January 29th, 2007

Flohil's Top 10 for 2006

Penguin Eggs publisher Roddy Campbell asked me - as well as hundreds of others - to supply him with my Top 10 records for last year. Of course, Roddy won't let us list any artist(s) we're involved with, which is difficult for me, since I can't list anything on Stony Plain, for instance...Anyway, here's my Penguin Eggs list (complete with one-paragraph bio that was requested.

Top 10 (in order, at least right now)

Jim Byrnes                                  House of Refuge                          (Black Hen)

Stephen Fearing                          Yellowjacket                                 (True North)

Tom Russell                                Love & Fear                                 (HighTone)

Ray Wylie Hubbard                      Snake Farm                                 (Sustain)

Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler  All the Roadrunning                       (Mercury)

Johnny Cash                               A Hundred Highways                     (Columbia)

Bob Dylan                                   Modern Times                              (Columbia)

Luke Doucet                                Broken (and Other Rogue States)  (Six Shooter)

BeBop Cowboys                          Canadian Dance Hall                     (BBC)

Prairie Oyster                              One Kiss                                     (Open Road)

Runners-up

Jeremy Spencer                           Precious Little                               (Blind Pig)

Solomon Burke                            Nashville                                       (Shout Factory)

Various Artists                            Toronto Women's Blues Revue Live   (TBS)

Reissues of the Year

Ray Charles                                Pure Genius: The Complete Atlantic Recordings

                                                   (Atlantic/Rhino)

The Waterboys                           Fisherman's Blues                            (EMI)

I would vote for these, if I were allowed:

Justin Rutledge                          Devil on a Bench in Stanley Park        (Six Shooter)

Serena Ryder                             If Your Memory Serves You Well        (EMI)

Various Artists                           30 Years of Stony Plain                     (Stony Plain)

Martyn Joseph                           Deep Blue                                         (True North)

Discoveries of the Year:

Treasa Levasseur, Sam Baker, Christine Tier

Richard Flohil has been told he has some sort of semi-exalted position as a Toronto-based music business publicist, simply because he's been doing it for so long (40 years 'n' counting). Oddly and thankfully, he still remains passionate about music. He also edits Applaud!, a magazine designed to promote Canadian music everywhere else in the world.

The Top 10 Canadian records of all time

Another bloody list!  This was my answer to a writer who is compiling a book on the best Canadian records.

I hate lists,. especially when you have to rate them in order (the list, and the order, changes by the day, by the mood) and you can't explain WHY you think the records you're listing are are on the list in the first place...

Today's list is as follows, and my mood is, for once, fairly level:

1) Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen 1967

2) The Band - Music from Big Pink 1969

3) Ian & Sylvia - Great Speckled Bird 1969

4) Crowbar - Bad Manors 1971

5) Sackville All Stars - Tribute to Louis Armstrong 1988

6) k.d. Lang - Shawdowland 1987

7) Oscar Peterson - Beginnings 1945-1949

8) Ferron - Shadows on a Dime 1984

9) Downchild Blues Band - Straight Up 1973

10) Mary Margaret O'Hara - Miss America 1988

Tomorrow's list, of course, will be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT - the implicit flaw of lists....