35@35 (2011)

is this belle and sebastian?
is this disc printed wrong? or is this a cover?
or is this from the film?

Definitely found this track through listening to Geoff Muldaur and following that rabbit hole. Then jumping over to the sister of Geoff to follow Diana's career.

As a missionary in Scotland we met a musician who brought out his ukulele banjo during a visit. I had never seen or heard of one before, and the whole experience of him singing old tunes felt completely new and unexpectedly fun.

In the UK, a well-known ukulele banjo player was George Formby, who had lived decades earlier. This Scot played us what felt like an endless run of Formby classics, and I was hooked. Listening more closely later, I started to wonder if the woman in "Leaning On A Lamp Post" actually knew he was waiting there for her. There might be a bit of a stalking issue going on. It's a theme that shows up again on a later mix with "That's How I Got to Memphis," where the line between romantic persistence and something else gets a little blurry.

The next time we were in town, I asked a local record shop if they had any George Formby albums I could take home. They didn't have any in stock, but they offered to order some, so I placed an order and picked them up a few weeks later. That was all it took.

I first heard Amanda Shires on Whole Wheat Radio, but I followed her through recordings of shows all over the country. For a stretch she performed with Rod Picott and shared those concerts online, which made it easy to keep up with them from a distance.

One I returned to often was their performance at The Cactus Cafe in Austin, Texas, on December 10, 2009.

Those recordings captured everything I was drawn to at the time. Small rooms, stripped-down instruments, and the space between songs filled with stories, bad riddles, and conversations about life on the road, even something as simple as finding clothes in thrift shops. They played on each other's songs, talked through where the music came from, and gave a sense of how much time they had spent traveling together.

"Put Me To Bed" carries that same feeling. Quiet, personal, and close enough that it feels like you're in the room with them.

These last two tracks are hidden on the CD version of this mix.

This recording is Lady Gaga performing on the Howard Stern Show. No band, no production, just voice and piano. It strips everything back and leaves only the song.

It was perfect for this mix.

Leading up to this mixtape I watched the documentary Lemmy (2010), about a man who lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles because it kept him close to his favorite bar and the people he cared about. The film dives into his daily routines and passions. The Rainbow Bar was part of his world, but so was his extensive World War II memorabilia collection and the deep knowledge he carried about that era. One of my favorite scenes shows him in a record store, genuinely excited to find a Beatles box set featuring their recordings in the original mono format. The Beatles were an early inspiration for him. He saw them live at the Cavern Club when he was 16 and later taught himself guitar by playing along to Please Please Me. It's hard to trace the line from early Beatles harmonies to Ace of Spades, but that tension feels very much like Lemmy.

The documentary also shows his love of gambling. He preferred slot machines over dice or cards, but joked that slot machines didn't make for good lyrics. Spinning fruit just isn't cool enough. There's a clear difference between the life he lived and the life that makes it into a song.

That's what makes Ace of Spades so interesting to me. The song is loud, fast, and built on high-stakes imagery. It feels reckless and unstoppable. But the man behind it seemed measured, thoughtful, even sentimental about the things he loved. The mythology of Lemmy the frontman doesn't match the person shown in that small apartment, flipping through records and talking about history. And that gap doesn't weaken the song. It makes it stronger.

There's something honest about performance. Sometimes the stage version of a person says more about their energy than their daily life ever could. Ace of Spades isn't a documentary. It's a character, turned up and amplified. Watching Lemmy made me appreciate that distinction. The volume, the swagger, the gambling bravado — it's part of the act. The quiet apartment, the Beatles box set, the collections and routines — that's the rest of the person.

I love the production behind music as much as I love the music itself. Watching someone create a song, test an idea, scrap it, rebuild it, adjust a synth line by a fraction, that process pulls me in every time. There's something deeply satisfying about seeing sound constructed in real time, about watching hands move across drum machines and tweak knobs while a song slowly takes shape. Some artists feel in complete control of their soundstage, altering the feel and pace as deliberately as melody.

