Time Will Tell

More than anything else, New Year’s Day marks the passage of time … it's when we acknowledge the relentless progression of days scrolling by throughout the year. Einstein said that “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once", which seems like a positive thing, but often when we're contemplating time passing, we're at least a bit wistful about it: it may mark the end of good times, the disappearance of friends, the loss of opportunities, the inexorable reduction of the total number of hours and days we have still ahead of us. But it may also signal coming into your own, finding love, having a child, creating art or buying a ticket for the next flight into space. For good or bad, it's fair to say time is the primary element in our lives, it's the essential component without which we can build nothing, it defines us. And it's everything in music as well … a fact that this New Year's set pays tribute to, along with Capt. Beefheart.