Good Morning Friends! I hope that you had a sincerely good weekend and that it was restful in the right ways. It is the start of a brand new week and I hope it is a most excellent one. Later this week Blaugust 2021 officially begins and I am looking forward to seeing all of the participants posting away. For those of you readers who might be finding my blog for the very first time welcome. Mixtape Mondays is a series that I have been doing each Monday for a few months now. As a kid, I loved making Mixtapes for my friends and now that I don’t really use physical media I was missing that experience. After getting heavily into Spotify, I realized just how well the Mixtape format translates, and as a result each Monday I post a new mix with new album art.
Tides of War
I think every generation goes through a period of time where they heavily engage with the music of their forebearers. For me, that time was late middle school and early high school and I am not entirely certain what triggered it. I do know that in 1990 when the massive Led Zeppelin Boxed Set was released I was already bought in and fully engaged. My personal musical explorations were largely contained to the genre then termed “Classic Rock”. It does make me wonder if that moniker is a sliding scale that changes meaning as the music ages. Does that mean that Nirvanna is now considered to be “Classic Rock”? Regardless this is also music that I deeply associate with Vietnam and post Vietnam era thanks to Hollywood choosing to populate the soundtracks of these films with large swaths of these songs. It has become a cliche that if you want to set a war film in the 70s, it needs to include the song “Fortunate Son”. The thing is I get it because that track is an absolute banger.
Track List
Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin
Paranoid – Black Sabbath
Dream On – Aerosmith
Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
Behind Blue Eyes – The Who
Limelight – Rush
Radar Love – Golden Earring
People are Strange – The Doors
White Room – Cream
Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival
You Really Got Me – The Kinks
Revolution – The Beatles
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – Bob Dylan
All Along the Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix
Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
Listen On Spotify
Listen On YouTube
Well, friends that brings to a close Mixtape number thirteen in the series. As always I would love to hear your thoughts below. If you are tuning in late to the entire series you can find the archive page linked below. I hope you have a most excellent week and if you are so inclined, check out the information about Blaugust 2021 and maybe sign up.
Good Morning Friends! Welcome to the start of a brand new week and with it comes another episode in the Mixtape Mondays series. For those who might be finding my blog for the very first time, each Monday morning I post a brand new Mixtape full of songs available through both Spotify and YouTube. The concept is that as a youngster I used to love making Mixtapes for my friends and I’ve not really had an equivalent to that for years. Now that I have gotten heavily into Spotify, I am once again constructing mixes and sharing them around. This morning represents the twelveth Mixtape in this series.
Explorations in Syncopation
I am going to be brutally honest with you. This Mixtape came about because I was trying to craft something that included Information Society, The Shamen, and Jesus Jones. After that, the entire structure took on a life of its own as I seemingly filled in other songs with syncopated rhythms that I was either listening to at the same time or remind me of that same sort of era. I am not entirely certain if it works as well as I think it does, but I am sharing this creation with you so that you can be the judge of it. I am not sure if I landed on a proper theme, or if I just shared a bunch of songs that I enjoy. Whatever the case, we once again have a Monday and a Mixtape, and this particular one came out of a binge where I crafted something like seven Mixtapes in a single weekend.
Peace and Love, Inc. – Information Society
Divine Thing – The Soup Dragons
Love Spreads – The Stone Roses
Rush – Big Audio Dynamite
Hippychick – Soho
Right Here Right Now – Jesus Jones
Your Only Joke – Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
Breathe – The Prodigy
Connection – Elastica
Girls & Boys – Blur
Unbelieveable – EMF
Ready to Go – Republica
Ebeneezer Goode – The Shamen
Groovy Train – The Farm
A Little Respect – Erasure
Listen On Spotify
Listen On YouTube
That brings to a close Mixtape number Twelve in this series. As always please let me know your thoughts below and if you are tuning in late to the series, you can find the entire sequence over on the archive page. I hope you have a successful and fulfilling week, and if it is your jam please check out the informational post about Blaugust 2021 that will be starting soon.
