Radio show recap: Bird is the Worm on Kevin Coultas’s “Mingle”

So, I was on the radio last night.

Let me start by thanking Kevin Coultas and the ARTxFM station for having me on as a guest on his show Mingle.  It was a hell of a lot of fun.  It was also exhausting, in its way.  My respect for radio DJs has risen dramatically from this experience.  Getting a taste of what they do every day was enlightening.

I wasn’t prepared for how exhausting the show would be.  I mean, I barely said very much, but the hyper-awareness of every word I was saying into the mic, easy to handle at first, but it eventually eroded my focus to the point where, in the last half hour of my appearance, a musician’s name would barely have left my lips and I’d already have forgotten who I was talking about or I’d be describing an album and suddenly forget what the damn thing sounded like or, y’know, most words and rules of grammar.

The trick is slowly measuring every word that comes out of your mouth while attempting to maintain a conversational tone… not so simple.  On top of that, I have a habit of dropping F-bombs in even the most casual conversations (sorry, day job people!), so, obviously, I was taking care to avoid that, since it’s not like they sell the FM radio licenses at the corner store right next to the prepaid phone cards.  I wanted to be sure there was a Mingle radio station still there after I left.

Speaking of which, it appears I’ll be making some return appearances on Kevin’s show.  I don’t know if it’ll be a monthly thing or what, but I’m enthusiastic about making a return visit.

I mispronounce some musician names.  There’s one instance where I failed to even take a shot at saying them, which I feel bad about, but then I hope I make up for it by playing an additional song from their album to close the show out.  There are various other errors I made, I think, I dunno, I haven’t listened to the replay yet, but I’m sure they’re out there.

On the very first track played, we didn’t realize that the CD deck was set to repeat, so Rudresh Mahanthappa’s “Bird Calls #2” calls out twice before transitioning into the addictive “Chillin’.”  Whereas most grown-ups use digital files these days, I dragged in a huge stack of CDs.  My thanks to Kevin for being a good sport in dealing with my my various tech liabilities (don’t get me started about the phone).

Here’s an embed of the recording of the show…

Mingle 03/17/15 with special guest Dave Sumner by Mingle on Mixcloud

And here’s the show playlist.  Following each line is a link where you can read more on this site about that album or, in some instances where the album hasn’t yet been released, more about the artist for a different album:

• Bird Calls #2 & Chillin’ by Rudresh Mahanthappa (LINK)
• MJH – Jeremy Udden & Nicolas Moreaux (LINK)
• Bardo – Markus Pesonen Hendectet (LINK)
• Kurt – Emil de Waal, Gustaf Ljunggren, Soren Kaergaard & Elith “Nulle” Nykaer (LINK)
• First Light – Eddie Henderson (LINK)
• Ritual of Take – Fresh Cut Orchestra (LINK)
• Where Are You From? – Tomoko Omura (LINK)
• Fabrication – Kenosha Kid (LINK)
• Sojourner – Josh Nelson (LINK)
• Reading – Ben Goldberg (LINK)
• Terrarosa – Anna Webber (LINK & LINK)
• Everything You Need – Jeremy Siskind Trio (LINK)
• Yokar Inceden Inceden – Goran Kajfes Subtropic Arkestra (LINK)
• Hoksang – Christian Wallumrod (LINK)
• All Tomorrow’s Parties – Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth (LINK)
• Goodbye Pork Pie Hat – Emil de Waal, Gustaf Ljunggren, Soren Kaergaard & Elith “Nulle” Nykaer (LINK)

Hopefully this won’t be the last radio playlist I post on this site.  It was too fun not to do again, plus it gives some additional time in the spotlight to so much good music.

Speaking of which, as it turns out, Kevin has been featuring a lot of the music that you read about on my site. Check out his show archive on the Mixcloud site (LINK) to hear more of the music you read about here as well as other great music that you probably should be listening to.  And if you’re an artist, label or rep who is interested in getting your music featured on Kevin’s weekly show, you should think about contacting him through his show’s Facebook page or via his Twitter account.  He’s a nice guy, so don’t be afraid to shoot him a message and say hi.

Enjoy the show!

Cheers.