The best reason to see Robbie Taylor at any or all of his three shows this week is that in 1982, he serenaded me with Buddy Holly songs while standing in the middle of a deserted Hill Country road at 5am outside Junction.

OK, that story isn’t so compelling but I left out a LOT of damning details and Taylor really is something to watch. The Louisiana native is based in Lafayette (where, between him and C.C. Adcock, they must drive the law and women crazy), but in the Eighties he did his time around Austin. Often, he worked as a waiter at places like Xalapeno Charlie’s and was known for his whip-smart sense of humor and a wicked ability to mimic accents. Somewhere along the way, he migrated back to Louisiana and turned into a world-class singer-songwriter.

His is a folksy kind of set, ripe with the kind of humor that makes you wonder if Mark Twain is in his gene pool. Taylor’s forte is roots twang, incorporating big, influential doses of Johnny Cash country, Elvis rockabilly, and, naturally, Buddy Holly rock. If you didn’t recognize the covers as they came along, you’d think them part of his classic-sounding originals, which you can hear here.

This year Taylor is celebrating his 50th birthday with a one-city tour. That means he’s taking time from his regularly appointed duties leading guided fishing tours from his pirate camp off the southern tip of Bayou Lafourche, not far from the notorious Redneck Rivera of Grand Isle, for this little jaunt that includes a solo happy hour show at Patsy’s Thursday and the industrial strength version with his monster band the Roebucks Friday. Robbie & the Roebucks greet the midnight hour at Ego’s Saturday.

If we’re lucky, someone will hand him an apron and some cornmeal because he does fry up the best dang catfish around. Then you can ask him about that moonlit night in the Hill Country.

Muted guitar beat and Matrix synthesizer drop into Buck Dharma’s methodical saw-the-girl-in-half riff, “Les Invisibles” marching through Haiti’s dark “waters of amnesia” with Terminator determination. A metronomic drone: “Seven, seven, seven, seven…” Imaginos blasts 1988 Blue Öyster Cult into infinity.

“In the saga of Imaginos, between the extremes of the beginning (Les Invisibles) and the end (Magna of Illusion), everything happens all at once. Without a sequence of events, there is a rush of events.”

Time tsunamis, the blur of events ticking off digital time at millennial rates.

“The rush of events is a horror. This is the key. Ultimately, rhythm is image and image is rhythm. Ultimately, this myth is random access.”

In an Audubon desk calendar from 1,000 years ago – 2007 – seven last lists of everything happening all at once, seven entries each. 50 musical signs of the Rapture not including the scrivener ’s personal earshot into the Divine: a violin/organ duo rehearsal at San Francisco monolith/cathedral St. Mary’s of the Assumption, Friday afternoon, 3pm, May 25, 2007.

In terms of music, 2007 was kind of like bowling with a child. It kept throwing gutter balls, and sometimes those balls even leapt into the next lane with a dull thud. But every once in a while the ball miraculously veered right or left and knocked down some pins, and it felt like maybe this year wouldn’t be eclipsed by the skin-numbing feel-goodness of that fucking Feist song.

Of course there were gender-specific exceptions. Nick Cave returned with a new (sort of) band, Grinderman, and album of the same name, a sucker punch of lusty, feral noise and tales of blue-balled middle-aged angst. Philly's Pissed Jeans hurled a debut, Hope for Men, onto our shoes, screaming about pizza, ice cream, Ford Explorers, and musing on what it is to be an adult male. Battles emerged a well-oiled machine and gave adult males between the ages of 25-35 a collective gearhead boner with Mirrored.

Alternately, Nick Cave's old flame PJ Harvey released her best album in years, White Chalk, by taking up with the piano, haunting her own skin, and creeping us all out with her ethered tales of loneliness and longing, often not for good things. Dallas songstress St. Vincent's debut, Marry Me, was a beautifully crafted Dear John letter that simply disappeared at the end of its 11 pop-noir songs, and M.I.A. managed to grind boys, guns, and bird flu into one of the year's most transcendent albums, Kala.

Recapping the year in music for this week’s column proved to be more difficult than expected. Here are a few of the more notable local events worth revisiting one last time.

Half a century after prophesizing The Shape of Jazz to Come, the rest of the world finally caught up with Ft. Worth-born trumpeter Ornette Coleman. Along with reissuing the 1975 Japanese-only LP To Whom Who Keeps a Record (Water), the improv icon received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the Grammys and the Texas Medal of Arts Awards, and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music for 2006’s splendid Sound Grammar.

In 2006, Patrice Pike launched herself into the Austin Music Hall of Fame after appearing on the TV show Rock Star Supernova. This year, reality struck even closer to home. Chuggin' Monkey and Uncle Flirty's owner Brad Womack starred in the latest season of ABC's The Bachelor, while the Chronicle, in turn, held its inaugural Bacheloser competition (Winner Chris McMinn is still holding out for a Natty Lite commercial) ME Television, meanwhile, hosted The Next Veejay, resulting in two new television personalities. Austin’s Pushmonkey, Wendy Colonna, and Boombox ATX all took home first place in different categories as part of FameCast, a locally based online competition, which recently completed its third season.

