(that duh directed at me, not daddy-o, btw)

Well, here’s your problem: I’ve never heard anyone call Mogwai “math rock.” Or maybe that’s my problem.

2) I’m not sure why, but I prefer the BOB LP to the EP. Always interesting to see how things change between releases, but the one that jumps out is that the FIRST song on the EP is now the LAST song on LP. Before I noticed that, I found myself thinking, hmmm, really like this record, but think I can skip that last track.” So there you go.

3) I’ve always wanted to do the “long weekend in Reykjavic” thing. Very cool. I want to be just like you when I grow…uhm, 20 years younger. But hey, something to aspire to.

4) ONLY bought music from emu in 2008, and I did in 07. The only 2 CDs in 06 were The Beatles Love, and the reissue of My Aim is True.

5) My wife and I apartment sat for a really, really rich friends of friends for the holidays in 2000. (They swapped apartments with us in Florida.) They had a loft in Nolita on Prince near Mulberry, easily 3000 square feet.

During the day of Dec. 31, a beautiful silent snowfall fell, with flakes the size of your open hand. We went to see a matinee of Lily Tomlin’s revival of “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” The snow kept two-thirds of the audience home, but she played like it was a sell-out crowd at Shea.

We stumbled into tickets for MTV’s party at The World in Times Square, which featured the first reunion of Public Enemy, in bizarrely close quarters. I don’t even remember a stage. I was close enough to touch Flavor Flav back when you might still want to do such a thing.

Around 11:40, a bunch of us noticed that there wasn’t a window in the joint – no way to see the ball drop! I did my best Gene Hackman as I led them up the stairs to the street-level gift shop like it was the last reel of The Poseidon Adventure: “We can get out this way!”

What?! Security was blocking the door!!! They wouldn’t even let us get close enough to the doors to see outside! Doing my best Gene Hackman again I yelled, “You can’t block us in! It’s illegal!” (So maybe it was my best Sally Field in Norma Rae.) I don’t know why the security guys were so mad, but they were furious. I thought they were going to stomp me. The rest of the group trying to leave started yelling too.

It was 5 minutes before midnight by now, so I started yelling, “We don’t want to come back in! Just get out of the way!” That seemed to actually make them madder, but they opened the doors anyway…and we wound up inside the barricade, literally at the foot of the building with The Ball on top, maybe two dozen people between us and it.

Turns out that you can’t really see the ball from that close, so we turned our backs to it, and faced uptown to see a million people down Broadway and 7th Avenue, filling the streets and leaning out every window, the confetti drifting down with the still-silent snow. I’ve never felt more human, in love with every human. We hugged a cop as we headed back, and smiled and smiled and smiled.

6) I’ll never say anything bad about a band that’s been emu Selected, but when I listen to Breathe Owl Breathe, I can’t escape the image of an accident in Jeff Goldblum’s basement with the guy from The National and Andrew Bird in the teleporter.

My most memorable New Year involved the Flaming Lips (in Chicago, at The Metro), and nearly as much confetti as there were fireworks in that video. Generally, I don’t remember much of New Year’s Eve, though. I’ve also never just popped over to Reykjavik for a few (near continuous) nights. Nice, Yancey. Very nice.

I figured I’d get into Cursive with “The Ugly Organ”; is Domestica a better starting point?

Welcome back!

And no fair teasing eMusic Selects; I haven’t gone with every one (or even most of them), but I always look forward to seeing what you folks have plucked up to deliver to us “members”.