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KEXP
The list of podcast episodes as yet not listened to has swollen to 70 thanks in due to spending most of last week in Windows as well as having lost my iPod earphones on the plane. (WestJet didn't have them in the lost & found, which surprised me a little, their having raised my hopes by being otherwise generally awesome.) Not to mention I didn't write an update last month. No earphones meant no listening to podcasts while in transit, which is no excuse, since I still have ironing and bill-paying.
I added no podcasts since last time, and even unsubscribed from one, ChinesePod. It was time to admit that despite intentions to do so, I was never going to get around to listening to them. Too much going on in my life to pretend to even have the time to continue learning Mandarin.
It pains me to say this, not having anywhere else to listen to great Canadian music, and knowing people who work in production for the show, but it must be said: I skip the talking bits of the still excellent CBC Radio 3. At least they put those in chapters within podcasts to make it possible: KEXP, can you please do the same? The latter has no talking for their awesome song-of-the-day podcast, so I've moved a few to my regular iTunes Library. "Convert Selection to MP3", despite the podcast already being in MP3 format, is your friend.
More than a day's worth of CITR's The Jazz Show, an afternoon's worth of KEXP's Sonarchy Radio, 6 hours (!) of The Crazy Canucks and a half hour of Planetizen Podcast wait for me to work through. But to Dave, who knows my usual response to his notification of a new podcast is to tell him how behind on podcasts, as with everything, I am completely up-to-date on The Canucks Outsider.
It would solve a problem for me if there was a port for the Mac.
Seattle's the Stranger starts with the electronica shelf and gives up.
I'm playing around with Should Do This today, another offering from the Robot Co-op, makers of 43 Things, 43 Places, and 43 People (but not 43 Thongs). Common Craft is using this as their suggestion box, and I've added suggestion boxes for TransLink and KEXP. (I represent neither.) A few of them were originally blog posts, that is, my having gone through my blog searching for the word 'should' and adding it to Should Do This. People and organizations often do the right thing because it also solves a problem for them or they benefit from it directly, though, so it might be more useful for TransLink if I told them why they should hire a social media/community manager to blog and respond to others' blogs and include their trip planning data in Google Transit. You can find my 'shoulds' using the usual handle, which you can subscribe to via RSS.
After buying my second iPod, a svelte nano, I subscribed to some podcasts, unsubscribed from others, which I listen to while commuting from place to place. (And while ironing.) Here are the podcasts I'm listening to these days:
- Dave Thorvald's Canucks Outsider podcast [podcast feed]. Recaps of recent games and analysis of the local hockey squadron.
- ChinesePod Intermediate [podcast feed]
- My Daily Phrase German: I'm finally trying to learn, after working with at least 3 German-speakers. The only phrase I remember, though, is Schluß fur heute, which means "that's all for today". That's the only phrase that's consistently repeated throughout the episodes. Found this one through the iTunes podcast directory, which you can subscribe to directly.
- KEXP's Music That Matters and Sonarchy Radio [podcast feed] podcasts. The SXSW MTM episode, which introduced new bands that played at the music festival, was a particularly good one. I find Radio Sonarchy challenging, but after listening to field recordings of electroaccoustic soundscapes and sound sculptures, I feel better attuned to the aural beauty and ugliness that surrounds us on a daily basis.
- Serious DJs, if only it worked properly in iTunes. I subscribe to it normally in ye olde aggregator.
- vanmega.com's faux-podcast [podcast feed]
- Deftone Fake DJ [podcast feed]
- The MetaFilter Best of the Web Podcast [podcast feed]. I don't even participate in MeFi, Ask MetaFilter or MetaTalk anymore, but this is a good weekly recap of the stuff on the web that I would normally be interested in.
- Fresh Lime Soda [podcast feed], by Suw Charman and Stephanie Booth. I know both through the #joiito channel, and like the MetaFilter podcast, they recap another part of the Web I'm interested, specifically social software.
These days I'm wearing headphones more often, trying to listen to Fake DJ sets, weekly recaps of the Internet, and language learning, so I apologize if I'm not paying attention to you. If people don't support this podcasting thing, it might not make it.
vanmega: “there was a time during the winter of 2003/2004 where I logged a lot of hours with WOXY. Back in my night owl phase I used hangout alone in my basement while working on my laptop, listening to WOXY. Yeah, It sounds a bit bleak but it was, in fact, joyful as hell for me. It was exciting, I remember being exposed to what felt like an endless stream of new bands and new sounds (you have to remember this was before "indie rock" as common the ipods which everyone now listens to the stuff on). Time has since passed, and a lot of these bands are now staples on The OC. But that's ok.”
I logged similar hours listening to WOXY after an article about the station in SPIN Magazine. After a hiatus from listening to online radio, I heard about KEXP through Joey deVilla, and have been listening ever since. I'm surprised that VanMega's editor hasn't mentioned KEXP recently, because it's the logical place for now-former WOXY listeners to go. A note for those who are used to WOXY's continuous indie format, though: KEXP's daytime schedule is heavy on the type of WOXY favourites, but in the evenings KEXP broadcasts specialty shows, my favourite evenings being Wednesdays and Thursdays, with DJ Riz. (I'm tempted to resurrect my "DJ Riz Drinking Game" list, since he has a lot of catch-phrases, like "Riz here" and "in the background soon to be in the foreground".) Right now, I'm listening "Swinging Doors", that features country music. Good, tear-in-your-beer country, not the stuff you hear on commercial radio.
So worry not, fellow-former listeners of Cincinnati's breath of fresh air, since KEXP is not only "member-supported"—I'm a card-carrying member, two years running, though really the station gets most of its funding through a large grant from the Experience Music Project—but plays great music with no commercials, save a few 'supported-by' announcements here and there.
The website, with a weblog (which updates too frequently for me to keep up with, so I just look at the pictures of in-studio performances), podcasts featuring local i.e. Seattle bands and more 'out-there' music, and live playlists. The one thing it doesn't have, at least not yet, is the ability to have a song that plays on KEXP, when I'm listening, appear on my Last.fm playlist. That would be pretty cool, though I'd probably want a way to let people looking at my playlist to know where I heard the song.
As seen on my ironing board. And I just got the t-shirt that morning!
In the last two days I renewed my membership to KEXP (I went with the t-shirt instead of the iPod condom) and sent a small donation to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. (In January they ran the gamut of tests on me, including a urine test, my first, to see why I wasn't able to eat for 3 days during my first trip there.) Today my registration for TextMate finally came through PayPal's ridiculous payment gauntlet, though I'm to blame thinking that I could pay through there with my credit card. I tried renewing my subscription to The Atlantic Monthly using the card they sent me, but I seem to have misplaced "the envelope provided". Today I set a date for a new patient exam at the local dentist. I'm very afraid of it.
I'm trying this new thing where some posts go to the front page and some don't, instead of everything. This being one of hopefully a few more changes towards (some) quality control for this weblog.
My outbox consists currently of the floor next to my desk, on which sits a real physical inbox. There's something deeply satisfying with having an inbox with paper bills to pay then discard (shred!) and some to pay by cheque and send by letter mail. You put the envelope in the red box on the corner of the street, magic happens, bills get paid.
