Well my friends, it’s that time of year again!  November is a key month in the world of Aaron Loves Meghan… it’s the month where we started dating, when we got engaged, and, of course, when we got married.  And every year around this time we present our latest Aaron Loves Meghan mixtape! 

For the newbs, on Nov. 17th, 2007, Megs & I were married and at our wedding (which I iPod DJ’d) we gave everyone there a mixtape called Aaron Loves Meghan and, of course, posted it up on tsururadio. Since then, we’ve had infinite fun creating a new mixtape together every year, some with themes, some with just the music we love to listen to together, whatever, and present it to you…

This time, as you can tell from the photo above, things got a bit messy… Thank the lardy I had my pencil handy and my lovely assistant to wind that cassette back up, eh?  

So, for our 5th volume, we each put together a mini-mixtape for each other.  Mine is Side Aaron Loves Meghan, her’s is side Meghan Loves Aaron.  Then, when we were all done, we put them together and BLAMO! Awesome-o lovey dovey romantical super good times happy hour!!!

And yes, I know we are a little late getting this mixtape up for you guys… We’ve been a little busy with Baby going to Hong Kong for two weeks, then me to going China for two weeks, then both of us going on a MUCH needed vacation to the Galapagos Islands for a week (which was epic! Like a beachy vacation meets a tropically exploring vacation meets nature’s classroom).  We even made a short film for you!  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R91zsFpxas

Don’t worry, as per usual it’s not a “talky” and it’s soundtracked by one my favourite songs, “2080″ by Yeasayer!

Okay, back to the mixtape!

Now, just as a little reminder… don’t read too much into each song!  Sure, some are blatant love songs, of course they are, but some are just songs we love to sing together or to/at each other – though you can certainly see where October, where we only saw each other for one day, played quite a role in the music selection…

And with that, I think I’ll get to hurrying up to shuttin’ up and get this music going on as…

Tsuru & The Bride Present…

Aaron Loves Meghan Vol. 5: Aaron Loves Meghan Loves Aaron Loves…

SIDE A: Aaron Loves Meghan

1. Noah And The Whale – 2 Atoms In A Molecule
2. Allo Darlin – Kiss Your Lips
3. Iron And Wine – Tree By The River
4. REM – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
5. Primal Scream – Movin’ On Up
6. Rachel Goodrich – Na Na Na
7. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Two Lovers
8. Beirut – Port of Call
9. Feist – Graveyard
10. Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes – Home
11. Hard Drugs – Aline And Lloyd (Reprise)

SIDE B: Meghan Loves Aaron

1. Living Sisters – (You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am
2. Charles May And Annette May Thomas – Keep My Baby Warm
3. The Head And The Heart – Honey Come Home
4. Etta James – I Just Want To Make Love To You
5. Paula & Karol – Birds and Bees
6. Jenny And Johnny – Scissor Runner
7. The Pipettes – I Love You
8. Fiona Apple – So Sleepy
9. Summer Fiction – Throw Your Arms Around Me
10. My Morning Jacket – Wonderful (The Way I Feel)
11. Jarvis Cocker – Baby’s Coming Back To Me

That’s it! I hope you enjoy as much as we do… Here’s to year number 5 being as wonderful as each that preceded it!

Love,
Aaron & Meghan

Photography by me.

I first really fell in love with REM with Green. 1988, I was what, 15? It was before the years of prog when I was still wading through the music world, trying all kinds of stuff, whatever tickled my cockles.  I loved “Stand”, hard. Bought the record and wore the fuck out of the vinyl! Then I saw an uncensored version of “Pop Song ’89″ on a friend’s cable late one night and well yeah, I was a smitten kitten.

I didn’t dig into their older stuff at the time, I was still just a poor kid finding out what’s what, pulling away from Top 40, pulling away from the kids around me, dabbling in whatever sounded decent that anyone had a copy of a copy of a casette that I’d get my hands on.

But before I could really dig my teeth into them, Out Of Time came out and I was the first person to call them sell-outs. Big hits, MTV awards, rap, and “Shiny Mother Fucking People”. I said some mean things to my girlfriend about the album she loved.  Of course, later, I learned to love that album.

Then Automatic For The People came out when I was living in this garage apartment in Tampa, doing the chef thing, riding bikes & my moped, living life (mostly at Joffrey’s, the local coffee shop).  It was with AftP that I finally started digging into their back catalogue, mostly thanks to my neighbor who I’d sit on our little porch with and drink beers listening to him play old REM albums.

It was after that my love of REM became a genunine relationship. Looking back, it’s strange, I can remember where I was, what I was doing, etc, the first time I heard each of their new albums. From Green to Collapse Into Now.  Strange, eh? I remember sitting in my living room playing New Adventures for the first time. I remember being in my car on a long drive home listening to Reveal.  I remember having friends over for a dinner and playing Up in the background for the first time.   I remember listening to Monster back in college in my apartment before digging back into studying and watching the premiere of the video for “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth” and seeing Stipe with his newly stiped hair.  God I loved that album.

