Well, every one is doing it, so why can’t we?

We talked about it for a while, set some rules and asked our lovely writers for their “top of 2010” thingy listey. So, without any further ado (and I can’t think of anything else to say), here’s part 1 of our “Best of” (I thought it was “top of”) list…

Russell Palmer (ranter, public relations nightmare, monkey wrangler)

Album of the Year – American VI: Ain’t No Grave by Johnny Cash

Released posthumously, the album is both joyous and heartbreaking in equal measures. Johnny was without his wife, June Carter-Cash who had unfortunately passed away. So he did the only thing he knew to carry on without her, bury himself in recording. Cash is audibly close to the end himself, all the strength gone from his voice and blatantly breathless in parts, yet still hauntingly recognisable. The eponymous track ‘Ain’t No Grave’ shows Johnny defiant to the end, rightly intimating that he will live on in perpetuity through his legacy. And how fitting that the final song he ever recorded was ‘Aloha Oe’, Aloha meaning both goodbye, as he passed away shortly after the recording, and hello, welcoming the inevitable countless generations that have yet to discover him. It is not an album that you will listen to over and over again, and it is quite uncomfortable to listen to in parts where his voice cracks and breaks, but there is something quite beautiful in a man using his last breaths to sing his heart out.

This is also the album that defines 2010 for me, as a year where the most interesting music was made by a man whose lungs could barely force it out. It is the one album where I am safe in the knowledge that his deathly notes won’t be used to flog iPods or confectionery any time soon.

Book of the year –Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (it came out in 2009, but I read it in 2010, so balls to it!) (We play fast and loose with the ‘rules’ folks! – Misky)

Zeitoun tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, A Syrian-American painter and decorator who became a kayak riding hero in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. The first half of the book is a tale of Zeitoun’s incredible bravery, and paints a vivid picture of post-destruction New Orleans seen from the viewpoint of those living through it. The second half of the book will shock and astound you, as you will be completely unprepared for what happens to the hero Zeitoun. It would be wrong of me to ruin the second half of the book and tell you what happens to Zeitoun, but I will say that this book could have gone all out on the American government’s appalling reaction to Katrina, but it does not feel the need to, as Zeitoun’s story highlights their failure so precisely.

Gig of the year – Stewart Lee @ Sheffield Lyceum.

My gig of the year was not a band, it was seeing the comedian Stewart Lee at the Lyceum in Sheffield. Now, it’s not that I didn’t go to any musical gigs this year, as I saw Green Day play the Sheffield Arena, putting on an identical show to the last 3 times I’ve seen them. Even down to the apparent ad-libs which were identical to the ad-libs they said when I saw them play in Las Vegas on the American Idiot tour. It was simply that Stewart Lee was astounding. He is by far the most innovative stand up currently working in the UK, but try explaining his act outside the theatre and it sounds awful. If you say he did 30 minutes discussing the tag-line to a cider advert, repeating the tag-line over and over again, it sounds like you paid to see a mad-man’s stream of consciousness, but, in the theatre it was literally breathtaking, as I cried with laughter. He has such comic craft and timing that repetition of a single phrase can bring the house down, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It is the only time I could ever validly use the phrase “you had to be there” without it just being a cliché.

Film of the year – American: The Bill Hicks Story.

This documentary about the life of genius comedian Bill Hicks, didn’t really tell you much that wasn’t already known about him from books by Cynthia True and Kevin Booth, but it gave you that information in an aesthetically astounding way. Still Photographs from Bill’s life were beautifully animated that added real depth to what is essentially the age-old story of a flawed genius. Add to that excerpts from his glorious canon of acerbic humour, and the comedies and tragedies of his life are laid bare.

Oh… And 2010 was the greatest year of my life so far, as I got married in Central Park, New York City, to my gorgeous wife Hayley. Which blew everything else out of the water.

Tonan (Top reviewer, interviewer, stargazer, Sam wrangler)

Album of the year –  Sky at Night by I am Kloot

The combination of textures, chord instruments and atmospheres of nostalgia, stars, planets, winter moons and matte stargazing create a sudden breath of peace and sharp memories that come together straight from my heart.  My favourite song turned out to be ‘I still do’. There are few songs in this world that would unbelievably match with our sense of individuality forged from all of our experiences, from our finest hours or happiest times, something we feel deeply identified with. Good times, bad times (“I had a will to despise, make destruction my life”), a recollection of feelings portrayed in a cloudy sky.

