« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »
February 27, 2005
Podcast Feeds
While my blog is not at all an MP3 blog in the purest sense of that term, I do occasionally post links to MP3s here. Some of those MP3s are just my own digital audio experiments and some of them are songs by other artists that I happen to be writing about for one reason or another.
I often find myself wishing that my favorite MP3 blogs had podcast feeds that allowed for automated downloading. Because right-clicking, Saving-Link-As, and navigating to a specific directory can get pretty old once you do it over and over again for the same MP3 blog. I really don't post enough MP3 links on this blog to warrant the automation that a podcast feed provides, but I decided to go ahead and set up a couple feeds anyway, partly just to prove the concept to myself and partly so that I could learn more about RSS and enclosures (which is all a podcast feed is anyhow).
Setting up a podcast feed was way easier than I thought it would be. I just installed this MT-Enclosures plugin for MovableType and defined a couple of new RSS 2.0 templates with different rules for matching potential enclosure URLs.
My basic podcast is just a feed of any and all MP3s that I link to in my posts:
Tuba City MP3 (http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/mp3.xml)
And then I set up a more specialized feed for any MP3s that I personally create:
DJ Twombly MP3 (http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/twombly.xml)
Note: this second feed is just a subset of the first one...so if you subscribe to the first feed, you don't need to subscribe to the second one. (Of course, neither one of them will be very active, at least for the time being.)
Podcasting's been getting a lot of hype as a means by which people can distribute their own radio-show-type content. In that sense of the term, my feeds might not really be considered true podcasts, as the enclosed MP3s are just songs or remixes and not longer standalone radio-show-type offerings with a host, voiceovers, etc.
That said, it seems to me that any site that regularly offers MP3s could use the same ideas behind podcasting to help automate the download process for anybody that wants to be a subscriber to a specific "audio channel". Or are MP3 bloggers slightly wary that enabling any sort of automated downloading might push them over the unclear boundary that seems to separate MP3 blogging from illegal filesharing?
If this is all new to you and you want to learn more about sending and receiving podcasts, download iPodder and then check out Brian Russell's very helpful podcasting tutorial. Brian's been podcasting for several months now and his audio offerings are true podcasts in the "self-broadcasted radio-show" sense of that term.
I might eventually get to a place where I feel like podcasting a lengthier DJ mix every now and then, but for now I'm just going to keep throwing up the occasional MP3. I'll even throw one up tomorrow to christen my new feeds. If you're interested in this sort of thing, please try out one or both feeds and let me know if they work!
Posted by Tim at 05:41 PM | Comments (5)
February 25, 2005
Waxing Poetic
The quarterly publication Wax Poetics is almost like an academic journal for beat junkies, crate diggers, and other funk/soul/jazz aficionados. Issue # 11 just came out a couple of weeks ago and it's stacked with some serious history, including lengthy features on Charles Wright, John Klemmer, Jimmy McGriff, and CTI art director Bob Ciano. Towards the back there's even an impressive Stax-related double-shot: a continuation of Issue #10's feature on the legendary 1972 concert/film Wattstax as well as a collection of interviews with various soul musicians who lived in Memphis during the turbulent 1960s.
What really makes the new Wax Poetics for me, however, is the fact that my pal Bret Dougherty contributed a fascinating piece on Bill Adler. Adler was the publicist at Def Jam from 1984 to 1990 and he's currently running/curating the Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. Dougherty gets Adler talking about those golden years at Def Jam, politics in relation to hip-hop, and Adler's passion for being a true preservationist/archivist of hip-hop culture. Like most Wax Poetics articles, the piece is accompanied by some incredible photos, including a few taken by legendary hip-hop photographer Ricky Powell. Oh snap, indeed!
You can get a copy of this new Wax Poetics from Dusty Groove, Turntable Lab, Fat Beats, or The Giant Peach. And if you absolutely can't wait until your order is shipped, just read the version of the Bill Adler interview that Bret posted on his web site.
Speaking of Bret D., he will be spinning some wax of his own tomorrow night as he joins me for a special edition of Sureshot. This was actually supposed to be my week off from The Federal but there's a big party goin' on. So we're going to be bringing the funk and maybe even doing a dry run of the Iron Dog/Tuba City mixtape that should be coming to fruition sometime in the next couple of months. Things start up at 9pm, a little earlier than normal. Don't sleep!
Posted by Tim at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2005
Copyright Criminals
M.I.A.'s Arular full-length was supposed to drop earlier today (er, "yesterday"), but as Pitchfork reported last week, the album has been postponed/delayed indefinitely due to some sort of legal issue related to the clearing and/or paying for a sample. I haven't heard any details on which M.I.A. song is causing the problem or what the specific sample is, but I did find it interesting that the day after Pitchfork's story came out, music journalist Sasha Frere-Jones followed up his own earlier comment/query about M.I.A. and songwriting credits with an extremely insightful note from DJ/producer Diplo regarding the various sources/inspirations for "Bucky Done Gun" (which is straight heat, by the way....if you haven't heard it, check out the minute-long snippet still available over at Soul Sides).
There seems to be something slightly ironic about the M.I.A. album getting postponed due to last-minute sample clearance problems, at least when you look at the big picture and compare Arular to its immediate predecessor, the M.I.A./Diplo promotional mixtape that came out last fall. The remarkably successful (and humorously named) Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 was chock full of M.I.A. mixes and blends, several of which used copious portions of huge 80s hits from artists like Prince, The Bangles, Madonna, The Eurhythmics, and Salt-N-Pepa. Of course, mixtapes of this sort generally fly below the corporate radar and play by a completely different set of unwritten rules - rules that don't involve accountants or lawyers. But Piracy Funds Terrorism blew up way beyond small-time "underground" status - it wound up being the #23 album on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll and #12 on Pitchfork's best-of-2004 list, simultaneously fueling and riding the M.I.A. hype wave (a wave onto which I gladly throw a few more drops of water as I impatiently wait for it to finally hit shore...).
For me, part of the initial thrill of lisetning to Arular in its entirety was simply getting to hear all those familiar-sounding M.I.A. bits in a pure and undiluted form - unmixed and unblended. As if that sample-heavy mixtape had been completely cleaned, sanded, and refinished so that nothing was the left but the raw vocals and the real deal beats. So I had to chuckle and sigh when I found out that a legal problem with some small sample was going to delay and maybe even change what had already seemed like a newly realized version of M.I.A., one refinished with an awesome Pledge shine. I probably ought to hold off on the full-on editorializing until I know what specific M.I.A. sample (or musical interpolation?) is causing such a stir...but it's hard not to see this as yet another case of copyright laws rearing their ugly head and interfering with the creative process.
It'll never ever happen, but I'd love to see current copyright law amended so that there was some sort of compulsory or mechanical license for sampling, maybe something similar to the various mechanical licenses that allow artists to record songs written by other people. Granted, I think some of those "I'm covering this song" deals still wind up being negotiated with the copyright holder....but even those negotiations seem to be a formality, with set statutory rates. I mean, Creative Commons is a very cool utopian idea and all....and I certainly hope it has some positive effects in the long run. But let's face it, CC doesn't help at all if what an artist wants to sample isn't already licensed in that way. If only there were some sort of compulsory sample licenses and various statutory rates to fairly compensate for different levels/types of sampling, then maybe "permission" could be taken out of the equation and the arbitrators and accountants could figure out how to crunch the numbers after the fact? Of course, I am not at all knowledgeable about copyright law so perhaps I am missing some obvious points here. And like I said, it will never happen....since copyright owners have little incentive to weaken their own grip on their copyrighted works.
Back to M.I.A. for a second, I assume XL probably cleared "Sunshowers" with Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band back in early 2004 before that single first came out. I wonder did they have to then re-clear the song for re-release on Arular? And if so, were the negotiations for that much tougher once M.I.A. started blowing up and looking like an artist that could sell a crapload of records? Hmm, maybe they could've looked to Tony Starks for advice based on his own Dr. Buzzard experiences....
Anyone who has read this far probably likes thinking about sampling and copyright issues almost as much as I do...and thus might very well be interested in checking out the new trailer for Copyright Criminals (found yesterday via BoingBoing), a still-in-progress documentary about sampling and how copyright affects music. The trailer's a meaty 10 minutes long and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Pete Rock and Matmos to Lawrence Lessig and WXYC alumna/Stay Free! publisher Carrie McLaren. Much like Lessig, McLaren has been all over this whole copyright issue for awhile now....if you haven't already seen it, check out her great illegal-art.org exhibit with all of its multimedia goodies and links to more information about copyright issues and related matters.
