In 2012, readers flocked to a boisterous discussion on those times when the Beatles didn’t exactly impress.

We’ve each already had our say, individually. Said our piece. Then came time to meet over the remnants of the egg nog and hammer out a consensus — before we go over the disc-al cliff into 2013.

The Dinosaurs of Rock roamed the Earth again in 2012, racing up the charts past bands half their age and chewing through expectations. Expectations, you say? I had many. Most of them dead wrong.

Part 2, Mainstream and Modern Jazz >>> For the sixth straight year, it’s time to look back on the year in music to recollect which albums I really, really liked this year and make a list.

Bob Dylan, both with and without his legendary collaborators the Band, roared to the top of Something Else! Reviews’ reader poll for September 2012 — with entries at both Nos. 1 and 2.

The wildly productive Mark Knopfler, who’s just issued a song-packed two-disc collection of rootsy goodness, tells Paul Sexton of the Independent that it actually could have been a triple album.

Mark Knopfler works with a loose theme here, that of living by your wits on the high seas, but the broader messages found on Privateering are sure to resonate with anyone who’s faced down life’s mighty struggles.

< >> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Becker and Fagen dug “Sultans Of Swing” like the rest of us did when this first Dire Straits hit was making hay on the radio in 1979. It was beginning with this song where Mark Knopfler made fancy fingerpicking — by way of Chet Atkins — cool again in rock music.

by Tom Johnson Check out guitar George he knows all the chords … Having originally picked up a used copy of Communiqué, I shelved it for a while when I realized that I just wasn’t all that in the mood for Dire Straits at the time.

by Mark Saleski So I was bored the other night and decided to flip through the on-demand offerings on the cable, and came across a short concert segment of Deep Purple doing “Space Truckin.”