Testing 1 2

It's been some time since I put together one of these here things. This is nothing special, just a snapshot of a night some time ago.

A list of songs I made months ago now magically birthed as a mixtape.

Listen at:

http://tinyurl.com/7odthh5

I GOT YA KILLA TAPE RIGHT HERE, GOD!!!!

This is an attempt to break out of my recent spate of playing torch songs, deep delta blues, classic country, and shoegaze tearjerkers.

A guy at work who has never been to the East Coast reveres the Golden Age of Hip-Hop to the point where after learning that I also have a certain reverence for that era and a dope ass record collection to boot decided that he would talk my ear off every night debating the relative merits of various MC's and producers, etc. I'm not even really into hip-hop right now, but I don't mind chewing the fat every now and again. So after a particularly vexing night - with events unrelated to Hip Hop Guy's monologues - I decided to make a "Killa Tape" for this dude. I asked him to make me one ages ago, but to no avail. I told him that my tape would not be a "best of" but would be fun, with solid choices, some remixes, and all selections would contribute to a a certain soulful vibe, which is what hip hop was all about anyway. I told him, Look if Rakim, who is one of my fave MC's doesn't make the tape for whatever reason, I'm not gonna slice my wrists open over it, OK? He chuckled and put his top 5 MC's of all-time argument to rest for a smooth five minutes.

Am I enabling him? Maybe, but there are much worse things. God bless the lad.

Hopefully he won't be too disappointed that there isn't any PE, BDP, or Jungle Brothers on this mix.

So this is a distraction from my romantic misfortunes and a blast from the past.


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The last song which fits on a tape, but not on a CD is Eyedea and Abilities', "Exhausted Love".

This is part 2 of the sad-ass mix I started just a little while ago. I just want her to figure out that there's nothing to be afraid of, but she may never figure that out - especially since she's decided to go out with someone else (in the meantime?), and if that's the case, I really need to know. There's a fifteen year old story arc here, folks. And it's hurting more than it otherwise might.

I hope I exorcise these demons but quick. I'm worried about her and I'm worried about me and there's nothing I can do but see what the next card brings.

THE BROKEN HEART.
by John Donne




He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.



I'm shamefully admitting this is just part one of the mix.

cabernet sauvigon on this late night and some random vinyl spinning on the fly from turntable to cassette for that live think-on-your-fader feel. tonight nothing makes sense about some shit that you couldn't pay me enough to think would occur. i'll hopefully never make the mistake of questioning this stuff ever again. Time will solve tell what happens. In the meantime, it's a mean time and an even meaner night.

Trying to distract myself from a romantic derailing of sorts. More like tailspin.

A themed mix that did little to distract me from me and my little dilemmas, but I was bold in the effort. That should count for something.

This mix is made for a girl. A girl with whom I have had a long history which dates back fifteen years. She is the only one who truly makes me feel unlonely. The title comes from something she wrote to me. It's early, but if this ain't the real thing, I won't ever know what is. I'll spill more of the beans in the song descriptions below.



the rest of the mix:

20 - The Decemberists - Here I Dreamt I was an Architect

We both like this song. The end.


21 - The Velvet Underground - I'll Be Your Mirror

I was driving home from her place one night, this song came on. I dedicated it to her on the spot.

22 - Stevie Wonder - You and I (We Can Conquer the World)

I used to listen to this song years ago and dream. I thought I was crazy to think we would ever get together, I guess I wasn't.

Sat up late one night, remembered she said she was gay for me, then I realized I'm gay for her too. Tried to watch a movie, decided music was the only way, so I got a few records together, cued the deck, then hit the button labeled play. This is a 90 minute mix not so lovey-dovey, but nevertheless as full of love as can possibly be, do ray mi, do ray fudging me.

The actual mix included the following tracks that could not fit on this playlist on this site:

steely dan - black cow
blondie - dreaming
surban lawns - unable
au pairs - it's obvious
new order - perfect kiss (fade out)

That's how this mix ends, if anyone was curious.

I recently made some nicely priced additions to the piles of musical wax in my room. Lots of early to mid nineties grunge/punk bands, some girl groups of the 60's, and even some folk music. So I listened to this stuff and had a 60 minute blank cassette handy so I pretended CD burning and mp3's were some science fiction pipe dream and went ahead with making an actual mixtape.

