It's been five long years and I love you just the same ...

I started this thing five years ago today -- wow. To celebrate, here's a top five list of the best posts in the life of this blog -- one for each year of its life.

Well, maybe I'm not aiming for the best moments ... the most representative moments, perhaps? These five posts, as a group, are a pretty good overview of the kinds of writing that have been "featured" here.

Year 1
It took about six months for the blog to start getting good, as the content progressed from brief observances, musical brainstorms, and half-developed ideas. Granted, that was the intent in those days (I had a notebook for more developed writing), but it doesn't necessarily make for entertaining reading a few years down the road. By the autumn I had finally figured out how to download and buy music over the internet, and on 12/09/00, having recently purchased music from Insound, I gushed about one of my favourite compilations ever.

Year 2
By now, I was no longer saving all of my best ideas for private notebooks, as partly evidenced by twice as much content in Year 2 as there had been in Year 1. My post on "The Red Thread" (April) has always been a favourite of mine, and I've probably re-read the 10/09/01 post more than any other from this year (even if it's not exactly a great piece of writing in and of itself), but the clear highlight is the 30/04/01 post about the end of 1050 CHUM, a radio station I grew up with, abandoned when it switched to an oldies format in 1986, and rediscovered as an adult. This post expressed my feelings about the outpouring of emotion concerning the second death of CHUM, which to my frustration, was being passed off as its first.

Year 3
I didn't focus on the blog as much this year -- the posts got longer, but I posted more sparingly. Making fun of Fleetwood Mac was tremendous fun, but I've got to highlight this anti-Radiohead post from 27/11/02. I think I still get more search hits from the terms "anti-Radiohead" than anything else.

Year 4
This one is a no-brainer. If there was ever a time to go out on a high note, the MUTEK diary (five days in May - June 2003) would have been it. I was having the time of my life and truly felt that I was witnessing something special each and every afternoon and night, and considered myself privileged to be writing about it. The end is a bit depressing (for a few different reasons), but don't let that get you down -- the fun begins here.

Year 5
I've written more in the last two years than in the first three combined (by far), and in the last year, spent more time thinking and reading about music than ever before. And it's not hard to figure out why -- I finally bought a computer! The computer also turned into a key music-acquiring tool, and as a result, I probably listened to more music this year than ever before, including one memorable stretch in which I listened to music for one week straight (13-19/05/04). The idea was conceived a few days earlier, and the experiment began later in the week.