Well, the big event of my year was becoming a father (at age 45) but I still managed to get out to some rock ‘n’ roll shows, buy some records and….wow, another great year for Stooges archival releases.

New Stuff (in no particular order)…

Thee Sgt. Major III-The Idea Factory (Spark and Shine)
I’m quite sure Fastbacks and now Sgt. Major III mastermind/guitar wizard Kurt Bloch will continue to write great songs well into his dotage. Here’s his latest batch, and a fine batch it is.

Black Keys-Brothers (Nonesuch)
I liked the slow ones best on here for some reason but it’s all pretty fun and certainly reverential…..and, hey, I gather it’s nominated for a Grammy so it’s gotta be good, right?

Roky Erickson-True Love Cast Out All Evil (Anti)
This grew on me big time. Inspirational and beautiful. And quite moving.

Jim Jones Revue-Burning Your House Down (Punk Blues)
Big step up from their first album, both production-wise and material-wise. Performance-wise, still smokes like crazy. Had a chance to see these guys in London last year but the show clashed with one of the Mott nights. They seem to be getting a lot of press now so maybe they’ll make it out this way some day. I always loved Thee Hypnotics, Jones’ old band, as well.

Teenage Fan Club-Shadows (Merge)
A very welcome return. Just well-crafted songs and the best couplet of the year, to wit: “Well the Rolling Stones wrote a song for me/ It’s a minor song in a major key”. Yeah.

Deadstring Brothers-Sao Paulo (Bloodshot)
And speaking of the Rolling Stones, these guys are clearly in thrall to them but they know to write a good tune and they got soul, not unlike the Stones.

Master Plan-Maximum Respect (Nicotine)
Yeah, I know this came out late last year but I didn’t have it in time for the ’09 list and it needs to be on a best-of list. Andy Shernoff and the boys made one fun record and ‘Suburban Soul Man’ was definitely the party hit of the summer, with that great falsetto vocal hook by Keith Streng.

Joe Elliott’s Down ‘n’ Outz-My Regeneration (Mailboat)
Yeah, that Joe Elliott. But wait: this is a tribute album of sorts as fanboy Joe and his band of ex-Quireboys and the like record their set of Mott/Hunter obscurities and should-have-been-hits. And it’s pretty fuckin’ rockin’.

Neil Young-Le Noise (Reprise)
Just Neil and guitar-lots and lots of guitar. Kudos to fellow Canadian expat Daniel Lanois for steering this in an interesting direction.

Radio Birdman-Live in Texas (Crying Sun)
Just got this in the mail a week or two ago and I’m loving it. Really, what’s not to love?

Stooges-Raw Power Deluxe Edition (Sony)
I ponied up for the loaded version with dvd, single with replica Japanese sleeve, extra disc, et. al. and loved it. Okay, the beef with this was that there could have been more of the oft-released outtakes on the extra discs and that the vocal on ‘I’m Hungry’, one of the outtakes, sounded like it was recorded after the fact. To be honest, I don’t care that much: Georgia Peaches, the live disc, more than made up for any of that other quibbling. For me, anyway.

Stooges-Popped (Easy Action)
Lovingly assembled by Natalie Schlossman and the EA team, this served as a great primer for the arrival, a week or two later in the mail, of….

Stooges-Have Some Fun: Live at Ungano’s (Rhino Handmade)
The long-rumoured, sought-after Danny Fields “field recording” of a full Funhouse-era set. Rhino certainly dropped the ball on the 1st alb. reissue (see below) but they did a pretty good job here.

Rolling Stones-Exile on Main St. (Universal)
Well, it’s my favourite album of all-time and I actually quite like the outtakes on disc 2, recent vocals and all. Again, the message board denizens were up in arms but I kind of feel like it’s their music and they can do whatever they want with it.

Johnny Winter And-Live at the Fillmore East (CBS)
I like Johnny best when he’s doing the blues-based rock ‘n’ roll, not just straight up blues., and that is exactly what he and the boys were doing on this night at the Fillmore. Smokin’ band, smokin’ set.

Iggy Pop/James Williamson-Kill City (Bomp)
This reissue, remixed and remastered, caused me to completely re-evaluate the album. It just sounds so much better/tougher now. I always knew the songs were good but now the production does them justice.

Didn’t get out much this year and certainly nothing held a candle to last year’s Mott reunion shows in London but, let’s see:

Wilco (Royal Theatre, Victoria) were really good, though I still prefer the old Stones-y version of the band to the more “mature” line-up but, hey, Jeff Tweedy seems very happy and it’s pretty fun to listen to Nels Cline freak out on guitar. Funny, whenever they busted out an oldie that I liked, the crowd lost interest. Great, and ambitious, cover of Neil’s Broken Arrow in the encore as well.

Ron Reyes’ 50th Birthday Party (Rickshaw Theatre, Vancouver)
Original Black Flag singer Ron Reyes has lived in Vancouver for years now and the line-up for this show was stellar: Van. legends the Modernettes played an excellent set comprising their classics and a few great new ones, locals The Jolts played bratty, trashy punk rock ‘n’ roll and Ron’s own band, made up of a who’s who of Vancouver r ‘n’ r, just killed: various local classics by the likes of the Pointed Sticks, Subhumans, Young Canadians, some punk chestnuts (Heartbreakers, Damned) and then…special guest Greg Ginn (Flag founder who’d flown up from L.A.) joined the band for a few Black Flag tunes that tore the house down. This night was a blast and it was great to see old friends to boot.

Angry Samoans (Sugar, Victoria)
Okay, so the only original members were Metal Mike and drummer Bill Vockeroth but the young-ish ringers acquitted themselves admirably and they certainly played all the hits with gusto. Metal Mike is one weird dude, unless it’s all an act.

Aerosmith/Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (Rogers Arena, Vancouver)
Got a last minute freebie for this and had a ball. I love Joan and hadn’t seen her live since, oh, ’92 or so. She did not disappoint: awesome set list that included a couple obscure numbers from my favourite record of hers, ‘83’s Album, plus all the hits of course. Her set drew as enthusiastic a response to an opener at an arena show as I’ve seen since…well, since Peter Gabriel opened for Bowie back in ’83. As for the headliners, say what you will about Aerosmith but I happen to love ‘em (mostly the old stuff but some of the newer tunes are fine, too) and had never seen them live. It was the last show of the tour and, given the bickering between Tyler and Perry, conjecture was that we could be witnessing the last ever Aerosmith show. Whether that turns out to have been the case remains to be seen but they seemed to be having a really good time. Again, great set list: Last Child, Same Old Song and Dance, Chip Away the Stone (yeah!), Draw the Line all rocked like sin. Steven Tyler was born to be on stage.

Hoodoo Gurus-Purity of Essence (Hoodoo Gurus)
It’s not that this was terrible or anything, just that nothing on this album jumped out at me. It was kind of bland, the first Gurus album which contained no songs that I’d stick on the proverbial mixed tape.  I’ve watched a few clips on Youtube from their sets at the TurboRock Festival in Spain, though, and they’ve still got it live. But I’m sure you Aussies know that.

Stooges-Stooges (Rhino Handmade)
Expensive and poorly compiled reissue of the first album (again) “highlighted” by the John Cale mixes which run at the wrong speed ie. way too slow. The inclusion of Asthma Attack goes a little way towards making up for that but not enough. Just a strange error, really. Was nobody actually listening?

…..and finally I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my own band, BUDOKAN, is finally finishing up our “long-awaited” album and it is going to KILL! I can feel it.