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Image via WikipediaAwright, so my new online/virtual/cyber m(i/u)xtape o-sphere is now up, meaning that all five of you who read this can collectively exhale and begin enjoying your lives again, free of the anxiety borne out of anticipation. Koven understands your needs. Also your wants. And occasionally, your desires. I finally went ahead and moved the mixtape widget over into the right hand column over there (seriously, look to your right–it’s right there!), so that it would be permanently available. It replaces the little-loved “Favorite Tracks from Last.fm” widget, which was cool, but relied too much on Last.fm’s occasionally questionable library of tracks (most painful was listening to my own “favorite tracks” and hearing an 80’s re-recording of Sam & Dave’s classic “You Got Me Hummin’” in place of the original). Anyway, I’m still using the Last.fm recent track list, for those of you who require up-to-the-second information on what I’m listening to. So here’s a list of what we’ve got this week, along with helpful/meaningless commentary inserted at random:

1. The Frames – “In the Deep Shade”
2. The Shins – “Sea Legs”
3. King Geedorah – “The Next Level”
4. Joao Donato – “A Ra” : we might be playing this jam at next week’s Latin Hustle show at Spike Hill in Brook-a-lyn. See the “Events” page fer more info.
5. Lee Hazlewood – “Hey Cowboy” : Great tune that I discovered thanks to the excellent “Joe de Vivre” mp3 blog. Lee Hazlewood is a new thing for me, and I’m definitely digging his stuff. That trumpet intro really, really sounds like Burt Bacharach to me.
6. Fleet Foxes – “Blue Ridge Mountains” : found myself surprised at how excellent this record is, given that the band is being advertised in Starbucks.
7. Enon – “Raisin Heart”
8. Deerhoof – “My Purple Past”
9. The Four Tops – “Are You Man Enough” : Just a last tribute to the great Levi Stubbs. This is one of my fave Four Tops tracks, from the Shaft In Africa soundtrack.
10. Daedelus – “Drummery Jam” : Oh man, how do I love Daedelus. He was responsible for one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen, as part of the “Sound Art” concert series curated by my friend Jennifer Stock. Daedelus just blew everyone’s mind.
11. Stars of the Lid – “A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning(less) Process”

That’s it for now, kids. I hope you’re all well.

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As many regular readers of this site may know, I was a huge fan of the online mixtape site Muxtape.com. It was a simple, sleek way to share what you’re listening to, and relied on your own uploads, rather than publicly available mp3s, as sites like Mixtwit and blip.fm do. Well, as with all good things music+technology related, the RIAA has, for the time being, shut the site down. In the meantime, some totally fresh dudes have put together a downloadable open-source version of virtually the same software, called “Opentape.” For the hell of it, I’ve installed it here on the wildly overqualified servers at kovenjsmith.com for your listening pleasure. If this works out, and if I finally add some real styling to it to make it fit in better with the rest of kovenjsmith.com, I’ll put up some kind of permanent link to it. For the time being, you can get to the most current playlist/mixtape here. I totally put Boz Scaggs on there. Because as I’ve told many of you, “Lowdown” is the new “Easy Lover.” Cheers, everyone!

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