Saturday, December 31, 2011

Adios 2011, may we never see your likes again...

Playlist
Various – Top 100 Albums 2011
King Crimson – The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson
Various – Milano Jukeboxes 1998-2010
John Renbourn – Another Monday
John Renbourn – Sir John A Lot
Graham Bond – Solid Bond
The Killers – Hot Fuss

Last day of the year and, frankly, it's not been a good one...

Almost every well wisher who has mailed or texted or visited today and over the last few days has said, "surely 2012 can't be as bad for you as 2011"...

This is a sentiment that I cannot but agree with...

But it has to be onwards and upwards now...

Up super-early - still not sleeping correctly...

With my now having seven of the 40th Anniversary King Crimson remasters, I decided to recreate the classic 1975 compilation "The Young Person's Guide to King Crimson" - which I bought as a Christmas present to myself back in 1978...



This is how I waste my time...

Initially, I was going to try and recreate all the edits involved but then I decided to include all full tracks and also to add a third disc featuring 1969-1974 tunes chosen by Robert Fripp to appear on subsequent compilations...

Done, listened to - excellent...

Fine tuned the Top 100 after more listening yesterday...

A good sign that around half the CDs I acquired made it to the long-list stage - but my final selections are perhaps a little predictable given my long-standing musical tastes...

A few mentions though of people kind of "discovered" in 2011 but who didn't quite make the final cut...

Alonso Arreola Project
Charts & Maps
The Douglas Firs
Dutch Uncles
Empty Yard Experiment
Lady Antebellum
Memories of Machines
Morrow's Memory
No Sound
Pagan's Mind
Quaoar
Sky Architect
Symphony X
Von Hertzen Brothers
White Denim
Everything Everything
Ke$ha
Broken Records
Amy Millan
Broken Social Scene
Glen Hansard
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Laura Nyro
The Yardbirds

...and composers too...

Metcalfe
Viotti
Ives
De LaLande
Kraus

Spent some time transferring Annie's 21 Milano Jukebox CDs I've compiled for her since 1998 to MP3 files on the hard drive - painstakingly typing in all the artists and titles...

This to burn to a couple of discs to help soundtrack this evening's eating, drinking and carousing with chums Lynn and Ross...

Watched "Sherlock Holmes" in the afternoon with Annie - top film and kudos to the much maligned Guy Ritchie for his direction - of course Downey and Law make a great double act...

Very entertaining...

In the evening, we saw out 2011 with the aforementioned Lynn and Ross - with two very tasty curries from the Exec Producer and lashings of lager from around the world, red wine and, for our guests, whisky too...

Games were played, laughs were had, Meg the Black Cat stayed up well beyond her bedtime and 2012 was ushered in...



The year was 4 hours old by the time we called it a night...

Bidding our guests farewell, it was off to bed, somewhat the worse for wear...

On into 2012 we go - hopefully it will be better than the disaster movie of the same name...

Highlight of the day :  Putting 2011 behind us...

No comments: