I'm amazed to report that by April 7, I had a solid 25 albums to bring to your attention. Usually I don't get here until late June, so either my standards are completely crap and I'm getting soft and stupid in my old age or the decline of the music industry and its butchering at the hands of the entertainment industry is actually a very good thing for musicians. Once you assume you cannot crossover to people who don't already like your kind of music, you stick to doing what brings you pleasure and it shows. Though I also fear by that measure that artists will become too complacent and play to the prejudices of their cult, this year it seems to be working.

To scare you further, the weeks following April 7 have brought me even more interesting albums, but I shall hold them for when I have another full 25 and can make it the blog of the century!

Ahh, what can you do? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Minor Threat [Photo: Malco23]Note: I'd like to dedicate this column to Sean Ison, a friend and fellow writer who shared music and his thoughts with me on a regular basis. Sean was just about to set me straight on Johnny Thunders and I was looking forward to hearing what he had to say. Best of all, we could disagree on things and still understand and respect where each other was coming from. It's with heavy heart that I say goodbye to my friend. Save me a seat, Sean. We'll catch up one day and compare notes once again.

Punk rock -- soon to be, if not already, post-punk -- soldiered on into the 1980s. Hardcore sped things up to the speed of light and made the funny, sarcastic, brilliant lyrics sound like one long yell into the abyss. If you didn't sit home and memorize the lyric sheet -- on your own time!!! -- then you were just left to slamdance as long as your young, stupid body allowed and know in your heart that you were standing up for something surely righteous.

To go along with the new youth movement, there were the weird offshoots from old punks who kept their names in the ring by releasing something and while there's a good chance that I'm overrating a few things, it's also likely that so is everyone else. Punk rock was provincial and the alternative scene was as much what you heard as what existed. The network was up and running but the glitches were fatal for some groups. Who knows how hard they rocked in the outskirts of Lawrence, Kansas.

Considering that The REM's debut album Murmur is celebrating its 30th birthday this year and that I've already done a retrospective for 1983 back in 2008 when the year was 25 years old, I thought it would be mildly interesting if I narrowed my focus into a three-pronged approach.

I've assembled three blogs for 1983. This one handles the "college radio" type music that found its home on left-of-the-dial college radio stations whereupon it got its goofy categorization. The second blog covers the "punk" angle. And the third will cover the hits!!

I got a lot of work to do!

Beyonce [Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images]

2013 looks to be a weird year on the concert front. But this is likely to carry on for the rest of our lives, considering how weird the music industry is these days. The Rolling Stones are said to be lining up 18 shows, and Gwen Stefani seemed to commit to Jimmy Kimmel that No Doubt would see the sunshine. But U2 are napping, and how many times can Roger Waters keep building that same wall?

One Direction

If you have youngsters in your family — or you just love watching kids! — you're going to want to find yourself to one of these youth-group meetings hitting Florida on June 13 and remaining in North America and Canada until August 10. Then it's off to Australia where the child labor laws are very different! See tour dates.

Justin Timberlake

Justin Timberlake — the man, the myth, the nostalgia, the who cares? — will be playing baseball stadiums this summer with Jay-Z, who really deserves the hype, but we're contrary folk! Just imagine seeing fans trying to send Timberlake over the

Mark my words, there will be a surprise summer hit that defines 2013, but even our high-end crystal balls here at Y! Music can't get much more than a cloud over what it will be. I guess that's why they call it a surprise hit. But we do have lists upon lists of new albums that are surfacing and which are likely to be the big movers of the summer. Some have already been issued while others still have no firm date other than a blanket "summer release." What music you prefer will determine, of course, what music you likely bump into all June through August. Unless you're a Kenny Chesney fan who has a soft spot for Iggy Pop and Miley Cyrus!

I'm going in roughly chronological order here:

Bon Jovi, What About Now

Arena rock is getting in shorter supply these days, at least until Steve Perry and Journey and Lou Gramm and Foreigner make amends. Need a reason to flick your cellphone these days in your own bedroom? Here it is. If they don't write choruses that make everyone sing then demand your money back! (March)

Heavy Metal, the music so hard it hurts, has had over thirty-two thousand bands attempt to define its style over the past 47 years. Yet, only a chosen few have proven the stamina necessary to achieve total dominance and unrivaled excellence in their field.

Plenty of un-metal people have tried to unlock the code, but all have failed, miserably. As Y! Music's Senior MetaList, I was called upon to make the final decision. I consulted with my dozens of heavy metal albums to determine who should attain the rank of greatness.

Here are the results. In the end, it could not have gone any other way.

Thy greatness speaks its name.

As anyone who knows this blog can tell you, what can be done once can be done again and again until this blogger gets tired. Having just moved my things into the Yahoo! Corporate Auxiliary Veranda #6 where I'm supposed to "keep it up, dude!" according to the I-think-he's-being-sarcastic blogger across from me who keeps holding sealed CDs up to his ear in hopes of divine inspiration when it appears to me that turning down the Complete Works of Spirit might be the first step in the right direction, I stare at my brand new wall and think about how I've done one and two-hit wonders and that three must be next. I check the number line near the accounting department and confirm that I am correct. Hooray for me. It will be a good day.

Here are the folks who have had three Top 40 hits on the Billboard Pop Charts!

[Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella]Welcome, everyone, to the summer of 2013! No summer is complete without standing in long lines for bathrooms and bottled water while braving a sudden summer shower all in the quest for the perfect chord! The idea is to do this while checking out as many bands as humanly possible! Those of us in northern climes sit around the hot stove all winter just waiting for these days when we can stand around outside without most of our clothes!

While every one of us would be a better person if we found our way to Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2, most of us aren't mentally or physically equipped to deal with the endurance-test qualities of this desert ritual. But for those who are, well, there's another one for you.

The rest of us can stick with the following, in roughly chronological order: