Mixtape Philosophy : A Bad Sense of Humor

                        

It's been a few months since my last contribution to Mix Club, but I'm happy to report I've got something new to offer. The mix is called A Bad Sense of Humor and started off with "Modern Girl" by Sleater Kinney. I found the song a few months back and decided very quickly that it was going to be the seed for a mix. "Modern Girl"is from Sleater Kinney's 2005 album The Woods. When the all-girl punk trio from the 90s put out the album, it was supposed to be their Led Zeppelin album, a foray into big, loud, pure-blooded rock. It's a great album, but sadly, it seems to have been their last. No matter, "Modern Girl" retains more of a punk sound than some of the other tracks and is my favorite cut. It served as a template for the songs I chose for the mix– punk-inflected 90s rock. Those three identifiers show up in some form on most of this mix, even if the songs only sound that way. Two good examples are the opening and closing tracks, "Baby C'mon" by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks and "Stay Useless" by Cloud Nothings. The former is from 2005, and obviously Malkmus is from Pavement. "Stay Useless" came out last year. Both have a particular kind of fuzz on the guitar and the kind of vocals that seem to want to prove that it doesn't matter if you can actually sing. "Love Police" by Sleeping in the Aviary is the same way. It would be a mess if it were any looser and louder.

As for the songs that stray from this style somewhat, "Hey Doreen" by Lucius is one of the strongest songs I've heard all year. One of the singers contributes to Brooklyn group San Fermin. I love the power in the vocals. My two mood-balancing songs were "Worlds are Made of Paper" by Ben Taylor and "The Box" by Johnny Flynn. Both are great lyrics songs, but the latter in particular is far more reflective and even a little melancholic than you might notice if you don't pay attention.

Speaking of paying attention, if you heard my last mix, What We Trade Our Hearing For, you might notice that Said the Whale is making a repeat appearance. Why? Because I remain in love with their September album hawaiii. Check out my interview with frontman Tyler Bancroft, if you have a moment. "I Love You" is like a two and a half minute caffeine rush. It was also the last song I added.

Making this mix presented a few challenging moments in that I originally included several songs that I love, but don't fit. A mix should be an experience, not a haphazard collection, so I had to be cold about my decision to cut out the more pop and dance-edged stuff. It was weirdly difficult to trim them, but I think the result is more cohesive. Plus, the upshot is that sound might be the focus of my next mix.

The last song I want to talk about is "She Takes." It's by a band from the 90s that you probably never heard called This Way. They put out one record and I only know about that because the universe put their song "Nice" in my path while in high school. Until recently, their album was unavailable on Spotify. More on them later.

Anyway, that's that. I hope you take it for a spin.

Mixtape Philosophy: What We Trade Our Hearing For

When I was 16 I split the cost of a blue iPod mini with my folks. It was right before my (June) birthday, just at the edge of the summer. I bought an iTunes card and downloaded a set of 14 songs that largely shaped the feel of that summer. Those songs sounded the way that summer feels in the late afternoon. I get antsy. For some reason, this season alone feels like just about anything could happen. You've just got to get out there.

That's the basic idea I started working with for this new mix. This past weekend was great, and a lot happened, but most of all, it felt like summer started. With an excess of ideas, I put together "What We Trade Our Hearing For" in about two days instead of my usual month.

The songs came mostly from a playlist I keep called Mix Material. I started with "Stairway" by Yukon Blonde, which has the kind charging bassline that makes multiple appearances on the mix. The other quality it has is this big, fresh sound on the chorus. That's partly how I matched it up with "You Know Me" by Air Traffic Controller and "Shout it Out" by Mikal Cronin. With regard to "Shout it Out," holy smokes does that song live on an awesome album. If you haven't heard MCII, get a hold of it as soon as you can.

I also followed a certain pattern with the sound of the vocals on the mix. It's mostly guys who don't have particularly deep voices, so the feel is airy, especially on a song like "American Dream" by ON AN ON that has some additional hazy-sounding production.

One song I'm excited about is "Shove Off," by Luke LaLonde (current frontman for Born Ruffians). I had this sparse, quirky, little tune filed away because it's only recently become available on Spotify. It worked out well because I also needed a more mid tempo song to balance out the rest of the mix which is pretty damn foot-tappy. One of the worst "offenders" in that respect is the jittery "High School Lover" by Cayucas. My immediate attraction is the California indie pop/surf rock sound. What's more summery than that? I offer this: Nothing.

Also earning a spot on the mix is "Mountains" by She and the Sun. I actually reviewed their debut album a few months back and really fell in love with song's dreamy build.

The real point of pride for me on this mix is "Camilo (The Magician)" by Said the Whale. It was the last song I threw in my Mix Draft 1 playlist, and one that I found because I knew I just needed something else. What can I say about this song other than I can hardly even listen to the rest of the mix because I keep replaying it. I love the exuberance, the halting guitar, the hooky chorus, and I like the idea of this guy asking a magician for help with a girl. It's like a modern "Love Potion Number 9." Most of all, I love that it makes me antsy and ready to get outside. That's how summer should feel: happy and boundless.

