Here’s some kind of list of the most memorable concerts I attended this year. (By the way, you won’t find a list of albums of the year here. I hardly ever listen to recorded music any more; increasingly, music to me means live music.)
It’s been an excellent year for my kind of music in Vienna, and shows by The Walkabouts, Tindersticks, Shearwater, The Cherry Thing and Bruce Springsteen might all have made the top ten on a different day. I was also gutted to miss, for one reason or another (work, illness, domestic commitments) many shows which I was looking forward to, including those by Brötzmann/Lonberg-Holm/Nilssen-Love, Death in June, Broken Heart Collector, Bulbul/Tumido, The Thing, Kern & Quehenberger, Sonore, Nadja, Josephine Foster, Double Tandem, Kurzmann/Zerang/Gustafsson, Glen Hansard and A Silver Mt Zion, not to mention the entire Konfrontationen festival.
A few of the concerts listed here have links to the reviews I wrote at the time, but most of them do not. This is partly because I haven’t had time to write those reviews, but mostly because it’s getting harder and harder to keep this blog going, to the point where I’m considering giving it up altogether. Very few people read these pages, and of those who do, only a few bother to leave comments. Those people, and they know who they are, have my eternal gratitude; but it’s rather disheartening not to be making more of an impression on the wider world.
In chronological order, then:
1. Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach, Barbican Centre, London
2. Codeine, Szene Wien, Vienna
3. Peter Brötzmann’s Full Blast, Chelsea, Vienna
4. Anthony Braxton, Jazzatelier, Ulrichsberg
5. Peter Hammill, Porgy & Bess, Vienna
6. The Thing, Blue Tomato, Vienna
7. Marilyn Crispell/Eddie Prévost/Harrison Smith, Blue Tomato, Vienna
8. Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Martinschlössl, Vienna
9. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Arena, Vienna
10. Swans, Arena, Vienna
Viennese Waltz 
Was at no.s 9 and 10.they were fab.were you at Richard hawley in Vienna? That was my gig of the year by a country mile
Thanks for the comment Brian. No, I don’t know anything about Hawley. He played at Akzent, right? I saw Tindersticks there this year, they just missed the ten. First time I’d ever been there, nice venue.
Keep going- I regularly visit to read your reviews plus to visit the excellent Evan Parker tour dates page
hmsiu
Well I hope you keep going and posting reviews here, they’re always informed and deserve to be read more widely. I’m in venues like rhiz, Porgy & Bess, Blue Tomato etc more often than I let on in my blog (OK so mostly, though not always, to catch avant-garde/experimental stuff that bleeds through from the classical scene), and it’s been interesting to keep vicarious tabs on that side of music in Vienna from somebody who’s knows what they’re writing about.
Have only been to one, that’s Swans, and that was for me the worst concert of 2012 ;-)
That’s OK Walter :) Looking forward to reading your own list!