Posted by Tim at 02:24 AM | Comments (5)
February 15, 2005
Losing My Edge & The Indie-Rock Crowd
The debut album from LCD Soundsystem finally hits American record stores tomorrow (er, make that "today"). I really like the first single "Movement" with its whole The-Fall-covers-"Ghost Rider" vibe...as well as the song's cool video. But I was a bit underwhelmed by some of the other tracks that my import-buying friend was playing for me over the holidays. Of course, such cursory listens aren't always so telling, and I'm eager to hear the whole thing in its entirety a couple of times before making any rash judgements. If nothing else, the CD comes with a bonus disc compiling all of the LCD Soundsystem singles and b-sides from the past few years - so necessary!
The January issue of The Wire had a pretty fascinating LCD Soundsystem cover story. If you're interested in the band but didn't get a chance to read the print article, you might as well do yourself one better and just read the full unedited interview that Peter Shapiro did with LCD Soundsystem frontman and DFA production guru James Murphy. It's pretty long and quite informative. I hadn't read any interviews with Murphy before, but I was a tad surprised to discover how completely earnest and genuinely forthcoming he was about his music, his life, and what he's trying to accomplish. Somehow I didn't quite expect that out of a person who has thrown so much sardonic wit and irony into his song lyrics, specifically those hilarious lines from the music-snob parody anthem "Losing My Edge". His honesty and straightforwardness aside, there are a couple places in The Wire interview where Murphy almost slips into the role of the "Losing My Edge" protagonist with some elitist-sounding comments. My personal favorite was his humorous if unfair dismissal of the Stone Roses ("I remember hearing 'Fool's Gold' and thinking it was really likeable and that a lot of college kids would like it, but it was like 'Vitamin C' to me without the weird, crazy Japanese guy.").
But enough with the personality analysis. The thing in the LCD Soundsystem story that surprised me the most was the fact that Murphy drummed for the early '90s indie-rock band Pony under the alias "Jimmy James". I hadn't thought about Pony in ages...and I dare say that I probably wouldn't remember them at all were it not for the fact that I actually reviewed their 1994 Homestead album for Stay Free! #9. The Stay Free! archives didn't have all of the contents of that particular issue online, so I dug up a print copy and uploaded a scan of my decade-old review here. (Note: This was one of the first-ever pieces that I specifically wrote for printed publication, so please cut me some slack for actually starting off a record review with the ludicrous declaration that "To have any chance of being able to rock in the nineties, a band must either have smarts or intensity.").
As I mentioned in my review, Cosmovalidator was recorded by none other than Bob Weston...and in the interview Murphy talks a bit about how he learned a just-the-basics approach to recording and miking instruments from Weston and Steve Albini. That seems to have certainly served him well as a "dance music" producer. No wonder so much of the DFA stuff sounds so interesting and organic, it seems that Murphy and his DFA production partner Tim Goldsworthy have taken a few pages out of Albini's no-frills "live band" soundbook and applied the lessons learned to the much more synthetic world of "dance music".
Murphy was Pony's drummer (that's him with the long hair in the middle of the Pony album cover), but he also wrote and sang the hilarious last song ("Gimme") on Cosmovalidator. In fact, this song comes up during The Wire interview because of its mockery of indie-rock crowds standing still and friends wanting to be on guest lists. Here are the full lyrics of "Gimme":
Hey Dallas, we're going to your show
I sure hope your band's good, if not we're gonna blow....early
It's three bucks a head, but I'm bringing seven friends
And well if the other bands suck, we'll leave before the end...comes
So put me on your guest list, 'cause I've known you for so long
I'll act like I enjoy it, might even sing along...with you
Just stick names on a paper and fatten up your crowd
Just promise me, promise me you'll play something hip and loud.
Stand around, stand around, stand around
Stand around, stand around, stand around
Do the indie-rock crowd
Fold your arms, fold your arms, fold your arms,
fold your arms, fold your arms now
Do the indie-rock crowd
After I went back and listened to this song, it all made total sense that this was the exact same guy who could sarcastically sing "I hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know" before rattling off an amazing laundry-list of music-geek faves ("This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars...") at the end of "Losing My Edge".
