Another bumper year for the discerning music fan with some cracking releases and choice gigs. It’s a fine time be a punter and the challenge will be keeping this review of the year to just 10.

Speaking of challenges, as I get older and my brain gets more addled, trying to remember what I had for breakfast is enough of a challenge, let alone trying to remember what I happened in the first half of the year. So, if I left something or someone off, be kind.

Amy Helm – This too shall light
Amy is the daughter of Levon Helm and Libby Titus and she (Amy) was a regular member of her dad’s band in the latter stages of his career. This is only her second solo album (she’s nearly 50) and with a pedigree like hers, you just have to check it out. In short, it’s a wonderful mixture of country, folk, soul, gospel and rock. Great voice and great backing. One of the albums of the year.

Other albums worth mentioning in the US sort of country space include Kim Richey (Edgeland) and Dawn Landes (Meet me at the River). Both excellent singers and songwriters. Kim’s ‘Leaving Song’ is one of the songs of the year.

Earthlings! We The Dark Clouds don’t care who you are! If you like polls, surveys and lists or if you think Shannon Noll is the pits. You’re all going under The Thunder.

1) You know that guy. The keyboard warrior, the one always going on about there is no good music these days. The guy with Brian Mannix as his profile pic. Well strike me lucky and call me Shirley you Putz. Here’s 10 bands in ten seconds: Port Royal, Legs Electric, The Lazys, MASSIVE, Aberration, Grindhouse, Dead Set, The CRAW!, East Coast Low, Electric Mary. See how easy that was. 10 ripper bands in ten seconds.

So you want a Top Ten? You don't ask for much, do you? Being a contrary individual, the approach is unconventional. There's a selection of lists for your perusal and the items on them appear in no particular order.   

10 Things That Sucked in 2018
Cancer
Adulting
Manbuns
Hipsters
Commercial Radio
Flume
Phil Collins, Phil Collins and  Elton John
Pop-Up Stores of Any Description
Self-Described Social Media Influencers
Something else I can’t quite put my finger on right now but it will come to me

Gigs
X at the Factory Theatre, Sydney
Mick Medew and The Mesmerisers at Marrickville Bowlo and supporting the Sunnyboys at Anita's Theatre
Born Out of Time #1 at Marrickvilel Bowlo 
The Pretty Things at The Factory Theatre
The Aints! at The Factory Theatre, Sydney
New Christs and James McCann at Marrickville Bowlo
The Johnnys at Marrickvile Bowlo
feedtime at Marrickville Bowlo (last December but who cares?)
The Stewy Cunningham Benefit that I couldn’t attend at Marrickville Bowlo

As another year draws to a close, your friend and mine, Mr. Craig T. Barman has requested I compile my top ten list for 2018 to be published on the esteemed I-94 Bar.

So, I turned my mind to the events of the year – and there have been as many standouts as low points – however, I think a lot of those have already been covered in a very heartfelt way by some of my compatriots here.

Needless to say, the loss of so many great musicians this past year – and the stellar support lent to those in dire need of it – has exemplified the way the “rock n roll community”, both performers and punters alike, pull together and lend of themselves a little bit more for who and what they love when the going gets tough. It’s been both saddening and heartening in one.

Now onto the list: I was reading a recent post on the social medias about a study that posited most people ceased seeking out new music around the age of 28-years-old. “What bollocks!”, I exclaimed to the socials.

Well, this may be true of a lot of people – but not the kind of people I know (and I’m sure not you, kind reader, being a lurker on the I-94). These are the ones who are forever curious; always hungry for the new; always the ones with the gleam in their eye when they are telling you about some new band or artist “you’ve just gotta hear!”; the ones who never declare “rock is dead!” or “there is nothing new that’s any good!”

I thank all of those people for keeping me in the loop of what’s going on because I too crave and thrive on new music; whether it’s all new or undiscovered (for me) gems from bygone eras.

The Barman has been pleading for a Top Ten list.  I have a Top Ten list but everyone is gonna fucking hate it.  For once I'm standing up and demanding some attention for something I believe in.

