As the year comes to a close, the inevitable parade of best-of lists are littering blogs, magazine articles and the life pages of newspapers. Some of it is intelligent, most of it is there to fill content in between ads begging consumers to fork over the last of their 401K savings for a new camera of perfume.

I’ve always greeted these types of lists with a degree of cynicism and doubt. They are never really best-of lists from the year, but rather a collection of the best music the writer/journalist has presumably heard in the 11.5 months (remember, these lists are written early).

Inevitably, this means things are missed, gems are forgotten and soon arguments break out in a bar because someone can’t understand how Coldplay’s alleged plagiarism-ridden “Viva la vida” scored lower than TV on the Radio’s “Dear Science”…or vice versa.

There’s a pretentious music fan war going on out there and while I’m a big fan of public conflict, I don’t nearly have enough whiskey in me to contribute extra wood to the fire of aural discontent, especially in a year with such a good-time feeling thanks to the first presidential election where I felt something real.

Instead, this is a short account of the best concert of my year. Not yours or the fat guy in the corner chowing down on a hotdog (dude, two words: eat less…and bathe).

For me, the concert of the year wasn’t at an indie rock club listening to band employ a violin bow to play a guitar or a summer hip-hop festival where a combination of breakdancing and drug use took the day over.

No, the show of the year for me was in Preservation Hall in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans. There, in a non-air conditioned room with minimal seating and no mics, I experienced unbridled, concert joy.

It was jazz as it was meant to be with jubilant players, a larger-than-life dude on the drums and a lanky keyboard player who looked like he had been jamming the same song for his entire life and a saxophone player seemingly smiling and playing all at once.

The lead singer, hardly caring his voice failed to rise above the power from the trombone and drums, closed his eyes and sang traditional jazz songs like “Down by the Riverside” as if the small music space was a church and he was speaking to the congregation.

In many ways he was.

Next to him was the lone white girl, handling the trombone and looking like she just got off of work at the local corporate retail store. And yet she fit in, somehow.

Something was different with this show. I didn’t feel part of the product, the endless aim of the industry to get people to talk about the next undiscovered band. I simply enjoyed, breathed it in and was grateful when they played “Saints” towards the end.

Different is not necessarily good. Talent always trumps everything else and in these financially meager times, a more toward quality over flashy may be for the best.

But this is why we go to shows, why we trudge through lame opening acts and and pay over-priced beer. We are all addicts for a drug we rarely get. And when that moment comes, it makes all the latenights and weird mornings worth it.