Tell me about your favourite music experiences of 2017

Every year we got together with a couple of Mr Veg’s college friends to go see the Bridge School Benefit together.

Now that it’s been cancelled, this year we went to friend A’s cabin in Tahoe instead for a commiseratory Bridge Weekend. Mr Veg brought the box set of live Bridge School performances, took out the bands we hated and made a big playlist. That first night we sat around drinking & listening to the music & telling stories not just about the concerts but music & bands in general.

The second day we settled in for day drinking & fired up the Tom Petty live anthology. This was about 2 weeks after he died so it was still pretty fresh. We were all big fans collectively but Friend B worshipped Petty from childhood, and almost every song sparked a story or memory for her, it was cool to hear her stories. we talked about Tom & his music all afternoon and sang and danced.

That whole weekend was so fun and exacly the kind of intersection of music & socializing that I love. And one of those great moments where EVERYONE talks at length, where no-one’s the nerdy bore, where everyone’s on the same vibe.

It was A+

that sounds lovely!

That whole weekend was so fun and exacly the kind of intersection of music & socializing that I love.
many of my good musical experiences also contain socializing. the appeal is real! also nice that no one was dominating the convo and everyone listens to each other.

• Seeing the Art Ensemble of Chicago, with Joseph Jarman rejoining the lineup to read poetry
• Seeing John McLaughlin play Mahavishnu Orchestra music
• Going back to the Vision Festival for the first time in close to 20 years
• Doing an Invisible Jukebox interview with Tyshawn Sorey for The Wire (I played him Metallica and Redman, among other things)
• Writing a monthly jazz column for Stereogum, a site that as far as I know had never covered jazz before 2016
• Starting a podcast so I could interview artists whose work I admire without having to transcribe afterward

Doing an Invisible Jukebox interview with Tyshawn Sorey for The Wire (I played him Metallica and Redman, among other things)

― grawlix (unperson)

see, i read this and thought to myself "surely sorey will know dewey redman, no?"

quitting drinking and being able to really enjoy and be immersed in concerts again

Definitely three things that were top shelf this year. Seeing Peej, tori and goldfrapp. Especially goldfrapp, who closed the show with the extended version of strict machine (we are glitter version). Fuck that made me go mental. Opened the show with Utopia too; from felt mountain an album that meant heaps to me in high school. I'm 33 now, Jesus' age. Lolstalgia hits hard ya know

https://ewedit-files-wordpress-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/ewedit.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/twinpeaks_sg_036-r.jpg?w=1024

Fuck yeah wins

Getting into what turned out to be a financially fortuitous car accident while I was listening to Paramore's "Hard Times" was at least interesting.

Lol man my friend crashed his car to "in my car" by gold panda. Talk about on the nose

Pickathon

Getting a test pressing of my own music on a vinyl record was pretty ace. It is definitely something I have wanted to happen for a good long time.

^ nice man

I forgot an important one! Many good memories can be lumped into "jamming in my basement with friends" including up to 4 ilxors as well as old and newish friends :)

http://www.atomicthrillride.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/test-pressing.jpg

great thread

Some random ones for me:

- Seeing Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project live - stage set up was zero lighting, Wolfgang was stood behind his laptop off to the left but hardly visible in the darkness. The main focus was just a giant screen showing films where the viewer was taken very slowly through a forest or was span slowly round in the trees and you just saw dark trunks in front of you as the light levels rose and fell, moving from almost pitch blackness and a dark sky, through dusky blues and beyond to relative daylight. Super cinematic and immersive with your emotions taken through alternate stages of dread and unease to something akin to euphoria. I was worried beforehand that might doze off during the show as I kind of relax a bit too much into music these days, but no chance of that, it felt like all my senses were so alert during the whole set, almost an animal response to that forest setting.

- Sat in the front row seeing the Necks live in a Brighton church. Not the first time I've seen them, but the first time I've seen them that close up and the almost telepathic way they played together. Whole thing was electrifying, had the good fortune to have a chat with them afterwards but I was p much a gibbering imbecile by that stage. Was only marred by the guy that we were with explaining to us in the pub afterwards that he was actually a jazz expert and the Necks were worse than rubbish and btw Miles Davis was useless charalatan as well. Yeah, thanks for coming pal.

