One of my hidden treasures whenever I’m back in NYC is a hidden Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side named Regional. It’s on Broadway and 100th St., and it keeps evolving fast in front of my face. I’ve walked in there and seen Prince Harry, Cristiano Ronaldo and Irina Shayk, Matt Damon and Al Pacino, but what’s more important than that, is that the staff here may have not even noticed any of them. I love that. A place where no one else matters more than any other human being. A place where the energy is good, the food is fantastic and the crowd is always pleasing.
I wanted to make a mix for today that represented a wider variety of tunes than some of us may be used to. Sort of like the wide variety of people that I keep encountering over at Regional every time I stop by. Columbia Students, Celebrities, Ultra Rich and Ultra Hip, models, writers, soccer moms and dad coaches. Variety, in life, is not as evil as some would say.
I started with only songs received within the past day that had great sound to them. A good friend of mine just wrote a piece for Headliner Magazine that argues, very convincingly, that great quality music has all the value when it comes to the business of music. I tend to agree, so I sifted through the pile of organized submissions (shout out to submithub.com) and handpicked all the songs with exemplary sound. Music that will sound phenomenal on any platform you choose playback from.
This little mini mix definitely houses a certain vibe to it. It’s probably just a chill, work-mode sound that ironically helps the rest of today go by just a little faster. A little smoother; a bit softer and a lot less tense than everything else happening around us these days. I’m in that mode. That sort of mood some of us get into when it’s raining outside and the sound of raindrops hitting the roof or ledge begin to rockabye us to sleep.
Here’s to not listening to a song we’ve already heard a thousand times before, ever again. Cheers.