Wow.

And I love all their albums. From the mumbling old gems to the experimental trilogy post-Berry, to these last two kicks in the nuts, and everything in between. My favourites? Ooo… tough one, but I’ll narrow it down to three, Green, Automatic,  and Reveal (yes, Reveal, a totally underrated amazing album, fuck off). I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. When you take into consideration their quality, quantity, & longevity, REM is easily the greatest American band… ever.

Yep.

Deal with it.

But sadly the boys have decided it’s time to move on from the band, do their other things instead of forcing it forward, good for them. But what does that mean for me, the life long fan??? One word: Mixtape.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy I hope you are ready for this! But I’m going to wager dollars to donuts you ain’t! Here’s what we did, we simply built the best REM (according to me) mixtape possible, 2.5 hours broken into 4 sides covering all the full releases and a bunch of gems in between! It’s the best god damn compilation of REM songs ever, for casual fans, people who lost track over the years, hard core fans, and people who ask, “R.E.What?”, all of you, it’s just awesome stuffed with epic!  Yeah, you could say I’m pretty happy with the way it came out.

Stipe & the crew, thanks for an amazing 31 years, you soundtracked my life for 23 of them and I’m eternally grateful. Now, let’s send them off in proper tsuru-style as…

tsurufoto presents…

Calling All In Transit: The Very Best Of REM (According To Me)

Side A: Crazy What You Could’ve Had

Side B: Look Up What Do You See?

Side C: And Change Is What I Believe In

Side D: See You In Heaven If You Make The List

Full zip of the tracks.  ;)

Feels good, doesn’t it??? Feels… fine.

Cheers,
Aaron Tsuru
Follow @tsururadio

Said The Whale – Goodnight Moon

Feist – The Bad In Each Other

;)

Well my friends, the time has come. The break the rules and have some fun. It’s been a nutty 4+ someodd years over here at tsururadio, we’ve gone through a lot of changes, did everything from mixtapes to vinyl rips, contests to out and out giveaways, we always tried to have fun and keep ourselves in check that we are just music bloggerin’, like 4 kabillion other kids out there on the wide world interconnected super highway of love canals.

But as the wise Canadian Nelly Furtado once sang, all good things come to an end.  But, as some other wise human probably said, for every door that closes another opens unless it’s the door to a serial killers basement in which you are probably fucked.

(Ir)regardless… every now and then I find its important to step back and take stock at what the fuck you are doing, then ask yourself, what needs to be cut, what needs to go, and what wants my time & energy.  I’ve been a photographer for the past 20ish years. Sometimes a hobbyist, other times an enthusiast, but always a passionist.  And for the past 6 months or so, I knew it was coming, I could feel it deep down in the cockles of my balls, that it was time to leave this crazy little thing called music bloggerin’ behind.

Yep.

We’re done.

Why?

A thousand reasons.  It could be all the white noise of music bloggerin’.  There are so many out there all blogging the same shit, you certainly don’t need this odd ball doing it too, eh? Twitter definitely didn’t help.  I love twitter, I really do, but when some crappy ass PR email hits your inbox and suddenly a thousand copy/paste tweeted blog posts hit the stream, well, let’s just say my desire to listen to it kind goes down the shitter with my morning poo.  But then again, I don’t do the PR thing. I don’t do the festival thing. I don’t get starry-eyed over the latest hyped band and what is at once my niche is also my downfall. I love music with all my heart, it’s been so critical to so much of what I am, what I do, what I think, but as much fun as I had sharing so many finds over the years, writing about music is just not my passion.

No… at the end of the day, it was my ego that a) kept it going and b) makes me want to shut it down.  You see, many of us bloggerin’ fools would probably call it day right now, it gets pretty chore-like at times, but the one thing that keeps you from pulling the plug and going to, say, write for a friend’s blog or whatever is the ego.  This is MY blog.  I’m famous in my teeny tiny slice of the internet for it.  Yeah, not easy to let that go.  But, here’s the thing for me that seeded in my brain last year.  I blog about music, but it’s not my music, these aren’t my creations.  The words are, sure, and to a smaller degree the mixtapes are a bit, but when my heart lies in takin’ pictures and making my zines (Issue #8 is over to the right & we just released our MICRO), things that are my creations, the little marks I’m leaving on this silly little globe (see, my ego again), the whole music bloggerin’ thing seemed silly for me.

There are people out there who have a genuine passion for writing about music and they are wonderful, even when they drive me bat shit, but as much as I thought I would become that, it just isn’t me.

Shhh… don’t cry because I’ve got good news.  Though tsururadio is dead, tsurufoto still lives!!!

