One more "proof listen" and I will have the first podcast of the year ready for you. I can't believe we have made it to 2017 after starting in late 2015 with what was really just a bit of fun for me and Ben. I didn't really expect your interest (or mine to be honest) to be maintained for over a year but here we are!
As I have mentioned the next 2 shows will cover the best of 2016 . They will be quite different and you can choose one or both or none
- the first is much more laid back and I am racing through the songs without a great deal of discussion. It's intended to be the "best of the rest" and has a huge amount of music to listen to with minimal chat. I know from roulettes and general discussion that my favourites aren't always yours and that many tracks on the shows are loved by some of you and not others. So I don't think I would be achieving my goal (to find every one of you , with your varied tastes, some new faves) if I just did my Top 40 for 2016.
What I do think I can do is to act as some sort of "quality filter" and distill my thousand of hours of checking out albums in 2016 down to a couple of shows of the albums that I thought were at least pretty good and let you guys make up your own minds.
So the first show is made up of songs from albums that I felt were good without being great , but certainly contained some of the best songs of the year. I have said prior that I think that a majority of the albums in my Top 40 or so will not be known to most of you guys. So by default I expect most of your favourite albums to be featured in the first show and hopeufully also some new discoveries too. This is a massive show of just under 9 hrs and contains a bit of everything - hard rock, metal , melodic rock/AOR, symphonic , power metal and even the odd growl
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The second show (still being prepared) is my Top 40 (or 41 I think it'll end up) albums of the year based on my rating system and we will chat about these in a bit more detail - the show will be much shorter though in the range of 3-4 hours. The vast majority of this show is metal in one form or another. As you guys know I rate albums based mostly on song ratings and so , although I may prefer to listen to a lower rated album due to a couple of killer songs , in the end my rating system will often give a higher rating to an album without that killer song but which is a more consistent effort with no duds.
So the bottom 15 or so of the Top 40 (rated in the mid-high 80's) may be consistent good albums missing that killer track. The top 25 or so (rated 90%+) are albums that I thought were consistently top notch throughout. I still can't split my Top 2 , so I need to give those another listen and compare my neck soreness after each.