One of the reasons that I started Musiclogging is because music’s really important to me, and logging the music as I listen to it forces me to have some discipline about it. I’m seeking even more such discipline in the new year, but we’ll see how that goes. [In other words, there's probably not going to be a resolution on that. ;)]

In an expansion on last year’s best music, I’m going to break down things into two categories, and then do a final ranking at the end: the best new albums [that is, those I've purchased that were released in 2006] and the best old albums [stuff that's new to me but was released before 2006]. I hope to continue this tradition in the future; tomorrow, I’ll tackle the bootleg best-ofs in a similar manner, as putting this entry together tonight has literally taken me hours.

In case you’re curious how I powered the writing of this entry, here’s how: iTunes Smart Playlists. I’ll describe the conditions of the playlist in each section. From there, it was a simple visual analysis, once each playlist was sorted by My Rating in descending order.

The iTunes Smart Playlist used to pick my best new albums of 2006 is set up like so:

• Date Added is in the range 01-Jan-2006 to 31-Dec-2006
• Genre does not contain Bootleg
• Podcast is false
• Year is 2006

Using that basis, the best new albums of 2006, in my opinion, are:

Honorable Mention: I’m giving an honorable mention here to Andrew Osenga’s Photographs, which he remastered and re-issued this year. The re-issue sparkles, to be sure, but this isn’t truly a new album. Also, it kept the next album off the list.

5. Bruce Springsteen’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions is great introduction for mainstream listeners into the wonderful world of Americana. Undoubtedly, many of The Boss’s avid fans are themselves fans of Americana, for listening to wonderful albums like Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad will leave one wanting more of that.

I think that the story of WSO is fairly well-known, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that this is one toe-tapping, rollickin’ little album. It’s probably the only album that my roommate and I both listen to and love. The three best tracks on the album for me are:

• “O Mary Don’t You Weep”
• “Erie Canal”
• “My Oklahoma Home”

4. Eric Peters’s Scarce is an inspiring, hopeful album. Pappy makes me want to be a more hopeful person, and I have truly enjoyed getting to know him better this year. He’s a modest, almost-insecure guy, so when I told him that Scarce was going to be on this list this year, I think he was really surprised and touched.

The highlights from this album are as follows:

• “Save Something for Grace”: The chorus sells this one for me: “Save something for grace / as she’s raising the sky / save something for faith / that there’s hope still in her eyes / save something for grace”.
• “Squeeze” is a great admission of Eric’s anxious nature. Since he admits to it, I’ll definitely confirm it, and I’m sure that Ronzilla would as well. In fact, Eric’s expressed self-doubt simply frustrates me, because I really don’t think it’s got any merit to it. But if it keeps him making great music, well, okay.
• “You Can Be Yourself“: It’s absolutely, positively the chorus that makes this song: “If love is a fool’s maze / I wanna get lost / if love is a new day / I wanna wake up / You can see, you can see what it’s done to me / You can be yourself”. The power of love to liberate is such a powerful thing, and Eric carves a powerful metaphor here, backing that with a great melody. The second verse is also so great, and a place I want to be someday: “I thought love was a weapon / to conquer and wield / But love turned out humble / and it still conquers me”. I think that it’s this track that sells the album; as a result, I’ve put the iTunes Store link on the track title.

3. Andrew Osenga’s The Morning is the album that we all knew Andrew had in him. Osenga’s previous band, The Normals, was a great rock band that never found an audience big enough to satisfy a record label. As such, Forefront killed the commercial enterprise; they didn’t, however, kill Osenga’s career or his flat-out ability to rock.

Andrew’s previous two releases, Photographs and the Souvenirs & Postcards EP, were quiet, contemplative, introspective albums. Given that Osenga’s day job has had him playing in, writing for, and occasionally fronting Caedmon’s Call, some listeners feared that Andrew might never really let fly with a great rock song again. This is probably doubly true if you consider “Bombay Rain” off of Share the Well, which shows a great pop sensibility.