- Watching a friend play a 24-hour improv set in a local pub with a group of ~9 other players of varying ability including someone playing their first ever gig. I couldn't stay for all of it but came and went as often as I could, but I did stay through the whole of the night and in fact at one point at about 3 AM I think I was the only one there. Were it not for me they could have all just put their instruments down and had a decent kip, poor sods - sorry guys. I won't say it was all gold all the way through (although there were some great and strange passages throughout), but it was inspiring seeing people dig so deep into their imaginations in that context and the closing hour was just this almost celebratory rush of music. Super-proud of my friend for pulling it off and just a lot more fun than I would have ever guessed.

- Spotify got blocked at work so I spent a lot of my time there listening to internet radio instead. Haven't really listened to non-classical music radio in years because on the whole it's mostly horrible and annoying, but I am now a full-on convert to NTS etc. Freshly appreciating listening to so much great new-to-me music that I wouldn't have heard otherwise however smart Spotify's algorithms get, but more than that, it's music connected to living communities, records in conversation with other records, all that basic shit, but I didn't realise quite how insular my Spotify experience was becoming.

- Seeing Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project live - stage set up was zero lighting, Wolfgang was stood behind his laptop off to the left but hardly visible in the darkness. The main focus was just a giant screen showing films where the viewer was taken very slowly through a forest or was span slowly round in the trees and you just saw dark trunks in front of you as the light levels rose and fell, moving from almost pitch blackness and a dark sky, through dusky blues and beyond to relative daylight. Super cinematic and immersive with your emotions taken through alternate stages of dread and unease to something akin to euphoria. I was worried beforehand that might doze off during the show as I kind of relax a bit too much into music these days, but no chance of that, it felt like all my senses were so alert during the whole set, almost an animal response to that forest setting.

friends of mine went to the barbican show just cos they lived there.
they had no idea as to what they were going to experience.
they sent me an email : 'hey mark, off to see GAS ... '
bastards.
i nearly scratched them off my xmas card list.

not that i am bitter or anything.

(i saw kraftwerk, i saw kraftwerk, i saw kraftwerk, i saw kraftwerk ... )

And what did they think of it?

i have no idea, not heard from them since.
they clearly felt my jealousy from afar.

Still lost in the forest imo

I didn't see very many shows this year now that my wife and I are caring for her dad, but I did get to go see Ann Magnuson & The Bongwater Experience (Licht, Rick, Hudson) do a totally killer set of Bongwater classics in Portland. We were wandering around before the show and totally by chance stumbled into the best cider brewery I've ever been too, they put on Bongwater by request and everything we tried was insanely good (Reverend Nat's, for you locals).

didn't see any shows this year

i got nice new headphones, though

plenty of religious experiences at home

Playing "Blitzkrieg Bop" with my grade 3/4 class at a school assembly.

Haha sleeve that sounds great but there’s every chance I would have been off my nut by the time bongwater happened

well we only had like 30 minutes or so, so we couldn't get THAT trashed!

Definitely want new headphones here too, my £15 sonys can’t be doing the music many favours

Seeing Low play at a church was pretty great.

Lol sleeve 30 mins is time enough believe me

seeing Acid Mothers Temple for my birthday (they come through every year around that week) was incredible. they played a really small club this year but it was still insanely rad. my friend Justin does video projections for them and has been touring w them for years so it was nice to see him too. pretty much the only time i get to see him is once a year for AMT. it's nice to visit and he asks me how my cat Five is doing. he gifted me Five from a litter when he lived in Alabama a few years ago...

seeing Andrew WK was also incredible. i was a fan of his since the first album, used to read his website and stuff, got "The Wolf", got "Close Walls", etc. for years i had heard accounts of his shows from friends and they sounded great. when he announced he was going on tour with a full band (made mostly of people from his band back in the day) i jumped on it and am so glad i did. it was insane.

