Manchester, Tennessee June 2010: Reviews of all the sets I could manage to catch at Bonnaroo 2010. Except for the first Bonnaroo in 2002 I have attended, and loved, every Bonnaroo Music Festival. 2010 lineup was not as strong as previous years line-ups, but the festival didn't disappoint. 2010 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival headliners are Kings of Leon, Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, and Dave Matthews Band - solid bands and artists to be sure, but they don't have the "wow factor" of prior year acts like Metallica, The Police, Bruce Springsteen, Phish etc. I have decided not to "rank" the sets because after Day 1 it just didn't seem like it was that kind of a festival for me, unlike last years Bonnaroo or this year's Coachella. So the list will remain in the order that I saw the sets. BUT, since I am nothing if not a Ranker, here's the highlights, ranked and mostly surprising to me: 1 - Lucero 2 - Stevie Wonder 3 - ISIS 4 - Dave Matthews Band! 5 - Ween 6 - Medeski, Martin & Wood!! 7 - Jeff Beck To see my reviews of prior Bonnaroos and other music festivals like Bonnaroo go here: http://www.ranker.com/profile-of/clark-benson

Top 500 Rock Bands isn't 100% accurate as this includes solo artists, and though it does not include jazz or blues it does include soul, R&B, Americana, reggae, and classic country (yes, that is somewhat arbitrary, but for whatever reason i listen to blues and jazz differently than the rest, and would be too hard to compare Miles or Ornette or Hooker to, say, Aerosmith). Criteria for my greatest bands of all time list is a combination of recorded albums, live shows I've seen, live recordings I've heard, radio songs, and even overall image/album covers/general coolness or uniqueness. I guess that was a way of trying to explain that the ranking is just a gut feeling. But it's probably about 50% based on "live chops", hence the lower ranking of the Beatles, who quit playing live before the most creative parts of their career. I am very into live shows and live recordings. Obviously, this list will change over time. I'm adding commentary to items whenever i get a spare minute or something interesting comes to mind about a band, probably 10-20 entries a month.

I am a serial entrepreneur. Ranker is my 5th startup in 15 years, and I'm not looking to start anything else for awhile - Ranker is pretty ambitious, and there is a LOT more that we will be doing with this platform, I think it will keep me happily occupied for quite some time. I try to start businesses that are involved in things I am really passionate about. It makes things a lot easier when you find yourself responding to emails at 11PM on a Friday night. As you can see, I'm pretty into music - most of my prior startups were in music, and Ranker includes music (as well as much more).. Being an entrepreneur is both one of the most rewarding and most stressful things one can do - at least if you are trying to really grow businesses (it's definitely possible to have a lifestyle business where you get tons of lifestyle flexibility, don't have to work crazy hours, and make a decent living, but if you are running multiple businesses or growth companies you had better be prepared to put in the long hours). I have found the personal rewards to be much greater, and the stress much less, when I am doing something I love. When I get an idea for a business in my head, I tend to charge ahead. This is not always the smartest thing - at numerous times in my business career, particularly when i was in my 20s, I have found myself having bitten off more than I could chew. When that happens, the only way out of it is basically to work every waking hour, which I have had to do for long stretches on numerous occasions. It's easy, and human nature, to underestimate how much time it takes to build a business. At one point I had four businesses going at once, one of them halfway across the country. I would not recommend this to anyone, it's hard to focus when you have that much going on. Ranker is 98% of my focus at this point, and I've learned the lessons of dilution. I have a thing about finishing anything I start, so no more startups on the horizon (though I have lots of ideas that I'd be happy to give to someone else who is prepared to run with them).. But charging ahead has paid off in the long haul, to be sure. It's my nature, and it's hard to change one's nature. I also have always put my own money into my businesses - started doing this when I didn't know any better, and I guess I have still never really learned, ha. This can sometimes be painful. But then again I'd rather bet on myself than something I have less control over. So far it has all worked out in the end. Yes, I rated them all "10s". Yes, I'm ridiculously biased. Would you rate your children any lower?

"Exile" is one of those rare records where every year or two a different song on it will become a special talisman to be played when I really need a fix of something deep. This list explains why this 18-song masterpiece deserves every bit of praise it gets.

