Tracks of time

– Kog Ravindran
IS IT me or has there been a higher than usual amount of countdowns in the last few years?
Maybe I’ve been paying too much attention to Bert Newton on 20 to one, but these lists seem to be every movie, music and TV magazine’s answer to not having anything important to write about.
The newest list that has people talking around the water cooler is radio station Triple J’s Hottest 100 Australian of Albums of All Time.
The countdown started at 100 last week and by today (Tuesday) had got down to album number 15 and, with the winner set to be revealed on 10 July predicting the top slot becomes a process of elimination.
The top few places are likely to be flooded by Australian music heavyweights and a few modern day classic for good measure.
Midnight Oil and Silverchair are leading the way so far with four entries each.
Silverchair are also likely to find themselves in the top 10 for their breakthrough debut Frogstomp, which sold a massive 5 million copies worldwide.
Despite the station’s young audience, countdowns do attract a broader audience, which has meant albums that aren’t considered ‘cool’ like John Farnham’s Whispering Jack have placed well at 49.
But the sleeping giant quietly awaiting their ascent to the top are Powderfinger.
So far, Double Allergic is their only album to make the list, coming in at number 41.
The scary thing about this placing is that the Powderfinger faithful were able to get this largely underwhelming album into the top 50. So what’s left?
There’s 1998’s Internationalist, the last album the group made before they were embraced by the mainstream and 2003’s Vulture Street which elevated the Queenslanders into the elite group of Aussie rock greats.
But the big one they’ll be punting on is Odyssey No.5.
With a track listing that sounds more like a greatest hits compilation, a couple of pub favourites in My Happiness and These Days, along with the uniqueness of being loved by the alternative and mainstream crowd, this album has all the ingredients of taking out the top spot.