GUEST SPOT BEST OF 2012 - 'Jon'

In the essence of our blog, we asked a few friends and blogs we follow to share with us their top tracks of the year. We are always interested in what makes people musically tick and hear to the stories associated with them, at the same time maybe learn a thing or two or catch something we've missed. So a big thank you to you all for taking the time to contribute.

Here we have Jon, a very good friend of my wife and I who we don't see as much as we'd like. A father, a Jedi, a former axe wielder for his band 'Fluorescent Black' and an all round good egg!!

Karen O / Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross - 'Immigrant Song'

OK, so technically it was released in December 2011 but I associate it much more with the first part of 2012. Love this beautifully dark cover of a Led Zep classic.

Maccabees - 'Pelican'

Had not really paid the Maccabees much attention until this gorgeous track grabbed my attention. Funnily enough I think it was Tune Doctor that alerted me to it.

OK Go - 'Needing/Getting'

Now I love OK Go, but the album version of this track didn't really do it for me. This re-scoring for the video however is a totally different matter, and it still blows my mind to think of the maths involved in laying out the track to the car hits each instrument at the right time. And yes, that's 288 open tuned Gretsch guitars with mini amps at 2'28"...

There's a series of "making of" clips for the video - the best one is here:

Have a look at some of Jon's brilliant guest spots he has done for us here...