30@30 (2006)

In the early 2000s I found a free internet radio station called Whole Wheat Radio, streaming around the clock from a cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska. They played indie and folk artists I had never heard of. Listeners edited the artist pages on a wiki, and you could call an automated line and leave a shoutout that would air between songs. It was a very early-internet thing: a small group of people who cared a lot about the same obscure music.

Every so often a musician would come through and play live in the cabin, and they broadcast all of it. The show opened with where to find the bathroom ("outhouse is out there, over a berm, watch for snow shedding off the roof") and the extra pillows, and you could hear furniture being moved as the locals came in. A collection plate went around instead of tickets, along with a reminder to buy some merch on the way out. It was a house concert, and I was listening from Utah.

Between Jim and Esther, the regular callers, and the chatter between songs, Alaska didn't feel that far away. A lot of the artists on these birthday mixes came from that station. I ordered CDs through WWR, got a few signed copies, and eventually saw some of the musicians in person.

Most of the live sets were just a guitar, maybe a piano or an accordion. This recording sounds exactly like Whole Wheat Radio.

I held my breath as you came near
You seemed to have something to say
I leaned in close so I could hear
A roll of duct tape in your hand
"We have a show next saturday"
You hung a flyer on the wall
"Will you come and see us play?"

The hits are the least interesting thing about Prince. Dig past the three discs of vault material in his Crystal Ball box set and there's a fourth, The Truth, where he goes acoustic. Finding "Welcome 2 the Dawn" felt like catching him alone at the piano after the show.

The Stevie Wonder I remembered from the 80s was smooth and radio-friendly. That was the version I grew up with.

In the 2000s I started listening to bootlegs of Stevie from the 70s on my laptop. Hearing him stretch out live was different. The songs felt more alive. That led me back into his 70s albums, where the groove and improvisation were front and center.

Few artists have earned multiple spots on my birthday mixes. Stevie in the 70s has. "Sir Duke" opens this disc for that reason.

"'Cause I'll hammer your toe like a pediatrician." The rhyme is always more important than the semantics.

That line alone makes me hit the replay button. The silliness, the confidence, the absurd punchlines stacked on top of sharp dance beats, it all works. Add in the sound of seams bursting, the thud of a car trunk, then the sudden muted shift as if I'm inside it, and the whole track is just having fun.

What a great track.

During my first year of college I took a film class as an elective. I was already watching movies constantly. Weekends (and summer weeknights) meant trips to Blockbuster to snag whatever new release we could find, often hovering around the return slot. But the class introduced me to films that felt completely different from anything I had seen before.

Brazil (1985) was one of those films. It was strange and visually overwhelming. The satire was sharp and the soundtrack enhanced everything. I thought about that movie for days afterward.

Geoff Muldaur's theme for "Brazil" feels cinematic and slightly surreal, like it came from a world just off from our own.

I was still using physical CDs in 2006 to distribute my mixtape and needed short tracks full of nostalgia.

As if! - Cher Horowitz (or is it Hamilton?)

Cliff Eberhardt got a lot of airtime on Whole Wheat Radio, and I heard him play and tell stories from that cabin in Alaska more than once. His songs aren't flashy. They take their time getting where they're going, and he quickly became one of my favorites.

When he came to Utah to play the Angelus Theater in Spanish Fork, I went. I brought some of the kids, and my dad came too. We sat in the front row of a theater that wasn't close to full, so it felt like he was playing for us.

After the show we got to talk with him. He signed my poster, and we ended up talking about Jim and Whole Wheat Radio like old friends.

This is the live recording of "The Long Road" from the WWR cabin. It closes out this mix, and it sounds a lot like that front row in Spanish Fork.

I wore out my copy of Jagged Little Pill in 1995, and it still took me way too long to find the hidden track. I always hit stop when the last song ended. The one time I didn't, a long stretch of silence went by and then Alanis started singing again. I had no idea where it came from.

When I was still burning these mixes onto CDs in 2006, I decided everyone deserved that experience. If you let this disc keep running after the last song, Norman Greenbaum is waiting for you.