Stuff that helps make it easy to get out of bed in the morning, even on days when life doesn't much seem worth living.

Just passed 15,000 tracks scrobbled on Last.fm (15,259 to be exact) & I thought I'd put together a mix of those tracks by those artists which I seem to listen to the most.

Took my 20 Top Artists overall & then scrolled through the Top Tracks overall & grabbed the track by each top artist that had graced my ears more than their others.

Interesting. Some surprised me ... most didn't.

I'll send this off for my March'08 IMP trade.

*a note about the cover art :: I understand that the mix might be a bit boring in comparison to some girl-on-girl action, but I did what I normally do when looking for some random cover art & typed "top list" into google images. This was the first photo that came up & I decided it sort of worked with the title*

I was raised way up in the mountains by (for lack of a better word) Hippies. We didn't have a telephone, or running water (yes an outhouse) or electricity until I was in 6th grade. My folks didn't believe in television, but my mother is a folk-singer & my father a music junkie with a large record collection (which I inherited on my 14th birthday) & it seemed that our lives revolved around music.

Whether it was in the form of Mom playing guitar & singing us to sleep, or Dad starting up the generator (which was only otherwise used to power the juicer for our required morning glass of carrot juice) to play us a Frank Zappa tune (I'm The Slime) that would curb our young minds of the question, "why can't we have a T.V. like NORMAL people?"

As children my siblings & I spent the greater part of each Summer at our Grammaw's house up in the woods. While my older sister was off chasing boys at the lake & my younger brother was off chasing frogs in the creek ... I was in the house, chasing pop-music on the stacks and stacks of records I would pile around me. You see, Grammaw had electricity & little Poppy could listen as long & as often & as loud as she desired.

Curled up on a large avacado-green vinyl, duct-tape patched bean-bag chair directly in front of Grammaw's large silver Hi-Fi system, wearing a set of headphones not unlike the ones depicted in my cover art (except for the fact that mine were made of wood). They were huge & heavy & awkward & if I accidentally bobbed my head too far to either side my neck would threaten to snap. But they erased the outside world & cocooned me inside my music & brought a feeling of safe contentment into my soul that I was too young then to recognize or explain.

Each of the songs on this mix was chosen because I consider them to be perfect 10s & I have at different times in my life spent more than a little time, wrapped in headphones, ignoring life outside just to listen again & again & again to a perfect little bit of heaven.

1-7 are from summers @ Grammaws

8-12 are teenage years (the headphones got smaller, but the frequency intensified)

12-21 are college & beyond (I am now on the lookout for a nice, large, wooden pair once again)

My contribution to the IMP (internationalmixtapeproject.com) January mix trade ... this one is headed to Las Vegas. It's what it says ... 26 tracks, one for every letter of the alphabet.

Aside from the classic Frankenmix, this is probably one of the best ways to get some randomness happening in a mix ... a bit of organized chaos for the masses, if you will.

I am one of those annoying folks who absolutely adore Christmas music & I have a disgusting amount of it on CD, Cassette & Vinyl. I love pulling it out at the beginning of November & peeking around to see what goodies I may have passed up in the previous years.

This is the seventh annual Xmas Mix I've put together to accompany my Christmas cards. The challenge is always in finding something new ... something you don't hear every time you walk into a mall or turn on the radio in your car. There are only a finite number of original Xmas songs out there, but ... some versions are better than others & I always try to make sure that I don't repeat the same version from Xmas-Mixes-Past.

This year the holidays have got me wiped & it's all I can do to get in my car at the end of my sometimes 14 hour workdays & drive the 35 minute commute home. More than once I've contemplated camping out in my car, just because I'm not sure I've got the energy to make it all the way with my eyes open.

Listening to this mix while enjoying a bottle of Shiraz is a good cure for the holidays-in-retail-blahs.

Thank the Goddess for Shiraz.

Merry Zzzzzzmas to all. I hope you sleep well.

Another Holiday mix, this one was for Thanksgiving though. Songs that fill my face with smiles, my heart with thanks & my belly with pie.

The purely-for-fun-something-to-play-@-work-mix that I'm sending out for this month's IMP trade. It's Halloween & holiday mixes get to be as random & cheesy as I need them to be, random & cheesy aside it ended up with an exceptional flow. Now, let's see how many times I can use the word "spooky".

I work in a bookstore & was chatting with a coworker as he scanned our Self-Help section & arrived at the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books, of which there are TONS. A title for almost every niche that you could dream up. We questioned however the absence of a, "Vegetable Soup for the Vegetarian soul" & after that came up with as many alternatives as we could for those groups left out. "Smile Soup for the EMO Soul" was good, but we both agreed that "Human Soup for the Cannibal's Soul" was the favorite. This mix was born of that conversation & later given as a gift to said co-worker.

An Autumn mix ... a mix that brings to my mind falling leaves & stompy boots & pumpkin cupcakes & plucking guitar strings & stripy socks & favorite sweaters & no need to wear blush & scary movies & brisk morning walks & candy corn & extra blankets. Driving with all the windows down up the valley ... wowing at the contrast between the colorful forest canopy & the bright green cool-season grasses that line the valley floor. (the artwork is a picture taken last October of the persimmon tree in my front yard)

a 3am-can't-sleep-no-matter-how-exhausted-
i-may-be-or-how-much-chamomile-i-ingest mix.

i am not the easiest person to figure out. for me or for others & i believe it is particularly difficult for my boyfriend to "get" me.

i indulge in my own moods, be they good or bad & can stay behind emotional walls for days on end. the problem being that i like it there, where no one can reach me ... i thought i'd have grown out of it by now, but have not. as unhealthy as it may be i still find that place extremely fascinating & fulfilling.

he's the second most impatient person i've ever encountered, yet when it comes to me he's been nothing but patient for the last three & a half years.

this mix is for him. most of the songs remind me of things he might say to me ... a few are my answers to those things. just to let him know that i know he's trying & so am i & i suppose in a relationship that is most important. the trying.

the title was taken from the Bowie song.

a frankenmix put together for a trade between myself & the ol' man & my oldest friend & her significant other. they make excellent mixes, but don't usually take part in trades ... & i hadn't done a frankenmix for a few years, forgot how nicely they tend to turn out.

there isn't any time in my life that i've felt as free as when it's just me in my car, driving around on the deserted nighttime streets of the small, mountain town i live in.

i was a nanny for five years & lived with the family i worked for. privacy was hard to come by, but after the day was through (if i wasn't @ the pub swilling sapphire tonics) i found privacy & release in my tri-weekly 100 mile journeys.

i would hop in the car with a handful of random mixes & a fresh pack of cigarettes (a habit i've now quit, but still miss only while driving) & drive for fifty miles ... turn around & head back. just to clear my head & with only the night breeze as company, be truly alone for an hour or so.

driving @ night warrants a different flavor of music for me than driving during the day. i want a lot of "boom-chuck-a-boom-a-chuck-a" guitar rhythms & the sort of airy, meandering songs that let me daydream about where i'm headed & reflect on where i've been.

am heading to oregon to visit my heterosexual-life-partner @ the end of the month, this mix will loop back on itself nicely as i wind my way through the mountains to the sea before i head north.

the last mix i made for a Mixies (www.mixies.org) trade. a mix for bedtime. comprised of songs that at some time in my life I have put on repeat @ a nice soft volume while lying in bed, staring at stars through windows, thinking about this ... or that ... or nothing at all