But rock Osenga did. I remember talking to him about this record some time back, and he promised me that he’d bring the heat again. Here’s where it came:

• “White Dove”: Following the rocking “After the Garden”, which merely served as a signal that, yes, this was going to be a rock album, “White Dove” slows it down a notch in the first verse, with Will Sayles’s and Paul Eckberg’s drum kitting held quiet until the chorus. But then as the song concludes, Andrew lets rip: “and all of this / and all of us / are an arrow / pointed at the heart of God / shot through and pierced his side / blood and water / bread and wine”. Heard live, it truly sizzles. Every sad thing really will become untrue.
• “Trying to Get This Right”: Coming as the album has passed from morning into evening, this is a deeper, darker song. It’s slow and mournful at the start, and then Andrew wails away in the chorus: “cause I love you, baby / and I don’t want to fight / you love me, baby / I know that we’re both / trying to get this right”. This is another track best heard live. [Admittedly, I'm greatly influenced by the release show for The Morning, which I attended and bootlegged. ;)] I think the thing that I love most about this track is that Andy gets his wife, Alison, to do the bgv’s on the subsequent runs through the chorus. No one else would fit, would they?
• “Santa Barbara”: Here’s the unabashed rocker of the album. This is another of Osenga’s fictional forays; he often notes that about half of his songs have basis in his life, and the other half are totally fictional and just serve a greater musical purpose for him. The energy builds throughout the song, slowing only during the bridge, which is followed by the triumphal, ultimate verse: “but tonight the moon is preaching his revival, / and I’m breaking like the tide to make a change, / so I’m going to the ocean, / I’m swimming past the pier, / praying, Lord, to wash my sins away”. I think that I was most excited to hear this one live, and … well, Andy didn’t disappoint.

Andrew, I’m really proud of you for making this album. We’ve been friends now for three years [!], and this is the album I’ve wanted you to make ever since you sold me the old Normals discs. [Thank you, Stephen Cavness.] I like your folky stuff, brother, but … you also rock, dude. And remember … nothing rhymes with orange.

2. Over the Rhine’s Snow Angels is so much more than a Christmas album, but it’s a very good representative of that genre, too. I’m reminded of my trip to KSC back in August 2005, where the guys in the Sew Shop play a Bing Crosby Christmas album at least some part of every single day. This album has, I believe, the potential to be similarly timeless and listenable any time of year.

The key tracks for me are:

• “Snowed in With You”: It sure feels like a song Karin wrote for Linford [the liner notes don't make this clear], imploring him to stay home and spend time with her. It’s certainly got its fair amount of sexual tension to it: “I wanna get snowed in with you / I’m gonna make every effort to be so good to you / that when the snow melts away / you’ll want to stay / snowed in with me”. Sounds like something Alex’s wife would have written for him in the last couple of weeks.
• “North Pole Man”: Well, if the last track had sexual tension to it, this one has a brazen, instinctual quality to it. I’ll just list the last lines, because the rest is so risqué: “It takes perspiration / to melt the snow”. Karin’s delivery is really what sells it, too. Phew. As Jeff says, “I need a cigarette after that.”
• “Snow Angel“: The title track is just so … achingly beautiful. It’s a ballad of love and war, set in a Civil War timeframe given the Detquists’ purchase of Nowhere Farm and its antebellum farm house—the oldest residential structure left standing in the area, actually. Words simply don’t do this song justice; check it out on iTunes with the URL at the beginning of this bullet.

This album really leaves me ready for The Trumpet Child, due out next year.

1. Matthew Perryman Jones’s Throwing Punches in the Dark is probably the album I most identified with this year. When I do a new theme for this site—one I’d hope to have done by 2007, but simply won’t—it’ll be subtitled “The Loneliness of Ambition”. I don’t know Jones as well as I’d like, but I’ve just made that a goal for 2007—and this is album is a reason why. Anyone who makes an album like this is someone I need to know. I think we’d find that we share a lot of traits.

