Go to the music player of your choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud and press play. Use the song titles as your answers. NO CHEATING!

1 - How does the world see me?
Song: God Pt II
Artist: U2
Comments: That is pretty awesome I must say.

2 - Will I have a happy life?
Song: Episode III - Wedding
Artist: Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington
Comments: Well I guess a marriage is in my future. A Happy one at that?

3 - What do my friends really think of me?
Song: Long…

Here's a list of the bands I saw in 2005, at least the ones I can remember. Not counting local bands because none of you have heard of them. Some of these were not by choice, opening bands and all. Guess which.

Tegan and Sara
Xiu Xiu
Franz Ferdinand
The Killers
This Song is a Mess But So Am I
Echo and the Bunnymen
TV on the Radio

and the best one by far, The Decemberists. I've seen more but I can never remember the names of opening acts.

Alright I'm not going to bother writing out details because no one reads these things anyway. As an aside, I'm leaving in an hour and won't be near a computer until the new year. With that in mind, here we go. Top five albums
of 2004, one year later.

5. Franz Ferdinand
4. Has Been
3. Fabulous Muscles
2. Album of the Year
(not quite)

1. The College Dropout

How gloriously anti-climactic.

No, the title does not contain a typographical error. Instead, I've decided to approach the ubiquitous "end of the year" album chart from a different angle as this solar year comes to a close. Now that the 2004 releases have had at minimum a year to sink in, I've decided to see which ones stuck, which ones stood the test of the brief amount of time that has passed between now and then. So here we go.

10. You Are the Quarry
It's no The Queen is Dead, but it's no Maladjusted either. Too many torch songs, sure. Many…

One of the irksome qualities of the combination of music industry trend and the fickle nature of music listeners is the massive number of artists who slip between the cracks, unnoticed and criminally underloved because of it. I'm going to try to highlight some of these acts who deserve some loving.

First up is Billy Bragg. Bragg's genre is most commonly described as anti-folk. Now I'm not exactly well-versed in this, but as far as I know its sort of a union between punk and folk music - at least of the mentalities of the two. Similar artists to…