Best Of 2008

As the holidays close in, the Daily Vault is proud to present our annual cavalcade of Best Of 2008 columns, this year featuring entries from six writers (and counting...). Jeff Clutterbuck, Melanie Love, Sean McCarthy, Kenny S. McGuane, Mark Millan and yours truly have all chipped in to highlight the highlights from Bon Iver to Bruce Springsteen, Neil Diamond to Nine Inch Nails, The Hold Steady to Nick Cave and those Bad Seeds of his. Even Guns N' Roses merited a mention -- but then, these aren't exactly your conventional awards we're handing out here...

The Vault in brief: Nine Inch Nails, Jon Troast and a cast of thousands

Since we threw caution to the wind last Friday and sang the praises of one of our competitors, maybe it's time to toot our own horn for a day, eh? Because there's surely been a ton of interesting material published on the Vault in recent days...

For one, there's Darren Paltrowitz's biweekly effort at Keeping Up with the latest in music, books, and all other forms of entertainment media.

For another, there's Bruce Rusk's review of a recent Nine Inch Nails concert -- sounds like Trent & co. are putting on quite a show this winter.

And for another, there's a review of a Jon Troast show at a much smaller venue -- my living room -- for anyone interested in hearing more about how a house concert works...

Finally, there's the reviews we just published of Powderfinger, Talking Heads, Kraftwerk, Elvis Presley, Fight Like Apes, Bob Seger, Marvin Gaye, CSS, Megadeth, Duran Duran, Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Cure -- not to mention the reviews we're about to publish of Guns N' Roses, Ry Cooder, Rick Wakeman, Science Faxtion, George Michael, Billy Squier, Donovan, the Rolling Stones, Katie Miller-Heidke, Jeff Beck, Keane, the Mountain Goats, The Clash, Love & Rockets, Morrissey, Tina Turner and many more to come.

Capeesh?

Trent Reznor and HBO in talks for possible Year Zero maxi-series

The man America counts on to turn nihilistic anger into high art -- Trent Reznor, natch -- may be on the cusp of his biggest multimedia triumph yet. The LA Times reports that Reznor is in talks with HBO about transforming the backstory behind his band Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album Year Zero and the video game of the same name into a two-year maxi-series for broadcast on the cable network. Year Zero chronicles a dystopian future vision in which holy wars rage worldwide as the environment collapses around us. Just the sort of thing to put a skip in your step... but, potentially powerful dramatic raw material.

Now serving: free lunch

Apparently, Trent Reznor has never heard of the famous economics maxim which states "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Today, Reznor announced that the latest NIN album was available to the fans 100% free,

This announcement comes two months after Reznor released Ghosts I-IV, a 36 track instrumental album in every format known to man. In the span of a week, Reznor sold roughly a million dollars' worth of digital downloads, lighting the internet on fire with his bold new delivery model.

As many have surmised, with the actions of NIN, Radiohead, and Coldplay, there is a paradigm shift occurring within the music industry. The old way of walking down to the local record store to pick up the latest released from Bread is going the way of the dinosaur. How much one laments the loss of such a process is growing more and more dependent on the age of individual.

Of course, it's going to be some time before this is preferred delivery model of music; the bands that are utilizing this system have huge, established fanbases. They have made it big, and can afford to take losses when announcing and delivering released of this nature. Your fledgling, indie band trying to make it big simply cannot afford to the same. At least, at the present time...