Overall, an excellent Cochella, though the huge crowds definitely added a bit more strain to the experience. Adding Coachella videos to the reviews as soon as they arrive on YouTube - great to see so many fast uploads. List is ranked by how much I liked the set. Theme of Day 1 of the 2010 Coachella Music Festival: Jams, Coachella style. TCV, LCD, and PiL all played extended, angular, jammy sets. Due to travel and parking hassles I did not get to see as many bands as hoped on Friday. Day 2 and Day 3 were all about equally solid (the jams continued, especially on Day 3 with Yorke). Sly Stone - we were ready at the tent for the 7PM Sunday start, but then an announcer came to the mic and said "Sly would be playing a bit later in the evening". After the Thom Yorke set the video screen flashed that Sly would be going on the Mojave at 10:45, and we debated staying. I'm very glad we bailed: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-04-19/concerts-music-clubs/coachella-festival-day-three-sly-stone-charlotte-gainsbourg I am a happily married man, and perhaps my perspective is off due to the fact that I don't get out much anymore, but it seems to me that the VIP area at coachella, as well as poolside at the nicer resorts this weekend, is host to an incredibly high percentage of some of the most stunning women on the planet. Every year ( I've never missed a coachella) this percentage creeps higher up. Given the quality and credibility of the music here, I take this fact as a very positive sign about society in general. I don't personally have much of a celeb-spotting radar, but my lovely wife and her friend Alison do: Coachella Celebrity Sightings day 1: Drea De Matteo (w/ kid and nanny) Kelly Osbourne Penn Badgley (apparently a(Gossip Girl) Braydon Svansky. Pro skateboarder for Baker Skateboards Mischa Barton Various 90201 and Hills people Melanie Griffith (this one seemed odd to me, but what do I know)

The rock album theme of the "00s"? Consistency. There were unquestionably less amazing records this decade than any other decade in rock. I probably listened to 3000 or so discs that came out in the "oughts" and gave just 3 "perfect" scores. But that doesn't mean everything sucked. Good, even great, albums came out in droves. By the same artists. Year after year. Maybe it's just the way I listen to music (I'm pretty loyal to artists I like) but it was fascinating going through this exercise and seeing the consistency - for example, finding that all of the last 3 Mars Volta records were clustered together, along with the last 3 or 4 MMJ albums, TV On The Radio, Doves, Kings of Leon etc. It's pretty much the case down the line, from the few credible superstar bands like Green Day, U2, Radiohead, to the old warhorses like Dylan and Springsteen on down to the many excellent bands that never get airplay in these fractured times. And those bands are really the heart of the great rock of the decade - the mid-level Bonnaroo/Coachella/Lollapalooza draws. Highly credible bands that play theatres and put out a bunch of records that aren't quite "10s". Soon, when I have more time to actually play with my own website, I'll be ranking my whole record collection. With far fewer "10s" in this decade, will I find that the overall number of great records (9+ ratings) are also lower this decade than in the 70's, 90s, 60's and even 80's? I can't wait to find out. I'm pretty damn sure the 70's and the 90's will blow this decade away, but not sure if the breadth of great albums was quite as consistent in the 80's or the 60's (I don't count jazz on this list - hard to compare apples to apples - so the 60's are hampered in my book by getting a pretty late start). It's also fun to revisit records that - great as they may be - just don't seem a part of this last decade at all. Fatboy Slim? The last studio record from Rage Against The Machine? It also underscores how 2000-2001 frankly just had some more interesting stuff going on. Strange that 2001 feels like sooo long ago. A very fun exercise, this. Wish I had time to write little blurbs about each record, but at the time of posting I just have too much going on. Blurbs/reviews will be trickling in. The rankings took a lot of time, even with the ultimate listmaking tool at my disposal. To clarify for you readers who have gotten this far- I listened to (and am pretty likely to own) the entire decade's output by all but about 2% of the bands on this list, so (if you care) you can safely assume that, for example, having Motorhead's "Inferno" on this list does not mean I'm just I am just some dude who scored the odd Motorheaad album, but rather that Inferno was a surprisingly high-quality album by a band that hadn't put out anything consistently memorable in a long time. And so on. I was originally planning a 200 or 250 item list, but some quality records would have gotten cut. So it's 300 - but in fairness, quality does start to drop around #275 or so. Criteria: Live albums and compilations of all sorts excluded. Had I included live albums, certainly Wilco, Warren Haynes, and many "official bootlegs" would have made the list. Other thoughts - Pearl Jam barely on the list, tho an absolute fave live band. Ditto for Phil and Friends, and Gov't Mule as well. Live versions are just better for these guys. When you make a list, you gotta have some rules (tho, when I do my 70's albums list, I don't see how I'll be able to exclude live albums - we humans are maddeningly inconsistent creatures). And when I find myself deep in the weeds of trying to slice whether, say, the Starsailor debut beats Gillian Welch's "Time", I ask "if i had to live without ever hearing one of these which would it be?" Not entirely fair, as one can burn out on a once-loved album so of course I try to take that into consideration as well. Such is how it goes, when Ranking

