Preface To Gary's Favorite Indie Music Of 2007: Year End Lists & The Women Who Love Them

"The Year In Music"

JANUARY: An overhyped new record by some old dude. Giant world tour follows. Tickets top four hundred dollars each. Sponsored by Viagra. Old Dude makes lots of money.
FEBRUARY: A new hiphop record by the same dude who's made a lot of hiphop records in the past three years is released the same week as the new hiphop record by the other dude (who'll be dead by year's end) who's made even more hiphop records in the past five years, & there's a lot of news blurbs about the competition in sales. No one actually listens to the records, though some do enjoy the women in bikinis in the videos.
MARCH: Another awards show gives top awards to both an old dude (who was criminally not given this award three decades ago) & a young dude who's sold a lot of records (which no one will listen to three decades from now).
APRIL: A scantily clad, terrifyingly thin pop singer with a child creates a scandal when she endangers her child's life in some way, goes to rehab, leaves the child at rehab, shaves her head, shaves the child's head, & then breaks up some other scantily clad, terrifyingly thin pop singer's relationship. A reality show based on the event follows in the fall.
MAY: A new FCC ruling allows Clear Channel to purchase every radio station in the United States except for ten.
JUNE: Forty year anniversary of some overrated record by overrated old dudes dominates the media for a week, much to the gratitude of the current administration. Only a couple of people are strong-willed enough to look up from the nostalgiac haze to point out that the record hasn't aged well.
JULY: This year's group of "indie" musicians, picked apparently at random in a smoke-filled room by record company executives, get their break by being featured in a commercial or on a summer movie soundtrack. Of course, the ones who "make it" are not the group of musicians who truly deserve it, but the deserving musicians disqualified themselves by not signing to a major label.
AUGUST: Another old dude makes news complaining about the Internet, myspace, filesharing &/or mp3 stores online from his Malibu home as the third set of reissues of his CD catalog (feauring remixes by Moby & Radiohead!) hit the stores.
SEPTEMBER: Someone generally unimportant dies/kills self/is killed & becomes more important than they ever would have if they'd lived. This may or may not be the hiphop artist who released a new record earlier in the year.
OCTOBER: Some old dude rips off some groundbreaking hiphop/electronic/indie/world music trend & is hailed as a genius. He doesn't pay the interns who turned him onto the music (he only listens to his old stuff), but he does let them blow him.
NOVEMBER: A major musical innovator dies, but not only do the obituaries focus on the musician's "hits" & the troubles he/she had while alive, but someone unimportant - a politician, usually - dies soon after, taking the attention away from the true legend.
DECEMBER: Year end lists by famous critics will include only those records sent to the famous critics by major record companies, although, if an intern will fuck them, one of the critics may include the intern's favorite independent record as an afterthought or a "band to watch."