Blog Features

MixTape Mondays: Semi-Charmed Panic Attack

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Good Morning Friends! I hope you are all having an excellent Monday out there in internetland. For those of you who might be stumbling onto this as your first visit, I do this thing every Monday where I post a new MixTape pulled from some of my musical tastes. I was one of those kids that made MixTapes for my friends or as a poor substitute for flirtation. There is a certain artform to placing songs in a very specific sequence in order to create a whole that is greater than any of its parts. I’ve missed this process and decided to revitalize it for you my readers. Again like my blog posts in general, I am sorta sending this out into the void and hoping that someone out there might get some enjoyment from this particular brand of nonsense.

Semi-Charmed Panic Attack

There is this particular moment in music that feels like it gets overlooked. Between Grunge and the more punk inspired stylings of Blink-182 there was this music scene that I find it hard to really define. It makes me think of college and the early days of trying to figure out how to be something resembling an adult. I attempted to reach back into that era and pull out a cohesive soundtrack to represent it. There was this weird thing going on where the songs were still peppy sounding, but the lyrical journey that was happening behind them was pretty damned depressing. I’m also abusing my powers to expose you to two excellent Tulsa area bands: Caroline’s Spine and Mollys Yes.

  • The Way – Fastball
  • Everything You Want – Vertical Horizon
  • Attention Please – Caroline’s Spine
  • Promise – Eve 6
  • Sugar – Mollys Yes
  • Load Me Up – Matthew Good Band
  • Father of Mine – Everclear
  • Semi-Charmed Life – Third Eye Blind
  • One Man Army – Our Lady Peace
  • Rain King – Counting Crows
  • Good Intentions – Toad The Wet Sprocket
  • Til I Hear It From You – Gin Blossoms
  • Get Off This – Cracker
  • Closing Time – Semisonic

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And there we have it friends, another MixTape Monday in the bag. I had honestly been a bit concerned that I might be out of inspiration given that I had burned through all of my pre-made MixTapes last week. Then this weekend happened and I crafted no less than five brand new ones for the coming weeks as well as a handful of idea fragments kicking around in my head. Also of note if you are tuning in late you can view the entire archive of the past nine weeks at:

MixTape Mondays: Big Hair Tight Pants

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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

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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: Waiting For Now

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Hey Friends! I was torn this morning as to whether or not to keep up with MixTape Mondays or to create a more topical post returning E3 shows today. I opted to keep the series rolling forward and I guess tomorrow I will return to my crappy coverage of E3 events. For those unaware MixTape Mondays is my series where I share a playlist aka the closest thing we have to a real MixTape these days. I was one of those kids who used to create them a lot given I had the magical dual tape cassette deck stereo allowing me to record all the things. Instead of sharing them on a one by one basis, I am sharing them with all of you my readers and internet friends.

Waiting for Now

Sometimes all it really takes is a single song to send the brain off in a specific direction. I love How Soon is Now by the Smiths. There is something so iconic about the guitar vibrato and big train horn chords that I legitimately never get tired of hearing it. Because of this fact I had no clue that the song was actually over six minutes long. What ended up happening as a result was me trying to match the feel of this song occasionally skimming the top of new wave or diving down into goth classics. The end result I think “works” for reason I can’t really fully explain. This has been in my listening rotation an awful lot lately and I have technically had this one finished for almost a month before unleashing it upon the world.

  • How Soon is Now? – The Smiths
  • Whisper to a Scream – The Icicle Works
  • True Faith – New Order
  • For Her Light – Fields of Nephilim
  • Fascination Street – The Cure
  • Under the Milky Way – The Church
  • Wasteland – The Mission
  • Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
  • Under the God – Tin Machine
  • She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult
  • Never Let Me Down Again – Depeche Mode
  • How Not To Drown – Chvrches feat. Robert Smith

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There you have it folks, my attempt at doing “How Soon Is Now?” some justice in MixTape form. Tomorrow I fully expect to return with a post about the Microsoft and Bethesda E3 show, but for now I wanted to keep the pattern of Monday MixTape releases. I managed to make a post every single day last week and even over the weekend so I am hoping that I have finally reached a place of equilibrium with my life in spite of still going through work hell. For those new to the series there is of course always the archive allowing you to catch up on the series.

MixTape Mondays: Hack The Gibson

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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

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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.