This year, surprisingly, there was a landslide winner.
I've participated in the voting in each of the last three years, I believe. And, this year, I must confess, I didn't feel up to the task. I mean, I haven't…
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If you're interested in a really special look at some of the best albums of 2006, you can visit The Tris McCall Report. You'll find that Tris has just begun to unveil the results of his annual Critics Poll. Today, he shares his thoughts on the voting results for the year's top albums. If you like what you read, check back each day this week for further commentary.
"An audience member unhappy with the sound in their part of the auditorium can change seats, but we [concert pianists] cannot," Byron Janis says. "Therefore the position of the piano on stage is of utmost importance—moving it only a foot in either direction can make an enormous difference in the sound and therefore in the performance."
That's Spengler's argument in this Asia Times essay, at any rate. Within that discussion, however, Spengler muses about why modern art is so much more popular with the public than "modern" music—and that's the hmmm part of his essay—that music, unlike the plastic arts, can only be experienced within time.
"When you view an abstract expressionist canvas, time is in your control," says Spengler. "You may spend as much or as little time as you like, click your tongue, attempt to say something sensible and, if you are sufficiently pretentious, quote something from the Wikipedia write-up on…
Fiona Maddocks writes a fine rebuttal to Norman LeBrecht's grousing dismissal of the BBC's Tchaikovsky Experience.
"The view that Tchaikovsky's music is merely decorative and devoid of deeper meaning is now so outdated that I must urge Norman, politely, to get out more."
Dave Taylor has it right, I think. Sony, once the personification of innovation, quality, and vision, now has none of them. That is the beginning of a lingering death.
The creator of Calvin & Hobbes gave a legendary (some say notorious) speech called "The State of Cartooning" in 1989. I'd heard of it, but never read it until Planet Cartoon posted it yesterday.
Watterson praises the three tentpost comic strips of all time: Peanuts, Pogo, and Krazy Kat. Now that Watterson and Gary Larson have retired the field, I can't think of a single strip being produced now that I would buy a paper in order to read.
Meridian's resident genius, Bob Stuart, sends along this old but still appropriate article by Janis Ian. Be sure to read her follow-up, "Fallout," as well.
As Stuart says, "It's good to hear from an actual recording artist in this debate."
This isn't exactly the way I submitted it to Tris, but if I created this list again tomorrow, it would again be different. So. My Top 10 of 2006 looked something like this:
1. TV On The Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain
2. Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped
3. The Dears: Gang of Losers
4. Belle & Sebastian: The Life Pursuit
5. M. Ward: Post War
6. Silversun Pickups: Carnavas
7. Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afriad of You, And I Will Beat Your Ass
8. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegon: Ballad of the Broken Seas
9. Arab Strap: The Last Romance
10. The Killers…