We pause now...

...to ruminate on the state of the year, because it's mid-September and I am farther away from having a best-of-the-year list than I've ever been at this point in a year, at least since I started wasting half my life on e-mail lists.

I'm not sure if this is because of the iPod changing the way I listen to music (mixing old stuff with new, and favoring songs over albums because I have it set on Shuffle -> Songs), or because I'm getting old and don't listen to music as often or in as focused a way as I used to (not really sure if that's age-related or just me-related), or because it just hasn't been a spectacular year for music. My guess is that it's some combination of all of the above, of course, which means that I need to make a more concerted effort to listen to stuff that came out this year.

Or not. I mean, maybe it isn't that important to have a best-of list. I've done one every year for the last ten years or so, but that doesn't mean it isn't an essentially useless habit. Then again, I enjoy thinking the list through and making brief comments about the records that have especially affected me...and it is a good way to force myself to listen in a focused way to the year's output. Okay, I've talked myself into it.

So, probably, the listening, and buying, will begin shortly, I guess. Bill and I are drowning in CDs, almost literally, with commercial and burned discs littering every available surface in our overstuffed house, but what's a few more to add to the pile? I think I'm still searching for the magic disc that will make my best-of list come together. My record of the year is already determined, pretty much unshakably (the Delgados' Universal Audio), but the rest of the list is far from certain. And to my total astonishment, there might even be a Westerberg disc on the list. Way down toward the very very bottom of the list, true, but there nonetheless. That would be a first, since I wasn't making best-of lists back when the Mats were still a) together, and b) good. That was 18 years ago, after all...

np: Li'l Captain Travis. Not the record of the year, but a likeable record nonetheless. I'd like to see them live.