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ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER ROUNDUP!

I can hardly believe it. Here we are, not only at the end of another year but at the end of a dad-blamed decade! And what a decade it was!!!! Yeah right, once you get down to it the oh-oh's were even less energetic, exciting, entertaining and downright livable than the nineties and eighties combined, and everyone knows what a drag it was living through those years unless you just happened to like grunge and radical in-your-face gulcheral upheaval! Like the nineties, I can't think of anything stimulating or life-reaffirming that came out of these past ten years, and for the life of me I am not going to do a "Best of the Ots" rundown on this blog because...frankly the past ten years are like one big roll of dough to me that maybe should be best left in the hamper until some diddley dolts decide to "revive" it. One good thing about the years 2000-2009 was that they were the first decade that I totally began to devoid myself of any knowledge whatsoever of the general culture and civilization for that matter, something of which I am definitely the better for!

But I will tell you about the past 365, which had its little ups, mostly downs and was more or less just time spent passing before I hit the good ol' six-feet-under (though frankly, I hope they lose my body in transit!). Some good items did hit my nerve-centers during those years, and since I pretty much ignored the hotcha underground amerindie new flavor of the week music like I had these past few decades I didn't bother much if any with the dross being passed off as new and innovative. Thankfully I did have my fun along with the aggravation, and if I hadda do it all over again I'd do it all over Heinrick Olausson.

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ALBUM OF THE YEAR! Believe-it-or-not but there were a few good releases this year one would think I would have automatically chosen to top the list this year, Lou Rone's and that Meercaz 'un amongst 'em. However, if I hadda point out just one album that I would consider a favorite at least judging from pre-bedtime spins and whatnot it would be the DARK SUNNY LAND KON TAN KOOR Cee-Dee which I must give additional brownie points for since it managed to keep my attention with its amorphous creeping bent sound for quite a few many nights in a row. It was so good that it gave me the same teenage tingly feeling I got when I was about 18 and a good portion of the amorphous avant garde bent of the previous fifty years was making up the soundtrack to my ever budding phony-intellectualism!

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SINGLE OF THE YEAR!There wasn't gonna be one until I got hold of the Sun Ra double-header "I Am Strange"/"I Am An Instrument" on Norton (where else?). Pure "electric" beauty from this long gone madman who on these sides dwells deep into the o-mind while remaining incomprehensible to about 99.999...% of the populace. A downright "sleeper" as they say.

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BOOTLEG OF THE YEAR! The Yardbirds' LAST RAVEUP IN LA even if it did come out thirty years ago!

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ARCHIVAL COLLECTION OF THE YEAR! Surprisingly enough my favorite gathering of trackage past this year was not available in stores or only on television, but was copped off of the PUREPOP website when nobody was looking. Yes, I'm talking about the collection of rare mostly-English proto-punk glam rock that I gathered from choice available single sides on this boffo blog, and the numbers that I stuck onto my hour-plus disque really do satisfy even more than the legit GLITTERBEST which my own collection was perhaps not-so-obviously inspired by. Made a fine backdrop for my automobile driving this past summer, and to prove just how potent it is I was at an intersection blasting this and some pretty girl in the car next to me actually FROWNED at me! And some say there is no shock value left in this world of ours! Of course if ya wanna talk about something that was actually manufactured and sold to the general public, this item was pretty durn good in itself!

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JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR! That Gunter Hampel double disc set recorded live in '68 (with Sonny Sharrock!) that Rick Noll sent me!

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REPACKAGE OF THE YEAR! Mirrors' SOMETHING THAT WOULD NEVER DO which you probably think you don't need, but you'll end up getting anyway. Honorable mention: TV Toy.

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BOOK OF THE YEAR! Lotsa nice ones to choose from natch, but the one that really hit the spot despite the various faults I found in it is the HUMBUG collection of boss late-fifties satire created by the same creative team that gave us MAD long before that rag ceased being humorous on any level! If you like the spirit of the original MAD and find HELP offensive in that great early-sixties way you'll love HUMBUG, and I only wish I had this 'un back when I was twelve when I really needed it 'stead of a buncha hippies telling me to smile on my brother while they beat the stuffing outta me!

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FANZINE OF THE YEAR! No question, whatever UGLY THINGS just happened to come out! Can't beat this 'un nohow, even if the fanzine world seems to have shrunk to the size of a peanut, or at least the size of __________________'s manhood!

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BLOG OF THE YEAR! Hands down winner is Jim Marshall's THE HOUND BLOG which you can retrieve on your left...now I will say that Miriam Linna's KICKSVILLE 66 had been doing some strong up 'n runnin' not only with her illustrated recollections regarding the Cramps and the late Lux Interior, but after a quick burst the entire blog fizzled out leaving me gnarlier than Dick Gregory in the middle of a hunger strike for unfunny comedians. Oh well, at least Marshall's HOUND BLOG is to his boffo NEW ORDER/VILLAGE VOICE (really!)/KICKS writing as what Linna's blog is to her various fanzine endeavors. (And please don't laugh, but Marshall's VOICE contributions were one of the few reasons to pick up that weekly piece of yellow liberal journalism for quite some time, at least until the likes of Chuck Eddy and a slew of lesser knowns began cluttering up the "riffs" section or whatever it was called by then with some of the worst ca-ca passing as out-there gonzo rock criticism!) Mighty good stuff in there...best of which is most def. his personal recollections regarding Lester Bangs which I linked up at the time and you can find with enough blogsearch savvy. Let's just say that thirty years after the death of seventies Golden Age rockscreeding it's sure great reading something with that old-timey fanzine/CREEM-inspired swing in the here/now.

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DEATH OF THE YEAR! Actually, 'tis a tossup twixt that of Ron Asheton and Sky Saxon. Lux should figure in there somewhere but at least for me ('n this is my blog, remember?) it was Asheton and Saxon who pretty much made the underbelly of mid/late-sixties rock & roll as good as it was, Asheton with his sub-strata guitar playing and Saxon as "the prince of the punks" fronting the Seeds long before he became about as organic as the dog manure that was crowding him outta his house! In an age when even youth shock seems to be pre-packaged the mere existence of both Asheton and Saxon only goes to prove to us just exciting outrageousness used to be!

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I GOTTA GIVE HIM AN AWARD FOR SOMETHING! David Patrick Kelly's RIP VAN BOY MAN.

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HEY DAVE, IF ANYONE CALLS YOU A SISSY JUST HIT 'IM WITH YOUR PURSE! And now for the DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR we have this walking specimen to contend with. When I think of how close this "human" came to expiring this past year due to a sudden attack of appendicitis boy does my mouth go a'frothin'! If only the ambulance had a flat tire or the paramedics had a few too many beforehand maybe we wouldn't be putting up with this poor excuse for a rock "critic" (as much as that term seems to exist these days) anymore! Hopefully next year might bring more physical and mental travails to this herb so's we won't have to put up with his precocious opines regarding a number of "pertinent", "relevant" and "crucial" recordings that he somehow deems worthy of letting his small group of toadies in on. C'mon Dave...keep reaching for that MORAL HIGH GROUND that makes you oh so superior to paranoid me!!! Also noteworthy of mention (but certainly not a disappointment)...Gerard Cosloy's house burns to a crisp, an entry that I'm sure will make it into that all-time best seller WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD PEOPLE. (Just consider it me "gettin' some 'get back'" as they say on the streets Gerard!)

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And that was the year that was that! Phooey!