It’s tough to do this kind of thing off the top of your head, so I thought I should probably warn you about the Song, by Toad readers’ Best Of votes this year, so you can have a wee think before the spotlight falls upon you and you have to make a choice.

This Friday: Top 5 Songs On the Friday Fives this week, instead of the usual nonsense, I will be asking you to list your five favourite songs of the year.  Then I will add them up, and on Sunday afternoon I will announce the winners.  Simple.

Next Friday: Top 5 Albums Next Friday we’ll be doing much the same thing, but with our five favourite albums this time.  I think the concept of an album can be treated pretty loosely, so if something’s a mini-album or a longish EP then I reckon it can pretty much count.  No point being a fussy fucker about this kind of thing.

I will be counting the votes of course, but I won’t actually be voting myself.  That’s because I will as usual be publishing my own top twenty albums of the year, as well as my favourite fifty songs, but that will all be coming a bit later and I don’t want to ruin the (unbearable) suspense.

And finally, as a salute to the absolute fucking genius who decided to describe the storms hitting Scotland today as ‘Hurricane Bawbag’, I thought I’d include some Bob Dylan.  Being English I can’t even pronounce bawbag properly, but that’s still the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.

Bob Dylan – Shelter From the Storm

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Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

Here is the official beginning of Christmas List season, here at Song, by Toad. If you want to get involved and write your own list, then please do. Go here for more details. The more of you that contribute to that the better the results we will get, so don’t be shy.

This is the first quarter of my Festive Fifty for 2008. I will also be preparing a list of my twenty favourite albums, but I might just neglect singles and EPs this time around. If you disagree with anything then do get stuck in, but bear in mind that this is far from a definitive ranking. Ask me on another day and Pictish’s brilliant I Don’t Know Where to Begin could easily be in the top five. Ask me in four months’ time and it would probably be all-change again. Read the rest of this entry »