MOG

I am very late posting thanks to my Secret Santa, matt cleveland. I have a reason, I hope justifiable.

Throughout the year, I noticed that Matt was promoting a program. I thought that he, like many other Moggers, was promoting his own radio show or podcast. I am always short on time and I usually don’t follow those links from anyone’s posts. Well, this was certainly my loss. It turns out that The Program which Matt refers to is really a “personal listening plan.” He and his buddy, Mogger bendblock, select an album a week and listen to it “like you used to listen to music in high school.”

Matt wrote: “Each week we agree to listen to one album (we agree on the same one) as though we had spent our hard-earned money on it, that is, listen to it as much as possible in a given week (at least 3-5 spins). The only other restriction is that you can't listen to anything else "new", that is, an album you haven't heard yet, while you're listening to the album of the week.”

Matt sent me a 2-CD mix in his Secret Santa package, one of Christmas tunes by rock artists, and the other a compilation of 2007 favourites from The Program . Hence my reason for delaying this post – I have taken the past few weeks to really listen to these songs!

The Christmas songs were very timely. I had put up my Christmas tree while listening to chamber pop because I just couldn’t bear to pull out the old-timers’ Christmas classics one more time. Then what should appear but a mix with seasonal songs by The Flaming Lips, Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes, Aimee Mann and more!

The 2007 mix had 18 tracks, only two of which I’d heard, and none of which I owned. The mix transitions really well among genres, mainly indie pop, alt-folk, and alt-country. I was thrilled to hear, at my leisure, so many hand-selected songs that were completely new to me. (And I also noted that there were some hard-to-find and non-album tracks.) Here’s the playlist:

Ragoo – Kings of Leon You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb – Spoon Seahorse – Devendra Banhart Carried Home – Iron and Wine Four Winds – Bright Eyes Blue Hotel – Ryan Adams Simple Twist of Fate – Jeff Tweedy To the Dogs or Whoever – Josh Ritter The Way I Am – Bonnie “Prince” Billy Kookaburra – John Vanderslice Challengers – The New Pornographers Plus Ones – Okkervil River Goin’ to Acapulco – Jim James & Calexico Don’t Fade on Me – Magnolia Electric Co. In Our Nature – Jose Gonzalez Fake Empire – The National North American Scum – LCD Soundsystem The Thanks I Get - Wilco

I had to conclude that this Secret Santa match was very inspired. You see, I too am always feeling overwhelmed by the amount of new music to keep up with. I bought 13 and “previewed” 13 releases from 2007 throughout the year…an average of one every two weeks. And I committed myself to “really” listening to them and getting to know them, so they were all listened to with full attention at least 3 times. So I was on The Program and I didn’t even know it! So cool to find a kindred spirit out there!