We are now in year 18, (a Harshad number), and I stand by my statement from 7 years ago... "it seems both impossible and inadvisable to have gone so far down the rabbit-hole." This blog began in April of 2005. As of this date, that works out to more than 3,398 posts. The odometer will probably roll over 3,400 this year.
This was the first year Google tried to censor one of my posts. It was an old one from 2019 about KRAB [LINK] which is totally on-brand. Some conservative folks are such delicate flowers, so deathly afraid of bad words and people unlike themselves. Anyway, Google undid the doings and the post has returned to normal.
Outside of this blog, I edited the memoir of a 1930s union organizer and started yet another writing project I'll get into another day. (I'll post about all that when I'm closer to a publication dates.) I also have been writing zine reviews for The Slingshot Collective for a couple years now. It's lovely to see my mad scribbles on newsprint.
Links to all 18 years of News & Reviews:
| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2018 |
2017 |
| 2016 | 2015 | 2014 |
| 2013 | 2012 |
2011 |
| 2010 | 2009 |
2008 |
| 2007 | 2006 |
2005 |
Best Posts:
I started off 2023 with a big research project into the publication history of TAB books. Many of you likely own books from TAB, but had didn't know their catalog was so long and wild. I certainly had not. I found hundreds. I bought a few more too. I found a can of dirty and used Ruby Fluid in a junk shop with resistors floating in it and discovered their 100-year long history. I wrote a definitive history of the Toronto Radio band. But I think my favorite for the year was researching the radio history of a Leon Russel Bootleg cassette I found. The recording is excellent and the history fascinating.
Most Popular Posts:
My most popular posts haven't changed in over a decade. Since 2009 the most traffic has gone to a post about Peter Tripp. This is what I call the post that Reddit built. It remains an aberration in my web-traffic with 96k+ hits. I did eventually collate a list of all Radio Wake-a-thon records here. It garnered another 12,700 hits of it's own. My 2007 post on the Career Academy of Famous Broadcasters continues
to get comments from it's legion of former students.
Best Zine
Because of Slingshot I get to read a lot of Zines I might not otherwise discover. Due to the publishing cycle I sometimes write reviews for zines published in the prior year. Sorry for the delay, but it's a thing. Anyway some quick favorites for the year are below. Fluke is was and continues to be an outstanding zine year after year. Invisile Eye only debuted in 2022, btu the first 2 issues are excellent. TAZ was a new work and deeply impressive. But the one I've read the most was the trifecta from an anonymous Oogle zinester.
- TAZ [link] from the Rogue Writers Guild
- Fluke #20 [link] from Fluke Publishing
- Invisible Eye #2 [link] from Fluke Publishing
- A set of 3 from an anonymous writer [link]
- Let me Put My Pants on
- All the People I've Peed With
- Thread Direction is for Assholes
Best Radio Show:
I've been back on the podcast wagon for a while. The bit of travel I did in 2023 was radio-free time I mostly spent napping I do miss spinning the dial in new places and finding unexpected things.
- Retrospect '60s Garage Punk Show [LINK]
- Jumpin' Joe's Basement Show [LINK]
- Dynamite Hemorrhage show [LINK]
Top 10 Records of 2022
Usually my top 10 is comprised of full-length albums, and is format agnostic. The definition of "full-length" is
totally at my discretion as to number of tracks, or album length in minutes. But generally EPs, Singles, Re-releases, and demos get sifted down the the notable list. I've gotten more flexible on this as the digital age seems to be driving shorter release formats.
- Chat Pile/Nerver - Brothers in Christ
- Tojo Yamamoto - 山本東条
- Better Lovers - God Made Me An Animal
- Ex Everything - Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart
- Canyons - Pro Rock
- Godflesh - Purge
- Pile - All Fiction
- Great Falls - Objects Without Pain
- Big|Brave - Nature Morte
- Will Haven - VII
Notable mentions: Chat Pile - Bulls on Parade; Soft Play - Punk's Dead, Killing Joke - Full Spectrum Dominance, Overkill - Scortched, Therapy? - Hard Cold Fire, MSPAINT - Post-American, Eyes - Congratulations, 68' - Yes, and..., Torpor - Abscission, Ken Mode - Void, Flooding - Silhouette Machine, Protomartyr - Formal Growth in the Desert, Negative Blast - Echo Planet, Matt Cameron - Gory Scorch Cretin, Nights Like These - The God City Session,Dark Canyon - Deadman, Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel, Gentilesky - Ways of Seeing, Urine Hell / NÜDE split, Nailbomb - 1000% Hate (deluxe edition), Glossa - Panic Breathing the Mystic Smoke, The Company Corvette - Little Blue Guy
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment