The Weeknd was nominated for 3 of the 4 songs in the “Best R&B” category. Nothing against The Weeknd but c’mon…NOBODY else had a worthy R&B song this whole year? Seriously?  If that’s even slightly true, why is a genre so pathetic in its creative output even being mentioned this year?  Also, just how crazy are your nomination rules that it’s even possible for one person to get 75% of the nominations?  Are the Sammie Award folks now working at Billboard? ;)

A few things in the collection...

2 copies of the "Purple Rain" soundtrack
"Let's Go Crazy" 12-inch DJ single
"1999"
"Little Red Corvette" 7-inch (one of the first records I ever bought)
"U Got The Look" 7-inch
"Purple Rain" 7-inch on purple vinyl

My proverbial basket was filled with vintage vinyl. Not kidding.  :) A friend of the family was cleaning out his dad's estate and found a stack of 45's.  I was the lucky recipient.

I lived in fairfield in the late 80's. Across the street I had this neighbor, Terri, who was just becoming a professional actor and photographer. I'd nerd out with her about the new Def Leppard record, she introduced me to Dokken and Triumph – I still have the dubbed copies of their cassettes I made while raiding Terri's music collection.  Terri (and her then-fiancé-now-husband) was a huge influence on me.

Finally getting some video footage archived and posted to the interwebs. Here's The Dead Milkmen doing "Punk Rock Girl" at Harlow's (April 2015).  There was a time when I never thought I'd see Dead Milkmen live.  Now I live in a world where I've seen them twice.  Granted, for the first one, I had to fly to Austin TX. But still, the world is a much more beautiful place now.

I've never been to Coachella; the idea of spending 3 days in the desert with all those dirty hipster hippies has never appealed to me. The one year I was seriously considering going was the year Bowie was rumoured to headline the show -- if he'd signed on, I was going to BE there. The rumours turned out to be fake.  Fortunately I’ve been luck enough to see him on five other occasions...

Who says Bowie was phoning it in during the 80's? Or that Tin Machine wasn't any good? Unacceptable gibberish! The Labyrinth soundtrack alone has 3 or 4 gems from The Thin White Duke. And if nothing else, the Tin Machine records were an introduction for many of us to the great guitar work of Reeves Gabrels (though they technically worked on a few things together before that as well). And seriously...that's just the tip of the ice berg. I firmly stand behind the Tin Machine records. And the 80's Bowie albums. Yes even the ones that include Muppets on them.

Be it his Ziggy-era or his 80's-Muppet-enhanced songs or something else, I see no low period in the material. Here are five semi-atypical Bowie songs that you should know...

2015 was a good year for music!  So many things came out that It’s time to recap some of the best ones.  

In no particular order...