dust off the turntable

i am not a vinyl purist, but i do enjoy the ritual of the needle's hiss and flipping an album. over the weekend, i stopped at a garage sale and came across some real finds in terms of vinyl. whoever the old woman was who owned these records, i salute her. i bet she was a stone fox, because i found all kinds of good stuff there.

this week, post some of your favorites from y0ur vinyl collection, if you have one.

High School Evolution

This documents my High School journey from pop punk to a brief stint in guitar blues/john mayer (sorry), to the day I bought an Iron & Wine CD on a whim while vacationing in Destin, FL, to my Nick Drake stage (which led me to college).

I tried to be as honest as possible about my high school tastes while still making this mix listenable. Because a straight up mix from my 17-year-old self would NOT have been listenable.

let's get those NEEERRRDDDS

THIS WEEK:

Songs for your nerdy, pimply, high-school self. Songs you rambled around in your shitty car listening to, probably smoking crappy weed and eating chili dogs.

nobody reads this but me and r. helly.

fewd

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FUUUUUUUD

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my grandma used to always sing me the shortnin' bread song when i was a kid. she still hums it all the time. i wonder if she does that only when i'm around as some pavlovian response?

FUD

After undergrad, I gave up on living the dude's life of a thousand sweaty dude roommates and instead decided to branch out on to my own. Sharing a crappy townhouse on 14th street in Bloomington with 5 other dudes may be fun for while, but it can get kind of horrible. Like when all of your food is constantly eaten or your roommate who never cleans his room or anything else gets brown recluse spiders in his room and almost has an arm amputated.

So anyway, living on my own taught me a lot about self-sufficiency. Sharing household resources amongst a bunch of people limits the amount of time you want to spend in the kitchen, so you tend to eat simple things that can be microwaved. Once I was out on my own, with my own kitchen, I learned that I have a deep and abiding curiosity for cooking.

So after that long, rambling set up, THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT: Songs about food, eating, tasting, etc.*

*Plz limit 2 Cibo Matto songs per mix.

Oh, the Shame!

Ok, so ... given the music I grew up listening to assignment, I am posting this partial confessional.

In my earliest years, I had two tapes (Remember cassette taps, children? Time to step into the Wayback Machine.) that were my favorites. One was a Sesame Street tape full of delightful diddies like "I Love Trash" and "Rubber Duckie." The other was Mr. Rogers and fell quite a bit below the ranking of the Sesame Street tape. I'm sorry, Fred Rogers was a national treasure but cannot match the pre-adolescent awesomeness of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.

When I was older (say 4th-6th grade) my tastes varied and I still listened primarily to cassettes, up until the early 90's. I loved Belinda Carlisle's first solo album and Tiffany was often played. I also liked U2, Heart, Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Wonder (the latter two because of my mom). And yet -- and here's the truly embarrassing thing -- I also listened to ... sigh ... Chicago. I DON'T KNOW WHY!!! Maybe because they had that one single that came out in '88 or '89 called "Look Away" and I didn't know how hideously unawesome they were? I just don't know. I try not to think about it. Until now.

In junior high and high school I secretly listened to old Billy Joel, The Police, Blondie and Elvis Costello and The Attractions while openly listening to current pop hits from the likes of Color Me Badd (so "bad" that one 'd' just wasn't enough) and Boys 2 Men. "End of the Road" was the theme for the senior prom but fortunately, I boycotted that travesty. I also listened to some Tupac because my younger brother LOVED him and I began to love him too, although I can't remember many lyrics from his songs except for "California Love."

College lead to listening to more maintsream and "indie" Hip-Hop and New Wave and listening to X103 on the radio until I got sick of hearing the same songs by Soundgarten, Blur, Jane's Addiction and Nine Inch Nails. I also listened to The Pixies, The Breeders, Elastica and other bands of that ilk. I got more into jazz, but never that smooth, "all I need is a keyboard that can mimic the sounds of real instruments and a guy playing alto sax" jazz. Acid jazz, jazz fusion, old school straight ahead jazz, big band stuff, that's what I like.

From my twenties to now being in my early thirties, my tastes haven't dramatically changed from college days but have been enhanced by meeting new people with different tastes and sharing music. There isn't any genre that I won't open my mind to but I generally dislike anything that's played on pop radio, especially in Indy, which I'm certain has the worst stations in the country, nigh the free world.

Pre-teen to Teen

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some explanation:

fleetwood mac, queen, elo and janet jackson are all things my mom or dad would listen to, so i just got into what they had around.

i had a great-aunt, mary, who made albums which often could be purchased in truck stops. she and her husband at the time would cover the big hits of the 70s and 80s for truckers to listen to. one of her albums, i remember, had her wearing a red sequined evening gown and leaning against the grill of a big rig. so we listened to a lot of that stuff at my grandparents. thus the juice newton/kenny rogers&dolly parton.

teenage mutant ninja turtles and poppy hip-hop were pretty much all me from ages 7-11 (or maybe like 14). don't get up in my moussed hair and step off my hypercolor shirt.

the rest stands, no explanation.

the shameful sounds of youth

this week's assignment:

in your childhood, there were a lot of terrible bands that you probably really loved. you might be old enough to remember actual vinyl hissing and popping out your cherished songs. you might remember messing with the needle to replay the one song on the lp that you really love over and over again. you might remember staying up to listen to the hot hits on the local radio station with a blank cassette tape loaded into the boombox, ready to record your favorite song. you may even remember making a mix tape with ACTUAL TAPES and either giving it to your crush or shamefully keeping it in a shoebox wishing you had the balls to give it to them (*single tear*).

This week, post songs from your past. Dig deep and find the songs of your youth. Picture yourself with a bad haircut and giant glasses and imagine what that kid was listening to at the time. Try to remember the logos of the bands that you wrote on your folders at school.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

SOOO many climaxes

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ROBOMUSIK

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ROBOT MUSIC

WELCOME

this week's project: make a mixtape of music made mostly electronically. i don't hold much truck with techno music, but when i was a dumb 18 year old kid idioting my way through europe, all i had on my headphones was big beat and trip-hop stuff (and all i had in my system was booze and drugs). SOOOO this week's mix should consist of largely robot music. guitars are so last week, yeah?




GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


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