The best three tracks all come right in a row on the second-half of the disc. I spent weeks starting this disc on the sixth track in my car:

• “Refuge”: I’m a sucker for a singable chorus. Refuge’s chorus is singable and plaintive: “(Take me to) A place where love can mend these wounds / where mystery can dance with truth / and the broken soul finds refuge”. That line, “where mystery can dance with truth”, is what drew me into the album on the first listen on his MySpace page. [Yes, yes; Jones doesn't have a real site right now, and "Refuge" is the song that auto-loaded in 2006 when the page was finished.]
• “One Thing More”: The aforementioned line about “the loneliness of ambition” comes from this track: “What’s in the mirror / are the tired eyes looking for something new / Is it any clearer? / Does the loneliness of ambition bother you?”. 2006 has been such a professionally successful year for me that this song keeps me in my place. It is the anchor in rough seas, the lighthouse keeping me off the shoals. Sadly, this isn’t on Jones’s MySpace or on iTunes. Guess you’ll have to buy the record to hear it, huh?
• “Hard Times”: This is a great cover of an old Stephen Collins Foster song, sparsely done with MPJ on acoustic and vocals, the lovely Kate York on BGV’s, and Neilson Hubbard playing the keys. It’s a quiet song that really soothes the soul after the last two heart-wrenchers.

I am definitely ready for another MPJ record!

The iTunes Smart Playlist used to pick my best new albums of 2006 is set up like so:

• Date Added is in the range 01-Jan-2006 to 31-Dec-2006
• Genre does not containg Bootleg
• Podcast is false
• Year is not 2006

With that as my basis, here are the best albums I picked up this year that were released before 2006:

5. Jill Phillips’s Writing on the Wall: I think I can be fairly accused for being a shill for the Square Pegs, given the above list, but I think that you’ll find that this part list is leavened more towards non-Pegs. But this is still a great disc from a lovely, funny, talented woman whom I am getting to know better as time goes by. Jill, you and Andy are a blessing to me in ways you’ll never know. And even when you call me and the SPA.net folks out at shows and make me blush like a crushing teenage boy, I still like you a lot.

Enough personal stuff: let’s talk about what makes this disc a must-have for me:

• “Wrecking Ball“: Many great albums have great opening tracks. Jill’s husband, Andy Gullahorn, penned a goodly chunk of this one [to the point that she wants him to play it live, rather than her doing so]. The chorus’s metaphor is strong and evocative: “So piece together these little mysteries / it isn’t hard to see the writing on the wall / triumph and tragedy, only God can be / both the builder and the wrecking ball”. Jill wrote this album just before her father died, and these songs were a comfort to her in that time. I think it’s clear to see why…
• “God Believes in You” is a cover of a Pierce Pettis tune. Jill does it great justice, even if her sweet, smooth, strong voice is nothing like Pierce’s quavering, rough-hewn tenor. Everything matters if anything matters at all.
• “Grand Design“: The final track of the album, it’s a strong finisher. I believe that Jill is in a different place than I am theologically, but even a Methodist like myself can appreciate the chorus: “I feel the pain but it still doesn’t change who You are / Nothing I feel is outside the reach of Your arms / My whole world could crumble but all of the pieces remain / In Your hands that are waiting to put them together again”.

4. Tom Brosseau’s What I Mean to Say Is Goodbye really struck me earlier this year. Brosseau’s tenor is so high and reedy that some find it androgynous or effeminate. Though now a resident of SoCal, Brosseau is North Dakota-bred, and it’s written all over this album:

