mid-year in review


andy and i were duly inspired monday after, with the help of kiker, downing a healthy (in portion at least) plate of ribs, white bread in rib sauce and banana pudding with rib aftertaste. our thought? our thought...my thought was that i spent so much time and thought on my annual year-end music review that it might be fun to spend half the time and half the thought on the music that had been rocking my cd player in the first six months of 2006. in lieu of any other subject worth the time to blog on this week, we'll get to it.

as i combed through my not so healthy (in quantity at least) list of 12 cd's i had purchased thus far, my first reaction was, "gosh. this music year has sucked so far." and let me go ahead and throw this out. i don't have the exact number, but i seem to remember reading at the end of last year that there were over 13,000 cd's released in the year 2005. going with that number, we can probably assume that there have been around half that number hitting the shelves already in 2006. out of those 5000-plus, i have purchased twelve. so, my sample set being what it is, i am certainly not commenting on "the mid-year in review" with regards to the entire music universe, only my music universe.

getting to it, only three of my twelve purchases stick out to me as worth mentioning, and i have to believe, unless july-december proves as fruitless on my music tree as january-june, these three are the only ones out of the dirty dozen that have a chance of making the year-end top ten. in ascending order:

3. angels and airwaves - we don't have to whisper - if you spend only a little time on the internet, you have heard of this band. tom delonge, co-founder of one of my favorite bands of all time (blink-182), and his band made up of other guys from other bands released this album in may. tom went out of his way to make sure everyone knew that if jesus, himself, released an album in 2006, it would not match the awesomeness of WDHTW. i don't know if he succeeded in saving rock'n'roll. but after repeated listens, i have found an album that i can listen to from beginning to end and thoroughly enjoy every song. sure i like tom's voice. but the music is pretty good too. if there will be no more blink, this will do pretty fine.

2. saves the day - sound the alarm - the album contains two songs (one and four) that i already know will make my songs of the year list and it's a return to form from another one of my favorite bands. after making two almost pop albums, the pop is still there, but the speed is turned back up again. i like this album a lot and it is a lock for the year-end list.

1. pearl jam - self-titled - i could go on and on about how much i am into this band and eddie vedder, but the last two or three albums they've put out have been terribly inconsistent to me. you could see them stretching themselves, but at times they stretched to the point where they didn't sound like pearl jam anymore. it seems, on this album, they have fully realized that they could very well be my generation's go to "classic rock'n'roll" band. still "grungy", but incredibly technical and proficient due to the talent of each of the band members, not just eddie. something is going to have to come along and strike me as pretty damn good to knock pearl jam out of the top spot at the end of the year.

there you have it. we'll see how the dust settles again after all the christmas presents are opened and any last minute cd's get their fair spin.

looking forward to with high expectations:

park
blood brothers
brand new
many, many more