The Friday Informer: Crawling Out From Under the Confetti to Greet 2006

And…..we’re back. 2006 is getting off to a slow, hung-over start it seems, with a few more Best Of and The Year That Was re-caps trickling in.

• Music writers—including NMBx columnist Andrew Druckenbrod (yay, Andy!)—get some year-end accolades as Jason Gross rounds up the Best Music Scribing Awards, 2005, without prejudice (which is to say, classical music gets to play with the rockers, and no one gets hurt).
• Also in last year’s news, not sure how I missed this guy, who is taking minimalism to new levels, including only owning CDs of music by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and La Monte Young. [via aworks]
• The big DRM music news this holiday was the tray card insert in all those new Coldplay discs (a favorite band among the conductor set, it seems—both Salonen and Slatkin have confessed to NMBx that they’re fans). BoingBoing highlights the new rules that greeted those who found the disc in their stockings.
• In the “hey, wish I had thought of that!” category: Someone, please grab your favorite AM radio DJ and start making audio concert calendars for the new music community in your area.
• $25 and a video camera sure did do amazing things for the career of this Chicago quartet in 2005. For the truly adventurous, take a crack at a low-budget new music-music video and send ’em our way so we can usher you into similar Internet fame.