Temporary Exhibit: Cindy Lee Lost Media

We at the Woodbine Chamber are proud to host a temporary exhibition of a piece of lost media that is a nearly three hour long Karen Carpenter documentary created by artist Patrick John Flegel, also known as Cindy Lee.

Realistik Radio Volume 3: Wild Rose in America's Shadow / Karen Carpenter Special

Cindy Lee is an independent music project run by Patrick John Flegel. 2024, the project saw massive a breakthrough into the public concsciousness with their double album Diamond Jubilee, after Pitchfork gave it the highest rating it had given in years. 

This is a 3 hour long audio documentary and DJ mix that was released for free via the artist's CCQSK website, circa March 2020. It was presented as the third episode in a series of radio mixes that explored 60s and 70s pop music iconography, post modern malaise, esoterica, and the music industry. 

The Karen Carpenter Special is a magnum opus for no-one, that teeters in style between an Adam Curtis documentary and a bootleg greatest hits CD box set. The opening act is a 30 minute pieced-together diatribe from writer Aldous Huxley juxtaposed with various hits and jingles from mid-century America. This first act then gives way to a curated exploration of Carpenter interviews, hits, and deep cuts. It cannot be found on Soulseek, the Cindy Lee Discord, the subreddit, or any easy to find page across the internet. 

Well. we found a copy of it on an old mp3 player.

Access this material by visiting our in-person exhibit at 236 Woodbine St, Louisville Ky. We are open for events and classes throughout the week, please check our schedule. Almost any public event is either sliding-scale or free.

Once the exhibit closes, Vol. 3 will return to being inaccessible.

This bonus exhibit opens May 14 during a concert featuring Artifcial Go and will close May 31 at the conclusion of the Decayed Couture fashion show. 

Rules and Vibes

  • At the exhibit will be a QR code to a form. We will follow-up within 24 hours with a link to view the full documentary.

BONUS:

Jackson on the AGPTEK $30 MP3 player and being a Cindy Lee historian

Greetings,

Imagine this. The year is 2021 and after a year stuffed inside away from other humans, I as a possibly reasonable person ordered from Amazon.com a $35 microusb mp3 player from the brand AGPTEK. My quick review of this product: It’s fine. It holds a charge for an okay amount of time. It doesn’t have a great headphone output so it’s definitely not an audiophile device. It quick to turn on and shuffle everything. Going through the menus is a slow experience but I love the bleak minimalism of the blue LCD screen. The bluetooth works fine but my car’s security feature doesn’t like it and refuses to connect. The microSD support is super lacking because you have to access files on it separately from the internal storage. Finally, overall the device tends to lock-up after about 20 minutes. I guess it had a really small RAM storage. Once it’s locked up, all of the buttons stop working and an image of a lock just comes up. You just have to turn it off and back on to reset it.

(The more I looked into what a solid offline mobile audio player, I have discerned that the Corvette of this said topic is the modern line of Sony Walkman, which range in price from $75 to $3700. Please examine this beautiful device.)

I got this because I decided to stop using Spotify and began using Soulseek and Bandcamp, unless maybe someone was sending me a specific song only on Youtube.com.

Otherwise I listened to the radio, records, or internet radio. This mp3 player was for the gym, shuffling in the car, or for solo traveling, where my phones battery life was a finite and important resource.

I had a bunch of different stuff on it, but I dropped off from using it.

It currently looks dirty because in December of 2024, I busted this back out in order to play music at a job site where I was painting. It’s now covered in gold and brown paint that came off my gloves.

Ok now imagine this.

For the uninitated, Cindy Lee is a mostly solo music act speared by the last great Canadian rock guitar player Patrick John Flegel, formerly of the band Women. Cindy Lee exploded in popularity in 2024 when it received extremely glowing reviews from music press for their seventh album Diamond Jubilee, a self-released, self-recorded indie pop magnum opus.

Most notably, the album received the highest annual score from Pitchfork, which had at the same time just had massive layoffs from their parent company’s losses and dwindling traffic. Pitchfork’s high score seemed to suggest a shared sentiment regarding the the nostalgic vision of Flegel’s refreshingly DIY antics.

Now why am I telling you all this?? I have been a vocal fan of Women and Cindy Lee for a very long time, especially Cindy Lee. I’m a major Cindy Lee freak. It’s here I need to apologize to people reading this who know me because I have been incredibly annoying about Cindy Lee since 2015. My satisfaction at being the bearer of this now (ir)relevant knowledge is palpable.

I have to say at this point that most all Cindy Lee media is fairly easy to access. More than its ever been (in 2015 the CCQSK website didn’t work and I individually downloaded each song using youtube-to-mp3 ). One day I even inquired about the broken dropbox links and Pat apologized and said the dropbox was being used to access some animated film made by Chad VanGaalen.

It’s here now I say that yes, the Karen Carpenter sepcial was found on this mp3 player.

In 2024, I saw rumblings of new fans exploring the full Patrick Flegel catalog and the topic of the radio mixes from before Cindy Lee had an NTS show. These were released on CCQSK via a dropbox link and would also be published on mixcloud. (Before Patrick was doing this, I had deeply explored the entirety of the Realistik Studios youtube playlists (great stuff in there and suprisingly little makes it to the NTS stuff.) 

All this material is still accesible on the internet except for Realistik Radio Vol 3: The Karen Carpenter Special. A 3 hour long audio documentary about the Carpenters that features tons of interviews, deep cuts, from an oddly sociological view. It’s an impressive work for someone who’s never really made this type of thing. There is a little bit of preeminence in the structure of Realistik Radio Vol 2, which features tons of interviews over a collage of 60s and 70s hits. Vol 2 is also not available online but in my collection.

People online had asked if anyone had a link, but no one could provide anything other than wayback machine snapshots. I knew I had this at some point on my laptop, but I had wiped it recently. Possibly it was on a random hard drive? I wasn’t certain. I had no backup, so it seemed the episode was lost. 

In 2025, I was playing the mp3 player on shuffle and I noticed Realistik Radio Vol 2 was playing, and realized that MAYBE the Karen Carpenter Special was on the mp3 player buried in a folder. I pulled over immediately and voila, I found it sitting there.

Access to the Vol 3 of Realistik Radio is only available via a temporary exhibit at the Woodbine Chamber, 236 Woodbine St, Louisville, Kentucky.

We are open to the public for events and classes throughout the week, please check our schedule. Almost any public event is either sliding-scale or free.

Once the exhibit closes, Vol. 3 will return to being partially lost to the wider public. 

Finally, in memory Karen Carpenter, we will have provided ways for people to donate to local organizations that support girls learning music.

Louisville Leopards: https://leopardmusic.org/

Out Loud Louisville: https://www.outloudlouisville.com/

That is all. Thank you.


Post script


ok so there’s a little more.

Here’s 10-ish recommendations from my covid MP3 player.

The general guidelines for the songs on this list are that I really associate them with this device and my taste at that time. These are in no particluar order and for you to discover how ever you see best.

  1. Les Rallizes Denudes - Night of the Assasssins

  2. Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour

  3. CC Dust - Never Going to Die

  4. Moor Jewelry - Shadow

  5. Evergace Soundtrack - On The Sunlit Hill

  6. Strawberry Switchblade - Michael Who Walks By Night

  7. Popular Music - Smile

  8. Cindy Lee with Scarlet Rose - Born Too Late (Live) 

  9. Women - either Pinky (CBC Radio) or Jordan (live) or the Veritas album (which is sort of lost media too)

Jackson Kinkead