My top albums of 2009, albiet posted on the late side - wanted to give them a little more time to breathe. I almost never listen to a record more than once a week, so it takes time to form a new opinion, and as usual a lot of good stuff came out at the end of the year. A below-average year for albums (and ditto for live shows). Only a handful of great ones. Overall verdict? "Meh+". But there is still good music, oh yes. A lot of my perrenials in my top 10 - the two big surprises were the YYY's (definitely the record that will most remind me of 2009), and of course Animal Collective, to some degree. The Animal Collective record wasn't at all a surprise in the sense that I had been DYING to hear these songs ever since they played a set of mostly that material at Coachella 2008, but it's certainly the first studio record of theirs that I've rated very highly. And the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were just one of those rare bands that I didn't want to like at all and over time have acquired Maximum Respect for. I might add more to these notes when I have time - sadly I am too busy to even use my site to make lists right now.

The best Dio albums, spanning his full career. For about a 10 year period from the mid-70s into the mid-80s, Dio fronted prime years of 3 of the greatest metal bands to ever walk the earth. Ronnie Dio recorded quite a few records in a long career, but these are the only 10 you need to hear unless you are a die-hard, although there are moments on Black Sabbath's "Dehumanizer", "Live Evil", and the 3rd Dio album worth hearing. Call it a Dio primer or a Dio record buying guide. RIP RJD - you were one of a kind as a vocalist. And you gave us the "horns". Metal wouldn't be what it is today without you. Also just a note, if you want to see more stats about these albums just click "change display" button. Neat, huh? -for anyone interested, Sabs are #7, Rainbow #45, Dio #192 on my alltime list http://www.ranker.com/list/top-500-musical-groups-and-artists-of-alltime/clark-benson

Dan Tana's history is not just in the walls but on the menu. Dan Tana's restaurant, in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard, is an "Old Hollywood" institution. A number of old-school celebs or prominent entertainment industry execs have dishes named after them. I don't know the exact details behind what it takes to get a dish named after you there, and certainly a lot of the dudes on this list aren't household names, (and Rick Hilton ain't no "Connie" Hilton), but God Bless Old Hollywood regardless. Dan Tana's is definitely one of my favorite places to eat; I'm personally partial to the Veal Scallopine Karl Malden (RIP) and the Veal Scallopine Florentine James Woods (please don't hate me animal lovers I swear it's a once in a year pleasure and i don't own furs).

2008 Bonnaroo Review (sorta - mostly just rankings). 2008 was one of the alltime best Bonnaroos - huge headliner firepower, 2 days of Phil, and much more. Ranked in order of awesomeness.

These are columnists whose editorial opinions I find most interesting, whether or not I always agree.

Requirement: they must publish regularly, ideally once a week or more. This list is only loosely ranked; I find that people writing regular columns tend to be somewhat inconsistent for stretches at a time. Perhaps it is because they become more distracted when working on a book or doing heavy TV appearances or all the other distractions of being a "personal brand".

Chicago bands and Illinois bands in general. As a native Chicagoan who went to school in Champaign, i feel entitled to weigh in on this matter. That said, i'm probably missing the boat on some less prominent Chicago bands of the late nineties and "oughts".

One side note to this list - for the most part, i have a thing where i can tell by a band name if i WON"T like a band, it's about 95% accurate for bands that have albums out, and probably even more for all bands. the two times in my life where i have been most wrong about band names happened when i was still living in Illinois back in 1991. I saw a band whose name i hated but who had some local buzz at the Lounge Ax - they were called the Vulgar Boatmen. As predicted, they totally weren't for me. So, having broken my rule and gone out to see a band with a horrible name, i decided i wasn't going to get burned twice. The next two young bands i blew off, for "lame band name reasons" were called Uncle Tupelo and the Smashing Pumpkins.

doh!

