So a few months ago, we signed my favorite band in the whole wide world (no joke) — Norma Jean.
In all seriousness, their music has played a HUGE part in my life through very difficult times.
But back to the rocking. The first NJ jam I heard was “Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste,” from the debut album Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child. Most (but not me) say it’s their best song (so far), but regardless it’s the one that got me hooked on the band from the get-go. Singer Cory Brandon put it well at their last show when he said,
We’ve never not played this song! Rrrrrrrr………
I know, right? Amazing.
I got to fly down to Atlanta in October to hang out with my favorite band for a whole day. YEAH. I hardly slept the night before, and it was quite difficult to be the slynam from their new label and not the slynam who absolutely loves their music. But of course, I did the latter most of the time anyway.
In December, NJ came to NY to play at the Blender Theatre. The gf was able to take some really great flip cam footage, check it all out below.
Easily the best show of my life thus far. But I’ve got many more Norma Jean shows to attend…
ALRIGHT! This is the first Top 10 list I’ve ever done, so bear with me here. I don’t even know how you really go about making it (so you might see some things that were released prior to 2009. Yes, that might defeat the whole purpose of a “Best of 2009″ list, so maybe consider this a “Albums/Tracks/Artists I Rocked Out To The Most In 2009.” I’m also going to cheat stick to my love of social networks and just go by my last.fm stats.…
TOPALBUMSOF 2009. Now I know what you might be thinking: “How the hell can you talk about listening to that much metal/screamo, but then have Owl City in your Top 5?” and you would be right. I have to tell you–I ran a whole bunch of errands one day and played his album on loop the whole time. It was PERFECT walking-around-NYC music. I was hooked. #10 was a big album for me in the last year, as was #4. I feel like #9 crept up there late in the game. #1 taught me that sometimes all you need are breakdowns, short transition riffs, more breadowns, and crabcore. Here’s the list, links are to Lala:
TOPTRACKSOF 2009. Okay, starting to get a bit more towards my well-publicized tastes in music. Now, my Top 10 (and 20) tracks of 2009 have several from the same artist, so to keep it interesting I omitted tracks if I had another track by the same artists with more scrobbles plays (still with me?). #10 was on BLAST after I saw them in February. I guess you could call #8 my indie jam of the year. I’m pretty sure #2 got all it’s plays in one day, after I heard them at Warped Tour and saw Adam sing upside down way up in the air. #1 is an awesome opening track to one of the best albums of the year. Here’s the list, and check the playlist at the bottom…
10. I Set My Friends on Fire — Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
TOPARTISTSOF 2009. There they are. These bands make the kind of music that, year in and year out, makes me want to straight up LIVE. I had the pleasure of seeing all of these bands perform more than once this year, and not surprisingly, they were some of the best shows I’ve ever been to (#3’s show on Dec 11 in NYC being the best!). #9 knows how to get down–but I really want some new tunes! I think #8, #7, and of course #4 all have their own genres. They did it first and the best. Okay enough, here they are, links are to myspace pages:
So that’s my first Top 10 / Best Of list. Now since I took these lists straight from last.fm scrobbles, they’re solely based on the number of times I listened to a track by a particular artist. So I have look at it this way: August Burns Red is my #1 artist for 2009 because I listened to more of their tracks than any other artist. Not necessarily based on me thinking they put out the best songs of 2009. However, I guess if I listened to them the most, they must be doing something right!
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