Then why are you posting in this thread with such heavy handed opinions? If you haven't even listened to a good amount of the source material then how can you have any positive input. You cannot possibly prove that most rock fans haven't listened to a specific album since, as you said, it's only a small part of the overall rock scene. That's applicable to you close minded old men who refuse to delve farther into new areas of music as well. Do you know what? Those people are a vast minority since rock music has grown and evolved away from their grasps. To prove my point look on RYM, Paranoid has accumulated almost 12,000 reviews. You cannot tell me that an album that most rock fans haven't listen to could garner 12,000 reviews. For the musical sage you claim to be your depth is pretty fucking shallow, and your mind is manipulated by your own fucked up musical perversions. Get a fucking grip already.

First off, an editor on a DDD list, if he is doing the list properly, does not have to hear ANY of the music on the list. The editor can be deaf from birth and still make a great list if he does it properly.

With the objective criteria that should be used, there is nothing in there pertaining to the editor's opinion of the music. The editor's job is to ascertain the rest of the world's reaction to the album (or song, or artist). Things like initiual popularity, lasting popularity, acclaim, influence, and impact have NOTHING to do with what the music sounds like, All of those things can be measured by doing research. I don't have to have ever heard "Dark Side Of The Moon" to be able to do a good job at evaluating it's objective achievements.

Secondly, several other people in the thread have already agreed with me that's there's no possible way that most rock fans have heard the Paranoid album. The fact that it has 12.000 ratings on RYM doesn't mean anything in the scheme of worldwide rock fans. RYM has a ton of metal fans, and album fans, on the site. It is not at all representative of the general public rock fan. There are several albums on the site with huge numbers of ratings like that. Like Velvet Underground. Not only have most rock fans never heard ANY of the VU albums. Most rock fans could not even name one song by VU.

You're delusional if you think that hundreds of millions of people have heard the Paranoid album. You've got two long time collectors who also worked in the business here (Brett and me) who have never heard it. You just don;t seem to realize that metal, and even hard rock, is not all that popular with the mainstream. Black Sabbath only had two singles that made the Billboard charts, and neither of them cracked the top 50. Mainstream rock listeners don't listen to much heavy metal.

I stopped reading here. If you honestly believe this then I give you no credit as an editor. Editor's should be objective but they should still listen to and appreciate the material that they're analyzing. It would be like a person who doesn't watch baseball making a list of the games best players, it just doesn't make sense. I want someone who is passionate about the list's content to be compiling the source material, not someone who is doing it like a chore.


are you fucking serious? I don't give a shit about your stone age radio charts, those are flawed and out of date. You don't think Iron Man, Paranoid and War Pigs have been listened to by millions of people? They get constant airplay (still), they're in videogames, movies, commericials, TV shows....these songs get constant exposure and are well received by the public, even by people who aren't rock fans. On last.fm each song has over 2,000,000 listens each, and Paranoid (the song) has over 5 million listens. I also never said hundreds of millions, that's a figure that you're making up and I also never lobbied for moving the album up, I think it's in an appropriate position but I think you're flat out wrong with where you stand in regards to it's popularity, appeal and influence. I'm sick of dealing with your ignorant ass, i've never seen someone know so much but also know so little.

Yes I do, but that's not listening to the album, and there are hundreds of millions of rock fans, most of which do not listen to "classic rock" radio.



In order for "most" rock fans to have heard the album it would have to have hundreds of millions of listens. And we're talking about the album now, not a few of the individual tracks.



I forgot more than you know about the entire history of rock, but if you're sick of dealing with me, you can always leave.

Not only do I believe it, but I've practiced it on some of my lists. I've never heard several of the records that are some of my lists. Editors should not be "analyzing" the materia at all. They should be researching what the rest of the world thinks of the material. But their own personal opinion of the material it totally irrelevant to making the list.



That would be absolutely no problem for a good researcher/writer. The object of these lists is to measure the reaction of the rest of world. The editor should not in any way be using his personal taste to choose or rank the items. You don't have to know a thing about baseball to reserach this and come up with a very respectable list of the best players.

If I worked at a magazine and my editor assigned me to make a list of the 100 greatest paintings oif all time, which I know nothing about, I'm positive I could do the proper research to put together a very competent list, without having ever seen most of the paintings.

You just proved my point, to you this is more of a task than it is a passion. That to me is a problem and it means you have no place working on this list.

On the contrary. The editors who are too passionate are usually not good editors. They invariably want to see their favorites rank high, rather than to see the list done objectively.

I know a good editor when I see him lobby for something that he does not like personally.

For instance, if you hated Black Sabbath but were still pushing for the album to be ranked high, that would be a good sign.