* playing a Devo cover in my hometown of Akron for an audience that included my parents and my 2 best friends

woah LL this is amazing! my mom's side of the family used to live in Akron so i heard a lot about it and Devo growing up. hope this winter is mild and favorable for you (i know winters can get tough, that's why my folks moved down south).

were you drumming in it? that must have been fun to play. Devo has such cool drum parts.

i was!! we played "gates of steel"!! i still feel kinda emotionally high when i think about it
i am glad you appreciated the gravity of this moment <3

i don't live there anymore, but my parents do and directing my parents to and seeing my parents in a DIY space was a sub-highlight of that highlight for sure
they have already complained about shoveling snow :)

-discovering Girlpool
-hearing "O Superman" for the first time
-seeing Animal Collective in May (besides the first time i saw them in 2006, it was the best set i've ever seen them play, out of 9 shows)
-seeing Avey Tare & Panda Bear do Sung Tongs two weeks ago in a room full of superfans singing EVERY word. still only my 3rd favorite out of 9 shows
-becoming completely obsessed with Stereolab
-making cassette mixtapes for friends that only have tape decks in their cars
-seeing Xiu Xiu play to a packed room in April, and then play to maybe 30 people tops in the same room 5 months later. both great sets
-seeing Deerhoof play to 70 people tops in a 300 cap club, super depressing but they were killer as always. my first club show was Deerhoof in January 2006 at the same place. coming off The Runners Four, it was totally packed. people take them for granted
-seeing the Tony Conrad documentary followed by three seamless improv sets inspired by Conrad's work
-seeing Dan Deacon's Spiderman of the Rings 10 year anniversary show
-seeing Billy Corgan play in an opera house. played his (excellent) new album in its entirety followed by an hour long career spanning set full of deep cuts, obscurities, and unreleased songs
-discovering Richard Dawson
-discovering Raymond Scott
-seeing the 4 hour Grateful Dead documentary in a huge theater
-discovering Circuit des Yeux when she opened for AC at that May show
-"I Wanna Be Young" by Ariel Pink
-"Betty Dreams of Green Men" by Guerilla Toss
-becoming obsessed with There's a Riot Goin' On
-recording a new solo record at a leisurely pace
-making a 22 minute tape collage on a tascam 4-track over 6 months, was probably the most fun i ever had making something, and the most time i spent on something
-debuting that piece last month in a place that's very special to me and meeting a lot of new people that actually liked my insane tape collage
-seeing Wume and Horse Lords open for Hans-Joachim Roedelius
-emailing Jim O'Rourke about the pun in the title of "Not Sport, Marital Art" and if it was intentional and getting a really sweet response like an hour later
-finally figuring out how to play that song on guitar (it's in Open A)

-seeing Steely Dan less than 2 months after Walter Becker's death, and being surprised & relieved by how celebratory & free of sorrow it was

for me it has to be investing in a Serato controller and teaching myself how to beatmatch. It's led to all sorts of avenues of discovery, and even encouraged me to start making my own music again

-emailing Jim O'Rourke about the pun in the title of "Not Sport, Marital Art" and if it was intentional and getting a really sweet response like an hour later

(*^#)(832":*(749@^%#$8276^(*^*76ahhhhhhhhhhh^

DO TELL!

I posted earlier but I forgot one:

• hanging out with Melvin Gibbs and 3/4 of Khanate (no O'Malley) at a Matana Roberts/Supersilent show

xp it was intentional! he said he was walking in chicago one day and saw a martial art studio that had "NOT SPORT!! MARITTAL ART!!" painted on the window, he said he thought it was hilarious and named the song after that. it was bugging me for years because EVERYONE gets the title wrong

^ definitely did that.

LL i played Gates of Steel in a band once too! if you have one Devo song to play that is a good one to pick

- seeing Propagandhi, Converge, and The Clientele for the first time following many years of listening
- seeing Chris Murphy of Sloan lead a killer version of "Underwhelmed" at an Evaporators show (while already being an incredibly entertaining drummer to watch)
- crying at the Kevin Devine show
- seeing a very green but extremely promising Snail Mail get to play an encore in their opening slot because people were so into them
- Moon Tooth and Astronoid on the same magical night of metal

oh yeah! i forgot to say seeing Snail Mail open for Frankie Cosmos at a sold out show in May. small place & i was in the balcony- was very endearing and cool to see an artist still so un-jaded right as the buzz begins to mount. she seemed genuinely moved over the moon, jumped off her amp at the end. it was really cool to witness a rock n roll dream like that. and also to see an emerging artist not yet beaten down from a solid year or two of constant touring and press - i remember thinking about something Kurt Cobain said about popularity, paraphrasing: "the best and most exciting time in a band is right before your band gets big." she got signed to Matador after one EP and she can't even buy cigarettes yet. but she's very talented and very smart, feel confident the bends of sudden attention won't dull the enthusiasm of that set i saw.

Obsessed with the Chart Music podcast this year. Various MM journalists pick apart a random episode of TOTP. Insightful, irreverent and always insanely funny.

ooh that sounds good

https://chartmusiccouk.wordpress.com

oh yeah! i forgot to say seeing Snail Mail open for Frankie Cosmos at a sold out show in May. small place & i was in the balcony- was very endearing and cool to see an artist still so un-jaded

Yes! When I saw them they were opening for Priests, and were on stage left rocking out the entire time. It was so adorable!

Another memory from the same show, watching a local band play the funniest song I'd seen played live in years

https://baldbritney.bandcamp.com/releases

Seeing Slapp Happy & Faust at Cafe Oto was incredible. Also seeing Shirley Collins sing. Things I never even considered I'd be lucky enough to witness.

Also Wolfgang Voigt putting me into the most pleasurable in-between state imaginable for an hour and a half or whatever it was idk. NickB was at the same and I concur.

Also Decolonise Fest at DIY Space For London was incredibly well realised and made me feel things I've not felt at shows before. And Divide & Dissolve were immense.

xp it was intentional! he said he was walking in chicago one day and saw a martial art studio that had "NOT SPORT!! MARITTAL ART!!" painted on the window, he said he thought it was hilarious and named the song after that. it was bugging me for years because EVERYONE gets the title wrong

ha! i know exactly where that sign is! i see it all the time on the way to/from work.

Writing a track with 100% field recorded binaural samples from the machine shop at work and then performing it for a bewildered audience a week later.

ooh! i have heard you never know what you're getting with a richard youngs show -- what did you get?

It was like this 3 hour journey of shaggy dog stories, audience participation, the odd shouted (by me) request and achingly sad ballads. Quite an evening.

<3 richard youngs

thanks to your contributions to this thread everyone, it's been nice reading them

marcos, are any of your paintings online?

This is a great thread and the sort of thing that doesn't get talked about enough here.

I was at that GAS thing and it was wonderful, but my personal highlight was watching Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson play at the RFH, midway through the performance they were playing this swirling piano and synth thing and when Laurie started speaking you realised it was coalescing into a cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Democracy'. I nearly lost it right there and then.

This is a great thread and the sort of thing that doesn't get talked about enough here.

^^^^this
thread makes me really happy

me too

marcos, are any of your paintings online?

not yet! i'm hoping to create a website in the new year though

when Laurie started speaking you realised it was coalescing into a cover of Leonard Cohen's 'Democracy'

<3

This reminds me of another great moment: Susanne Sundfor covering "After the Gold Rush"

another awesome thing that just happened a couple of days ago is that I got my wife a Yamaha keyboard for the Solstice and we jammed for the first time a couple of nights ago in the key of D, it sounded good! I think I was talking on IMM about how we have a PA and a digital recorder set up in the basement now along with my electric guitar and the new keyboard. she was trying to work with a melodica and an accordion but they are physically demanding! I never knew.

next step is obviously a flood of self-released microlabel CDR releases :)

this year i also discovered the music of r stevie moore. at first i went through his numerous albums cherry-picking the "pop hits" but each album is its own thing and you got surrender to his weirdness. hes amazing! one of a kind

I've been fortunate enough to play live more often than I ever before this year. Performing music became a much more regular part of my life in 2017 and for that I'm grateful.

