National Institute for Musical Healing

I know most people still haven't finished digesting the summer series, but, I had to make another mix. This was made while out of town at a conference. Without going too deeply into the process and circumstances of making the mix, let me just say, the music is all from 2007, except one song from 2006. I'm not sure I'll make a CD out of it, and I might make a zipped folder of individual mp3 files, but for now, enjoy the wma by clicking on the title.

National Institute for Musical Healing

1-Rilo Kiley-The Moneymaker
2-Spoon-Don't You Evah
3-The Shins-Australia (Peter Bjorn & John Remix)
4-Peter Bjorn & John-Young Folks (beyond the wizard's sleeve re-animation)
5-Tegan & Sara-Back in Your Head
6-Au Revoir Simone-A Violent Yet Flammable World
7-Northern State-Away Away
8-Stars-Ageless Beauty (The Most Serene Republic Mix)
9-The Most Serene Republic-Sherry and Her Butterfly Net
10-The National-Black Slate
11-Grand National-By the Time I Get Home There Won't Be Much of a Place for Me
12-Low Line Caller-Over The Counter Kids
13-Iron & Wine-Boy With A Coin
14-Anja Garbarek-I Won't Hurt You
15-Mono in VCF-Escape City Scrapers
16-Bat For Lashes-What's A Girl To Do?
17-My Latest Novel-Wrongfully, I rested
18-Throw Me The Statue-Conquering Kids

Got The Splint Removed!

Although my hand is still bloated and swollen, and my second metacarpal is still fractured, the doc removed the splint. It looks pretty gross and I plan to add a picture of it later.

I have two splint pics below that were taken by friends with high tech pda cameraphones:

This picture was taken with a blackberry of some kind. It was August 2, 2007 and I was in Spingfield Park in Queens to see Roy Ayers. When I had the cast on, I was supposed to keep my arm elevated. So I went to a lot of concerts, aoided auctions (for the most part) and kept a ready supply of questions. "You in the back! You've had your hand up for the whole presentation. Do you have a question?"

"Yes, I do. I'd like to ask the chairman..."

This picture was taken with an iPhone on August 5, 2007. I was bopping around the city with some friends who used to live in New York. I had just recieved a phone call from my nephew, who was experiencing culture shock upon his return to Memphis. He asked where I was. I said, "Houston Street."

"So, you're like, in SoHo?"

"Actually, I'm in the middle of Houston Street. Neither SoHo or NoHo. I guess I'm just in Ho."

A meaningless milestone: this is the first picture ever taken of me with an iPhone.

In New York

...with my bloated freakish Kevin Mawae disco club hand.

Fractured Second Metacarpal

I fractured my second metacarpal in a jacuzzi mishap. Won't be typing much for three weeks.

Summer Series Artwork

Here's some design concepts for the CD label designs for my summer mix series.

I was having difficulty with the CD design. I tried using images from the web and a graphics program to create the labels. But the graphics, and the software were too difficult for me. I was unable to achieve the results I wanted.

So I recalled the way that James T. Kirk dealt with the Kobayashi Maru scenario when he was in Starfleet. Since the test was too hard, he changed the test. So instead of getting bogged down in a computer graphics project where I was doomed to fail, I changed the nature of the project. I decided that it would be a photo/craft project instead.

And so, with the help of my nephews Yonadav and Lavi and my niece Racheli, we were able to create the following pictures with fruit and beads.

• cover art slideshow
• summer series 07 page - with downloads!

Summer Series 2007: Almost Ready for Release

The Summer Series 2007 is almost done. You can now download all the mixes. Playlists, artwork and a dedicated page on mennu.com are coming soon.







You can download the music here:

• Hammock (zip) (wma)


• Sexy Poolside Groove (zip) (wma)


• Tulsa (zip) (wma)


• Advanced Listening (zip) (wma)

I've even made a tee shirt to celebrate. It's got the summer seal on it! More merch coming soon.

Click here to check out the mennu method store.

Summer 2007 Mix Series

My ambition this summer is to create a four mix series. I am happy to say that I'm halfway done with the music. You can download the first two mixes as .zip files. The other two mixes are still in development, but I'm still working on the order of the songs.

So here's what's good to listen to now:
Sexy Poolside Groove: My intention here is not to make you get up and dance, but rather, it's to make you shuffle in your seat a bit, or press down on the accelerator in the car.
The Hammock: Put this on before getting into a hammock for a summer afternoon nap.



In development:
Tulsa: Tulsa is just the production name. On my notes it's called "rock mix." This mix will need a title. It's got some really good and really interesting music.
Advanced Listening: This mix also needs a name. Last night I got to work on making it an actual mix. It's not a mix for everyone. Many of the songs are over 7 minutes long. Those who "get it" will love it.

On the cutting room floor:
B-Sides and Outtakes: There are a bunch of songs that didn't make it onto one of the four mixes, but they were part of the list at one time. This includes horrors like Rick Astley and Lisa Stansfield, and The Streets. This would be like my last B-Sides which was for the Global Paradigm Shift.
Revisions to the Hammock: I was going to make a number of changes, but then I figured, I shouldn't overthing things. The songs in this list could be the seed of another mix.

What I need to do now:
Artwork for the discs: I have a vision for how the discs should look. I need round fruit cut in half, and mounted on a white background. Then I need something that looks like a stamp for the summer 07 series.
Raw Materials: Yellow CD envelopes, green CD envelopes, disc labels, little round labels, quart sized ziploc bags and a whole hellovalotta blank discs.

Gratuitous exra ideas:
Make postcards or recipe cards to add into the ziploc bag with the discs.
Write liner notes with the whole "I wanna thank all my peeps cause without them..." and mabye a little "These mixes were inspired by long car drives, jacuzzis, airport bars, sand in my beard, etc..."
Have a really cool webpage for the mixes. Well, I'll probably do that anyways.

When I finish these mixes, I'm look forward to listening to a completely different playlist. Here's what I have lined up:
Dimitri From Paris: Both Playboy Mansion Discs
Mark Farina: Mushroom Jazz Volume 5
The Aluminum Group - Cannot Make You Out
Jerry Garcia - Legion of Mary
The Parson Red Heads
And anything played by any other DJ!

Fewer Chuckles; More House Music

I made a few modifications to the mix with the colloboration of my nephew, Yonadav. Here's the current mix (version 0.89) and tracklist:

• Merlot Warrior - Andy Caldwell vs Patton Oswalt
• Beginning People - Stockholm Cyclo
• Reality Check - Stigmato Inc
• If I Lost You [Michelle's Mix] - Michelle Shaprow
• Point of View - DB Boulevard
• A Stronger Man - Ben Watt/Sananda Maitreya
• Battle - Ben Onono/Tim Deluxe
• Didn't Mean To Turn You On - Colette
• Can’t Get Away From You, - Walk Drink, Mood II Swing
• K&M Feat. Joy - Pink Is The Colour - Hed Kandi
• Beautiful (jask's original mix) - Jask feat. Jocie
• The Realm And V - One Chance - Miguel Migs
• Let The Sunshine - Milk & Sugar
• Let The Sunshine inHair - Hair - Original Soundtrack

Refill the Flagon of Chuckles!

I am no longer ashamed of the mix I'm working on. You may as well download the current version because I'll be making some changes to it.

The following is the current playlist for Version 0.82. Just a few words about the format of the list. The name of the track is first, followed by the artist, the number of beats per minute (BPM) the time of the track and the album. Pay attention to the BPM. It's had too much influence on the song order of this mix, and I may play around with some of the track order. One of the changes I know I plan to make is to put "A Stronger Man" and "Battle" together. Then again, their beats will match well, and so do their themes. Unfortunately, the Afrobeat track will be cut in the next version. I like the track, but I have to come to terms with the fact that this is turning into a vocal house mix. I also need to figure out an ending to the mix. More notes follow the list.

• Merlot Warrior - Andy Caldwell vs Patton Oswalt - 112.4 - 4:38 - the mennu method remixes
• Beginning People - Stockholm Cyclo - 113.7 - 5:13 - Hed Kandi : Nu Cool - Lounge Grooves & Sassy Beats
• Reality Check - Stigmato Inc - 110 - 3:48 - The Sex the City The Music
• I Don't Feel Like Dancin' - Scissor Sisters - 108 - 4:48 - Ta-Dah
• Point of View - DB Boulevard - 128 - 3:25 - Escape St. Barth's
• Wakafrika - Manu Dibango - 120.1 - 4:48 - Afrobeat
• Didn't Mean To Turn You On - Colette - 123.9 - 4:06 - Destination Lounge: Las Vegas
• Battle - Ben Onono/Tim Deluxe - 125.3 - 7:05 - The Little Ginger Club Kid
• Psycho Killer - The Black Mighty Orchestra - 127 - 5:01 - Seriously Good Music: Cocktail
• A Stronger Man - Ben Watt/Sananda Maitreya - 125 - 6:46 - Buzzin' Fly, Vol. 1 [Bonus Disc] Disc 1
• If I Lost You [Michelle's Mix] - Michelle Shaprow - 124 - 5:02 - This Is What Radio Should Sound Like
• Ooh La La - Goldfrapp - 146.4 - 2:58 - Ooh La La - Single
• Can't Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head - Kylie Minogue - 125.8 - 4:05 - Love At First Sight
• Can’t Get Away From You, - Walk Drink, Mood II Swing - 125.9 - 5:50 - Base Ibiza 2003 CD1
• Where's My Merlot? - Patton Oswalt - 99.9 - 0:02 - Feelin' Kinda Patton
• K&M Feat. Joy - Pink Is The Colour - Hed Kandi - 126 - 4:45 - Summer Mix 2003

