Archive for July, 2008

She’s just being Miley…

{ July 26, 2008 @ 3:40 am } · { i'd like to get to know you, playlist }
{ } · { Comments (2) }

And I’m just being me.

Same old cycle of routine where music is just…background noise.

I cringe when I say that because I like to think of music as something more, but lately, it’s just been exactly that: background noise. It explains the lack of my posting here because I’ve just had nothing to say about music (or anything else lately) for that matter. What is most usually a steady stream of companionship for me, music has just been filler so I don’t have to listen to whatever is going on around me. Public transportation, crowded restaurants, waiting in line for coffee at Starbucks…all drowned out by the familiar that I just don’t pay attention to.

I have a healthy relationship to music, just right now we’re…off. I’ve noticed that when I delve into the world of free reading, which I have been lately, I don’t pay attention to music. And vice versa…right now I’m in the middle of a mystery series (thanks, love), a book about the history of film, and a 4 foot high stack of financial documents.

My eyes are tired, my head hurts, I remember why I have no-line bifocals, and music is just a noise in my ears.

At least it’s got some merit and variety to it. Download what I haven’t been forwarding through here.

The Birthday Mix, part 1

{ July 12, 2008 @ 10:10 pm } · { birthday mix, i'd like to get to know you, playlist }
{ } · { Comments (1) }

A few months ago I sent an email out to pretty much everyone I exchange music with. It was a simple request: for this years birthday please share with me 10 songs that you cannot live without. I was graced with 10 replies and a list of 105 songs. In return, everyone who submitted a list would receive a book, handmade by me, and a compilation disc which I ended up calling Anthology. The books are finally done and most of them have been given to their new owners.

(Note: I do a birthday mix every year. Sometimes it’s a song for every year I’ve been alive, sometimes it’s a song from each year I’ve been alive, sometimes it’s songs from the year I was born, etc. It’s always a mix I share with my friends, usually just giving them a mixed cd, but this year I decided to go big and bold.)

Each list is different and when I look at them, exactly fitting for the person that gave them to me. There are songs I love just as much as the submitter and there are songs I cannot bring myself to listen to. (Maroon 5. The guy makes me want to stab my eyes out with something rusted.) I did my list of 12 favorite songs ever and some people submitted their 10 favorite right now. This mix covers everything from Rap to a lone Christmas song to Country to Metal to Pop and on and on.

I don’t plan on sharing the entire mix here because it’s a special event, these mixes, but I do on occasion plan on sharing parts of it. Like this mix, which perplexes me as much as it amuses me. Country, Rap, Heavy Metal…Cats in the Cradle. It’s all there in this jumble of a play list.

Mix order: (which you can download here)

shout at the devil (motley crue)
cats in the cradle (harry chapin)
eze does it (e z e)
bad day (fuel)
plush (stone temple pilots)
goodbye blue sky (pink floyd)
what it’s like (everlast)
i see it now (tracy lawrence)
the river (garth brooks)
far behind (candlebox)

As so often in my world, what would a Birthday mix be without some kind of art? (Clicking them makes them full sized)

Envelope going to Washington DC with an Anthology tucked safely inside of it:

The cover of one of the books:

Page from the above book, for the mix offered today:

Also, if you’re still reading and you’d like a copy of the Anthology minus the book (I burned a few too many), drop me a line and in exchange for your list of 10 songs you can’t live without, I’ll send you a disc in the mail!

Shuffle me: twenty from the pod

{ July 8, 2008 @ 8:38 pm } · { playlist, shuffle me mixes }
{ } · { Leave a Comment }

“It was one of those oh, I forgot about that song” moments. I hit shuffle on my iPod and up comes a song I haven’t heard in quite some time. In fact, it was a song I forgot was even on my iPod to begin with. I was going to go with the 5 first songs your iPod spits out list, but decided to expand it from 5 to 20 because it always amuses me what pops up on random.

I get that a lot…that surprise when someone gets to hear what’s on my iPod and are shocked when I go from some Showtune to Heavy Metal to oh, I don’t know, Miley Cyrus. “Didn’t I just hear the Carpenters? And now this is what?” The conversation goes and I’m forced to answer something like “System of a Down” or “Diana Krall” or “Tupac”. And I always get the strangest looks. It’s not really a surprise to me to have my shuffle work that way and why should it? This is the music I listen to. But other people…other people run the gambit from pleasantly surprised to downright horrified I’d jump from Opera to Hardcore Rap to Jazz to 1970’s Disco in just a few songs.

So in honor of that (and because it just happened a few minutes ago, that “shock”) I offer up the first twenty tracks from my iPod after hitting “Shuffle Songs”:

Download it here.

More Pretty Girls Than One — Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett
Celebrate Your Youth — Keller Williams (live)
When In Rome – Nickel Creek
Touch the Sky — Kanye West
One — Aimee Mann
Brush Up Your Shakespeare — Kiss Me Kate
Helena — Nickel Creek
Guitars, Cadillacs — Dwight Yoakam
You Can Depend On Me — Diana Krall
Rock, Paper, Scissors — Ani diFranco
Back In the Day — Erykah Badu
Fire Door – Ani diFranco
Gravity — BT
Chemical Calestenics — Blackalicious
The Con — Tegan and Sara
Diamonds On My Neck — Smitty
2HB — Roxy Music