Understanding Records Mixtape

We received over 40 submissions for our Understanding Records home recording contest earlier this month, which was honestly about 30 more than I expected to receive. I rounded up a panel of judges here in the office--3 males and 4 females, to make sure any latent male rockism was balanced out--and asked them each to pick their top 10 tracks and rank them in order of preference. For each judge's selection, #1 picks received 10 points, #2 picks received 9 points, and so forth on down to #10 picks receiving 1 point. (The excel spreadsheet I made for scoring this was awesome.)

The songs were all very very good, the judges' selections varied far and wide, and the competition was particularly fierce right at the cut-off point. It's worth noting that no song received points from each of the 7 judges, and two judges' #1 picks did not make the cut! We had a tie for the #10 slot, so I've included all 11 winners, plus two bonus tracks: one from Gabi of Stickers, an ex-Continuum employee who copyedited the first 50-odd books in the 33 1/3 series, and one from my own archives.

Each of the winners will receive a copy of Understanding Records plus one 33 1/3 volume of their choice.

TRACK LIST:
1. Killing Time - The Hate My Day Jobs website
2. She's Got a Fu Manchu - Yankee Power facebook / myspace
3. Golden Age - Beat Radio website
4. Plastic Flowers - Economy Class Sunshine myspace
5. Scrambled Eggs - The Conduits website bandcamp
6. Disappear - Paul Roub website
7. Yukon Blues - The Milkweeds website
8. Some Clothing, Some Money, and a Name - The Hotel Comforters website
9. Spinning Wheels - Black Swan Carpentry
10. Reason (demo) - Slopes of Distant Hills (recorded by George Reisch) website
11. Make Believe - Tom Hamill website

Extra CD Tracks:
12. Art School - Stickers myspace
13. Fresh Kills - Sonic Recycling Program geocities closed down a few years ago

Click here to listen online and download individual tracks.

There are a number of excellent songs that that didn't make the final eleven, but will not be deleted from my ipod any time soon. I'd like to encourage anyone who didn't make the list to post a link to their song in the comments field, and I'd like to encourage the rest of you to check them out.

Thank you for the music, everyone. Enjoy!