Why doing compilations ?

Everybody is familiar with the difference between a meal at a good restaurant, and fast food. The latter is functional, superficial and "fun", while the former is fulfilling, ceremonial and — comparatively — serious.

For us, the population of music amateurs, the experience of listening to a full LP from an artist worth of this denomination could be compared to a real restaurant meal, as opposed to fast food listening of charts singles at the radio : an enjoyable, quick, neutral and soon-to-be-forgotten activity. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but we modestly visualize ourselves one step higher on the culture-consumers pyramid.

Usual compilations (in which I don’t include record label samplers) generally involve stuffing an 80 minutes CD with lots of chart hits, housewives favorites and teens’ party anthems, putting the most popular first to excite the desire of the consumer casually listening it through headphones in the store. This is bad. Considering the price of records in Europe, I wouldn’t spend so much money on a CD I won’t bother to listen anymore six months from now.

What I’m trying to do is different. I can’t force my friends to go at a restaurant every time they’re hungry. Litterature teachers already waste so much by feeding still uninterested pupils with Great Works. This mixtape is intended to be a digest, but a honest one.

I choose not to ride my bike to a dozen fast food of different ethnicities and specialities, and make a meal of that. My point is to go to actual restaurants, to examine closely the menus, and to choose dishes that will fit together fine. More hard work is implied…

Most of interesting music comes under the shape of albums. Extracting a single song but keeping the interest and the soul of a record is a perilous challenge. It’s nevertheless my goal.

This fifth compilation is yet another attempt of introducing people who showed interest to the kind of music I’ve been listening to (discovering!) during the last 12 months. It’s not comprehensive nor extremely successful… but it’s free ! ;=)

As time-consuming as making those compilations can be, the benefit should go anyway to the artists. Buy their records. Go to the gigs.

[the compilation 5 is out. check it out on this page…]