I agree that we don't need to do any more oldies nights/competitions for awhile. Not necessary and the focus should be on the new, whether it be actual newly released music or music that may have been around awhile but that you've only recently discovered yourself.  I do find it a tad odd, however, that a consensus emerged about the group becoming too 'oldies' centric from the same quarter that devised and advocated for the oldies competitions.

Also, not entirely convinced that we were ever as cutting edge as we perhaps like to credit ourselves. Yes, Arcade Fire and Band of Horses were concerts attended before they broke big, but I'm struggling to find other examples. I think that Derek has probably done the best job of keeping up with new groups by reading exclaim!, visiting soundscapes, and checking out online sources over the years. The rest of us have then checked in with periodic bursts of discovery and sharing. Certainly not an indictment of our musical prowess--we're still likely ahead of 95% of the population--but I don't think it's fair to indict our current performance based on a false sense of past glory.

Having said that....I don't know that I have the time or inclination to keep my ear to the ground for innovative, non-released music/bands these days. There are so many sources of potentially great music and so little time to devote to them. However, bringing 3 pieces that we've listened to at least a handful of times still sounds completely do-able to me. Happy to make that a rule/strong suggestion/legally binding requirement for subsequent meetings.

In terms of this metabeats space, I suggested last year that we maybe think of shutting it down or rethinkng the format. I love reading longer form pieces and prefer these to lists. I'm also happy to ban lists completely even though I think these have really served as jumping off points for discussion when it comes to meeting up in person ("Really, you included 'x' but not 'y'?"). But when it comes to submitting longer form pieces about music that I like, probably not going to happen for me. Very little time for this during office hours, even less time in the evenings. If others feel differently or have more time, great. Please post here as frequently as you would like.

In terms of needing that filter, or relying on the kindness of friends to curate some good stuff, definitely some ways that we could do so more effectively via other social media. Twitter would be the easiest, most obvious.