First of all, it’s freezing out. Nay, below freezing. In case you haven’t been outside. And if you’re reading this, whether you’re here in New York or elsewhere in Dharma Land, chances are you could use a little post-holiday giving to warm your heart.
To that end, I hereby propose the first round of a mixtape (er, mix CD) trading session (assuming this is legal?) to take the edge off all this cold. My group-organization skills are limited, so I’m going make this relatively simple: a straightforward two-way trade. E-mail me at first initial last name at gee mail dot com, tell me you want the mixtape below ASAP, and we’ll trade. I’ll send you the following disk and — here’s where the dharma part comes in — you send me one in return.

Yes, this is plainly a bid to expand my musical horizons. And get free stuff. But it’s also a bid to expose other folks to a new song or two they might fall in love with. And if you’ve ever fallen so in love with a band you wanna get their logo tattooed on your arm, then you know — the act of introduction has gotta be good karma.
The playlist here is a slightly edited version of something I put together for a friend this Christmas. I tried to pull it from new-ish bands or albums, though it’s by no means cutting edge. And it’s kind of a compendium of everything I’ve been listening to for the past few months, minus the Shins (whose music weirdly became the only sound I could write to last semester, and now I can only listen to them while doing that), and I owe almost all of it — plus props — to my friend from Gainesville, Andy D., who now resides in the frozen hinterlands of Denver. Many of these bands were new to me when Andy introduced me to them, and it’s time I return that favor — paying it forward, as they say — and perhaps introduce some of them to you.
I hope this works! And, by all means, if you like any of the bands you hear on this list, please support them. Buy their albums. Or better yet, go to a show. Bring your friends. Make new ones while you’re there.
Frozen Playlist Number One:

1. Ever Fallen In Love – Nouvelle Vague covering the Buzzcocks
2. Mama, Won’t You Keep Those Castles In The Air & Burning? – CYHSY
3. Falling Man – Blonde Redhead
4. Volcanoes – Islands
5. I Am a Scientist – the Dandy Warhols
6. You Can Make Him Like You – the Hold Steady
7. The Police And The Private – Metric
8. Listen to What You’ve Got – Idlewild
9. 15 Step – Radiohead (from In Rainbows which you should download immediately)
10. Intervention – Arcade Fire
11. Wicked Gil – Band Of Horses
12. Finding Out True Love Is Blind – Louis XIV
13. Fucking Boyfriend – the Bird and the Bee
14. This Fire – Franz Ferdinand
15. Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But… – Arctic Monkeys
16. Teenage Kicks – Nouvelle Vague covering the Undertones
17. No Satisfaction – Black Mountain
18. International W.C. – Vic Ruggiero
19. The Luckiest Guy on the LES – Get Him Eat Him
20. Is You or Is You Ain’t My Baby? – Dinah Washington Remixed
21. Broken Arm Reprise – the Winterpills
22. While You Were Sleeping – Elvis Perkins

Postscript: as I hope I made clear above, I’m no music expert or indie snob. At all. If it weren’t for the good art of mixtape trading, I might still be listening to bands on MTV, and dancing around in my bedroom to whatever I could steal from my older brother’s collection of classic rock (primarily the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who, plus my mom’s old Donovan records). So yeah. This way is better. Share the love.