Yeah, not exactly packed with surprises for the tastes of a 42 year old US male. I love a good film as much as anyone, but am by no means a cinefile. I'm sure I'm missing a few movies on here that i loved but only have seen once - for example Shawshank Redemption, Life Is Beautiful, even Forrest Gump really moved me the one time I saw them (along with some 70s classics), but because my memories of them are a little foggy I don't know quite where I'd Rank them. I'll spend some more time going thru AFI picks, Oscar winners, etc lists - and of course the Ranker Community List of this topic - and update/expand this list over time.

Updated 8.29.10 - Mad Men climbs (I am only halfway thru the current season). Big Love drops majorly after a terrible, terrible season. Love Glee but hate American Idol-like autotune musical covers. Heroes last season was so bad I question whether they should stay even in the lower rings of this list. Had to move Survivor up a bit as well after a number of great seasons in a row after all these years. Updated 2.10.10 - movement on the chart - Mad Men Season 3 sold me hook line and sinker. . . and Big Love this season has been a bit too over the top, hopefully it will reign itself back in... and this list has now basically become "Best TV shows of the Decade". In my 20s i watched very little TV, and it's hard to compare old shows/shows i watched as a youth (when you are a bored kid, Charles Nelson Reilly on Match Game qualifies as entertainment) to current fare, so this isn't really an "alltime" list - but it's pretty close. i fear that the golden age of TV may have been approx 2000 - 2007 or so (mainly because HBO was on an unsustainable streak), but hopefully will be proven wrong. I did love a few shows in the 80s (St Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, M*A*S*H) and early 90s (LA Law and Seinfeld), but honestly that is probably about it. I also find i have a hard time watching any show with a laugh track nowadays, which probably unfairly biases me towards the last 10 years of TV. The reason the ratings are all clustered so high is because i am not listing the many shows i tried watching a few shows of and bailed on. So this list is basically every TV series I have watched at least a full season of since i got DirecTV, except perhaps for a few that i watched a season or so of and got cancelled to a level where I forgot. I would also like to point out that a list like this brings up some general Ranking questions - for example, is it fair to combine cable shows (less episodes needed, more leeway with the sensors) with network shows. Should a show like The Simpsons - which I think very few longtime fans would disagree ain't what it used to be, but certainly doesn't suck - get punished because, well, they have done over 400 episodes, and they are bound to run out of ideas. Food for thought, eh?

Not my fave lineup overall, though the Rage Against the Machine reunion was the all-powerful draw for me at the time. Lotsa bands on this list that I am not a fan of and only saw becuz I was with people who wanted to see them, or there was nothing else to watch. Ranked by how much I dug em.

My first "weekend festival" Grant Park Lollapalooza (I attended most of the touring festival ones in the 90s) - a very solid show and one that has kept me coming back to Lolla. Great weather and the perfect location in Chicago, my hometown. Met some cool people and had a great weekend. Ranked by how much I enjoyed the set.

Reviewing Phish Festival 8; a live review of the Phish festival. Liveblog is ranked by Set Quality. Full coverage and wrapup of Phish Acoustic Set.

for additional coverage: Jambase http://www.jambase.com/articles/story.aspx?storyID=20251

NOTE: these are the rankings as they stood at the end of this particular year (typically produced in January, because it's important to give Q4 records a chance to breathe and i am not one to listen to a record over and over again right when i get it (i hate to burn our on an album). Eventually, when i get around to Rating everything, i will generate a "current" list of records from this year, inevitably different.

There’s a theme here. Only a handful of musicians under 30, and probably half 40+. Makes me feel young. 41 is the new 33 1/3. ANYhow, overall a lot of good, even great albums, tho perhaps no absolute killers.

And before we begin i must note that I don’t think I’ve counted EPs before, but if they did Ben Nichols “The Last Pale Light In The West” (“Concept EP” based on a Cormac McCarthy book, internet-only in 08)
would be Top Ten and One Day As A Lion (Zach De La Rocha and the always phenomenal ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore) would be Top 20, and one of the Jesu EPs as well (not sure if that was 08 or late 07)

“Liveblog” of Bonnaroo 2009. Bonnaroo 09 Reviews, some Setlists, etc. Listed in order of preference, not schedule order. Continually updated.

5PM Sat update: In the middle of a no-win situation; that would be the combo of Mule>Wilco>Volta (3 of my alltime fave live bands, followed by another, The Boss). It will be impossible to see all of Mule or Wilco due to overlap. I will have to split the baby.

