The Color of Rhythm

The other day I saw an "R.I.P. Mixtape" t-shirt and though I knew it to be true, it was still a little sad. Didn't everyone make mix tapes as a kid? I definitely did... I thrust mix tapes on so many of my friends, hoping they'd think my songs were the jam. The concept of 'fidelity' back then was pretty pathetic -you had to preserve the sound as best you could, until you were desperate enough to re-use a tape and deal with the inevitable bleed-through of the ghost tracks from the previous mix. You had to press the record & pause buttons just right to avoid the "popping" sound between songs... and then when it was all ready to go, the damn radio DJ always yammered away over the first few notes of the song you were feverishly waiting to record, trying to make it all fit just right onto the 45-minutes...

After turning away from radio's meager offerings, I fell into jazz since my dad had jazz records. Some of the first songs I heard were Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" and Miles Davis' "So What?" I was drawn to what I heard on "So What," but to my childish attention span, the 9-minute track seemed to last an eternity! (Nine minutes of Miles goes by a lot faster now.) I meandered my way through vocal jazz, cool, West Coast and soul jazz, finding favorites along the way: Blossom Dearie, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone, as well as Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Wes Montgomery, Bobby Hutcherson, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus and of course Miles & Coltrane, amongst others. Luckily Austin is home to talented jazz musicians such as Blaze and Torch - hearing them play live moves me time & time again.

As for modern giants, there are so many musicians & DJs I admire... Quantic (Will Holland) being among them. (Anyone responsible for bringing Spanky Wilson out of semi-retirement deserves high praise!) Anything he puts out is worth buying - he is constantly breaking new ground in numerous genres. DJ Day (Damien Beebe) is amazing - the quintessential blend of fresh beats blended with incredibly warm samples, making for a totally modern yet retro feel. It's hard not to rave on about him. Gilles Peterson, DJ Spinna, J Rocc, Mr. Scruff, DJ Nuts, Paul Nice, Steinski... the list goes on & on. Fortunately Austin is home to some crazy talented DJs too — DJ Mel, DJ Manny and DJ Chicken George to name a few.

Not much has changed since the mix tape days, other than the media format... I'm still giving mixes to my friends in the hopes they'll find some new music they dig. I love doing what I do, but don't do it as often as I'd like to be able to. If you like what you hear, please let me know. I'll try to get more mixes up quickly to keep things moving.