Some of this stuff I'd never heard or heard of before, so with headphones on at 3AM, I put this thing together. It turned pretty well except for the volume is a little too low on the $100 Jayhawks song and I had to include a song twice since it was cut off prematurely at the end of side A, but honestly these were the only things I'd change, aside from maybe using a longer cassette so I could wrap it up with a Tom Waits song.

It's fucking grey and cold and I needed something to do. I may send this out for the November International Mix Project.

Part 2 is a little more somber for no reason at all.

Someone suggested I make this mix, so I did. Part Uno has a waywardly country feel to it and it's a tad goofy to boot.

It's been said that music will get you through times of no love better than love will get you through times of no music. I agree with the first part.

(This mix has an unrequited love theme to it, but like most things, it's a bit more complicated than that. I will spare myself the details of writing about the situation, however, I will say that right now I don't think I could ever be a friend to her without putting myself through a bit of the 'ole hell.)

OK, you've danced to the Monster Mash, you've enjoyed Joey Ramone telling you that he doesn't want to go down to the basement, you've heard Thriller twice, you've realized that it's the season of the witch, and Screamin' Jay has put a spell on you from the grave, so here's something for when you find you're coming down from the sugar rush, while muddling it all over while cuddling to up to a new ghoul amidst the fog-machine vapors.

I got the hankering for that good stuff and it did me in. SPRUNG to DEATH!

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a note:

What inspired this little compilation was listening to a bunch of damn fine compilations of mod, freakbeat, garage, proto-punk, girl group, and psychedelic music. These are some of my personal favorites of that marathon listening session.

So if the Cramps haven't already taught you some of these songs, here ya go. And if anyone wants a link to this I'll put it together and do what needs to be done.


RUMBLE!

The long ass title, which extends all the way through keyword #3,
is a joke.

Another mixtape drudged up. I remember I took the title from an incident where I was about to leave Gothenburg and a girl who had been the light of my social life, upon learning of my impending departure, gave me the cold shoulder. I looked back upon the event and thought that she may have been wise to have shut me out. It was a cleaner break to a situation that had no hope of existing outside that particular time and place. Another meaning to the term, "tough love". Haha.

Anyhow...

I'm going to "transfer" a bunch of my mixes from Art of the Mix over here. Since there's not a ton of people using the site during this "dead time", I figured it would be a good time to do it. These next few submissions are all from a time when I was just sort of listless, etc. I don't blame anyone who finds it all a little too much of a cloud-gazing affair.

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Another from a few years ago. This is what I wrote about it back then:

This mix is also bookended by dialogue from the classic noir film, D.O.A. Hikkomori is the Japanese word for social withdrawl due to extreme anxiety. I seem to have a case of that plus a case of unrequited love/limerence. I feel a little better about it all now.
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There are two other songs that won't fit on this page:

21 Tegan and Sara - Walking With the Ghost
22 The Cowboy Junkies - Blue Moon

I'm going to "transfer" a bunch of my mixes from Art of the Mix over here. Since there's not a ton of people using the site during this "dead time", I figured it would be a good time to do it. These next few submissions are all from a time when I was just sort of listless, etc. I don't blame anyone who finds it all a little too much of a cloud-gazing affair.

I'm going to "transfer" a bunch of my mixes from Art of the Mix. Since there's not a ton of people using the site during this "dead time", I figured it would be a good time to do it. These next few submissions are all from a time when I was just sort of listless, etc. I don't blame anyone who finds it all a little too much of a cloud-gazing affair.


This mixtape is from last decade when I was really well hung up on a fair lass from parts well distanced from my city of home.

I listened to this mix the other day and decided to post it here for sake of posterity. It still feels like she was the one that got away, however that could be my mind playing a game of revisionist history thus amping the degree of self torture played upon myself in the darkening afternoon while staring at the flowers blowing in the wind outside the thick glass of the coffeehouse window as the people walk by in their summer clothes, past the marble fronted bank with the FOR RENT sign in its window, as the grey-eyed girl with the pale skin keeps looking my way, as the tags on my car remain expired, and a bird looks at me through the well cleaned glass expecting me to feed it something for nothing. Oh yes, my kite-soul was riding aloft at that moment. Nowhere to go but down.

Anyway, here's my namby-pamby-ass mix from years gone by.

Using as inspiration bands and songs from the soundtracks for the films, River's Edge and Over the Edge, this mix is a homage to the brooding death-metal hard-rock heathen crowd - the nihilistic lost pups who inhabited the scenes in the both movies. Culled mostly from the 80's and 90's, the songs contained herein are chalk full of teen angst, self torture, heretical speed-metal solos, and listening to the likes of such will be sure to get your inner white trash bastard rocking out (drug use is/is not optional).


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An additional note about the creation of this mixtape:


I drove through a couple of trashier neighborhoods for further white trash inspiration, where I noticed quite a few new-baseball-cap-wearing "wiggers" who worship Eminem and Lil' Wayne and who have seemingly bought into the thugged-out philosophy hook, line, and synthetic fly, but representing that crowd would obviously be an entirely different mix tape. And technically, I suppose a further mixtape could be dedicated to the Juggalo subgenus. In addition to those two sometimes overlapping and more racially progressive groups, there's the country-and-western and the motorcycle club sorts, which also many times overlap, and which also are something else altogether from "wiggers" and I really thought about picking songs from each of the white trash social groups to complete a more total musical picture of the white trash phenomenon, but had I chosen to go that route, listening to that kind of mix would have been a very scattered musical experience and while I'm not always opposed to that sort of thing, it was an "artistic decision, ya dig?.

So in the end, after a bit of geekified wrangling, for the sake of a more focused and rocking effort, I limited my mix to songs that could have been included on either soundtrack for the two films listed above (Though curiously enough, the soundtrack for River's Edge does include a reggae song, which doesn't make me feel bad for including a darker hip-hop song here). My aim here was to extol the attributes of the crowd that takes their coffee as black as their metal, sets fire to things, dabbles in the occult, seeks out the goriest horror films in addition to snuff films, drops out of school, huffs glue with their own mother, experiments with their friends' mothers, and generally raises an unnecessary ruckus whenever their dull mind feels the need for acting out their drug-addled urges. This mixtape - with perhaps the exception of the inclusion of the hip-hop horrorcore classic by the Gravediggaz, the feminism of L7 and Bikini Kill, and the mood of ironic self-awareness of some of the grungier numbers - is intended to be a celebration of the negative creep residing in all of us, in all his/her glory. And of course, I also wanted the thing to rock harder than the norm, so even though the tattooed character on the mix cover is representing all sorts of corporate butt-rockery and though I regretted not having room for a bit of Randy-Rhodes-era Ozzy, and though there is some overlap between butt rockers and death metal rockers, on based solely on the general principle of siding with the extreme darkness of the thrash/death and the gutter punk edginess of the punk/grunge side of things, I have eliminated most of the 80's hairspray bands from contention.

So then, grow your hair out, buy a beat up Trans-Am, stay up all night, and do your best Crispin Glover impressions. This is all about guilty and not-so-guilty pleasures and some damned righteously evil and downright good music besides.

Hail Beelzebub!

This is something I cobbled together for the International Mixtape Project August assignment. Since The Supremes and The Go-Betweens both ended up being included, it stood to reason that I also include Comet Gain's "The Ballad of the Mixtape", which gives a shout-out to both. I also stuck on a Robert Plant song that I learned about on this site.

The final song, which wouldn't fit is Pure Ecstasy's "Pressure Drop".

I have no idea just what this mix is supposed to achieve. I have very scattered tastes in music and my listening habits are just as haphazard. Especially lately. This is just one of those late nights with coffee, tea, booze, darkness, and some thinking and some drinking. I have no idea if anyone would dig on this mixtape. I don't even know if I will in the future.

I'm still stalling on my River's Edge mix, but I've been puzzling it out subconsciously for a bit now. And I have the perfect cover art for it.

Here's to August 1, 2010. Cheers.

Short, sweet, sly, and not so sophisticated. A trashy batch.

OK, someone who meant a lot to me came back into my life and I don't know what to do about it, so, as a purely knee jerk reaction, I made a mix. It's a nervous habit, I know.



That might help explain the schizophrenic nature of this mix.

This is the hazy and lazy let-yourself-down mid-morning soundtrack for nursing yourself through the results of a three day weekend or an insufferably prolonged working week. Take your pick.

twenty is as twenty does and twenty never said exactly what it could be.

