more mix lists
These aren't driving mixes, per se, but they're tapes that I made specifically for playing in the car. This is an important genre distinction. No, really. Driving mixes are carefully-thought-through tapes, with specially-made covers, that become permanent fixtures in the car's tape case. These are disposable mixes, the kind I listen to for a couple of months and then record over with new batches of songs; the song listings are scribbled on index cards, frequently in an odd shorthand comprehensible only to me. They usually get odd spur-of-the-moment titles like "Blue Plate Special" or "Edge Radio: whiteboy angst and macho posturing." Or, in this case...
odds & ends: anxiety, doomed love, and acoustic melancholy
The Jealous Sound - What's Wrong Is Everywhere
Kristen Hall - Prey To You
Suzanne Vega - In Liverpool
Moulin Rouge - Elephant Love Medley
Moulin Rouge - Come What May
Sheryl Crow - I Shall Believe
Heather Nova - Winterblue
Lamb - Gorecki
Enigma - Gravity of Love
Cry Cry Cry - Northern Cross
Buffalo Tom - Frozen Lake
The New Amsterdams - Proceed With Caution
The Connells - Gladiator Heart
Little Big Sky - Feels Like Rain
Aimee Mann - Save Me
Jump, Little Children - Close Your Eyes
Madder Rose - Diane
The Connells - Rusted Fields
Little Big Sky - The Sad Place
The Children - Listen To Your Heart
Beth Orton - Feel To Believe
The New Amsterdams - Idaho
odds & ends: singing in my sleep
Jimmy Eat World - (Splash) Turn Twist
Fountains of Wayne - Troubled Times
Pete Yorn - Undercover
Plow Monday - Blank
The Jealous Sound - Anxious Arms
Luscious Jackson - Strongman
Black Lab - Learn To Crawl
Jen Trynin - Around It
Sugar - If I Can't Change Your Mind
Lift - Turn Away
Jen Trynin - Go Ahead
Heather Nova - Heart And Shoulder
SemiSonic - Singing In My Sleep
Heather Nova - London Rain
Lift - Sunny Day
Black Lab - Wash it away
Jump, Little Children - Come Out Clean
Looper - On The Flip Side
Pet Shop Boys - Home And Dry
Beth Orton - Central Reservation (the then again version)
Lift - Let It Out
U2 - Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Semisonic - Closing Time
I was telling truepenny recently that my musical taste hasn't really changed since 1987 or so (that is, late middle school), and it occurred to me after saying it to wonder whether that's really true, or if it's just a convenient recasting of an earlier self. So I checked myself against a couple of mix tapes dated almost exactly fourteen years ago (2/8/89, which is shortly after I got my first double tape deck), and I feel I can stand by the statement. My preferences have gotten both more expansive and more focused, if that makes sense, but they haven't radically changed. I don't actually listen to the same bands, for the most part (except for R.E.M. and The Connells, classics of our time), but I can whip out the few remaining tapes from that era with no sense of shame whatsoever. Which is nice.
Possible Pleasure-Inducing Aural Experiences, Vols. I and II
[I'm just listing bands here, not songs -- though if anyone's actually that curious, I can certainly fill in songs.]
The Wild Seeds
Will & The Kill
The Furlongs
Paul Kelly & The Messengers
The Incredible Casuals
Scruffy The Cat
The Coolies - okay, I have to mention "Coke Light Ice" because I still love that song
The Wild Flowers
The Nils
Dancing Hoods
The Pontiac Brothers
The Fleshtones
The Accelerators
The Long Ryders
The Johnsons
Guadalcanal Diary - whom I do still occasionally listen to, bless their freakish little hearts
Velvet Elvis
Let's Active
Dumptruck - "Going Nowhere" is such the small-town highschool song
Jet Black Berries
Yo
The Fuzztones - Britt Daniel's first band, The Zygotes, used to cover "Strychnine." "Some folks like water, some folks like wine..."
Drivin' 'n' Cryin'
The BoDeans
The Screaming Tribesmen
Tommy Conwell & The Young Rumblers
Dreams So Real
The Last
The Dream Syndicate
Tim Lee
The House of Love - I actually found a CD of theirs recently (used) and bought it, and listened to it with great happiness.
The Primitives - "Crash" ended up on the first driving mix, so I still listen to it. And still love it.
Transvision Vamp - "Tell That Girl To Shut Up" wins some sort of award for Bitchiest Song Ever.
The Soup Dragons
Georgia Satellites
Kings of the Sun
The Screaming Blue Messiahs
The Rivals
I'm sort of nostalgic for those days, when I could be so completely absorbed in seeking out music. But then again not, because the reason I was so absorbed in it was that I was miserably unhappy and always on the verge of soul-crushing boredom, and needed something to do when I ran out of books, which was often. (As I told Truepenny, it's much easier to bootleg tapes than books.) Way #783 in which my life might be different if I'd had access to a decent library. Ah well.