Mixtape Mondays

Good Morning Friends! It is that time again, time for another MixTape. For those who don’t know what is going on here, every Monday I release a new MixTape as I share some of my musical tastes with you my readers. I was one of those kids who made MixTapes for my friends and as a completely failed attempt at flirting. There is a certain artform to a good album and this is my attempt to revitalize that whole experience that I have found I deeply missed. An old friend of mine told me over the weekend, that it seemed like I was missing creativity and creative outlets… and I guess this is one way of flexing those muscles. I do enjoy creating my nonsense album art for each release. However lets get on into the music.

Big Hair Tight Pants

This time we are diving back into the era kept alive by mascara, tight pants and copious amounts of extra hold hairspray. That’s right I am talking about the era of Hair Metal and Glam Rock. I am of a specific age that has allowed me to weather many trends, not the least of which is when the baddest dudes on the planet wore women’s cut tops and spandex pants. I have a deep nostalgia for this era of rock and once again I attempted to pull together some very well worn staples and a few deep cuts as we go. Honestly once again this is a bit of a build around… Hysteria by Def Leppard is probably my single favorite track from that era so of course I had to feature it.

• Panama – Van Halen
• Hysteria – Def Leppard
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Warrant
• 18 and Life – Skid Row
• Sweet Child O’ Mine – Gun N’ Roses
• Livin’ On a Prayer – Bon Jovi
• Poison – Alice Cooper
• Dr. Feelgood – Motley Crue
• Nothin’ But a Good Time – Poison
• Thunderstruck – AC/DC
• Cum on Feel the Noize – Quiet Riot
• The Final Countdown – Europe
• No More Tears – Ozzy Osbourne

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

• Tidal Playlist

An there we go, another Monday and Mix down. This one is probably going to be fairly polarizing since the hair metal era is not exactly loved by everyone. The older I get the more nostalgic about it I am. For some reason this era always reminds me of State Fair concerts and the little “coke” mirrors that you used to be able to win on the midway with album art for all of these bands. If you are tuning in late to this project and want to catch up you can do so through my archive linked below.

• Mixtape Mondays Archive

Hey Friends! It is that time again, time for another mixtape. This seems to be the only thing I can actually manage to do right now on a regular schedule. Over the weekend we once again failed to record AggroChat in part because I just couldn’t handle human interaction. Work is still in a really bad state and I am not handling the chaos terribly well. The grind has been over a month long at this point and I don’t really see an end to it. During this time however, listening to music has acted as a bit of a solace to everything going on. If this is your first MixTape Monday, the idea is that I used to share mixtapes with my friends and since that is no longer terribly practical… I am doing the next best thing by creating some custom curated playlists available through Spotify or YouTube.

Hack The Gibson

I was not terribly certain what I would actually choose this morning, so I rolled a die and it chose for me. I love the movie Hackers. It is this campy vision of computer hackers that came out at exactly the right time for it to gain traction in my brain. I was a wannabe warez and script kiddie at the time… managed to gain some traction but we won’t talk about that right now. Even then I knew everything that was on the movie screen was pure nonsense… but delightful nonsense. The thing that made the movie really stand out however was the soundtrack. While there is very little overlap between my MixTape and the actual soundtrack… it is more crafted to give the same overall feeling of the movie. How do you represent something like this? With Matthew Lillard as the face of Emanuel Goldstein of course!

The challenge however is while I set out with this goal… the MixTape itself developed a life of its own.

• From Your Mouth – God Lives Underwater
• 6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps
• Fools Gold – The Stone Roses
• Block Rockin’ Beats – The Chemical Brothers
• Purple Haze – The Cure
• Your Woman – White Town
• Ava Adore – The Smashing Pumpkins
• Numb – Linkin Park
• Voodoo People – The Prodigy
• Human Behavior – Bjork
• Sour Times – Portishead
• Teardrop – Massive Attack
• White Flag – Dido

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

This MixTape is quite a bit different from what I have generally shared, which I guess makes two weeks now in a row where I have popped out of my general traditional comfort zone. Since I now have several of these created, it is starting to get to the point where I really need to collect them all in one place. Over the weekend I did precisely that and now each time I post a new one of these I am going to close things out with a link to the archives. That way if you started this process late and you are so inclined, you can catch up and listen to the entire series.

• MixTape Mondays Archive

Hey Friends! It seems that I have gone from being one of the most prolific bloggers to one of the least prolific in record time. I am still more or less trudging through hell on the work front, and as a result it has sapped any energy that I once had for creative endeavors. I miss you all greatly and this time I carved out of my life to talk to you. I need to figure out a way to return to some semblance of normality and maybe attempting to blog again is a good method to get there. The prolific era of this blog was actually spawned as a counter reaction to one of the worst periods of my life up to that point. Part of me is hoping that after I get on the far side of this current phase… I will have a similar upwelling of creative desires.

For those who are not used to this construct, the idea is simple. I create a mixtape and share it with you. For me however the act of creating a mixtape is way more than just throwing a bunch of songs together. I am old school in that nature in that I am trying to build an experience that is enjoyable to listen to in its whole. Back in the day I used to refer to albums that were built in this manner as “listen throughs” which I admit isn’t terribly creative, but they were albums I could just throw on and let play without feeling the desire to skip tracks. My goal with this project is to share with you tiny bits of myself in musical form. I was a creator of mixtapes then and I find the process more or less translates smoothly to an online playlist.

Thinly Veiled Crisis

A lot of the tracks that I have been sharing with you are fairly old at this point dating from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. With Thinly Veiled Crisis I am cherry picking from some of my favorites in modern rotation but even then there is a bit of a theme. A lot of these tracks remind me of an earlier era, namely in many cases they have this throwback flair to the “New Wave” era of the 80s. Others just sorta felt like they fit into missing pieces. I have been working on this list for a month, adding and removing songs here and there until it reached a point where I thought it was ready for listening.

• Hard Times – Paramore
• Once in a Lifetime – All Time Low
• Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
• Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
• Oh My My – Blue October
• Comeback Kid – Sleigh Bells
• Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked – Cage the Elephant
• Kiss This – The Struts
• Deadline – Grouplove
• Level of Concern – Twenty One Pilots
• Serotonin – Girl in Red
• Soul Meets Body – Death Cab for Cutie
• Are You Bored Yet? – Wallows feat. Clairo

Listen on Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

This one is a bit different than most of what I have been sharing, but still very much represents a slice of my musical tastes. I have to admit one of my favorite parts of this experiment has been the comments I have received. Even if I can’t do other posts right now, I am hoping to keep this going because I enjoy the process greatly.