Why should we buy a new car, or take out that payday loan, or adopt a dog, or join a gym, or get a prescription for the latest anti-depressant, or purchase the latest shade of red in the world of luscious lipsticks? We should do any and all of these things because they have a cool commercial with a cleverly sampled chorus from a hit song or a song that will be a hit after everyone looks the song up online and downloads it from itunes.

Here are some songs to grab people's attention and get them buying stuff.



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This mix was inspired by thinking that the Black Sheep's song "Flavor of the Month" with its crazy catchy horn section sample and its super duper chorus, asking us to "get with this or get with that", would make for a somewhat funny jingle for advertising an online dating service. I don't watch much live television because I prefer to download shows and chainwatch them, so after having that little thought about the Black Sheep song, I happened to turn on the television and was surprised to see a commercial using that very song to sell cars. Not too weird, but coincidental enough to get me thinking about other songs that could be used to get people's credit cards sliding through the dirty slits in those filthy machines that are kept near cash registers.

Low on wank, high on spank, without spunk, this is the one you're gonna crank in your trunk. So with no bunk and no jive, sakes alive, gimme five and I'll give you a ten, my friend. Don't look at me, Mommy!

OK, I hope this is interesting, musically.

If you've ever had occasion to listen to the soft rock, whether it was during a road-trip hostage crisis, or while hunting and gathering at the grocer's, or while waiting to have a tooth pulled, then you know how depressing it can be and how appropriate many of genre's songs would be for inclusion on a suicide mixtape. Drifting away to the sounds of that ever-so-lilting AM flotsam and jetsam might just be the ticket for softly going into the night. And if that's a dreadful thought for you to think, then think of this tape as a sad bastard mix tucked away for a rainy day*.


Post Script- (I'd rather listen to this tape than R.E.M.'s "Automatic For the People" like a certain famous someone did before finishing himself off with a bang. But whatevers.)

*Disclaimer: This is a hypothetical suicide mixtape. It's not the first or the last to be made in the wide world of mixtapes. Life is great, more or less. This isn't meant to be all scary. Thanks.

A friend of mine wanted a Mr. Bojangles compilation, so I proved myself to be a bit of a music weirdo by agreeing to make this comp. Of course there are more versions of this classic song out there, but I chose to limit the thing to two discs.

And yes, this is not torture. I actually listened to this all the way through. And I'll say that it's something you have to be in the mood for, but it's better than most would think it could be.

So, yeah, there it is, the reason for this making this mix.

This is the final part of the nearly four hour mix I started with "party mix (radio goo goo).

I tested my mash up skills with a simple Lou Reed/A Tribe Called Quest blend.

After keeping the party flame alive with some classic rock stuff,things wind down with some country and jazz. And with that my hypothetical party mix comes to a close.

The Snarkfest Mix Club and the IMP Mix Club both issued party mix challenges this month. I took this as a sign to make my first real party mix. The mix is about four hours long and is intended to be played from about 11PM to 3AM. Since party music is all about celebrating what's familiar to most of us, I included quite a few radio friendly songs, hence the mix's title. Now, I could have been a little more genre specific or a little edgier in my choices, but I wanted to make a mix that all of my friends could mostly enjoy. Since most of my friends live in different states and different countries, we'll never really know how this party mix would have taken root in a live setting. It may have been the bomb or it may have been a K-Tel cold fart, but I did my damnedest to feature a variety of genres including twee, rock, garage, hip hop, club, and shoegaze. It's all pretty easy on the ears - so no free jazz in this mix. I kept the pace basically upbeat with slower songs for lovey-dovey dancing or conversation or drinking or all of the above.

This mix was tough because I'm used to making moody headphone music mostly and some of the mixes that I've made in the past could work as party mixes, but I don't think they would satisfy enough of the hypothetical people hypothetically present. When you play stuff for the minority of your friends, it's really cliquey - and that's not so good if you've got people in the house that really don't get off on trance music. And since I've never been that sort of High Fidelity type snob to shun people based on their lack of musical taste (a person's musical taste is a useful barometer of their worth as person, but it is most certainly not the deciding factor.), and because I set the parameters that I did, I had to make this mix just the way I did.

