This was a renaissance year for us. As you probably already know, after not posting a new episode since November 2006, most people had assumed that MJR was as dead as the cassette tape. But 2008 proved we were not only alive, but setting up for an even more productive future.

Continuing the four episode-per-year ratio we had in ‘05 and ‘06, this past year really saw us step up our production value. At least we thought so— especially since we were still working with the same computers and software we used for Episode 1.

Of course, that won’t be the case for 2009. We’ve not only made our first financial contribution to MJR this past month in adding a MIDI controller to our arsenal, but should also be updating both of our computers very soon. For us, this is pretty exciting as we’ll finally be able to truly control the creation and editing process for all of our compositions without too many limitations.

Thus, 2009 is looking like a potentially phenomenal year for MJR. Why is that? Because we have set the ultimate goal for ourselves that by the end of 2009, we will put together our first album of “mostly” original material. This will be in contrast to the podcasts, which should become even more sample based than before.

And that’s the summary of ‘08 and the forecast for ‘09. As always, thanks for listening and we hope to have some fun stuff for you starting in January. Cheers.

Nevertheless, it’s not like I’m sitting around playing Xbox and watching VH1. I’ve been keeping busy with multiple projects (both creative and house-wise), so I’m hoping for a release of MJR 11 before we leave for Lollapalooza on July 31… of course, I could be smoking peyote on that one. You know how my podcasting releases go.

But this is the price I pay to give the podcast a more timeless feel. A fact that you may not have noticed is that there is a very low level (if any) of current events in MJR. This is done on purpose so that you can listen to the podcast many times, and not feel like we are talking about some event that happened six months ago.

See? Don’t ya feel better about us taking so long in producing new episodes of MJR… we’re looking out for your best interests, even when you don’t know them yourself. As the Radiohead line goes, all these things will one day swallow whole. But as we see it, if you’re going to get swallowed, we’d rather be a nice juicy steak than a piece of birthday cake. Peace.

Here we are, nearly a year removed from the last MJR podcast, and at a loss how it has been so long since we were here. Worse yet, all of the upgrades we planned on making to the podcast were never capitalized upon.

As S.Rod and I sat in our living room on Columbus Day morning listening to where we left off here (MJR #8), it became apparent to us that this was never really about gaining an audience, or trying to market our musical creations. Doing MJR was a litmus test, a hypothesis to see if this creative outlet would lend us more perspective.

The good news: it did enlighten us, both in our present love for creativity and music, and our desire to leave something unique behind on the web.

The better news: we have about 25 compositions in half-shape to put together for a MJR #9. It may not have any radio-friendly unit shifters, but as I mentioned, that’s not what this is about. In truth, it may be us throwing down a bucket of concrete and signing our names in it. But if someone builds a wall in front of it, it’s really no big deal.

Live and let live. Cheers.

The first episode of Magic Junk Radio launched on August 30, 2005. Now a year later, I’m taking a look back at how it all came to be, as well as the new direction that the podcast is headed in months to come.

I will begin honestly: podcasting and sampling came to me by accident. While I was always interesting in making compositions, I always lacked the knowledge to do so. Then in July 2005, I had written a post for the multimedia website Blogcritics.org called “iPod Death Scenarios” and it was here that a comment and response started it all. Here was the exchange:

Lisa (7/6/05, 01:12 PM): Hilarious, Mark! This was too funny.
Have you considered podcasting this post….?

Mark Sahm (7/6/05, 02:03PM): Lisa, if only I knew how.

When I reread my comment the next day, I didn’t like that I did not know how. At the time, I thought podcasting required some type of code to write, like CSS or some other difficult webform that I didn’t have the patience to learn. But after a little research at your friendly neighborhood Wikipedia, I realized that podcasting was actually quite easy, and a cheap artform at that. I bought a $20 USB microphone, plugged in, and went to work in GarageBand.

I offered up my first podcast as a ‘creative crossover’ to the Blogcritics community. Despite bracing for an onslaught of flames, surprisingly no one told me that the podcast sucked. So I decided to make another, and the rest is now history. My efforts (with some help from the lovely Ms. S. Rod) ended up stretching into the interesting capture of a year in the podcast life that you see below.

While other podcasters produce an episode every month or every week, my construction is a little more labor intensive, since each track takes me anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks to finish, depending on the complexity. That and being able to get 5 different samples to sync right!

Still, to have produced 7 full episodes (or 86 tracks worth) in a year’s time is pretty good for me. Knowing that (a) there are about 30 unfinished/unrefined MJR tracks sitting around my archive, and (b) I took a break of nearly 4 months between Episodes 5 and 6, I’m happy with what I produced.

But like Tyler Durden recommends, may I never be content. While getting better at the audio craft (or whatever you’d like to call it), S.Rod and I have concluded that we needed to refocus our future digital music efforts into strengthening the front:

• Magic Junk Radio will now focus not only on our sample-based tracks, remixes, and our mini-dialogues, but houses all of our more original and lyrical tracks.

All in all, I don’t know what the future will hold for music in my arsenal of creative efforts. But no matter what, I know I enjoyed making the close facsimiles that I did, and I hope I can polish them up to be presentable on a professional level one day. Thanks for listening. Peace.