Good Morning Folks! Long time readers of my blog might remember a reoccurring feature called Mixtape Mondays, and in theory I am hoping to bring it back. Essentially growing up the creation of Mixtapes was very important to me. I would painstakingly spend hours going over specific tracks and dubbing them onto a cassette with my stereo until I had crafted the perfect flow of songs that followed a sequence and more or less fit a theme. I would give them to friends… and attempt to bestow them upon lovers, who so rarely appreciated them. However that was not the important part. The important part was crafting what I felt was the perfect sequence of songs that fit into the album format, and more importantly than anything… looped in a way that made sense to be able to listen to it over and over. Over the course of April 19th, 2021 through May 9th, 2022 I released twenty three of these mixtapes, and you can see the entire archive over on the dedicated page. These all sort of represent a piece of my soul, and if you ever want to know anything about me as a person… they are written clearly in these assemblages.
Erasure Shaped Box
I’ve talked a bit about my romantic interest on this blog a few times with the code word of “Erasure”, this is in large part because she really likes that band. I gave her some hopeless homework some time ago, where I asked her to listen through my mixtapes as a way of understanding me a bit better. Unfortunately she is not the sort of person who really listens to disparate assemblages of music, but instead prefers to listen to the same song over and over until it is worn out… before moving on to the next song. So I set out with a rather hopeless mission, of trying to craft a mixtape that I thought she might like. Turns out she did enjoy it mostly, or at least enjoys some of the songs on it. However it was more thought experiment than anything else. Could I craft a mixtape that I also enjoyed centered around a song from Erasure the band, not the person… and make something I would enjoy listening to. I think at least in the later mission I succeeded because I have been listening to this one quite a bit lately. The catalyst was Chains of Love, and then I worked forward and backwards from that song trying to assemble a sequence that makes sense.
Track List
01 – Lips Like Sugar – Echo and the Bunnymen
02 – Space Age Love Song – A Flock of Seagulls
03 – Why Can’t I Be You? – The Cure
04 – World In My Eyes – Depeche Mode
05 – International Bright Young Thing – Jesus Jones
That brings to a close the first of this new batch of Mixtapes. I have no clue how long I will keep this run going, because I have a ton of things going on in my life right now. However there is something about crafting a Mixtape that I find deeply satisfying. I usually start with 30-40 songs and then whittle it down to just the right blend of 13-15 while trying to perfect a sequence in which they flow together nicely. I was driving home yesterday from a trip to Harbor Freight and heard a song on the radio that I have not heard in years, and I think that is probably going to serve as the nugget for the next mix. I would love for this to regularly return to my blog, but I am never certain how much inspiration I will be able to keep going. As always however you can see the entire sequence of all of my mixtapes over on the archive.
Good Morning Friends! I hope you had a most excellent weekend. For those of us in the US, it was Mother’s Day and I hope that went off swimmingly for everyone. Me… well we spent some time on the side of a very busy turnpike because we had a spectacular flat. For anyone who might not be used to this feature of my blog, Mixtape Mondays are where I create a number of mixtapes and share them with you. As a kid, I was a prolific maker of mixtapes and loved the structure of lining up songs in a specific order to convey a feeling. The original series ran for 20 episodes before I ran out of creative juice, and now we are on week three of this revival. Who knows how long I will keep it going this time, but I still have a bit more ammunition ready to go.
Contextual Rickroll
The internet has a proud tradition of bait and switch tactics, and one of the proudest of these traditions is hyping something up and then linking the Never Gonna Give You Up video by Rick Astley. I am not sure why this one artifact of a bygone age came to represent the epitome of cringe, but it did. However too often it seems like folks view this one video as some sort of isolated incident or an odd happening that makes no sense. However friends… I am here to tell you that the theme song of the Rickroll, was absolutely an element of the times in which the song was created. I’ve kicked around the notion of creating a playlist for a while that places the song in its proper conditions. When I was in seventh grade I had fairly major sinus surgery and spent quite a bit of time laying in the hospital. Given that I grew up with cable… and as a result without MTV… I consumed as much as I could possibly watch. Never Gonna Give You Up was a new song at this time, and I present to you the auditory landscape of this era.
That friend brings to close the third Mixtape Monday in this new series. I can’t say that I am going to be listening to this one a ton, but it served a very specific purpose. Think of this as an auditory time capsule to place the Rickroll in its original context. For those who might be finding this as your first Mixtape Mondays post, I keep an archive of all of the mixtapes I have created shown below. I hope you all have a most excellent week, and I hope I manage to finish up a few more mixes before next Monday.
Good Morning Friends! I hope you had an excellent weekend. Last week was fairly dominated with guide posts about Mastodon/Fediverse, but hopefully this week we can get back to the regular sorts of nonsense that I provide. Today however I am bringing you the second new mix of what I am at least mentally thinking of as “season 2” of this project. For anyone tuning today fresh, I was one of those kids who constantly made mixtapes for myself and for my friends… even used them as a wildly ineffective way of trying to flirt. There is something about the art of placing songs in a specific order that I love, and I even go overboard enough to create some custom fake album art.
Immaculately Overwhelmed
Something that I realized in the time between my previous mixtape spree and now, is that I never really plumbed the depths of Emo Rock. I was way the fuck too old to adopt this as a style and way of life, but I spent plenty of time listening to this music. While as a Gen X I mostly viewed Emo as a resurgence of the Goth roots of The Cure and Bauhaus mixed through the party hard ethic of Blink-182. The end result was an extremely enjoyable rock phase from the mid to late 2000s. As frat rock began to fade it was replaced by this more deeply introspective version that honestly I related to quite a bit more. The scene kids that followed, even felt quite a bit like my little skater punk era. It is funny as you age, how you can clearly seen the connective fabric between different movements in music and culture. The only problem is you age out of being relevant to the oncoming generation, and as such those attempts at wisdom fade into the void. The cycle repeats for eternity.
Track List
Well folks that is it for another round of Mixtape Mondays. I hope this playlist hits the spot as much as it did for me. This would be number twenty two in total, and for those just now catching up you can check out the full list over at my archive page. I have a few mixes that are in a fluid state right now, and I will need to spend some time this week to dislodge them from the logjam they are in currently. I hope you all have a most excellent week, and we will continue this nonsense next week.
Good Morning Friends! First off sorry for the complete lack of a podcast this weekend. We were experiencing some severe weather and it seemed like a really bad idea to be sequestered up in my office as it was hitting. Next up I am bringing back Mixtape Mondays! For those who did not experience this last year, I had a semi-weekly running series where I gave you a brand new mixtape each Monday morning. I made it through twenty of them before my inspiration ran out, but recently I have been crafting Mixtapes again, and you my readers are benefiting from it.
For some backstory… I was one of those kids who was constantly making mixtapes. Since I was one of the few that had a stereo with dual cassette tapes, I had the ability to easily dub things. Growing up in a small town, when anyone got something… it was passed around heavily which lead to me crafting a lot of custom mixes for my friends. I have a specific love for the way songs flow together on an album, and I think the art of album creature has suffered in the era of buying individual songs on iTunes. So this series was my attempt to bring back the mixtape via Spotify and YouTube playlist. Since I have personally moved on to Tidal I am including those now as well.
Zombie Sexfiend
Most of my mixes have a starting point, and for this one it was Rob Zombie. I am cheating and including both a song from White Zombie and a song from his solo career… which is still more or less White Zombie. One of the things that I have had to do with this second generation… is go through all of my previous mixes and log them in a spreadsheet because it is getting too freaking hard to remember if I have used a song before or not. I have a few personal rules… never repeat a song I have used before and never repeat a band in the same mix. However I have found creative ways to cheat before… like on a mix that was Blink 182 focused I also included a bunch of things from Blink 182 adjacent side projects. This mix however is things that fit neatly into the auditory realm of White Zombie. I hope you all enjoy!
Track List
Jurassitol – Filter
More Human Than Human – White Zombie
The Chemicals Between Us – Bush
Guilty – Gravity Kills
Save Yourself – Stabbing Westward
The Perfect Drug – Nine Inch Nails
Just One Fix – Ministry
After the Flesh – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult
That begins what is hopefully the second generation of Mixtape Mondays. This would be number twenty one if you count them sequentially however. I am uncertain how long I will be able to keep this going, but I do have several mixes that I am actively working on as well as a few that I have completed. I have a few things that I am working on that sort of stretch the boundaries of my musical tastes, so it will be interesting to see how those work out. As always if you are new to this series and want to catch up, you can check out the full archives here:
