Ok, so I'm tagging with the same basic thing as my last post, but man, I can't help it!And now, my personal faves of 2006!Artist (Longest Lasting thru the year): RatatatOk, ok, obsessive....yes. But still. It speaks to me or something.Nah, to me it's more about the musicianship. The more I listen, the more I find to love. The influences that I can find in their music (probably 1/2 of them are imagined) are vast, and range from AC/DC to Beethoven. Especially the last one. I've started picking apart Classics as much as I can with my musical knowledge, and when it really comes down to it, they are reverting to so many classical chord structures. The stuff symphonys are made of, only with drum machine and bass/guitar. I've also gravitated to them as a bass player. E-vax is quickly becoming a huge influence on me and my own creativity. Fairly simplistic bass lines with the occasional crazy. Playing around with octaves more, etc... I've also been more spurred to playing with Reason and various other tools for creating music outside of my norm because of them...Album: Midlake - "The Trials of Van Occupanther"It's very rare that I find an album that I don't have a favorite track from, one that stands out above them all. Consistency is the reason I'm choosing this album. Start to finish, nothing about this album is wrong to me....The first sentance was kinda a lie. I do have 2 favorites (Head Home & Young Bride), but they don't overshadow the rest, and it's the closest to a no-favorite album I have.Song: Islands - "Rough Gem"I had never heard of these guys (other than some of the guys were from The Unicorns) before I saw them live with Metric at the Wonder Ballroom. I know I’m gonna get smashed for this, but they totally blew Metric out of the water. I fell in love with this song live, and don’t think I’ve listened to a song more times in 1 day than this.Show: Tie between Ratatat/Panther/envelopes/E-Rock at Berbatis Pan and Boy eats Drum Machine/Dat’r at The Doug FirOk, yes, ratatat again, but seriously, this show was amazing. It was the first time I had seen them, and I had heard up to them very bad things about their live show (easily explained - the ST album was not written with playing live in mind, hence having like 15 guitar tracks on every song etc. Classics was written with live poerformances in mind, and it really comes thru in their shows. Anything on Classics they can pull of flawlessly, but stuff from the ST is hit or miss. Seventeen years I’ve seen performed horribly and amazingly. El Pico they did great both times). I was also already a fan of Panther, having been a the planet the formerly. Luckily I had some great dancing partners there. Envelopes was entertaining as hell, and Ratatat blew my freaking mind. Simple. Standing at the end of their set at Berbati’s and not being able to see 2 feet in front of me due to the excessive fog machine use was really fun, and kinda gross feeling.The BEDM/Dat’r show was great because of my love of BEDM’s stage show, combined with the random discovery of Dat’r. I’ve always loved to go to BEDM shows and just dance my ass off, which I definatley did. Seeing Dat’r for the first time was rad. I played with the 2 members other band a few weeks earlier. Suddenly I see the drummer on stage. Then the guitarist. Then awesome music. Then a joystick. Then I’m dancing. Yeah, that was rad.....These bands have forced me to loosen up and just fing dance, which has been a good thing.