Looking back through the archives, I see it’s been a few years since I really did a “Best Music I Heard Last Year” article, and that’s a shame, ’cause I really enjoy doing them – almost as much as the music itself. But it takes a lot of time to put something like this together and once I get going on one my editorial instincts go out the window and they become untenable, unfinishable beasts. And thats what you had here in the last few weeks… I started my “Best of 2008″ and realized that I hadn’t done a Best Music I Heard This Year for 2007… and that lead me into a wider discussion of How To (or How I) Criticize Music. Somehow both of those got done and here we are now, 2008…

The year…2008. A year of much car listening for me (and Kelly), travelling to and from races. A lot of personal growth for both Kelly and I eventually culminating in her completing the biggest challenge of her young life and we both taking first big step to the biggest challenge of them all – parenthood. Perhaps viewed relative to those things, the music got lost – dwarfed a bit, but perhaps it was just a down year. I didn’t sense the same profound leaps in sound that I saw in 2007 – just a lot of good-to-great music that was just a step or two removed from the everyday. This band sounded like that band but with just a little twist thrown in. Perhaps it’s just the quiet before a loud and roaring storm?

It was a good year with a number of albums that I dearly loved, but my general feeling was that the market was down from the high that I saw in 2007. And the good news is that the market for sound always rebounds… more after the jump.

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slugger, originally uploaded by michellej.

Love this photo from Michelle over at Consuming Louisville. Perhaps I’m just pining for baseball?

Brace yourselves for massive cuteness!!! Bocephus J. Honeycutt III curls up with the Kelly-Belly.

We made the slippy-slidey trek out on the streets this morning and had another ultrasound done with a very dear family friend (Melinda S.) who needed a preggo guinea pig for her new ultrasound machine! It spits out photos and movie clips onto a thumbdrive or a CD… but who cares about that, right?!  It’s A GIRL! IT’S A GIRL!!!!!

Say hello to…

Amelia Brockman Wilson

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Did you see the little baby hand open and close? That kills me!

Didn’t get any stills of the nether-regions of the baby – too excited to remember! It was a tough thing to get to – Melinda was shakin’ Kelly’s belly to get the little baby inside to move around. It took a little while but Melinda saw “the good” and conferred with the guy there to set up the machine… and they agreed! It’s a girl! Melinda says she’s never got one wrong.

By the way, the Volkswagen Routan Babymaker 3000 says she’ll look something like this:

Amelia, if the VW Routan Babymaker is correct...

Weight, that is!

Cue ominous music… A SEDENTARY lifestyle led this man to WEIGH 1000 POUNDS!

But… I don’t weight 1000 pounds, in fact, I’m pretty average.

NO you aren’t, TUBBY! Your BMI is in the “FAT” range!

Well, yeah, but that’s just a guideline. What’ I’m really doing is…

…SO HE TURNED TO THE LATEST IN FAD DIETS – PERHAPS THE CABBAGE SQUEEZIN’ DIET or the ALL BACON DIET…

Hey! No! It’s not that at all. Let me explain:

Two years ago I weighed 180 pounds, give or take a daily fluctuation. In the intervening two years, I’ve been “moderately active”, running two Louisville Triple Crown series and two Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathons, a handful of triathlons and other local running races. In the last year, I’ve started cycling a fair amount (I did likely 1000-1500 miles in 2008) while helping my wife train for the Ironman, learned to swim decently, started going to gym regularly, joined a cycling team and commuted to work via bike every day in October.

My weight after those two years? 180 pounds. No foolin’! I intend to get to the bottom of that – to understand the why and wherefore of this machine I call a body. more after the jump…

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The year was 2007… I listened to a lot of music, but didn’t write so much about it, and for that I am remiss. In writing my “Best of 2008″ post I realized that much of the music I was listening to I had listened to in 2007. Perhaps a sad critique on the 2008 season, I’m not sure, but in any case, here goes. Listed after the jump below you’ll find some selected reviews of albums that I heard in 2007.

Add one to my “all-time favorites”, a few to the “I could listen to them anytime list” and a few from years gone by…

If this is your first time ’round with me, I would recommend reading my prior “Best Of” posts and also suffer my treatise on how I criticize music, otherwise soldier on…

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This was going to be a part of my not-quite-so-annual-anymore “Best Music I Heard This Year” series, but it got so large and gangly that it broke itself out of the 2008/2007 post and landed here…

If there is one thing that this blog has taught me (aside from imposing some editorial control on my self) is how and what makes good criticism. It’s all well and fine to say to my self, in my own head “this is good” or “this is not good” without much back-and-forth because I, being my own audience, understand me pretty well.  Not so on the blog side, though – as my audience (you, dear reader) will require a further explanation.

So, suffice it to say that I’ve done a fair amount of cypherin’ and ruminating on the subject – so here are some thoughts on how I listen to, criticize and then report on music. Read on after the jump…

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