It’s maybe I Am Kloot’s genius to convey the message so accurately, maybe it’s because this album tells us a story using sky figures (clouds, the moon, suns), or just because music composition would make me think of the sound of the sky. It’s just a good catharsis from a past that still smells of fresh flowers, my favorite garden, and the whole vacation time spent at that garden, watching always the skies in a white or pink dress trying to figure out how the planets, stars, clouds, moon and clouds worked. It represents a part of my life almost forgot: my childhood (I know! I was a weird child, and still I’m a weird grown-up!).

EP of the Year – Wet Nuns EP by Wet Nuns

One of the funniest, talented and honest band I’ve ever listened to and I have copy number ‘EP 83 /100’ , which just arrived to my destructive hands. There’s no way I can feel in a bad mood whenever I listen to this band. It’s their dialogues, it’s their music (I still can’t believe it’s just two of them playing the soul out of their guitar, drums and throats, cowbells and coconuts trance included. Respect!) And their rare (yet extremely welcomed) taste for old blues; it’s been a long time since I didn’t hear or listen to this elemental piece of music, the foundation of contemporaneous music, where ‘I told my mama’ is the clearest and more obvious influence; blues would remind me of those music courses I used to attend every Saturday morning where the teacher would tell us to close our eyes and just feel the jam, as an attempt to decipher the singer’s soul. Of course, that meditation breaks with a loud guitar for Wet Nuns. I’d definitely love to see them live, a show from a band so free to play and say whatever comes to their minds and make it sound just gifted, that ought to be good! (Yee-haw!)

Movie of the Year – Inception.

I don’t think twice when I say: ‘Inception’. It’s my general impression that media is running out of creativity. Sometimes it hurts to go to the cinema just to find the same horrible movie you watched when you were 10 years old with the magic “R-E-M-A-K-E” title on it. Christopher Nolan is one of my most respected film directors and didn’t let my poor mind down with this film: an unexpected and uncertain end full of so interesting twists that really made me reconsider if I was awake or just dreaming I was awake.  The realm of Subconscious is one of the most scariest words and concepts I’ve even come across with, it’s there where your true being hides and we might not like what we find; however, there’s one thing that’s even creepier than subconscious itself: the idea of it getting invaded and spied, mostly when it is a fact that it’s possible to manipulate our memories. Mr. Nolan decides to explore the oneiric world and gives the audience a brilliant and smart film full of action, and which really manages to get our full attention into the screen (if you miss 1 minute you might risk to be lost for the next 40 minutes of the film: little details, I love them!) Cool special effects, brilliant script, and I must even say I respect Leonardo Di Caprio again, just a little. I’ve only watched this movie once, but I wouldn’t doubt of the fact that I’d find a different meaning every time I’d watch it.

Book of The Year – Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists (Cuestiones Cuánticas. Escritos místicos de los físicos más famosos del mundo). Wilber, Ken. Kairós, 2009. Translated from English by Pedro del Casso

This book was first released in 1984 (in English), but I got this year the eleventh edition released in 2009. Ken Wilber, owner of a pretty long CV, edited this beast, which is a compilation of lectures, writings and interviews by Nobel Prize Quantum Physicists as Heisenberg, Schrödinger (my favorite), Einstein, Jeans, Planck, Pauli and Eddington (basically, the fathers of Quantum Physics), who stated their interesting arguments about why science and religion should not be understood as a whole or as elements to explain their respective counterparts. There’s a thin line between the Mind, Volitive aspects and the world of Physics and Science.  Even when the title “Mystical Writings” may discourage many to read this, just keep in mind  “mystical” is a broad concept. These contemporaneous geniuses use an easy and common language to explain why their theories or the Science they make cannot relate to or explain the world of Religion and Individuals themselves. If you find yourself trying to explain the world through numbers or a specific religious belief (which are both quite respected), I strongly recommend this book, it’d help clearing out a lot of doubts or to get you into one of those deep depressions (it all depends on your mood, basically).

 

Tune in tomorrow (in all senses, booyah!) for part deux, including the rantings of a plush cow…