Monday, January 31, 2011

The Lucky Thirteen: 1/31/11

As I'm sure most of you, this past week I recorded my first show for deepellumradio, the first of what I hope to be many to come. With that, however, brings a question: what should become of the Lucky Thirteen? Should I just repeat the same songs here? Is it redundant to have a playlist and a radio show? I have not yet come up with answers for those questions. I guess you could say I'm at a creative crossroads of sorts with the Lucky Thirteen. So I've decided to do what many musicians do when they're needing to put out an album but not sure what to do: release a best of retrospective type deal. I've selected thirteen tracks that, for whatever reason, have been significant musical points in past playlists. I don't know if this is goodbye to the Lucky Thirteen, but it seems a good time for reflection.
And whether or not the Lucky Thirteen continues, I encourage artists to send their mp3's to ghostofblindlemon@gmail.com for either these playlists or the radio show.


  1. "Big Scar", Blackheart Society
    April 20, 2008 was the date of the first Ghost of Blind Lemon playlist. I used the last.fm playlist widget. At that time, there was no flexibility with ordering songs on the playlist. All tracks were done in alphabetical order by artist. As a result, this made the Blackheart Society song the first track on the first playlist here.

  2. "Supernatural", Rahim Quazi
    The playlist has gone through many different formats and platforms: last.fm, MySpace, Hypster, and finally Grooveshark. I feel pretty safe in saying that this track has been used in each one of the formats, and just might have been featured on more playlists than any other song. "Supernatural" is a guaranteed mood picker-upper, and one of the most infectious tracks in recent local music memory.

  3. "Red in the Morning", Menkena
    I've been featuring this song on playlists since it was a demo on their MySpace page. It's finally seen a proper release this year, and all I can say is that it's about time.

  4. "Jack Never Crashes", The Deathray Davies
    I got into a bit of a rut last year, not even doing many Lucky Thirteens for a lengthy period. I finally revived the playlist with a theme very special to me: the early years of the 2000's. Although many people view that period the beginning of the decline of Deep Ellum, that was also when I became a true local music fan. Groups like Chomsky, Sugarbomb, OHNO, [DARYL], and of course The Deathray Davies created my obsession with local music. Sometimes getting in touch with your past really can help you move into the future.

  5. "Everything Dies", Nicholas Altobelli
    I've always been a big supporter of Mr. Altobelli, and I could have chosen many other tracks of his. What makes this one special, however, is the fact that he let me debut this track on my blog. He didn't debut it on Dallas Observer, The Local Edge with Mark, or with anyone else. This was the first time I'd ever gotten a chance to debut a song on the blog. As a result, this song will always be special to me.

  6. "You're No Good", Pale Horse
    This song fared rather well last year, considering that it made it to #1 on my year end countdown. Not too shabby, right?

  7. "Virtue and Vice", The Virgin Wolves
    As you know, one of my favorite things as a blogger is to discover new talent. This past June, I urged new and up and coming acts to email me their mp3's for a special Lucky Thirteen consisting only of acts new to me. This particular track became a big favorite of mine during last year, and it works really well when played as loud as possible. I also feel compelled to give props to Anna Thomas, who was featured on that same playlist, and was almost included on this Lucky Thirteen.

  8. "Tryin' to Have a Good Time", The O's
    The O's have definitely made it on several playlists. My first inclination was to feature "You've Got Your Heart", which came in at #2 on the 2009 year end countdown. I opted for this track instead. Some of that was because I wanted to spotlight their newer material. More than that, it's also because a GOBL fan was so excited over the inclusion of this song that she took a picture of the Grooveshark player and posted it as a Facebook profile pic. That alone is reason enough for it to make this "best of" edition.

  9. "Paper Girl", Katie Carroll
    The first time this song was included on a Lucky Thirteen, there was a slight misspelling of the title. Somehow the word "girl" was spelled as "bag". But just as a rose by any other name smells as swell, this song with any other title sounds just as sweet. Call it "Paper Girl", call it "Paper Bag", or just call it a good song. And that it is.

  10. "Just Wanna Try", Luna Matto
    I was already playing the living daylights out of this track back in the MySpace playlist days. When Luna finally sent me the new mp3s of what was to become Happy Isn't Real, I said on my Facebook account that receiving the tracks was like Christmas day for me.

  11. "Echo and the Pass", Hendrick
    This track not only was my favorite song of 2009, it's made my top 10 favorite songs of all time list. I don't mean a top 10 local tracks list; I mean top 10 songs ever. I can't explain the effect that this song has on me, but I can say that this song strikes a chord within me in a way that few songs do. If you haven't ever listened to the song before, please, do so now.

  12. "sEVEN", Ducado VeGA
    Earlier, I referred to this playlist as sort of a "greatest hits". Like many greatest hits compilations, I decided to slip in a brand new song. I want to save my comments for the next radio show, so I'll simply say that I feel Ducado VeGA will be a major player in the local music scene this year.

  13. "Me Quedo en Blanco", Lauren Adelle with Colin Boyd
    One of the big tricks on compilation albums is to feature one brand new song. Another trick, more often found in box sets, is to include an older never released song. Although this track charted on my top 40 podcast from last year, it never made it onto a single playlist. I always meant for her to be included, but for whatever reason, something always got in the way. Until today, that is.

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