I recently attended an OSU event at the OSU Urban Arts Space called Urban Monthly Mix Exchange. The Mix Exchange is a gathering of fellow music aficionados who dig talking about music, sharing music and making mix CDs. It sounds like something Rob Gordon from “High Fidelity” would come up with, but Rob would have had more of a music snob edge. This is not what the Urban Monthly Mix Exchange is about; it puts together music snobs and music nits, and gets them to talk to one another. Hopefully the latter will get some taste, and the former will come off his/her high, fixed gear bike and accept a band someone else has heard of.

On the way to this burn party, I reveled in the fact that this building is located downtown, instead of on-campus. Which is nice, because going to anything on campus is a hassle coupled with a burden sometimes; it’s also nice because it affords the average student a chance to hang out in the downtown part of Columbus. The OSU Urban Arts Space is a really nice place to hang out too, and they provide many fancy snacks for their Mix Exchange joiners.

The theme of this Mix Exchange was Fist Pump, the meaning of that was my fun task to interpret, so I chose to go with songs I get my power jam on with (they ask you to make a track list with the bands to go with your mix).Then you all sit around and pick your favorite song from the mix, and we YouTube the video. We do that with everyone’s song pick, and it usually ends up becoming a big discussion about what the song reminds you of, or makes you want to do, or the history of yourself when you heard it -- which is priceless.

Then comes the end when we all vote on the next theme for the Mix Exchange. We talk about what the coming month means, what we want our mix to represent and we try to think of catchy titles. Who ever picks the theme title, wins a gift certificate. I happened to be the winner of the Mix Exchange theme, so I got a $15 gift certificate to Magnolia Thunderpussy. Also, the person who makes the prettiest CD cover wins a gift certificate to Impero Coffee Roasters, which so happened to be who I brought to the meeting, Heather Pugh (she thought we were gifting our burns to each other and wrapped it in confetti paper).

The Urban Monthly Mix Exchange is every month, on a Thursday, from 7-8 p.m. at the OSU Urban Arts Space. The next theme is A.C. Coma, the Electric Fan Orchestra, come and bring your mixes to chill out to in the summer, you’ll have a blast or stomp off in a frustrated huff because no one likes Katy Perry. NO ONE.