April?

Any bets we get May's mix tapes before the April folks decide to meander off the slow boat?

I hope so because this is a pitiful opening charge.

Once every 10 years or so a thing comes across the bow that should be duly noted.
In the late 90's I worked as a builder of highways in the perpetual state of Idaho. I walked the latitude and longitude of the state stifled and listening mostly to KRIC out of Rexburg to get my NPR fixes. It was my informational heroin. The co-workers, (mostly headbangers and Z103 kind of people) thought I was daffy, but I didn't care. I thought their practice of warming cans of Campbells Chunky over the hearth of hot asphalt was weird. . . I even took part in the unholy gustitory communion myself and came to know that it was not wholly evil when a boy was hungry for something hot at noon in the Idaho July. Like I say. . . Hot times require hot measures.

That year I heard a little exposé on NPR about a band and their album that was forecasted to change perceptions of modern music. OK computer. I was skeptical. That Christmas my pal Mitchell gifted me the album. One of the few that I still cherish and absorbs me with every playing. That was the Christmas where everything changed for me. Not because of the Radiohead, but it was nice to have the perfect soundtrack to accompany the sudden alien cloud in which I found myself gasping for anything resembling oxygen. Ten years later, in vino veritas, it is true. . . Thom Yorke's voice, the Greenwood boys. They changed everything.

I could be wrong. i usually am in matters of providence and fortune. But I have a feeling that this new NIN album is something. Maybe you don't like the NIN - that is fine. I'm not here to debate you. But for every decade they say there is an album that typifies the generation. Where Ok Computer exposed the dissociative life of the dot com bubble times, Year Zero voices the anxiety of something like the first discovery that the Great Father's Iron Horse is rushing like a tsunami upon your children. . .

But that's just my impression. I'd like to hear a bit of what you peeps think.

All this time, I thought that a death-star balloon would kick ass.
I have obviously been well plussed.

-iso

Status? ! ?

I hate to be Sergeant Fussypants, but here I am.

Mixes are due. I think the guild, unlike the IRS or IRA, can be more forgiving in matters of deadlines, at least this month. So, Enigma-M, Juan Juan Fur Tete, and Vincenzo, you have a few days to get these out. I am still waiting for a 3 mailing addresses from members--you know who you are. Let's get shaking. The first round is the maiden voyage for the guild, the precedence-setter: lets break a bottle of vintage Sauternes across this ship's bow, not Night Train. Capiche?

Thoughts or concerns? Let us reason together in the comments section.

Because I love? you all just this much...

very special treat for each of you...make sure you have two good speakers or are wearing headphones for this. It will change your life

I'm a bit curious...

Where do ya'll get your music from?

I get mine from all over the place. It goes a little something like this...

itunes. A very good library with a few stunning omissions (Radiohead, Sex Pistols) I like the option of listening to a clip before you buy, and they have some really good deals sometimes. (Thelonious Monk's "Live at the It Club" for $9.99!)

emusic. I like this site a lot, the price is right ($19.99 for 75 songs per month) but if I download less than 75 I lose the remainder, and if I download 75 as far as I can tell there's no way to download more. Even though I'm paying less than $0.27 per song, I always feel a bit taken.

various magazines. I still subscribe to CMJ and I pick up Paste every month. Occasionally I get Uncut or somesuch.

Music stores. I got a part time job (like 9 hours a week) at a Hastings Entertainment store. I cruise the used bins and spend more than I earned there pretty much every week.

Anyhoo, I was just wondering if this is normal, or if I'm old fashioned, or ...what.

Seacrest out.

Insanity-ness.

I guess this is as good a place as any to spit this out...this might be old hat to some, but I just read that Johnny Marr, yes, Johnny Marr now plays guitar for Modest Mouse. Should this compel me to renew interest (not in Marr, but in Mouse)?

Discuss.

Let the mixing begin.

To quote Rob from the book:

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind," but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.”

Official Groups

They have been randomly generated, and they are as follows. Once again, I want to aver that I assigned a number to each member and then randomized the sequence. I had no selective preference about the order or placement of anyone. If any of you are not amenable to your position, please indicate and we can work something out.

