I’m one of those music geeks that Nick Hornby was writing about in High Fidelity; the type that finds a song for everything, makes top five lists for fun and, if I got a date, I’d make her a mixtape. I’d also make them for myself as a way to collect what I’m really digging on at a particular moment in time. They serve as a sort of audio time capsule. Perhaps, if I laid out every mixtape I’d ever made, I might would find a road map through both my emotional history and the winding course of my musical tastes. It would certainly add up to an extraordinary length of magnetic tape capped by a few dozen compact discs…

There’s been a few sites online that allow you to compile a playlist and stream it for listeners and I’ve finally gotten on board with one for the first time: muxtape.com. Basically (and it is basic; that’s one of the things I like,) you upload 12 songs, sort as you wish and, viola! You have a mix muxtape!

You can also listen to other people’s muxtapes by picking one straight off the homepage or, perhaps, someone will link you to one that they’ve created. You can hear mine by clicking: http://rowjimmy.muxtape.com (or click the tape at the top of this post.) Also, you can keep up with your muxtape news by heading to their blog, here.

Enjoy.

I’m gonna spend a few minutes telling you about an amazing album and band that came to my attention late last year and has been blowing my mind since day one. The band is Akron/Family. The album is their 2007 release, Love Is Simple.

Akron/Family – Love Is Simple

I was going to do a song-by-song breakdown of this record but it seems to defeat what they’ve concocted to split it out into its component parts. The album alternate between heady percussive chants (akin to something I might have heard in the lot on Grateful Dead tour) to soaring, steel guitars and plaintive choruses that evoke George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. If that doesn’t grab you, hold on for a few minutes because the next bit may well sound completely different.

The influences aren’t buried on this record, in fact, they bleed through. However, as the first line of the album points out (“Every precious human being is a precious parent to you,”) we are all indebted to our past and predecessors; best to embrace them. Spatterings of early Zappa intermingle with Satanic Majesty-era Stones and Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd with bits of Yes thrown in on top. All of this churns together in a rapturous celebration of Life, Love, and Humanity that may be akin to an hour-long acid trip.*

The first time I listened to this album on headphones, it notably disoriented me at several points and, at others, caught hold of my emotions and drove me to further distraction. I had visions of a shamanic, hippie celebration; held in an ancient forest clearing; with an electric rock band, copious hand percussion, lots of hair, and mushrooms. This is probably not an album for a late-night country drive. I feel that it is more suited to headphones or small-group listening experiments. It is also a teaser for a band whose live show I must see as soon as possible. One wonders what of this euphoric studio work will carry over to the stage… According to this review, it does:

To look at them, you’d see a bunch of pretty regular looking guys but put instruments in their hands, crank the PA (they do like it LOUD!) and you’ll see them sweat off some of the natural inhibitions that keep human beings from evolving. Watching them leap and cavort in SF, one felt part of some beautiful cataclysm that precedes growth.

-Dennis Cook (Jambase.com)

Sounds like a compelling gig to me. So these guys are on the rise, blowing minds left, right, up, and down. Check out this record under ideal conditions and thank me later.

I’ll leave you today with a feature on the band from Current.tv followed by a couple links:

Akron/Family at Wikipedia
Pitchforkmedia.com Review

*Your mileage and acid trips may vary. Use wisely.