Good Morning Folks. I hope you had a most excellent weekend. Things are a bit weird here because things have taken a turn towards the cold. While I did not get any, my folks who are a bit further north got some snow yesterday. I am still in a holding pattern, but rapidly running out of time. This coming Thursday, I am scheduled to get a chemo port installed, and as a result, I am losing hope that there is a “surgery only” path forward. As a result, I have been in a fairly dour and sedate mood, and this week’s mixtape fits that pattern. I continue to confront the concept of my own death because the thought of being severely immunocompromised, on top of my normally malfunctioning immune system, is some scary shit. I know I can make it through this, and I have started making plans for some things I am going to do when I am on the far side of this. For example, I have a group of friends in the Chicago area, and I want to make a pilgrimage up to see them. I also really want to make the trek down to see “Erasure” in the Houston area, but that was already on the table since that trip got cancelled due to all of this bullshit happening. I figure so long as I can keep some good plans in my mind, I can focus on those while I deal with whatever awful crap I have to deal with in the coming weeks.
28 – Mired Moody Mindset
This mix largely exists because of an anchor song, like these mixtapes often start. I was sitting in the car listening to the radio before going to a doctor’s appointment, and “Sultans of Swing” came on, and I stalled long enough to listen to the entire song. I’ve always liked Dire Straits and specifically that song, and it made me realize that I had not really dived into a lot of the more moody and almost wistful in a melancholic manner style of music that I really seem to love. For example, up until this point, there was not a single list that I felt I could really place Big Dipper by Cracker on, or the song that always brings me to tears… Jimi & Stan by Strand of Oaks. These mixes show you a piece of my soul each time, and this one… drills straight through the core of me. It is through these mixes that I have also found a lot of community with people who have listened to them and struck up conversations about songs that they have not thought about in decades. If I am going to get through this, I am going to need a lot more of that community, which is a challenge given how fucking awkward and introverted I am. Thanks for being here throughout the years, and if you regularly listen to these mixtapes… thanks for sharing in my nonsense. I guess I will stop stalling and get to the track list.
Track List
01 – (Don’t Fear) The Reaper – Blue Öyster Cult
02 – The Chain – Fleetwood Mac
03 – Heroes – David Bowie
04 – Sultans of Swing – Dire Straits
05 – Message in A Bottle – The Police
06 – Who’ll Stop The Rain – Creedence Clearwater Revival
07 – Gimme Shelter – The Rolling Stones
08 – Little Wing – Jimi Hendrix
09 – Big Dipper – Cracker
10 – The Night We Met – Lord Huron
11 – Red Hill Mining Town – U2
12 – Here Comes Your Man – The Pixies
13 – Cherry Bomb – John Mellencamp
14 – Jimi & Stan – Strand of Oaks
15 – The Waiting – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
It feels like I am working through the stages of grief in mixtape form recently. I just might not be going through them in exactly the same order as normal. I might be in a bit of the bargaining phase because I have been doing a bunch of things in the hopes of improving my success through chemo. I know the Tirzepatide that I am on causes muscle loss, so I have started doing a bit of light weight training, and on some level, I am hoping the universe notices that I am trying and gives me a fucking break. It is weird how fast this mix came together, honestly, because some of the songs are ones that I have not really thought about in years, but suddenly popped into my mind as I was assembling this. For example, Red Hill Mining Town is phenomenal, but I had not thought about that since the album it came out on was on regular rotation for me. Similarly, Cherry Bomb by John Mellencamp is a phenomenal track, but it had not popped into my head in decades. I have decided that I will be disowning “The Librarian” though because he referred to this as “Yacht Rock”, and I present that there is not a single Christopher Cross or Michael McDonald track on this list. This is way more thoughtful than that particularly vapid movement of music.
I have a few more posts that I know I want to make this week, including talking about a book that is sort of awful but at the same time thought-provoking enough that I want to talk about it. As always you can see the full list of my mixes over on the archives.
Mixtape Mondays Archive
The post Mixtape Mondays: Mired Moody Mindset appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! This weekend was a bit wild. I had a tornado pass within a mile of the house, and then, in my very sleep-deprived state, I decided that it was a good idea to record two podcasts on Saturday. One of them was obviously AggroChat, but the other was sitting down with a long-time friend of mine from High School that I have referred to by the enigmatic title of “The Librarian”. Better known in some circles by Kaleon or others as Jason, this is someone who has known me for an extremely long time, and as a result, this show gets a bit more personal than normal. Every episode ends up revealing something about me, just by the nature of the conversation. This show, however, goes into some extremely “real” places with my past and the past of “The Librarian”.
This is the first episode in what I hope is a series of brand new recordings. Originally, I was going to sit down and record with all of the AggroChat crew, and I still want to finish that out. The challenge is always timing. This took up roughly two hours of real-world time that got edited down into an hour and twenty minutes once I compressed the silence. It is sometimes a challenge to figure out a time when you can spend that much time talking to a person and recording it. Hopefully, you enjoy this episode and will be around whenever the next one drops as well.
The post Bel Folks Stuff – Episode 10 – Featuring the Librarian appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. This Mixtape is a week late because, quite honestly, last Monday I forgot entirely that I had one sitting waiting in the pocket to be released. However, it seems like destiny might have shone upon me because this morning is going to be a bit of a mess as I have a very early medical appointment, and don’t really have time to bang out a proper blog post. I am hoping to return to weekly releases after this one again, because I enjoy making these and honestly… I end up listening to them as much as any of you might. Now, to preface my explainer as to why I make these… I have always loved the craft of placing songs in a specific order to create a unique mix that matches a specific mood or theme. Oftentimes, these end up with an anchor song and then attempt to make something that flows together with that single song. Others, like today, are more just that I have been in a specific mood and chose songs to go with that mood. I’ve explained this theory a bunch of times by now, but I don’t necessarily take for granted that someone has read every blog post, or honestly ANY of the previous Mixtape Mondays posts.
