Some of my favorite purchases and downloads from last year? What music fan could resist such an invitation? I don’t really have any theme or system to the music that I buy – I’m woefully ignorant of new artists, and so I rely on people like Brian to point me in the right direction (that’s one of the reasons that I was excited to join this blog). And the backlog of music that I expect I’d like but haven’t yet bought is so enormous that I don’t particularly focus on new music. Of the CDs I’ve recently bought, highlights would include Orphans by Tom Waits and Beauty and Crime by Suzanne Vega. I also bought We Shall Overcome by Bruce Springsteen last year and really enjoyed that. On the other hand, I bought Bone by Tim Booth (who was the vocalist in the band James), but it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Same great voice, but weaker songwriting. I’ve been a big Paul Simon fan for ages, and I bought his latest (Surprise). It was pretty good, I thought, with some nice lyrics, but it doesn’t match his best work. My downloading is almost entirely from emusic, which limits the field somewhat. Some of my favorites from there have been live albums - Near Truths and Hotel Rooms by Todd Snider, Karma to Burn by the Waterboys, Just an American Boy by Steve Earle and Live at the Bottom Line by Steve Forbert. I also really like Picaresque by the Decemberists and The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake (which was something Brian introduced me to). I’ve downloaded quite a lot of Janis Ian songs, some of which I like a lot, and others which don’t do much for me. I really like The Trumpet Child by Over the Rhine, which I’ve already mentioned once before. I also downloaded a cover of Radiohead’s Black Star by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings that I think is great.