Mixtape Philosophy: How to Ride a Tornado / 500th Post

I haven't posted anything in a few days because I was trying to scheme up something cool for The Musically Inclined's 500th post.

Well. Here we are. Happy 500th post to us.

Last night while watching the local news, I heard the weather person say that this week is the beginning of Tornado Season. If you grew up in an atmospherically volatile place like Nashville, Tornado Season conjures up a whole range of feelings from anxiety to annoyance. Never been through a bad tornado warning? Picture the Helm's Deep battle from Lord of the Rings. You cower inside while all hell breaks loose outside. And the worst thing is when a storm hits in the early hours of the morning. There were a few years in the 90s when it felt like I was woken up every other night in the spring by epic thunder, lightning, and the general sense that the gods were unhappy.

But the thing is, after 18-ish years of living here, I can't muster up a good fear anymore. Anyway, I thought it would be cool to make a themed mix in honor of the start of the season called How to Ride a Tornado. Themed mixes can be a little on the nose sometimes, but the last one I did (Flight Notes) was pretty fun.

I see this mix as a pre-storm calm down. Most of the songs have some repetitive or ambient quality, good for taming nerves. I'm most excited about "Surrender to the Storm" by Joseph Arthur off his recent 2-part album Redemption City. "Surrender to the Storm" breaks my rules about song length in mixes, but for good reason. At 11 minutes, it's an accurate mix of emotions and tensions during a rough weather system, from an awe for the power and drama of the storm, to the final soothing stages when the worst is over and it's just rain. There are also songs like "Windstorm" by School of Seven Bells that have interesting, mysterious sounds to them, not unlike the weirdness you hear in a storm. And then to close out, I picked "Rise to the Sun" by Alabama Shakes, partly because it's the perfect segue from "Surrender to the Storm," but also because the morning can be the best consolation.

Anyway, Happy Tornado Season.

PS ("Weather of a Killing Kind" by the Tallest Man on Earth might not show up on Spotify.)

Mixtape Philosophy: It's Brighter When the Lights are Out

The saga of the mix club continues. For anyone tuning in late, some friends and I have an arrangement for swapping Spotify playlists every week or so. Tonight I posted my second contribution, a mix called "It's Brighter When the Lights Are Out." Like I did last time, I thought I'd post the mix and a walk through.

Some months ago, I found a couple tracks by Simon Dawes (L.A. band Dawes's previous incarnation) and really loved them so I decided to build this mix around "The Awful Things," which is a punky-er turn on the Dawes sound. That set me on a mission to find songs that recalled guitar-bent, west coast music from decades past. That was not hard to do. A few that came to mind immediately were Howler's "Back of Your Neck" which I posted about this summer, "Learn How to Hang" by David Vandervelde, and The Explorer Club's "Do You Love Me," which is an awesomely bizarre combo of the Beach Boys and Phil Spector, essentially.

I also got the chance to work in some Madi Diaz, and because Madi Diaz and Keegan DeWitt are linked in my mind, I followed it up with "Jonti" by Wild Cub. It's a killer track that gets better with every listen. I cant' say enough good things about its sounds and spirit. "Jonti" is also where I got the name for the mix. DeWitt sings, "I see it now, it's brighter when the lights are out." I thought that was a great lyric and great name for the mix.

Record label samplers, NoiseTrade, and the like also helped me out this time around and I really did make some good finds. For example, "It Lingers" by Cheyenne Marie Mize and "How I Roll" by Charlie Mars, both important for the mix in terms of tone and pacing. Speaking of which, I thought the first couple drafts lacked something. Tthe mix needed one more song early on to bring things down just a bit for the middle section. I took to the ever reliable Paste Magazine and almost right off the bat ran into an article about a band from California called Allah-Las that have a kind of sepia-tinged retro thing going on and it was a real "bingo" moment. "Vis-a-Vis" fit perfect.

For the first time I included an instrumental called "Native New Yorker" by Booker T. which set up perfectly for "The Awful Things," and that pretty much brings us back to the beginning.

I've embedded the Spotify playlist above. I hope you take it for a spin. Sometimes you make these things and have no idea if A) anyone heard it or if B) anyone liked it. Anyway. There you have it. The very latest in mixtape philosophy.

Mixtape Philosophy : My First Mixtape

Mixtape philosophy is front of mind lately. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, some friends and I have a mix "club" where we swap Spotify playlists. This week we started up on an unofficial round two. For me, making a mix is a long process. I'm shooting for January sometime, but I'm already collecting and corralling songs from my library and scouring digital samplers etc. for new material. Give it another few weeks and I'll be in full on obsession mode, working on song order and taking the tracks for test drives.

My mix madness started crica 1997-8. There was a show on PBS called KidsSongs that featured a cast of children producing a television show that ran music videos they made for oldies.

Already favoring oldies to anything else on the radio, I started bugging my dad to help me find some of the songs that I heard on the show since he'd been known to make many a mixtape. Over the course of a couple Saturdays, we put together two sides of a cassette tape, starting with original versions of songs ("Rockin' Robin" by Bobby Day, "Sea Cruise" by Frankie Ford) that he happened to have on vinyl.