I don't hate Sabbath but i'm not a fan of theirs and they are not a band I listen to often. However, they are indeed incredibly popular, high acclaimed and have released one of the most influential albums of all time. All of these are objective facts, and i'm not pushing for it be higher and instead i'm pushing for you to realize and understand why it would be fair for someone to want Paranoid to be ranked higher because it is indeed justifiable. For you to not realize that is what bothers me because it shows ignorance on your part, Bruce you are not as unbiased as you believe. You don't like metal. You don't like hard rock. You don't like what you haven't listened to. You have strong opinions against music made past a certain time period, you have demonstrated these opinions in the past and you're very stubborn about them. If you actually listened to the pertinent material on the list and appreciated the genre and its related sub-genres you would be able to better understand what you are ranking, and that would make you a better editor because you would actually have thoughts and opinions about what you are ranking instead of doing it like some sort of machine. That is why I would prefer someone who is both unbiased and is passionate about what he is ranking because that person actually has an understanding of what he/she is ranking, and in my opinion that makes the list much much better for people reading and helping make the lists.

Well, I'm sorry that we can't tell you that, but your refusal to hear such a thing doesn't change the fact that it's absolutely true. 12,000 people is nothing in the grand scheme of things. There is absolutely no question that an album can get 12,000 reviews without being heard by the majority of rock fans, and if you can't acknowledge that, you're not going to learn anything.



But someone can be a passionate baseball fan and still evaluate players he has never seen. How much footage of Josh Gibson or Oscar Charleston exists? To say nothing of 19th Century Hall of Famers such as Addie Joss or Hoss Radbourne. Should we not include them on a list of the game's best players, simply because we can't see them play? Or do we do the research to learn how great they were?



Then what do you propose to use in their place?



They don't get THAT much airplay, and what they do is on stations of somewhat limited appeal. The big hits of The Beatles, the Stones, Stevie Wonder, and so on reach far more ears on a regular basis than those songs.

Besides, he was talking about the album. I would certainly agree that most rock fans have heard "Iron Man" and "Paranoid". The rest of the album? No.



He's basing it on your disputing the idea that most rock fans haven't heard it. There are hundreds of millions of people who are at least casual fans of some form of rock music.

I agree with everything in your post.....except Addie Joss never played in the 19th century His career spanned 1902-1910.

so by contrast do you believe that Raising Hell by Run DMC is an album that is more popular,well known and better received among rock fans?

Well, it certainly was more popular in the USA, getting to #3 on the LP charts with one more week on the charts than "Paranoid" had.

Better received is not part of any criteria, although I'd say that the Run-DMC was better received considering that the Black Sabbath was kind of outrageous for its day. Many people thought it was just loud noise at the time.

Both were incredibly infleuntial within their sub-genres of rock, but hip hop is a much more popular sub-genre than heavy metal. At least in the USA.

There's only been a handful of heavy metal singles that have been top ten singles, while there are now hundreds of hip hop singles that have been top ten.

Checking critical acclaim on acclaimed.net we get...

ALL TIME RANK
135 - Paranoid
178 - Raising Hell

The Sabbath album is likely bigger outside of the USA than the Run-DMC album. I'd say that ranking them here would depend on the precise layout of the criteria.

Don't even give me this shit, here we go again with your slanted opinions on hard rock and metal. "many people" think a lot of things, you can't keep using your group of 70 year old geezers to validate your ignorant opinions because those people are an extreme minority of rock fans. Most rock fans have the dignity to crossover to other sub-genres and listen to other things, or least listen to something before they judge it.

Keep in mind i've never said that Paranoid should be moved up, i've remained impartial, but I hope that i've shed some light on Paranoid. You even stated the facts yourself, and keeping in mind the immense influence Paranoid has had on the landscape of metal and hard rock I think it's justified if someone debates for the album to be moved up a few pegs. No matter what way you swing things Paranoid is a popular and well liked album among the rock listening public.

Paranoid's immense influence is on a smaller part of the overall rock world than Raising Hell's immense influence is. Each album is considered the most influential album in its subgenre of rock, but hip hop is a much bigger subgenre of rock than heavy metal is. Do you dispute that?

And heavy metal had a head start of about 10 years, and still is much less popular than hip hop.

As for your claims that I don't like metal and hard rock.....I'm not exactly a big hip hop fan.

By the way, I like the song "Paranoid" a lot, it's on my list of favorites from 1970, at #115. It's certainly better than anything I ever heard by Run-DMC.

115 ¦ Paranoid ¦ Black Sabbath

I edited my post because honestly I don't give a shit about Paranoid being below Raising Hell. It makes sense to me, I get it. However, Paranoid's influence vs. Raising Hell's influence is an entirely different debate. Paranoid influenced whole other genres of rock. It influenced the conception of metal. It influenced the creation of other mega rock bands (AC/DC, Metallica, Iron Maiden etc...) which went on to influence and inspire on their own. Raising Hell is influential and it's influence continues to course through popular music unlike Paranoid, I agree, but understand that Paranoid is much bigger than what you're giving it credit for.


so why haven't you listened to the rest of the album?