The first time I watched Beck's Record Club in 2009, I was alone, late at night, hunched over a laptop, falling down a rabbit hole I didn't know I needed. Beck gathered friends and remade an entire album in a single day. No rehearsals. No polishing. Just instinct and interpretation. They sat in a room surrounded by instruments and recreated classic albums in their own style, filming the whole process and releasing it online for free. Watching those sessions felt like being allowed behind the curtain. I could see the experimentation, the hesitation before a take, the laughter when something unexpectedly clicked.

Beck covered albums by The Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen, among others, each project with a new group of collaborators. The most electric for me was their take on Kick by INXS. Already a perfect album, but hearing it reimagined with different voices and textures gave the songs new edges. Sérgio Dias brought his presence into the room, but the real revelation for me was St. Vincent. I didn't know her work before seeing those sessions, but after hearing her vocals cut through that space, I went straight into her catalog and never really left. She's included on this same mix because that discovery started here.

Another Record Club project, Songs of Leonard Cohen, introduced me more deeply to Devendra Banhart, who later found his way onto another birthday mix. That's part of why this matters to me. Watching those videos didn't just entertain me. They created new musical threads in real time, threads that would weave into future mixes and future versions of myself.

I am a child of the 80s, shaped by Saturday morning cartoons, action figures scattered across the living room floor, and the careful craft of making mixtapes from the radio. My first mixes were cassette tapes recorded off KTMT and Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40. If there was a song I wanted badly enough, I would call the station and request it, then sit near the tape deck waiting for it to come on, hoping I could hit record fast enough to only miss the first few seconds.

I didn't own an Atari or a Nintendo, so I played at friends' houses, sharing the screen and solving challenges together. In 1989, The Wizard arrived like a fever dream of everything Nintendo, with kids traveling across the country alone to chase a video game competition that promised prize money and maybe redemption. Watching it now, it feels like a feature-length commercial, but at the time it was unbearably cool.

I don't remember when I realized that Jenny Lewis, the child actor from The Wizard, was the same Jenny Lewis whose records I would later play on repeat, but that connection reframed her music for me. Knowing she had lived through that early spotlight, that strange mix of childhood and performance, made the vulnerability in her songs land differently. She covered the Traveling Wilburys with Conor Oberst, leaned into gospel textures, and wrote candidly about her own past. Rabbit Fur Coat carries some of that history plainly.

But "Acid Tongue" is the one that stays with me. There's an effortlessness to it, a loose sway that feels lived-in rather than performed. It carries a quiet ache without demanding attention, like someone telling you a hard truth in a steady voice. Maybe that's why it resonates. The 80s kid in me remembers the bright commercial surface of things — the movie, the games, the radio hits — but this song feels like what comes after, when you're left sorting out what was real and what was just spectacle.

I first heard Marian Call on Whole Wheat Radio. Clean, simple instrumentation, sometimes even a typewriter, and a voice that carried everything.

Not long after, she announced a tour in 2010 where she would drive from Alaska and play shows in every state. When she made it to Utah in July, we went.

The concert was in the backyard of someone I had never met. It was just a group of people who had signed up for Marian's email list and showed up when they heard she would be passing through. A warm summer night, a relaxed crowd, and a small setup with Marian and a guitarist. At one point the typewriter made an appearance.

There was a potluck before the show, and I tried strawberry and serrano gelato for the first time.

"I'm Yours" carries that same feeling. Simple, close, and shared with whoever happened to be there.

Danny Schmidt is exactly what Whole Wheat Radio was all about. Thoughtful songwriting, quiet delivery, and stories that reveal themselves over time.

This recording comes from a concert in London on January 31, 1974 at the Rainbow Theatre. Every track feels different from the album versions. The songs stretch out, take their time, and move in directions you don't expect. "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" runs over eleven minutes here, and it earns every minute of it.

Hearing Stevie in this setting changes how I listen. It's not about the familiar version anymore, it's about hearing him in the moment.