<I>Stereophile</I> has released its 2009 "Products of the Year" (<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/features/istereophileis_products_of_2009/">a… to the website last week</A>). The reviewers and editors have made their choices, so what is yours?
I wonder if <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/not_not_fun/">Karen</a>, over at <a href="http://www.othermusic.com/index.cgi">Other Music</a>, has gotten around to listening to Sex Worker’s <i><a href="http://www.notnotfun.com/now.html">The Labor of Love</a></i>. I’d like to tell her about it. I probably wouldn’t tell her like this:
Have you read <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/the_way_we_listen_now/">that<…;, yet? Okay, now read this: “<a href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/116282-reconsidering-the-revival-o… the Revival of Cassette Tape Culture</a>,” by PopMatters’ Calum Marsh.
Every once in a while, and particularly around the first of the year, news writers (of which I am one) get the urge to play oracle, laying our credibilities on the line by attempting to divine what the coming year will bring. Since I am writing this at the end of January, the chances of my miscalling my shots have already been reduced by a factor of 0.083. But there are still 11 months to go, and some possibility that a prediction or two may be wrong. Nonetheless, I shall intrepidly grab the bull by the horns, the crystal by the ball, and the opportunity of the moment to take an educated guess at what the rest of 1988 holds for audio.
<B>DELBERT McCLINTON: <I>I'm With You</I></B><BR>
Curb D2-77252 (CD only). Justin Niebank, Carry Summers, engs.; Delbert McClinton, Barry Beckett, prods. DDD? TT: 34:11
Okay, read this: <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121023882">The Decade in Music: The Way We Listen Now</a>, from NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Here’s the video for the Fiery Furnaces’s hit single, “Even in the Rain,” which is possibly my favorite track from the band’s excellently <i>easy</i>-to-listen-to album, <i>I’m Going Away</i>. (It’s not really a “hit.” I just made that up. But it could be, if we lived in a different world.)
I’d say on average that about 85 percent of the people I ask, hate Christmas music with an undying passion. I am one of a crazed minority who actually like the stuff and have long cultivated a collection of the stuff. Although I usually begin the season with the two volumes of <I>Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits</I>, both of which are now out of print (C’mon Rhino!), but are easily found used on Amazon, my general rule with Christmas music is: the weirder the better. And God knows when it comes to weird, Bob Dylan’s new collection of guttural holiday croakings is truly amazing.
This is what I want from music:
On Friday, I promised myself that I would spend no more money on records until after the New Year. On Saturday, I found myself at <a href="http://www.othermusic.com/">Other Music</a> with three LPs in my hands. Gah! I brought them up to the counter, where the cute girl with the black hair was waiting. I felt despicable.