• “West of Town”: A matter-of-fact, descriptive song that recalls the 1997 floods in the Great Plains and their affect on his home area and provides the setting for the album: “Green cars of the Burlington Northern / slowly going through town / will always be / my favorite sight and sound”. This is a man who has left his home but still remembers it fondly: “Sometimes I go back on my own / sometimes it’s on request / someone’s getting married / someone’s laid to rest. / Can’t do anything, can’t go anywhere / without a jacket and a hood / I even miss how cold it gets / but I never thought I would.”
• “Wear and Tear”: This is the swift, driving lament of the decay and dilapidation of his home: “too much wear and tear to care”. “Once there was livestock / and hay up in the hay loft / and big machines that worked the land / and smaller tools for simpler tasks.” It’s my favorite track on the album to sit and listen to and also the one that comes up when I picture the album cover in my mind.
• “In My Time of Dyin’”: No great Americana album is complete without a song about death, is it? This is Brosseau’s, and the opening lines say all that need be said: “In my time of dyin’ / I don’t want you to mourn / All I want for you to do / Is bring my body home / Well, well, well / So I can die easy”. I will leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to draw parallels to the recent deaths of James Brown, Gerald Ford, and Saddam Hussein. [Sidenote: as much as folks are fond of saying that "celebrities die in threes", can you come up with a stranger trio? The Godfather of Soul, the Accidental President, and the Butcher of Baghdad. What a week.]

I don’t own Brosseau’s other discs, but I’ll remedy this in February.

3. Elliott Smith’s XO really stole my heart and CD player this fall. It’s now my favorite Elliott release. I am sad that he’s no longer with us to create more beauty like this.

• “Waltz #2″: It’s just so … picturesque. “She shows no emotion at all / stares into space like a dead china doll / I’m never gonna know you now / but I’m gonna love you anyhow”. That, and it’s really catchy. Really, really catchy.
• “Oh Well, Okay”: I have a hard time explaining why I connect with this album, so I’m left to just throw lyrics at you: “if you a get a feeling the next time you see me / do me a favor and let me know / ’cause it’s hard to tell / it’s hard to say / oh well, okay”.
• “I Didn’t Understand”: What a devastating heartbreak song about a heartless femme fatale: “Thought you’d be looking for the next in line to love / then ignore put out and put away / and so you’d soon be leaving me alone like I’m supposed to be / tonight, tomorrow and everyday”. What makes the whole thing doubly effective—aside from the well-timed profanity—is the entire a capella arrangement of the song. In a time when Elliott’s fans were lamenting that the big budgets come from recognition post-Good Will Hunting, this stripped-down little gem is a reminder of all that’s good with Elliott’s music, especially his voice.

2. M. Ward’s Transistor Radio begins the “Geof Loves M. Ward” portion of the program. As I noted earlier this week, I was all set for this to be the best album I got this year until #1 came along. Why do I love it so?

• “Four Hours in Washington” is the first track that really hooked me. ["Fuel for Fire" came close.] It’s an ode to insomnia, and … well, right there with ya, brother. “It’s four in the morning and I’m turning in my bed / I wish I had a dream or a nightmare in my head / So I can stop my imagination and get some sleeping done / Now it’s five in the morning and I’m wishin’ it was one”
• “Paul’s Song”: The steel guitar, which meanders in style between Honolulu and Nashville, just makes it happen. “When I come to town / I ain’t gonna lie to you / every town is all the same”. That’s exactly what all my musician friends tell me. Linford Detweiler once described life as a musician like so: “It’s a beautiful vacation / But you wear Salvation Army clothes”. “Paul’s Song” treads that same ground in a grand new way.
• “Radio Campaign”: It’s a great little lament about lost love, coming in at a brisk 2:36 and getting right to the point: “I sent signals and signs / from the mountainside / Now I’m gonna try this old microphone line / Now I’m callin’ out your name on this radio campaign / Come back, come back / My little peace of mind”. It’s well-crafted, self-mocking, and enjoyable.

But let’s get to the champ.

