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F R I D AY, M A R C H 1 6 , 2 0 0 7The Best (Selling) 200 Albums Of All TimeThanks to Roger Friedman of FoxNews.com who has been covering themeltdown at the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. His column was the firstplace I read that the voting was rigged for this year's nominees to theHall -- final voting put the Dave Clark Five into the Hall, but JannWenner ignored that, kept them out and put Grandmaster Flash andthe Furious Five in instead. Now Wenner was right that it wasembarassing that the Hall had no hip-hop, but that doesn't mean youcna just ignore the votes. Including six inductees was a very reasonableoption but he just ignored it. That makes the Hall a joke. Personally, Idon't think the Dave Clark Five belong in the Hall Of Fame, but if theygot the votes, they got the votes.Now Friedman tells me the Hall has shamelessly tied itself to a recordstore promo on The Definitive 200 best Albums Of All Time, an absurdlist created by the National Association of Record Manufacturers. Alllists are silly, of course, but this one is so shameless, pretending to be alist of great albums but really only highlighting bestsellers. Among the200 best albums of all time are dreck like the "Top Gun" soundtrack(really, one of the best albums of all time? It's not even the bestsoundtrack for a Tom Cruise movie, which would be Risky Business, ofcourse.) I think about the only cast album is "The Phantom of theOpera" but they don't even include the legendary, best-selling doublealbum, they include the single CD "Highlights From...." You've got acouple of Bob Dylan albums (but not Blonde on Blonde) and certainly alot of the albums are great, but it's just so transparent. BarbraStreisand's "A Star Is Born" instead of one of her truly great (andequally best-selling albums)? And surely this is the only list whereKenny G will be cheek by jowl with NWA. (#107 and 108, respectively.)And it's all so unnecessary. Why didn't NARM just release a list of the200 Best-selling Albums Of All Time, asking consumers "How ManyDo You Own?" Many of these albums would have repeated and it wouldhave been a lot more honest and no one could have mocked them.POSTED BY MICHAEL IN NEW YORK AT 12:18 PM

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