Anyway, no one ever comes to this site nowadays, but I'll post this monster party mix just the same.

Cheers.

When the sun goes, nobody knows what comes next. I think this mix is for when you're alone and taking walks, trying to right your heart and your head, and if you go out to a bar it's not to drink, but just to think and as far as companionship, on these kind of nights, you and can take it or just plainly leave.

What I will do with this mix when I listen to it really depends. I could have a mental breakdown or achieve inner peace, or, perhaps a combination thereof. I shall leave the decision to the fate of my future self, but odds are that my breathing will become relaxed and thoughts and memories will drift incense-like into a beautiful smoky dragon protecting me from the night and its many talented and treacherous accomplices.

(Trip-hop and laid back tracks make or break this mix.)

This mix was my attempt to create a themed mix for the month of January/Februrary for the FTOTZ mix club using songs with the idea of "two".

It took some tweaking, but I think it turned out kind of dope.

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If you want to listen to it, let me know.

I chose songs that were either blatantly related to the nighttime or songs which went well with the darkness. Nighttime can conjure up all sorts of emotions, especially when you're alone, whether it's wistful nostalgia or aching hope or unexpected peace -and it was with that variety in mind that I set about selecting songs for this mix. I work nights and when I have a night off, I, many times, find myself waiting the night out with the hum of my body and the appliances in the kitchen providing the background for my thoughts to roam. This is when I do most of my mixwork, which is why so many of my mixes have a certain nocturnal quality to them. I've been trying, with some success, to change that habit of late by listening to more upbeat garage rock. So jumping back over to making this type of mix was rather easy for me to do.

note - I made this mix last year for the April FTOTZ exchange.

A cabin fever induced snow themed mix that I put together during December 2008 while snowed in. I made use of the electricity while it was available.



The cover is a picture of my street on the day I made the mix.

Link:
http://tinyurl.com/yc7uvj2

This mix has body-image issues, but pretends it doesn't. On most scales, it is phat, nonetheless. From the big meaty bouncy grooves of Starfucker, to the emaciated tones of Interpol, to the sweet contours of Monster Movie, to the drugged-up sass of Times New Viking, to the poppin' pretties of Aztec Camera, the Go-Betweens, and some other gooberrific top 40 messes that seemed right at the time, this is a harvest of emotions that followed the death of someone, who I saw at work everyday that made me laugh and who I could make laugh, someone that accidentally picked up the phone and told the boss that she didn't habla Espanol and hung up. There's a lot more to that story and I'll tell it later, but I must say that it's weirdly coincidental that just after making that goofy mixtape for the "ghost" of my Uncle Clarence, Shelby dies tragically. At any rate, this mix isn't about her, but it would not have occurred without the insomnia that hearing the news of her death brought about. I miss her and she didn't deserve to go out like that.

So this mix doesn't know what it is, but in pretending, even with the silly cover art and all the rest, it succeeds, for me, today. Fuck.

My Uncle Clarence died recently. I did not attend the funeral. I received a memorial card and a memorial slide show DVD. Out of curiosity, I watched the DVD, and saw a man, several generations removed from my own, going through the snappy 50's and 60's and into the atrociously dressed 70's, fighting a war, raising a daughter, hanging with the other deacons at the local church, and spending quality time with his grandkids. By all appearances, he was a good guy, but he seemed a little stubborn, a little stiff, and a shade cranky. I met him later and I was right on all counts.

For various reasons, I really did not know my uncle during his lifetime, but yet there I was listed as an honorary pall bearer on the memorial card. And just as I was volunteered, by persons unknown, to be there in spirit, just as unexpectedly, Clarence showed up at my house, in ghostly fashion, to see what I was doing with my life. And what I was doing was making a mellow mix with death in mind. So Clarence and I rapped a bit. This was a clash from jump. And Clarence doesn't approve and I don't know why not, but I think I'll start a four mix series called the Sex and Death Quartet.

And, if by some strange twist of boredom I ever visit his crypt, I will listen to this mix on the way.





Download link:

http://tinyurl.com/y8s789d





note - The cover is from a watercolor painting by Anselm Kiefer

Themed Mixtape for the the July FTOTZ exchange. It travels out and about with city jamtimers, freeway screamers, and rural ragers. At times it's a bit middle of the road, but by then it's so far off the map that it doesn't really matter because there ain't too much traffic around anyway, ya dig?

