Best (and Worst) in Show 2006

by PopMatters Staff

Edited By: Andrew Phillips and Megan Milks

Writers: Brian Bartels, Elizabeth Black, Eddie Ciminelli, Christopher Cwynar, William Ferleman, Ryan Henriquez, Peter Joseph, Jennifer Kelly, Jon Langmead, Michael Lomas, Matt Mazur, Kevin Pearson, Shain Shapiro, and Adam Williams

Covering concerts is a lot like old-school anthropology: a good reviewer knows how to roll up his sleeves and forge head-first into the forest. Sometimes you’re bitten by the local bug; sometimes you’re bowled down by a wild bore. But, no matter what happens, the key is to keep the notes coming.

This year, the PopMatters concerts crew filed field reports that made Margaret Mead look like Geraldo Rivera. OCD incarnate, we made it our mission to analyze every aching vocal, every errant note, until there was nothing left to pick apart.

Of course, with all that lofty philosophizing and introspective analysis, we sometimes forgot to tell you the obvious—like who totally sucked and who didn’t. Time, then, to make amends: pulled straight from the pages of our notebooks, these are 2006’s Best (and Worst) in show: