[Photo by KMazur/WireImage]With Super Bowl XLVII (47) upon us and a performance from Beyonce and Destiny's Child pending, it's time to go to the videotape and determine with scientific accuracy who was very good and who was very bad. For the record, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were 'Very Bland' and The Who were 'Very Old.'

And here's where I suggested who should play the Super Bowl after viewing the Who's olden performance…so far, the Super Bowl Honchos have taken up my idea for the Black Eyed Peas, but that still leaves nine more!

Ten Performers Who Could Play The Super Bowl

We don't count performances before the modern era, which began with 1991's nod to New Kids On the Block. Previous to their performance, the Super Bowl halftime show featured a lot of marching bands and performances from Up With People!, who may have done a wonderful job in 1982 with their "Salute to the 1960s and Motown" or in 1986 with their "Beat of the Future" but I don't want to encourage those kinds of choices in the future. Especially when many legends are still potentially semi-living. We need David Bowie, not Up With People's "Tribute to Sexually Ambiguous Rockers of the 1970s."

Let's all be grateful that there won't be any more tributes to the Big Band Era, now that its fans are either dead or in places where they're not in control of the TV remote. Laugh all you want, but it comes to us all.

Unlike so many publications that start making up their annual "best of" lists sometime in late September, I pride myself with procrastinating until the year is over. I don't profess to have heard every new album released last year. Nor do I try. I limit the new data input to the point where I still feel optimistic at the end of the day and not beaten down by a sense of duty. I don't think music listening should be like an all-you-can-eat-buffet. I need time to digest what I've heard. However, if I make a meaningful emotional connection with a musical one-night-stand, then that's cool, too. It's why I write things down.

I like to do things in lists of 25. Keeps it simple. Keeps it regular. It's in my contract. Do I remember all 25 of these albums? Absolutely not. But that's because my memory is not what it once was. It's why I write things down. I should also admit there are technically two releases here that came from my list of potentials in the first half of the year. They made more of an impression on me between July 12 and the third week of October.

For the record, I don't think anyone would like more than a few of these. I'd worry if we agree on too much. Just look at all the awful things people say about me.

Note: Folks, we're running out of time here! 2013 will be upon us and a whole new bunch of old years will be celebrating important anniversaries! I didn't want anyone thinking I didn't care. We now join this ridiculously ill conceived blog already in progress…

…and that was how ol' 'Fat Wax' McGillicuddy died in my arms on New Year's Eve, dreaming of hot dogs and Proust.

You could say 2002 started poorly. We were still freaked out about 9-11 and anthrax letters and it took years to feel something resembling normal. The music business was on its own death trip, hurriedly calculating how many ways it could shoot itself in the foot, heart and head and surrender to irrelevancy without a real fight. The fractures of the 1970's mass audience had turned into full-on dismemberment, with the foot bone having no effect on what was happening with the arm bone (I flunked doctor school) by the 1980s and 1990s, when adult music critics pretended to like, get this, Eric Clapton albums named August and Journeyman! It was like he was daring you to like them. Why not Hack! you might ask?

By 2002, everything was in pieces, all junked into strict stylistic boxes that few people bothered to rummage through anymore. It had only been a few years earlier when a girl got in my face about not liking Tool! By 2002, she was likely married, pregnant and thinking about a career in corporate communications.

The list below is a cross-section of stuff that got released within the calendar year of 2002. The stuff that passed my sniffer as being "pretty good" probably got heard by a couple dozen people. I know younger folks like to imagine a world without 'boomers,' but I have to wonder if anyone will be performing to any notable audience at 70 years old. I mean, of course, once Dave Grohl inevitably dies.

Is Rihanna all we have to look forward to in our retirement communities? Maybe Lady Gaga will do a little soft shoe?