26. Fennesz: Endless Summer (Mego, 2001)
Finally, an album the Futurists would approve of! Arguably the first masterpiece of glitch electronica, which perturbs ambient flow with interjections of what sound like electronic mishaps (“glitches”), Endless Summer is mellow yet disturbing, a milestone in '00s’ electronica’s greater acceptance of more abstract, non-dance-oriented music that’s as avant-garde in intent and sound as anything the classical avant-garde has created (though often modern electronica artists are strongly influenced by the old-guard avant-gardists such as Pierre Schaeffer, Bernard Parmegiani, and Tod Dockstader). There’s actually a lot of variety on this album, ranging from the manipulated solo keyboard of “Before I Leave” (its vibrato beating quickly) to looped soft rock calling to mind the Beach Boys to looped drones that highlight the glitches’ rhythmic pattern in a quiet way. This particular Fennesz album is listed here because it was such a trendsetter, but I’m also quite partial to 2008’s Black Sea.

Ground rules: No compilations. Nothing recorded significantly earlier than 2000 but not released until the period under consideration. Albums on which artists re-record their hits are not considered, which also means no live albums unless they consist largely of new material. Genre definitions are the broadest; jazz and classical will be covered separately. Don’t take the order TOO seriously; while I’m absolutely sure that I prefer #1 more than #25, from day to day the order of the top 5, or any range of similar size, could completely reverse.

Vic Chesnutt, one of the greatest songwriters of our time and as charismatic a concert performer as Springsteen despite being confined to a wheelchair, committed suicide through an overdose of muscle relaxants. His tragic life was inextricably intertwined with his art. At age 18, driving drunk, a car crash left him paraplegic; never much of a reader before that, he started reading voraciously. He also began to take music-making much more seriously, and his reading eventually influenced his lyrics. His physical abilities varied from night to night; how well he functioned could determine his set lists, and for a while he played with his guitar pick superglued to his fingers.

Overcoming adversity, from 1990 through this year he had 14 albums released under his own name plus two as brute. in a collaboration with the band Widespread Panic.

The pregnancy hadn’t been an easy one. Due to her size and his shake, rattle & roll, the King’s mother thought she would have him around Christmas. But she didn’t go into labor until January 8, 1935. At her bedside were her husband, the midwife, and the doctor whose $15 delivery fee would be paid by the state of Mississippi.

Her husband, Vernon, had just finished building their shotgun shack with a $180 loan. He was a carpenter, a moonshiner, and 19 years old. Out in the yard that frosty, starlit, predawn Tupelo morning were the family chickens and their cow. After a long, hard labor, Gladys Presley delivered a stillborn child. A half hour later came his tiny live twin, Elvis.

When critics complain that it wasn’t a good year for music, I just think of how hard it was to narrow my best-of-the-year list down to twenty, though admittedly it wasn’t quite as much of a struggle this year as it’s occasionally been. In compensation, I especially enjoyed 2009 because the post-punk and shoegazer revivals are lasting much longer and bearing greater fruit than I ever would have guessed, with the post-punk crowd now reaching far beyond the simple-minded disco beats of The Rapture to instead mine the angular weirdness of more obscure late '70s/early '80s practitioners. And the Afrobeat revival, though largely a reissue-driven phenomenon, brought some thrilling surprises thanks to Strut’s collaborative Inspiration Information series, including my #1 choice that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the year’s offerings.

It was thirty years ago that newlyweds John Lennon and Yoko ran their holiday message to the world in a full-page New York Times ad: "GIVE PEACE A CHANCE." The couple also posted "WAR IS OVER! If You Want It" on billboards in eleven cities around the globe.

At the same time, an unseasonable war was escalating among the once harmonious Beatles. In September 1969, Lennon had told the others that he was breaking the group up. McCartney begged him to delay a public announcement so as not to jeopardize sales of their imminent release, Abbey Road. His songwriting partner begrudgingly agreed.