Thanks to Spotify (and at least partially thanks to ILX), I listened to more new music than ever before this year, even though I didn't go to as many concerts.

In terms of live music experiences, I loved seeing Susanne Sundfor at LPR, Jay-Z at Barclays, Sturgill Simpson at Radio City, and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever in the Bowery Ballroom. I guess a New Year's Resolution of mine is to keep better track of when artists I like come into town--I swear I used to be pretty good at that...

getting beyond a lot of the typical children's music w/ my two sons - we started listening instead to a lot of classic country because the songs are so good and easily learned, they have good stories, lots of fun novelty songs that they love - little jimmy dickens "country boy", "take an old cold tater and wait" "a-sleepin at the foot of the bed" lefty frizzell "saginaw michigan", "if you've got the money i've got the time". they also have caught on to the dead stuff we play and ask for "uncle john's band", "dire wolf" a whole lot. it is is neat to see what they take to & what they don't

― marcos
You might check out Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits, with lots of my own childhood faves: he was smart about doing theme songs from movies with kid appeal--not Disney so much, but big screen Westerns---also covered some by Jimmie (sometimes Jimmy) Driftwood, who started as a schoolteacher, writing historical (or sometimes dime novel) yarn-songs for his students.

-Errorsmith in Berlin playing bangers for hours
-Laurel Halo playing Ability II's "Pressure Dub" at The Art School
-Kyla La Grange at King Tut's, being a truly great popstar
-getting the aux cable at a house party where I knew one other person and playing Oni Ayhun's "OAR-003B" and watching everyone get dreamy
-the Definite Party Material radio show on Noods and accompanying Youtube channel
-the bounce remix of Adele's "Hello" that somehow felt like a private meme and yet everywhere I went to dance in Spring
-being signed off work in the summer with stress, and using the hot afternoons to sit in the park and listen to the Gaussian Curve album and feeling calmer for it
-friends trying to lift my mood by taking me out for drinks to a deserted pub, and being the last three in the place, making the DJ play "The Boy Is Mine" and making it into a three-part duet somehow
-having the courage to let other people hear my own music
-a very intense, strung-out hour-long conversation late after a night of excess, talking about the mix of low culture and high art in Shakespeare's Sister "Stay" because a music channel played the video
-a club that played nothing but Madonna singles all night
-three blogs: Test Pressing, Listen To This! and Ban Ban Ton Ton
-a drunken Chromatics-inspired cover of Shania Twain to take a pal's mind off a break-up
-sitting in an outdoor hot tub in the Scottish borders with my brother, drinking and blasting Job Jobse's XLR8R mix into the adjacent farmland
-discovering the YouTube account "Mixsensei" which hosts 80s groove and 90s street soul, none of the uploads I had ever heard of but so many gems
-the Young Marco Italian dream house compilation and wormholes on Discogs and Youtube it sent me down
-every time I heard Jax Jones "You Don't Know Me" in the wild and getting excited, every time, thinking how nice if unexpected to hear "Body Language" played in a shopping centre or out a car window

-the bounce remix of Adele's "Hello"

Love this, also love that there are people in New Orleans who are not really aware of non-bounce versions of Adele songs.

just found that bounce hello,it's great!

I already posted one thing upthread, but a few hon. mentions follow. I've been to rather more live music events than usual in the past 12 months or so, partly down to (and partly acting as a proxy for) my friend Robbie who had a stroke in March and was in the care of the NHS for much of the year (he's home now, thankfully).

