I realize we aren’t exactly the first ones to hit you with a Top 10 list.  But hey, it’s the end of the year, and for the matter, the end of the decade… so lists were bound to happen

Being record store geeks, we really have to do them.  It is in our blood.

OK, that might not be entirely true.  I’ll never really know, because the truth is that I “ask” (read: make?) all of the hoodlums to send me some lists, which they do… except for Kristian, the store’s co-owner and ultimate rebel, who can and does refuse to do them (You can see my “Want good music?  Ask Kristian” video blog here).

Don’t worry, they are all rebels to some degree.  We hire ‘em that way.  If I ask for top fives, they send top ten or twenty.  If I want two, they send ten; If I want ten, they send two.  If I ask for specific categories… they may or may not give them to me.  I will post them as they were sent to me, so you can see what I mean.  Last, but certainly, they send them late.

But one thing I do know for sure is: They don’t put things on their lists lightly.  Neither do I.

And they all know what I know: If you are a real music fan, doing top ten lists can be a lot of fun.  Really.  Once you get going, you can get out of control (see Andy the Hoodlums’ list for an example).

Would you like to try?  We’ll provide some incentive.  You send us you top five, or your top ten, or whatever music and movie rated list you want… and we’ll enter you in a contest to win $50 worth of good ol’ Hoodlums merchandise (otherwise known as a gift card).  Only two rules:

1) We gotta have ‘em by January 15th (that gives you roughly a week); and

2) You need to be prepared for us to possibly post them online.

Wanna play?  Email your name and lists to us by clicking here.  Send ‘em in text form if possible.

In the meantime, we’ll be posting our separately.

How do you do it?  Here’s how I do it:

• Start drinking wine or beer.  Whatever you are in the mood for…
• Put all of your CDs back in their proper alphabetized section (you have them alpha’d, right?).
• Peruse your CDs and start writing down stuff.  Make sure music is playing to inspire you.  Drink more booze, or change albums, if it isn’t working.
• Check other top ten lists to see if there is something that you forgot or misplaced.  Here’s some links for some good ones: NPR, Allmusic.com,  Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, and Aquarium Drunkard.
• You have a whole decade to work with, so this shouldn’t be tough… but if it is, make just make up some categories (magazines do it all the time for their “best of” issues).
• Type ‘em up and send ‘em to the Record Store Geek.

Sounds easy enough, eh?  You’ve got a week to enter the contest, so send those picks in.  Some of us are doing ours this week as well, so we’ll compare notes.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 9:04 am and is filed under Random Babbling of a Record Store Geek, Store Observations, The Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.