Bart McPherson Weblog

Here are my top 25 albums of 2007. They are the albums I think were the best from this year. These are items I’ve actually listened to, so there are probably a ton of artists/releases from this year that belong on the list that I just never got a chance to hear. You can always send your stuff to the station for me and the rest of the programmers to spin if we like it.

25. A Place to Bury Strangers - self-titled
24. The Cave Singers - Invitation Songs
23. Tunng - Good Arrows
22. Wooden Wand - James & the Quiet
21. Steve Earle - Washington Square Serenade
20. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
19. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
18. The Apples In Stereo - New Magnetic Wonder
17. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
16. The New Pornographers - Challengers
15. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir - self-titled
14. The Afternoon Naps - Sunbeamed
13. Boris - Rainbow
12. Caribou - Andorra
11. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog
10. Dreadful Yawns - Rest
9. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
8. Shout Out Louds - Our Ill Wills
7. The Avett Brothers - Emotionalism
6. Great Lake Swimmers - Ongiara
5. The Sadies - New Seasons
4. Arthur & Yu - In Camera
3. José González - In Our Nature
2. Frightened Rabbit - Sing the Greys
1. Okkervil River - The Stage Names

Honorable mentions go out to the following bands. (Sorry, good stuff. I just can’t fit it all in.)
Buffalo Tom, Citay, John Doe, Dungen, Feist, Meat Puppets, Robert Pollard, Two Cow Garage, John Vaderslice, David Vandervelde, and Mary Weiss.

I did some queries against the database I use to keep my playlists.

I confirmed what I was thinking. My tastes in music are evolving. I’ll be posting my top 25 picks for 2007 in a couple of weeks. It should be quite a diverse list.

Below is a chart of the top 30 artists I’ve played since I’ve had a show on WCSB (and the # of plays they received this year).

You can see that The Pixies took a huge dive in number of plays. This year’s plays only makes up approximately 4% of their total plays on the show.

Here’s a chart of some of the artists I’ve played the most this year (compared to their overall plays).

This year you’ll notice a couple of the top artists are brand new to the show in 2007. My tastes appear to be shifting toward mellower, folky stuff. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still love the noisy, feedback drenched guitar stuff. It’s just not as prevalent in my show as it once was. I have also started to play more types of artists on my show. I played over 500 different artists this year on the show.

I have gone through these musical evolutions before. I was once an industrial music fan. I’ve seen Ministry, KMFDM, and Nine Inch Nails live, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I listened to any of their albums.

I imagine more changes will come. Frankly, I’m glad that my tastes in music are evolving. Otherwise, I might still run around in a Flock of Seagulls t-shirt.

This weekend we went to Toronto. It’s a great city to visit, and I imagine a great place to live.

The main reason we went up was to see Elliott BROOD at Lee’s Palace. They were great. Much louder than I expected them to be, but they still sounded great. They played their “hits” and a few covers (Johnny Cash, White Stripes, and Neil Young). The opening bands were rather disappointing. Plants & animals and Corb Lund.

Before the show we had dinner across the street from our hotel at the Beer Bistro. Had a great Quebecois beer Blanche de Chambly.

The next day we explored the city taking the subway and street cars. Visited the shoe museum and their Little Italy neighborhood. I picked up some CDs at Soundscapes.

The people in Toronto were very nice. Very polite. It seems to be a “live and let live” type of town. Where in the U.S. it’s “I live at your expense” or “I’ll sue you for making me feel bad”. Workers looked you in the eye and said thank you instead of grunting and wishing you weren’t bothering them.

And of course coming back to the U.S. you’re treated like a criminal right at the border.

Canada, I miss you already. Still don’t understand the appeal of Tim Hortons, but I can get past that.

Next week my show Stand Clear of the Closing Doors will be kicking off the 2007 WCSB Radiothon. Radiothon is the once-a-year pledge drive for WCSB.
WCSB is the student run radio station at Cleveland State University. The money donated during Radiothon helps the station keep equipment running, purchase music, and pay for other miscellaneous costs. The university basically pays for the FCC license, provides space, and keeps the lights on. The rest is up to our generous donors.
Listen in on Sunday, November 4th at noon for the kick-off of the week long event. Please donate to keep alternative radio broadcasting in Cleveland and on the internet.

I fixed the playlists page. I had mucked it last week.
I’m using a PHP plugin in Wordpress and it doesn’t like the fancy editor that comes with Wordpress.
This week I resigned from the Friday night rock rotation. There’s enough people on the rotation that I can do it without feeling guilty. I am however thinking of making my Sunday show into a rotation show.
I work at CSU, so driving down a sixth day is getting silly. I would love to be able to do a show right after work, but those spots rarely come open.
I’m still mulling it over, so I’m not sure if or when the show will change.

Coming up with interesting things to post about has gotten harder.
Let’s see. See since the last time I posted the only thing of note is my graduation from CSU. I finished this summer and I’m going through the Kaplan GMAT prep book. I’m thinking about getting an MBA. To move into management at my company you pretty much need a graduate degree.
As always, listen to the show on Monday morning. Provide some feedback about the stuff I play if you like.

Last night was the WCSB benefit show with Les Breastfeeders, The Twilight, and Mike St. Jude & the Valentines. A big thanks to the bands for playing the show. Everyone had a good time.
The Breastfeeders played in studio at WCSB earlier in the day and rocked the place. The Beachland show was great. The played some new stuff and a ye-ye cover.
They sold some CDs and shirts, so they gained some new fans in Cleveland.
Next time they come back there better be 3 times as many people.

Sad, sad news.
I’m going to be off the air for a little while. Yesterday I accidentally let a couple of explicit words get broadcast out over the air.
Another member of the station called me and asked me to take their name off of the list for giving away Spoon tickets and getting into the show for free. I did that and though I should give the tickets away since the show is coming up this week. I could not find the latest release in the new release push box, so I went and grabbed an older CD that had a lot of entries for being played previously. I scanned through a few songs and found one that sounded okay during a quick listen. So I announce the give away and play the song. I take the winning call and get the guys info. I turned the mic back on to let people know that tickets are gone so I don’t have to keep answering the phone and telling people the same thing. One line lit up again and they guy on the other end says “YOU JUST BROADCAST MOTHER F*CKER TWICE!” I was like, whoa… I didn’t hear it since I was on the phone. So I killed the Spoon song half way in. I didn’t know what the lyrics were so I just killed it.
Cut to today. The guy who called is the station engineer. He told Tommy the General Manager. The station has been extremely conservative lately because there have been incidents of pretty bad stuff going on. I’m suspended immediately from my show. I meet Monday with the executive staff to find out what’s going to happen.
I’ve been doing a lot for the station, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. I understand that I can’t get off with nothing. The FCC could hit the station hard if someone complained. I just hope it won’t be too harsh since it was completely accidental. If I knew the song had that language would have never played it. The CD had no warning label or notes from other station member that any of the songs had any non-FCC lyrics.
So a friendly warning to any other college radio people. Watch your back. Big brother is already watching it.

The CMJ/Rock Hall Fest is coming up quick.
WCSB is having a bunch of bands play live in studio, and I’m going to be talking with some of the great poster artists that will be showing at the Rock Hall. Confirmed so far are Tara McPherson, Mike Martin of EngineHouse13, Print Mafia, and Jermaine Rogers.
The interview will be on 6/9 at 3 PM Eastern. Listen on the web if you’re not in the area.

Here’s the flyer for Les Breastfeeders’ show at The Beachland Tavern on June 15.
This is just a quick one until the real one hopefully comes in the mail this week from Montreal.