How exciting is that??
A few weeks ago I organized a CD swap amongst all the members of the Avenue Mailing list, a forum for fans of British pop band Saint Etienne (hence the name of my podcast). Anyone from Avenue was welcome to participate in it if they wanted to. There were quite a few people who got into the spirit of things.
In a nutshell, I collected all the names of the participants well as a list of what artists they like (Avenue members can be pretty diverse in their musical tastes, so I felt this was necessary: turns out I was right, too!). I then forwarded a name and details about musical preferences to each participant so that they could create a mixed CD for someone, and get a mixed CD from someone else in exchange, using the exchange partner's musical tastes as their guideline.
I used Microsoft Excel and entered all the information into a database, then I sorted the whole list by the names of the artists people liked. I tried to then match people by the music they were into at the moment. From the reaction I have had from people so far, the match-ups were pretty successful, so I am pretty pleased!
N-E-WAY... back to why I got 4 CDs in the mail... I participated in the exchange too, and I mailed my CDs off two or three weeks ago (I made 2 CDs, that was the maximum number of times that I allowed people to participate). Last week in the mail I got 1 of the CDs from my exchange partner (the other one still hasn't arrived) but today I got 3 CDs from 2 other participants, who just wanted to say thanks for organizing this! They made an extra copy of the CDs they created, including artwork and graphics, and they sent the extra one to me!
One person went above and beyond what was expected of the Avenue CD Exchange: she created a 2-disc set! Disc one was labeled "HAPPY" and disc two was labeled "SAD"... what a great concept!
In the next couple of weeks I will definitely add some more info about these CDs to my blog, I plan to upload a few of the magnificent CD covers that the talented people from Avenue came up with, and I will include a few track lists from some of the exchange CDs, too!! I think it might be fun to create a podcast or two based on the tracks that were circulated during this CD exchange.
There were several people that I know of who couldn't decide what to cut from their compilations, and made double CDs, LOL!
I can't tell you how good some of these discs are! These were the songs that the music lovers on Avenue wanted to share with each other, and believe me when I tell you these people are really knowledgeable about pop music in many of it's guises; be it indie, underground, dance, or electronic.
The CDs included quite a number of undiscovered gems or forgotten songs that should have been huge (or huge in your own heart, at least!). You'll see what I mean when you get a chance to hear some of them (and since that ain't gonna happen on any radio station anytime soon, watch this space!)
I haven't had much of a chance to fully listen to all the CDs yet (I mean, COME ON! I got a total of 4 CDs full of music that I've never heard! I'll need another day or two!) but I am really impressed by what I have heard, so far!
I consider myself to be a pretty knowledgeable person when it comes to music, but on these 3 CDs that I got from my fellow Avenuers, there were exactly 4 songs that I had ever even heard of... and maybe 7 artists that I recognized.
WOW.
My credit card might get maxed again if I start hearing too much new stuff that I like! ;)
Since not all the participants in the exchange have received their CDs yet, I can't go into any more detail right now, so in the meantime, here is the artwork I used to create my own Avenue exchange CD which I sent out to my exchange partners.
When I was describing the "do"s and "don't"s of the Avenue CD exchange this year, I mentioned that it would be fun to try and make our CDs reflect not only our musical tastes, but ourselves as well. I thought this would be a nice way to bring the folks on Avenue a little closer.
In the spirit of this, I decided that since I live in Taiwan these days, a nice photo from here would be a lovely front cover for my CD. This is a photograph I took at Lotus Pond in the city of Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. My sister Sue and I went there this summer and spent a fantastic day strolling along the water front and visiting temples.
Now... where was I?
Oh YES!
I mentioned that I had received 4 CDs in the mail right? So I got the 3 CDs from my fellow Avenuers, and THEN, to top that all off, I also got a CD from a band called Secret Shine whom I really like! Some of you may remember them from their Sarah Records days (circa 1991).
They released a new ep in October of this year, entitled Beyond Sea and Sky, and I had pre-ordered it, but it never came... I wrote an e-mail to Scott Purnell, the guitarist, and he double checked their records and posted it for me last week: it finally arrived today, along with a couple of Secret Shine badges, and a second copy of the new ep for me to give to a friend that I think might enjoy it! i think what I'll do is hold onto it for awhile and maye run a contest to give it away to someone who'd really like it!
So all in all, today was a really good "mail day" for me!
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