Beyond KidsSongs, the tape also went in a few other important directions as far as taste-making goes. After all, we had 60 min to fill. There were the songs that my dad picked out because he thought I'd like them ("Jackson" by Johnny and June Cash, "The Little Shoemaker" by The Gaylords, "Let Me In" by The Sensations). There were the songs that I requested because I already knew them ("Big Girls Don't Cry" by The Four Seasons), or that I asked for because I wanted to hear more from the artist/group/style (The Temptations were the soundtrack to 3rd grade). I liked saxophones, so my dad picked out a sax instrumental. And then there was the lesson to be found in including the original (and somewhat underrated) Carl Perkins version of "Blue Suede Shoes" over the Elvis cover: Original and rare should be prized qualities in music.

Anyway, after digging up the actual tape, I took to Spotify to recreate it and managed to avoid any lame re-recordings, which was more challenging than you'd think. (I'm looking at you, Roger Miller.) If you're tired of your own memory lane, take a stroll down mine.

NPR's Best Practices for Mixtapes

Allow me to direct your attention to some sage advice from the folks at NPR's All Song Considered. It's how to make a mixtape without looking like a creeper. Spolier: Never ever use "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. A move like that's almost restraining order worthy. Anyway, hop on over to NPR and read up on this great piece of mixtape philosophy. 

Adventures in Mix Making

In an earlier post I mentioned that I'm involved with some ruffians in a mix club. The basic premise is that we're taking turns creating Spotify playlists and posting them on the Facebooks. Wild stuff. My turn finally came around this week, which is good because I've been crafting this sucker for about a month and I'm damn near sick of it.

In any case, I thought I'd post it here (since who doesn't like a little injection of new music) and tell you a bit about it. (Hiyo process story!)

One of my favorite conversations has always been about how people make mixes. For me, my default mode is finding music that matches sound-wise, whether it's jangly indie guitar, or breathy songwriter stuff, or whatever. For this mix I got stuck on what I consider to be a kind of dirty guitar sound. I went through about 4 drafts of the mix before I settled. The biggest challenge was dealing with Spotify, which sadly lacks many of the tracks that I was most excited about including, like:

A Story of Nashville by Oblio
Nice by Thisway
The Silence Between Us by Bob Mould
Sewn Together by The Meat Puppets

Bad luck, right? I think I found suitable replacements. It sounded ok when I took the final incarnation for a test drive yesterday. Oh, and that's the other thing. I test drive my mixes. Before anyone else hears one, I've heard it at least twice.  One positive turn that came from the swap outs, is that I got to put "Trouble Comes Running" by Spoon back in. The song hadn't survived the first draft edits, but somehow at the end, it was just what I needed.

The name of the mix comes from a line in the second track "Good To Be" by Backyard Tire Fire. I think basic mix protocol is to use a lyric that somehow fits the mix. In this case, I picked "I Just Don't Know When to Stop" because most of the songs are upbeat and energetic, and that violates my pacing rule of putting in two slow songs in the middle and a kind of slow song second to last. I tried. Sort of did it. But you know, I hate slow songs. I want a mix, not an Ambien.

Ok. Quick word about some of the artists. The past few years, I've had a hard time making a mix that didn't include Brendan Benson. His 2005 album Alternative to Love is a mix maker's dream. "Feel Like Myself Again" is the kind of song that'll get you through a gloomy afternoon. Suzanne Vega's "Frank & Ava" is  probably one of my most listened to songs. Her lyrics are *mwuah* excellent. I also got to work in the very first Wilco song I ever knew, one that I actually had the lyrics to in my high school locker. Then there's the Candy Butchers, the most underrated pop/rock act of the 90s. Also, let's not forget Pictures and Sound, from Nashville dude Luke Reynolds. Again, you want to talk about under-appreciated, Picture and Sound's one and only album had more than a few standouts.

Anyway, that's enough about that. If you're so inclined, give it a listen. Happy Friday.

Flight Notes: Tunes for the Traveler

Syracuse airport or bowling alley?

I'm a big believer in mix(tapes) as an art form. They're fascinating. Everyone has a philosophy on how to make one, whether it's leaning more on theme or sound. I prefer the latter. My goal is to put together a group of songs that compliment each other, take you through a mood arc of sorts and get you home in about 35 minutes. And if I've worked hard enough, you won't know 85% of the tracks.

Some folks just like to throw together some good stuff. End of story. I still can't decide whether it's better to give or receive.

In any case, about a month ago I diverged from my mixtape-making habits and started work on a collection of songs about traveling since at last count,  I've been on 17 different planes in the past 8 months. Plus, I read Walter Kirn's 2001 Up In the Air, which became the George Clooney movie in 2009. My excessive flying gave me a new appreciation for the topic and the nomadic protagonist. There's a certain amount of melancholy in mixed in with all that circulated air.

After testing driving this mix (or maybe I should just call it a playlist) for a few weeks, I'm satisfied. On a related noted, playlists and mix cds do wonders for making my daily bus ride palatable.

Anyhoodle, here's the link to "Flight Notes: Tunes for the Traveler" on Spotify. And if you've got your own mixtape philosophy, do share.