Grab Bag: 2022 Wrap Up
"Who's to say when all the roofs will cave in again?"
A Letter From The Editor
Hello, old friend and welcome to the second, and therefore now traditional, Negative Progression End of Year Grab Bag, from here on known as the The Wrap Bag.
How was your 2022? This time last year I wrote about 2021 being weird and Not Great, Bob! but I thought 2022 was pretty good. I let a robot cut me open1 and even that couldn’t dampen the vibes too much.
One side effect2 of a more normal year, was a considerably reduced output here. I said last year that monthly was a good goal and while that remains true, I also am not going to post for the sake of it, in the hope that quality will beat quantity. As I said last year, as with all life, this remains a work in progress(ion).
I did boldly profess to having a variety of new ideas this time last year, but did not execute any of them. I think one of them3 is a keeper that we’ll probably see in 2023. (The others? Not so much.)
As ever, thanks for reading this. I appreciate you! Happy December!
Playlist: Best of 2022
Here’s the thing with writing vs when I was a radio host: I have no idea how/when/where you consume this.
Given that most of the posts are related to music, in my idealized version of your consumption, that music is being listened to while you read it. As noted in previous editions, I consider myself to be a better live radio show DJ than a writer, but as I am retired from the radio, I am reduced to making playlists and writing about them. Needs must.
That sais, I do think that playlists remain an essential and under-utilized tool in the communications toolbox; there’s an alchemy that I find irresistible to finding the songs that align to a certain vibe and also in finding the best track order for them.
More specifically, the year end “best of” list has long been a personal go-to for a playlist, even though it’s a super hacky concept. It does at least serve a valuable purpose for me (if not for anyone else) because it allows me to keep track of my musical moods/vibes/tastes each year and how they (d)evolve over time.
In many past years, I was really in a bigger discovery mode and grabbing a ton of releases, leading to longer and more diverse lists. The last few years have been muxh more scaled back, but again, quality is beating quantity and this years list is packed with some great albums.
So, for the first time since 2019, I present my “Faves4 of 2022” playlist, click the button below to open it in YouTube.
Chris’ Favorite Records of 2022
Horsegirl “Versions of Modern Performance”
Martha “Please Don’t Take Me Back”
Meat Wave “Malign Hex”
The Rubs “Dust”
Lifeguard “Crowd Can Talk EP”
Green/Blue “Paper Thin”
Swami John Reis “Ride The Wild Night”
Fruit Tones “Pink Wafer Factory”
Some brief notes on the list:
As noted, in this summer’s Grab Bag, Versions of Modern Performance is my favorite record in years and therefore clearly my fav this year, hence it both opens and closes my playlist, the undisputed glamour spots in any such list.
Meat Wave is the first band in 6 years to have a record on Swami Records that doesn’t feature label honcho John Reis as a member. That is a clear Swami John endorsement of them and their record (Malign Hex) is killer, except for the first track which is terrible. Start at track 2 and thank me later.
Speaking of Swami John, he had a productive year by recent standards with both the Plosivs record (my least favorite thing he’s ever done) and the release of his “solo” record that’s been on the shelf forever. The solo record is far from his best work, but has enough Night Marchers style riffs in places and does just enough overall to get the softest, most Orange Cassidy style thumbs up from me.
Lifeguard and Martha also got write ups in this summer’s Grab Bag. The Martha album wins lyric of the year for referring to Great Britain as a damp and hateful island.
The Rubs album is more of the killer powerpop that Joey Rubbish has long since mastered, with an added bonus of some Thin Lizzy-esque stylings, as best featured on the track chosen here Hang On To Me.
Fruit Tones is a very late breaking choice, but I’ve listened to it a bunch in the two weeks since I found it. Check it out!
In addition to this years, list here’s some older ones:
Best of 2013 (live Radio Show recording)
Best of 2014 (old blog post)
Best of 2016 (old blog post)
Best of 2017 (old blog post)
Best of 2019 (YouTube playlist)
Best Of The Teens (Negative Progression post)
Corporate Social Media Still Sucks
As we slowly watch Twitter fade from relevance (despite the best attempts of the insecure man-child owner,) I am of one of many freaks seeking a new online harbor to nerd out and chat shit with fellow my weirdos. So far, it’s a bust on the other social media sites. I have joined a few Discords, with somewhat mixed results there too.
