Music & More

Photo courtesy of the artist Welcome to my happily old fashioned list of the best albums of 2022. I'm old fashioned in the sense that I'm a holdout for the idea that the full length album is still an art form. For me, the album is still the thing, as you'll see on my list (below).  The music industry was altered by Covid in so many ways that in 2022 it seemed as if the forces were retooling to resume some kind of new normalcy going forward. A lot of good music was recorded and released. My cut down picks for the thirty best albums of the year was as fraught as any prior year with so many records wanting to be on that list. So, go to the streaming service of your choice and spin these albums while you read a few remarks about why, in my estimation, they are the best releases of the year.   Album of the Year: Joan Osborne - Radio Waves Nevermind that she hit it out of the park on her first try with the album Relish in 1995. Joan Osborne's reputation as a songwriter was c

  Welcome to the new Christmas releases for 2022. There are some really good ones this year. I am always amazed by the resiliency of the Christmas repertoire. Even though we may have heard the same songs hundreds of times, they still have the capacity to delight us. The artists who go out on a limb to write new music occasionally come up big.  I was in the viewing audience when CBS debuted their first animated special featuring Charlie Brown and his friends, A Charlie Brown Christmas . At the age of twelve, I was more interested in the characters and the groundbreaking story than the conjunction of Christmas music and jazz. I knew right away that this special truly was, and that it knocked it out of the park in every possible way. In those days, there was no cable tv, no streaming, and no such thing as home video. Specials were only shown once a year, at most.  I still remember hearing the actual soundtrack LP for the first time. The album by the Vince Guaraldi Trio blew me away then,