So where was I? Over the past year I’ve heard lots of really incredible things. Most of it not music, I have to admit, but some of it. A year is enough, though. My palate is clean. My head is clear. Time to get back in the game. In honor of the radio tuning of choice during my great music hiatus (NPR), this week’s theme is “Wait, Wait” after the weekend news quiz show. Turns out a lot of news went down this year. Hope you didn’t miss it while lost in your headphones. It was cool.

(Besides, as luck would have it, edition #33 was “Breaking the Silence” which is kind of ironic. At the time I wrote “Just like music is a great way to keep yourself tuned in to time, the premise under which I started writing my columns here, silence is the only way to understand the context in which your music sits.” It makes slacking off for a year feel almost noble.)

Triple Play 34 [Listen Here]

Taking a step back from the music blender of Radio Exile I got to test a few long standing theories I posed in this space. For example, yes the good stuff does bubble up as I found when the RE staffers made their year end picks and I had listened to and liked the stuff at the top of the consensus voting. I was also right about DRM. There was a middle ground and it it didn’t involve using technology to limit rights. I was wrong about CDs though. Going to a store and dealing with shrink wrap proved too annoying. Every CD I bought over the last 13 months, I bought on Record Store Day 2008 or Record Store Day 2009.

Songs featured this week are:

Beirut – “The Akara”
Deer Tick – “Spend the Night”
Bob Mould – “Argos”

All of these artists are good options for your ear, but the songs have nothing obvious in common. The choices were driven by the audio snippets from the November 23 edition of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” I kind of like using the found audio. I might talk less this year. Not less than the past year, but… you know.

Last 5 posts by Greg Wind

• Triple Play 35: The Passing of Ernie Barnes - May 4th, 2009
• Beating the Drum - Mom to Universal: "Let's Go Crazy" Again - April 28th, 2008
• Common Materials: Austin Kleon - April 25th, 2008
• Beating the Drum -- From the "We Told You So Department" - April 23rd, 2008
• Between the Notes: April 19 is Record Store Day! - April 17th, 2008