There’s a charming new format flourishing at the intersection of new technology and old: artist-curated personalized soundtracks with engaging narratives on free, global online radio.
Go to Apple’s new radio, which you can find via iTunes on your handiest device, and there you’ll hear a weekly radio show, not streamed but scheduled at a set time, featuring a mix of storytelling narrative and music.
Old-school live radio meets the internet. Consider it an update on the vintage request line, “this one’s going out to the one I love … “
“St. Vincent’s Mixtape Delivery Service” airs Tuesdays at 7 p.m. locally (repeated Wednesdays at 7 a.m.) on Beats 1. Beats 1 is a 24-hour live station hosted and programmed by DJs and artists, not unlike Spotify or Rdio. You can also locate it on YouTube, Spotify and elsewhere.
“St. Vincent’s Mixtape Delivery Service” is a well-conceived program in which a request from a listener explaining his or her musical desires is answered with a personally designed playlist from Annie Clark (stage name, ).
The artist-curated show introduces fans to new music along with an interview and narrative good enough to exist as a public radio-style show.
Clark tells the first show’s letter writer, an 11-year-old girl named Piper, “The line in this letter that made me so happy is you said you have singing parties by yourself at night. What happens?”
The girl describes singing into her hairbrush and dancing around her room to various songs.
“Piper, you’ve got great taste!” Clark then offers “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite from 1990, something she figures the pre-adolescent missed but would like. The mixtape also includes Devo’s “Whip It” from 1980 and Chaka Kahn’s “I Feel for You” from 1984. And on to David Bowie’s 1983 “Let’s Dance.”
Piper’s musical education is now expanded and the audience has had a compelling modern radio interlude. St. Vincent’s interviewing style is encouraging and sweetly nonjournalistic. (“You’re just the coolest kid ever!” she tells her first mixtape recipient.)
The features a mixtape for a grandmother-granddaughter cross-country road trip, including Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam” and “America” by Simon and Garfunkel.
“I have so many questions for you, Adelaide,” Clark begins. “Now, is our goal here to satiate grandma as well as you, are we trying to forge some exquisite middle ground … ?”
Covering cultural moments, personal stories, music history and more, the hour is wonderfully, even surprisingly engrossing. Speculation about grandma trucker’s 1970s on-the-road sex life is the least of it.
Last month, St. Vincent posted a call for submissions on her Facebook page:
“Sometimes, the best remedy for what ails us is the perfect mixtape. So, St. Vincent would like to create a personalized ‘mixtape’ just for YOU. Simply click on the link below and submit a paragraph (50 words or less) describing what in your life would benefit from a St. Vincent curated playlist. Submissions will be anonymous, names and any personal details will not be made public.”
From there flow some terrifically inventive hours, pushing the connections among radio, music and storytelling.
Apparently after the pleasures of streaming and on-demand (which brings many to one) comes a return to radio (one to many). And everything old is new again.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830, jostrow@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ostrowdp