It goes Garage Rock --> Post Punk-->Classic Rock--->Country-->Hard Rock-->Proto-Punk-->Punk--->Hip-Hop-->New Wave-->Indie-->Rock-->Dream Pop-->Shoegaze-->Classic Rock-->Rock and Roll Supergroup--> 21st century Bowie

Get a load:

http://tinyurl.com/ygbqrgy

I found a Sun Records 45 the other day and it triggered an overwhelming sense of deja vu, like I'd owned it before or like maybe, at some time in the past, I'd had a strong personal feeling about this song. I'd always poohooed the ideer of past lives, but I couldn't shake it.

Being alone one day in New York City, I thought about it some more and decided that maybe a gypsy psychic in the Lower Eastside near St. Mark's Place might offer some help. What did I have to lose? Her name was Madame Juli and she claimed to be a clairvoyant medium who could also balance and realign chakras. I explained what the feelings felt like and she thought that since music figured to be a major trigger for me, we could use that to help regress me to a past life. Being near a number of great record shops and being a music person herself, there were plenty of great 45's to listen to. I thought we would just use tarot cards or a ouija board, but yet, there we were, playing records from the 50's and 60's while I was under a deep hypnosis and all the while, recording the my recollections.

I've since listened to them a few times and transcribed part of them. I decided to leave out some of the details because I need to check some things out first and besides this isn't a diary entry, but I thought that most of the songs used would make a great mixtape. I added a relatively modern song or two as mood suited and all in all, I found it unsettling and beautiful what sort of fake(?) nostalgia that surf guitars can conjure.

upload:

http://tinyurl.com/yjjh5fw

I made this mix for the August 2009 FTOTZ mixtape exchange. I wanted to do a cover chain straight through, but, for the sake of sounding decent, I had to cut some songs, thus cutting the chain into a short chain, a longer chain, and an unrelated three song closing sequence. It became frustrating to me at one point and I felt like a surgeon on Michael Jackson's fifteenth nose job trying to make some semblance of continuity out of butchered materials.

This mix is something I might blast while driving to Portland later this week. I made this mix because I was compelled to make it.

The cover art is by Basquiat and it's a hodgepodge like this mixtape.

I uploaded it for any curious enough to give it a listen:

http://tinyurl.com/yk3exzx

'Tis the season. This is a short mixtape to ward off the flu formerly known as swine. I randomly remembered some hip hop lyrics, mentioning flu or flu like symptoms, by artists such as Method Man, King Tee, and Craig Mack. So I isolated those lyrics + a sniffling beat box performance by King Tee and mashed them all up to a dope beat by Madvillain. From there, I went to a great piece of advice from Screamin' Jay Hawkins and then to a gimme for a mix like this: Mudhoney's "Touch Me, I'm Sick". Then on to a Canadian shoegaze band that put out a more slightly hip hop track called "Sicker this Year". Then a very somber 60's folkie/jazzy track written from the perspective of a teen aged girl on her death bed, who in spite of all the medicines and care, knows she will die and is, of all things in the world, most sad to lose the music in her life, to which the singer's mother attributes the onset of the illness! Next is great tip for the flu season from a country feller named Nat Stuckey called "The Least You Can Do Is Wash Your Hands" which is basically a criticism of dirty hippies, but it's still a good idea. The Pogues sing a deathbed rant to carry us home and that's it. I didn't want to drag this theme out. Fifteen minutes is enough to give the H1N1 virus. If any of us should contract this illness, may it last as long as this mix before we recover.

(So, basically, this is an experiment borne of boredom, per usual, and cements my reputation as a world class dork for all time.)

At least while I made this thing, I stayed away from people, which, of course, in all actuality is a major risk factor for contracting the dreaded swine flu.

Innoculation available:

http://tinyurl.com/yfc8qbf

I'm overwhelmed with music lately. Actual physical 45's, mp3's, CD samplers, local shows, and the random function on the mp3 player have my head swimming. I revert to super music fan mode when life becomes too disheartening and use mixtapes to suss out something to hold onto. So here I am, making a mix again for an imaginary someday.

