There’s only a few days left of 2006 but I can’t seem to compile my top gigs or album lists. This is more to do with a frizzled, over-worked, brain than with the quality of music – in the last twelve months I’ve seen and heard music that makes me go weak at the knees!
I started putting together the list of bands I’ve seen (by trawling my photographs to jog the memory) and after 5 minutes I’ve got a list of 76 .. if I gave it a bit of actual thought it should be around the 100 mark, similar to last year. So a good gigging year! Starky, Red Riders and Shaky Hands would be topping the seen-multiple-times-list with at least half a dozen of each.
In comparison to 2005, this year has had a much more solid output of recorded music as some brilliant albums, EPs and singles have been released. But more on that post-Christmas when I compile my favourites.
In between gigging, working, studying, and sleeping I managed to get through 36 books (at least one more should be added to the list once I get my feet up in the country-side) so in the mean time, in no particular alphabetical-by-first-name order, my favourite new reads of the year (most of these were released in 2006 but a few might be from 2005 and I only got my hands on them this year):
I head off on my yearly country-side adventure tomorrow. Sheep and dog photos to follow next week (I bet you can’t wait!).
Woo, I’m starting to catch up with you on the gig front – don’t know how many I got to, probably about 30 which is still way off your count but a lot better than last year when I remember you shocking me with your count.
I’ve falled way back on books though. I’ve started to realise that I only tend to read books during the winter months – there’s nothing like the cold weather to make me want to curl up in bed and spend hours sinking into a book. Until last week, I hadn’t read any novels since the summer holidays (just lots of photography-related books plus far too many newspapers). Now I’m poring over my bookshelves again, getting excited about the sheer volume of unread potential.
Got to agree with you on the David Mitchell & George Saunders books (two that I did manage this year – although I haven’t got hold of In Persuasion Nation yet, just the Novella of “Phil”).