::WARNING RANT::

OK so this is the rant that my mother was so lucky as to witness the other day as we drove down to meet my grandmother for her museum Christmas party.

We were listening to NPR and there was a piece on the best album of the year. ooo! thinks I, NPR frequently has an interesting view on what musicians are currently influencing music and such.

The best album of the year folks? a compilation of old 45 singles that this company put out of Motown. What?!
come on!
how pretentious do we have to be? the best album of the year was a compilation of music that was originally put out 40- 50 years ago? so...there was no music worth any interest that was put out this year by current composers?

That's crap, NPR that's crap!

Now I love NPR, and the article was really interesting and something that I genuinely wanted to listen to, but as the best album put out this year?

What I want to hear about is who is saving Hip-Hop from its commercial demise? what group is changing the sound of indie rock? who is taking the folk/bluegrass community by storm. I mean it's still NPR, they're still going to report on some no-name band that only a select few will have ever heard of and then these same people will pissed off that NPR went off and ratted on their musical secret (allot of people by records off of NPR recommendations, I know because this one time I was doing just that...heard an awesome review said 'wow I would like to own that CD' dashed off to Borders and subsequently couldn't find it. The clerk there told me that they always get a rush of customers for albums after an article is run on them by NPR) but still despite the pretension that I expected, to decide that the best album of the year was comprised of music written years ago is complete malarkey.

Now I know and revere old music, but I don't even expect them to say that a new recording of a classical work is the best album of the year. I mean it would be interesting to see what they think the best classical recording of the year is, but that's a different piece entirely.

anyway that's all I have to say on the matter, NPR should have found a contemporary group to review for album of the year. This piece was great I did want to hear it, just in a more apropos context.