Listeners of the podcast know that we’ve been giving a lot of love to Revaz these days. The last G5 podcast was basically an ode to our tall lanky friend who, like so many others, recently made the move back from Brooklyn to the Bay. Due to time constraints and the effects of beer, I was the only one who didn’t get to tell the story of how Revaz and I met.
His version has it that he thought I was Robert Redford – who he’s always had a crush on – and so he came up and started flirting with me. In my version we bonded over Digable Planets. I’ve always been super anal about my music library. I only have albums – no single tracks. And every album is complete with track number, album art, the year it was released, genre, etc. This was back in 2002, however, (Revaz messed up his dates) before bittorrents were big so I had to painstakingly search through eMule and find every single track for every album I wanted. I probably spent half of that Latin American literature class searching for the last two tracks on Digable Planet’s 1994 Blowout Comb.
I liked Digable Planets and Revaz liked Digable Planets. And that was enough.
OK, so maybe that’s simplifying things a bit. But it’s absolutely true that nearly all of my closest friends and I share a love/obsession for music. We might not write a single word to each other, but we’re constantly passing mp3’s and bittorrents back and forth. It’s a form of communication. The first ten notes of Coltrane’s Quartet: Acknowledgement (Part I) can express more than hours of babble.
I think music was also part of what pushed Georgia and I off the ledge of blog buddies to become close friends. Through Georgia I’ve discovered Monica Salmaso, Christian McBride, and many others. But it was our mutual affection for Everything But the Girl that first sealed the deal.
In Miami we had one of our bi-annual external hard drive music exchanges. The goodies are still in folder waiting to be imported into iTunes (listening to new music isn’t to be rushed).
For some reason I never would have guessed that Georgia was a Digable Planets fan. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that she chose ten tracks from Digable Planets to try out Mixwit – a mix tape application for the inkernet. I’ll leave it for y’all here below. And for all you lovers of Indie Rock, don’t miss Revaz’s latest podcast with his buddy Timmy Lee.
May I continue to surprise those near and dear to me till the end of time.
Yeah, I learned that the hard way when I plugged in my external hard drive to your laptop and let you copy all of my album-less, metadata-less mp3s to your iTunes where they totally messed up your play order or whatever it is. I swear, I’d never seen you angry before.
But that’s how I roll, y’know? I treat my mp3 collection like a radio station – I just put that bitch on shuffle and go along for the ride. Everything I listen to is pure gold anyways, as you already know.
The only time I’ll make a playlist is when I invite a pretty young thing over. Then I’ll break out the Pringles and Dr. Pepper, and throw some Loverboy, Corey Hart, and Bananarama into “templist.m3u”.
I don’t think I need to tell you what happens next.
Ha, I picture you driving in your Trans Am with Bananarama on repeat in the tape deck and I just can’t stop laughing.
I feel closer to people when we share music. I think that’s why I like mixtapes and your podcasts.