Zen Running Order - Mixtape Community

John_K makes a splash this week, as his first two submissions to ZeRO earn him Mix of the Week honors and an honorable mention.  Both of these mixes are genre overviews, with Bubblegum Pop taking Mix of the Week, and Madness & Gaiety, a collection of ska and 2 tone tracks, earning an honorable mention.  Welcome to ZeRO, John, and congratulations!  Feel free to share more of your musical interests with us.  You can check out John_K's heavy rotation on LastFM on his mix LastFM 20 from 20.

Honorable mentions this week also go to Jenergy and Mr. Mirage.  Jenergy's Cute in a Stupid-Ass Way is a mixed-genre mix for a friend and Mr. Mirage gives us plenty to think about with his Rorschach test of a mix, RIGHT TURN TO HELL.

It is always the right time for hearts and flowers.   And this week our hearts go out to DJ Karen Adams who wins Mix of The Week with Belated Twangy Valentines.   It is better than a bouquet of posies and has that lovable country twang.  And  you are invited to join DJ Karen for her 10th anniversary celebration of online mixing.

An Honorable Mention goes to johnny_luddite for his tribute to some outstanding practitioners of guitar, Pick Up Thy Guitar And Play.   And an Honorable Mention goes to duuuuuude for his devotional mix God is Good, which makes it all worthwhile.

Congratulations to the honorees, and many thanks to all who make this a wonderful musical community.

Mr. Mirage takes MOTW this week with his fast and loud Vocals, Chainsaw, Machine Gun and Saxophone.  Congrats to one of our most prolific mixers with a well-deserved MOTW.

And for honorable mention, DJ Karen hits a double with her mixes focusing on the production work of Willie Mitchell and the vocal genius of Al Green.  Congratulations to Karen for taking home two silvers!

There was also a bumper load of fine mixes that just missed the cut, including those by Jenergy, Mutual Appreciation Society, Los Babymakers, njr and JohnnyDark.  So pat yourselves on the back for another noteworthy week at the old ZeRO homestead.

Last month marked the first anniversary of ZeRO.  Like many of you, in the fall of 2008 I was mourning the decline of the mixtape community that had grown on Art of the Mix and I wanted to do something about it.  I had some programming skills and I knew enough about websites that I figured I could set up something to keep the community in direct contact with one another.  I asked around to some of the AotM regulars and enough people sounded interested in the ideas I had for a new site that I thought it would be worth the effort.  I put myself through a crash course in PHP (programming language), MySQL (database) and Joomla (content management system).  PHP was fairly straightforward for me, but I knew next to nothing about MySQL and absolutely nothing about Joomla.  But, yeah, it was fun learning how to use them (just lettin' my computer nerd flag fly, folks!)  Anyway, I was hoping people would like the site, but I thought there was a pretty good chance that it would die on the vine.  But here we are a year later and it's very gratifying to see so many people regularly using the site.  So I figured it was time to learn another another skill (CSS) to make the look-and-feel of the site more consistent, and to go back and clean up some of the bugs.  The alternating color bars on the track lists are the result of learning some CSS.

One new feature is "Today's Random Mix" (on the left panel just below the "Recent Comments").  Each day the program randomly selects a mix that's at least two weeks old (so as not to influence any voting for Mix of the Week) for you to check out or revisit.  Speaking of which, Mix of the Week and honorable mention status is now displayed on the "Recent Mixes" page.  Just look for the icon next to the mix title as you go down the list.

I've got a list of fixes and coding changes to make that will take me some time, but I welcome any suggestions for changes or enhancements.  You can post your suggestions here or in the forum, or you can send me an email by clicking on the "Contact" link on the left panel.  Thanks to everyone for making this community so much fun to be a part of.

Many ZeRO members are sharing in this week's Mix of the Week.  The Avocado Rabbit tribute The Richest Mixer in Town, which includes contributions from 40+ citizens of Bedford Falls ZeRO members, takes MotW honors.  Here's hoping that this mix leads to a speedy recovery for Dean.

Doowad, who organized of The Richest Mixer in Town, also receives an honorable mention for his solo mix Comin' On Strong, which was his contribution to the January Mixathon!!!  An honorable mention also goes to Texas Hobart, who has really been on a roll recently.  Ever the prolific mixer, Tex's recent submissions have been particularly moving.

A number of other mixes received high thumbs up counts.  Unofficial honorable mentions also go to sammyg123, doowadette, and kmbone.

The January Mixathon proved to be a real inspiration for a number of ZeRO members.  I hope the next mixathon stimulates such great work, as well.

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).