Welcome to 2015, it was around this time last year I foolishly declared that I wasn’t going to buy any records during 2014 … 83 LPs later, I feel slightly like I’ve eaten 4lbs of butter in one sitting. No grand declarations, but that can’t happen again.
2014 was a good year for new music I think, all manner of stuff excited me and very little of it seemed to be on major labels this time around. I didn’t pick my 11 fave records from independent labels just to be cool and edgy*, that’s just where the stuff seemed to be that interested me this year; although almost all the older music I bought was on major labels, maybe that tells a story of bigger labels being a)Far more conservative than they once were and b)Less influential outside of pop and rereleases.
It wasn’t all unalloyed success by any means I picked up a few duds, although Mr Spotify and Mrs YouTube help me to avoid too many of these. For what it’s worth my top 3 duds this term were:
- Radio Moscow Magical Dirt. Note to self, the term ‘stoner rock’ on a sticker is not in itself a badge of quality. No tunes.
- Mark Lanegan Band Phantom Radio. Sorry J, but I just couldn’t hear anything in this and Mr L is off my ‘auto-buy’ list.
- Black Keys Turn Blue. I was so excited to get it early but it’s a two, maybe three song LP for me.
With Christmas over and done I can finally catch up on blogging and, more importantly, reading everyone else’s work properly too. I just seem to get so little time once we career past 20th December every year, my incredibly selfish family just seem to demand all my time – like Christmas is some kind of family holiday or something! Pah!
As always you only have yourselves to blame for my continued existence on your event horizon, all of you who read, comment and like stuff here give me the fuel to carry on typing nonsense about dodgy rock LPs no-one else seems to properly remember / got conned into buying 25 years ago. To all my Crüe and in particular (in order of shoe size): Mike, John, Scott**, Bruce, Aaron, Sarca, Geoff, Deke, J, Ray, Michael D, Rich, MrBeatShoes^ and Mr Blunder as well as anyone I may have very rudely missed out, thank you one and all – partly for coming here, but mostly for producing such interesting stuff yourselves.
Just think, I’ll be a third of the way through the 1537 in only 25 records’ time. This year I have photographed more shiny things at night than I thought possible, recorded myself reading poetry for you, been mentioned on Canadian radio^^, took pictures of my lawnmower at 11:58pm, actually met a real fellow blogger in the flesh, been to a few gigs and actually interviewed someone I admire – It’s a gas, gas, gas!
487 Down (still).
*I’m currently wearing red pyjama bottoms with reindeers on them – yup, that’s how MF edgy I am!
**source of all the Blackfoot LPs I could possibly need this year, many thanks for your generosity.
^’scuse the abbreviating.
^^thanks LeBrain!