ITEM: Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney, is doing mix lists on NPR these days. The most recent one is
here, and is highly recommended – especially if it’s raining right where you are sitting now.
Two things of note besides the actual music:
1. Because she’s doing these for NPR, Brownstein has to get clearance for the songs. Which is fine, except that she wanted to include a Grateful Dead song, and the band's record label said she couldn’t use the full song, but they’d consider it if NPR did a whole segment on the Dead for
All Things Considered. And the RIAA still thinks it's college kids using BitTorrent that's killing the music business.
2. Brownstein’s first mix for NPR generated a lot of listener comments expressing "surprise" that it was “so heavy on the rock”. Um ... they DO know that this is the same Carrie Brownstein that used to be in Sleater-Kinney, right?
Anyway, it’s a nice short collection of songs. I’m trying to learn from people like Ms Brownstein and Warren Ellis that mixtapes don’t have to run for 80 minutes, as mine tend to do. Otherwise I’d be doing more of them myself. I do have one in the works, but it’s one of those 80-minute deals. Since I don’t have time to work on it now anyway, I’m going to give it a rethink and see if I can break it down into a series of shorter mixes instead of one big one. Yr own thoughts on this are welcome.
Short sharp shock,
This is dF