At the end of the month, John recorded what was to become his first solo holiday hit, "Cold Turkey," about his heroin withdrawal. In explaining his and Yoko’s addiction, he later told an interviewer, "We took H because of what the Beatles and others were doing to us."

We’re well into the holiday party season, and of course no party’s complete without music. Some of you will go with Christmas songs, but the funkier folks out there will want to get down while imbibing their eggnog. Here are seven new mix albums you can get down all night to.

Various Artists: Daptone Gold (Daptone)
This has popular album tracks, offering a good introduction to Brooklyn’s finest soul label, but it’s the outtakes and 45-only releases that are the real treat:

Zero Boys
Vicious Circle
History of the Zero Boys
(Secretly Canadian)

Recorded in 1981 by a bunch of Germs-idolizing hardcore kids in Indianapolis, Vicious Circle is a punk classic.

"The phony must die, says the Catcher in the Rye. Don't believe in John Lennon. Imagine John Lennon is dead, oh yeah, yeah, yeah!"

Mark David Chapman’s chant, overheard by his wife, days before the murder.

In his Sheraton Hotel suite, he stands at the bureau, carefully arranging an altar. To the left he places a snapshot of himself, smiling broadly, arms around Vietnamese refugee children at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Next to it, he lays down his YMCA supervisor’s hand-printed letter of praise for exemplary service. Behind these, he tapes to the mirror the Wizard of Oz poster he picked up downtown yesterday, the one of Dorothy wiping away the Cowardly Lion's tears before she taps her emerald slippers and returns to Kansas from Emerald City.

"For me, the lyrics are a… freedom to express my insanity. If the Iraqis aren't used to freedom, then I'm glad to be part of their exposure."

So said American patriot James Hetfield, Metallica’s frontman. At the time, his band's hit "Enter Sandman" was being used to soften suspected terrorists at Guantánamo. Defending its use in interrogations on the grounds of equal opportunity, the singer noted, "We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?"

Now, five years later, Hetfield seems to have changed his tune.

As the release schedule winds down for the year -- gotta get everything in the stores in advance of Thanksgiving -- there's been a flurry of excellent new albums appearing. Here are a few highlights, unconstrained by genre or order.

Brock Van Wey: White Clouds Drift On and On (Echospace)
Brock Van Wey is better known (and more prolific) as a dub techno artist under his pseudonym, Bvdub.

Harmonica virtuoso Norton Buffalo passed away last Friday, October 30, losing his brief battle with stage four metastasized lung cancer. Buffalo, who was diagnosed with the disease in September, performed throughout this summer, as he’d done for over 30 years, as a member of the Steve Miller Band, where he provided harp, vocal, and percussion. Miller would introduce him as his "partner in harmony."

Norton Buffalo was born in Oakland, CA to musically inclined parents -- his mother a nightclub singer, his father a harmonica player, and his great uncle an Academy Award-winning composer of music for the film The Wizard of Oz.

I was first introduced to Daniel Johnston's music four years ago when I lived in Los Angeles, taking my inaugural listen to Johnston’s 1994 release, Fun, while crashing on a buddy’s couch. One of my best friends had recently passed away and the song “Life in Vain” brought me a much needed sense of comfort at that moment in my life. I have since reserved a special place in my heart for that title and the unlikely rock star who composed it.

Daniel Dale Johnston was born in 1961 in Sacramento, CA. He spent most of his childhood in West Virginia, then later found his way to Texas, where he became an almost mythic rock legend during the music movement that started in Austin during the early 1980s.

Etienne Jaumet: Night Music (Domino)

After stints in Zombie Zombie, Married Monk, and Flop, French electronic producer Etienne Jaumet went solo two years ago; after some well-received 12"/EP releases, this is his first full-length album. He stands outside current trends, instead looking back on old styles and giving them his own spin.

The opening track, the 20-minute excursion "For Falling Asleep," suggests at first with its heavily pulsating beat a more emotive Kraftwerk circa Autobahn but then surprises with saxophones halfway through, pointing to earlier Krautrock influences, and at 14 minutes a brave abandonment of the previously insistent beat.

