In the farmhouse things will be all right...
We made a ton of mix CD's over the years we spent at the college. Wavelet was especially prolific; her mixes always had awesome titles, too, like Drunk & Depressed (perfect for when, you know, you are), and Love & Rockets (perfect for when you're drunk and you're fucking sick of being depressed and you want to jump around and yell a lot).
My mixes always tended to be a little too obsessive and overthought. The ones that turned out the best, oddly enough, were the two sets of road trip mixes I made before the bro and I drove from L.A. to Atlanta, and then at the end of the summer from Atlanta to L.A. They were basically just thrown together from all the music I'd downloaded recently, but they held together amazingly well. They ended up being sort of themed in a weird accidental way, like one of them was A Bunch of 80's Music That's Vaguely Creepy But Hell Yeah (Talking Heads, Prince, Michael Jackson, etc), and another one was Bands From the Late 80's That Usually Played Drunk Off Their Asses (lots of Replacements and Guided by Voices on that one).
But one of the best mixes I ever made was actually one of the more thought-out ones. I put together a big ol' playlist of songs, and changed their order around about 300 times. I listened to the end of one song followed by the beginning of the next one to make sure the transition was right. I finally burned it right before nomikkh and my brother and I headed out for the desert endurance test known as Coachella, and it has forever more been known as... The Coachella Mix. I don't know that it has a theme, really; the closest uniting thing I can think of is that each one of these songs, pretty much without exception, gives me the feeling I value the most about listening to music. I don't know if I can describe the feeling in a way that makes sense...something like being so fucking happy, so overjoyed, that you're grinning with tears running down your face, and slamming yourself against people in a mosh pit until you can't breathe. Which makes it sound like a very psychotic and mixed-up feeling, but it's not--it's too joyous for words, and it's sad too, which is the best kind of joy, maybe the only kind. I don't know. "I'll be home when I'm sleepin..." "The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean." You can't argue with that shit.
Anyway, now that I've made it sound like a damn Salinger novel in musical form, the actual list is bound to be a bit underwhelming. But here it is.
The Replacements - Can't Hardly Wait
Violent Femmes - I Held Her In My Arms
Pretty Girls Make Graves - All Medicated Geniuses
Flaming Lips - Buggin'
Phish - Farmhouse
Proclaimers - Over and Done With
Trio - Out In the Streets
The Supremes - Love Child
Grateful Dead - Brown-Eyed Women
The Kinks - Nothing in This World Can Stop Me Worrying 'Bout That Girl
Built to Spill - Strange
Daniel Johnston - Speeding Motorcycle
Le Tigre - Sweetie
The Band - Up On Cripple Creek
Guided by Voices - Atom Eyes
Halo Benders - Don't Touch My Bikini
Fugazi - Waiting Room
Violent Femmes - Jesus Walking on the Water
Ugly Casanova - Things I Don't Remember
Wilco - Bob Dylan's 49th Beard
My mixes always tended to be a little too obsessive and overthought. The ones that turned out the best, oddly enough, were the two sets of road trip mixes I made before the bro and I drove from L.A. to Atlanta, and then at the end of the summer from Atlanta to L.A. They were basically just thrown together from all the music I'd downloaded recently, but they held together amazingly well. They ended up being sort of themed in a weird accidental way, like one of them was A Bunch of 80's Music That's Vaguely Creepy But Hell Yeah (Talking Heads, Prince, Michael Jackson, etc), and another one was Bands From the Late 80's That Usually Played Drunk Off Their Asses (lots of Replacements and Guided by Voices on that one).
But one of the best mixes I ever made was actually one of the more thought-out ones. I put together a big ol' playlist of songs, and changed their order around about 300 times. I listened to the end of one song followed by the beginning of the next one to make sure the transition was right. I finally burned it right before nomikkh and my brother and I headed out for the desert endurance test known as Coachella, and it has forever more been known as... The Coachella Mix. I don't know that it has a theme, really; the closest uniting thing I can think of is that each one of these songs, pretty much without exception, gives me the feeling I value the most about listening to music. I don't know if I can describe the feeling in a way that makes sense...something like being so fucking happy, so overjoyed, that you're grinning with tears running down your face, and slamming yourself against people in a mosh pit until you can't breathe. Which makes it sound like a very psychotic and mixed-up feeling, but it's not--it's too joyous for words, and it's sad too, which is the best kind of joy, maybe the only kind. I don't know. "I'll be home when I'm sleepin..." "The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean." You can't argue with that shit.
Anyway, now that I've made it sound like a damn Salinger novel in musical form, the actual list is bound to be a bit underwhelming. But here it is.
The Replacements - Can't Hardly Wait
Violent Femmes - I Held Her In My Arms
Pretty Girls Make Graves - All Medicated Geniuses
Flaming Lips - Buggin'
Phish - Farmhouse
Proclaimers - Over and Done With
Trio - Out In the Streets
The Supremes - Love Child
Grateful Dead - Brown-Eyed Women
The Kinks - Nothing in This World Can Stop Me Worrying 'Bout That Girl
Built to Spill - Strange
Daniel Johnston - Speeding Motorcycle
Le Tigre - Sweetie
The Band - Up On Cripple Creek
Guided by Voices - Atom Eyes
Halo Benders - Don't Touch My Bikini
Fugazi - Waiting Room
Violent Femmes - Jesus Walking on the Water
Ugly Casanova - Things I Don't Remember
Wilco - Bob Dylan's 49th Beard
posted by ridley at 11/29/2004 07:47:00 AM
1 Comments:
hey, jedno! thanks for stealing the topic on which i was going to write. ok, still am. i would like to state proudly that ridley use to be a hippy hater, but then WE CONVERTED HER! she saw the error in her ways, and has come over to the bright side--the peace, love, and joy side! (no, i still don't smoke.)
Post a Comment
<< Home