Group 1:
Enigma Machinist
Vincent
Jan Wan 4t
Approx. mixtape due date: APRIL 15th (it is a tall tall order, but you are up to it)

Group 2:
Gillz
Captain Admiral
Chaucer Arafat
Due Date: May 15th--how 'bout our best fertility tracks? Rites of Spring and such?

Group 3:
Shamus
Isopraxis
Teacher of Fruit
Due Date: June 15th--some emancipation tracks perhaps?

Group 4:
Sweetface
Ibid
Wajok Weiß
Rice
Due Date: July 15th--break out the John Philip Souza!

Ignore my stupid quips. But lets try to have mixes postmarked by the ides of each month. I will assemble the addresses and send each of you an email so that you might have a destination for your mixtapes.

Time!

We are lacking one person. I am going to move forth, tomorrow evening, and generate a schedule. For anyone who wants to investigate my method for randomizing a schedule, please go to Random.org and make sure you are ok with its randomness. It is a great site, and it is good to finally have a valid reason to use it.

I am going to assign each member a number (1-13) and then generate them to create 3 groups of 3, and 1 group of 4. I vow, with bog and all his holy angels and saints as my witnesses, that I will go with the first random number sequence I am given.

If anyone has any misgivings about this method, please speak. I will post the teams on either Thursday night or Friday morning.

Dye A Log

Let us talk. Some items...

1) Teh Blogggg

I think everyone's status on the blog is set to admin. Feel free to post. This is for everyone.

2) The Mixes (once they begin)

We need to discuss a schedule for mixes. My thought is, depending on how many members join, that we break into teams. Lets suppose we have 12 members. I was initially thinking of 6 teams of 2 (and I use "team" strictly in the sense of "a collective of members who create mixes in the same month"--there is no mandate to collaborate or anything of the sort). Okay, so, 6 teams of 2 would allow everyone to create 2 mixes per year. This schedule offers ample time for digestion of the mixtapes, which I find is necessary. By my way of thinking, being bombarded with 5 or more mixtapes is rarely good. HOWEVER, I also realize that the concept of mixtape clubs is a sort of indirect narcissism. It is a selfish act, creating a mixtape for someone else--it gives as much if not more pleasure to the creator than to the recipient. It's a blatant "look at me!" mechanism, and I think the more often we produce mixtapes, the more involved people will remain. I was in a mixtape club before this one (a club whose name I can't mention) and I think part of the reason that it fizzled out was because of how spread-out the schedule was. There were 2 people a month who created mixes, and if they failed to do so, many people didn't feel rewarded enough to contribute the following month. So, I propose that we do the following: arrange the schedule so that we would each be creating a mixtape every 3 months or so. Either 4 teams of 3, or 3 teams of 4. Please chime in on this.

3) Content

We can't limit any content. Everything is fair game. Everything. I hasten to insert the caveat that, perhaps if something on our mixtape could be seen as strongly offensive, we might want to offer a disclaimer before guild members listen. I don't know a lot of you, and I can't gauge your sensitivities. I really have no sensitivities, aside from cats in renaissance clothing, so I don't mind what goes on, but some people might. Even if it is Frou Frou's "Let's Go" (sorry Troy). It all has to be fair game, that is the guiding ethos of the guild.

4) Aesthetics

I mentioned that I was a member of a mixtape club prior to this one. I think another reason that it went under was that there was a subtle game of one-upsmanship with regards to the decoration of the mixtapes. No kidding. People kept trying to make more hip and exciting designs to accommodate their music. Some of it was really good, because it bolstered the theme of the mixtape. But I don't think we should impose any rule stating that we have to decorate our mixtapes. We can mail them in a clear jewel case with no identification whatsoever, if we feel like it. If we want to hand-draw the Harlem Globetrotters on the disc and encase the case in Astroturf, that is fine too. The guild knoweth no limits.

My goal is that, by Sunday, membership will at least be finalized enough to where we can get the first 2 or 3 months schedule hammered out, and I can randomize a schedule for the guild. Please post your thoughts below, and once again, if you have yet to do so, send a reliable physical mailing address to trainsmoke@gmail.com. I will collect them all and redistribute them to everyone. Also, a few of you have suggested friends, to whom I have extended invites. None of them have enrolled yet, so please encourage them to do so. If they need me to resend the invite, I will, but weez gots to be swift on this. Lets get moving.

Ready.......break