Manassas: Pieces (Eyewall/Rhino)
This is the third vault-mining compilation Stephen Stills has been involved with recently for Rhino. He started with the solo Just Roll Tape: April 26th, 1968 in 2007; earlier this year we got CSN Demos; now this. All have been rewarding, and it’s nice for a change to be able to get rarities without having to rebuy an album you already own that some label’s decided to attach them to. This is the way to do it without ripping off fans, so kudos to Stills and Rhino Records!

The Cribs: Ignore the Ignorant (Wichita)

Some guys date younger girls, some buy a motorbike or a flash car, others re-invest in the record collections of their youth; some do most or all of the above. Johnny Marr's mid-life symptoms have manifested themselves by his joining forces with a ropey indie band. The Cribs are the Jonas Brother for the student hordes. Shouty, frantic, and currently popular, what they lack in talent they disguise with energy.

Nia Morgan: Nia Morgan (Patrin Records)

Discretion can be a form of silence, a means of being ignored. Nia Morgan's debut album is a mannered, refined and eloquent affair. No major splash has been penciled in, and no lavish promotional campaign lurks to herald its arrival, but she owns what many crave: a profound sense of integrity. This is an affectionate punch that lingers like a long anticipated kiss. As reputations go, hers is confined to a discreet coterie, but with this release the secret is out, and secrets are at their best when shared.

Mingus in Wonderland (Blue Note)
Blues & Roots (Atlantic)
Mingus Ah Um (Columbia)
Mingus Dynasty (Columbia)

Charles Mingus was one of the greatest bassists and composers in jazz history, an important figure in bebop who anchored a Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie band at one point but eventually developed in very different directions. By 1959 he was already a prolific recording artist as a leader. Making four albums was hardly an unusually productive year by his standards, but rarely did he match the peaks he hit in 1959.

Having come from a rather disappointing event where I failed to meet up with some people I was planning to spend the evening with, I stomped across The Village through stormy weather, in a foul mood, making poor company for the friend who did show up, as we pressed on to Fat Cat. Now, I am no longer a church-going man, nor do I ever plan to be, but if I found a congregation that worshiped with the music I heard on that rainy Friday night, then my parents might get some relief from worrying about my hell-bound soul.

Pushing through the crowded underground of Fat Cat, my friend and I managed to negotiate our way past the pool players and gaming tables to the welcoming sounds of Myron Walden Countryfied. Ranging between funk, jazz, gospel, and rock, this trio of soulful musicians single-handedly altered what had otherwise been a miserable evening.

"I’m sure you’re both convinced my self-destructive streak has won out again…

I’m awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you… Please believe that you can’t possibly want for me to be a winner more than I do."

Janis, 1966 letter to her parents, after joining Big Brother and the Holding Company

Four years later, October 4, 1970, the Queen of the Blues was found on the floor of her Los Angeles hotel room, dead from a heroin overdose.

All Tomorrow’s Parties is a multi-day music festival originating in England, held annually since 1999. For the past two years, there's been a U.S. branch of the festival at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, New York. This year, Day One -- Don’t Look Back/Comedy -- featured Panda Bear, Iron and Wine, Dirty Three, and a comedy stage curated by David Cross. Day Two was music curated by All Tomorrow’s Parties. Day Three was curated by underground mainstays the Flaming Lips and featured No Age and Bob Mould performing Husker Du, Menomena, Deerhoof with Martha Colburn, and many more. I attended Day Two.

Marcy Playground at B. B. King Blues Club (9/28)

"Sex and Candy" is far from being the best song by Marcy Playground, yet it is the only one that most people know. In 1997, when the band released its first album, it was somehow decided that a song with "sex" in the title deserved relentless radio play, which was fine, because it's a good song. However, when the alternative rock trio released its follow-up album, Shapeshifter, despite it being superior to their previous release, there was no love from the radio. Over ten years and four albums later this Minneapolis-based group continues to hover under the airwave radar.