12:30 AM sat update - i did my best. i have seen a lot of amazing rock. it is entirely possible that this day, Sat June 13, 2009, will prove to be my best-ever single day of Rock (one must count sets that start in the early AM as part of the prior day, to be fair). The key variables will be a) my stamina. b) Nine Inch Nails, who are going on at 1am, and who were one of if not the absolute best sets of music i saw last year.

2AM Sat/Sun AM stop the presses:
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails announces this is their last show ever in US at Bonnaroo

7:40PM Sun - it's current up to this point. Phish closing headline performance is the last thing on agenda. I need coffee.

10:10 PM Sun.
Coffee in bloodstream and halfway thru Phish there is BIG news: Bruce Springsteen is on stage performing with Phish. 3 songs so far. see details below.

As good as any year- maybe the best ever. was like a Bonnaroo as far as me cramming tons of different sets into 3 days. Definitely the most music I've seen at a Coachella to date, and I've been to all. Perhaps the best thing of all was that for my tastes there were very few schedule conflicts. It's going to be tough for any other festivals to beat Coachella 09. glad to see Goldenvoice continue to open up the lineup to older artists with cred. All my top 8-10 sets were about equal as far as my loving them went - tough to pick winners but a man's gotta Rank.

NOTE: list is "as is" at the end of 2002; my opinions have definitely changed a bit since then and I will update a revised version of this at some point. There were a TON of damn good records this year, but I didn’t find any that completely blew me away – no OK Computer or Is This It? or Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space or Mule Variations or Time Out Of Mind or If You’re Feeling Sinister or What’s the Story Morning Glory level releases. Maybe it’s just that a lot of good records came out late in the year and I need to give them more spins. It was the hardest year I could think of to come up with an order for this list, just about all of the Top 10 could be interchangeable, and so could 15-25 (and for that matter there were 10 other records that could almost as easily have made the Top 25.) The overall theme might be consistency – a lot of bands I like put out records this year, and very few of them sucked (I would have to say the biggest disappointments were Badly Drawn Boy, especially the bloated record about the fish but also the soundtrack he did, and Peter Gabriel – maybe not total shite but surprisingly tuneless for a 10 year wait). It was great to see Sonic Youth put out a record as good as anything they’ve done, Pearl Jam’s record has a couple of truly classic songs and the rest is pretty solid, bands like Low really jacked their songwriting to another level, David Gray’s followup to his huge hit is an even better record, Foo Fighters stone cold rocked it, Sleater-Kinney’s best batch of songs yet, etc. Spotty records from faves like Oasis (though “Stop Crying Your Heart Out” is definitely one of the best songs I heard all year), Chris Robinson, Phish, Bowie, Gov’t Mule, Chemical Bros, Guided By Voices – all with some total clunkers, but all also had at least one or two great songs on them. Oh and the Mars Volta put out a great EP and are odds-on favorites for my fave album of 2003 judging from what I’ve heard in advance.

I suppose you could call this a CougList. But it's not just all Cougs, it's women that have not just kept it up but improved- at least for awhile. Impressive.

And it's not all MILFs either. The definition here is that she has to have gotten noticably hotter at some point over time. Whether she is a mom, or whether she has "peaked" looks wise at this current moment is irrelevant to this particular list.

It's important to clarify these things when Ranking.

My original 2003 list was a top 25 which i have pasted below - I decided in this case to rank the full list as I currently (late 2009) feel. Most of the mini-reviews or notes about the records are from the original list. In retrospect, a solid year of music where most of my faves of the decade really proved themselves (MMJ, DBT, Lucero, KOL, Volta, Twilight Singers, etc) The Year-End List as it stood at the end of 2003: 1 The Strokes “Room On Fire” 2 White Stripes “Elephant” 3 Radiohead 4 The Mars Volta “De-Loused in the Comatorium” 5 Killing Joke “Killing Joke” 6 Drive-By Truckers “Decoration Day” 7 Neil Young and Crazy Horse “Greendale” 8 My Morning Jacket “It Still Moves” 9 Libertines “Up The Bracket” 10 Ben Harper “Diamonds on the Inside” 11 Black Keys “Thickfreakness” 12 Spiritualized “Amazing Grace” 13 Allman Bros “Hittin the Note” 14 The Darkness “Permission to Land” 15 Cody Chestnutt “The Headphone Masterpiece” 16 Lucinda Williams “World Without Tears” 17 Grandaddy “Sumday” 18 Ministry 19 Entombed “Inferno” 20 Jane's Addiction “Strays” 21 Lucero “That Much Further West” 22 Superjoint Ritual 23 Zwan “Mary Star of the Sea” 24 Joe Strummer “Streetcore” 25 Party Of Helicopters

