Category: Music

Features The System, Frozen Ghost, Bourgeois Tagg, Rock & Hyde, Julian Cope, The Other Ones, and more.

Hang a sign up on the door, indeed.

This was the third live show I had done, and the first one to be time-specific. The original plan was that I’d start in 1987, and see where it went from there. But after a while, I committed to the idea, which would explain why the end gets a little weird.

I also had to get creative. A few of these songs were released in album form in 1986, but not released as singles in the US until 1987 (ahem, Level 42). I also used a mix of a song that wasn’t released until 1988. Following on the heels of the previous song, it would have been negligent to do otherwise.

Thank you, as always, for listening. Next up: 1979-1982. Think First Wave, but adjacent to First Wave, mostly.

This is the first of two mixes (so far) that were made for this year’s (postponed) get-together at the Cabin in the Woods. I made this specifically for Saturday morning, as we recover from the night before and plan the next day’s adventure/day drinking. I was sitting on a ton of downbeat songs that I knew Karen would like, but worried that they might kill the vibe, so I thought, “Morning, when this IS the vibe.” Towards the end, I started to ramp things up a little so the next mix wouldn’t be so jarring. Or at least that was the plan.

Artists include Le Flex, Dubstar, Howard Jones, Ellie Goulding, Jagwar Ma, Hatchie, Metric, Bryan Ferry, Duran Duran, Massive Attack, Arcade Fire, Icehouse, Heaven 17, China Crisis, Immaculate Fools, The Bluebells, ABC, Lightning Seeds, Aztec Camera, Franz Ferdinand, Trashcan Sinatras, The Feeling, Prefab Sprout, Romeo Void, Propaganda, Everything but the Girl, White Lies, Tom Bailey, Spandau Ballet, a-ha, Florence + the Machine, and Sheppard.

Thank you as always, for listening. Next up: Vol IV: More Beats.

I made this in early 2019. Karen had invited our crew to stay at a cabin she rented, and I wanted to make the music more personal. The previous year, I played a bunch of old Dizzy Heights shows with my talkie bits cut out, and that was fine because most of them covered the time period we shared together, but I wanted there to be something hand tailored to this group of people, particularly Karen, because she pays for this cabin every year, never asks us for a cent, and refuses to take money when we offer. This seemed like a small price to pay in return.

The first Karen mix was a beat mix. This one is a rock mix. I took two other mixes I had made for her (one classic rock, one alt rock) and threw them together, along with some newer stuff that either fit the vibe or appeased my kids for five seconds. There are dozens of songs from those two mixes that will appear on Volume 5. Wait, did you say Volume 5? Yes, I did. I’ve already made two others before compiling the unused tracks from those two mixes.

Artists include Icehouse, Donnie Iris, The Kinks, The Kings, The Tubes, Kim Mitchell, Honeymoon Suite, David + David, Bourgeois Tagg, Crowded House, The Call, Stabilizers, Art in America, Marillion, Rush, Pete Townshend, Robert Palmer, The War on Drugs, Daft Punk, The System, Simple Minds (twice), The Art of Noise, Electronic, Naked Eyes, Gary Myrick, Cheap Trick, ELO, Tears for Fears, Panic! At the Disco, Queen, Muse, The Producers, INXS, Pete Yorn, The Airborne Toxic Event, Ultravox, Gary Numan, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, The Ting Tings, Alphabeat, The Feeling, Attic Lights, The Divine Comedy, The Stranglers, The Damned, The Republic Tigers, a-ha, New Order, Duran Duran, Sinead O’Connor, Julian Cope, The Stone Roses, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Kirsty MacColl, Twenty One Pilots, and Talk Talk, because Mark Hollis had just passed away when I made this, sigh.

Thank you, as always, for listening. Next Up: Volume III, The Saturday Morning Chill Mix.

I apologize up front for all of the extra noise during my talkie bits (hopefully the music beds drowned them out). Between the daughter shooting up the stairs (only to stop dead when she saw me recording) to the cat trying to jump on the chair next to me (and missing), to my phone getting a text message, it was a banner week for live mics in the Medsker house. On any other week, I would have re-recorded all of them, but then again, the sound of the cat scrambling to climb up the chair is pretty funny to me now, so it stays.

It did not surprise me one bit that I was only able to come up with about half as many songs about boys as I was able to come up with songs about girls. We’re just not as fun, or interesting, to write about as women are, and the numbers reflect that. There will certainly be another show about girls, but this will mostly likely stand as the only song about boys, at least by name, anyway. Face it, we’re gross.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

I could put it off no longer.

I’ve been sitting on this as a show idea since I first started doing themed shows. I did a Name That Tune with this theme 10 years or so ago (excuse me while I reach for my cane), and because of that I put it off…until I had over 400 songs from which to choose for a show. So here we are.

How to divvy up 400 songs, though? I thought about doing it by decade, but ultimately chose to do it by genre because it gives me the freedom to jump from decade to decade. Also, had I broken things up by decade, the distribution would be a big bell curve peaking around 1985, and we all know it.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

I have a sheet of paper that contains all of my show ideas. There are about 20 of them. This, oddly, wasn’t one of them. This just popped into my head one morning two weeks ago. And here we are. ‘World’ songs, ‘Planet’ songs, ‘Globe’ songs, they’re all here, along with one ‘Earth’ song and a song that is none of these things, but totally belongs. 

Thank you, as always, for listening.

The idea for this show came around the same time as the Scotland show. I know that the timing of its release looks gauche, like I’m trying to capitalize on the horrific wildfires that Australia is enduring. I’m not; I’ve had a thing for Australia since I first read “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.” Then MTV happened, and I wanted to move there. Still do, sometimes.

The plan was to chill over the holidays, and not make any shows for a good six weeks. Instead, I made four.