A Valentine For Your Heart

Cardio 15 [Valentine's Mix] by Pete Bilderback on Mixcloud

Here's a Valentine for your heart (your actual heart, the organ that pumps blood through your body).

I've been posting 30 minute mixes optimized for cardio workouts over at Mixcloud. The idea is pretty simple: each song averages between 120 and 160 beats per minute (generally considered the ideal range for cardio exercise). Personally, I've found it really is easier to keep moving at a brisk pace when the music falls in this ideal range. I've got a number of other cardio mixes up at Mixcloud as well.

There's a Mixcloud app for both iPhone/iOS and Android devices, so it's quite easy to access these mixes on the go.

Tracklist:

The Replacements - "Valentine"
Rockpile - "If Sugar Was As Sweet As You"
Talking Heads - "Love → Building On Fire"
The Modern Lovers - "Someone I Care About by The Modern Lovers"
David Bowie - "Modern Love"
The Slits - "Love Und Romance"
The Undertones - "Valentine's Treatment"
ABC - "Valentine's Day"
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours"
Marvin Gaye - "This Love Starved Heart Of Mine (Is Killing Me)"

Record Store Day 2014: DJ Set

Here's the first hour of the set I DJ'd at In Your Ear Records for Record Store Day. Unfortunately, if you wanted to hear the part where I played the Fat Boys you had to have been there. Let that be a lesson to you.

DJ will.i.is - Record Store Day 2014 - In Your Ear Records by Pete Bilderback on Mixcloud

Happy Birthday Remain In Light

The Talking Head's fourth album, Remain in Light, was released on October 8, 1980, making it exactly 30 years old today. I was 11, and I have to confess I was not quite a hip enough eleven-year-old to have picked up the album on the day of release. I became a fan of the band in 1983 after hearing "Burning Down the House" and quickly started exploring their band's back catalog (probably by taking advantage of my Columbia House membership).

Remain In Light, along with the Eno-Byrne collaboration My Life In the Bush of Ghosts and the first Tom Tom Club album, all had a major impact on my evolving taste in music at that time. The sense of adventure, and the combination of playfulness and high-art seriousness of these projects all went a long way toward convincing me that music could be more than whatever happened to be on the radio in the background, but something to be listened to seriously and followed passionately. In that respect, the Talking Heads were probably the first band that I actually became a fan of as opposed to merely making music I happened to like.

Totally by coincidence, I listened to the first Tom Tom Club album on my way to work this morning after having needledropped my LP last night (I had already ripped Remain in Light and My Life In the Bush of Ghosts to my iPod). I have to say, 30 years on, while this music does sound a bit like a time capsule from the early eighties, I believe it holds up as music, art and entertainment remarkably well. In many ways it still sounds more forward-looking, open and even futuristic, than any of the new music I am hearing these days (mainstream or otherwise).