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Revisiting The Wrath
In 2009, I threw together a mix inspired by Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreaks. Here’s what I said then: I couldn’t dismiss it entirely. I left it on my iPod, letting shuffle find tracks on occasion and usually letting them play out. I started to think of it as a friend going through a rough…
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The Hope Fix Mix
Caught myself this afternoon, just watching the Dow Jones steadily plummet. A stalled airplane, spiralling. An imminent train wreck in slow motion. This isn’t the end of the world, I know, but it feels like the end of something. There are a couple of analogies that have entered my mind in the last month or…
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Another Summer, Another Mix
Summer is here and the time is right … for hanging around the house and burning as little $4-a-gallon gasoline as possible. In light of our collective lack of sufficient economic stimulus, I have compiled an 18-track mostly continuous mix of 24.5 songs designed to facilitate distractions of a more economical nature. After all, it…
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Obscuriosity: Week 5 (High Nineties)
(Didn’t think I forgot, did you?) It’s been a week or so since the demise of local radio giant, 99X. To be sure, the giant had fallen into a deep, deep slumber a few years back. The coma left the giant doing little but muttering remembered songs from the station’s glory days. Inevitably, if you…
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A Wherefore Mix From Back When
In May of 2001, I directed my first show outside of college. That’s a gap of seven years, if you want the math. Well, let’s call it six and a half. My last directing gig at Berry was a restaging of The Actor’s Nightmare during my graduating semester, a play I’d put on the previous…
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Better Make It Good
The new Over The Rhine album is out today. The Trumpet Child. “Trouble” is track two. I’ve had it (legally!) since Saturday afternoon, but the weekend prevented me from listening and enjoying until today. I’ve loved this band for so long, maybe fifteen years by now, but I don’t think they’ve sounded ever so good…
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Sun Daze Cool – Summer Mix 2007
It’s mix time again. Sun. Daze. Cool. 2007. 1. “Phat Beats?” – dialogue from the film, Human Traffic / “Know How” – Young M.C. 2. “Our New National Anthem” – Donnie 3. “Funky President” – James Brown 4. “Shameless (Live)” – Ani DiFranco 5. “Supermassive Black Hole” – Muse 6. “That’s Enough” – Brother John…
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Omens And Portents
The laundry room is downstairs, just off from the dining room, in the addition we created from a backyard deck a year or so ago. Currently, the dining room is serving as a seamstress’s haven, a place for Alyssa and Nikki to manufacture dresses for the upcoming production. You are coming to see it, yes?…
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File Under: “Pleasure, Guilty”
Nice day outside, eh? Pity you’re stuck in here. I mean, wherever here is, you’re there. And where you are is probably not the same as being out there. Unless, of course, you’re sitting on the deck or patio of some techno-forward thinking bar or coffee shop. Only then could you actually be here and…
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Not If You Care For Me
Chet Baker was 22-years old when he recorded the song that would make his career and establish him as the prince of West Coast cool. The take was spare, almost tentative in approach, as Chet was a trumpet-player by trade and not a crooner. At the hard-won age of 58, Chet played “My Funny Valentine”…