After years of anticipation, The Wire Soundtrack will finally be released on January 8th, 2008, on Nonesuch Records. We are currently in the very final stages of production of the record, and I can say without reservation that the project is everything I always hoped it would be. It turns out David Bither and Bob Hurwitz at Nonesuch are huge Wire fans, and they have given us incredible support and creative freedom to do the record the right way. It includes many of the show’s most important musical signatures, including several versions of Way Down In The Hole, all of the season-end montage songs, a great selection of Baltimore club and hip-hop, The Pogues, Stelios Kazantzidis, a selection of dialog scenes from the show, and the theme music “The Fall” which I composed and so many have asked for over the years. It also includes a gigantic deluxe booklet stuffed with photographs, and liner notes by David Simon, George Pelecanos and Jeff Chang.

I will post more details and a full track list in the near future right here. Until then there’s a bit more info at the Nonesuch blog here:

And in case you were wondering, Season 5 is finished and continues the tradition we have all come to expect from The Wire; the season premiere will be Sunday January 6th.

Here’s looking forward to January!

Season Four of The Wire is in full swing, and we’ve been sleeping on it here at Ten Thousand Things. To get back into the fray, here’s a roundup of previous Wire-related posts, all with temporarily re-activated music links:

Stelios Kazantzidis: Efuge Efuge

Positive Black Soul: Respect the Nubians

Lorem Ipsum: Wax Music Box

Michael Franti: Rock The Nation

The J.B.’s: Paradise

I am the music supervisor for The Wire, and I also wrote the theme music that plays over the end credits, a piece titled “The Fall”. I’ve been receiving dozens of emails from people asking where they can get a copy of The Fall, and I have to reiterate here: that track is not available anywhere, and it has never been released. We are saving it for The Wire soundtrack, which we hope will be released next year along with the recently announced Season Five. In response to the deluge of requests, I have made a page explaining the situation here.

Check back in the coming days for more posts about The Wire. The official site for the show is here. The Wikipedia page for the show is stuffed with fascinating minutiae and can be found here. There’s a very readable new unnoficial blog about the show called Heaven and Here. There was an article about my work on the show in the Baltimore City Paper recently, which you can find here.

I’ve got a few cuts spinning in the Soul Sides Summer Songs extravaganza. If you don’t know Soul Sides, you should stop by there and stock up on some fresh tunes, served regularly with love by Mr. Oliver Wang, aka DJ O-Dub. Soul Sides is one of the towering institutions of the mp3 blogosphere, and for good reason. It was the first blog that I visited regularly for mp3s, and was one of the main inspirations for starting The Ten Thousand Things. So get on over there and get yerself some Summer Lovin’.

I’ll be part of a panel about film music at The Tribeca Film Festival, hosted by Future of Music Coalition. It’s on Wednesday April 27th at 1pm at The Knitting Factory. The other people on the panel are Rick Karr, Tim Robbins, and Michael Rohatyn. Stop by and say hello if you’re in NY.

There’s more info about the panel here, and about The Tribeca Film Festival here.

Right then, here we are at tenthousand.org. If you preferred the old look… well, you should have said something before. Say something now in the comments if you like.

A few things are changed; instead of hearing a file by clicking on the title, you can use the “HEAR THIS NOW” button at the bottom of the post. Clicking on the title will now take you to the permanent link for an individual post (which isn’t of much use, but at least now there IS a permanent link).

The new URL for the rss feed is here. Also, the RSS feed now includes the link to the mp3 file, via the same HEAR THIS NOW button. That means you can get all this content without ever visiting the site if you prefer.

Unfortunately, the site is completely broken in IE on a Mac. Fortunately, my stats show that only three people have ever viewed the site in IE on a Mac. You three have my condolences.

Also there are now archives by category. This will acquire utility over time, as the categories fill up. If you have suggestions for additional categories, please chime in. In fact, please chime in with any suggestions, comments, diatribes, feedback, harangues, haiku, what have you… GO!

I’m taking the weekend off from Blogging. See you on the re-up with more music.

The first person to correctly identify this piece of music wins:

* a copy of Elliot Goldenthal’s Frida score CD

* and a copy of my 2000 CD Shadow Economy.

The prizes have nothing to do with the mystery music; they are not clues. Add your guess to the comments below. Go ahead, make a guess, even if you don’t know. Entries are only accepted in the comments section below.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

UPDATE:

The track is Il Casanova by Nino Rota (see above), and the prize goes to His Excellency Midnyteson aka Shawn Henehan.

Jon Hassell contacted me today and asked me to remove the mp3 file I had posted from his forthcoming record Maarifa Street: Magic Realism 2, and I immediately did so.

Here’s an excerpt from what he said:

“so here’s the deal…i licensed maarifa street to Label Bleu for europe and - in an effort to take control of my life, out of the hands of middlemen - i’m starting my own label, NYEN, for usa/cnd - release 17 may 05. this is very important for me and every track that bleeds into the netstream sabotages my attempt to go it alone and put out all the interesting material that i have in mind to release.

“as i said, i do appreciate the enthusiam and the buzz but please help me out here.”

So until May 17th, we’ll have to make do with low-resolution Real media excerpts which are available from the releasing label in France, Label Bleu. And don’t miss a ton of great stuff at maarifastreet.com.

I look forward eagerly to Maarifa Street and much more music from this great artist in the future.