Some Other Good Stuff From 2005

Concerts Of The Year:

Fine, we lied. The rest of these lists aren’t ranked, but this was definitely The Show Of The Year. From the moment the ’secret’ Strokes tour was announced, 100b obsessed over getting tickets. We never actually imagined that we would. It took 7 hours standing in the freezing cold and a lot of hope, but we did it. And it was more than worth the trouble. We saw The Strokes in 2003 at Amsterdam’s Heineken Music Hall, a venue over 9 times bigger than the Melkweg’s small hall, and it was fantastic. But this show - it blew away all memories of that dumb ole 2003 show. We’d never been part of anything that was such an event. We read the reports from the other shows - the “VIPs” filling the venues, rather than the fans who were willing to stand in line all night. But that didn’t seem to be the case in Amsterdam, the crowd appearing to be at least 90% actual fans. The intense anticipation and excitement of the audience, combined with The Strokes insanely energetic performance made this the single best night of the whole damn year.

Oh, and it was fun to see that loser from MTV (Holland) get told off by The Strokes’ enormous security guy for filming without permission. Tee hee.

We managed to agree on which shows belonged on this list, just not on the order. (Which should explain why we haven’t ranked them.) 100b goes to a lot of concerts (we go see just about anyone who passes through these parts), but these are the ones that really left us speechless. There’s no real need to go into why - you should just go check them out for yourself and you’ll see what we’re talking about.

Tracks Of The Year:

Bright Eyes, “When The President Talks To God”
Kanye West, “Golddigga”
Devendra Banhart, “I Feel Just Like A Child”
Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback”
Eels, “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)”
Kaiser Chiefs, “I Predict A Riot”
Arctic Monkeys, “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor”
M.I.A., “Bucky Done Gun”
The Go! Team, “Ladyflash”
Babyshambles, “Fuck Forever”
LCD Soundsystem, “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”
Weezer, “Beverly Hills”

(Video and/or audio are available for all these tracks via the links provided.)

This should really be called the Tracks Of The Year That Aren’t Already Covered By Our Best Albums Lists list. Mostly, they’re just really great songs - great pop, great rap, great indie, great funky hippie folk. If you made a CD (or playlist, for those Pod people out there), it would be one hell of a mix. I personally would like to give some special attention to Bright Eyes’ “When The President Talks To God”. As insane as it will sound to some people outside of the States (or not from the States), recording this song was a really brave and gutsy thing for Conor Oberst to do. (Not to mention singing it on nationwide television.) A lot of entertainment industry folk have spoken out about the Bush administration, but barely anyone has dared to be this blunt. Most of the recent protest songs hide behind vague concepts like peace and freedom. They make you feel good to be on the same side, but when the anger drips off Conor Oberst’s voice, he makes you feel like it’s actually worth trying to change things.

Honorable Mention Albums:

•  Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Howl
•  The Boy Least Likely To, The Best Party Ever
•  Kaiser Chiefs, Employment
•  Babyshambles, (First) ½ of Down In Albion
•  The A-Sides, Hello, Hello

These are just some albums that are definitely worth your time, but didn’t quite make it into either of our lists for one reason or another.

So we conclude our list of lists celebrating the brilliant music given to us all in 2005. And it begins again, with (hopefully) another year of exciting new music to discover in 2006.