1. M. Ward’s Transfiguration of Vincent has simply blown me away the last week. There’s just no other way to put it. I hesitate to make this my top album until I go back and listen to it again (and again), and then I know I’m right. Here’s why:

• “Sad, Sad Song”: I’m a sucker for songs that use the chorus as glue between disparate conversations or threads in a story. This is one of those songs, and it’s simply well-executed, especially as the ending echoes the beginning and simply … ends. It’s poetic and wonderful. “Make a sad, make a sad / Make a sad, sad song”. I have my new down-in-the-dumps song lamenting lost love. Woohoo!
• “Involuntary”: There’s just something ineffable about Matt’s delivery here. “Have you ever been alone in the nighttime? / And you’re thinking that you just don’t know / And that feeling grows / Without control / And you’re thinking about a place to go / But your body tells you, “Stay at home,” / It’s involuntary”. I totally read this through the eyes of my own depression, so I really can’t evaluate any other perspective on it.
• “Let’s Dance”: What a tender, aching love song with Ward’s rendition of David Bowie. Here, Vincent O’Brien’s transfiguration is complete: he’s out of his doldrums and has a tenuous but strengthening grasp on love: “If you say run, I’ll run with you / If you say hide, we’ll hide / Because my love for you / Would break my heart in two / If you should fall / Into my arms / And tremble like a flower”

Now it’s time to rank them 1-10. Here goes:

1. Transfiguration of Vincent
2. Transistor Radio
3. Throwing Punches in the Dark
4. XO
5. Snow Angels
6. The Morning
7. Scarce
8. What I Mean to Say Is Goodbye
9. Writing on the Wall
10. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

This has been as much fun to put together as it has been to evaluate over the year. As midnight Central draws near, I ask you, dear reader: what were the best albums you got in 2006?

Okay, I admit … I’m giving thought to becoming a Twitter user.

Yeah, I even roll my eyes at myself on that one, but I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that the thought isn’t regularly crossing my mind. [So much so that I've had a tab open to it for over a day, mulling it over.] Two pieces of knowledge are holding me back: the cost of an unlimited text-message plan on my phone, and how much data I can slurp back out onto GFMorris.net. The former is a quick move to Cingular’s Web site, and the latter is some time spent with their FAQs and Google.

Do any of you use Twitter? What do you think of it?

Kathy Sierra answered the five-things meme on her Creating Passionate Users Weblog, and in her response, developed a set of questions of her own that she wanted folks to answer. Sooooo, I will. Kathy’s questions are in strongly-marked text, and my answers follow each.

0) What’s your name and website URL? (optional, of course)

Well, my full name is Geoffrey Franklin Morris. I have many URLs, but I guess I prefer linking to GFMorris.net the most these days. That has varied over the years.

1) What’s the most fun work you’ve ever done, and why? (two sentences max)

It’s a tie between two jobs: being a part of the Space-DRUMS® payload development team and doing all the proposal management stuff at work the last five months. The former was very technologically fulfilling and instructive work for me at a young age [before I graduated college, and all of it before I hit 23], and the latter has broadened my horizons in business knowledge and savvy.

2) A. Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? (one sentence max)

I honestly wish that I still wrote for, edited, and managed TOTK.com Sports. There’s no way that I’d even begin to have time for it now, but if we’d kept doing what we were doing back then, we might be as much of a name in the sports blogging world as Deadspin. I mean, crap … I did TOTK Today as a daily sports commentary blog before anyone really know what a blog was [myself included]. I was doing that stuff a decade ago.

[I know, I know, I was supposed to keep that to a sentence.]

B. Name one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep putting it off? (one sentence max)

Become a hobbyist computer programmer: I have all the good intentions and the O’Reilly texts to match and none of the output.

3) A. What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why? (two sentences max)

I’d like to be better at being fully cognizant of what I’m doing and what I should be doing, which are only occasionally the same thing.

B. If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead, who would it be and what would you hope to learn? (two more sentences, max)

This is an easy question: I would dearly love to have been an apprentice rocket scientist under Wernher von Braun. I can learn all the management stuff, personal and professional, from just about anyone, but in terms of designing rockets? I’ll put WvB up against anyone, warts and all.

4) A. What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you?