I'm not a regular MP3 blogger or anything, but given the buzz that LCD Soundsystem is getting right now and the fact that Cosmovalidator is out of print, I'm sure that there are some people out there that would be interested in hearing "Gimme", the first James Murphy-penned song to appear on a record. So here it is, a 1994 example of Murphy's acerbic wit and songwriting abilities:
Lest I be accused of falling into the role of the "Losing My Edge" hipster, posting rare mp3s from one of my oh-so-out-of-print CDs, let me just admit that while I do like the Pony CD, I seriously doubt that I would own it were it not for the fact that I happened to get a free review copy way back when...and I'm a bit of a packrat that rarely purges anything from my record collection. Besides, anyone who wants to get their own copy can currently get one used on Amazon for the not-so-premium price of $1.74.
Of course the LCD Soundsystem double disc will cost you a little bit more than $1.74. But, you know, I heard that all of the cool kids are gonna be buying it...
Posted by Tim at 01:38 AM | Comments (3)
February 14, 2005
Addicted To Roses
"My name is Cupid Valentino, the modern-day Cupid. And I just want to say one thing: Happy Valentine's Day. Every day the 14th!"
- Andre 3000, Outkast's "Happy Valentine's Day"
Last year's Grammy for "Album of the Year" went to an album that I ended up using several times during Saturday night's pre-Valentine's dance party at Hell. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for this year's "Album of the Year".
Of course, six tracks after wishing everyone a happy Valentine's Day, Andre 3000 sang a much more memorable line that fits the current holiday quite nicely: "Roses really smell like poo-poo." That's right, florists!
For Saturday's party, I worked out a short blend of Outkast's "Roses" and Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love" to use as a transitional device between full chunks of those two songs. For someone's potential Valentine's Day amusement (hopefully), here is a slightly different version of that idea that I assembled with my digital audio editing and mixing programs:
Just playin'!
Posted by Tim at 02:49 AM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
See You in Hell, Valentines!
Do elementary school kids still exchange paper Valentine's Day cards? Or has that been supplanted by some newer technology? Or maybe even outlawed entirely so as to not promote popularity contests and the inevitable hurt feelings? Whatever the case, this right here is way more than just a Valentine, it's a personal invite to "Deep Down Where The Love Is", the pre-Valentine's Day dance party that's going down at Hell this coming Saturday. Here's the official love poetry as written by Hell's very own Super-Casanova:
I'm not sure how I became a "Sound Machine" a la Gloria Estefan's backup band, but I'll be doing my best to live up to the term while also putting the "Love" back in "Bueno Love Baller". I've got a whole new arsenal of dancefloor jamz, many of which were specifically chosen to make this evening something special. So yeah, this Saturday is when it all goes down....deep down where the love is!
Posted by Tim at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2005
Federal DJ Nights
Mad props to Mark Weddington (aka DJ Marco) for designing this brand new flyer promoting all three of the DJ nights at The Federal. Looks like Mark also gave The Federal website a nifty re-design and much-needed overhaul. Now it's even got an events page that has the exact dates of when any of us are DJing. Which will hopefully clear up any possible scheduling confusion now that we're all DJing biweekly and not weekly.
I'm back at The Federal this Saturday night (02/05/2005), from 10pm until 2am. Contestants, please come on down!
Posted by Tim at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
2004 Favorites, the WXYC Version
Just to follow up on my own "favorites of 2004" list, here is the recently unveiled composite list of "WXYC's Favorite 20 Releases of 2004", as determined by the votes of 72 different WXYC DJs:
1. The Arcade Fire - Funeral (Merge)
2. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs (Fatcat)
3. Madvillain - Madvillainy (Stones Throw)
4. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City)
5. Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop)
6. Brian Wilson - Smile (Nonesuch)
7. Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing In The Hands (Young God)
8. Elliott Smith - From A Basement On The Hill (Anti)
9. Various Artists - Bandwidth: Celebrating 10 Years of Internet Radio on WXYC-Chapel Hill (WXYC)
10. The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (Rough Trade/Sanctuary)
11. Xiu Xiu - Fabulous Muscles (5 Rue Christine)
12. Shark Quest - Gods and Devils (Merge)
12. Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose (Interscope)
14. Destroyer - Yr Blues (Merge)
15. Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News (Epic)
16. Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt (Subliminal Sounds)
17. Mirah - C'mon Miracle (K)
18. The Foreign Exchange - Connected (BBE)
19. The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike (Memphis Industries)
20. Various Artists - Goodbye, Babylon (Dust-To-Digital)
It should be noted that this list is entirely based on DJ votes and is not in any way determined by actual airplay statistics, though there are probably some significant correlations between what DJs liked the most and what actually got played the most. Sometime soon I will calculate an actual "WXYC's Most Played Releases of 2004" list and see how it compares. I know right off the bat that such a list will have Bandwidth as #1 and not merely #9.
