February brought (slightly) better weather, some great music, some good books, an incredible concert, and quite a few lovely weekend walks capped off with a perfect beer. And we were able to celebrate Valentine’s Day and my mom’s (long-deserved) retirement.
February 2024
The year started by throwing a few wrenches our way. The wind and ice storm shut down the city for a few days, but at least we kept power the whole time. This led to a lot of nights sitting by the fire with warm drinks and catching up on some long overdue reading. Not a bad way to spend a winter evening.
And the music year started off strong.
Let’s hope for less chaotic weather in February.
January 2024
Brian Fallon has long been one of my favorite lyricists, with dozens of classics under his belt, but there’s a line on the new Gaslight Anthem album that I keep running over and over in my head. Midway through “Autumn” he sings, “I wish I could do my life over, I’d be young better now,” and that lyric has haunted me ever since I first heard it. Such a damning description of growing older, looking back at life, and reflecting on the passing of time. At its core, ‘History Books’ feels like an album full of reflection, rejuvenation, and grace. It’s an album I was unsure we’d ever get, but one that sits proudly alongside the band’s storied catalog.
Sitting here by the fire on another Sunday evening, music softly playing, and thinking about a future where I’ll look back on today as when I was younger. I find it easier to start each week with that as my perspective.
My favorite albums of 2023.
As a whole, I loved music in 2023. I loved how many bands that I’ve followed for years released albums that felt like incredible additions to their catalog. I loved how many new artists I discovered. I loved all the time I spent with music both old and new. And, perhaps most importantly, I loved the way music weaved its way through my year, providing a memorable soundtrack to the passing months.
The Stats: I listened to over 14,470 songs this year (29,840 scrobbles), 988 different artists, and 2,081 different albums. My most played artist was Blink-182, and my most played album was One More Time…, because, of course.
Well, it’s that time of the year again. I’ve been putting together a list of my favorite albums of the year since at least 2005, and 2023 was one of the most jam-packed I can remember. Not only did I listen to more music than ever before, but I found the quality of new releases week-to-week to be engaging and exciting. Discovering new gems and being more than impressed with the output from old favorites.
You can subscribe to my newsletter if you’re interested in a weekly rundown of the music and other entertainment I consume, and the staff compiled best of 2023 list can be found here.
Read More “Jason Tate’s Top Albums of 2023” 2023 was absolutely S-T-A-C-K-E-D from top to bottom with some incredible music from so many talented artists. Below is a collection of my favorite albums (which include several EPs, for the first time on my year-end list, because I adored them so much), a separate call out for EPs, a playlist of my favorite songs, the best concerts I attended, my favorite books I read during the year, as well as my favorite interviews I conducted. Also, be sure to check out my favorite movies and TV shows that kept my attention in 2023. I wish all of you a very happy New Year, and I’m thrilled to spend another year with everyone on this site and in the forums.
Read More “Adam Grundy’s Top Albums of 2023”
Sometimes, the things you love leave you. Sometimes, those things come back.
Musically, 2023 for me was a year defined by the things I got back. Six of the 30 albums listed below were made by artists or bands I thought would never release music again. All six were artists who played key roles in extremely formative moments of my life; then they all went dormant for extended periods of time. Three of the six had been out of action for a decade or longer; one’s been gone for 23 years. Getting all six back – plus a few other long-awaited returns not represented on this list – felt like a little gift from the music gods, and made 2023 feel so special. There’s a Dawes song I love that goes, “May all your favorite bands stay together.” 2023’s blessing, for me, was more like “May all your favorite bands get back together.”
2023 was also the year that I wandered back out into the live music world, after being extremely hesitant about doing so in 2021 and 2022. While that post-pandemic return to normal didn’t come without its costs – I definitely contracted COVID-19 at a Taylor Swift concert – it felt so wonderful and so life affirming to be a part of a deafeningly-loud audience again. Getting that sensation back in 2023 – and having a couple of my very favorite concert experiences ever along the way – was a gift of its own.
So, here’s to getting things back, whether that’s the bands you love or the kinds of communal live music experiences you weren’t sure you’d ever have again. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the past five years, it’s to never, ever take anything for granted, and I tried to instill that spirit into the making of this list. To quote yet another Dawes lyric, “Most people don’t talk enough about how lucky they are.” Most people also don’t talk enough about why they love the music they love, so here’s 30 albums from 2023 that I love – and more importantly, the “why.”
Read More “Craig Manning’s Top Albums of 2023” Man, what a year. It was dominated by Taylor Swift and I wrote one of my favorite pieces about attending two stops of The Eras Tour. I attended Furnace Fest for the third year in a row, but didn’t write about it this time. It’s been a tough year with a lot of loss. But music has really helped me through. It’s been the year of the EP, with some absolute juggernauts represented below including as my AOTY. Gonna share some of my favorite songs of the year interspersed with their albums. Definitely check them out if you haven’t. Happy New Year!
Read More “Garrett Lemons’ Top Albums of 2023”And that’s a wrap for 2023.
All the stats are totaled. My most played albums of the year are on slide two, and we’ll post our end of the year features on January 8th on the website. 🥂
It’s always one of my favorite times of the year, but this year felt extra special. I’ve loved each evening when the lights turned on and slowly filled the house with gold.
A wonderful December with friends, family, and the two cats. We ate lots of good food, our annual Christmas party had all sorts of fun news and life changes from our friends, and we attempted ice skating for the first time in over a decade. And, of course, we listened to a lot of Christmas music.
