Good god, it’s been six years. How did that even happen?

So, today is the six year anniversary of Bird is the Worm turning on the lights.

The anniversary always sneaks up on me.  Shout-out to Twitter for sending me a reminder (I began the Twitter account the same day my site went live).

In past years, I’ve cranked out a bunch of words about all the new things that were going to be happening on the site.  And I usually embed some of my favorite albums covered since it all began.  Speaking of…

Over time, I’ve come to finally admit that between the day job, my fiction writing and tying to, y’know, maintain some sort of life, it’s enough of a commitment to just keep things nice-and-steady around here.

What you’re still gonna be getting:

• The Monday Round-up columns.  Based on traffic and emails/comments, I know my long lists of mini-recommendations are the most popular thing around here.  It’s pretty time consuming to do the 10-15 recs per column like I did back in the day, but I’m hoping that the five-per-Monday Round-up things help satisfy your habits.
• Stand-alone recs.  But of course you will.
• Saturday album previews.
• Sunday is for older albums.  I’ve tried a couple different themes.  I think in 2018, Sundays will be for albums from 1990 to 2011 release date… modern stuff that pre-dates my site but still can be considered modern.  But I might change that.  Y’see?  I’m already waffling.

Stuff that may happen in 2018:

• Complete site redesign, including a name change.  I’ve got a couple side projects, jazz-related, that I’d like to incorporate into the framework of things, plus the creative writing.  But, god, I’m shaking my head now at everything it would entail to get there.  But fair warning, one day, things may look very different.
• Patreon (or similar crowd-funding) account for a special Jazz Picks edition.  I’ve had this on my to-do list for years.  I think I’ve even hinted at it in previous anniversary posts.  I mentioned in a bullet point up above the amount of time it takes to put together my old Jazz Picks columns.  I may soon be offering a way of getting those things, in an enhanced format with other bonus fun stuff, with a special subscription dealio.

But we’ll pretty much just have to see about that.

I’m not quite ready to announce when the Best of 2017 list will get rolled out, but it’s looking like the festivities start approximately a week from this Monday… December 18th.  And if not that Monday, then soon after.  You’re asking yourself, “How is it possible that he still hasn’t set his schedule?”  I know, I know, I ask myself the same thing every day.  And every year.  One of these years, the end of the year won’t sneak up on me and I’ll totally have my shit together and there’ll be no year-end panic.

Totally.

I can’t state emphatically enough how much I appreciate you all for visiting the site to check out the music and occasionally shoot the breeze.  There’s two messages I most love receiving:  Music fans telling me I helped point them to a new favorite album and musicians when they tell me they saw an uptick in sales immediately after my write-up posted.  I want you all to keep finding music that enriches your lives and musicians to earn a living to continue making our lives better.

Okay, I think that’s it.  I hope your 2017 wraps up nicely, and that 2018 brings nothing but happiness for us all.  We deserve it.

Cheers.

P.S.  If either embedded track intrigued you:

First audio embed:  Storms/Nocturnes – VIA

Go read about it.

Second audio embed.  Jaimeo Brown – Transcendence

Go read about it.