Lots and lots of reviews. Over the past few years we have received many CDs. No surprise, this is a music magazine. But our deal has been to outsource reviews to musicians, usually letting them choose whom to review — “peer reviews” was the basis for that. It worked well.

However, the CDs kept piling up.

What occurred to us was simple: So much music, created almost continuously, by people in every city, town, and village around the province, and all of them worthy in their own way of recognition.
So what we have here are good news reviews.

And if you look through the following pages and don’t see your band and are sure you sent us your CD, you aren’t here for one of these reasons:

1. We gave your CD away. We used to do that, since we couldn’t keep up with the volume of incoming discs and felt wrong about hoarding the music.

2. You sent your CD directly to a fellow musician hoping for a review.

3. Your CD was published prior to 2010. We did our best to include everything but sacrificed from the earlier years to fit these pages.

4. We received it after January 2011 (we had to have some cut-off date) in which case we’ll include you in the Sept/Oct reviews issue.

5. It never actually reached us.

How did we conduct these reviews? With some difficulty. It was a group process, some drinking was involved, but mostly it was honest work, listening through entire discs, researching the musicians, and keeping an open mind.

Finally, are you wondering how you can be included next time? Send us your CD plus bio and background information (the more background information you give us the better). Don’t bother with cellophane. Don’t send EPKs via email or disc; we actually like paper. Do send trinkets. Stickers and buttons are fun (thank you Petroleum By-Product).

And in case you’re wondering, this list is alphabetical, not hierarchical or subject to any other categorizing.