December 2023
I’ve been trying to remind myself to take photos during the month so I have something to share at the end of it. November is always one of my favorite months of the year. Our wedding anniversary starts it while Thanksgiving and decorating for Christmas act as a perfect bookend. (And I see holiday music getting some extra plays this week has already started to creep into my most played albums of the month.)
November 2023
Congratulations to @blink182 on another number one album! My two variants have arrived and I’m just as happy with them as I am the album itself. Beyond my wildest dreams of what I could have hoped for when we heard Tom was coming back.
My full review is up on the website and the feedback has been a little overwhelming. Thank you to everyone for the kind words and for sharing with me how much this band has meant to you over the years. I had a good feeling I wasn’t the only one that felt the way I did, that grew up with blink-182 and experienced much of life soundtracked by their music.
With October coming to an end, I realize how little I’ve posted here over the past year. Not for lack of record buying. 😬 I guess I should try and step that up over the next few months and share some of the new additions.
#blink-182 #blink182 #vinyl
I wrote about @blink182’s new album and what the band has meant to me over the years at chorus.fm.
Call it a review, an essay, a love letter, or just a mess of words trying to work out how this band helped shape our lives.
Yes, I know it’s long. But when I sit down to write I always want the outcome to be something I’m proud of, and when I started writing this, so many different feelings started to bubble. It wasn’t long until I knew I needed it to exist.
The written album “review” barely seems to be a thing these days but they still matter to me. Soon I fear it’ll all be ChatGPT looking “summaries” and hot take reaction videos. But I tried to distill my history and musical journey, and put that into context with the band and their new music. And that matters to me too. My whole thing, from the start, is that I’ve wanted to treat this genre seriously when no one else did.
I’ve been writing this for a while. I hope you can relate. If not with this specific band, to one that’s changed your life.
Chorus.fm gets updated with new features regularly. All of the latest fixes and updates are tracked below. The website announcement thread is also updated with new changes, so you can follow that thread to be notified of updates.
Blink-182 performed two nights at Coachella as their first two shows back after reuniting with Tom DeLonge. I wrote about what the first performance meant to me in my newsletter:
Last night, Blink-182 returned to the stage to perform with Tom DeLonge for the first time in almost eight years. And the return at Coachella was live-streamed on YouTube. While I feel awful for the fans that had their shows postponed due to Travis’s injury, this being the return, to a massive hometown crowd and the entire thing being streamed so that fans across the globe could experience it together … was such a perfect treat. I texted a few friends to let them know it was happening, sat down on the couch, and experienced a new Blink-182 memory that I’ll carry with me for years to come with a whole bunch of fans in the Blink-182 thread on Chorus. It was an incredible evening. The band sounded as good as I think I’ve ever heard them with Tom. Mark sounded incredible. Tom sounded like he wanted to be there. Travis was an animal behind the kit. Seeing the smiles on the band’s faces, seeing how happy Mark was, and hearing the banter back and forth again was everything I could have hoped for. I sat there with a stupid grin on my face. Just an hour of being happy. An hour of hearing some of my favorite songs being played by one of my favorite bands and getting to nerd out with a bunch of like-minded fans just losing our shit like it was 2001. There’s a magic this band has always had that just hits different. A mixture of fun times with band members that we’ve grown up emulating and songs that we’ve spent countless hours listening to. And for those of us they’ve infected, it’s been an almost lifelong obsession now. Last night was a beautiful entry into the pantheon of Blink memories. With all the band drama, the health scares, and the years adding up on all of us, to see the band at this level deliver on that stage, with all of us experiencing it together, was truly special. Maybe it’s because I turned 40 a few weeks back. Perhaps it’s a combination of the collective trauma of the past few years. Or maybe it’s just an elder emo being over dramatic on a Friday evening, but I couldn’t help but be a little choked up seeing this all play out. The adoration for the songs that have meant so much to me over my life, the happiness radiating from the stage, and the shared experience with other Blink fans, was one more addition to the scrapbook of memories I’ve had with Blink-182. And they absolutely crushed it. Blink-182 for life.
Being able to experience this show, with other fans, really captured how much being a Blink-182 fan means to me and how the fanbase really is a wonderful community. I’m not usually a big bootleg, or even live album, listener. However, these two shows were so much fun to experience, and were two of the best performances I’ve heard from the band in ages, that I felt like they should live for posterity for all fans to experience over and over again.
I used the highest quality rip of the performance I could find, a direct from source download. Then I cut the files up into individual tracks, using The Mark, Tom, and Travis model of where to put the dialog and splice the songs. And then I used my, admittedly very novice, audio engineering skills to “master” the files in Logic Pro. I tried to clean up the audio the best I could, removing extra artifacts, trying to reduce the audible “hiss” that permeated weekend two’s vocals, and giving the entire thing a more clean and punchy EQ. It’s edited to my personal taste in what my ears find pleasing. Then I raised the volume to better match what I expect an album to sound like, and avoid any clipping, and exported all the tracks as 320 kbps MP3s.
I added the awesome artwork done by Danyel Saldanha Evangelista and am now sharing the entire thing with other Blink fans. Please feel free to share these as I believe everything deserves more Blink in their life. And, I’m crossing my fingers no one gets too mad at me for sharing live bootleg audio only files.
Y’all can keep the videos for your YouTube channel, let us share and experience the audio!
UPDATE • Apr 28, 2023Welp, Coachella’s lawyers are a bunch of party poopers:
God forbid people want to enjoy something and actually have a positive feeling about your festival. 🙄
Read More “Blink-182 Live at Coachella Bootleg”
