Making anniversary plans

I've been mapping out the schedules for You, Me and An Album and Bonus Tracks (the Patreon-only episodes of YMAAA) into the New Year. There is still one vacancy to fill before 2025 ends, and I'm hoping you can help.

This December marks the fifth anniversary of YMAAA. One thing I want to do to mark the occasion is to do a crowdsourced episode. My plan is to listen to at least three albums that you recommend and to share my initial impressions of those albums on the December episode of Bonus Tracks. For those who have the time to do so, I'd love to hear—either in writing or in an audio file—why you're recommending the album and what you personally get from listening to it.

I will comp a membership to Bonus Tracks for the month of December to anyone who recommends an album for inclusion in the episode, whether I wind up using it or not. (If I get too many recommendations to use for a single episode, I'll save the others for future episodes. The only possible exception to this is if you recommend an album I already know.) To recommend an album, just leave the artist and title in the comments here or reply to this post via email. I can't wait to see which albums you'll be recommending!

I've already done one thing to acknowledge the podcast's upcoming anniversary. I started to take stock of what I've learned from doing the show. Between the albums that guests have picked, the albums that guests released around the time of recording the episode and other albums I listened to in order to write about them for the newsletter, I figured I've listened to somewhere between 350 and 400 albums in the process of working on YMAAA episodes and posts. The most obvious thing I've gained is the experience of listening to hundreds of artists and albums that I didn't know previously, but I've also begun to unlearn some habits that have kept me from exploring more music on my own. I wrote about this in a post for the Bonus Tracks Patreon.

While I'm attending to some end-of-year business here, I want to let you know that I am slowing down the YMAAA publication schedule for the holidays. There will not be a new episode this week, and I will only be publishing every other week for the remainder of 2025. I had intended to stick to a weekly schedule, but between cataract surgery and out-of-state trips for a memorial service and Thanksgiving in the upcoming weeks, I'd likely have a hard time getting everything done. While it will take a little longer before you hear them, I can assure you that the upcoming episodes with Wreckless Eric (talking about Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever) and Modern Nature's Jack Cooper (discussing Michael Head and the Strands' The Magical World of the Strands) will be worth the wait. Plus this will give you extra time to consider Eric's thesis that Full Moon Fever is the original Dad Rock album.

Also, I've been slowed down for another very good reason. Contrary to the impression you might get from the photo below, our new dog Mabel is extremely high-energy and has been needing lots of walking and training. I can't work on episodes or even a post like this one until Mabel is calm, and sometimes that is a process. I am able to send this post to you today because Mabel is being a very good dog. We both greatly appreciate you reading it!