Vampire Weekend "Step"

I was super-curious as to how this Vampire Weekend record was going to fare, on the mvyradio Top 25 of 2013 voting.

I get the impression that our audience is split on Vampire Weekend.

Many of our older listeners, and/or folks who tune into mvyradio to hear Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and The Blues At 8 and such, don't seem too effected by Vampire Weekend.  To some, their inclusion on our playlist may even be a little out of character.

For those who have younger-skewing tastes, or listen because they appreciate our devotion to artists like Peter Gabriel or Robert Plant or Angelique Kidjo who are making multi-layered and multi-cultural records, Vampire Weekend makes sense on MVY.

And those people feel strongly.

So this is not a record like Ray Lamontagne's, which spans a broad swath of demographic.  But it brings out a devoted following.

So how did it fare?

Once you get the logical wrangling out of the way, the answer is fairly obvious.

Vampire Weekend ended up at Number 9 on our list.  It wasn't close to being Number 1 (as it was on many major publication's lists), but it made a strong showing.

Makes sense.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Garland Jeffreys "Any Rain"

Have you ever had this experience at one of those buffet restaurants?

You start filling your plate with things that really look good.  And when you get back to your table, you realize that your meal consists of a slice of prime rib, lasagna, a crab leg and some Brunswick stew?

You were just thinking about what looked good.  You weren't thinking about balance.

That happens from time to time, while programming the station.

I think most people who don't do this job just assume . . . you pick the best couple of song each week and that becomes your playlist.

But if you do that, without consideration of the bigger picture, you can end up with an unbalanced and awkward plate.

Coming out of the summer rush into some clearer-headed fall consideration, I felt that the station's list of new songs had started leaning toward the modern/alternative a little too heavily.

The playlist is full of Avett Brothers and Vampire Weekend and Neko Case and Elvis Costello & The Roots.

But the MVY tradition is rooted in singers and songwriters.  And I realized that the plate was really lacking in artists the huat more closely to the folk roots that are the baseline of MVY.

And that's when, as a programmer, you worry less about the best song, and more about the right song.

It was great to see Garland Jeffreys new record come in, because I knew it was the first step in speaking to the missing part of the current playlist.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Vampire Weekend "Unbelievers"

I write a lot of about this new single or that new single, and talk about the record label's strategy for using it, or MVY's reason to play it or not play it.

And I think, unintentionally, I present the single in the way that many people view it---as something picked by a corporation for maximum market value, to be forced upon radio stations and the listening public.

But the reality is, we don't have to use the single as the song we will play off any record.  We could pick another tune.  There are reasons to not do that, which is a thought for another post.

I did want to point out that choosing a single is often a more organic process that cynics may realize.

Take Vampire Weekend.

Their new record is the Number One album in the country, and their first single "Diane Young" is a Top Ten song on the chart that MVY reports to.

(You can see the chart here.  Scroll down.  MVY is part of the 2nd chart, called the "Triple A R&R/BDS Indicator Chart").

But we didn't play it, because, sonically, it wasn't a good fit for us.

There are somewhere around 50 stations on that chart, but only 37 are playing "Diane Young."

Some stations are probably the kind that would never play Vampire Weekend.  And other stations are probably like MVY, who just found the first single to be a little hard-edged for what they do.

A handful of stations, now including MVY, are playing a different Vampire Weekend song, "Unbelievers."

Some are like MVY, who wanted to support the record, but not the single.  Others were huge supporters of the first single, and have already played it so much that they didn't want to wait for a second single to keep going with the record.

Suddenly an organic groundswell of support appears for "Unbelievers," and the label takes notice.

Without having to pick it themselves, they can actually use this as a promotional pitch to other radio stations to encourage them to pick it up:  "We didn't even put this out as a single.  Stations just started playing it."

And so sometimes a second single is simply chosen by the people who are listening to the record.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Vampire Weekend "Diane Young"

I was going to write a post about how its almost become not worth it to post new music on the blog, because by the time you do, 10,000 folks have already done the same.

