As I read so many 2022 best/favorite album lists, I think back to my early years in Murray Hill. I was writing for Musician magazine. There was an annual ‘unsigned band’ contest, and zillions of cassettes poured into the publication’s mailroom. I, along with several other contributing editors, volunteered to take boxes of these home and listen to them, siphoning them down to a group of ten. Then each writer’s top 10 were put into the pot and siphoned further. Musicians are dedicated. They bare their souls to the masses. They will be ‘Slave(s) To the Rhythm’ (the image of Grace Jones singing this song while walking a runway spinning a hula hoop for the duration comes to mind). These cassettes came with bios and backgrounds, many handwritten, from all over the country. The process of whittling this mountain of music down to one band was in many ways random: what if I had received a different box of tapes? You get the picture.
End of year pick
End of year pick
End of year pick
As I read so many 2022 best/favorite album lists, I think back to my early years in Murray Hill. I was writing for Musician magazine. There was an annual ‘unsigned band’ contest, and zillions of cassettes poured into the publication’s mailroom. I, along with several other contributing editors, volunteered to take boxes of these home and listen to them, siphoning them down to a group of ten. Then each writer’s top 10 were put into the pot and siphoned further. Musicians are dedicated. They bare their souls to the masses. They will be ‘Slave(s) To the Rhythm’ (the image of Grace Jones singing this song while walking a runway spinning a hula hoop for the duration comes to mind). These cassettes came with bios and backgrounds, many handwritten, from all over the country. The process of whittling this mountain of music down to one band was in many ways random: what if I had received a different box of tapes? You get the picture.