Oh my, I’m not sure that I have the self-awarness to answer this one very well. I’ll let my friends answer this in the comments…

B. Now list two more words you wish described you…

Studious and athletic.

5) What are your top three passions? (can be current or past, work, hobbies, or causes– three sentences max)

My three great passions are understanding God’s will and purposes for my life, manned spaceflight, and music, especially with my friends in the Square Peg Alliance.

6) (sue me) Write–and answer–one more question that YOU would ask someone (with answer in three sentences max)

What is your worst habit, and what do you believe is the underlying cause of that habit? How can you best eliminate it?

[If any of you want to tackle that in a comment, well, go ahead.]

[Bonus: What is one question you wish people would ask themselves?]

Why do you pursue the things that you pursue?

Lastly, let me be evil and make this into a meme! I’ll reverse my modus operandi from last time, as I’ll choose Rick, Jonathan, Stephen, Jeff, and Sean. Oh, and since Kathy asked six questions, I’ll pay Alex back for passing me the five-things meme in the first place. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Speaking of tagging: Amy, Jessica, and Katharine have taken me up on my challenge, but Ashley and Misty haven’t. Hint, hint, ladies!

IMG_8103.JPG

Originally uploaded by gfmorris.

Good gracious, I’m more than a bit behind the times in posting these photos. Only … three months late. [Let us not speak of the backlog of audio I've yet to post, either.]

Yesterday and today, I tackled about 700 photos in my set of photos from the 19 Sep 2006 Square Peg Alliance show in Nashville. This one is one of my favorites, and it allows me to tell a story:

Matthew Perryman Jones (left) was brought up to sing just one song, and he chose “All the King’s Horses”. At the time, I was very much into his Throwing Punches in the Dark, and … well, I started softly singing the harmony lines at my seat, a row back and off to the side. Apparently, I wasn’t singing nearly as soft as I thought, because as he started the second verse, Jones was totally thrown, asking “whoever’s singing this on stage, come up here and sing this with me”. Well, it wasn’t anyone, so after a few seconds, Andrew Osenga (right) hopped up to sing BGV’s with him.

After the show, I sheepishly went up to Matthew afterwards and admitted that I was the one singing. He then said, “Well, next time, just come on up there.” So I might.

Dear Facebook:

Please support snarfing photo feeds into your album interface. That would be oh so cool, because … well, if I’ve already put them in Flickr, I don’t want to spend the time mucking about with your interface, too. Y’all are smart and already have a feed parser powering the Notes.

Thanks, y’all, for making the only friends-and-acquaintances-linking community I’ve ever really wanted to use. Even if you released it to UAH after my undergraduate career was long over. [Actually, thanks for waiting ... my GPA would have been another tenth of a point lower.]

Geof

Dear Flickr:

Please, please, please support tagging of other Flickr users a la Facebook’s photo-tagging features. Ambient findability is soooooooo 2006. [Er, damn, it's about to be over, isn't it?] I mean, who doesn’t enjoy seeing photos of their college buddies blowing chunks behind some dive bar at 1:45 a.m.? [Lightweights!]

Okay, maybe that was a bad example. But it would still be coooool. Promise.

