Royal Band de Thiés/Thiossane Ablaye Ndiaye

On the poll ballot, I'm torn between listing personal favorites or trying to make a list of what I genuinely think are the best albums Xgau hasn't reviewed or gave B or lower to.  (I decided to exclude anything HM of B+ from consideration, although that cuts out plenty of beauts.)  Keep going back and forth,  Good news is I still have a month to decide.

P.S. Since Bradley says OK to campaign, gotta say I've loved listening to Minor Threat/early Fugazi for the first time in years.

On the eternal beauty/art for the ages/genius thread, just wanted to say that it is entirely possible that those living in the future will conclude that the Beatles were s--t and real genius lay with Badfinger, or-um, the Dave Clark Five.  We will be all be dead and, despite much rolling in our graves, churning in our urns, etc., we will be completely unable to do anything about this.  The then-living will make whatever use of the past best suits them, and, if they are at all like us, they will not let our notions unduly trouble their needs/wants/desires.​  That's the compensatory power that comes with all of the hassles of actually being alive.   Not sure which, present or future, is the privledged take on things.  Not sure if it matters.  Maybe all that matters is the miracle of finding something present to you that quickens your spirit and makes you tingle and flash and jump around. If it is something from 1823 or something from last week, well then, so be it.  As the CG keeps proving, there is great stuff out there, much of it--but by no means all of it--unjustly obscure, that we, the now-living, can vibrate to, and maybe that's as much as you can know or hope for. 

 It's appaling to remember that America at one time had this great treasure--blues music--to me as powerful an art as anything I can think of, and it was, for most white people and for many non-white people, trash, worthless, and it took the far-removed Brits to show us the world-shaking grandure of what we had just down the street. That makes absolutely no sense to me, but it is, damn it,  human all-too-human nature.  Seeing is all, but seeing is often enabled by distances of space and time.   Not sure what uses, for pleasure, edification, release, etc, if any, the yet-to-be-alive will make of Wussey or Pink or the Fab Four.  All we can know, I think, is what they do for us.  Claims to know what will matter to the ages are, well, let's jsut say not very helpful I think.