Musical lists

I’m known around the office as a list maker. I keep a box of index cards, cataloging plans for the year, ideas for the future, every Smart Living Guide we’ve ever published and so on. I love updating my index cards with lists of CDs I’m considering for each month’s Currents. (My January and February lists are making me very happy right now! There are great things ahead.) Mary Ellen, Joe and I shared a great laugh this week when Joe walked into our office and said, “Carla Jean, do you have any of those great index cards you always keep lying around?”

Yes, I’m a list maker. And so I don’t think anyone would be surprised that I keep lists not only of every concert I’ve attended this year, but of every concert I’ve ever attended.

I might be missing a few entries from the latter list. I didn’t start it until after I graduated college, so it’s quite likely I’ve forgotten a show that fell between Billy Ray Cyrus in 1992 and Amos Lee earlier this week. The list currently totals 101 concerts.

Twenty of those took place in 2008.

I haven’t analyzed the full list, but I am fairly confident that this number earns 2008 the “year of the concert” title. 2007 came close, with 19 shows, and it looks like I attended quite a few in 2004 as well. But 2008 reigns.

And the shows are still coming. Tonight I’ll attend a show that I expect to land on my “top five concerts of 2008” list: Iron and Wine at WorkPlay. Heck, if all goes well, this show could break into my “top five concerts I’ve attended” list!

I bought tickets to this now-sold out show within an hour of them going on sale and have been anxiously awaiting Sam Beam’s performance ever since. Last night a friend and I used Iron and Wine as a soundtrack to an evening of baking. We’re getting to the show way too early to secure a good spot on the floor. I’ll miss watching my (and Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam’s!) alma mater, Florida State, take to the football field against Maryland. Sometimes music is more important than football.

The list will continue to grow in December, as Drew Holcombe and Red Mountain Music hold a Christmas concert at WorkPlay and The Blue Cut Robbery takes the same stage a week later. (Read more about that trio in our interview with Matthew Mayfield.) And I already have tickets to the first show that will grace my 2009 list: Punch Brothers at the Alys Stephens Center.

2009 promises a year of concerts, newly-discovered bands and new favorite CDs. You can be sure, I’ll be making lists of all of them.