When we launched Rollo & Grady in July 2008, we made reference to the following quote from Jim James:

“At the end of the day, my tastes are all over the map. I don’t see boundaries in music, so if I’m excited about an Outkast song or some Sam Cooke gospel record, I want to bring that into my world.”

James’ words sum up the way we feel about music and the way we run our site. Our daily posts are consistently inconsistent. Some days we’ll run a mellow acoustic song followed by a metal or hip-hop song. There is no rhyme or reason to our selections; it’s just the way we feel in the moment.

Last year we ran a special feature where we asked over 60 of our favorite artists to submit their top 5 albums of 2009. This year we asked over 120 artists to submit their top 10 favorite albums of 2010.

The participating artists are from all over the world and cover many genres: Funk, jazz, hip-hop, blues, pop, rock, country, afrobeat, world, americana, soul, punk, heavy metal, electronica, and folk.

In addition to the artists, we asked our readers, friends, journalists, radio DJs, music supervisors, photographers, and fellow bloggers to submit their favorite albums.

We listed everyone’s picks the way we received them. People chose EPs, reissues, 7″, DVDs, books, and Justin Bieber. If you want to learn more about the artists, click on their names listed above the images.

Here are the top 10 albums of 2010 based on the participants’ selections:

Images by Michael Orlosky

Invisible Children Benefit :: Troubadour – Monday, December 20th

Middle Brother


John McCauley

Mountain Man & Middle Brother

We are about 24 hours away from the start of the Invisible Children benefit show tomorrow night at the Troubadour. We are pleased to announce that the show is sold out. Thank you for your support.

Deer Tick – Straight Into A Storm

SET TIMES:
Doors open at 6:30
JOHN McCAULEY OF DEER TICK: 7:30 – 7:45
BLAKE MILLS: 7:45 – 8:00
GUARDS: 8:05 – 8:30
MOUNTAIN MAN: 8:45 – 9:15
CASS MCCOMBS: 9:30 – 10:15
MIDDLE BROTHER: 10:30 – 11:15

Related Posts:
Invisible Children benefit bolstered by music blogs (click here)

We normally post our favorite albums of the year in early December, but we’ve held out til now. It’s crazy how some sites’ “best of” lists start to pop up in mid-November. It seems a bit premature, but the majority of noteworthy albums are usually released prior to November (sorry Kanye – 11/22).

While we worked on our site this month, we’ve taken the opportunity to check out other blogs and publications’ “best of” lists for 2010. While compiling our list, we cheated twice: We revisited the Broken Bells album based on Patterson Hood’s list; it is truly a phenomenal album that would not have cracked our Top 20 if Patterson hadn’t put it back on our radar. For our “Artists Pick Best Albums of 2010″ feature, we noticed a ton of the bands chose Demon’s Claw’s Defrosting Of as a favorite album. We were already familiar with the album, and we ended up listening to it non-stop for a week. It is worth the hype and I strongly recommend checking it out – if kick-ass garage-rock is your thing.

2010 was, however, a disappointing year for the full-length album. The reality is that people no longer download full digital albums and that CDs, of course, are dead. This is not a shocking revelation, but the interesting trend now is that indie bands are releasing free EPs on Bandcamp. Some of the best music that we’ve heard this year came from Bandcamp artists. These musicians are truly working the DIY model; they just want their music to be heard. Music blogs and Tumblrs are making this happen for them.

I don’t miss the days when CDs were my primary source for music consumption. Still, when I used to buy that lovely CD for $17.99, I normally took the time to listen to the whole album, and eventually most songs clicked. These days, the majority of people, including myself, download tracks à la carte . Why buy a track that doesn’t personally move you within the first few seconds you listen to it? It’s sad, but true.

Rollo & Grady has gone through some changes this year. Some of them you can see and some of them you can’t.

Those you can see generally have to do with the look of our site: We’ve finally finished revising our header and because we moved offices back in September, the Sunset and Horn street signs are no longer relevant. We considered incorporating the Hollywood sign in our header, but decided it was too generic; besides, the gossip douche Perez Hilton uses it on his site.

