I do a lot.
The result is that I need a lot of music to suit my mood and inspire me. And so I have a lot. Every last track paid for!
People always ask what a cartoon angel might like to listen to, so here's my record collection.
I also have most of the books and movies from the other lists here at the Cyberland cultural center.
Oh and I have 17 of the 34 Vermeers on the Art List too! I collect those.
Lee Vidor's Private Music Collection
