It's a relatively quiet musical weekend by Portland standards, what with the holiday weekend freeze on and all-- but we still have plenty of ground to cover, an entire year's worth in fact. Speaking of which: have you sent in your personal Best of 2007 top ten list yet? What are you waiting for? In case you missed it, we put out the call for your faves of the year this past week and have been getting a steady flow of would-be critic picks (only, like, two of which mention "Manilow"). Now's the time to email (opbmusic@opb.org) your top ten, or feel free to simply post in the comments below, anonymously or otherwise. We'll crunch the names and numbers and reveal what your collective ears have been loving in 2007, just before the year calls it a...day. To help jog your memories a bit, we'll pay particular attention tonight to some of the releases that have been widely considered amongst the year's best thus far.

Also tonight, we remember the late, great Joe Strummer. The former Clash and Mescaleros frontman died five years ago today from an undiagnosed heart defect, a loss significant not only for his music, but for his social and political activism as well. At the time, Strummer was working on what many would later call his strongest output since The Clash's London Calling days, the album that would be released as Streetcore the following October. We'll get to cuts from both The Clash and The Mescaleros throughout the show tonight, and try to figure out how it's been five years already in the process.

It's a good night for staying in with the music, in other words, although there are also multi-act holiday-flavored bills going on tonight at both the Doug Fir and the Alberta St. Public House, respectively.

The thread's open and the fire's on, let's see some best of lists roll in....

Posted by jpetersen on Saturday, December 22 at 8:41pm