We went with a beautiful view of downtown Los Angeles using the same Rollo & Grady logo. The look and feel of the site remains the same; we did not want to complicate the site with an entire new design. We slightly increased the width of the blog. The boxes for categories on the right side are slightly bigger. We wanted to put an emphasis on these categories, especially the “Artist to Watch” category.

Over the years we here at Rollo & Grady have run across some excellent bands. We have found them through our own research and through suggestions from fellow blogs. 2010 has been a huge year for up-and-coming artists: John Wesley Coleman III (pictured above), Lord Huron, Bear Driver, Levek, J. Irvin Dally, Yuck, Lower Dens, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., We Are Trees, and many more have emerged this year with great success.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.

Rollo & Grady Productions is the new music supervision arm of this blog. One day a couple of years ago, we got a random email from an AOL account and exchanged emails with its owner, discussing our mutual admiration for My Morning Jacket. The AOL account belonged to Mike Barker, former Family Guy writer and co-creator of American Dad on Fox. Mike brought us on as music consultants midway through Season 4 in 2009. One of the highlights thus far has been that we were able to sit in on the shoot of the My Morning Jacket episode and drink beers with the band while they read their lines from the script. We are currently working on Season 6, which airs in January 2011.

In 2009, we were approached by Fox Searchlight to consult on the film Cedar Rapids, starring Ed Helms and John C. Reilly, directed by Miguel Arteta (Youth In Revolt, The Good Girl), and produced by Jim Burke and Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways). We worked for an awesome music supervisor, Margret Yen (Juno). She has been an incredible mentor, and we wouldn’t have been able to move into music supervision without her guidance. Together with Margret, we were able to place JEFF the Brotherhood, Blitzen Trapper, and The Fucking Eagles in the film. Cedar Rapids will debut at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Blitzen Trapper – Wild Mountain Nation
The Fucking Eagles – Happy Home
Jeff The Brotherhood – Bone Jam

In addition to consulting, this last year Rollo & Grady Productions handled music supervision duties on the documentary Sing, a film about the 2008 Hotel Cafe tour. The indie comedy, Last Call, is another recent film for which we supervised the music. This film starred Christopher Lloyd and Tom Arnold and was executive produced by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers).

We are currently handling the music supervision responsibilities for Cessna Aircraft’s online campaign for the Mandala Agency out of Portland.

We cannot believe how fortunate we’ve been. From a music blog with a random ass name to a music supervision company… with the same name: This is the kind of professional transition we couldn’t have dreamed up. The cool thing about Rollo & Grady Productions is that roughly 90% of our music submissions for film and television projects are from artists that we feature on the blog. Our goal is to spread the word about these talented bands through film, television, and the internet; we believe that the bands deserve to connect with as large an audience as possible.

If you are a filmmaker looking for a music supervisor, or an artist looking for song placement in film and television please contact us at rollogradyproductions@gmail.com.

Artist To Watch:
Hanni El Khatib – You Rascal You
Bear Driver – A Thousand Samurais
Lord Huron – The Problem With Your Daughter
Levek – Chief
J. Irvín Dally – Brasil (Adelir De Carli)
Lower Dens – Hospice Gates
We Are Trees – Daniel
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – God Only Knows
Yuck – Automatic

Image – Patrice Jackson

Turbo Fruits
Album: Keepin’ On 7″ (Buy)
Label: Turbo Time Records
Turbo Fruits – Keepin’ On

Image – Danny Clinch

In 2009, we asked over 60 artists to submit a list of ther top 5 albums of the year. Patterson Hood submitted an in-depth list, including his favorite albums of the decade. This year, 2010, Patterson submitted an updated list of favorites, including tv shows, books, and movies as well as albums.

John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees

Recommended Shows :: December 14th – December 18th

Tuesday, December 14th
Horse Feathers @ echo
Tame Impala @ echoplex

Wednesday, December 15th
J. Irvin Dally @ Bootleg

Thursday, December 16th
John Grant with The Chapin Sisters @ The Autry
Lord Huron @ echo

Friday, December 17th
John Brion @ Largo
OFF! / Thee Oh Sees / Nobunny @ Thesex

Saturday, December 18th
Sic Alps with Wounded Lion @ Spaceland