In the daylight anywhere feels like home

Hooray! Daylight Savings! I'd long planned to make a mix or maybe suggest it become a national holiday to commemorate the occasion, cause I do indeed love my outdoor time. Completely stoked for having the extra hours for more riding and frisbee-shaped-object-related activities. Only that whole wiping the music library thing means it's much harder finding proper songs than it used to be. And there are SO MANY hoops to jump through for instituting national holidays. Geez. So I wasn't sure it was gonna happen. But maybe, just maybe I can pull something off. Gotta find something to keep myself occupied. Am I actually celebrating having daylight by doing stuff outside? NO. Cause it's cloudy and dreary and RAINING. I mean, I'd only been planning on that play time since the beginning of Winter, Mother Nature, it's no big. Ho hum.

Who Loves the Sun? mix:
Matt & Kim - Daylight
Beck - Sunday Sun
Harlem Shakes - Sunlight
Deerhoof - Sunnyside
Ohmega Watts - Groovin' On Sunshine

Vol. 2, the indie rock mixtape challenge

This is a message for the indie rock kids. Go check the short version if you're pressed for time, or if you hate jokes, or if you didn't care all that much for High Fidelity.

As Mr. T would say, any fool can make a mixtape. I can give you a few examples: I personally have seen trained seals put together decent stuff. I heard about a monkey hitting tracks at random on a laptop for an infinite amount of time with an infinite number of mp3s once creating a complete mixtape. A reasonably intelligent dog probably wouldn't do half bad. Hell, I bet even a Neanderthal who was slightly ahead of his time could do something not so terrible. That's all well and good if mediocrity gets you going, but that's not what I'm striving for. I'm a perfectionist. How 'bout a little eardrum-blowing bliss, hmm? How 'bout a mixtape that brings lots of people to my front door, trying to get into my house for merrymaking at my place. Yeah. I'll have a couple helpings of that. At least, that was how I looked at this before starting some research in preparation. There is an entire world out there that I was unaware of; I'm now trying to understand and incorporate some new ideas. I first found there exists a surprisingly lengthy wikipedia article about mixtapes, touching on history, legal issues and culture (I particularly liked the section about aesthetics... and yes... I did read the entire thing... kind of a dork that way). Going deeper, I decided I would watch High Fidelity, which expands greatly on the aesthetics aspect. Jack Black and John Cusack imbue me with a new level of energy and enthusiasm. I feel I am ready to accomplish something magical...

And so, that is why I am today issuing for myself the Indie Rock Mixtape Challenge! Here's how this party works:
1. Blab for a little bit about what you dig, in terms of genres (or sub-genres), moods, tempos, instruments, artists, actions to accompany listening, etc. If you've got no clue where to begin, you might cheat a little.
2. Armed with my trusty library of indie rock songs and a few handy last.fm tags, I create your custom mixtape of choice.
3. Listen to mixtape. Have eargasm. Rinse, repeat as necessary.

As there are now just four weeks left until the sure-to-be-awesome mixtape party, I figure it's time to get crackin'. That could be either a lot of time, or a little, depending on how demanding and complicated I decide to be. Or how distracted I get by other music, or shiny things I find on the ground, or hard drive death and its subsequent loss of data, or interesting stuff on the interwebs... Also! Still waiting on Perry, o' fearless leader, to put out the guidelines for this.

Participation, of course, is optional. If you elect not to play the game but still want a little something something I can make you a mixtape that's a bit more random and follows whatever whimsy floats through my head at the time.

PS: So entertained by the things that can be found on wiki. :-)

Wavin' bye to the train or bus

Share the Road - Buses and Bicycles from Chicago Bicycle Program on Vimeo.

Woo, safety first! For me this is mostly common sense ish after nine years of transportational cycling, but still it's handy to know and nice to see. I wish Chicago would come down and visit sometime. More seriously, I wish more people in autos had the presence of mind to be aware so two-wheeled folks like me don't get runned over. Somehow that nearly happened twice (!) on my commute this morning. Baffling! It's only two miles. Takes me a whole eight minutes. And today I only used one street. And a smaller one, at that. Le sigh. As if dealing with cold snaps wasn't enough. Good thing I ride defensively.

Don't get hit by the bus mix:
DJ Trackstar - The Playboys - Bumpin Bus Stop
Frankie Smith - Double Dutch Bus
Bus People Express - Augusta Georgia
Rjd2 - Bus Stop Bitties
Beastie Boys - Mark on the Bus

Hmm... surprisingly funky.

Lying alone in the hospital

Bleh. Don't much care for hospital visits. They kinda creep me out, to be perfectly honest. Could be it's the smell. Or maybe it's the doctors. Or it's the sickness and pain and death, perhaps. And let's not forget about the bills. Whatever the case, I highly suggest avoidance of frostbite, as recovery is not nearly as much fun as we've been led to believe. Don't ask. In fact, I don't know why I'd even bother to create a mix for this. Not for the happy memories, that's for sure. I think it's because I listened to the original version of this Metric song today, for the first time. You ever hear a song that you know but don't know how you know, cause you don't know it? I feel like the universe is out to get me. Freaked me out something fierce, that's for sure. When I sat down and actually listened to this, though, that made everything better. Music takes me to a happy place. Gotta love that Candi Staton, and it's been too long since I listed to anything from Miseducation.

A playlist in two parts...
1:
Friendly Fires - In the Hospital
Johnny Cash - Hurt
Faunts - It Hurts Me All the Time
Metric - Monster Hospital (acoustic)
Bad Fathers - Hurting
Candi Staton - Too Hurt To Cry
Lauryn Hill - When It Hurts So Bad
Gentleman Auction House - A Hospital of Heaven
2:
Phoenix - If I Ever Feel Better
N*E*R*D - Things Are Getting Better
David Bowie - A Better Future (Air remix)
Gnarls Barkley - A Little Better
John Legend - Each Day Gets Better

Guns, Cars and Sitars

One day I'm gonna buy a big tv. And then across from it, I'm gonna put another big tv. And I'm gonna play these videos on each of them all day long. Won't need to watch any other car chase scenes for a good lil bit.





I promised myself that the next mix I'd try and do my would be about mixtapes (got to catch up to / outdo someone... a mix about Bea Arthur's death? Whuaah??), but this just had to be done. And it was laughable easy.

Do It For The Love... Of Destruction! mix
100dBs - The Chase
Moving Units - Crash 'n' Burn Victims (Felix Cartal remix)
Now, Now Every Children - Cars
Audioslave - Getaway Car (sometimes you just gotta go where the mix takes you)
Animate Objects - Riding (In Fast Cars With Your Momma)
DJ Shadow - Mashin' on the Motorway
Target Market - Killer Cars
Queen - I'm in Love With My Car
Dan the Automator - Theme From Don [feat. DJ Shadow]