Hugs and kisses and another year of my FlickrPro money come August,

Geof

• $1 Per Download, Again | alexking.org
  (tags: gfmorris_comment)
• tecosystems / links for 2006-12-30
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• The Real Me | Naked & Ashamed
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• DSC_0272 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
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• Heading Home » Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key
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• Flickr Social 101 | overstated
  The thing I got out of this? The feed for comments anyplace you’ve commented. That’s awesome. No more following my own gfmorris_comment breadcrumbs!
  (tags: flickr howto)
• Here are the Official Slap Bet Rules - VIDEO - TV Squad
  SWEET!
  (tags: television tv how_i_met_your_mother)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “Police 1982/04/22 Uniondale from MASTER”
  (tags: dad_torrent for_misty the_police uniondale new_york)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “The Police - Dec 23, 1983 Brighton AUD ARCHIVE#2″
  (tags: dad_torrent for_misty the_police brighton england united_kingdom)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “The Police - Feb 13, 1981 Auckland, NZ AUD New Transfer”
  (tags: dad_torrent for_misty the_police auckland new_zealand)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “The Police - July 22, 1983 US Rehearsals ALT SOURCE with ADDITIONAL TRACKS”
  (tags: dad_torrent the_police for_misty lilitz pennsylvania)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “The Police - May 24, 1979 Minneapolis KQ92 FM - NEW TRANSFER”
  (tags: dad_torrent the_police for_misty minneapolis minnesota)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “The Police - Oct 14, 1983 Stockholm AUD FIXED”
  (tags: dad_torrent for_misty the_police stockholm sweden)
• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “The Police - Oct 3, 1983 Lyon AUD New Transfer”
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• www.dimeadozen.org :: EzTorrent v0.5.3 :: Torrent details for “THE POLICE The Edge, Toronto 23 March 1979 FM”
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• Through a Glass, Darkly » And I said, “What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”
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• Feedback for Mint 1.2+
  Not sure how I feel about this one. I may test it on one of my lesser-trafficked sites first.
  (tags: mint pepper feeds)
• Through a Glass, Darkly » Sneaky!
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• not another blog. » Rae’s Top . . . Eight Albums of ‘06.
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• On Our Way To Crazy
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• $1 Per Download, Again | alexking.org
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• Elemoose Public » L’Anno Avanti : The Year Ahead
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• Heading Home » Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key
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• Through a Glass, Darkly » “She didn’t just turn out all right. She came out and then it was a lot of hard work.”
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• Through a Glass, Darkly » “She didn’t just turn out all right. She came out and then it was a lot of hard work.”
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According to TVIV’s page for Rescue Me, the fourth season will premiere on 12 Jun 2007. There’s still no definitive word on a release date for the season three DVD, but given when the first and second season releases have happened, I don’t expect it anytime before mid-May 2007.

Why the long wait? I think the fine folks at Apostle understand that we’ll slavishly buy the DVDs and watch each of the old episodes a couple of times before the next season re-airs, building all the anticipation that you need for a summertime-release show. If they put the DVDs out in time for, say, Christmas … well, you might not anticipate the summer show so much. While TiVo and time-shifting-via-DVR in general have made it far easier to stay current with shows—and kudos must go out to FX for re-airing each week’s episode multiple times before the next week hits—it’s just harder for a show that airs new episodes only in the summertime to get an audience, because of all the other things you could be doing on a summer evening besides planting your ass on the couch to watch Tommy, Garrity, Lou, and Franco, y’know?

Update, 6 Feb 2007: It’s my understanding that the show goes into production on Thu 8 Feb 2007.

Update, 9 May 2007: The premiere has moved back one day, as noted elsewhere on this site. And if you were looking for the season three DVD release date, it’s 5 Jun 2007. As TV-on-DVD releases typically happen on Tuesdays, it won’t move concomitantly with the timeslot change.

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Well, let me put it this way: I hadn’t taken a full week off from work since I started working full-time. Yes, that’s four-and-a-half years without much in the way of a break. [I tend to take my vacation time in one-to-three-day spurts.]

Yes, I realize just how insane this is. That’s why I was going to take a week to go out to Utah to photograph things in July, before I up-and-went to Portland instead. [And, you'll note, only took two days off from work.]

I’m not finishing 2006 like I’d hoped when I started, but at least when I hit 2007, I’ll have had a little bit of a break. [Other than the nearly 1100 miles driven.]

