Today’s mixtape DJ is the brilliant Joan LeMay, creator of our beloved Breakfast Deciders, maker of fine portraits and just an overall excellent, exuberant human being. She also happens to have 17 years as a music publicist under her belt, which makes for an especially pleasing mix. Read (listen?) on for her selections and stay tuned for more deets on her upcoming tome with writer Alex Pappademas, Quantum Criminals, which she describes as “an entirely different type of music book”. Can’t wait! — Team 20x200
Music and art-making has always been my lifeline, my escape hatch, and the framework around which the truest parts of myself have always been lashed. I am a retired but still passionate music universe person; I was a music publicist for 17 years, played in bands, booked and promoted shows, worked at and for labels, all that jazz (which is, coincidentally, mostly what I listen to these days while I paint in order to keep me even but energized but not TOO anything). It's extremely easy to end up painting the energy of the thing you're listening to; I used to do it intentionally, late at night, making messy abstracts to Talk Talk's "Spirit of Eden" or dramatic figurative oils to Rufus Wainwright or whatever. I, in fact, miss that mode of release and should revisit it. Anyway, making this art-paired mixtape (imagine this on a Memorex, with handwriting, not a Mac) was a breezy psychological matching puzzle; the pairings clicked. —Joan LeMay
