Jimmy E's Music List Mania

Intro A much more haphazard affair this year, I think, dearest friends, which I would suppose is in keeping with one of the themes of what has been a decidedly odd 2016 (as opposed to all the other 2016s we’ve had where no-one died and everyone was excellent to each other). Plenty of decent music though, thank goodness. I count at least 94 records purchased/acquired plus a few others checked out on streaming services like a normal 21 st century person - I admit I’m starting to feel like maybe CDs aren’t all there is to life (you heard it here first). If my mother is reading this she’ll be breathing a sigh of relief for her attic space. An overly long list of a very vague and poorly executed theme I want to say that if you’re into music that doesn’t necessarily need a traditional vocal melody (I mean, what a cliché eh? Oh, and note I didn’t say instrumental music) you’ll have been in a happy aural place this year. But then I’m generally fairly dismissive of normal ...

I printed my 2014 “best of” blog for my less computer literate relatives to read. It was 6 pages. 6 pages people! I strongly suspect that many people in my life, old and new, wish I was a little less verbose, at least sometimes. So I’m going to go all Ernest Hemingway and see if I can keep this one short. Don’t say I never give y’all anything.   The special characteristic of 2015 (every year seems to have one, mostly because we do love to force labels onto arbitrary calendar year divisions) appears to be a lot of music hanging around the “very good” mark. By this I mean very thin tails on the bell curve – not a huge amount of rubbish (thank goodness, given I acquired some 88 records released in 2015) but not a large number of truly exceptional records either. (Hmm a bit of long sentence that, plus the bit in parenthesis – sorry Ernest I’ve buggered it up already.) Nevertheless I have cobbled together something resembling a top ten. Neither the narrowing down nor the rankin...