...It's been a long year. I took a leave from my CHIRP show. My dad got sick and died. I crashed my car. My second son was born. I didn't think I'd get to write one of these this year, but thanks to a last-minute deadline extension, I do, and for that I'm grateful. I can hear the baby stirring in his bassinet; by the time I finish this, it'll be time to feed him, and commence another winter night's tasks. I'm not getting much sleep tonight. I'm not getting much sleep at all these days. We're 23 hours from the new year as I write this, and all I want for 2025 is boredom. Through all that, I listened to over 300 records in 2024, the best of which I'll carry into next year as mementos, as trophies, as badges that say "Somehow, we made it." Take a look today, and maybe tomorrow, then get ready. A fresh year of records starts this week. Who's going to listen to them if not us?
Throughout December, CHIRP Radio presents its volunteers’ top albums of 2024. Our next list is from DJ Peter Buckshot.
2024. A year that historians will point at with some scrutiny for some reason or another. A year in which my son can string together a sentence like "On Skibidi I'm about to crash out on you" and I'm somehow able to translate it as if I am also a 10 year old boy. A year in which I listened to these 10 albums that I truly enjoyed and resonated with on some pseudo-spiritual level.
First, my methodology, in an attempt to improve my recollective abilities since trying to assemble my “best of” for 2023: This year, beginning in November, I went through all the LPs and EPs that CHIRP had added to our on-air new music “Rotation,” beginning in January 2024. I assembled a playlist of 1-15 tracks per album (depending on if I had all of the songs, or just a sampling of two or three tracks). I originally had a playlist that was well over two thousand songs and about seven days’ worth of material. As of 12/28/2024, I had cut it down to (or expanded, depending on what I had also stumbled upon since) to 1,846 songs and just under a length of five days. I sorted this playlist alphabetically by artist (in the hopes (soon dashed) that no artist had two releases in 2024). I then started listening to all of the songs, deleting the songs from albums that I knew would not make the cut. Two days before the deadline, I was still deep in the weeds in the letter C. Only 23 more letters to go, yay! If there’s some bizarre focus on acts that begin with the letters A, B, or C, blame the alphabet, and not me. My rules for inclusion: no tributes, no greatest hits, no reissues, no records I didn't at hear all the way through at least once (which means a lot got left behind-- sorry).
Throughout December,