There's a repeat theme I've encountered when reading 2008's year-end reviews in various established periodicals, music- and film-related websites and in opinions offered by those 'informed gentlemen of the Internet' – bloggers. The consensus seems to be that 2008 was a rather lackluster year in the arts, and their annual wrap-ups reflect as much. I'd like to offer an alternate reading/overview. Rather than there being less high quality releases, it has been the case that 2008, more than many of the post-millennial years to date, has been one for diggers. By that I mean those who dig deeper, reach further and work harder to find expressive, inventive and adventurous new works in the arts – film and music in particular.

Curiously, many of these quality works that audiences have to 'dig' for are simply impaired by the mechanics of commerce; distributors tend not to take risks when choosing what releases are brought stateside. Cases in point: Outside of screenings at the more progressive U.S. festival circuits, the highest award-winning films at Cannes and the Venice International Film Fests have yet to play in the states, now some seven months later. We haven't seen the Palme d'Or-winning Gomorra, we haven't seen the new Steven Soderbergh film, Che and we haven’t seen Ari Folman's award-winning animated bio-docu of the Lebanon War, Waltz with Bashir, which in itself created a new genre. And that completely sums the year up for me – despite adventurous curation happening in specialized genre markets (and for the existing audience for such genre forays) little progress was made to make them known to a larger audience.

As a consequence, most of my music and film picks for this year I found through doing the work, work, work of digging. With the exception of a couple of titles, all of the film picks here were seen in the theater during the three weeks of the Seattle International Film Festival and most were never to return for subsequent theatrical runs. The same experience happened with music; confoundingly, the better albums by artists like Autechre and Boris were labeled respectively as a 'special edition' and a 'Japanese version,' and, in both cases, never distributed to the States.

Further, Bernard Parmegiani's daunting/profound L'oeuvre Musicale, easily my number one release of the year, was only stocked by one US distributor and not featured at all on most music commerce websites (including Amazon). Make of this what you will. What I read in this is that since the industry is neglecting much of what they perceive to be 'fringe' markets, it then translates into a situation where those passionate and motivated enough to discover these works are then in much more of a position to share the fruits of their labor/adventuring/digging with that hypothetical larger audience, such as their friends and cultural connections.

Me personally, I'll just keep on digging, doing, experiencing, making those efforts to see a film that's playing a single time in a festival, find that edition of an album that was only released in Norway, go out of my way to hear and see those releases that have yet to find an audience, or yet to even be given a genre name. This largely sums up my whole ethos and reason for living in an urban, international city – that these opportunities exist for such adventuring and 'digging' for those who are interested and invested.

So here it is, after all that exposition, my film and album picks of the year!

TOP 15 ALBUMS OF 2008 IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

Bernard Parmegiani - L'oeuvre Musicale - Box Set (INA-GRM)
Anthony Braxton/Milford Graves/William Parker - Beyond Quantum (Tzadik)
Autechre - Quaristice (Versions) (Warp UK)
Boris - Smile (Japanese Version) - (DIW Phalanx)
Hecker & Haswell/Mika Vanio - Popol Vuh Remix (Mego)
Various Artists - Money Will Ruin Everything II (Rune Grammofon)
Zeitkratzer - Electronics - Box Set (Zeitkratzer)
Coh - Strings (Raster-Noton)
FM3 - Buddha Machine II (FM3)
KTL - IV (Mego)
GAS - Nah Und Fern - Box Set (Kompakt)
Stephan Mathieu - Radioland (Die Schachtel)
Birchville Cat Motel - Seventh Ruined Hex (Important)
Skullflower - Circulus Vitiosus Deus (Turgid Animal)
Jasper TX - Black Sleep (Miasmah)

TOP 15 FILMS OF 2008 IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

Andrei Zvyagintsev - The Banishment (Russia)
Pedro Costa - Colossal Youth (Portugal)
Roy Andersson - You, The Living (Sweden)
Ari Folman - Waltz with Bashir (Isreal)
Jai Zhang-Ke - Useless (China)
Koji Wakamatsu - United Red Army (Japan)
Gustavo Spolidoro - Still Orangutans (Brazil)
Aditya Assarat - Wonderful Town (Thailand)
Pen-Ek Ratanaruang - Ploy (Thailand)
Carlos Reygadas - Silent Light (Mexico)
Tomas Alfredson - Let the Right One In (Sweden)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Tokyo Sonata (Japan)
Frederick Wiseman - 34 Documentaries by Frederick Wiseman (United States)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Meteorites / Emerald (Thailand)
Alex Gibney - Taxi to the Dark Side (United States)

Snoopy's on vacation, so this will be a quick, no-frills edition of The Word.

Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton was found dead today (Jan 6) at his home in Ann Arbor, MI. Cause of death has not yet been determined, but it appears he died of a heart attack several days before his body was discovered. Asheton was 60.

Guitar gods Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton will share the stage for two shows in Japan February 21 and 22. These concerts will be the first time the two axemen have shared the bill for big arena shows.

Amy Winehouse saved a little boy from possible death by preventing from eating a deadly cashew nut while she was on holiday in St Lucia.

Kraftwerk co- founder Florian Schneider has left the band after forty years.

John Lennon's MBE, which he famously returned to the Queen in 1969 has been found in a royal vault. Beatles fans are calling for the medal to go on public display.

That's it for now...off to the beach!

The crew here at Easy Street have spoken!  We've listed our top 10 albums, top 3 DVDs, most mind-blowing concerts or events, and the most eye-popping cover art for 2008. This year, we also asked a few friends of Easy Street to list their faves as well - many thanks to them for helping out! Cumulative lists are still being tallied, but you can check out the individual lists right here. 

Happy New Year from all of us at Easy Street!!

Snow day in Seattle! Here are some video treats to keep ya happy!

Above, the trailer for the long-awaited Neil Young Archives release

The Boss is back! Check it out....

Working On A Dream

A Christmas offering from Sub Pop artists Low...

Santa's Coming Over

And from our pals at Barsuk Records ... here's Mates of State!

Get Better

Somehow, we neglected to mention a couple of important items in our recent edition of "Word on the Street." We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Flight of the Conchords, No Age, and Death Cab for Cutie for receiving 2009 Grammy nominations!

Just like last year, two Sub Pop artists were nominated for Grammys. Flight of the Conchords self-titled debut is up against Lewis Black, Harry Shearer, Kathy Griffin and George Carlin for Best Comedy Album, while No Age - yes, No Age (!) - and art director Brian Roettinger were nominated for Best Recording Package for their Nouns album. 

Meanwhile, Death Cab was nominated for Best Rock Song ("I Will Possess Your Heart") and Best Alternative Music Album for Narrow Stairs.

Other Northwest artists nominated for Grammys include Bill Frisell in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category (History Mystery) and Eddie Vedder in the Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, "Rise," from the Into the Wild soundtrack.

Good luck, y'all!

Video clip: RIP Bettie Page

Reunion Fever!

Seattle Times Music Journalist Patrick McDonald To Retire

Pearl Jam To Reissue Ten - Super Deluxe Style!

Clothes-Minded Kanye West Moving to London

The Holy Grail of Tour Riders Surfaces

McCartney Wants R-E-S-P-E-C-T

RIPs: Dennis Yost, Bettie Page

Reunion Fever!

First there was the now-old news that Jesus Lizard are reuniting to play All Tomorrow's Parties' Fans Strike Back festival in England and assorted other dates. Then, we looked on, amused, as British music rags wet themselves after Blur announced they were back in the game with a July 3 concert in Hyde Park that, incidentally, sold 10,000 tickets in two minutes. (Oasis had no comment.) Now post-grunge Seattle fiends are deee-lighted to hear that the Murder City Devils will reconvene for a string of West Coast dates in February. Well, not all of their fans are deee-lighted, as it turns out. Readers of The Stranger, longtime champions of the Devils, weighed in with several negative comments on the paper's music blog. Here's a sampling:

"What year is it? Didn't this band break up already? Their show at the 'Capitol Hill Block Party' was so bad that it ruined this band for me. Fuck man! Get over it Seattle. FUCK! The Seattle music scene is so fucking lame now."

"Ooooh, look at us - we are broken up but wait, NO WE ARE NOT! What the hell is going on? This just stinks of a way to get some cash-ola in the coffers of the boys and girl."

"Can yous say cash-in?????????"

"sometimes it's best to let bands 'of the past'... stay 'in the past' this is one of them."

"Aging hipsters/living at home with mom losers are so sad. Seattle music has become a fucking joke."

The words of looonnnnggggtime Seattle punk dude "Slats" highlighted the division between said aging hipsters and the presumably younger skeptics... "To the Haters: May Kim Warnick spit in your drink at the Cha Cha. You won't be missed at the shows."

Blur isn't faring much better, as longtime enemies - not Oasis - but Mogwai, who in 1999 sold t-shirts that read "Blur Are Shite," opted to open up old wounds by posting the following on their website:

"Anyone fancy a 'Blur: Are Shite Once Again' T-Shirt? It seeeeeems as if the seminal britpop band called Blur want to get back together again to make astounding new music. This could have catastrophic effects on our youth and middle-aged citizens. As the world's 4th biggest economy, Blur's surprise re-union could have destabilizing ramifications which are too legion to be properly explained here. Only Patrick David Xavier McMeneman-McHanarahan, our specialist re-union specialist, can even start to describe the disastrous potency of this formative party's re-grouping on the world's already dangerous pre-apocalyptic position. He says, 'Their imperial designs know no bounds and we will have to use all of our vigor and guile to disperse this potential doomsday-making scenario else we sprint toward a life-ending britalocalypse.'

This screed attracted the wrath of NME-reading Blur fans who called the Mogs "pretty shite," "Scottish morons," a "shitty little band," "pathetic," and "twats." One commenter really rubbed it in by writing: "it must be pretty tough when your biggest hit is a t-shirt slogan you thought of ten years ago." Ouch.

The Jesus Lizard reunion news seemed to escape comment from "haters" for the most part, probably because most people are so blown away it is even happening. Or maybe it's a testament to the band's sheer awesomeness, or awesomeivity, or whatever.

Seattle Times Music Journalist Patrick McDonald To Retire

Patrick McDonald has covered pop music in Seattle for forty-six years. In addition to thirty-five years with the Seattle Times, he wrote for the Seattle PI, the UW's Daily paper, Rolling Stone, and was a disk jockey for the now-defunct KOL. He interviewed Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Dylan, and The Boss, along with countless others and he was the first to play Led Zeppelin on Seattle radio. On the flipside, his derogatory personal comments about Heart singer Ann Wilson drew the ire of the band and their fans, and, according to PI music writer Travis Hay, he was permanently blacklisted by Pearl Jam for reasons I cannot uncover.

December 12 was the last day of McDonald's career with the Seattle Times. Sadly, the ever-shrinking Times, in a financial bind, has no plans to replace him (they also sacked their art critic, Sheila Farr). In an e-mail to fellow journalist Hay, McDonald wrote: "I have been so lucky, so blessed, to spend my entire working life - going back to the P-I, 46 years ago - involved in things I love: music, media and writing. ... I'm going to take it easy for a while. No plans for a book or freelancing. I'm going to go through all my recordings, DVDs and books, file what I want to keep and give the rest to the UW School of Music. I have many treasures and I'm going to enjoy them."

Pearl Jam To Reissue Ten - Super Deluxe Style!

Just a couple of weeks ago, Pearl Jam's 1991 debut album Ten was among the top ten best-selling releases of the week at the West Seattle Easy Street. Amazing, isn't it, that some records just have it - a marvelous staying power that keeps the product selling and selling for years, decades, and even longer. Now fans have another reason to snap up this seminal release: Pearl Jam is reissuing Ten in four special edition packages next March.

The Legacy Edition will include:

* The original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered (original mix)

* A second disc with the original Ten tracklisting digitally remastered and remixed by Brendan O'Brien, plus six bonus tracks: "Brother," "Just a Girl," "State of Love and Trust," "Breath and a Scream," "2,000 Mile Blues" and "Evil Little Goat"

The Deluxe Edition will include the two discs in the Legacy Edition, plus a DVD of PJ's previously unreleased 1992 MTV Unplugged performance, and a bonus performance of "Oceans" with 5.1 surround sound audio remix.

The Vinyl Collection is a two-LP vinyl set featuring the discs in the Legacy Edition, minus the bonus tracks.

And lastly, the Super Deluxe Edition will include everything in all of the editons listed above, plus

* Two-LP vinyl of Drop in the Park – Live at Magnuson Park in Seattle on September 20, 1992 (audio mixed by Brendan O'Brien)

* A replica of the original "Momma-Son" Pearl Jam demo cassette featuring "Alive," "Once" and "Footsteps"

* An Eddie Vedder-style composition notebook filled with replica personal notes, images and mementos from the collections of Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament, a vellum envelope with replicated era-specific ephemera from Pearl Jam's early work and a two-sided print commemorating the Drop in the Park concert.

Holy crap! Pre-orders for the Super Deluxe version ($140, free shipping) are being taken now at www.pearljam.com. And get this...random copies will be signed by the members of Pearl Jam.

Clothes-Minded Kanye West Moving to London

Kanye West is an expert at putting needle to the groove, but will he be able to put needle to thread? West is moving to London next spring to submit internship applications at Louis Vuitton's luxury goods headquarters and other leading fashion houses. West plans to unveil his new line, Pastelle, in London soon, but he wants to dig in his fancy kicks and learn the trade, instead of merely just making millions off of it. West has been telling friends that he will even make the tea if it helps him get his foot in the door. That should do the trick.

