What .…

Assorted random and unrelated thoughts from Simon Grigg.

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Searchin’ for a note / pure and easy

December 3, 2006
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Sim­ply put, what a great year for music. The repeat­ed obit­u­ar­ies for the music indus­try were clear­ly erro­neous, clear­ly over­stat­ed. In real terms the record indus­try is in big big trou­ble, espe­cial­ly the old guard record com­pa­nies and the world they know and live in. If any evi­dence of that beyond falling sales was need­ed, wit­ness the thrash­ing around of Doug Mor­ris, the head of Uni­ver­sal Music, in his attempts to blame the impend­ing demise of the sys­tem as they know it on any­one but themselves.

Right now the ploughs are out dig­ging up the play­ing field. What and where we will end up, I don’t know, but the likes of iTunes is only a way sta­tion on the way there. Ask me if five years and I may have a clue…

So, 2006, a vin­tage year for con­tem­po­rary music, I think, but aren’t they all. That I still get excit­ed at my ripe old age about new music makes me hap­py, but I think I would shriv­el up and die with­out it. And it’s eas­i­er and eas­i­er to get hold of, cour­tesy of our elec­tron­ic world, some­thing that must seem like a cru­el irony to the record com­pa­nies who monop­o­lised for so long by con­trol­ling the means of dis­tri­b­u­tion. There is more music every­where than there has ever been in my life­time and more peo­ple are listening.

So to my per­son­al picks for 2006 (and thats all they are..nothing defin­i­tive, just the things I’ve liked)…..

First­ly singles…and there were a few. There are sin­gles by acts that I’ve includ­ed in the albums but will avoid here to pre­vent a dou­ble up.

Albums.…actually not that many, par­tial­ly because I’ve found myself lis­ten­ing to a lt of old­er albums, but par­tial­ly because my focus is very clear­ly less albums than sin­gles these days. A few of these acts released a few sin­gles that would’ve made my above list (espe­cial­ly Anders Trente­moller) but are either on the album or, in his case, come as a bonus disc. Lucky…

Mixed albums….

Reis­sues and comps

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