The annual countdown at WFPK provides some entertaining listening, but what’s more fun is looking at the list online and figuring out how much of the music you’ve actually heard of. Then there’s the sport of spotting all the grammatical and spelling errors (Bruce Springstein?) on the list. Must be a shortage of musically-inclined spellcheckers at the station.

This year’s list is 919 albums. The last few years have featured lists of artists, albums and songs. And I think the folks in charge have run out of topics, which is OK. In fact, running a countdown between Christmas and New Year’s is a great idea, and would be OK even if it were the same list every year. It ends Saturday night before 9, with no doubt the Beatles White Album, or something like it.

It’s much more interesting to listen to the less-known discs on the list, and to hear artists like Michael Jackson or Tenacious D (number 919) make one-time appearances on the station, mixed in with station regulars like Citizen Cope and Joan Osborne. Then there’s the approach of listening just to hear where your favorite artists rank (Delbert McClinton’s “Cost of Living” #758).