Never mind re: Shift — here it is, by one Sylvia Nalli-Petta, which for some reason strikes me as a particularly Torontonian name.
“Dallas newspaper reporter Josh Benton runs crabwalk.com, a weblog and ‘CD mix of the month club.’ Users exchange burned CDs: Send off one custom compilation and Josh reciprocates with one of his own. Snail mail two CDs and he adds another crabwalk-er’s mix to the envelope. Effort is made to match musical tastes, so Blur fans don’t wind up with an earful of Cibo Matto.”
Generally dead on, but are Blur fans really that far away from Cibo Matto fans? I mean, I put both acts on my June mix. I suppose Blur fans are, on the whole, more likely to brawl with a Gallagher brother, while Cibo Matto’s are more likely to sing lullabies about food. But they’re not exactly different universes.
And to be honest, the effort to match up musical tastes is pretty minimal — Blurheads and Cibophiles invariably get stuck in the same pool. I divide the CDs I get in the mail into four stacks:
– Stupendous, momentous, mixes that shake my very soul to the core, then rebuild it from the bricks of great music.
– Solid, enjoyable mixes that have great tracks and an attention to detail.
– Eh, I’ll look past the Bryan Adams track. The Whitney Houston’s pushing it, though.
– Seriously, have you ever heard anything other than Hits 102? Did you look at my track listings and still think that Kid Rock and O-Town would be a good idea for trade bait? Actually, do you still think Kid Rock and O-Town are good ideas, period?
Those who send me CDs that end up in Pile No. 1 get No. 1 discs in return. Twos get twos, etc. (And no, I won’t tell you what stack your CD got put into — that’s a crabwalk.com corporate secret.)
In case you’re wondering, more than 375 people have signed up for the October trade since the mix club was mentioned on Daily Candy a few weeks ago. (I got more than 17,000 hits in 24 hours.) All my waking hours the last few weeks have been filled burning CDs, folding liner notes, stuffing envelopes, updating a big unwieldy database, answering email questions, and paying lots of postage. Delicious irony: With my car CD player stolen not long ago, I never have time to listen to CDs any more.
5 thoughts on “shift article and cdmom update”
Comments are closed.
oh man – i just found myself crossing my mental fingers that i’d end up on the stack o’ super-elite. o have mercy on me, josh :/
*turd
while I agree that Blur people and Cibo Matto people are, well, often the same people, I do want to add that if Noel Gallagher and Yuka Honda were in the ring, my money would be on Honda.
well some secrets behind what cds we recieve have been disclosed, this is much more info than we are receiving in regards to the sniper. i might need to dig deep into the bowels of my cd racks to come up with next months trade that might see me to the promised land…i.e. the 1st pile!!!
*all hail the cd of the month club* 😉
What a great system – Now I’m going to actually have to try harder to make it into “pile 1” or at least “pile 2.” Somehow that word just doesn’t fit quite right. A pile of anything can’t be good, can it? I just imported another 400 cd’s into my groaning iTunes library, so maybe I’ll have something for the new mixes!
Keep up the good work Josh, and let us know what we can do to help. (I will be slipping some green in this month’s package.)
Alvin…
I was always honored that you didn’t send mine back – I always tried to go that extra mile for you so I didn’t have to hang my head in shame. I never had to say “Yes, I know it’s Whitney Houston, but it’s good Whitney Houston!”
I’m not participating this month because of National Novel Writing Month, but you can expect a little extra something from me sometime soon – you introduced me to Spoon, for cripes sake. Good luck with the flood.