The question we get asked most often by listeners, friends and acquaintances is how we find all the music we play week in and week out on The Joint.
(Interestingly enough, we’re not asked specifically where we get the music from. So we’ll leave it to you to obtain the music how ever you prefer. But please allow us to recommend the joys of visiting old-fashioned record shops such as Galaxy Records, Penny Lane Records, Real Groovy, Slow Boat Records, and Conch and droppping some dollars).
Now, I can’t vouch for The Herb Whisperer’s mysterious methods but here’s my tried and true, hit and miss method for finding music. It all boils down to finding some trusted starting points and then letting serendipity take over. Listed below are my current starting points…
Radio shows and podcasts
Human Pleasure @ Hourly Rates – every Monday night at 7pm NZT on RDU98.5FM William Bird Esq. plays two hours of fresh indie tunes. How he keeps up with it all I don’t know but the man is an inspiration to us all (even if he likes to sound grumpy about it).
The Sound Pellegrino podcast – Based in Paris, France the Sound Pellegrino record label is the baby brother of Institubes. The podcast is irreverently and lovingly hosted by DJ Orgasmic & Teki Latex and they play some very lovely house, techno and electro. Damn I would love to see their studio.
Stones Throw podcast – Peanut Butter Wolf’s Los Angeles record label is host to some of my favourite artists (Madlib, Dam-Funk, Madvillain). The podcasts are really mixes and contain some good random selections.
Guardian Music Weekly – More talk than music (which I curse sometimes) but good interviews, conversations and wit.
MP3 blogs, magazines and mailing lists
Rough Trade weekly mailout – heaps of releases and a silly amount of genres listed.
Keytars and Violins – god bless Leighton Jones. Hope he doesn’t mind me plundering his techno and cosmic disco selections for our show. But I can never resist.
Avant-Avant – a curated music selection updated every day at 10:00am GMT
Dub dot dash – Peter McLennan aka Dub Asylum (ex Hallelujah Picassos) writes and DJs. Lately he’s been writing about the 1990s Auckland label Deepgrooves. Catch him on his show “Ring the Alarm” Base FM every Saturday at 10am.
20jazzfunk greats – even after all this time still one of the best.
FACT mixes – courtesy of FACT magazine. Hundreds of classy mixes available free.
And then if you feel nerdy you can do some further research using…
Discogs – perfect for checking back catalogues of labels and artists
The Hype Machine – possibly the simplest way of all. Pop in a favourite artist and you can end up joining the dots for hours on end. It’s how I ended up finding most of my favourite MP3 blogs.
“Huh?” you say…
If you’re wondering why we’re giving our “secrets” away, it’s all in line with the mission statement that our board of directors recently adopted: “We will be truly successful when people have stopped listening to us because they can find the good shiz for themselves.”
THE JOINT RADIO SHOW 