When I was a kid I remember peeling decorative doors off the Christmas calendar.  Each peel meant I was one day closer to opening presents.  The anticipation was paramount; the end result could have been anything.  My imagination wasn’t spoiled by reality back then; the sky might have been the limit, but everything between the lines was fair game to want after.  And yeah, sometimes I wanted it all.  But it wasn’t always about the payoff.  From the moment you first start to grasp what’s behind that feeling called excitement, you realize the lead-up to the end result is where it’s really at.  Your expectations and your reality are hardly ever on the same page, even when they end up being the same thing.  Once you start expecting something everything else can only be a letdown; you’re only setting yourself up for a, “Yeah, but…” moment.

In thinking about ways to end up this decade in a blog/Tis the season combo fashion, my first thought was to talk about the best gifts I’ve ever received.  But the more I thought about that the more I realized that, for the most part, I don’t remember them; the gifts, the faces behind them.  The things that make you smile, sooner than later they’re replaced with something/someone else.  Something/someone new.  It’s a natural progression, growing in and out of spaces/places/people.  Faces blend together.  Bodies start to sag.  Memories start to blender themselves together into one fine mess.  Before you know it everything looks like a maraschino cherry Smoothie.

So I decided to do something else.  For the 31 days of December I’m going to write something about the 31 most important albums to me in this first decade of the 2000′s.  These are by no means the “best” albums from 2000 to 2009 if you were to ask the “critics”; some of them, to most, probably outright suck.  And they might not even feature my favorite songs from the past decade.  In fact there are really only two criteria: 1) they were released sometime between 2000 and 2009 2) something about them make me experience them and not just listen to them.  I scrolled through my iTunes this afternoon and made a preliminary list of albums that, for one reason or another, made me write the name down.  A lot of the albums I wrote down were ones I haven’t listened to in years, and in some cases, might never really listen to again.  But I suppose that’s part of it, and maybe, perhaps, a fun part of it.  We’ll see.

The preliminary list is as follows:

At the Drive-In – Relationship of Command

Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP

Flogging Molly – Swagger

Dashboard Confessional – The Swish Army Romance

Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory

Neil Young- Silver and Gold

U2 – All You Can’t Leave Behind

Vertical Horizon – Everything You Want

Ani Difranco – Revelling/Reckoning

Bob Dylan – Love & Theft

Irish Tenors – Ellis Island

John Mayer – Room For Squars

Ludacris – Word Or Muth

NaS – Stillmatic

The Strokes – Is This Is?

System of a Down – Toxicity

Tenacious D – Tenacious D

Aimee Mann – Lost In Space

Andy Stochansky – Five Star Motel

Dredg – El Cielo

Early November – For All Of This

Eminem – Cleaning Out My Closet

Finch – What It Is To Burn

Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies

Goo Goo Dolls – Gutterflower

Howie Day – Australia

Jim Brickman – Love Songs & Lullabies

Kasey Chambers – Barricades & Brickwalls

Sigur Ros – ( )

Sparta – Wiretap Scars

AFI – Sing The Sorrow

Colin Hay – Going Somewhere

Alkaline Trio – Good Mourning

The Ataris – So Long, Astaria

Coheed & Cambria – In Keeping Of Secrets of Silent Earth: 3

Dashboard Confessional – A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar

Dropkick Murpys -Blackout

Howie Day – Stop All The World Now

The Mars Volta – DeLoused in the Comatorium

NOFX – The War On Erroism

Street Dogs – Savin Hill

The Strokes – Room On Fire

50 Cent – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’

Alexis MacIsaac – Inspired

Arcade Fire – Funeral

Chronic Future – Lines In My Face

D12 – D12 World

The Faint – Wet From Birth

Flogging Molly – Within A Mile From Home

Franz Ferdanand – Franz Ferdanand

Jimmy Eat World – Futures

Keane – Hopes & Fears

The Killers – Hot Fuss

Madcap – Under Suspicion

Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News

Ray LaMontagne – Trouble

Sparta – Porcelain

Against Me! – Searching For A Former Clarity

Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake And It’s Morning

Dredg – Catch Without Arms

Fiona Apple – Extraordinary Machine

Sigur Ros – Takk…

Angels & Airwaves – We Don’t Need To Whisper

As Tall As Lions – As Tall As Lions

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova – The Swell Session

John Mayer – The Continuum

Justin Timberlake – FutureSex/LoveSounds

Killswitch Engage – As Daylight Dies

M. Ward – Chinese Translation

Nas – Hip Hop Is Dead

Pink – I’m Not Dead

Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam

Regina Spektor – Begin To Hope

The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band – Big Damn Nation

Silversun Pickups – Carnavas

Sparta – Three

Thom Yorke – The Eraser

Against Me! – New Wave

Bon Iver – For Emma, Long Ago

Clutch – From Beale Street To Oblivion

Once – Soundtrack

Kate Nash – Made Of Bricks

Lindi Ortega – Fall From Grace

Radiohead – In Rainbows

Thrice – The Alchemy Index (I-IV)

Emma-Lee – Never Just A Dream

Coldplay – Viva La Vida

Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American

Lil Wayne – Tha Carter III

Metallica – Death Magnetic

Nas – NaS

Dredg – The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion

M. Ward – Hold Time