This blog was born three years ago on this date, but only in the last year has it become the kind of place a guy can be truly proud of. As of last July 11, I’d done about 300 posts in two years. In the past year, I’ve put up almost that many. Here are a few of my favorites:

The post that got the most traffic this past year was the one in May about the way the radio was talking to me during the week I graduated from high school. (It was one of the top 100 posts on WordPress the weekend after it appared.) The post that generated the largest number of comments was actually a series: a three-parter on the demise of Chicago’s Real Oldies 1690 (part 1, part 2, part 3) last July and August.

Posts about the radio biz interest a lot of readers, so we discussed why radio stations play the same handful of oldies from artists that have other songs deserving of airplay. We talked about what’s really going on inside your local radio station during the Christmas season, and we paid tribute to a true radio man. I also related the strange tale of how I got fired on suspicion of industrial espionage (part 1, part 2).

But this is a music blog, after all, and we continue to be one of the only music blogs to write about the pre-1920 Pioneer Era of recording. After all these years, we still like Huey Lewis and the News. We also like Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Some Beatles songs we don’t like, and some we do. We still love those fabulous 70s compilations we bought back in the day (one here, one here). And there’s one live album we love more than most. We took note of an important anniversary involving one of the gods of gum; we discussed things people know about Woodstock that ain’t necessarily so; we shared some strange concert pairings; and we presented both a mini-bio of Allan Sherman and ten songs from the heart of darkness. We discussed how used CD sales are like theft—or something—and presented a short history of medleys.

In the very first post on this blog, I worried that sometimes, the subject matter would be so personal that I might be the only one who cares about it. As it turns out, that isn’t true as often as I feared, and it’s a good thing, because this blog is ultimately a very personal thing. So you found out how I met The Mrs., how I got my 12-year-old heart stomped, and all about the sorry highlight of my athletic career. You read about the day we lost a loved one, and about an old friend we lost track of until it was too late. I told you how I experienced sweet forgiveness on Interstate 94, and shared a story that probably isn’t true, although I wish it were.

(The mp3 links in all the posts mentioned above are dead, so I’m posting a 22 MB mixed mp3/WMA zip file containing a handful of them. Grab it fast because it won’t be up for very long.)

Apart from the pleasure of writing, the greatest reward I get from this blog is the relationships with readers, whether it’s our little ad hoc community of like-minded bloggers (“Friends o’ Blog” in the links list), who read and comment on one another’s stuff and thereby prod one another along, or regular people who take the time to comment on posts or send e-mail to me. I am grateful for every click I get, no matter who’s clicking. Thanks a lot.

The Greatest Hits Just Keep on Comin’ ’06-’07

Zip track list:
“Tracy’s Theme”/Spencer Ross (buy it here)
“All Day Music”/War (buy it here)
“Cherry Hill Park”/Billy Joe Royal (buy it here)
“Love Song”/Elton John with Lesley Duncan (buy it here)
“Sweet Forgiveness”/Susan Tedeschi (buy it here)
“Jimmy Loves Mary Anne”/Looking Glass (buy it here)