In an effort to be proactive, and provide solutions not complaints, Brother Patrick and I have teamed up to bring you the latest Social Media success story failed venture: THE FAIL WHALE5.
Sign Up using the button below if you want to discuss any of the topics you’d read about here (music, nonsense, etc) plus more, including but not limited to: hot dogs, pet pics, the cinema etc.
Speaking of places to talk about topics you read about here, I also enabled the new chat feature that Substack added. It might be cool, it might also be dumb; I have no idea.
If you want to check it out, you’ll need to download the Substack app. (Chat messages are sent via the app notifications, not via email like this post is but don’t ask me why, because I don’t know)
Download the app by clicking this link or the button below.
Or, maybe you wanna get into the blogging game? There’s a button for that too!
When Yer With…
Up the top there, I mentioned not following up on some ideas I had last year. One of those ideas was for a podcast, and while I didn’t start a podcast, my friend Joy did and it’s such a good idea, and done so well, that I’m super jealous that I didn’t do it first.
When Yer With, is kind of a like a fly-on-the-wall experience in which you get to hear Joy have pleasant, earnest and interesting conversations with her friends and family. It’s such a simple but perfect idea and as she says, inspires you to learn more about your own friends and family. One of the reasons Joy started the podcast was so that her kids will have a way to learn about their parents, relatives, their parents friends, etc. I thought this was a cool idea as I have all kinds of knowledge gaps in many of those areas.
For example, last week, I had dinner with my dad and was asking him about the business trips he went on to Japan and Singapore in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And well, it turns out my dad met an astronaut on one of those trips. Not just any astronaut either, it was John Young, the only astronaut who both moonwalked and was on the space shuttle! Turns out, they just talked about planes a lot, but still, a cool story. So yeah, let’s lean more about the people we know I guess?
Oh, also I buried the lede: I recorded an episode with Joy last week and it’ll be airing some time in the New Year. I’ll let you know when it’s out but in the meantime, I suggest checking out the episodes that are already out.
Wrestling 101
Ok, so that idea I had for a podcast that I didn’t follow up on? It was to prove Bryan Danielson’s theory that "if you show excellent professional wrestling to anyone, they’re going to enjoy it.”
I also said I didn’t know how to write about it, but then in October, some people who are clearly smarter than me figured it out and VoicesOfWrestling.com launched The Wrestling 101 project, which they describe thusly:
There’s more accessible wrestling content than any human could possibly consume available to anybody the moment they enter the hobby. While many a seasoned wrestling fan might react in great disappointment at somebody not having seen what they believe to be a keystone of wrestling, how is any newer fan meant to distinguish what the keystones are amongst the thousands of other bricks which make up wrestling’s citadel?…
[The Wrestling 101] will consist of a list of 101 wrestling matches we at Voices of Wrestling feel you should have watched…
[The Wrestling 101] explicitly isn’t a list of what we feel are the 101 best wrestling matches in history, that would be another project altogether. Instead…this list aims to help people fill in gaps, understand why matches are important, and serve as jumping-off points for further discovery.
I very much love this idea, and as a person who did not come up in online wrestling circles and certainly wasn’t in the tape trading markets of the 90s/00s, it’s a list filled with many things I haven’t seen. One of which is the leadoff match in the series, an absolute classic Kensuke Sasaki vs. Kenta Kobashi match that happened on July 18th, 2005 in Tokyo.
As soon as he stepped out of the curtain and I laid eyes on Sasaki for the first time ever, I knew I was getting into something special. The gus just looks like a classic heavyweight Japanese wrestler. Plus I already knew Kobashi was a big tough dude, so I was giddy before they even started wrestling, just knowing this would rule.
Then, over the 24 minutes that the wrestle, they whip a crowd of 30,000+ attendees into a wild frenzy multiple times over. It’s incredible and about as good an entry point into the classic age of heavyweight puroresu as I can think of.
I’m so glad someone figured out how to execute this idea.
!~See you in 2023~!
Putting such context free bombshell up top to see if people read the footnotes! It was a minimally invasive outpatient surgery and I am fine. Watch the same robot that fixed me up very carefully peel a grape here:
I’ll leave it to you to decide if this is a positive or negative side effect.
No more bests, just faves.
You’ll have to ask Pat about the name. I was going to make a Negative Progression server but he beat me to the punch on setting one up.
Hope you have a great 2023!