Merged

Some years ago Tricia Mesigian was doing merch on one of my tours and we discovered we had some musical tastes and acquaintances in common — Lambchop was one group I remember. Quite a few of these groups were distributed by a small record company in Chapel Hill, NC called Merge. Tricia convinced us to play a club in nearby Carboro, NC called Cat’s Cradle that was a few doors away from a bar/hang she had just opened called The Orange County Social Club. She introduced me to Mac and some other folks from Superchunk/Merge and we all kept in contact. When Merge act Arcade Fire blew up a couple of years ago the label got some extra attention, and probably some extra stress as well. But they, and the band, handled it really well.

The label approached me about a year ago as they were asking various folks to curate compilations from their 20-year history. How they’ve survived 20 years of the music biz wars is a miracle and somewhat amazing. Some might think that having acts like Arcade Fire and She and Him keep the label afloat — and maybe they do — but I know that big success can also overwhelm a small efficient staff. Success can bloat a small company, and then they have to deal with their expanded bulk after the big hit is over.

Somehow Merge has managed to do it.

Anyway. They approached a wide variety of folks — a chef (David Chang), artists (Andrea Zittel and Marcel Dzama), a writer (Jonathan Lethem) and of course musicians (Georgia Hubley and me). We were given iPods loaded with every song ever released on Merge — a clever way to both ingratiate themselves with us and provide us with the tools to do the selecting. It took me a long and pleasant time to rummage through the thousands of tunes. Like everyone, I have favorite bands, but I didn’t want to overrepresent, so I made an effort to discover gems I had never known about.

So, Merge will release a CD of my selections plus a cover version I did of an East River Pipe song. In the meantime, here are pretty much all my selections, plus the backup choices (in case other curators HAD to have a certain song) and a bunch of Merge instrumentals. I almost suggested that my compilation be all instrumentals — to make it cohesive — but I changed my mind.

Congratulations, guys…

—DB
NYC

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