The year 2012 has been tumultuous, for sure.

About halfway through, our longtime editor left unexpectedly, as did another staff member who had been with us for a long time—to go to law school in New York.

It’s always hard to lose staff people whom you trust, and who support the magazine. But life goes on; new people come in and change the ways (but not the vision) of the magazine.

OffBeat persists.

This has also been a year that’s seen a lot of attention paid toward our live music scene in the city. As our readers know, I’ve been trying to get the tourism people to make music the focus of their promotional efforts, particularly as it relates to attracting international visitors for a great while. But things don’t move very quickly here. I’m happy to say that the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau put our beloved “Uncle” Lionel Batiste on the newest version of their Official Visitors Guide, thus letting anyone who gets their guide know that we’re definitely a music city.

The state of Louisiana is also once again featuring music in its promotions. I hope that both entities will do more than publish beautiful photos and skim over the surface of how important music can be in attracting people to the city.

The historic, newly renovated Little Gem Saloon will reopen in January, thus bringing jazz back to South Rampart Street, the street where Louis Armstrong himself played as a boy.

Frenchmen Street, at this writing, has four applications for new venues on the stretch, although whether or not they’ll open as music venues is still up in the air. Frenchmen is getting a little too crowded with tourists who see the street as an alternative to Bourbon as a place to party, not as a stalwart area that’s focused on providing an authentic music experience. Before anything else opens on Frenchmen, there needs to be adequate parking in the Marigny to service the area.

Not everything has been positive: The effort to shut down music “noise” continues by residents of the Quarter and the Faubourg Marigny who resent the tourism element as it creeps into their neighborhoods. A recent study on noise abatement, commissioned by the city, should be released in mid-January. I expect all hell to break loose from the pro- and con- music contingents when the report is released. The city is looking to create a noise abatement team that will add to the enforcers of the current city codes, as “noise”/music is the main issue when it comes to enforcing the law, when it comes to how loud music is, or whether a property is permitted to present live music.

As we know, New Orleans doesn’t have too strict of a reputation when it comes to the letter of the law. How and why this should happen in the near future is something that’s going to be very interesting, indeed. Do our citizens want this, or is it a very few who are calling the shots? I say we put it to a vote!

Speaking of voting, have you cast your ballot for your choice for the Best of the Beat Award winners?

Voting is now online at offbeat.com and ends at 6 p.m. Wednesday, January 9, 2013. No votes will be accepted after that deadline; we need time to create the actual awards.

The nominees for the awards are chosen in a painstaking process, which includes polling musicians and the music community for suggestions, and vetting these through a group of local music writers, club owners, media and OffBeat staffers to arrive at the final list of nominees, which are now online. If you haven’t already voted, scan the QR code on this page and it will take you right to the ballot.

We’re all pretty excited about this year’s Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music recipients. Traditionally, we’ve had only one recipient per year (except for 2006, post-Katrina, when we honored both Irma Thomas and Allen Toussaint). There are so many wonderful musicians who have not yet received a Lifetime Achievement Award, particularly those who have made contributions to our New Orleans R&B heritage. Thus, this year we are honoring the Dixie Cups, Frankie Ford, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, Al “Carnival Time” Johnson, Jean Knight, Robert Parker and Ernie Vincent. We also honor Jonathan Bloom in Music Education, Big Chief Howard Miller (of the Creole Wild West) with the Heartbeat Award and Jimmy Anselmo in Music Business.

We hope you plan to attend the awards and party on Friday, January 18, 2013, where we’ll honor these and dozens of other worthy musicians and bands that you select. Details of the party and ticket information are available at offbeat.com. See you there (in my bathtub!).