Favorite Live Music 2012

This tells a much different story from the records I've been listening to this year. It's much more heavy on rock and it tells the story of Ace of Cups (opened very late summer last year) really coming into its own with Jeff Kleinman's booking. 6 1/2 out of 20 shows that spoke to me enough to list here happened there. Looking at the track I kept, 35 shows out of the 115 I saw this year were there. A lot of money and a lot of nights almost all well-spent, all at least worth taking the chance on.Obviously this is cyclical and a vacuum never lasts...

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Favorite Records, 2012

This was an odd year for recorded music for me. It wasn't until I was looking over everything I listened to that I realized how many great records I heard this year. Very few of them fell under the rock rubric but this list could have been twice as long and I'd still be cursing leaving things off. It depresses me that this is overly white and overly male but that's not on anyone but me. I need to make sure my ears are open.Black Swans, Occasion for Song - Lots of records made me come up short this year, short on description of the depth of feeling...

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