I bought Quanah Parker at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar.

Probably shouldn’t say how many greenbacks changed hands, but it was both more and less than you’d think. Pretty good deal for a Comanche bigwig:

“Born to Cynthia Parker, an abducted settler white woman, and Chief Noconas, the young warrior led the Kwahadi Comanche in treacherous attacks against ‘white’ intruders. After the surrender in 1875, Quanah became a shrewd, dynamic leader of the reservation. He died in 1911 and was buried next to his mother.”

Scoped him out during Ponty Bone & the Squeezetones’ glowing set on Sunday, and plunked down some Hamiltons towards the end of the Texana Dames typically miracle (and annual) Christmas Eve performance. He could be the brother of my Los Lonely Boys gold record hanging a few inches away. On the other side, a naked sprite clutching the candle of a tongue-shaped, Plexiglas Rolling Stones 45, “She Was Hot,” keeps Parker burning the midnight oil.

San Marcos organ grinders Attic Ted perform their annual "Mary's Little Secret" holiday opera, a musical tale of a virgin who not so immaculately gives birth to a little baby Jesus, tomorrow night at the Triple Crown, and apparently some of the locals don't cotton to their degenerate ways.

As you'll see from the poster on the right, someone thought long and hard about this, but not about spellcheck.

Hoax? Joke? I don't know ... some of those dark corners of small town Texas sure harbor scary folk. Either way, go check it out because Attic Ted is one of the most underrated local bands. Starts at the demonic hour of midnight.

Then, feel free to burn in hell.

Watching Angus Young go nuclear on the first disc of the new Plug Me In ranks up there with anything on the gold standard of music DVDs, Led Zeppelin. Ace Frehley resurrecting Their Satanic Majesties Request, “2,000 Man,” on this summer’s Kissology Vol. 2, yet another freshly minted DVDnd (Vol. 3’s imminent). The Beatles’ Help!, Ramones’ It’s Alive 1974-1996, Nirvana’s Unplugged, plus last year’s Live! Tonight!! Sold Out!!! – in evolutionary order – spell out c-o-u-c-h this holiday season. Burrow.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ Running Down a Dream commits four hours, same as more conventional cinematic marathons a la Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. To see or not to see: Blind Faith, London Hyde Park 1969, and Ghost's Metamorphosis (Chronicles 1984-2004), both longtime coffee table queue items at my house still waiting for Godot. Dylan, McCartney, and even my neglected Can DVD versus current multiplex attractions I’m Not There, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, and Joy(kill) Division strangulation, Control. When did music become required viewing?

Duke Ellington Live in ’58, that’s when.

It’s one of my favorite weekends on the town, when the students are gone and the traffic is easy. Most of the folks you see in the clubs are the hardcore fans and that suits me just fine. I woke up this morning thinking about the Broken Spoke and just know that in ten years, no matter what the developers say, that place will be totally different, surrounded on three sides by Starbucks and apartments for people who can’t afford the overpriced condos but want that 04 zip code.

However, I didn’t start this blog to rail about that. The end of the year is my favorite time for sorting through past events and putting them in the place within my life. That basically means I am a sentimental fool, capable of tearing up at the sight of Salvation Army bell ringers. It also means I love to wrap myself in memories of years past because in almost 33 years of writing about music in Austin, I’ve had a few good times, my friend.

Many of my good times I had with the Skunks, gathering tonight at the Continental Club for their annual reunion. The trio of bassist Jesse Sublett, guitarist Eddie Munoz, and drummer Billy Blackmon was the first headlining punk act to play Raul’s right after the Sex Pistols, kicking off the scene that still throbs on Red River nightly. They played my reception at Soap Creek Saloon after my first wedding in 1978, when Munoz was still the guitarist. A year later, I went to New York for their first gig at CBGBs, back at a time when the Police were touring in a station wagon and it seemed like punk would save the world. It didn’t but it did serve notice to the then-overblown dinosaur rock that the jig was up.

Lots of Texans aren’t familiar with NRBQ simply because they never visit here. When I was in New York, 12 years ago now, they were easily my favorite band to see live. Their concerts were a droll mix of rock, pop, jazz, and wackiness that had no equal. The past few years for Q fans have been rough, as they’ve gone on hiatus save for a few special occasions.

Last week I discovered they reissued their Christmas Wish EP as a deluxe edition, expanded to 19 tracks. The title track is one of best Yuletide tunes you’ve never heard, a slice of pop whimsy with a toy piano and simple yet direct sentiments. Some of the songs are live and rather short so there is impromptu silliness on “Christmas Time Is Here” and “Jingle Bells.” As a whole this is one disc perfect for those tired of the same old Christmas songs performed in the same old way. It’s a bit of Christmas cheer for the rest of us. Happy holidays, y'all.