Zen Running Order - Mixtape Community

This week's excellent crop of mixes included the first day's worth of the Proust-based Mixathon, and indeed the winner of Mix of the Week is johnny_luddite's Proust Talked About Talked About...   He answers the questions with a killer set of tracks and some very personal remembrances of things past.  And if you happen to have read Proust, you will recognize the style of the notes.

An Honorable Mention goes to Blue Overtone's Happy Birthday, Django! which celebrates the 100th birthday of jazz great Django Reinhardt, opening with a track by the jazz great himself, plus performances of Django compositions and tracks from his musical follwers.

An Honorable Mention goes to sammyg123 for Greatest Album Openers.  All mixers know how important the opener is, and here is a collection of the best.

An Honorable Mention goes to DJ Karen Adams's a/v/o/c/a/d/o r/a/b/b/i/t, a fitting and tuneful tribute to one of our most active mixers and collaborators by our honorable resident DJ.

Congratulations to the awardees, and thanks to all who make this site a wonderful musical experience.

Appropriately enough, DJ Karen's MLK mix picked up MOTW with her collection of well-known and lesser-known anthems.

Honorable mention went to two long-time mixers, one new to our community and one a standard bearer.  Johnny Luddite's Train of Thought mix was a unique perspective on  the classic train mix and Hemizen also won honorable mention with yet another in his long line of mixed genre mixes,  I Even Knew What I Didn't Know.

Please remember that the mixathon is next weekend. We look forward to your participation with your mix responses to the Proust questionnaire!

This week, Mixxer's The Mixtape Decade is Mix of the Week.  It is a mix about mixes, and a look back at the changes that have occurred.

DJ Karen Adams's P/e/t/r/o/c/k/s receives an honorable mention.  One of our top mixers has created a wonderful tribute to another of our top mixers.   Mr. Mirage's To Conquer Hatred, To Quell Rage receives an honorable mention.  He reviews the awesome gospel group The Staple Singers, from whom, it turns out, he is only 2 degrees of separation away.    Blue Overtone's Festival Favorites receives an honorable mention.   It is a bluegrass festival in itself, with some of the very best of the genre.  And our fearless leader Dead Man, the visionary who created this excellent website, celebrates the first anniversary of the site with some self-described "absurd audio" in the birthday mix ZeRO Is One!

A reminder on MOTW procedures:  Mixes are considered on a Saturday through Friday basis.   You can "thumbs up" as many mixes as you like, and each counts as a vote.  The votes are tabulated Sunday night, and the results are posted Monday.  

Congratulations to all the honorees, and to all who make this mixing community such a wonderful, musical place.

Congratulations go out to Dead Man's fine obituary mix for People Who Died in 2009.   Vic Chestnutt was an unfortunate late addition to the stellar lineup. 

On a similar note, retrojoe put together another fine collection of country tunes for his friend Ralph with Ralph's Belated Requiem, Vol. 2 receiving an honorable mention.  DJ Karen Adams' Single-Song tribute First Cut Is The Deepest also received an honorable mention.  And The Mutual Appreciation Society (expanded out to 25 this time) also won honorable mention with the "in the pot" posting entitled Happy ZeRO New Year's!

Although traffic dropped off between Christmas & New Year's, it seemed to pick up again with 2010 on the calendar.  We hope everyone is preparing their Mixathon offerings for the end of the month (see the newsletter for more details). 

This week's MotW is sammyg123's "The Art of the Mix Reunion," a celebration of the community we've established and the website that brought us together.  Thanks to Sam for taking on the job of organizing this compilation.  Many of the contributors are now active on ZeRO but some of the tracks were contributed by people who have never come around.  Clearly, though, the pull is still there, as the response rate to Sam's query was very high, resulting in 54 tracks spread out over three discs.  This submission is a particularly good example of what keeps us all coming back--there's just a whole lot of great music out there, and sometimes the only way to be made aware of it is by someone in the know.  I'll echo Mr. Mirage's comment, will this become a yearly thing?

