A Music Entry
Any folk even slightly interested in music is putting online his top-ten CDs list of the year these days, especially among fellow webloggers, and I’m not going to be an exception.
Some people might find this showing of strictly personal taste, full of redundancy, pretty boring. If somebody tells me he couldn’t care less whether I put Grandaddy or Venus as my number one, he’s definitely got a point.
What I think, and what IMHO allows me to write this, is that the large number of published lists may eventually convey a statistical « truth » about what were the best albums in 2000. Last year, a lot of Guided by Voices fans had the Dismemberment Plan Emergency & I record in their top-five, so I got this CD and I haven’t been disappointed at all. If you buy your new CDs with respect to the advertisement, you get Blink 182, and if you buy it thanks to music papers, you’ve got to be very rich, as most publications claim for finding the new OK Computer every week.

Anyway, back to the tunes. I don’t think 2000 was a tremendous year for pop music, as 1999 had been (see dEUS, Venus, GbV, my top-three last year). Big stars made damn good and promising albums (Kid A), but no groundbreaking stuff ; newcomers were rare and modest (except ATDI). But all of the music presented below is certainly worth a listen, and the top-five are definitely must-haves (in all categories).

Category #1 : Top-Ten Best Records of 2000

1. Grandaddy – The Sophtware Slump
2. Venus – The man who was already dead
3. Coldplay – Parachutes

[… find the whole lists here]

Concerts coming in Paris, Feb-Mar 2001 : Don’t feel afraid to mail and join me !!
* At the Drive-In, Trabendo, Feb 04 (110 ff !)
Punk-rock sensation from the Grand Royal label, one of the best live acts this year, they say.
DON’T MISS IT !!

* Grandaddy, Feb. 22
Third gig in Paris in less than one year. Excellent band, #1 in my top-ten.
Space rock and soft-punk, the only rock band that knows how to use keyboards today.

* PJ Harvey, Feb. 26
The miss is still angry, but she’s in love (or so it seems). A perfect career, a perfect musician.

* Placebo, Zénith, March 20
If there’s somebody to join me, I’d be OK to see again the most glamorous punk band in Europe and the #1 reason to become gay : Brian Molko.

A very cool link : emulations of the first and second generation browsers (Mosaic, IE and Netscape <2, had you ever seen them ?). Surf the web of today with the tools of yesterday. Pretty interesting ! [via Webmaster Richard]

Speaking of computing « history », the X-Web Abandonware is a great site (in French) where you can download the forgotten games of your youth. I got Indiana Jones 3, so cooool !
Piece of advice : get (on another abandonware site) the Hitchhiker’s guide…, a full text-mode adventure that opens in a small window (based on the famous novel). Great to play at the office (low-profile…).