Mixtape Memories

I recently jumped on the Spotify bandwagon after reading this awesome article about stalking people's playlists. I then realized that I hadn't made a playlist or music mix in F-O-R-E-V-E-R. This was slightly depressing because I spent a decent chunk of my mid-teens to early 20's making mixes for myself, for friends, and for guys I wanted to bone. Of course, the irony of making a mix for someone else is that most of the time it simply screams "LOOK HOW AWESOME AND COOL I AM. I HAVE GREAT TASTE IN MUSIC. DON'T I??"more so than including anything the listener would actually like. I  got a dose of this recently because my Ipod adaptor in my car broke so I've been listening to some of the mix tapes I made and received back in high school. They are both awesome and embarrassing, as only time capsules from another era can be. I'd highly recommend it.

Somewhere along the line (roughly around the time I got my first mac) I got lazy and started letting iTunes do the mixing for me (Damn you, Shuffle and Genius!) Now, I am by no means a technophobe but part of the art of making the perfect mix has disappeared. Remember how long it used to take to make a mixtape? How you'd have to sit there and listen to every song while it recorded and then allow for the proper amount of silence in between each song pass? How you'd curse yourself if you got distracted and let the next track bleed over before scrambling to press the STOP button? Or maybe you added wrong and the last thirty seconds of Train In Vain got cut off and now your whole afternoon just went down the shitter because Tommyistotallygonnathinkyoureaposer? Ah, those were the good old days....

For the past few years I've mostly just done an End of the Year mix that catalogues all the notable songs I listened to for whatever reason. It's like an audio scrapbook of bands I discovered, songs I couldn't stop listening to, or the soundtrack to memorable moments. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a song can be worth a thousand more. 

Anyways, Spotify made me realize how small my original scope of mixes had been. I had only been doing it since about 2007, but I could totally take it further! Enter 2006 mix, College mix, and High School mix. I figured I should probably do them now, while I still remember. Maybe it took a couple of hours that I'll never get back, but it was nice to revisit my younger days and track how my musical tastes have changed (Man, I really loved The Get Up Kids for awhile) and what has remained steady favorites over the years (Peter Gabriel, I love you even more now).