Perfect Playlist

For a bit of shameless self promotion...

Wait...isn't that what a blog is anyway? Whatever.

How about...for a bit of extended shameless self promotion.

I have YET to share that I was on the radio last week with my friend Tony who I work with at AngelVision for 94.7's Widmer's Perfect Playlist.

For those of you NOT from Portland, let me explain: Every weekday at 5 p.m. -- quitting time if you work anywhere else OTHER than AngelVision (Okay I can't complain too much, I typically do leave at 5 every day...but I've always got my laptop bag draping over my shoulder next to my hippie bag which, might I add, I am soooo in the need for a new one) -- Gustav from 94.7 hosts a five song playlist made up by, well, anyone. All you have to do is submit a playlist along with an explanation for your songs and, of course, information about yourself to Gustav via email and hope and pray that your list is awesome enough to get chosen.

Here's what Tony and I submitted earlier this month:

Tony and Amie's Widmer's Perfect Playlist

Theme: A Day at AngelVision

Tony and I work together at a marketing company in Tigard called AngelVision Technologies.  AT AV we make impact movies -- 3 to 3 1/2 minute movies that serve as marketing tools for companies to use in 20 different way (We've got to put the company plug in somewhere, right?). My role at AV is as a scriptwriter while Tony is a flash developer. Basically, I write the script for the movie while Tony puts my words and cues and directions into action (But making them way cooler than I could ever imagine). In essence, it's a relationship built to last; I tell Tony what to do and he complies, ten-fold (Isn't that what any girl wants?). I kid, of course...though our two minds have been known to create some of the craftiest, though easily most twisted plots and ideas.

It's a good thing they rarely ever come to fruition (Though our band 80s Montage Limbo would, by far, be the best obscure band...maybe ever).

What really brought Tony and I together, aside from our shared love for sushi, zombies and creating obscure band names, is indeed, music. While Tony's more hardcore than I am on his Pandora (The guy eats through his free 40 hours before the fifth of the month) and despite our shared differences in favorite artists (His = Radiohead, Mine = Jack Johnson), we share enough common bonds to interrupt each other enough during the day over instant messenger to gush about whatever song is streaming through our ear buds (Or, if you're like Tony, giant headphones).

Our perfect playlist is a recreation of our typical day at AngelVision -- starting out dead tired in the morning after a long day AND night of writing and flash development, only to trudge on with more work so we can feel totally gangsta after FINALLY finishing a project...before being stuck in traffic after day's end to finally  make it home.

Here's our list of glory:
1. Sleepyhead, Passion Pit (Need we say more? Love the band and the song is perfect to kick the day off with...heck, it's my ringtone and alarm)

2. Work, Hockey (This song hits a couple of points: During our first conversation, Tony asked if I liked hockey, based off a Windows Live status I had up that said, "Wake up with Hockey." Of course, I responded, gushing about the Portland band Hockey...only to find out that he was, in fact, talking ice and pads and sticks and pucks. We also have a special place in our hearts for Canada.)

3. Paper Planes, MIA (There's nothing like celebrating the completion of a project, especially ones for difficult clients, than playing Paper Planes and letting our suburban white kid exterior disappear as we thug around like...well, you know..thugs)

4. No Cars Go, Arcade Fire (Tony's REAL favorite band is Arcade Fire which I, too, am totally down with. They're just...so...good)

5. Home, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (Every time one of use hears this song on Pandora we ping each other with new lyrics...sort of like a bragging right. Of course, sometimes I cheat and pull it up on YouTube just so I can hear it. It's funky and folky and Jade's voice and the whistling are simply to die for).

And our alternative: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips (This song, of course, is a great alternate to Paper Planes because something, throughout the workday, we have to battle crazy clients who well, try to eat us...and stuff).

At any rate, we received an email back a little over a week after submitting our Perfect Playlist and, within five days were ON THE RADIO.

I don't think I had ever been so nervous in my whole entire life. Okay, that's obviously hyperbolic but I was surprised by how awkward sweaty I got over being on the radio. It was like the feeling you get when going on a first date...multiplied by 10, and on crack. Like really good freak out crack (Of course, not that I would actually know).

The experience actually turned out to be a blast...not that I had an any inkling that my radio debut would turn out otherwise. But still, I'm a nervous wreck prior to any kind of recording where I know SOMEONE is going to be hearing my voice. Nevertheless, despite some shakiness at the beginning (I stuttered a bit when explaining how I got into Hockey) on my part, Tony and I managed to pull off a smooth and seamless radio show. We even had a guy call in half way through Edward Sharpe and demand...okay fine, suggest...that Tony and I get an hour to run music every day because we were, indeed, "Just that awesome."

While we were hoping for some birthday luck on pocketing Arcade Fire concert tickets (It was Tony's birthday the day we went on the air), we ended up with, like everyone else that week, tickets to see Sublime in November. On a Tuesday. Without their real lead singer. We've already vowed to make complete asses of ourselves, demanding old school, REAL Sublime songs.

Go big or go home, right?

Passion Pit

I am in love, love, love. It's been a while, actually, since I've fallen hard core for a band or solitary musician but here I am, swooning like a brace-faced junior high school girl after just two days of exposure.

Go ahead, call me easy.

Nevertheless, here I am, on my day off, glued to my computer, listening to and looking up information about Passion Pit. I first heard them as I was driving home from my friends' house late Monday night. Passion Pit had just started playing at the Crystal Ballroom, kicking off 94.7's December to Remember concert line up (which, man alive, I hate that I'm too broke to go see any of the shows. Tonight is The Bravery followed by Vampire Weekend tomorrow. Sniff sniff) as I was hitting the I-84 on ramp back west to my freezing studio.

The band opened with The Reeling, one of their more popular songs, followed by an even more popular song (which is now the ringtone of my new phone...trust me when I say that this is a huge feat because I am not an impulsive ringtone purchaser...a person's ringtone says a lot about who they are, unless you're my friend Jacob whose ringtone is from Aladdin. ), Sleepyhead. Sure the songs are poppy and danceable, even for me with my awkward skinny white girl moves, but they hit me quite a bit deeper than most pop songs do (which, let's be honest, barely graze my passionate musical soul). Perhaps it was the fact that the warped techno soundscapes took my mind off of the fact that my car's typically-on-the-ball heater had yet to kick in or perhaps it was the fact that my hangover, which was still full throttle by 10:30 Monday night had mysteriously kicked itself out of my body; but after just two songs, I was in lust.

I went onto the band's website today and found this little morsel that morphed that lust into pure, maniacal love:

"Redemption. Paranoia. Guilt. And brief glimpses of a better tomorrow, all cloaked in pop hooks that truly help the medicine go down."

I need redemption. I'm paranoid at least 18 percent of the time worrying about, well, everything. And guilt...I think my recent batch of hangovers provide ample evidence for my shame and guilt. That's why I'm all about brief glimpses of a better tomorrow. Enter Passion Pit and it's ability to make the lessons of everyday life (ahem, that medicine I take daily when I suffer an empty bank account, broken heater and broken spirit) a little easier to swallow. What more could a girl want from a band at a time when she's struggling with finding the brief glimpses of a better tomorrow?

I think one listener on lala reviewed Passion Pit as "if music were food, Passion Pit would be chocolate cake." Chocolate cake is too flavor of the month for me which is why, for me, Passion Pit is more carrot cake -- constantly good, a little nutty and chock full of surprises.

Bon appetite.