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.
