Best of Nashville 2009: Music

Best Jazz Radio Station:
WMOT-FM
This is a bittersweet honor, because some time in the near future 89.5 WMOT-FM will no longer be a 24/7 mainstream jazz station. Just as classical fans saw the pursuit of demographics and dollars doom Mozart and Beethoven in the daytime hours at WPLN-FM, their jazz counterparts will soon experience a similar fate vis-à-vis Parker and Coltrane. That's not to say jazz will completely disappear from the station—word is the nightly treasure Jazz With Bob Parlocha will remain, and hopefully they will salvage other worthy weekend specialty shows like Austin Bealmear's Jazz on the Side, The Brazilian Hour and the weekly program produced by the Nashville Jazz Workshop. But unfortunately, while the folks at Japan's Jazz Journal and listeners around the country salute and celebrate WMOT-FM's quality and excellence as a 100,000-watt voice for mainstream jazz, the folks who run the store are nearly ready to devote the daytime to talk—as if that's something lacking in the Nashville radio world. RON WYNN

Best Dance Music Blog:
Blogging Is Serious Business
In the year-and-a-half since local dance music impresario Justin Kase decided to put the blog back in blog house, BISB has become the local go-to source for the latest in squiggly, wiggly electro-funk. The blog features the hottest house tracks from across the Intertubes and a plethora of local dance mixes from local beat-jackers like Sanchez and The Shockers, Fan Fiction and even the man himself—the muscle behind the hustle—Mr. Kase. And while we would love to see more frequent posts, we will gladly take quality this high over quantity. SEAN L. MALONEY

Best 'Secret' Show:
Pavement 'Reunion' at The 5 Spot
The Internets were abuzz last month when Brooklyn Vegan broke the news of a Pavement reunion—and again when the band sold out five nights in New York over a year in advance—but there was plenty of buzz in Nashville this past February when a couple hundred wide-eyed wedding crashers got to see the closest thing to a Pavement redux to hit a stage in almost a decade. Sure, they didn't play anything off Wowee Zowee, and Spiral Stairs wasn't even there, but just seeing them—bumping into them, even!—at Bob Nastanovich's open-to-the-public reception was thrill enough for the slacker rock-starved who got to witness Malkmus leading a crack house band through "Come and Get Your Love" and a few other pop classics. STEVE HARUCH

Best Other 'Secret' Show:
John Fogerty at Mercy Lounge
John Fogerty's AMA appearance at Mercy Lounge wasn't much of a secret by the time it rolled around, but that didn't keep some people from sitting it out for fear of ending up like a few hundred Kings of Leon fans who were duped into catching a performance by techno ironists Spring Hill Spider Party at the very same venue a few weeks prior. Those who decided to skip this one will likely never stop kicking themselves, and those who went still have the marks from repeatedly pinching themselves to make sure it was real. What was initially billed as a 45-minute performance became an unforgettable near-two-hour run through a dozen-plus Creedence classics—prompting Mercy co-owner Todd Ohlhauser to call it the most special moment in the club's six-year history. ADAM GOLD

Best Local Band Cameo in a Feature Film:
Turbo Fruits in Whip It!
Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers hasn't played Nashville yet, so we don't know whether the Turbo Fruits are taking a slot that should rightfully belong to 'humpers Dave Cloud, Chris Crofton, Travis Nicholson or Brian Kotzur. But after all these years of having Austin's cool cred lorded over us, it's a juicy bit of payback to see the city's indie rockers played onscreen by a band from Nashville. (This is how it must feel to be ubiquitous rent-a-location Vancouver.) Watch for them in Drew Barrymore's irresistible roller-derby yarn backing indie-rock cutie pie Landon Pigg, perfectly cast as the kind of doe-eyed sensitive rock dude every girl should avoid like an unsanitized toilet seat. JIM RIDLEY

Best Thing the Music Scene Needs:
An All-Purpose Next-Level Venue
Granted, City Hall may have been a concrete cavern with all the sleek style of a Quonsett hut. But its heart and function were in the right place. Nashville needs that pivotal venue twixt the Cannery Ballroom and the Ryman Auditorium. Our solution: A mixed-use hall that could accommodate shows too big or small for other stages, while providing a home for parties and other events. Are the Nashville Rollergirls outdrawing their space at the Fairgrounds? Give 'em a full-fledged Thunderdome for wheeled combat. Comedy shows? A Nashville chapter of Lebowskifest? The return of Girl Talk? Put it here. The war for naming rights begins...now. JIM RIDLEY

Before & After
Jason Ringenberg/Farmer Jason

Most parents wouldn’t trust their children to a program conducted by a punk-rock singer. But Jason Ringenberg was never a typical punk-rock singer.

The qualities that made the leader of ’80s Nashville rock heroes Jason & the Scorchers such an engaging performer—earnestness, enthusiasm, physical abandon and a whole-hearted commitment to the emotion of the moment—also account for Farmer Jason’s knack for holding the attention of a much younger audience.