Filed under: Music
I end up watching CBC’s “The Hour” on a regular basis, if for no other reason than there’s really not much else on during its 9 p.m. AST timeslot on Newsworld. It’s also really the only broad audience interview show that we have here in Canada, lacking any sort of late-night talkshow or our own Larry King. And George Stroumboulopulos has grown into a surprisingly good interviewer.
Anyways, I was watching the show last week and George was talking about his “Disc Drop” project, which started back in November and I clearly missed. It got my attention this time, though. Here’s how it works:
STEP 1: Make a mixed CD of your favourite tunes. Somewhere on the disc write: “DISC DROP – cbc.ca/thehour”
Be sure to include a track-listing so people can track down more music by the artists on your disc.
STEP 2: Drop off your disc in a random public place.
STEP 3: Go to the “I Dropped a Disc – What Now” post, click on the comments, and write down where you dropped off your disc and the track-listing. Check back later to find out who picked it up, and where it’s heading next.
Cool, eh? Random acts of musical generosity with a digital twist. So far, hundreds of discs have been dropped off across the country, six of which – according to the project’s Google map – have been in Halifax. This morning, on my walk to work, I dropped off the seventh in the Dalhousie Student Union building – figured that I’d be more likely to reach an audience that would be interested in some indie pop music.
I had two rules when putting the mix together: I wanted to focus on newer music (in this case, nothing earlier than 1997) and it had to be music that was accessible to some degree (no noise-fests or alterna-jams – keep it poppy). It was originally going to be a more relaxing, quieter mix than it ended up, but I found it a bit lacking for something designed to catch a random person’s eardrums, so I worked in some more upbeat tracks for balance’s sake. Here’s the tracklist:
Camera Obscura – “Lloyd, I’m Ready to Be Heartbroken”
Idlewild – “You Held the World in Your Arms”
Dismemberment Plan – “The City”
The Decemberists – “Eli, The Barrow Boy”
The Wrens – “Boys, You Won’t”
The Magnetic Fields – “California Girls”
Spoon – “Eddie’s Ragga”
Arcade Fire – “Ocean of Noise”
Neko Case – “Outro With Bees”
The Organ – “Memorize the City”
Morrissey – “First of the Gang to Die”
The Flaming Lips – “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”
Peter Bjorn & John – “Up Against the Wall”
Ted Leo + Pharmacists – “Biomusicology”
Stars – “Elevator Love Letter”
The National – “Start a War”
Sufjan Stevens – “Sister Winter”
Neutral Milk Hotel – “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”
Bodies of Water – “I Guess We’ll Forget the Sound, I Guess, I Guess”
Band of Horses – “St. Augustine”
I know that Calum was putting together a mix last week to drop somewhere in Fredericton…any other readers out there who’ve done this or are thinking about it?
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I did in fact, I left mine in a restaurant in town. I tried three or four times to add my tracklist and location to The Hour’s blog, though, and I got an error message every time. Did you have a problem there?
We managed to avoid any duplications on our mixes, except for that Bodies of Water song, of course. Nobody can listen to it and not be instantly enraptured.
Comment by Calum January 18, 2008 @ 11:29 amIt seems that their website has to approve new commenters, which can take some time. Mine went through okay, but it isn’t up yet; didn’t get an error message, though.
Comment by McNutt January 18, 2008 @ 12:28 pm