NOTE: this is my list "as it stood" at the end of the year - time has updated my opinions since then and I will probably at some point publish a "revised" list (in retrospect, there are like 12-15 killer records that came out this year, and that is why you'll see ratings that appear out of order. Here's my intro, such as it was, in January 2001: 2000. Well, in looking back on this year the main thing that came to mind as far as music goes is, thank god it at least wasn't quite as grim as the year before. Hopefully 1999 was the "bottoming out" year as far as shitty albums. Not that 2000 was a great or even good year by any means. . Decent amount of damn good records this year, but very few truly timeless/amazing ones - in fact, out of this whole list probably only Grandaddy would I put in the "all time classics" category. Still, there were at least 15 more really strong records. Also, a lot of great records came out right at the end of the year (badly drawn boy, coldplay, rage, twilight singers, u2, pj harvey, etc) and i'm sure i'll feel differently about them with further listens. so here's my Top 25 of 2000, at least as it stands at years-end:

This is my list (and my notes) from the time - in retrospect I would certainly disagree with at least some of my summary about the year (not a lot of quality releases, BUT at least 6 or 7 EXCELLENT ones) as well as some Rankings, but the "revised look back at 1999" list will come later:

In general, 1999 was a pretty grim year for albums; probably the worst year since some dim period in the 80s . . . That said, there are still always some good records out there, though certainly a shortage of outstanding ones.

Probably the worst trend, of course, is that the big hit rock records that are actually artistically good are few and far between - in my book a couple of radio songs really help make a big rock record a classic. Unfortuantely this doesn't happen when A) the big great bands are breaking up or dormant, and B) the rock radio airwaves are dominated by Creed, Limp Bizkit, Lit, Oleander, Staind, and other such mediocrity. Oh well. There were a few pleasant surprises (whod'a thought the Chili Peppers actually had it in them, Ben Harper put out the best record of his career, and I was quite impressed with the Pavement record, having never really been much of a fan). But all in all, it was gruesome out there.

On the bright side, I saw many of the best live performances of my life in 1999, and so will have to mention those below so as we don't write the year off as a total loss. In fact, pound for pound I saw more amazing live music than ever - aided by lots of multiple-band and festival bills.

Note: this is the list as-is at the end of 2004, I will eventually probably update the list as time can change opinions. Pretty good year for the Rock, only a handful of amazing records, but dozens of damn good ones. Also great to see a bunch of bands that have been around for awhile (Wilco, DBT’s, Slipknot, Lanegan, Crystal Method) putting their best work out this year.

My list as it stood at the end of 2005. Differences in the ratings vs list position reflect changing opinions over time. 1.06 - "an average-to-weak year – many releases by artists I like; lots of good, even great records, but very very few excellent ones. Everything under about #12 on my list was pretty interchangeable rankings-wise"

2001 Y/E list - at the time (you will notice some discrepancies btw the rating and the order here. the rating reflects my feelings about the album today. The rankings are my thoughts at the end of 2001).

NOTES: these were my rankings at the end of 2006; opinions have changed a bit since then and I will do an updated version of this list at some point (I've already cheated a bit because my original list only ranked the top 40; the rest were all "bubbling under"). My change in opinions would be the reason a higher-rated album may show below another. I’ve been saying all year it was a lame year for albums, but in retrospect it was a good one, especially when you think of it in terms of sheer tonnage. Nothing absolutely blew me away, but a truckload, or at least a humvee-load, of decent-to-pretty-great records came out this year. Trends: Most of my fave new bands of last 5 years or so put out good-to-great records that were nonetheless slight disappointments compared to the masterpieces they released just prior – Drive-By Truckers, Mastadon, ISIS, Volta, Strokes Another great year for metal. The youth of America have woken up and realized that Nu- and Rap-metal have the substance of are thankfully in retreat. All hail the old school (maiden, celtic frost) and the really creative younger extreme metal world (ISIS, Satyricon, Cult of Luna, Agalloch, Giant Squid, Mastadon) At different times, any of the top 7 on the list could be the #1, just as the 5 or 6 after those are pretty interchangeable, the 6 or 7 after that, and so on.