It's Decemeber. As most of you know, hordes of publications are releasing their year-end lists. This is not a post asking you to submit your favorite 10. I'll let the number-crunchers that be handle that end of the business. I have mine own to do. However, it's getting around the time where we give gifts. Who gives your gifts or why you get them, doesn't matter. I want to ask you a question, though.
What were your favorite musical gift this year and what do you want from music santa?
My favorite musical gifts this year come in the form of live music. If there's anyway to enjoy it, it's fucking live. I saw some of the year's best material performed by some of the best bands of this decade, or ever this year. To wit, I saw Radiohead play in one of the best performances of their North American In Rainbows leg. Hell, it was rainy, but good. I got to see Fuck Buttons play loud as hell with some quite challenging music. In that same city (Charlottesville, Va) I saw Yoni Wolf and Why? perform material from one of the year's best albums. It may even be the most underrated. July brought the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, where Public Enemy brought it. It Takes a Nation of Millions and other classic material, just fucking spot on. The festival itself was great, too, with performances by Animal Collective, King Khan and the Shrines, Caribou, Fleet Foxes, The Hold Steady, Ghostface and Raekwon, Dizzee Rascal, and Spoon. Speaking of The Hold Steady, I saw them three times this year. One of those instances was the Rock and Roll Means Well tour with the Drive-By Truckers. Phenomenal, yes. I also got a chance to go to CMJ in NYC and saw Broken Social Scene play for two and a half hours. Fucking awesome.
As far as what I want, it's pretty simple. I want more of the live music, definitely. Mostly, I want the new Animal Collective and Bulit to Spill albums kick ass.
Your turn.
My Trusted MOGs
Heya Heath :)
My favourite musical gifts came in the form of live music as well. Living in the UK, I had the chance to see all the British indie bands that I wouldn't even dream of seeing back in Greece. Bands that don't even have an album out yet, or have only one, that was a sci-fi scenario for me. Not to mention all the bigger bands that I had never seen.
Meeting Alex Turner wasn't that bad either ;)
I should also mention all the great albums we got this year, debut and non debut. It was such a rich year in music.
What I want is for me to be able to stay in the UK, so that I will keep enjoying the musical benefits of living here.
Oh, and for the new Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand albums to PWN all :)
My Trusted MOGs
I want to find a job that'll move me to someplace that offers more good live music than Wichita. And I want to keep the funds together enough to make Coachella an annual event.
My Trusted MOGs
@Anna: I can't speak to the situation as far as music goes in Greece vs. the UK. I live in a relatively small town in the mountains, and I have to travel to see anything. Sometimes I go home (5 hrs east) to see bands, but I've also gone as far away as Chicago (12 hours), New York (8 hours), and Raleigh, NC and Washington, DC (both about 4 hours). So, the traveling's worth it. Also, new Jay-Z will be better than both those albums.
@Dale: This is one of my hopes after I graduate. I want to move to a larger media market (either out west, Chicago, or NYC) and be able to take in the music.
My Trusted MOGs
Well, in the UK I can see everything in the city I live in. In Greece, I could sometimes see something in the city I used to live, but mostly travel to Athens (6 hours) to see more important acts.
Bah @ Jay-Z ;P
My Trusted MOGs
Ah, ok. That makes sense in terms of that situation. Bah at one of the best hip-hop acts ever?
My Trusted MOGs
Eh...he's good at what he does, but his genre doesn't do much for me.
My Trusted MOGs
I like hip-hop. Sometimes more than rock.
My Trusted MOGs
a live show would make my season I would say. I think it has been almost a year since I caught one
My Trusted MOGs
Ya know what music I want for Christmas? NOTHING! Not because I don't have a ton of CDs I would love to have. But I've been digging out from an almost 700-song backlog of music purchased but unheard. In a few weeks I will have listened to all it, kept the good and deleted the bad and then, and only then, will I allow myself to purchase new music.
Jay-Z? I'm with Anna... :-P