- Basil Kirchin weekend in Hull in February; a fantastic weekend of concerts, screenings and talks, with Sean O'Hagan and friends the highlight; I also took in the COUM Transmissions gallery show in Hull at the same time

- Sarah Angliss album launch show at Kings Place in London, ably supported by Ian Rawes (aka the London Sound Survey, who I encountered again in Southwark a few months later - see below) and DJ Special K

- Meridian Brothers at Rich Mix in London's trendy Shoreditch; gig of the year - danced my ass off (and I never dance), as did everyone else

- Delia Derbyshire 80th birthday tribute gig in Coventry Cathedral

- Musicity London weekend in Southwark, especially Siân Hutchings' Sonic Walk in Peckham. Musicity's core purpose is to commission musicians and recording artists to compose tracks in response to specific buildings and locations in cities around the world, which are downloadable from the website but geo-tagged so you can only listen to by actually visiting the buildings in question. I may nominate the Sean O'Hagan (him again) track for the EOY poll...

Sean O’Hagan had something new this year? Gotta check that out

If I had to POO, then probably pogoing to Lumpy & The Dumpers at Static Shock Weekend (/username checks out)

Every Thursday lunchtime, at the community arts charity where I volunteer, I meet up with a DJ friend in the charity's dedicated DJ room, for exactly one hour. He brings his vinyl and CDs, I bring mine, and we alternate our choices. It's my one opportunity of the week to geek out with a kindred spirit, and our tastes intersect very well. Once severely hobbled by autism, his exceptional skill as a DJ has given him a career around the country, and I find his passion, knowledge and ability hugely inspiring.

mike wins the thread.

A Carl Craig set on a great soundsystem
Playing the Danny Krivit edit of My Love Is Free by Double Exposure and watching a bunch of twenty something gay otter types dance to the entirety of tit.

Seeing the Flamin Groovies with Bebe Buell in Nashville. The still-cute groupie stood next to me in front of the stage and then flew off to join her old friends in the dressing room.

not nearly enough live music this year! normally I see a lot more local shows but the idea of heading out all the time to catch them left me feeling enervated

seeing The Melvins, having completely forgotten they were going to be in town but texting a friend on a whim and getting invited to join. it was exactly what I needed and was so enthused that I hugged a coworker I ran into at the venue after they finished

heading to Brooklyn on a whim when I was in NYC for business, seeing Inga Copeland and some great openers, it just clicked and was a great crowd

getting over my dislike for huge arena shows to see Depeche Mode, checked every box of what a huge audience show should be, enthusiastic fans singing along, video clips just for the tour, sounded great

You might check out Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits, with lots of my own childhood faves: he was smart about doing theme songs from movies with kid appeal--not Disney so much, but big screen Westerns---also covered some by Jimmie (sometimes Jimmy) Driftwood, who started as a schoolteacher, writing historical (or sometimes dime novel) yarn-songs for his students.

― dow, Thursday, December 21, 2017 12:39 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

will do, thanks dow!

cosigning dow re Johnny Horton
I think it’s Battle of New Orleans he sings about turning an alligator into a canon :D

cannon, even

The biggest thing for me musically was that I went to my first concert since 2006. It's really weird because before then live music had been a pretty huge part of my life, but moving out of the city and having kids and having very little money in general had kinda scuttled that for a while. I had decided that I wanted to go see a show before I turn 40 next year and bought tickets to like 4 different shows that I ended up having to sell the tickets at the last minute due to schedule conflicts. Finally made it happen for Wolf Alice at the 930 Club. I know other adults go to shows, but I have no idea how they make it happen. Anyway, managed to see one of my favorite bands live.

Anticipated new albums by three favorite bands: Paramore, Queens of the Stone Age, and Wolf Alice. I had gotten into all of these bands for the most part on their last album cycle, when their releases had caught my ear by surprise. So this time around I went through a cycle of anticipation, met with occasionally confounded expectations or complete musical surprises, followed by deep listening to try to wrap my head around their new stuff, which led me to find many things to love about the new records.

Albums that caught me by surprise this year: Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology, Melkbelly - Nothing Valley, Dave Catching - Shared Hallucinations Vol. 1.

Rediscovering the B-52s this spring. Have long been a fan of the self-titled, but when I went on a bender of the first 3 albums I rediscovered a bunch of songs that used to get played a lot on my local modern rock station back in the day and I had simply forgotten about for the past 25 years.

Discovering Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy just before Christmas. This falls into a long pattern of me ignoring a musician for years and years because I just assume I won't like them for all the wrong reasons. Whoops.

Put down my guitar for a while and spent the early year just woodshedding a bunch of Beatles songs on bass. I don't think that anyone in my house wants to hear me thump my way through Savoy Truffle or Back in the U.S.S.R. again but I could do it in my sleep now.

At the close of the year dug out an old favorite, 50 Foot Wave's Power + Light, and have made significant progress hacking my way through that on guitar.

Taught my daughter to play a couple of songs that she wanted to learn on piano: Here Comes the Bride and Jingle Bells.

Getting into what turned out to be a financially fortuitous car accident while I was listening to Paramore's "Hard Times" was at least interesting.

― _Rudipherous_, Saturday, December 16, 2017 2:41 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, glad to hear that your car accident turned out ok, Rudipherous!

https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohc1aWVjjQevuvBwA/giphy.gif

btw, reading through all of these and I agree with Matt DC's statement that this is a great thread NickB. So happy for all the cool stuff people experienced this year. Hanging out with Melvin Gibbs? Covering Gates of Steel? Tascam tape collages? Doing paintings to old Mazzy Star records? All this stuff. Good to see how much everybody loved music this year.

@ how's life - learning Beatles songs on bass is great, very challenging and informative and great musical practice in general. even something as seemingly simple as 'from me to you' is really complex and full of sweet counterpoint and stellar composition.

One of the best things for me was the ILM 80s R&B Top 250 poll. I've shuffled through this playlist many times, a mix of the familiar and new, and it played like an alternate history of the decade — I grew up in Vermont and probably wasn't exposed to a lot of this stuff as a kid; later, I had the idea that R&B was moribund after the disco era. But this playlist was as consistently fun as any listening experience I had in 2017. So thanks, ILM!

on Xmas night i did some drunken record shopping for the first time in my life and spent ~$500 on 80s vinyl from Japan. there was so much ILM introduced me to across several threads YMO related and otherwise and I had some Xmas money and i was fuck, threw down on Miharu Koshi, Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, etc. i even ended up getting a Trattoria picture disc. the first week of 2018 has been all these amazing records showing up in the mail (and me being afraid of playing them lol)

In 2017 I got more into hosting music trivia nights at a bar, and writing questions, which forced me to keep looking at music from different perspectives and focusing on different areas/genres. At home I enjoyed seeing my 7-year-old pull my old cassettes from the basement at random, so I might come in his room and find him listening to random things - Dinosaur Jr, Desmond Dekker, The Outfield, Yoko Ono, all sorts of things. My favorite live-music experiences this year were hiphop arena shows - Kendrick Lamar, Future/Migos. Oh and two smaller shows I learned about at the last minute and just barely made it to - Joan Shelley/Jake Xerxes Fussell was one, the other was Robyn Hitchcock in somebody's loft apartment. I had a bad case of writer's block this year, which was frustrating but also a bit freeing.

Oh man irt the first posts i this thread - i saw grouper play a snobby art party i 2017 behind a huge bowl of shrimp cocktail and no one even paid attention to her. it was still awesome, but just goes to show ya live music in context.

It was really amazing seeing Sparks with an actual amazing ROCK band finally after years of duo, orchestra and dull ass Franz Ferdinand shows. Also I stood behind Ned the whole time which made it rock more.

Undisputed musical highlight was the MRI scan I had in May. An hour shut in a minimalist techno/drone chamber. Incredible stuff.

Runner up was taking my eldest to see Nick Cave, something she's wanted to do for years but has never fallen into place.

The rest:

Eating Ethiopian before seeing SWANS while the restaurant played CDs of Begena recordings, then hanging out with Norman Westberg for a bit because I think I'm the only guy in Britain that buys his CD-Rs.

The opening night party of a Mexican microbrewery, soundtracked by a guy doing alt-country versions of Narcocorrido.

Breakfast in the hotel next to said microbrewery accompanied by a toothless guy with a two string guitar throttling the life out of Cielito Lindo.

Mohammad doing a full-on *performance* of a doom/drone band to a completely indifferent audience and people actively walking out.

Oxbow just fucking killing it live and on record.

Ex-Easter Island Head carrying the torch of NYC minimalism and setting fire to venues with it.

Finally telling John Doran to his face what a great writer he is.

Speaking to people (actual real musicians) who were so inspired by the lecture I gave a couple of years ago on no-input mixing to incorporate bits of it into their work, and vague collaboration plans.

Not learning to play banjo for another year.

Idly pulling Come And Get It off the shelf and instantly proclaiming it the great lost pop album of the 2000s to anyone who'll listen.

Sitting in the bar of a Berlin microbrewery while they were having a staff party round me and staying far longer than I intended because of their bangin' glam rock mixtape. Then having to explain to one of their staff why Gary Glitter doesn't get played in Britain any more after a particularly raucous singalong to Rock 'n' Roll Part 1.

Seeing Slayer finish their Primavera set with Raining Blood and Angel of Death and moshing like fuck. Also hearing lots of Spanish lads shouting 'Slyyyer!!'

Seeing Skepta at Primavera and getting super sweaty.

Wandering around Primavera on my own for two days because my friends only wanted to see stuff on the final day and I wanted to see the whole thing. Solo festival going is definitely something I'd be up for in future

Seeing Stormzy and moshing like fuck to Know Me From with a bunch of teenagers (moshpit of the year)

Seeing Dizzee Rascal live and him doing tracks from Boy In Da Corner

Optimo 20 (especially Nurse With Wound)

Optimo 20 afterparty (one of my best Sub Club experiences)

Yves Tumor live

Seeing Spencer from Numbers play 'Watching Trees' by Eleven Pond as the last track of the night and losing my shit

Feeling like I'm getting better at making my on music. I made a new year's resolution last year to finish a track a month and I just about stuck to it

Playing UK drill music to my dad when home for Christmas. I thought he'd hate it but he thought it was amazing

I bought quite a lot of music this year but I'm aware that none of my best musical memories are of buying music or listening to it at home. I love those things but they're just not as intense as good live music experiences and therefore less memorable I guess

• I haven't been going out to see too many shows, my wife got very ill about 18 months back and she's still recovering but taking her to see Kraftwerk at the Royal Albert Hall was a bit of a milestone for her wellness in some way, and even though we had kinda shitty seats it was still great.

• Reading a book on music and seeing my name and an old band get briefly mentioned gave me a thrill.

• A new and weirdly brilliant record from Nits and booking a little trip to see them next year.

lol at MRI concert; i had a similar thought while dealing with claustrophobia in there

i had Wipers-fever for a lot of 2017. but near the beginning of the year, i was pretty unfamiliar with their non-Youth of America albums.

on some fateful night, though, i had the house to myself and got waaaaaay too alone-drunk. i decided to listen to Wipers at top volume, with Over the Edge as my starting point. it turns out that the first song, the title track, is one of the greatest songs of all time, and it only gets better the louder its played. then it turned out the two tracks that follow it are nearly as good and also sound good at deafening volumes. i air-guitared and air-gripped the mic and air-drummed the living daylights out of myself, and my dog got really interested and thought i was playing. we ended up play wrestling and moshing for a good 20 minutes. it's a weird moment to take headphones off and be covered in sweat and sudden silence. but really, that was my top 2017 musical moment, getting way the fuck into Wipers on some random night by myself.

sorry to humble air-drum brag but it's really fun to air-drum when you actually know how to play drums. it's easy to imagine actually BEING the drummer, the heat and momentum building up, the frenzied fills and growing exhaustion by the third song, the relentless pace, reaching up to his the crash. there's really nothing like it. except, er, playing real drums with a band, i guess

^^^ it's fun both when you know how to play the drums and when you don't i think, but i'll say i enjoy air drumming a lot more since learning

1) Having my friend Rob Pursey over for our monthly club night at Paul’s Boutique in Oslo.
2) Listening to Robbo Ranx’ dancehall show on Mixcloud on the way home from work every friday.