Some observations on this composite WXYC list:
- It was quite a year for local label Merge. 3 releases in the Top 15!
- It was quite a year for folky-type releases, "oddball" or otherwise. They absolutely dominate the WXYC Top 10. On the other hand, "non-rock" releases (hip-hop, electronica/techno, world music, etc.) did not fare nearly as well as one might expect given WXYC's diverse format.
- The WXYC Top 10 is remarkably close to the Pitchfork Top 10 Albums of 2004. Seven releases appear on both Top 10 lists...and then WXYC's list has Iron & Wine, Elliott Smith, and Bandwidth where Pitchfork's list has Ghostface, The Go! Team, and The Streets. I must confess that I like Pitchfork's Top 10 a little better!
- While I'm on the subject of Pitchfork's list...the remarkable similarity between Pitchfork's list and the WXYC list raises some questions in my mind about whether Pitchfork's influence has gotten a bit out of hand. I mean, I enjoy looking at their "Top Whatever of Whatever" lists as much as anybody else, but I'm starting to wonder if "Pitchfork-think" has been taking hold in an unhealthy way. Pitchfork is a valuable information source, to be sure, but they shouldn't be defining the college-radio/hipster musical canon all by themselves. Especially when a website like Dusted Magazine covers a lot of the same sort of music, without paid writers or advertising of any sort....
Posted by Tim at 02:05 PM | Comments (5)
February 02, 2005
2004 Favorites
Just as it is with employers handing out year-summarizing W-4 forms, January 31st is the de facto deadline by which WXYC djs are supposed to submit their "top releases of the year" lists. One brave DJ then undertakes the thankless task of tallying up everyone's votes, calculating the overall ranks of various releases, and coming up with a composite WXYC "best of the year" list. No one knows what this list looks like at the moment, but soon all will be revealed: the top 20 releases will be counted down tomorrow night on WXYC's Thursday Night Feature. So if you're interested, tune in to 89.3 FM (or listen online) from 9pm to 12 midnight EST for a fun 2004 retrospective...as well as a chance to win one of the top 2 vote-getting releases (whatever they may be).
Personally, I don't always find it to be an easy or enjoyable task to try and numerically sort records based on exactly how much (or let's face it, exactly when) they blew me away during the previous year...but I really enjoy getting an intriguing glimpse into the collective hive mind of the radio station. Whether or not I wind up being all that surprised by some of the "broad consensus" picks that will make up the overall WXYC Top 10, I really like reading other people's lists and seeing various records that I either never listened to or never even knew existed. The whole sharing of "best of" lists creates an instant blueprint for musical catch-up. And catchup can be extremely rewarding...if past years are any indication, I may very well discover some of my favorite 2004 releases during the next few months. Anyway, enough with the chatter, here are my 15 favorites of 2004 as submitted to WXYC a few days ago:
1. Jay-Z - special acappella edition of The Black Album
2. Scharpling & Wurster - New Hope For The Ape-Eared
3. Various Artists - Bandwidth: Celebrating 10 Years of Internet Radio
on WXYC-Chapel Hill
4. Battles - EP C; Tras; B EP
5. Girl Talk - Unstoppable
6. Diverse - One AM
7. Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in The Hands; Nino Rojo
8. DJ/Rupture - Special Gunpowder
9. Madvillain - Madvillainy
10. The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning, Strike
11. Ghostface - The Pretty Toney Album
12. Tussle - Don't Stop EP; Klingklang
13. Murs/9th Wonder - Murs 3:16, the 9th Edition
14. Lali Puna - Faking The Books
15. M.I.A. - "Galang", "Sunshowers", Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mix (w/ Diplo)
While I'm at it, below are a few notes/explanations/observations...
|
|
|
#1 - Maybe this is a gimmicky choice for #1 but I didn't have another clear favorite and no other 2004 release dominated my year like this one did. The underground wax versions were circulating in late 2003, sure, but the official 2004 CD release (of just the acappellas, mind you!) took it into places like Best Buy. Of course, that only happened after all the derivative works started flying around the Internet in early 2004. I will surely hit a point where I never want to hear this again (much less use it), but the whole acappella push was a genius marketing move and a 2004 musical milestone. Props to Danger Mouse and a few other folks for taking these acappellas and making great new music out of them and taking the whole thing to a new level...my #1 vote definitely factors in the genius of The Grey Album and the out-of-control-ness of what followed.