Sure, it’s littered with all my nudie photography, but going forward, it will also be the site for all my mixtapes as well as the usual songs and viddies that inspire me in my little day-to-day.  WOOOT!  You can subscribe here:

And you know what? Maybe you aren’t all about nekkid people & nudiezines? That’s cool (weird, but cool). You can still find me tweeting & facebooking & google+ing all kinds of things musical! AND, of course, there’s still our super secret society of music geeks & freaks (shhh… it’s a secret).  So, you see? You aren’t losing a blog, you are gaining a more focused and happy Tsuru and that’s a good thing.

BUT.

It wouldn’t be very tsururific to drop a load of big news on ya without an accompanying mixtape, now would it?  Of course not.  Especially since we are the reigning king of the mixtape battles — Not once, not twice, but THRICE bitches!!! What was going to be just our “July Mixtape” became our final mixtape for the site… almost bitter sweet, eh? But, to get the full effect, I recommend just pushing play on the big fat fatty link right below of the full mixtape all mixed up with a few special secret gems and what not.  But, if you are just here for mp3s, you probably aren’t reading this and are already downloading the individual mp3s. It’s cool.

Alright. That’s it!  Last thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you to all the wonderful people I’ve met (online and in real life) and all of you who have left sweet comments here and there via the infinite number of methods the intertubes have given us.  Without you guys, this would’ve been dead ages ago.   I love you guys!  You are all amazing….  I’ll see you at the avenue for hanging out of your choice!

Enough mushy pants! Let’s get on with the music, shall we, as…………………………………

tsururadio proudly presents… I am the passenger

PSST…. CLICK PLAY FOR THE FULL MIXTAPE, IT CONTAINS SECRET BONUS SHIT!

01 Neutral Milk Hotel – Song Against Sex (Vinyl)
02 Portugal. The Man – So American
03 Traveling Wilburys – Tweeter And The Monkey Man
04 Mother Mother – Chasing It Down
05 Mister Heavenly – Your Girl
06 Pulp – Help the Aged
07 Smith Westerns – Smile
08 David Lowery – Marigold
09 Queen – You’re My Best Friends
10 Death Cab For Cutie – You Are a Tourist
11 Okkervil River – It Ends With A Fall (Vinyl)
12 The Format – Inches And Falling
13 Ezra Furman & The Harpoons – Teenage Wasteland
14 Nick Diamonds – Gone Bananas
15 Beirut – Santa Fe
16 Trips and Falls – This is All Going to End Badly
17 The Killers – All These Things I’ve Done
18 They Might Be Giants – Destination Moon
19 The Decemberists – The Perfect Crime #1
20 R.E.M – The Passenger

- Zip of individual tracks -

That’s it! Thank you everyone, it’s been fun! I’ll see you over at tsurufoto. Until then, go ride your bikes, go take lots of pictures (of your boobies) and we’ll see you all before long…

Cheers,
Aaron aka Tsuru
Follow @tsururadio

Please stand by for a very important announcement concerning tsururadio with accompanying mixtape Monday July 17th at 10am

Handsome Furs – What About Us (uncensored) from Sub Pop Records on Vimeo.

New Handsome Furs video for “What About Us” the uncensored version, of course. If you want the censored version, go fart around on youtube.

HA!

Cheers,
Aaron

I haven’t even listened yet, but I had to share…. Nick Diamonds of Unicorns, Islands, etc, etc, etc, has a brand new solo album out over at Bandcamp and it’s name your own price (for now).

Listen now & go buy, get, steal, whatever….

Love,
Aaron

Allo my friends… you got a second? Good. Can we talk about this new album by Beirut called The Rip Tide? Good!

Oh my… I like Beirut, but like a few of you out there in internetland, they were a band to take in doses, perfect for a mixtape, or a couple songs back to back. Hell, they were perfect for the end of our wedding mixtape. So, word of the new Beirut album floating aboot and “East Harlem” making it’s lovely way into our lovely hearts, I took it all with a grain of pepper and maybe one of salt. Will this be another beautiful yet a whole lot to handle eastern block style music?

Only time (and a leak) will tell and leak it did. 9 little songs, barely clocking in over a half an hour later I/we were smitten. But, it was a chill night over laptop speakers filled with arts & crafts, so how would it fair with a proper ass listen???

Oh me oh my.

Beautiful… sublime… and non-stop repeat. Its Beirut through and through but there’s a hint of easy to digest “pop sensibility” — you like that phrase, eh? — that helps the medicine go down and I’m eating this shit up! Yeah. Quite lovely. I found a couple soundcloud uploads that are probably mostly illegal so enjoy!

Then go get your hands on a copy, eat it up yum, THEN almost 2 months from now, go buy it. I’m thinking this will be the sex and total tits on vinyl and you should too.

Beirut – East Harlem by Revolver USA

Beirut – Goshen by Alan Williamson

Beirut – Port of Call by daftdreamy

Cheers,
Aaron

The computer graphics during the chorus blew my mind. Michael Bay ain’t go nuffin’ on this shit!