Hi everyone,
This week’s mixtape was pulled from my archives and dated 2007.
The songs are eternal enough to not let it bother you 
STR Mixtape : Keep Your Mind Open
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It was a busy busy week, you may have noticed I was away for couple of days.
So I didn’t have the time to prepare a new mixtape, therefore I went to the vault and took a mixtape I made for radio 106fm (the Israeli college radio), and here it is to you. Hope you’ll enjoy.
Singers are like a ram horn to the soul. They are players with a complete control of their voice. It doesn’t mean they have to be in pitch. It means they have to be in a total hold of their instrument, regarding of mathematics. Dylan was a great singer, but academically – he was shit. Still, no one could take away his amazing song deliverance from him. This quality of his allowed him to sing 11 minutes of Desolation Row, and still keep you interested, nine minutes into the song. He has authenticity.
Tom Waits sings Alice like a rusty frog, but he’s such a great actor, that it feels ok jumping of a fairy cross the Hudson. Jacques Brel was a great singer, but one shot of his eyes in Ne Me Quitte Pas, to understand that he doesn’t sing. He cries. With his entire body.
Hi all,
It’s been a busy week, and I didn’t find the time to write in the blog, but still, you do deserve your mixtape – and therefore -
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1. Floyd Tillman – I love you so much it hurts
2. Cul De Sac – The Moon Scolds the Morning Star
3. Faust – Baby Rock
4. Drum Circus – Now It Hurts You
5. Dominique A – Vacuez
6. Robbie Basho – Khalil Gebran
7. Devendra Banhart – A Sight To Behold
8. Jefferson Airplane – You and me and Pooneil
9. Oneida – Treasure Plan
10. Master Of Deceit – Boxes
11. Fifty Foot Hose – If No This Time
12. Mogwai – Dial:Revenge
13. Ran Jurgenson – Today
14. Joe Meek – I hear a new world
15. Gandalf – can you travel in the dark alone?
16. Procol Harum – Too much between us
17. Matching Mole – Smoke Signal
“These days, you don’t call a thief “a thief”, you call him “a designer”
(Jonathan Geffen, Tel Aviv, sometime in the 70’s)
He was right. It’s the small semantic differences that can turn a potential to something completely different: all you have to do is calling it by a different name.
For example, you can call a random pile of sounds “avant-garde”, and similarly, any group or artist that releases an album can call themselves “a project”. It’s a wonderful escape option: you can invent an alter ego, staying the same artist, but not entirely.
Dominique A is a great musician which I love. I came to know him through Eli Rozen, who brought Dominique A’s word to Israel. For Eli, Dominique A is a musical hero, just like John Fahey, Glen Jones, Jack Rose or Wilco are for me. Somehow I managed to contact him and send him my album and Eli’s album. He sent me back an enthusiastic letter in which he praised our albums, wrote that he enjoys them a lot and that he listens to them on the road, in his current tour.
In 2006 I wrote a this article about his album, L’horizon, which is no less than a masterpiece, if not more then that. I’ve published it at the Hebrew music reviews site The Blind Janitor, and thought of giving it new life (and adding audio and video). I haven’t changed what I’ve written then – and this is the article. This is an album that you really should hear no later than today.
