The time has come for columnists and bloggers to do their “Best of” lists for 2009. They fill some needed space for many writers and do serve a good purpose in this day and age when the fads seem to come faster and faster. I’m waiting for the day when someone declares that a TV show has “jumped the shark” (one of my least favorite terms lately) before a single episode even airs.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.regularguycolumn.com\/accelerate.jpg\")
I won’t do these lists for a couple of reasons. First of all, I am lazy and don’t feel like doing the research. Secondly, I focus all my energy on The Brians, which will come out in a few months. Lastly, the annual “Best of” frenzy has taken on a new energy I just can’t keep up with as the decade ends. My daughter was born in 2000 so I’d be a better candidate to create a list of things I didn’t see that were awesome over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n
That said, I saw my first bit of good news in one of these lists when I stumbled upon a list of the top 25 albums released since 2000<\/a> from Oakland Tribune writer Jim Harrington. He puts R.E.M.’s Accelerate<\/a> <\/em>at No. 15 on his list. High praise for an album which sailed under the radar pretty much, in my opinion.<\/p>\n Those who lost track of R.E.M. after 1994’s “Monster,” which seemingly includes most of the listening public, have missed some of the band’s finest work. The three-legged R.E.M., minus original drummer Bill Berry for the entire decade, returned to its early guitar-based sound on its terrific 14th studio record. <\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I doubly appreciated the nod for my favorite band when I scanned the list and found that not only had I not heard most of his picks, I didn’t want to hear many of them. Just give me some good guitar-driven rock any day of the week over the likes of Amy Winehouse<\/a> and Bjork<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The time has come for columnists and bloggers to do their “Best of” lists for 2009. They fill some needed space for many writers and do serve a good purpose in this day and age when the fads seem to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-its-the-end-of-the-week-as-we-know-it","category-music","category-rem","wpcat-47-id","wpcat-11-id","wpcat-5-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}