I tend to label mix tapes with some sort of phrase that reminds me of when and where it was made. They tend to be a little cryptic in the usual album title/band name manner: "Geographic Vagaries" refers to a time when I seemed to have a gift for meeting attractive, interesting women who lived a very long way away from me; "Bronfman Two Twenty" is the room number of the lab I worked in as an undergrad; "Fines Doubled in Work Areas" is a tape I made to listen to on the long drive across Pennsylvania. Occasionally this produces really odd results-- another tape is labelled with the spectroscopic designation of a particular transition in rubidium (as getting a laser locked to that transition was my concern at the time), which leads to much bafflement whenever I have an atomic physicist in the car...
The post title, then, refers not to the profane clip-art comic, but to the most recent tape I made. It's not exactly the Poor Man's party-killer, but the title was sort of unavoidable given recent events. As usual, it's skewed toward things I've acquired relatively recently (which doesn't necessarily mean recent albums).
Lacking better blogging inspiration, I'll list off the songs, and a comment or two on each. If I were ambitious, I'd provide links to MP3's or something, but I don't have time for the RIAA, so take what you can get:
Side One:
- "Hallelujah," Jeff Buckley. It's a Leonard Cohen song (which, weirdly, turned up in Shrek), but it's hard to beat Buckley's unearthly delivery. I've wanted to put this on a tape for a good while, so it was a place to start.
- "People Get Ready," Blind Boys of Alabama. Blind gospel singers do Curtis Mayfield. Why not? It's a decent transition from the opener to:
- "The Rising," Bruce Springsteen. From real gospel to gospel-influenced rock songs about September 11th.
Article comments
1 - Tim Jarrett
Good candidate for Art of the Mix.