The Monday Mix is an occasional roundup of compilations, live recordings, videos, podcasts, and more by Washtenaw County-associated artists, DJs, radio stations, and record labels.

This edition features sights and sounds from Leon Loft (concerts), Ann Arbor District Library (concerts), Perfect Average (music video), ImCoPav (music video), and Joseph Neely (poetry).

Various artists, Leon Loft concerts
Since 1997, Ann Arbor's Leon Speakers has made the sort of hi-fi listening gear that sometimes gets overlooked in this age of earbuds and MP3s. But audiophiles know that the difference between, say, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue streaming on your computer versus it spinning on vinyl or CD on a well-crafted, well-designed audio system is the difference between consuming French bread from Meijer and French bread in France: no comparison, and not even sure the two items should be considered in the same food group.

The Leon Loft is the company's intimate performance space, and the concerts are usually an invite-only affair because the room is so tiny. The live gigs, featuring national touring artists and breakout Michigan performers, provide content for the locally produced syndicated radio show Acoustic Café, whose website hosts embedded audio streams of the shows, but Leon also posts videos from many of the performances on its YouTube page. A few recent examples are below:

Various artists, AADL concerts
The Ann Arbor District Library's YouTube page is a repository for all sorts of cultural events, from book discussions, author talks, and podcasts to children's programming, drawing classes, and culinary chats. There's also a growing archive of musical performances at AADL, featuring local and national acts alike. In fact, there are probably more concerts at the library than you're even aware of, but you can keep track of upcoming shows here. (As of this writing, not many music events are on the schedule right now, but it's just the usual lull during the holidays—and things really ramp up in the spring and summer.)

Perfect Average, "50 Years From Tomorrow"
Among the many cool offerings for area teens at The Neutral Zone in Ann Arbor is a series of recording, beat-making, singing, and videography classes. I think everyone involved in making the song and video for Perfect Average's "50 Years From Tomorrow" is involved with The Neutral Zone and its B-Side Studios. The charming indie-folk song was written by drummer Trilian Krug, and the video was filmed in various spots in the Ann Arbor area.

ImCoPav, "Ann Arbor" and "Pinball Pete's"
Vaporwave is a musical and artistic subgenre that takes its sonic and visual cues from the 1980s and early '90s. It seems like a cool world where the creators pretend the past 30 years never happened. I like to imagine they're all still surfing the web on Netscape and logging onto AOL Messenger on the daily to talk about how much they like Alf and Saved by the Bell as slowed-down synth-pop and R&B plays in the background. That doesn't seem to be the case for Ohio artist ImCoPav, who claimed in 2018 he'd be exiting the scene with his Hentai Mixtape due to the "chaotic hatred and toxicity within the vaporwave community." RIP to the Dayglo dream? Maybe not because ImCoPav continued to release music through 2023, and in 2022 someone made a video for the artist's Hentai Mixtape song "Ann Arbor" featuring altered images captured around town. ImCoPav must have made a visit to Tree Town before making Hentai Mixtape because he also penned an ode to Pinball Pete's.

Joseph Neely, Slow Rivers: Poems From My Sixties, the story behind the book
Local poet Joseph Neely recently launched his book Slow Rivers: Poems From My Sixties with a reading at Schuler Books in Ann Arbor. In this video, he talks about the inspiration behind his latest collection and readings a few pieces. You can follow his work at theoccasionalpoem.com.

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.