We here at TNB Music would like to extend a swift kick in the ass with a steel-toed boot to 2012, with menacing threats to never, ever show its ugly mug around here again. That said, this open heart surgery of a year has yielded a rich trove of enduring albums and songs, and as we impatiently wait for 2013 to pull up out front and beep its glorious horn, the intrepid writing corps at TNB Music now pause to share our favorite offerings from 2012.

To our readers, colleagues, conspirators, confederates and harried editors, we wish you all a happy, healthy and hopelessly sexy new year.

-Joe Daly

TNB Music Editor

The first-ever Firefly Music Festival descended upon the Dover International Speedway from July 20^th-22^nd  with a lineup boasting acts with profiles so high, one was forced to contemplate whether both artists and fans could simultaneously fit within the state’s modest borders (one in, one out?).  Every hotel within 30 miles advertises “No Vacancies- Welcome Firefly!” Telltale campground sprawls around the gates; weekend homes for the braver souls.

Grading the last seven days in End Times culture…

Interview magazine recently published a uniquely compelling interview featuring the unlikely duo of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to ever walk on the moon, interviewing rocker Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, seven thousand other bands, side projects and one-offs). White, who never met a trend he didn’t buck, conceived the idea when the magazine solicited his thoughts on who might conduct his interview. Someone’s people called someone else’s people, an agreement was struck and thus flowed a thoroughly fascinating dialogue between these two disparate symbols of American culture.

To devote your life to art you have to be a little loopy, so it stands to reason that most entertainers are half insane. That’s your soul up there onstage or on the big screen, and it takes a lot of balls and maybe just a touch of madness to even try to pull it off.

Of course I make no claim to the actual mental states of the following performers. But if allowed to indulge my latent arm chair psychologist, here are a smattering of musicians who toe that narrow line between ingenuity and insanity.