Mixtape Mondays: Jangly Bits

Good Morning, Folks! If you have not been around this blog for long, one of the things that you have to know is that mixtapes are really important to me. I have spent large swaths of my life creating carefully curated lists of songs for the purpose of creating an experience greater than the parts. I used to do this for individual friends and paramores while growing up, and now I release my madness out into the greater internet. I am truly uncertain if anyone appreciates this nonsense, but it makes me happy, and I legitimately listen to my own Mixtapes on the regular. So I guess at the end of the day I am doing it for myself as much as I am doing it for you all. If this is your first outing, you can find the other 31 Mixtapes that I have created to date over on the archive.

32 – Jangly Bits

This particular brand of madness dominated my mind one night and would not let me sleep until I had assembled what you see before me. Essentially, it started with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Jars of Clay, and then attempting to craft something that thematically matched that level of melancholy. The only regret that I have with this mix is the fact that there is a whole-assed Cracker album that none of the streaming services have. So I had to choose an alternate song, but in truth, it worked out well because it became the perfect last track. I spent a lot of time listening to this music, especially in late high school, and as a result, I am sharing yet another fragment of my soul with you all. Jars of Clay is a Christian band, which is a thing you are not likely to see often among my mixes, but Flood broke into the mainstream. I once went to a Jars of Clay concert expecting it to be normal, but there were folks in the aisles doing the “celestial benchpress” as a friend calls it, raising their hands to the sky with eyes closed. Side note… I am agnostic. I appreciate the role faith has in people’s lives, but I chose to remain unaligned.

Track List

  • 01 – Flood – Jars of Clay
  • 02 – Promises Broken – Soul Asylum
  • 03 – Come Back Down – Toad the Wet Sprocket
  • 04 – Mr. Jones – Counting Crows
  • 05 – Bittersweet – Big Head Todd and the Monsters
  • 06 – My Sister – The Juliana Hatfield Trio
  • 07 – Allison Road – Gin Blossoms
  • 08 – Selling the Drama – Live
  • 09 – Man On The Moon – R.E.M.
  • 10 – Noah’s Dove – 10,000 Maniacs
  • 11 – Wonderful – Everclear
  • 12 – Somewhere Out There – Our Lady Peace
  • 13 – Best I Ever Had – Vertical Horizon
  • 14 – The Old Apartment – Barenaked Ladies
  • 15 – Sick of Goodbyes – Cracker

Listen to it yourself

Well, folks, that is another mixtape added to the archive. I did not honestly expect to keep doing this thing, as my brain aligns with new mixes, I post them. This one in particular means quite a bit to me, because the music is deeply personal. Trivia… not sure if you have realized, but I specifically never use the same song twice. Often during the process, I add a bunch of tracks and then weed them out, and my brain attempted to reuse three songs while creating this mix. I just hope there is someone out there who appreciates this nonsense.

Mixtape Mondays: Willowy Weary Wise

Good Morning Folks! This is an exceptionally busy morning for me. I have a pretty early doctor’s appointment and will have to fight road construction to get there. So as a result, I got up quite a bit earlier than I had normally been getting up, largely so that I could roll this post out without issue. This week represents the third week in this new series of Mixtapes, and the twenty-sixth in total since beginning this series during the pandemic lockdown. If you are tuning in for the first time, Mixtapes are really important to me on a personal level. I’ve always loved the art of constructing just the right mix of music for the right mood. There are a lot of things that have inspired me to make mixtapes in the past, but I think part of this is that I mourn the art of crafting albums. There were so many musicians that I grew up listening to that fully understood the way an album flows… is more important than the individual songs on it. While I am entering my “Cancer Boy” era, I am finding it more important to do little things that allow me to stake a creative claim on the world, and this mixtape nonsense is just a small part of this.

26 – Willowy Weary Wise

These mixtapes start for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they are inspired by lived experience, other times are built around a specific song, and in the case of today’s mix, are a bit of a remix of someone else’s playlist. On February 6th, my friend Mallow shared a playlist on bsky, and given that I like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I clicked through and gave it a bit of a listen. One of my favorite things about social media is when you find out one of your existing friends has relatively “drift compatible” musical tastes. Collectively, there is a lot of really great stuff on that list, but I was floored by how well a very specific block worked together. Namely, how Red Right Hand, Down by the Water, and Tear You Apart flowed together perfectly and set a very specific tone for the entire outing. Individually, they are all great songs, and I have been a massive fan of PJ Harvey since she was thrust into my life initially with 50Ft Queenie. So that gave me the tapestry with which to weave another mix, and I anchored that block in the middle of a fifteen-song mix designed to exploit that same sort of feeling. The mixtape itself was named in honor of Mallow herself, since I am effectively copying her homework for my own creation. I am hoping you will enjoy my own spin, and also check out her own playlist, so you can see two different takes on the same idea.

Track List

  • 01 – Dead Souls – Nine Inch Nails
  • 02 – Cirice – Ghost
  • 03 – This Corrosion – The Sisters of Mercy
  • 04 – People Are People – Depeche Mode
  • 05 – Bela Lugosi’s Dead (The Hunger Mix) – Bauhaus
  • 06 – The Killing Moon – Echo & The Bunnymen
  • 07 – A Girl Like You – Edwyn Collins
  • 08 – What’s A Girl To Do? – Bat For Lashes
  • 09 – Death Don’t Have No Mercy – Delaney Davidson
  • 10 – Red Right Hand – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
  • 11 – Down By The Water – PJ Harvey
  • 12 – Tear You Apart – She Wants Revenge
  • 13 – Black Wings – Tom Waits
  • 14 – Glory Box – Portishead
  • 15 – Stay – Shakespears Sister

Listen To It Yourself

This represents three weeks in a row that I have released a new mixtape on Monday. I know that I will probably not be able to keep this up indefinitely, especially as my whole “Cancer Boy” journey ramps up. However, I do like that this gives me at least a small amount of creative control over my world. Similarly, I am trying to arrange a time to sit down and record with “The Librarian” and do what will honestly probably be the most revealing and personal episode of “Bel Folks Stuff” that I have ever done. I kind of love that I have given them this ominous-sounding moniker at the same time they are themselves struggling to decide their own identity going forward. I have a few nuggets of playlists floating around in my head, or at least anchor songs that I want to build around. One of the big self-imposed challenges for me is that I do not want to use the same songs that I have ever used before in a playlist, and similarly, I do not want to repeat the same musicians more than once in the same playlist. For example, this week I might have gone with the Ghost version of Stay, but went with the original to keep from violating my own self-imposed rule. These mixtapes are yet another way I am trying to declare that I still live and am still trying to be a creative human.

As always, you can see the full list of mixes over on my archives, and in many cases, I release the new mix a bit early there so it is staged and ready for Monday morning.

Mixtape Mondays Archive