Normally, I let you ignore my records.  Normally, I just go with the inferioty complex.  But I bought my friend's in on this and I don't like them being ignored.  Fuck you all.  You're gonna listen to this fucking record.  And you can happily call me a cunt.

I noticed that the way to actually push things through social media is by being a repetitive rude cunt. 

If you ask me what the 10 most important things that musically consumed me, it was the ten songs on the album Going Underground by the Light Brigade.  Which other songs did I dedicate 100 hours plus a piece to?  A thousand hours.  Forty days.  A tenth of the year. 

No songs more obsessed me.  Musically, fuck all else actually mattered.  Other new albums this year?  James Williamson did a good one. 

The easiest cop-out is to call this record a Velvet Underground tribute but tribute albums are inevitably piecemeal.  A blur of people's visions.  Someone inevitably always has to do a Ramones version of a slow song and someone else has to slow a fast one down into an overblown ballad to try and force meaning onto lyrics that have none. 

Almost everyone I know seems to be mourning people they loved who passed on this year. Some staved off the inevitable until later in their lives, for which I am only one of many very grateful folk. Other people are coping as best they can.

For many of us 2018 was a very mixed year. In many places great swathes of love came out, so the struggle was peppered with brilliant, unforgettable events, music, films and a few books.

Normally I just do some sort of Top Ten for the I-94 Bar, but this year has been memorable for far too many of the wrong reasons, which has annoyed me quite a bit, and I'm an old shit, so cue meme of Granpa Simpson shaking his fist at a cloud.

But let's start with Australia, the country which can't count on stable government, can't spot a recessionary bubble billowing up like a volcano, and increasingly puts local news first because that is, apparently, what we're really interested in.

This is going to be a very biased view and I’m not trying to hide it. I’ll make my own rules just so I can bend them to suit my agendas.

Best gig of the year - The Stew Cunningham Benefit night in Sydney at Marrickville Bowlo. All the bands were awesome but what won the night over was the atmosphere and goodwill of all the people that attended. A truly special night.

Best local live act - The Celibate Rifles. The Rifles slayed it in support of The Sunnyboys at The Factory, then followed it up with a couple of scorchers at The Marrickville Bowlo and The Narrabeen RSL. The old fellas have still got it. Honourable mention to Stiff Richards who tore the roof off in support of The Rifles at the Bowlo, great band.

Best local release - The Aints!, "The Church of Simultaneous Existence". Wonderful album from go to whoa. Honourable mention to Warped - "Bolt From The Blue" - brutal honesty at its best.

Best international gig - Señor No at The Botany View Hotel. It was wild, crazy and a helluva lot of fun. honourable mention to Los Chicos at the Rad Bar in Wollongong, they put on a show and a half, they were just pipped at the post.

2018? This year all blurs into one for me , like being a passenger down the river with the occasional stop off to play, talk, refuel and get back on and cruise.

The cruise hasn't been steady, it's been rocky. More than any other time - or for some time.

The boat feels like it lost i's rudder and all the Generals on the field are nowhere to be seen; what would they say, what would they want us to do? I think we all know the answer to that.

So, here is my attempt to make neither head nor tail of the year 2018 so far...

SPENCER P. JONES
1956-2018

In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig interrogates the very nature of quality through the lens of motor mechanics. Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who’s bound to have some characteristic of quality.

Spencer Jones knew a thing or two about quality - especially musical quality. Born in 1956, the Year of Elvis, Spencer wanted to be a working musician as long as he could remember. Spencer’s family moved from the regional town of Te Awamutu to Auckland in 1965, the same year the British invasion swept through New Zealand, with tours by The Rolling Stones and, infamously, The Pretty Things.

Spencer’s grandfather was a gifted musician; his mother, too, was born with a natural ear. Recognising Spencer’s musical abilities, Spencer’s elder brother Ashley recommended his parents buy Spencer a guitar.

Carbie Warbie photo