A monthly podcast about music.
By two people who love music.
Hello, and welcome! We’re Big Al Hammond and Phoebe Fowler, and we’ve been curating a monthly, changing music playlist since July of 2020, and starting in March of 2023, we added a podcast.
Maybe our favorite themed playlists are when we find what we call “unconventional covers”. Songs you might recognize, but presented in a new (and sometimes almost foreign?) way. We think this batch (our volume three of this format) is out best ever, and at least a few of these are huge improvements on the originals. All eleven are fun and interesting takes on songs you might already know.
Welome to (unplanned) Alumni Month here in ItD,O Land. Al sort of intentionally made all his submissions former playlist faves, but it turns out that all eleven of our songs this month are from artists who have been in our playlist before. It’s a theme… without really intending to be a theme. Plus, we’re attempting to learn how to use some new microphones this month (ahhh, technology!), so hopefully we sound a little better, while remaining true to our uncompromisingly unprofessional standards!
Every eleven months, we go through our previous playlists and pick out the favorites of our favorites. Plot twist: Phoebe can only submit songs that were originally Al’s, and vice versa. So we end up with not only eleven great songs, but eleven songs that both of us feel a deep connection to. In this special bonus episode of our podcast, we’ll talk about these songs, why we love them, and what makes a song good enough to be a “Greatest Hit”.
Where in the podcast universe can you find Vic Chesnutt, Howlin’ Wolf, Lemoncello, and Doeschii, all in the same episode? You’re lookin’ at it! Our first playlist of the new year brings a great variety of artists… seven returning ones, and four great new additions too!
This month’s additions feature six new artists to our playlist, and five acts who are back for their second appearance. (And one new version of a previously heard song). Also, this month we’re changing our format around a little… a little less of the playlist play-by-play, and a little more general talking about various music stuff. We’re still loving making our Spotify playlist every month, but wanted to shake things up a little here on “the pod”. Hope you enjoy!
After bringing you a bunch of returning artists last month, Phoebe brought all new musicians to her submissions for our November playlist. Al contributed some new ones too, as well as new releases from our two most honored artists. We hope you enjoy these eleven songs.
October brings us lots of returning artists to the playlist. Beirut, Harry Nilsson, and the amazing Allison Russell are among the seven returnees we’ve got for you this month. This is might not the most cohesive collection we’ve presented. We don’t care. Here are eleven good songs for you…
Sad to say that Frank, your favorite podcasting primate, is missing from our ceremony yet again. This has resulted in embarrassing monkey impersonations and much recrimination against Phoebe, who again forgot to bring him when we recorded this episode. Somehow in spite of this adversity, we managed to come up with yet another damn good playlist and podcast for you. A few returning artists, a bunch of new and obscure artists (though maybe fewer great videos this month?). It’s what we do for you.
August brings us to the 50th monthly version of the In the Distance, Oblivious Playlist! And with summer in full force here, Phoebe and Al have never been more hot and humid with their music choices. They’ve settled on a few returning artists, a bunch of new artists, a new attitude, some cicadas, and a dose of happy pills!
Frequent Obliviites know that we sometimes take our show on the road to record in odd places like beach motel rooms or state park campgrounds. This month we carried our laptops, mascots and various sounds effects up to the roof of the OML Studios for our July episode. So listen up as we bring you you eleven great songs, plus bonus sirens, traffic, train horns, jet flyovers, and other general city sounds! We always try and keep it entertaining for you, and remember, “this is not a professional podcast”.
June brings you another one of our themed playlists! Even in our regular playlists, we love finding more obscure and under-the-radar music, so all the artists we’re featuring this month had to be under 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify (and never featured in our playlist before). We think we found you some good ones that you’ve (hopefully) never heard before? Let us know what you think!
