GGF Young Professionals

Mix tape mania

A couple of years ago, I went through this period where I was completely obsessed with compiling mix tapes, well, mix CDs anyway. I'd spend hours compiling songs and arranging them in some emotionally coherent order and then designing CD covers for each mix.

Pretty soon, I ran out of steam and had to lay off for a while.

Well, it looks like I'm back on the habit, having spent four or five hours this week on a new mix.

As I was trying to figure out where each song went, I was thinking of that scene from "High Fidelity" where the John Cusack character explains the art of the mix tape.

I found the quote from the Nick Hornsby novel that was the basis for the movie:

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind," but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.

I've made my own rules, too.

* Kicking off with a corker is one way to do it, but there's other patterns you can follow. You can start subtly and quietly — the way some songs start and you barely realize you're listening to them until they suddenly hit their stride — build up to a climax and then ease on out. Hmmm, that sounds not quite right. Music. We're talking about music, OK?

You can drop the listener into a song that starts suddenly, the way some novels drop the reader into the middle of a scene without any explanation. Then you build up excitement with a couple of tracks, bring it down a few notches as Hornsby suggests and cruise for a few tracks. Then you build up to the climax and go out with a bang.

* Obviously, there has to be fast songs and slow songs. If the whole mix consists of, say, non-stop hard rock, it's gonna just all blend together. You have to highlight the qualities of the songs with their opposites.

* Picking all the tracks from the same genre or the same year is lazy. Mix and match if you can. It's acceptable to mix original artists with later bands that sing songs written by the original artists, just as long as you don't repeat songs on the same mix.

The one exception to the rule is ABBA. There is only one ABBA. I forget the stupid punks who redid ABBA note for note a few years ago but it was supremely lame. The same with Madonna sampling the opening from "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" in "Hung Up." I could go on, but I won't.

* Sometimes it's fun to bury a bonus track after a long pause at the end of the mix. I don't know why I like to do this. Maybe I like to offer a counterpoint to the whole mix. I once tucked a Muppet rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" — Miss Piggy: "Piggy pudding?" Scooter: "Figgy pudding!" — at the end of a Christmas rock mix.

* The mix should have some sort of theme, even if it's all in your mind and nobody can figure it out.

Sometimes the theme is obvious: break-up, heartache (related but not the same as the former), anger (also related), energizing (This is the workout mix. If you are a straight man, it should never contain disco. Tried it and it wasn't pretty.), etc.

Sometimes the theme is a mood: in love but cynical about it, in love and ecstatic about it, not in love and pissed off about it, feeling like beating the shit out of something, etc.

Sometimes the theme is complex. Imagine if you were making the soundtrack to a movie. Is it a comedy? A gritty urban tale? A fantastic spy pic? A drama? A movie about a loser kid in rural Idaho who wins over his high school by dancing like a loon to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat"?

* You might want to consider the song lyrics if you do a soundtrack. The opening track should convey the emotional spirit of the movie and the last track should reflect the ending. Is it a happy ending? A sad ending? A violent ending?

Anyway, I saved the boring for last. Here's the story with my mix.

It started with Lizzie West's "Chariots Rise," the song at the end of the movie "Secretary," the one with the full-frontal female nudity scene that I innocently gave to a female friend for her birthday. Oops. She lent it back to me and I got hooked on the song. The movie lead with a great song by Leonard Cohen called "I'm Your Man."

Anyway, "Chariots" was the core song that would define the spirit of the mix. I used All Music and Amazon.com to find similar artists and sample their songs.

Strong candidates included:

* Bic Runga's "Sway," from the "American Pie" soundtrack.

* Heather Nova's and Benjamin Biolay's "Let's Not Talk About Love."

* Beth Orton's rendition of "Wild World" from the "How to Deal" soundtrack. I love Cat Stevens songs, but sometimes they sound too delicate to go with anything else. It's kinda like how I feel about Bob Dylan songs, except Bob Dylan sounds like a frog so it's better if other people sing his songs.

* Rod Stewart's rendition of "The First Cut is the Deepest." I think Rod's version is way better than Sheryl Crow's and Cat Stevens' original version isn't even recognizable as the same song.

There's other stuff that I found but they didn't fit together some how so I had to call it quits for a couple of months.

Then I bought "Rabbit Fur Coat" by Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins this week and it all came together. The first time I listened, I was in my cubicle at work. I had to stop everything for a while because it was too hard to concentrate with all that aural pleasure going on. I'm not kidding you, I got eargasm. Try some samples on All Music or Amazon.com. All Music says it's "the perfect soundtrack to 2 a.m." One of my favorite tracks, which I had to use for the mix, is "You Are What You Love" — a truism if I ever heard one. I also decided to use the band's rendition of the Traveling Wilbury's "Handle With Care."

So here's what I got:

1) Bob Seger - Against the Wind
2) Keren Ann and Benjamin Biolay - Decrocher les Etoiles
3) Heather Nova and Benjamin Biolay - Let's Not Talk About Love
4) Rod Stewart - The First Cut is the Deepest
5) Shelby Lynne - Your Love's the Killin' Kind
6) Beth Orton - Wild World
7) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You are What You Love
8) Wilco - Kamera
9) Bic Runga - Sway
10) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Handle With Care
11) Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man
12) Keren Ann - Spanish Songbird
13) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Melt Your Heart
14) Keren Ann - Right Here Right Now
15) Lizzie West - Chariots Rise

I was gonna call it "You are What You Love" but that sounds kind of icky sweet. "Handle With Care" after one of the songs on the mix is better. All the songs sound like they were written by someone with a fragile heart, so handle with care is pretty appropriate.

Update 1:50 a.m., 8/28/06: Final version, I think.

"Handle With Care"

1) Rod Stewart - The First Cut is the Deepest
2) Heather Nova and Benjamin Biolay - Let's Not Talk About Love
3) Shelby Lynne - Killin' Kind
4) Beth Orton - Wild World
5) Lenard Cohen - I'm Your Man
6) Bob Dylan - Most of the Time
7) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Melt Your Heart
8) Keren Ann - Spanish Song Bird
9) The Velvet Underground - Stephanie Says
10) Keren Ann and Benjamin Biolay - Décrocher les Étoiles
11) Bob Seger - Against the Wind
12) Wilco - Kamera
13) Paul Simon - Kodachrome
14) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - You Are What You Love
15) The Traveling Wilburys - End of the Line
16) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins - Handle With Care
17) Bic Runga - Sway
18) Keren Ann - Right Now & Right Here
19) Lizzie West - Chariots Rise

posted by Tuey @ 4:17 PM