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?

Read More »from 2002 — What We Thought Was The End of The World Was Just A Bad New World Getting Started!

Once upon a time before this newfangled internet put us all in touch with one another on an alarming basis, young people used music to communicate their dreams and desires, to plot the revolution and to tell each other what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. By 1972, accepted wisdom says the party of the 1960s was in clean-up mode and while there is certainly a less optimistic tone to the music of 1972, it isn't as if musicians suddenly turned to regurgitating their classic albums on stage or reissuing their entire catalog with remastered sound and extra photos. No, there was still work to do.

Here are 25 choices from 1972, picked in a random, absolute order that says more about my cut-and-paste skills/ laziness than you'd like to believe.

Read More »from 1972: Forty Years Gone! Music — The First Internet!

Every Halloween it's time to dig up music that accentuates the holiday. Those of us with extensive Norwegian Death Metal collections simply put that catalog on repeat and blitz out for days.

But for those of us whose musical tastes vary wildly, I thought I'd throw together a beautifully random list of names that would make your Halloween quite enjoyable and festive. There are literally hundreds of artists who could make this list. But it's important to set limits. Be sure to write in your own personal faves for Halloween in the space generously provided by the technicians here at Y! Music. We're all about the service!

Halloween is a time for sharing. I'll let you have my candy corn if you'll give me your peanut butter cup! (Why does that sound so…dirty?)

10) My Bloody Valentine: Sure, you could find more obvious choices like Rob Zombie or Alice Cooper or Kiss, for that matter, but not everyone likes to be hit over the head with such pandering. We get it, you're scary! I'd

Read More »from Creepy Music For Halloween, the Creepiest Holiday Ever!

1992 was a year when most people didn't own a computer. You had one at work. Your phone was in your house and MTV still played videos. In fact, they were playing very different videos from the ones they were playing just a year and a half earlier. "Generation X" was a term that saw actual use -- seriously by aging pundits and ironically by the kids!

Were things better in 1992? I certainly felt better.

Read More »from 1992, Part 2: Once Upon A Time There Were Records For The Children To Buy…