We Do Chicken Right

I'd have to agree with Tom Warren. My current favorite indie record label is also Drag City — home of Smog, Silver Jews, Joanna Newsom, The Fucking Champs, Espers, Jim O'Rourke, The Red Krayola, I could go on.

I Could Go On would be an alright name for a band. But not better than The Fucking Champs.

Tom Warren also mentions Jason Molina. Again, I agree: Jason Molina sings a sad song. Perhaps the saddest song of all. I wonder if Tom Warren has listened to Tom Brosseau, another sadsongsinger on another great indie label: FatCat.

While I'm linking to things we've done, have you seen JA's fine photo essay on his trips to Totem and Simaudio? In the future, I'd like to do something similar.

And check out our web reprint of John Marks' latest "Fifth Element." In the print version, published in our August 2006 issue, JM offers a brief history of putting microphones in front of things and goes on to describe the characteristics of different mic arrays. In our web reprint, we've actually posted audio files of representative selections. If you read, you'll learn that I preferred an array featuring wide cardioids in X-Y mode angled at 120 degrees.

JA, of course, tells me I am wrong to prefer this. JA, of course, is only teasing.

Anyway, the web is great for things like this, working as a living, breathing, singing extension of our glossy magazine. In the future, we'll be doing more. Perhaps the world will even get to hear Lizzzeee.

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