#2 - I think the only 2004 things that made me laugh harder than this album were Chappelle's Show and The Daily Show. I already wrote about this double disc back in May. The fact that it's two guys doing comedy over the radio means that I have voice-only releases as my top 2 picks of 2004. I should've bought that Bjork album with Rahzel all over it, maybe I would've liked it enough to put it as #3.
#3 - I wrote way too much about this CD over the last three months. You can still download it in its entirety for free, though! (Weird, I just now noticed while uploading the album covers above that Casey Burns designed the art for my #2 and #3 albums...a completely accidental segue!)
|
|
|
#4 - Three EPs that total 66 minutes in length. Not an album you say? Well, Ian basically admitted that Battles was strategically avoiding the idea of an official debut album. Which probably disqualified them from getting as much notice as they should have. I wrote about Battles here and took pictures here.
#5 - I think this Girl Talk album is genius and I wish it would find it's way out of the plunderphonic/avant-garde ghetto and into the hands of everyone who copped the Hollertronix Never Scared mix (which was red hot in its own right, don't get me wrong). I can definitely see why some computer-based "audio art" and digital-detritus-type releases (like Wobbly, for instance) wouldn't fly with the mixtape/DJ/hip-hop crowd. But this album is an on-the-one party-rocker. And people who dig the vocal studies of Prefuse 73 would be crazy not to like "Keeping the Beat" and the way it totally chops and shreds the vocals to "Uptown Baby" by Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz while everything keeps on bouncing.
#6 - The Diverse album came out in late 2003 and I'm pretty much cheating by even putting it on here...but WXYC had it on the playlist for all of January and that's when I bought it. Definitely a solid early 2004 favorite for me, so on the list it goes.
|
|
|
#7 - Within the span of a single month this summer, I saw Devendra Banhart play live on both sides of the Atlantic. Both shows were pretty incredible but in very different ways. I really like both of these 2004 albums that he released...as well as his contributions to the Vetiver disc. Rejoicing... is probably my favorite of the two, though I like Nino Rojo's "At The Hop" so much that I played it at a wedding last fall.
#8 - DJ/Rupture's Special Gunpowder = my favorite album cover of 2004. Hot album, too.
#9 - A likely contender for the composite WXYC Top 5, and with very good reason. Madvillain fans who've already acquired many of the countless other releases featuring Madlib or MF Doom may want to check out the Stones Throw 101 DVD in order to see two hot Madvillain videos ("All Caps", "Rhinestone Cowboy").
Whew, I've already rambled on for quite a bit here so I won't keep going with these notes except to acknowledge that my #15 choice was also a bit of cheating, except in a pre-2005 instead of a post-2003 direction. I made it a policy not to consider mix CDs (or reissues) for this list, but I consider the Diplo/M.I.A. mix to be more of an artist-centric release that quelled some of my pent-up demand for more M.I.A. hits in the wake of "Galang" and "Sunshowers". I think individual tracks from this CD sound a bit silly sometimes when they're played out of context on WXYC, but as a whole the mix works really well. Today I actually managed to lay my hands on a copy of the Arular advance...so I'll have that to listen to while I sit around and ponder the extent to which M.I.A. is about to blow up beyond the DJ/music critic/hipster circles that she's already won over.
At the end of 2004 I made a year-end mix CD that features songs from most of the releases mentioned above....as well as a few other songs (non-jamz) that I really liked. I'm guessing that a decent percentage of the people who regularly read this blog may have already received one by now....but who knows. I finally have a new batch of printouts of Golfing Bush from Fahrenheit 9/11. And I would love to mark 'em up and turn them into CD covers....so shoot me an email at tubacity [at] gmail.com if you would like one.
Posted by Tim at 01:24 AM | Comments (4)