Indie69 March 2012 New Music Playlist Released

Who is that mysterious female?

Well, at long last, it has arrived. Let me explain…

I got busy,  I got distracted,  I “got late”.** (If you want to know what’s really going on, I’ve written a form-letter-like explanation. Just e-mail me and ask at the e-mail address provided below. I don’t want to *bum out* everyone.)

The good news is that the March 2012 playlist is here. It is my first playlist for 2012. My first in months. There are really, really new tracks here as well as the best of the tracks I had ready for several aborted playlists. There are some really amazing tracks on this one. I always say that, really. But this time it’s really, really true.

It seems at times that even the elements are against me when it comes to these monthly things. Just as I was putting the finishing touches on the playlist and browsing the files ready for the best of 2011 playlist (coming soon),the power to my entire neighborhood went out. No files were lost, thankfully, but I had to sit in the dark and just wait it out.  All while the clock on my mobile inched closer and closer to my self-imposed deadline of midnight (or quit doing the playlists for good). I had to cheat a bit on my own deadline because I didn’t have electricity! Oh well. I don’t think I could quit anyway. I have too much fun doing these.

Thanks for being patient again and a huge thank you to everyone who left messages and sent e-mails. There was nothing any of you could have done that would have helped make it happen these last few months, but it was nice to know my playlists were missed.

So dramatic, eh? Without further ado, hours  days after my deadline… and months late…..

You can get the Indie69 March 2012 New Music Playlist HERE and in any of the other places you usually stumble into my playlists.

I imagine there has to be at least one or two dupes/repeats. I tried my best to prevent it, but at some point you just have to let go and release the thing.

Special thanks to Catherine for the cover art. So far this year, including this month, next month and the best of 2011, all of the cover art has been submitted/requested art/photos, or my own art/photos. Nice. I’d like to keep it that way this year. So if you want to submit art for the May/June playlists, send it in to:  indiesixtynine@gmail.com

Hope you love the music this month and please remember to seed until it hurts. I’m going to put my headphones on now and bathe in the pleasant afterglow of accomplishment neurochemicals for a while.  I love those things. Combine accomplishment with a nice 2 hour stationary bike marathon and you’re swimming in the suckers. Nothing beats it.  🙂

Be well music lovers.

** If you want to know what’s really going on, I’ve written a form-letter-like explanation. Just e-mail me and ask at the e-mail address provided below. I don’t want to *bum out* everyone. The reason it’s like a form letter is that I don’t want to go through it 100 times writing it out again and again. I’ll respond to any questions, but I can’t go through that over and over. My health is fine, by the way. It’s just… complicated and not for direct public consumption.

Update on downtime

I have said many times that I am *this* close to releasing both new playlists and the “Best of 2011” playlist. Pretty flaky, even for me, the king of procrastination.

This has been true.

BUT.

Each time, I have been distracted and/or occupied with events and situations that have prevented me from giving it the attention it deserves. This time, however, I truly am close to releasing a Jan/Feb/March playlist (called simply the March playlist). This will be followed by a late, yet wonderful, best of 2011 playlist. The best of will take some time (it will perhaps be the latest “annual best of” anything… of all time), but the March playlist is very close to finished (80%, with submitted artwork for the cover and a verbose NFO) and is to be released before the weekend. If not, I will cease doing these playlists. This is not my intention, but I felt it was necessary to give myself some real stakes to motivate me.  And I am tired of making empty promises that I keep breaking. It ends up making me feel terrible. I wish I could explain the extent of the troubles that have prevented me from doing these playlists that I love doing, but I cannot without just…. really feeling exposed.  It’s not trouble with the law, or lawyers or anything like that. I am simply doing a good thing for the people I love and I’ll have to leave it at that. It takes up not only my time, but much of my energy and has had an impact on my desires to do anything but rest during down time. I’ve been doing a lot of resting, vegetating and reading when I’m not virtually making a slave of myself (my choice).

Each time I sit to go through submissions I am called away before I can feel like I’ve really made any progress or built any momentum. This has caused much frustration and has left me feeling discouraged more often than not.

Thank you all for the messages, comments and e-mails of encouragement/concern. I’m going to be fine, and all WILL return to normal soon. This appears to be a yearly thing now, but I will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again in 2012.

I am also planning to move the site and finding the right host and platform has been frustrating, so I am setting that aside for the moment and getting on with things.

Fingers crossed, folks. I’ll be doing my best because I love doing this.