A download is available:

http://tinyurl.com/yeyzkcu

I have no idea why I made this mix in the early morning hours yesterday. Imperfect nostalgia, I suppose. You stare at the wall for a bit and sometimes things like this happen.

So, these are neither the top songs from 1988 nor are they necessarily the best songs. I didn't want to make a 80's pop mix with the usual pop tunes. I scanned the Billboard charts for songs that didn't make the year's top 100, but that were still apt to be remembered by young people of the era. Most of the songs here fit into that category.

People I knew liked these songs. MTV and Top 40 radio made these tunes part of the 1988 experience. Some were even club hits. I make no apologies for their inclusion, unless someone would feel better if I did make one. U2's most minor hit from their biggest album of the 80's makes the cut because, hey, this mix could use some timelessness.

The only song on this mix that was not in Billboard's top 400 for 1988 is the Pixies' "Where is My Mind?" and that was included to show what was taking place in an "alternative universe".

Final thought: 80's pop radio kills 00's pop radio.

Anyway wishing to download this pup:

http://tinyurl.com/napukv

I made this for the FTOZT mix club for June. I never heard how it was received, but no matter, it is the giving that counts, and I don't celebrate Christmas, so I should know.

I included a bunch of stuff that I have found here in my own backyard in Salem and Portland, Oregon, but there's also great socialist hip-hip by none other than the Bay Area's own, The Coup. But wait, there's more. Listen at will.

Link:

http://tinyurl.com/nxblbj

On a recent trip to NYC, I witnessed some cool bands, many without my knowing anything about them beforehand, making some live sounds in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. I wanted to make a mix of my favorites from that trip, but ended up only including a few of them and surrounding those songs with some shoegaze and new wave classics (as well as asorted other stuff). This mix will also be sent to a girl who wanted to hear some of these bands, but didn't have the chance to do so while in New York. Basically, this tape is a mostly upbeat celebration of left-of-center pop tunes. I went for flow, rather then theme.

Download it:

http://tinyurl.com/nnoxmu

I met this great girl in NYC and we went drinking for a few hours. We live thousands of miles apart. She wanted a mixtape with jazz vocals on it. So here it is. She also had other mixtape requests which I intend to honour as well. It's been a long time since I've put together a jazz mix and I've never done so with the restriction of only including jazz songs with vocals. The title is from the lyrics to the Cannonball Adderly song "Never Will I Marry" with vocals by the underappreciated Nancy Wilson.


Download:

http://tinyurl.com/knh5bm

This mixtape is really all about the fun factor. Opening with some medieval French music then zigzagging into and between garage rock, Bowie, girl-groups, to acid jazz, and back again, this mixtape represents some of my favorite things of the moment. If this looks funtastic enough to listen to, email me at freemethodist@hotmail.com and I will provide the upload link.

I recently had the privilege of attending two concerts - one in a cafe, the other in a living room. Folk music was performed on both nights. I went to the living room gig because Beatbeat Whisper had performed so magically at the Salem CoffeHouse Cafe the previous night. A modestly sized living room in deep SE Portland, dimmed lights, and two acoustic guitars made the night memorable. After experiencing such a great grass-roots event, I wanted to capture some of what I was feeling on a mixtape. Three of the bands are represented here: Beatbeat Whisper, Firs of Prey, and Whiskey Priest.

Well that's what inspired the creation of this one, thank you to all who made it happen on St. Paddy's Day. Cheers.

NOTES: I picked song titles with names of painters, actors, directors, writers, or historical figures, beginning with Kubrick, ending with Chandler, and hoped that what happened in between made for good listening. There were many otherwise great tracks that just didn't fit the flow of the mix, but that might be included on future mixes. This mix has some hip hip-hop and some slick post-rock along with a reggae track and the folk song or three, so if you choose to download the mix, be forewarned. I looked over some of the similarly themed mixes from years past - many of which are stellar - and I hope this one is unique enough to warrant posting on this site. The Edie Sedgwick song about Mary-Kate Olson and the Dan Bern song about Johnny Cash and Anais Nin's imaginary love affair both crack me up. "Henry Miller" is performed by a band who has a really great Slowdive-inspired sound, which sets up the final track for a fitting send-off, hopefully. Enjoy. Download it at: http://rapids hare.com/files/206892252/start s_with_stanley_kubrick__e.nds _with_raymond_chandler.mp3