JANUARY
National: Retro-wave trendstarters Interpol release their first album for major label Capitol Records. It is critically derided as "overly She Wants Revenge-esque" and "lacking a certain Springsteenian warmth." The group breaks up after a brief tour; three of the four members become club DJs within a week.
Local: Bands that still sound like Korn begin to disappear from the Bay area scene and are slowly replaced one-for-one by bands that sound like the first Killers album.
FEBRUARY
National: Reactivated '80s pop-metal outfit Winger takes the stage at St. Pete's State Theatre in front of hundreds of enthusiastic kids in their late teens and early 20s. Stoked and unacquainted with the hipster version of irony, the band schedules an impromptu post-show meet-and-greet for their new "fans," who use the intimate encounter as an opportunity to beat the musicians to death.
Local: Digitally illiterate area groups finally figure out that the acts who always get their pictures in the local papers are the acts who have high-resolution publicity images available on their websites; GeoCities subsequently goes offline after its servers crash under the weight of hundreds of poorly shot, excessively upsized cover-band photos.
MARCH
National: Tens of thousands of fans, musicians and industry insiders flock to Austin, Texas for the annual South by Southwest Music Festival. A longhaired teenager playing acoustic versions of metal songs at the festival's Kip Winger Memorial Tribute is signed and immediately hailed as rock's newest savior. When asked if he was interpreting the songs ironically, he replies that he's not sure anymore. When asked if he was trying to tap into the "ironic market," the A&R guy who signed the kid replies that "it all spends the same."
Local: Beauvilles singer/guitarist Shawn Kyle, at SXSW to play the annual Bay Area Arts & Music Organization's unofficial Florida Bandango showcase, is crushed to learn that Austin is still 800 miles from what he terms "Mexican hospitality."
APRIL
National: Viacom announces its intention to launch MTV3 in September. Touted as the new home of contemporary music-video programming, MTV3 will show the videos bumped from MTV2 to make room for reruns of non-music-related MTV shows. By September, MTV will just stream 24-hours-a-day footage from a warehouse outside Minneapolis, equipped with 50 cameras, five bars and a dozen arrogant, drunken white kids. (And one black dude.)
Local: Three dozen Tampa Bay musicians send videos of themselves lying about themselves to MTV (Attn: Real World 24/7), and don't tell anyone.
MAY
National: Jack White holds the next White Stripes album up further by joining another pop-rock supergroup a la The Raconteurs, this one featuring Matthew Sweet and Alex Chilton. Meg White retaliates by contributing to Mike Patton's latest avant-garde project, Uno, Dos, Four, Seven: Weird Percussion Styles of the Americas.
Local: 98Rock's re-instituted LiveStock festival reconvenes in Zephyrhills. Obviously, planned headliner Winger is unable to meet its commitments, but a visibly inebriated Vince Neil fills in nicely; his only slip turns out to be a mispronunciation of the name of the most cutting-edge band on the bill: Saliva.
JUNE
National: Metallica's Rick Rubin-produced ninth studio album is released, panned and dismissed. The album is actually a stunning return to early-days form, and might be revealed as such in later years — but not before the band attempts to sue for libel every single human being who wrote or said a bad thing about the CD. They also sue Rubin for malpractice and "failure to deliver associative reputational reclamation."
Local: Outraged by the behavior of its heroes, Metallica tribute act Jump In The Fire announces from the stage of New Port Richey's Bourbon Street that it will hereafter be known as Caught In A Mosh: The Anthrax Experience.
JULY
National: Five days after being imperiled by David Lee Roth's arrest for trying to buy $10 worth of weed from a nun feeding homeless men in a city park, the Van Halen reunion tour is permanently derailed when young bassist Wolfgang Van Halen falls prey to a suspicious Jack-Daniels-and-hot-sauce poisoning incident. Witnesses report seeing a fat, balding, jovial man wearing a vest driving away from the backstage area in a red Lamborghini bearing the vanity plate CNTDRV55.
Local: Orpheum is forced to close for two weeks after someone trips over a loose flap of carpet and a new spore-based life form is discovered.
AUGUST
National: Former R&B superstar Bobby Brown and preferred hate target Kevin Federline participate in the latest installment of D-lister train wreck/reality show The Surreal Life. Tension builds between the two wildly inflated egos all season, culminating in a near-fistfight narrowly avoided when fellow housemate Tiffani Amber-Thiessen suggests they solve their differences via a dance-off. Amazingly, the competition is won by George Wendt.
Local: Tampa beatboxer eFFeX gains a level of national notoriety by annihilating Rahzel during an impromptu battle at a Bay area Roots show. For the rest of the year, no one can attend an open mic night without enduring 10 minutes of somebody making shitty, inarticulate sounds with their mouth.
SEPTEMBER
National: Eminem and Robbie Williams release new albums. Nobody cares.
Local: The Gwan Massive collective becomes a hit on the jam/world-beat circuit and presides over the assimilation of contemporary hip-hop elements into that scene, further upsetting millions of white adults unclear on the concept of "groove."
OCTOBER
National: On one otherwise perfectly regular morning, everybody gets in their car and turns on the radio. Nickelback is playing, and in an instant of absolute synchronicity, everyone realizes, "What the fuck were we thinking? This is horrible." This single bright, shining moment of hope is shattered when a Seether tune comes on, and everybody says, "Now this is more like it."
Local: Singer-songwriter Geri X returns from her first world tour completely covered from head to toe in tattoos. She's still sweet, though.
NOVEMBER
National: The last tangible review-copy CD is sent out by a major label, most of whom have been e-mailing advance music for several months. The final actual disc, a copy of the new Taking Back Sunday album sent to a daily paper in Denver, is never reviewed; it is eventually tracked to the bargain bin of a Colorado Springs new-and-used music store.
Local: Tom DeGeorge and the staff at Crowbar celebrate a year of successfully not going out of business by re-opening the club's outdoor beer garden/patio, which has been closed to the public since July, when patrons drinking out there just started bursting into flame. A reunited Semis play. Drummer Cristian Klimek swears this is really, totally the last time he'll play with them; singer/guitarist Billy Summer nods understandingly, then smiles and books a show for the following January.
DECEMBER
National: A little more than a year after the release of his comeback album, Jay-Z announces his retirement. Again. Really. Totally. Fans mourn the loss of an artist so successful he has absolutely nothing left about which to rap angrily and emphatically, then begin the anticipatory Internet build-up buzz for his next album.
Local: The month comes and goes without some local alt-weekly writer who thinks he's funny penning a column about what the music scene will be like in 2008.
This article appears in Dec 20-26, 2006.