Indie 69 March 2011 New Music Playlist is Released

That took longer than expected! But it’s done now and I can get some much needed sleep. Yeah, I’m still awake rather than rising early. That cookie simply crumbled. I hope you like this month’s selection more than I did. I found a few too many sound-alikes for my tastes this time around. I mean.. there are still numerous great tracks in there, and I do hope you like it more than I did. I guess I’m kind of talking it down a bit, eh? I’ll stop.

This is March, so I included a rabbit (or Hare) for the cover this time around. That rabbit’s stare is so intense, huh? He’s thinking, planning, knowing. Something.  I feel so lucky to have found that image AND it was a Creative Commons image!

Blahblah, on to the music….

You can grab the March playlist HERE and all the usual hangouts where it’s been found lurking in the past.

Remember to keep seeding it. And I want to remind everyone who downloads these playlist torrents to remember to SPREAD THE WORD! About all of the playlists, not just mine.  Through Facebook, Twitter, any way you communicate with others. You may have noticed I stopped doing my monthly playlist round-up posts. Well, that was partly because of time constraints and partly because indierockplaylists.com does such a bang-up job of it now. Check the site out to grab ALL of the playlists that came out this month so far. You will be very filled with super happy joy! I Promise.  So much music. A few duplicates, but that’s easy enough to fix now isn’t it? Just be sure to keep seeding and copy/paste (NOT CUT) the files to a new folder/library before you start deleting tracks. Seeding is so important. You probably download the music for the same reason I compile and curate, for the music.. because you love the music. Show that love by seeding as long as possible. And if it’s slowing things down for you, remember most bittorrent clients allow you to throttle/adjust the bandwidth used by any particular torrent. Better a slow seed than no seed. Always. Always.

I’ll stop begging for seeds now and get to work on April. Yep, right away. This month was so frustrating on so many levels that I have decided to start earlier from now on to be absolutely sure I find the best possible selection of new music with as few sound-alikes as possible.

Original Image For Cover :  http://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkstoop/152751595/

Cover image and this document:

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March 2010 Indie69 Indie Rock Pop Playlist Released

Indie 69 March 2010 Cover Art

One year and one month on and I’m still not tired of doing this thing. In January (in print, Feb) , Paste magazine published the “Is Indie Dead?” issue, which immediately begged the question “what is Paste?“. Well, at least the people I mentioned it to.  I guess the real question is “has Paste run out of ideas?” or “Is Paste dead?”. I kid, I kid. I like Paste and honestly the article was great and posed a lot of interesting (if not intentional) questions. But when it comes right down to it, whatever THIS is, it’s certainly far from dead. And as I’ve said a thousand times, the minute music is unable to support itself to the point that no-one can afford to release CDs, tour, etc, guess what happens? Music will find a new way  to release CDs (or simply releases), tour, etc etc. In other words, it will always find a way back. I quote a friend here for clarity… “If no-one published books anymore, someone would publish books”, to put it quite bluntly. And that’s about it, really. All the hand-wringing and brow sweat in the world will not END culture. It will always survive and prosper to varying degrees. And if it feels like it’s not speaking to you anymore, perhaps you got old and didn’t notice. May I suggest a mirror and some hair coloring? Does Dark Side of the Moon sound fresh and new to you? Do you think Phil Collins got a bad rap in the 80’s-90’s? Have the words “that ISN’T MUSIC!!” left your lips lately? Instead of ignoring or deleting that “We make rock hard for girlfriend happy happy super medicine” spam e-mail, did you click on it and read it? These could be signs that “Indie is Dead”. Embrace or ignore accordingly.

End rant. March is going to be another great month for new music and I hope this playlist reflects that.  Some may wish they could put their finger on one trend or sound that seems to be taking off at the moment, an “IT” sound. But I like that this is becoming more and more difficult (at least for me) lately. And this month reflects that. One stand-out track is the track I posted a few days ago from Doyle and the FourFathers. I’m not even remotely tired of it and it’s been in constant rotation along with their other tracks released HERE. I think it’s going to be a very memorable album.

Another Day On Earth had a bunch of his equipment stolen and he’s trying to fund a new, small DIY project. Donate 10 bucks and get his second “song a day” compilation. Worth it! I know what it’s like to have creative tools/creations stolen and it sucks. His goal is really a reasonable amount and he’s on his way. It’s horrible that he put SO much effort into that last project, doing a song a day for a year and this is his reward. We can fix that. Every little bit helps. Best of luck to him!

Fund his project HERE

You can find the March playlist in all the regular haunts as well as HERE(TPB link).

Enjoy the music and if you really like it, go buy it. Or go see a live show.  See you in April. (no joke)

Cover Image original image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steppinlotus/106738574/

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