I always think this is more fun than the obligatory best of the year lists, that one CD, or record, or tape, or whatever spun your top that you fell in love with the most this year, or fell in love with all over again. Instead of a fleeting listen, the one you couldn't get away from. You know, lyrical phrases that seem so cool with the music, but embarrassingly found their way into your mouth at inopportune times. Those melodies stuck in your head when you should be listening to the boss. The one you told your friends about, even though your friends don't really give a rat's ass about music. That's the one.

Mine for this year, hmmm, that may get complicated. Probably Brian Eno's Another Green World if I had some way to track it. That's one of my old dependables that I pull out all the time, sometimes play it to calibrate my mood, other times just because that's where I want to be, drifting and aimless, I'll come running, sombre reptiles, bemused, spirits drifting, just to be someplace else, and other times because it's the best record ever and I'm stuck with that, I love it and that will never go away. "You'd be surprised at my degree of uncertainty."

This was my first year where the computer was my primary source of music, taking the place of my home CD player. My player (foobar) says I have 1122 albums right now on the computer, though many are duplicates with different masterings, and it goes up and down. I'll probably never get the ambition needed to transfer everything I want to listen to the computer, and a lot of times you find out that the fond memory of a record is much different from the not so fond reality. But it sure is a good way to keep all those Another Green Worlds where they should be.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you.