2011 - The Year In Music

This past year I added 158 cd's to my collection. And two Christmas albums.

So, first things first - here's the new music I was grooving to in 2011:

Battles - Gloss Drop
Blue October - Any Man In America
Bon Iver - Bon Iver
Lindsey Buckingham - Seeds We Sow
Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow
Kate Bush - Director's Cut
The Cars - Move Like This
Chickenfoot - III
Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
The Miles Davis Quintet - The Bootleg Series Vol. 1, Live In Europe 1967
Death Cab For Cutie - Codes And Keys
Drive By Truckers - Go-Go Boots
Duran Duran - All You Need Is Now
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Ben Harper - Give 'Till It's Gone
Iron and Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean
Michael Jackson - Immortal
Booker T. Jones - The Road From Memphis
Kasabian - Velociraptor!
Lenny Kravitz - Black And White America
Stevie Nicks - In Your Dreams
Jimmy Page - Playin' Up A Storm
Peat Bog Mysteries - Peat Bog Mysteries
Radiohead - The King Of Limbs
Lou Reed & Metallica - Lulu
Robbie Robertson - How To Become Clairvoyant
Paul Simon - So Beautiful Or So What
Steel March - Damage Done
Wilco - The Whole Love
Wild Beasts - Smother

Reissues that I grooved to in 2011:

The Beach Boys - The Smile Sessions (not really a reissue, I know...)
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew 40th Anniversary Boxed Set
Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age Of Wireless, The Flat Earth
Howard Jones - Human's Lib, Dream Into Action, Action Replay, The 12'' Album (plus alternative mixes and an early live performance)
The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
The Tubes - The Completion Backward Principle

Artists whose work I actively collected in 2011:

Miles Davis (18 cd's)
Santana (12)
Bob Dylan (6)
Howard Jones (7)
Thomas Dolby (3)
Kansas (3)
Foo Fighters (3)
Duran Duran (3)

Album of the Year: Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues. Runners up: Bon Iver, Kasabian, Robbie Robertson.

Song of the Year: Adele. You know, the one that you heard everywhere you went. Yeah, I didn't buy her album either, but I have to admit that it was one hell of a song.

Disappointment of the Year: Jimmy Page - Playin' Up A Storm. A deceptive repackaging of an obscure mid 1960's album by Keith DeGroot which featured Page as a mere session player. That's what I get for buying something I had never heard of without checking it out first. Runner up: Battles - Gloss Drop. Imagine taking ten or maybe fifteen seconds of music and repeating it ad nauseum in order to fill up five or six minutes of album space. That's pretty much the album: two and a half minutes of musical ideas that take an hour to get through. Excruciating in its dullness and lack of musicality.

Artists I saw in concert this year: Ozzy Osbourne, Janet Jackson, The Cars, Death Cab For Cutie, The Fray, Robert Plant, U2, Peter Gabriel, Kansas, Sting, Paul Simon. Yeah, this was a great year for concerts. Unfortunately I'm kicking myself for missing Lindsey Buckingham, Roger Waters, Def Leppard, ZZ Top (again), Duran Duran, and Santana. Argh! And I couldn't get tickets for the upcoming Radiohead, Lenny Kravitz and Tom Petty shows. 2012 is starting out rough.

Not to mention the fact that I still haven't completed my own album, which seems to open up heretofore undiscovered realms of self-loathing on an almost daily basis.

Oh, and the Christmas albums were by Jimi Hendrix and Graham Parker. So there.