In addition, Sam earned an honorable mention with his Christmas mix "That'll Be Christmas."  His appreciation for Christmas music shines through in his first-ever compilation of holiday music (but where's that Mariah Carey track?)  An honorable mention also goes to Salman, who submitted yet another installment in his fantastic The Decade Series, retrospective compilations of a variety of genres in the "oughts."  His three-disc compilation of the best indie rock "I Know You Like Her, Well I Like Her Too" is perhaps the most thoroughgoing among this series, as Salman reveals this is the music he predominantly listens to.  Honorable mention also goes to Dead Man (I'm not in the habit of referring to myself in the third person, so I'll switch to first person).  I updated an old idea with a new mix called "Just Hear Those Sleigh bells Jingling".  Despite the holiday-sounding title, these are tracks with sleigh bells that have nothing to do with Christmas.

Honorable mentions also to Doowad and doowadette for their holiday offering "Merry Christmas from the Doowad Family 2009" and to JohnnyDark for his alternating mix with Robert Song "Rain Today, Rainbow Tomorrow, Fine Forever."

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and I wish you all the best in the new year.

It was a busy week, and for Mix Of The Week we have the proverbial "statistical dead heat."   One MOTW goes to Frenchy for his  Opus (Latin, 2nd decl, nom, masc, sing,  "really big mix") Psychedelicus (Lat, "that will cause thee to trip inside thy house").  It's a 100 song psychedelic wonderland.  And the other MOTW goes to Salman for his TDS - Garage/Psych Rock: All These Faces Mean Nothing To Me.   It is the latest installment in his Decade Series and is full of songs of the '00s (pronounce that as you wish) that you won't want to miss.

An Honorable Mention goes to DJ Karen Adams for ESSENTIALS [1969 Edition].  The year that famously rhymes with "smokin' dope and drinkin' wine" is covered, with love and knowledge.    An Honorable Mention goes to  Jenergy for Don't fuck with me as she passes on some bad-a** music (and attitude) to a young whippersnapper.  And an Honorable Mention goes to buglady for Ain't Goin' Nowhere, which, due to the weather this week, many of us ain't.

Thanks to all for sharing and joining in the musical community experience.

ZeRO was coming down from a few furious weeks of mixes expounding the pleasures and perils of the psychedelic experience so Doowad's hangover mix, The Day After, picked up Mix of the Week.

Dead Man's The Hell's Angels Watched Over Altamont was also an appropriate title to win Honorable Mention this week since he highlighted the metaphorical (and in some ways literal) end to the good times of the 60s while a fantastic foursome (hemizen, -valis, Frenchy & khradioguy), under the guise of The Mutual Appreciation Society kept the good times rolling with The Enhanced Listening Experience, In Two Parts, which also picked up an honorable mention.

And the final honorable mention goes to Petrocks's Lounge Blizzard, a very timely mix as winter cold settles in on many of ZeRO's northern hemisphere crowd.

All in all, a great week around the old ZeRO homestead, it must be the weather...

The amount of activity on ZeRO has been increasing lately and a number of excellent mixes were posted this week.  Mixxer takes Mix of the Week honors with his mix "And You Will Know Us by the Trail of [the Grateful] Dead," a Grateful Dead tribute mix without any actual Grateful Dead tracks.  Congratulations to Mixxer for such a clever approach to the tried and true tribute mix.

Honorable mentions this week go to Petrocks, JohnnyDark and DJ Karen Adams.  Petrocks's "Just a Slave to Sound" is a collection of tracks that came to him and came together organically, JohnnyDark's "Lilac Wine" is a compilation of his old favorites, and DJ Karen Adams provides the third volume in her series "A Funky Satchel of Hits".  In addition to the funky, soulful tracks, she also provides two funky, soulful recipes.  Biscuits and fried chicken!  Keep it coming!

Congratulations to all!

It was a holiday weekend in the US, and there was a fine batch of mixes posted.  The Mutual Appreciation Society's Steelin' Away is Mix of the Week.  This alt-DJ collaboration between Blue Overtone and Doowad pays homage to the signature instrument of country music, the pedal steel guitar, with some fine selections from the genre, and a tip of the hat to the practitioners.

DJ Karen Adams's ESSENTIALS [World's Largest Disco Edition] receives an honorable mention.  She has collected some of the best of the disco era, and recalls a notable event in the annals of records disposal.

Ballroom Pink's It's The Devil's Music receives an honorable mention.  Check out the killer selections from the 1950s.

Congratulations and kudos to the honorees of the week, and to all whose mixes, comments, and good vibes make the ZeRO experience so special.