More notes about this list:

• The transition between "A Stronger Man" and "If I Lost You" is just awful. Good thing I'm moving the tracks around.
• Lisa Stansfield got cut. The sound quality was, really, way too crappy. And I never did find a jazzed up version of it. I suppose this is good. I've been in a bit of a rut with bad music. It all started when adult swim started running a Family Guy promo with Brian covering Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Then again, the song was initially lodged into my head when I heard it in the background of an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia...I think the one called "Charlie Has Cancer."
• I need some good cover art for the .wma file. I have an idea which involves bikini-clad women and a certain beach house.
• I redid Merlot Warrior. I cut out most of the clips and just left a few at the start and finish. I guess you can call it "The AA Remix." I'm still dissatisfied with the way the clips are laid out, particularly in the end. The beginning is OK.

Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

I have a rather extensive music collection. I haven't even heard all the music on my hard drive, and each day I add more. Last night, I was working on a house mix until very late at night. In the morning, I wanted to burn an archive CD so I could review my mix on the way to work. My car stereo plays mp3 CDs, so I can always fit about 5-10 albums on a regular CD. Sometimes, I will add something from the hard drive that either I haven't heard before or haven't heard in a while. And thus, I filled space on my disc this morning with Baz Luhrmann - Something For Everyone. As I was reviewing last night's mix (the whole reason I burned the disc) I decided that it needs so much work, it's not worth listening to. I instead perused the rest of the disc to see what else was on it. And in that way, I stumbled across:

Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free [To Wear Sunscreen]

I was blown away by it. The words were so relevant to me. When I got into the office I did a little more research into the song. Wikipedia has a rather long entry about the song. Here's what I've learned:

The song started its life as an essay called "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement address she would give if she were asked to give one. The column soon became the subject of an urban legend, in which it was alleged to be an MIT commencement speech given by author Kurt Vonnegut in that same year (in truth, MIT's commencement speaker that year was Kofi Annan). Luhrmann read the speech and then had some real difficulty contacting Vonnegut's agent. After doing some web research, he learned that it was really by Schmish who was a fan of his movies, Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom. By the next day, the hired an actor in Sydney to read it, and the rest is history. There are a whole bunch of parodies of the song, but I think the original is great. Here's just a bit of it:

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

The rest is just as groovy. Click here for the original essay.

I would like to dedicate this post to all my Central Hebrew High students who just graduated. Mazal tov and stay in touch!

Sexy Poolside Groove

I'm working on a house mix: Something for people who walk around the pool as if it's a model's runway. You can donload a preview as one big .wma file, right here.

Nope! I removed the link. It sucks for a number of reasons:

• I need to use my old version of Mixmeister. Every time I need to download it again, it's become more expensive and I need to buy it again. Fie on you, Mixmeister! I don't need your free trial version software! And stop creating some kind of clutter files in my music directories! I was happy with version 3. Version 5 is awesome. But no! I'm not spending $169.95 so your "intelligent" software can beat match for me! Grr!
• Merlot Warrior: this was a great idea, and it was made in an afternoon with live mixing. However, I would like to redo this, with the samples distributed a little more sparsely. It's like when I made my first real dance mix "Smells Like Hot Dogs." It had a sample of Ralph Wiggum saying, you guessed it, "smells like hot dogs." At first I played the sample far too often for it to be good or amusing. It was just annoying so I had to remove most of them. The final version was subtitled "Lower Sodium."
• Lisa Stansfield - Been Around The World: The audio quality on the track sucks. Like, it really really sucks. And I feel like the song can stand to have a makeover. Isn't there a house version of this song? And if there isn't, shouldn't there be? Perhaps I can send an email to Frankie Knuckles; he'd know what to do.
• Manu Dibango - Wakafrika: I will get Afrobeat to fit into a mostly house mix.
• The Benny Benassi stuff: I am not Benny Benassi. I should not try to be. I will remove his stuff from the mix. It's a little too hard. Perhaps I'll add it to my advanced listening mix.

Playlist:

• Schpenster vs Patton Oswalt vs Andy Caldwell - Merlot Warrior
• Stockholm Cyclo - Beginning People
• Stigmato Inc - Reality Check
• Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancin'
• Lisa Stansfield - Been Around The World
• Manu Dibango - Wakafrika
• Colette - Didn't Mean To Turn You On
• Ben Onono/Tim Deluxe - Battle
• The Black Mighty Orchestra - Psycho Killer
• DB Boulevard - Point of View
• Ben Watt/Sananda Maitreya - A Stronger Man
• Deep House Souldiers - This Is Why We Dance
• Michelle Shaprow - If I Lost You [Michelle's Mix]
• Goldfrapp - Ooh La La (Benny Benassi Remix Extended)
• Benny Benassi - Satisfaction

♣

Underpants Haiku

check out this ensemble
hope I have an occaision
to, maybe, drop trou

Fenster vs Patton Oswalt vs Andy Caldwell

A live mix of Schzpensczter and Patton Oswalt and Andy Caldwell.
Click here.

Romance

Ever notice that in English we say:
"Fall in love" and
"Break up."

Post-Vacation Post

What's on my mind today?

My intense sunburn. Idan Raichel Project at Summerstage. Los Amigos Invisibles in Amagansett. Staying outside the fence and listening to Paul Van Dyk in Central Park. Tamigi's new blog. Dungen. The lyrics to Of Montreal - Gronlandic Edit.

And what have I missed?

International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day. Professor Murder. Dingle.

Packing for Vacation

Tomorrow morning I will leave for a 6 day vacation. My longest period off since last summer.

I'm bringing my laundry, hawaiian shirts, bathing suits and one of the 500 gig hard drives I have lying around. So tonight I should be packing. But I'm not bringing a lot of things. I'm packing music for the ride.
I assume I have the staples in the car:

• Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus (for driving on Sunset Highway)
  
• Kruder and Dorfmeister - The K & D Sessions Disc 2 (for driving on Dune Road after rain)

And new-ish additions for the drives:

• Afrobeat
• Blue Note Trip
• Destination Lounge: Las Vegas
• Funk Spectrum III
• Hamdulillah: Fes Festival Of World Sacred Music, Vol. II (or as I like to call it: Allapalooza)
  
• Hed Kandi : Nu Cool - Lounge Grooves & Sassy Beats
• Merl Saunders - Keepers
  
• The Bossa Nova Story
• Tokyo Lounge
• Ultra Lounge Sampler
  
• Untinted- Sources For Madlib's Shades Of Blue
• Vital Organs

And a few of my own mixes:

• boon-o-rama
• science
• spy rock 1
• spy rock 2

And all the while, I'm building a playlist for the car...

...you know what? Just to play it safe, I'm gonna burn The Feat and K & D onto a disc....

Sneak Peek Into The Hammock

Here's a new mix for this summer. I might make some changes, and then again, I might just leave it as is, and get to work on the next one. A wiser man than myself once told me, "anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly."

I have a theme for this one: A CD that you put on right before you climb into the hammock for a nap on a summer afternoon.

Download the zip here and the wma here.

1 - Los Amigos Invisibles - Comodón Johnson
2 - Cut Chemist - The Garden
3 - Brazilian Girls - Lazy Lover
4 - charlie megira - da koochie mama swingers
5 - Ane Brun - Drowning In Those Eyes
6 - Zero 7 - Left Behind
7 - Amit Erez - Heart Away
8 - Jose Gonzalez - Don't Stop The Music (Radio Edit)
9 - Emerson, Lake And Palmer - From The Beginning
10 - Traffic - John Barleycorn
11 - A Little Diffrent - Sweet Song
12 - Nick Drake - Pink Moon
13 - The Kings of Convenience - Leaning Against the Wall
14 - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Déjà Vu
15 - Jenny Lewis With The Watson Twins - Happy
16 - Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
17 - Elcho - Lazy Summer Days
18 - The Flaming Lips/Thievery Corporation - Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)
19 - Saint Etienne - I'm Here To Mix The Nuns
20 - Shpongle - Flute Fruit

Too much java?

My computer is a little slow today, so I'm gonna switch to decaf.

Podcasting on Podcasting

Last night Dude and I recorded a podcast on podcasts.
It was interesting.
I have other witty things that I wanted to write about:

• The outbreak of contact lens cases on my shelf.
• A wrapup of the boon-o-rama. (It was good.)
• The sleep clinic.
• Old army buddies crawling out of the woodwork.
• My life turning into the home version of "The Royal Tennenbaums."

But not today.

Gig Alert: Boon-O-Rama! Thursday, May 3, 2007

Next Thursday, I will be DJing for The Boon and Michelle.
They're having a party at Via Della Pace, which is on 48 East 7th Street, near the corner of 2nd Ave.
It's gonna be a lot of fun. The party is called for 9:00PM, and we will be spinning until 2:00AM (but the party will go on after that). I will be combining forces on this gig with Nick "Kid Lightning" Catania. When freindly DJs battle, the audience wins!

Evite
Schlep
Method
Horse