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Ivan of Noteworthy here again (Monday nights 6:00-8:00). If you read my previous post, I gave a little insight into who I am and why I do my show. Today, I’d like to break down what goes into putting together an edition of Noteworthy. In that first post, I talked about how I try to make sure the songs fit together even though I go through different genres. I’ll be going in to why I chose the songs that I did for the Jan. 19 show and the transitions that I went after.
The beginning of a show will always have a little bit of extra energy. I started off with three artists who have been classically defined as soul in Prince, D’Angelo and Van Hunt, but who also have a lot of elements of rock featured in their music. I just made sure to pick songs that gradually built up on the usage of guitars in order to make the transition to the much heavier Strand of Oaks not feel so jarring. Van Hunt’s “At The End Of A Slow Dance” felt like the right bridge to jump into a more traditional rock portion of the show.
A lot of times, the motivation behind the two hours of music I select is due to one song I’ve been dying to play and I build around it. This week, I knew I really wanted to include Hundred Waters’ “Murmurs” since I enjoy their music a lot but can never seem to fit them into a show as much as I like. I’m drawn to songs with dream pop elements and I think Hundred Waters is kind of underrated in that regard. In order to get to “Murmurs,” I slowed things down and made sure that the surrounding tracks had minimal instrumentation and some hazy qualities to it.
I knew that I also wanted to play JUCE’s “Call You Out,” along with Danity Kane’s “Lemonade” sometime very soon. JUCE is an all-female trio from the U.K. that makes pop music reminiscent of the 1990s and early 2000s. For the longest, I felt that the undeniably fun disco pop of “Burning Up” was their best song by a long mile, but “Call You Out” had grown on me in recent weeks. From there, it was smoother to segue from the R&B/pop of JUCE into some of the more hard-hitting stuff like “Lemonade” and J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” with 18+’s “Crow” serving as sort of a subdued buffer between the two sides.
I had been wanting to use the Flying Lotus/Outkast combo for a few weeks now because of the jazz fusion similarities, but I think that my main priority was finally playing “The Sun Will Never Set On Our Love” by The Juan MacLean from their latest album, In A Dream . It has enough of a slow build where I can pretty much put anything with some groove right before it. Noteworthy always ends with a song that’s seven minutes or longer and it’s great when I can find a newer track that fits the bill. The reason I go with such lengthy closers is because I don’t think they get aired enough unless you listen to classic rock stations and if the song is good, its running time shouldn’t prevent me from sharing it. Plus, a lot of my favorite albums end with long songs and it’s my goal to make each edition of Noteworthy feel like a journey.
If you want to find out what other songs I’ll be playing and how I’ll squeeze them in there, you can check out Noteworthy every Monday right here at uicradio.org from 6PM-8PM and like the Facebook page for the show here.
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