Let’s not overthink this… what’s on your turntable or streamer of choice or whatever today? I try to only spin black artists in Feb. in honour of Black History Month, so I’ve kicked things off with this incredible find from Vinyl Me, Please.

Coming in hot for my first post. Anyone have any memories to share of KEXP’s mixtape week? Anyone know if it is ever coming back? I’m an only-occasional listener (though I’m now nearly a daily one!) but Mixtape Week in 2019 was part of what got me hooked on that station and I remember asking someone the next year if it was coming back. Of course the next year was 2020 and whoever answered my email gave me a very polite “we have bigger problems right now and that thing takes some effort.” I wish it’d come back. Unless it did and I missed it, which is 100% possible. Thoughts? Also, hi everyone. Let’s be pals.

Ok. Ok. @Laura Lasser just posted a thing in the thread about "Fav bands you can't see live" that I think demands it's own thread/notification/whatever. They said at the end of the post, plain and simple - "Buy the ticket. See the show." Hell yeah. Thank you Laura!

Title says it all. What song (currently - no wrong answer, repeat answers allowed) feels like hope to you? For me, right now, it's this track called "Hold On" by French 79. This came out in.. 2020 I think? maybe 2019, but regardless, it was there for 2020. The whole album was there, but this song in particular. There was more than just COVID going on for for me, which I could go into, but not tonight. Point being, this song was there for me. I just now pulled up the video for the first time so I could post it here, and holy shit but this even hits harder. I was totally a skater as a kid, and even rode goofy foot. Nostalgia and hope wrapped into one. Perfect. Post your track too if you can - I wanna hear it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgBBCzi7Kpc

A bit of an opposite to John's "the song you weren't ready for" is the band / album that hit you exactly where you were at that time of your life. Way back in the before times, my friend stopped by randomly and said, "Hey. Whatever you're doing? Stop. You're listening to this now." He then put on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips. That album, from start to end - an absolute piece of art. I'm still a bit gobsmacked by it. I'd heard of the flaming lips, and knew the ol' "She don't use jelly" song, but this was something entirely different. For that hour or whatever I was completely transfixed. I'd also add Portishead's "Dummy" to this list - although the time and circumstances were quite different to this one... As an aside, several years later, I was waiting in the OKC airport for a flight to Denver, when a guy with curly longish hair, sunglasses, and a feather boa walks by me and sits down in the same seating area. I whisper to my partner - "Hey! I think that's Wayne Coyne!" Not only was it really Wayne Coyne, but he sat in the row directly in front of us. We ended up on a turbo-prop airplane, flying through a snow storm in the winter. When we landed, there was no jet-bridge, and it was late at night. They let us deplane on the tarmac and had to walk to the terminal in the snow. Halfway to the terminal, Wayne stopped to turn back and take a picture of the plane, with snow blowing all around us in the wind - an iconic image. I didn't stop Wayne to tell him how amazing Yoshimi was, or how important it was to me (I deeply respect the personal space of public people when they are not "on") but I've since made it a point to tell artists I meet at concerts or whatever how much I love their work, or how important it is to me. Every time I've done so, it's been really rewarding. But that's another topic for conversation...