Mixtape Madness Vol. 1, 90-minute edition
“The Awakening”
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What is the purpose of a mixtape? If you’re of a certain age, my guess is you probably have some pretty strong opinions on this subject, GenX, elder millennials – I’m looking at you even if I learned this craft from my boomer parents, specifically my Dad.
In his book “High Fidelity,” author Nick Hornby gave us some guidance around this task. Well, coming from the main character Ron, they were more like the Ten Commandments of Mixtape-ology – Thou shalt start off strong, thou shalt bring it back down, thou shall not blow your wad on the first few songs. But truth is something different entirely.
Were you making the mixtape for you? All bets were off, load that fucker up with your favorites! We’re you trying to introduce someone to a band? What songs to pick, how to show their greatness and range?! Were you trying to impress a member of the opposite sex?! Next to the break-up mixtape, this was the most delicate of dance. Using someone else’s poetry to express your private thoughts, that was some dicey shit and you better get it right! Whatever you were making it for, you had a plan and you knew the basic rules. You made a list, you bought the best quality cassette with the timeframe you wanted (60, 90, 120 minutes) plugged the headphones into the jack and got to work.
My brother and I have similar taste in music. That said, where we diverge, we diverge in some interesting ways. I was talking to him on the phone recently and we were reminiscing about mixtapes and how much we missed making them. I’d been playing around with different ways to introduce people to new music and had an idea.
Say what you want to say about old-school radio (and trust me, there were a lot of problems) but during its golden era, somebody who spent a lot of time listening to A LOT music was sitting behind the console spinning amazing shit just for you. I love how much the internet has democratized music but at the same time there’s no one left to separate the wheat from the chaff. No one is pouring over new releases finding that nugget from some local or unknown. No one at KROQ in Los Angeles is out there looking/listening for the next Oingo Boingo.
So the idea that I pitched to my brother (@ChasingVinyl on TikTok) let’s do that! Let’s take our passion for mixtapes and our natural tendency to geek the fuck out on music (we both have extensive audio setups including record players and our collection in all of its weird and divergent glory makes sense only to us) and make something for the world. So here we are, the first edition of Mixtape Madness. I have no idea how regularly we plan to publish these, though it will be with some frequency. We’ll flip flop sides (sticking with the mixtape thread) but we’re sticking to the time format and “the rules” as laid out since time immemorial. We’re jamming some of our favorite tracks in between some well-known, well loved tracks – surround the new with the familiar. We hope you enjoy this and feel free to send us a message letting us know what you’d love to see on there – if I’m being honest, the stranger the better. Popular music is pretty well represented in the modern mediascape, so send us recommendations to something new, something obscure.
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Playlist
Side A - Trigger Hippie
Molly - Ecco Vandal
Like A Stone - Audioslave
The Way I Walk - The Cramps
Satanist - Boy Genius
More Than A Feeling - Boston
Sickness - Runo Plum
I Still Remember - Bloc Party
Crash and Burn - Angus and Julia Stone
Why We Left - SpaceAcre
Sick - Lunar Vacation
Come Together - The Beatles
Side B - ChasingVinyl
Let’s Be Still - The Head and the Heart
Love Vigilantes - Iron and Wine
Fever - Caamp
Sweet - Cigarettes After Sex
Hero - Family of the Year
I’d Rather Overdose - honestav, Z
Bag of Bones - Lord Huron
Brightside - The Lumineers
Rushmere - Mumford and Sons
I Need Never Grow Old - Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
Life’s for the Living - Passenger
This was good. I'd have to say my top three favorites were Molly, I Still Remember (Bloc Party was on my first mixtapes), and I'd Rather Overdose, with Bag of Bones being an honorable mention.