Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category.
Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen Trapper's fantastic Furr smells more like the Kinks than Neil Young. [Editor's note: That's why we put it on our indie-rock list.] We likewise discarded Shearwater's near-masterpiece Rook, despite the fact that the album
A rash of recent musical deaths (Michael Jackson and DJ AM among others) have led us here at Rocks Off to do some speculating of our own: Which musicians do we feel were taken from us too soon?
Obvious answers like the Famous Js (John Lennon, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) or the dual tragedies of Tupac and Biggie are givens, of course. And it's silly to sit around wishing that Buddy Holly or Bobby Darin were still alive, because even if they hadn't been taken from us via plane cr
