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| From | "Stewart Mason" <craigtorso@verizon.net> |
| Subject | Re: How can (X) possibly not be on their list? |
| Date | Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:07:06 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Smith" <sam@lullabypit.com>
> I'm wondering if this is how it is with the rest of you. Let me ask
> a for
> instance question. Take a disc like Don Dixon's THE ENTIRE
> COMBUSTIBLE
> WORLD IN ONE SMALL ROOM or last year's Jeffrey Dean Foster disc. The
> Dixon is on my 2006 list and I have seen it on one or two others,
> and I
> may have been the only one here to lodge a vote for Foster last
> year.
> Now, I'm wondering how anybody could hear these records without
> respecting them enough to put them on their lists (just like a lot
> of you
> would look at my list and wonder why certain things were omitted).
> My
> guess is that very few people heard them, though. So their absence
> is a
> reflection of "not hearing" rather than "not liking."
>
> But I may be wrong. Not that we have to be talking about this disc,
> even,
> but I wonder if people here are leaving a lot that they hear off
> their
> lists, or if they're doing a lot of evaluation prior to acquisition
> so
> that most of what they buy IS here.
>
> And as a side note, did anybody listen to the Dixon (or Foster) and
> decide that they weren't worthy?
I never heard the Foster, but I thought the Dixon disc was in the
"good, not great" category. Personally, I find Ray Mason (no
relation) does the rootsy-soully thing more to my liking.
Speaking just for myself, I think a big part of the issue is that 2006
was a REALLY good year, musically speaking, with a lot of great albums
in a wide variety of styles. But there's still only the same number
of slots in a Top 20 list, and so unlike some years where I'm having
to scramble a bit to fill the lower reaches, my big problem this year
was choosing what to leave off. And that doesn't even include the
stuff that I deliberately held off on until the US release, like the
Lily Allen and Sloan discs.
The thing is, I gave up on the idea that I was going to hear
everything I wanted to hear in any given year at some point in the
early '90s. There's just too much out there for any one person to
absorb, even someone like me. Between eMusic, Yourmusic, and Lala,
not to mention the Tower liquidation sale, I was rather inundated with
new CDs this year (to puncture one of the more pernicious myths about
my chosen profession, I get *maybe* two or three dozen promo CDs a
year, tops), and that doesn't include the stuff I hear on XM, local
college radio, WFMU and everywhere else I hear music in the course of
a day. I just figure that if I don't hear a particular masterpiece
when it comes out, then that just means I'll discover it somewhere
down the line...or not.
S
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