Two months ago, I started a project that inevitably became “The 2009 Collection.” The project began out of frustration, but quickly became a labor of love that consumed countless hours of my free time every week. None of the 2009 music lists offered in popular magazines and blogs satisfied me, and I had no knowledge of music from 2009 to compare against the – to be frank – crap they offered. After sifting through hundreds of new albums and collecting a sizable library of new music, I culled an original list of 20 songs down to 10, and out came this.
A quick list of the bands that made the cut: The Heavy, Voluntary Butler Scheme, Phoenix, K’naan, Balmorhea, Givers, Jay Reatard, The Flaming Lips & Stardeath and White Dwarfs (with Henry Rollins), The Protomen
But this post isn’t just about the immense amount of work that went into creating the collection, but some of the great resources I found along the way that helped me gather the music. To list some of them, and then go into specifics for two:
Thesixtyone.com is both a beautiful music website, and a great tool to discover new and upcoming music. It helped me find quite a few of the songs that inevitably made the final list. I’d recommend checking it out if you’re interested in new music, and don’t mind sifting through crappier music to find stuff you love.
The All Songs Considered podcast was incredibly useful to me, and also a pleasure to listen to. All Songs Considered is an NPR music show with less talk and more tunes. I’d recommend listening to this if you want to hear (mostly) great music that’s just breaking onto the scene.
I found the other sites and the podcast I listed to be useful, but not nearly as much as the two above. I was particularly disappointed by Sound Opinions, both because I’m a Chicago native (the show is from Chicago Public Radio), and because they usually played absolutely nothing I found interesting. Let’s hope they find their way again, because they used to be a delight to follow.
So what’s next? Well, this website doesn’t mark the end of The 2009 Collection. A forthcoming disc with original art and contextual information about artists and songs on the list is in the works. E-mail me at hello@jaymargalus.com if you’d like a copy.
I hope you found this useful, and don’t forget to check out The 2009 Collection right now!