While I’m thinking about it and am done with my travels, let me take a stab at the cities I’ve spent time in during 2006, a la Kottke [starred cities overnighted in multiple times on non-consecutive days]:

• Madison, AL. [My current hometown, duh.]
• Detroit, MI. [Did I really not overnight anywhere in January and February? My Weblog has a better memory than I do.]
• Portland, OR.
• Nashville, TN. * [Stayed once with Brandi and Aaron, another time with Derek.]
• Powder Springs, GA. I think this makes three years in a row where I’ve enjoyed the Hollands‘ hospitality.
• Charlotte, NC. Another great night of sleep on Brandon’s couch. [No, I'm serious. That thing is awesome.]
• Jackson, TN.* I didn’t visit my folks nearly as much as they’d've liked.
• Chattanooga, TN.
• Cullman, AL.
• Calhoun, MS.* [Dad will have to confirm that they’ve actually incorporated. I think that they have, though.
• Baker, LA.
• Guin, AL.

I hope to travel more next year. I don’t know if I will.

I’m back in Alabama. Good trip, all told; given that it all involves my family, I’ll not write about much of it at all. [That's not an I'm-afraid-to-write-about-my-family thing, that's an I-know-you-don't-care thing. And if you do, you'll ask me when you see me next.] But if you want to ask here, well, the comment form’s at the bottom of the page.

Something I will mention, though, is my new obsession with M. Ward. I mean … I’ve had Transistor Radio for some time now, and I did get Transfiguration of Vincent just recently, but when did I go nuts? Well, let me tell you…

When I’m away from home, I just don’t sleep well. Part of this comes from the fact that I need some noise in my room at all times while I’m sleeping. I’ve written about this before, and I generally make this happen at home with my XM radio being tuned to some talk station [almost always ESPN Radio or WLW] with the volume down low. On the road, though, this doesn’t work, so I take my iPod nano with me. I have the lanyard for the 1G nano, and between that and a set of Griffin Ear Jams, I can sleep while wearing my iPod on the lanyard and only rarely pulling a bud out of my ear. When I wake up and find one dislodged, it’s certainly not much effort to put it back in.

So anyhow, suffice it to say that the first night had me select the “M. Ward” smart playlist that I’d put together for the iPod, and … well, it didn’t come off of that playlist the first two nights. The third night it did, only to go only to playing ToV over and over again. I … can’t get enough of this album right now. The last time I spiked on an album this hard, it was Sufjan Stevens’s Illinois. I remember reading Pitchfork’s review of Transistor Radio and reading what I then considered heresy:

His last record, 2004’s magnificent Transfiguration of Vincent is at once sprawling and intimate. It’s grown on me like strangling vines in the last year and I can play it anytime around anybody without a worry. [Transistor Radio] is just a little tiny bit less perfectly imperfect than that album, but it’s still got all the warmth and gentle disorganization of its predecessor– with a few more oomphy tracks standing in for Tranfiguration’s (sic) most introspective meditations.

Ain’t no heresy. Before mid-December, I was poised to declare Transistor Radio the best album I’d acquired in 2006. That honor will now belong to Transfiguration of Vincent. In his review of Transfiguration of Vincent, Pitchfork’s Joe Tangari writes:

Some time in 2035, I’m going to pull this album out, and it’s going to sound just as good as it does now. There’s something running through it that broadcasts timelessness and defies genre constraints– quite a feat, considering how M. Ward’s previous outings had pegged him as a modern-day alt-country troubadour, tied to tradition despite promise that suggested he might one day transcend its confines.

Exactly. I fully expect that this is an album I’ll buy five or more copies of and just give to people over the course of the next year.

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I got this recording from a friend via email, and it was too good not to share. Please understand that I converted it to MP3 for sharing here on the Internet.

Mission 12/24 (2:01, 1.85MB MP3)

Enjoy! This is how we do Santa’s trip around the world NASA-style.

Over the Tennessee River. Through the Piney Woods of Southeast Mississippi. Off to my grandmother’s house I go.

I’ve got a little present for you guys that’ll show up later tonight. After that, it’ll probably get quiet here for a while, as I’m not guaranteed to have much access to the Internet. And that’s fine … unplugging is great.

To you and yours, a Merry Christmas.

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