The Year In Records

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I like records. A lot. Listening to records beats streaming. The analog sound isn't quantitatively superior to digital, but I listen better to a record than to a stream. Put an album on and I'm there, really there, for the duration.

I picked up thirty-seven albums this year, mostly used, but a few are brand new pressings of brand new albums. Here's the 2019 rundown:

I've listened to Genesis since seventh grade and have almost completed the collection with Wind & Wuthering, Trespass, ...And Then There Were Three, Swelled And Spent (a bootleg of the The Lamb), Three Sides Live (Import) and Phil Collins' solo album, Face Value which works better as a whole record instead of individual songs.

My favorite albums in middle school were Supertramp's Even In The Quietest Moments... and Crime Of The Century, perfect examples of eighties pop. You don't get much better than "Fools Overture." Just handling these albums feels like the best kind of time travel.

I bought Steely Dan's Gold to have a vinyl copy "FM (No Static At All)" and "Babylon Sisters" on an album better than the one on which it originally appeared.

In high school, I avoided Bruce Springsteen because he was too popular, but I got over that and this year bought Nebraska, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., Darkness On The Edge Of Town, and the brand new Western Stars which, to my ear, is one of his best.

I didn't even know that Lou Reed's New York, one of the best rock and roll albums ever, came out on vinyl, but there it was in the bin. You bet I snagged it.

I grabbed some oldies too. Paul McCartney's Tug Of War (which isn't all that old), Glen Campbell's Greatest Hits (which my wife forbids playing in her presence), Stevie Wonder's Innervisions and Randy Newman's eponymous first album (both brilliant though very differently so).

There aren't many better songwriters than Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case, and The Decemberists. Illinois, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, and The Hazards Of Love represent some of their best work.

I can't get enough of old jazz like Getz/Gilberto #2, Vince Guaraldi Trio's Jazz Impressions Of Black Orpheus, Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers_, and Cannonball Adderly's, Something' Else. I'm especially devoted to the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Paul Desmond, so I picked up the Quartet's _Time In, Brandenburg Gate: Revisited, Jazz Impressions Of The U.S.A., and Desmond's Bossa Antigua and First Place Again.

Jazz fusion such as Jean-Luc Ponty's Aurora, Andy Summers & Robert Fripp's I Advance Masked, and Al Di Meola's Casino reminds me of record shopping at Spectrum and Desert Shore on the Syracuse University Hill back before I could drive. That Centro bus ride home felt endless with new records in hand.

Brand new jazz this year included The Bad Plus' Activate Infinity and the absolutely spectacular Finding Gabriel by Brad Mehldau. Nonesuch released Mehldau's best solo piano performanceLive In Tokyo on vinyl and sent me a sampler album too. Sweet.

A pretty good year for records, but then, any analog year is pretty good. On to 2020!

Without intending to buy any more records in 2019, on December 30, at Barnes & Noble I found The Decemberists' I'll Be Your Girl for fifty-percent off. I couldn't pass that up and so now it's thirty-eight albums for the year. That's one better than thirty-seven, in case you hadn't noticed.