Best Of 08: The Bloggers

Finals week is a terrible time to have a computer go on the fritz, but lo, my 2003 Dell, the one that got my brother through college and has lasted me the 2 and a half years of my college career thus far, has fallen ill. This means blogging is gonna be a bit harder to do consistently for the next week or two (harder than it already would have been whatwith it being finals week). But I'm taking a break from studies to hammer out one entry, the first this month, and the first in the Best Of 08 series.

No, I'm not making grandiose statements about the best record to come out this year. Not yet, anyway. Starting things small with the best music blogs on the internet this year. Every music blogger reads other people's sites. It's how we know what's making waves and what's worth posting about on our own sites. Agreeing on a fellow blogger's music tastes aren't a necessity, just the fact that you're reading and seeing what other people are putting out there is enough.

2008 was a huge year for ¡Viva La Mainstream!. It was the year that VLM suddenly got added to the list of blogs others read, and the year that this little project that started out when my girlfriend told me I needed a hobby grew to something much larger than that. A great deal of that is the result of you, reading this now, and over the next month I will thank you profusely for your contribution, but part of it also comes from the other bloggers who have stopped in and had a thought provoked by the words on this site. So without further guilding the lily and with no more ado, I present the 2008 VLM Blogroll Awards (I promise to have a cooler name for those by 2009).

First one goes to my colleague Matt at Addicted to Vinyl. Matt was probably one of the first bloggers to take VLM seriously, and in so doing his blog and VLM have found each other making dialogue with each other many a time. Matt was even cool enough to bring me along to Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore this year. Kudos, Matt, and keep up the awesome bloggage.

In tandem with Matt I should point out Broken Headphones, as written by Brian, a comrade of Matt's and fellow VMF festival-goer.

One of the first blogs I ever encountered was Idolator, a site that I recently learned is only about 6 months older than this one. They also certainly win the award for most thorough blog in the bunch. No group, genre, or artist is sacred on Idolator; if they did something, they'll talk about it. Idolator goes down as one of the blogs where I don't generally agree with the sentiments posted, but their sense of wit and fun when it comes to the music business, as well as their consistent updates over the course of a day is amusing enough to keep coming back for more. That said, if I see one more post taking snarky jabs at Dave Grohl or Hayley Williams, Maura Johnston's gonna get a knock at her door.

Kidding...kidding...

Then there's Luis & Co. over at Pretty Much Amazing. First I want to point out two fantastic guest pieces that showed up on the site; one here that talks about life as a low-level music blogger who has to try to sort through all the emails of promotion companies BEGGING you to check out the next huge thing, and one here that breaks down just how blog darling The Hype Machine has affected what we do. PMA covers mostly pop music, with the occasional Hype Machine pandering foray into remixes, indie bands and the like, but for the most part PMA is the place to go to get your Top 40 fix...with a twist every once in awhile.

It is my personal belief that everyone who calls themselves a music blogger should read I Am Fuel, You Are Friends. Regardless of your attitudes toward the music posted there (I'm lukewarm to it, but this Matt Nathanson post was great), Heather Browne is a stellar writer. Fuel/Friends is probably the high-water mark for music bloggers who want to do more than just report the news and post mp3s, if you ask me.

The good folks over at The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown post some great stuff too. They first won me over with a small army of Foo Fighters' B-Sides, and haven't really let up since.

And one final award goes to Mixtape Maestro, a guy who's been reading my blog far longer than I realized, and does some excellent work on his own page.

I think that's everybody. Of course there are bands who do some cool stuff on their sites (NIN, anyone?), but I wanted to get the average joes out of the way first. I'll be back sometime soon with another post, but much depends on a lot of variables right now.

==TJ==