Monday, November 18, 2024

(Not Yet) Music Week

This week's Music Week is being held hostage until I get my initial round of Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll ballot invites sent out (aiming for Tuesday, but probably Wednesday). Meanwhile, you can probably find some new records in the November Streamnotes archive. Not a particularly big week so far, but I'm working on it.

My main reason for posting anything at all today is that I have some links to share:

  • The 19th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll Begins: I posted this on Saturday, after sending out initial mail to my GNU Mailman list on Thursday. I don't have much more news yet, but wanted to make sure this much got some distribution. More in a couple days, but meanwhile, check out the Poll website. Focus right now is to provide information for voters. As we're currently updating the invite list, please feel free to suggest someone (even yourself). I also have set up the poll admin/discussion group, so if you're interested in following our deliberations (even if you're not a voter), let me know.

  • Q and A: Two recent questions answered (well, sort of).

  • Speaking of Which: No new one (now or most likely ever), but I keep finding things that seem like they belong here (and I feel like saving), so this swan song has grown to 317 links, 33193 words.

  • The Best Non-Jazz Albums of 2024: Way back in July, in conjunction with my Mid-Year Jazz Critics Poll, I compiled The Best Jazz Albums of 2024, and I've been trying to update it as we go, but I put off doing the Non-Jazz complement until now. So, 47 A-list new releases (+ 3 from 2023) and 7 reissues/historic music, which rather pales in comparison to 85 A-list new jazz (+3 from 2023) and 18 reissues/historic (+1 from 2023). Most years I have a large jazz/non-jazz ratio when I initially compile the lists, but that narrows as I catch up with the EOY lists. But I don't think I've ever had this much imbalance before.

  • Metacritic Aggregate: I started working on this mid-year, but haven't done a very good job of keeping it up to date. But this week I added the first EOY lists from Uncut, Mojo, and Bleep. This is not a huge priority for me, but it does help guide me to things to check out. There is also a new compilations of old/various music file, but it is very short (44 albums, vs. 1210 for new releases).

I ran the ratings counter and so far I'm +30 on the week, but only one A- so far. Unrated is -1, but I still have some unpacking to do.

Back to work now.

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