This Vampire Weekend track was digitally released on Monday afternoon, and my initial thought was that I'd write about it for my Tuesday entry.

But with barely more than 12 hours on the web, it's already all over the place, on music sites and blogs and your Facebook feed and such.  It's not even worth trying to be first, as it gets lost in a sea of sharing.

As I was dismissing the idea of just posting this because it's new and exciting, deciding instead to hold it back until I had a specific idea to write about . . . a specific idea to write about made itself evident.

Please, "Let Me Ruin This Song For You."

While bumping into this tune on radio and your social media feeds and television and your friend's playlists, try not to think of "Footloose."

That is all . . .


Hear Vampire Weekend on Youtube.


Hear "Footloose" on Youtube.

Adrian Belew "Oh Daddy"

Here's a Father's Day Weekend Post:

My four-year-old has picked up my wife's habit of displaying mock-disgust every time I make a lame joke:

"Oh Daddy . . ." she shakes her head.

And I always think of this song.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.

Vampire Weekend "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"

I'm on vacation this week, so I'm keeping the posts brief (but hopefully still interesting).

Occasionally, there is some specious reasoning that goes into why I might want to add a song.

A few months ago, while rooting around for older songs that would sound good to add to the mvy library, we pulled out Nickel Creek's "Lighthouse's Tale."

We have several lighthouse songs in rotation. It's geographically appropriate.

So when I remembered that Vampire Weekend had a really great song called "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" I thought we should go back and revisit it. Because it's geographically appropriate.

It IS now in our library.

But really, does it have anything to do with Cape Cod?

(Read the lyrics)


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Who "You Better You Bet"

Here's another video from MTV's first day of broadcast. I remember that folks made a big deal about this record, as it was their first post-Keith Moon album.

Whale "Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe"

Here's another weekend post:

I'd totally forgotten about this wacked-out gem that just screams "Hey, I Was A Random MTV Single From A Distinctly European Outfit In The Mid-90's!!!!"

Vampire Weekend “White Sky”

Often, when we’re considering songs for rotation at mvyradio, we’ll talk about the artist’s story.

Is there something that will give the record context, or make it interesting to talk about on the air?

“What’s this band’s story?” This question might have any of these answers:

a) The artist has an interesting backstory. Like, “Carla Bruni? She took the lyrics from the poems of people like Yeats and Dickenson. Oh, and she’s was the mistress and is now the wife of the Prime Minister of France”

b) Something interesting/important/tragic/fortunate happened to the band while they were making the record. Like “Big Whiskey And The Groogrux King” was made in the wake of Leroi Moore’s passing, and has his spirit all over the record

c) There are interesting intra-artist connections: “It was produced by T Bone Burnett!” “John Mayer wrote a glowing record review of this in Rolling Stone!” “They were invited by Martin Sexton to be his touring band!”

Often, these stories are part of the narrative of the band.

But of all the stories attached, rightly or wrongly, to a band, I don’t think I’ve ever had a story like Vampire Weekend’s. Strangely, the prevailing story about this band has to do with how much some people hate this band.

From NME: Lord knows they have their detractors, but whatever you might think of them, the simple fact is Vampire Weekend are now one of the most unique bands on the planet.

From The Boston Globe: An unabashed pleasure and then just as quickly bashed for its hipster cachet, Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut touched down like a Texas tornado in 2008.

From The Chicago Tribune: Only in the file-sharing era could a band suffer a backlash before its first album even came out.

From Pitchfork: Considering the ferocious objections to Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut, "Horchata", and the rest of Contra, is brave music.

And these are the professional reviewers, who have to present some level of objectivity and decorum. Delve into Blog-world, and the word “ferocious” only scratches the surface of the level of distaste some have for the band.

Can you hear this song, without hearing the story in your head? Is it something we should be playing?





See this previous post, for details on how a song gets into rotation on mvyradio, then let me know what you think.