b.rox

When I whipped up a Xmas mix three years ago, I had to engage in some serious scraping to round it out. Times have changed, and my collection has expanded. I can now present a collection of seventeen tracks with zero compromises. This is everything I consider necessary for a Five Star Xmas. Enjoy! I [...]

Hallowe’en is just around the corner, so here’s a mix for the occasion. It’s eight different versions of my favorite song of all time, by eight different artists. These are my favorites from the notorious collection of a hundred-odd versions which is floating around the torrents somewhere. The original is not included, but surely everyone’s [...]

Why not? Here’s a new mix of ten tracks, from Ensemble Melpomen to Andrea Bocelli by way of Yo La Tengo.

Summer is my favorite season. Take a brief vacation from reality with this summery mix.

Here are my favorite albums released from 2000 to 2009. I tried to narrow this down to a top ten, but I just couldn’t make the final cuts, so it’s a baker’s dozen. Who Needs Electricity? by Operation: Cliff Clavin [2000] — Acoustic anarcho-primitivist folkpunk from Bloomington, Indiana. O:CC was one of my favorite punk [...]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/imh/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 I’ve made a few changes to the streaming audio station as I continue the constant pursuit of perfection. Finally came up with a name: radio.rox — blindingly obvious but thanks to Charlotte for prodding me in the right direction. The name suggests the new web address: radio.rox.com …which is where [...]

Awrite — I’m taking the plunge and starting my own net radio station. This will be going 24/7 or as long as I can keep it up. Want to listen? Please be my guest. If you know my “taste” in music (and I do use the word “taste” advisedly) you’ll know what to expect. If [...]

Oops, I meant to post this mix to go along with the previous post about the burned-out car. This one’s almost an hour long with tracks by Dizzy Gillespie, Blue Öyster Cult, and of course Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Matt Sweeney. As I always I welcome your comments. Note also that 8tracks has just added [...]

For no particular reason except the sheer fun of it, here’s a mix of whistling songs. Perhaps you can use this to make your transition to the weekend.

Here at work we had our Hallowe’en social hour yesterday afternoon. I supplied the music; unfortunately we didn’t have the bandwidth to play this over the internet. Hopefully you do. So here’s a halloweenish mix of thirteen tracks including music by Andy Forray, Bauhaus and Body Odor. Warning: This mix contains three covers of a [...]

I found and scanned an old photo from my files. Here’s Brian Jones and I getting into a serious subterranean study session. I’m not sure who took this photo. Possibly Shelley Richmond aka Michelle Richmond Vallejo. Circa 1988? Anyway it’s at Greene Hall, Collins Living Learning Center, Indiana University, Bloomington. Naturally there is some music [...]

I was curious as to how Obama’s visit to New Orleans might be covered in the national media. Would it serve to re-focus attention, however briefly, on our recovery efforts? Perhaps the national economic situation trumps concerns about rebuilding one particular city? As it turns out, though, there just wasn’t much media coverage at all. [...]

Holy frijoles, my dad is 75 years old today. What kind of gift could I possibly give the man who gave me half his genes? It will come as no surprise that I decided to make him a mix. This is a bunch of music that was either recorded in 1934, composed or published in [...]

On the last day of 2007 I posted some of my favorite music. I quickly removed the link because I realized it was not, in the strictest sense, um, legal. I am nothing if not law-abiding. It recently occurred to me that I now have a legal alternative, so here’s the mix. 29 songs and [...]

President Obama is visiting New Orleans today, so here’s a mix (warning: some dirty lyrics). This is a silly thematic mix. The associations are simple and obvious and not necessarily germane to today’s visit. Some of the tracks are about Bush. And just to avoid any confusion (and, hopefully, any visits from the Secret Service) [...]

Here’s a frenzied mix of raucous rockin’ music — but there’s a catch, of course: There’s no actual rock music here. No punk, no metal. Some folk, world, jazz, electronic, hip-hop. Some of the R&B, country, gospel and industrial arguably verges into the rock idiom. And there’s a heavy metal cover in here too. But [...]

Avant-garde music has a bad rap for being screeching and unpleasant. Here’s a mix that proves otherwise. Some of it is still weird, thankfully. And all of it is beautiful, to me. Sometimes it helps to know a bit about what you’re hearing. That track by Katie Peterson? That’s the sound of a glacier melting. [...]

Here is a mix we listen to in our house when someone passes on. We listened to this last night after getting news that Xy’s grandmother Pauline had finally slipped away after a protracted struggle. My notes indicate Pauline appeared only in a single episode of our TV show, namely “A Day in the Life,” [...]

Apropos of nothing at all, here’s a mix of songs my parents taught me. Mostly these are songs I remember hearing my father sing while he did dishes or what have you. I think of my parents as pre-rock’n’roll but that’s not exactly true. You’ll hear some early rock hits here as well as the [...]