The Holy Grail of Tour Riders Surfaces

Last week we told you about the 2008 Van Halen tour rider that the Smoking Gun featured on their website. Well, our friends at SG have really done it this time...they have found and posted VH's long-sought, infamous "No Brown M&Ms" rider from the band's 1982 tour. In addition to the immortal "Warning: No Brown Ones" demand, the fifty-three page rider asked for - among many other essentials - herring in sour cream, cases of sixteen-ounce cans of Schlitz beer and one large tube of K-Y jelly. Sounds like what everyone needs during a power outage. Anyway, check it out.

McCartney Wants R-E-S-P-E-C-T

We can't help noticing that Paul McCartney has made a supreme effort lately to promote himself as the most forward-thinking Beatle. Recent reviews of his latest album, Electric Arguments - under the name of The Fireman - along with his stated desire to unearth the experimental Beatle track "Carnival of Light" prompted online debate about who really was the most "avant-garde" - Lennon or McCartney? Defenders of Macca noted that he was the one who introduced tape loops to Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows," and he was the one first aware of such experimental composers as Stockhausen and John Cage, and he went to all of the "artsy" parties in London while Lennon holed up in his suburbian mansion blissfully unaware. Now, McCartney is telling the world that he was the one responsible for politicizing the Fab Four. Paul told the Sunday Times that a meeting with philosopher Bertrand Russell increased his awareness of the Vietnam War. "He told me about the Vietnam War - most of us didn't know about it, it wasn't yet in the papers - and also that it was a very bad war. I remember going back to the studio and telling the guys, particularly John, about this meeting and saying what a bad war this was." Damn, Paul, next thing you know you'll be telling us you wrote "I Am The Walrus."

In other McCartney news, he told Absolute Radio's Geoff Lloyd that he would like to collaborate with Bob Dylan, "because I admire him," and David Byrne, "because I like him too." Aww, isn't that nice? McCartney also claimed to have written the lyrics for the Electric Arguments album on the spot in the studio. Macca said, "at the risk of humiliation and compete and utter degradation, I went in through the mic and listened to the track that we'd made, and I just started going [singing]…making it up, yes."

RIPs: Dennis Yost, Bettie Page

Dennis Yost, former singer for '60s Classics IV, passed away in Ohio on December 7. The Classics IV had big hits with "Stormy" and "Spooky." Yost suffered injuries after a 2005 fall and had since resided in nursing homes. He died of respiratory failure at the age of 65.

Former pinup girl Bettie Page, whose risque photos and signature dark bangs made her an icon of pop culture, passed away December 11 at the age of 85. Page was also notorious for bringing sadomasochism out in the open after posing for a series of S&M-themed photos in the early '50s, which resulted in a congressional investigation. Page later became a born-again Christian, and spent a number of years fighting depression and schizophrenia. In recent years she participated in signings but refused to let her face be photographed, saying "we want to remember [stars] when they were young." Page was hospitalized last week after suffering a heart attack and then went into a coma. She was taken off life support on Thursday.

What grooves are bending your ear this week? We want to know what's getting busy on your stereo! Whether it's in the car or at home, CD or turntable, album or song, take a peek in your player and tell us what titles are in your current rotation! Just click on the "post comments" link below to share your picks.

Here's what we've been listening to down here on Easy Street:

Corey Wolverton - Shipping/Receiving

Fripp/Eno - No Pussyfooting

Marnie Stern - This is It and I Am It...

Sparks - Propaganda

Ratos De Porao - Guerra Civil Canibal

Lau Nau - Nukkuu

Joe Huston - Clerk/Buyer

The New Order reissues

The Fireman - Electric Arguments

Holly Golightly & the Brokeoffs - Dirt Don't Hurt

Dido - Safe Trip Home

Coldplay - Prospekt's March

Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

Parts and Labor - Receivers

Secret Machines - Secret Machines

Neil Young - Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968

Dept. of Eagles - In Ear Park

Rod Moody - Web Editor

Rodriguez - Cold Fact

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

Bill Frisell/Dave Hollland/Elvin Jones - S/T

Richard "Groove" Holmes - Spicy

Tom Verlaine - Around

Various Artists - Titan: It's All Pop!

Chris Walla - Field Manual

Invisible Giants demo

Jeff Ament - Tone

Dean Martin - The Complete Dean Martin

Vincent Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas

Zero Boys - History Of