A few days to go . . . .

Just a few days remain until I will be a married man.  On Saturday 23 June, Naomi and I will hold our handfasting ceremony and celebrations, three years to the day since we met.  Most things are done now and it looks set to be a great party.  There's one thing beyond our control and that is the weather, it's senseless worrying about it, but to those coming and to those not, please take a second or two to visualise a lovely sunny day with zero precipitation. I know most people attending aren't scared of a bit of rain and will have fun regardless but sunshine would be the cherry on top.

I think this is as good an excuse as any to get the blog going again, one post since the turn of the year is poor even by my standards.

Goodbye 2011, Happy Birthday Mongrel Diaries, and the Annual Mongrel Top 20 . . . . . . . .

Happy New Year to you all and Happy first Birthday to The Mongrel Diaries!  

So it's been one full year (and a few days) of me posting crap upon photos upon poems upon videos upon all sorts.  I'm rather impressed that I've stuck with it to be honest, things like this usually just end up like a new years gym membership and fizzle out after half an hour or so.

Rather than write a review of all the crap I've managed to post in a year, I'll go back to my very first proper post (excluding the introductory post ) which was 'My top 20 listenend to bands/artists of 2010'

Last year The Cat Empire took the number one spot with Rancid and Kings of Leon coming second and third respectively.  It seems like a good idea to repeat it for 2011, so, in reverse order this time, here it is . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20. The XX

19. Bob Marley

18. Public Enemy

17. Nero

16. Operation Ivy

15. The Stone Roses

14. The King Blues

13. Anti-Flag

12. The Strokes

11. Jimi Hendrix

10. Cage the Elephant

9. Crystal Fighters

8. Radiohead

7. Lowkey

6. Levellers

5. Blink-182

4. System of a Down

3. The Cat Empire

2. Rancid

1. PJ Harvey

I'm a little freaked out that only one of the top three has changed!  Kings of Leon seem to have fallen by the wayside all together.  That's probably on account of all of their new stuff being utter garbage though so it was inevitable to have at least one change.

No surprise at the top spot though, PJ Harvey's Let England Shake was my favourite album of 2011 and seeing her at Bestival cemented her place at the top of my 2011 chart.

A surprise entry was Radiohead, I think they got into the top 20 more by curiosity than by love.  I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about put a bit of faith in a number of friends' insistence, that not everything they put out is just miserable droning old llama poo.  I found a few tracks that I liked and took in the new album in anticipation of perhaps seeing them at Glastonbury (did for about 15 mins, got crushed, left) and so that's how they got there.  I don't expect they'll be on my 2012 list though.

Crystal Fighters were my 'new discovery' band of 2011 and probably my favourite live act.  I saw them once at Glastonbury and once at Bestival.  I'd say their album 'Star of Love' came a very close second to PJ Harvey.  I think the only reason they didn't make the top three is because I didn't discover them until June.

The rest are a mixture of some of my favourite artists/bands along with a couple of newly discovered and somewhat guilty pleasures (yes Nero I'm looking at you) Some, had new albums and some are just there by merit of how awesome they are and the longevity of their material.

And of course, there's the odd 'resurrection'  . . . . . . .

The data was taken from my last.fm charts, I'd be interested in your top 20's for the year if you'd like to post them in the comments section, always interesting to compare :-)

All the Best for 2012,

Stay Mongrel!