Introduction

Introduction

                So 2011 was a really terrible year for music.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m a bitter old man now, or just the luck of the release schedule, but apart from the new Black Keys, the SMiLE ‘reissue’, and maybe the new Fucked Up, I don’t think I heard anything I’m likely to be listening to a year from now.  So that, combined with my getting the Beatles mono boxed set for my birthday (thanks, Andrew!), has got me looking backward.  At which point I noticed that iTunes has already noted the year in which things were released.  Hence this project.  I’ve decided to listen through my music collection year-by-year, spending no less than one day (and possibly more if a year is either really good or I have a lot of music from that year) listening more-or-less exclusively to music from that year.  Because my collection is spotty before 1963, I’ll handle those periods in bigger-than-a-year chunks.  I have nothing interesting to say about the 1920s-40s, as those periods are so dominated by a few virtually random collections, so I’d basically just be talking about how I feel about Jimmy Rogers or Robert Johnson or Duke Ellington, rather than their context.  Because I find this fascinating, but I don’t know who else will, I’ve decided to make it a blog that you can conveniently ignore rather than gassing on about it to whomever may be around me. 

Rules, everybody loves rules!

1)      I go by earliest release.  Singles that later appear on albums in later years get listened to the earlier year. 

2)      Live albums released while the band is an active concern get listened to year of release.  Archival live albums get listened to year of recording.  In Led Zeppelin terms, “The Song Remains The Same” gets listened to in 1976, but “How The West Was Won” gets listened to in 1972, not 2003.  Odds & sods comps get listened to year of recording, if possible.

3)      I’m not double-checking itunes’ work.  I’m crazy, but not that crazy.