27 – Fear Loathing Flesh
If you have consumed any of my posts to date, you might have gleaned that I am dealing with a colorectal cancer diagnosis. It’s really hard waking up every morning and seemingly hearing about another person who has died from this disease, and it feels really prevalent. I am sure this is just selection bias… for example, I had never noticed a Nissan Quest on the road until my sister-in-law got one, and then I saw them constantly. Brains are great at pattern recognition when you are looking for something specific. I’ve been ina pretty dark place over the last few weeks because I am effectively in a holding pattern with no forward momentum yet… and what feels like a ticking time bomb inside of me. As a result, I have been listening to much darker music lately, and this is a mix that more or less fits that mood. This mix honestly caused me to find a song that was completely new to me, because none of the US streaming options seemed to have Melt by Front 242, so instead I substituted a really interesting cover by Helalyn Flowers. Probably my favorite thing is when one of these Mixtapes turns someone on to a new song or musician that they had never heard of before, and I feel like maybe this one has more chance of that given that it is crossing a few different musical worlds.
The funny thing about this Mix particularly, is that it has what I would consider to be a “phantom anchor”, because this did start off with Down In It by Nine Inch Nails being a sort of thread that I was pulling upon. However, the more songs that fell in place, the less and less that song really felt like it fit anymore. So I removed it and replaced it with Reptile that seemed to fit much more neatly into the emerging theme. I am pretty sure this is not the first time I have attempted to make a mix with that song, but I never actually ended up creating anything that flowed in the way that I wanted it to. Tomorrow is probably going to be an emotional post, because it has been a while since I have done one of my big dumb dumps of feels posts. So be forewarned. I did not sleep super well last night because Gracie has decided that she needs to scream instead of going to sleep, and I know that I did not get proper sleep until after midnight. After wrapping this up, I am going to start getting ready to leave the house and go off to my early morning appointment. I hope you all have a wonderful week, and one way or another, this is going to be a bit of a week of reckoning for me and my “cancer boy” journey.
As always, however, you can find the full list of Mixtapes over on my Archives, and I love it when people listen to them and comment about them. Hopefully, I will have yet another new mix next Monday.
Mixtape Mondays Archive
The post Mixtape Mondays: Fear Loathing Flesh appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! This is an exceptionally busy morning for me. I have a pretty early doctor’s appointment and will have to fight road construction to get there. So as a result, I got up quite a bit earlier than I had normally been getting up, largely so that I could roll this post out without issue. This week represents the third week in this new series of Mixtapes, and the twenty-sixth in total since beginning this series during the pandemic lockdown. If you are tuning in for the first time, Mixtapes are really important to me on a personal level. I’ve always loved the art of constructing just the right mix of music for the right mood. There are a lot of things that have inspired me to make mixtapes in the past, but I think part of this is that I mourn the art of crafting albums. There were so many musicians that I grew up listening to that fully understood the way an album flows… is more important than the individual songs on it. While I am entering my “Cancer Boy” era, I am finding it more important to do little things that allow me to stake a creative claim on the world, and this mixtape nonsense is just a small part of this.
26 – Willowy Weary Wise
These mixtapes start for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they are inspired by lived experience, other times are built around a specific song, and in the case of today’s mix, are a bit of a remix of someone else’s playlist. On February 6th, my friend Mallow shared a playlist on bsky, and given that I like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I clicked through and gave it a bit of a listen. One of my favorite things about social media is when you find out one of your existing friends has relatively “drift compatible” musical tastes. Collectively, there is a lot of really great stuff on that list, but I was floored by how well a very specific block worked together. Namely, how Red Right Hand, Down by the Water, and Tear You Apart flowed together perfectly and set a very specific tone for the entire outing. Individually, they are all great songs, and I have been a massive fan of PJ Harvey since she was thrust into my life initially with 50Ft Queenie. So that gave me the tapestry with which to weave another mix, and I anchored that block in the middle of a fifteen-song mix designed to exploit that same sort of feeling. The mixtape itself was named in honor of Mallow herself, since I am effectively copying her homework for my own creation. I am hoping you will enjoy my own spin, and also check out her own playlist, so you can see two different takes on the same idea.
Track List
01 – Dead Souls – Nine Inch Nails
02 – Cirice – Ghost
03 – This Corrosion – The Sisters of Mercy
04 – People Are People – Depeche Mode
05 – Bela Lugosi’s Dead (The Hunger Mix) – Bauhaus
This represents three weeks in a row that I have released a new mixtape on Monday. I know that I will probably not be able to keep this up indefinitely, especially as my whole “Cancer Boy” journey ramps up. However, I do like that this gives me at least a small amount of creative control over my world. Similarly, I am trying to arrange a time to sit down and record with “The Librarian” and do what will honestly probably be the most revealing and personal episode of “Bel Folks Stuff” that I have ever done. I kind of love that I have given them this ominous-sounding moniker at the same time they are themselves struggling to decide their own identity going forward. I have a few nuggets of playlists floating around in my head, or at least anchor songs that I want to build around. One of the big self-imposed challenges for me is that I do not want to use the same songs that I have ever used before in a playlist, and similarly, I do not want to repeat the same musicians more than once in the same playlist. For example, this week I might have gone with the Ghost version of Stay, but went with the original to keep from violating my own self-imposed rule. These mixtapes are yet another way I am trying to declare that I still live and am still trying to be a creative human.
As always, you can see the full list of mixes over on my archives, and in many cases, I release the new mix a bit early there so it is staged and ready for Monday morning.
Mixtape Mondays Archive
The post Mixtape Mondays: Willowy Weary Wise appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