Good Morning Friends! It is Monday morning and once again I am bringing you all a hand-crafted mixtape. For those uninitiated to this series, I greatly enjoy crafting Mixtapes and have since I was a youngster. Given that we no longer use tapes or burn CDs, the next best thing is to create carefully curated playlists on Spotify or YouTube. Along with this process, I also create custom album artwork since so much of the mixtape process was adorning the physical media with sharpies and other colorful markers. Instead of sending a tape to a specific person, I broadcast these out to all of my friends and readers on the internet. It makes me exceptionally happy when I hear back feedback from one of my friends as they enjoyed a specific musical blend.
Hot Chicken Cold Stares
There is a specific flavor of rock that I associate with bands like The White Stripes or The Kings of Leon. It is heavily distorted, jangly, and fuzzy around the edges and I am uncertain what you can actually call it. However given that both Jack White of the White Stripes and The Kings of Leon now record out of Nashville Tennessee, I mentally associate the particular sound with that scene. What else do I associate with Nashville… well hot chicken of course because I love it so. So this morning I bring you a Mixtape dedicated to that style of music and quite honestly… this is one of my favorites so far. I am certain it will be an acquired taste much like the capsaicin laced hot chicken that gives this blend its name. I also feel like it is important to pay homage to where I think the sound came from… with The Rolling Stones and The Animals.
Ruby – Kaiser Chiefs
Fell In Love With a Girl – The White Stripes
King of the Rodeo – Kings of Leon
Melatonin – Silversun Pickups
Come a Little Closer – Cage The Elephant
Hate To Say I Told You So – The Hives
Get Free – The Vines
Steady, As She Goes – The Raconteurs
Hang Me Up To Dry – Cold War Kids
Here It Goes Again – OK Go
Hash Pipe – Weezer
Paint It, Black – The Rolling Stones
Lonely Boy – The Black Keys
Reptilia – The Strokes
E-Pro – Beck
Flathead – The Fratellis
House Of The Rising Sun – The Animals.
Listen On Spotify
Listen On YouTube
There is my latest Mixtape and with it, I hope signals the beginning of a wonderful week. This week I am transitioning back to remote work, and hopefully, that goes smoothly. Like I said above this is probably one of my favorite Mixtapes that I have created, and while it has been waiting on release I’ve listened to it for hours at a time. If you are tuning into this series late, you can find the entire archive of Mixtapes released to this point here:
Good Morning Friends! Today would normally be considered “holiday mode” given that in the United States many of us are off today in celebration of the Independence Day weekend. However given that I do a thing on Mondays and only on Mondays… and have a nice backlog of mixtapes to go through I thought I would put forth the effort to keep things rolling. For those who might be new to this blog, each Monday I post a new custom curated mixtape of music, often times with a theme of some sort. As a kid I was a mixtape creator and crafted them for friends and recently I have fallen back into that tradition utilizing things like Spotify and YouTube to craft as close as you can get to the feeling of a digital mixtape.
Tapedeck Held Aloft
Being born in 1976, my “childhood” pretty neatly straddled the line between the 80s and the 90s and as such I largely consider myself a child of both decades. I am a sucker for a good John Hughes film and spent more than more than my share of time watching romcoms and teen movies from that era. This MixTape today is essentially my love letter to the soundtracks of those movies. If you are of a certain age, you can close your eyes and imagine the movies that went along with these songs or instead let it all sort of blend together into one sappy slurry.
Hungry Like the Wolf – Duran Duran
Take on Me – A-Ha
The Promise – When in Rome
Doctor! Doctor! – Thompson Twins
Things Can Only Get Better – Howard Jones
If You Leave – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
I Melt with You – Modern English
Head Over Heels – Tears for Fears
It’s My Life – Talk Talk
The Goonies R’ Good Enough – Cyndi Lauper
The Ghost in You – The Psychedelic Furs
Voices Carry – Til Tuesday
In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel
Don’t You Forget About Me – Simple Minds
Listen On Spotify
Listen On YouTube
There you have it, my tenth MixTape served on a Monday for you all to enjoy. I hope folks are partaking of this nonsense, but even if they are not it is at the very least causing me to listen to a lot more music which is increasing my overall joy in the world. If you are tuning in late to this series you can check out the entire archive of past weeks collected in a single page:
