Records and My Ramblings Thereon
by Marc Hirsh
Some people keep a journal. I do this instead.
These are unchanged from when they were written, although a few are noticeably different (or not) from when they were originally published, a result of my disagreeing with editorial license (which was usually more an issue of available space than anything else). If you've got a serious problem with it, you've probably read The Rice Thresher a lot more closely than I ever did. In any event, I've only cleaned up obvious typos, leaving things like misinformation, hasty and/or dumb pronouncements, poor analogical judgement and just plain boneheadedness in plain sight for everybody to see in perpetuity. I've also left well enough alone, with one minor stylistic explanation and one major exception which I really needed to explain and apologize for. I'll leave it for you to ferret them out.
And yes, I occasionally recycle myself when I recap for the year-end stuff. So don't bother telling me.
Also check out:
...not to mention this guy , who would like to offer a well-taken rebuttal.
I got into the habit of coming up with my never-asked-for but somehow always-appreciated year-end best-of fairly early on, and my friend George inadvertantly encouraged it with his similar Burger King Crown Lists (references to which you will find scattered throughout). They've been getting increasingly involved as the years go on and I find myself more and more opinionated.
A note about missing years: if you've made it this far, you'll see that there's nothing before 1992 and 1994 and 1995 have gone missing. The fact is, I didn't start this nonsense until 1991, but that list is lost to the mists of USENET, as I was young and foolish enough not to make my own copy (my pick for top album that year was Julian Cope's Peggy Suicide ). My 1995 list was, similarly, emailed to one person and one person only, and if he still has it, he ain't talking (best album: Evil Stig's Evil Stig ). 1994 is more complicated but can be boiled down, essentially, to my being out of the country (the U.S., that is) and therefore I: a) wasn't really in the same musical universe as everybody else and b) not really paying attention to my obsessive listing at the time. So get over it.
2007 Retrospectrometer
2006 Retrospectacular
2005 Retrospectrola
2004 Retrospectravision
2003 Retrospeculator
2002 Retrospectrum
2001 Retrospectacle
2000 Retrospectator
1999 Retrospectual
1998 Retrospectionary
1997 Restrospecticon
1996 Retrospecticus
1993 Best
1992 Best