33 songs for 32 years

1975 - Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
1976 - Aerosmith - Last Child
1977 - Bob Marley - Three Little Birds
1978 - Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson - Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys1979 - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
1980 - U2 - A Day Without Me
1981 - Duran Duran - Planet Earth
1982 - Michael Jackson - Beat It
1983 - The Police - Synchronicity II
1984 - Prince - Purple Rain
1985 - The Cure - In Between Days
1986 - Van Halen - Summer Nights
1987 - INXS - Devil Inside
1988 - The Church - Under The Milky Way
1989 - Van Morrison - These Are The Days
1990 - They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse In Your Soul
1991 - Nirvana - Drain You
1992 - Inspiral Carpets - Two Worlds Collide
1993 - Hothouse Flowers - One Tongue
1994 - Weezer - In The Garage
1995 - Everclear - Santa Monica
1996 - Counting Crows - Have You Seen Me Lately?
1997 - Matthew Ryan - Chrome
1998 - Lucinda Williams - Drunken Angel
1999 - Tom Petty - Room At The Top
2000 - Joseph Arthur - In The Sun
2001 - Ryan Adams - Somehow Someday
2002 - Coldplay - Warning Sign
2003 - Death Cab For Cutie - The Sound of Settling
2004 - The Killers - All These Things That I've Done
2005 - Kings of Leon - King of the Rodeo
2006 - Cold War Kids - Hospital Beds
2007 - The Shins - Sleeping Lessons

You make the connection...or better yet, make your own connection.

The Mixtape, Part Three: I Sink Like A Stone

So I applied just about every principle discussed in parts 1 and 2 of this series to make this mix. The glory of the iTunes is that I can publish the entire playlist as an iMix and the whole thing is available to sample and buy.

Applied Principles
I broke the rule of having a movie clip simply because it couldn't be uploaded to iTunes, but I probably would have bookended the mix with the two quotes from High Fidelity. The title comes from a lyric in the Ryan Adams song. And it goes with the theme of some songs that tell the story that it isn't always good and it isn't always bad. Luminous Times is a pretty obscure U2 song, but lovely. New stuff to be exposed to could be the Swell Season song, the Julie Moffitt song, Regina Spektor and Feel. The Pixies track qualifies for the 80's song. I'm missing a motown or bubble gum retro song, but I have the vocal standard in "Moon River." You're cringing at Journey, but I guarantee it will be the most played song on this list. The Mates cover isn't necessarily rare, because it's pretty recent, but it qualifies. Creedence will always qualify as the classic rock song. It closes out with perhaps the low point of the compilation which drives the nails deeper. All links are to iTunes.

I Sink Like A Stone: A MKinMotion.com Compilation

1. The Arcade Fire - Wake Up (from Funeral)
2. Kings of Leon - Slow Night, So Long (from Aha Shake Heartbreaker)
3. Athlete - Street Map (from Tourist)
4. The Swell Season - Leave (from The Swell Season)
5. Journey - Don't Stop Believing (from Escape)
6. U2 - Luminous Times (Hold on to Love) (from With or Without You - Single)
7. Julie Moffitt - Slow (from The Stolen EP) [More on Julie Moffitt in a future post]
8. Louis Armstrong - Moon River (from Hello, Dolly!)
9. The Pixies - Where is My Mind? (from Surfer Rosa)
10. Death Cab For Cutie - This Temporary Life (from Future Soundtrack for America)
11. Cary Brothers - Forget About You (from Waiting for Your Letter)
12. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Wrote a Song For Everyone (from Green River)
13. Keane - Nothing in My Way (from Under the Iron Sea)
14. Cat Power - The Greatest (from The Greatest)
15. Band of Horses - The Funeral (from Everything All the Time)
16. Feel - Got Your Name On It (from Feel)
17. Regina Spektor - Better (from Begin to Hope)
18. Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Meadowlake Street (from Cold Roses)
19. Mates of State - California (from Music from the O.C. 6 - Covering Our Tracks)
20. Drive-By Truckers - Goddamn Lonely Love (from The Dirty South)

The Mixtape, Part Two: There Are A Lot Of Rules

The following are a few ingredients for an ultimate mixtape. The first thing you need to establish is a theme or a message. Generally it's best to pick whether you are going to have a theme or a message and not try to do both. I prefer to go with a theme, but if the compilation is going to be given to someone, you have to accept that they will look for a message regardless of your intentions.
Ingredients for any good compilation I make will have the following features.

• Your compilation must have a name. The names I recommend are generally a line from one of the songs that sums up your theme or your message.
• Sound clips from a movie that are either funny or thought provoking. The shorter the clip, the more recognizable it has to be. Big hits for me have been random lines from Wes Anderson films, Napoleon Dynamite works, even the occasional Buffy the Vampire Slayer clip.
• An obscure U2 song. All good compilations have a U2 song, but the best have something off of October or a B-Side or a rare track.
• At least two songs must be fairly recent new releases that will expose your listener(s) to music they haven't heard before.
• An 80's song.
• All compilations must have at least one Motown and/or early 60's bubble gum song.
• A classic rock song.
• The first song is one of the most important songs. It is appropriate at times to have a movie clip start the compilation, but generally unless it really sets the tone, the first song needs to be a hook. As Rob Gordon (John Cusack) explains in High Fidelity:

  "The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do; it takes ages longer than it might seem. You've got to kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you've got to take it up a notch...you've got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules."

• So your first song is a rocker, it can at the same time fit one of the other requirements, for example, Jackie Wilson's "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" fulfills both Rob Gordon's requirement and also the retro song. I tend to think that the perfect song one for a compilation is also track one on an album. Think "Zoo Station", "Where the Streets...", "Bittersweet Symphony", "Round Here", or "Black Dog."
• At least one song on the compilation must be something you know your listener is going to cringe at upon their first listen, but it will end up being their favorite song eventually. I have a genre tag in iTunes called Cheese that has songs like Pat Benetar's "We Belong," or Styx "Lady" or anything by Bonnie Tyler. Their guilty pleasures and if they subtly fit your theme or message, they are gold.
• A jazz or vocal standard song is also a requirement; think Dean Martin or Sinatra, even Judy Collins will do, but again it must fit the theme or the message.
• A rare cover song of a well-known song is also a requirement.
• Your last song must bring closure to your message, similarly to the opening track, tracks that close an album work well to close a compilation.

Coming up next, I follow my rules and compose a compilation.

Again from Rob Gordon:

"The making of a compilation tape is a very subtle art; many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing."

The Mixtape

While the technology of cassette tapes has been long gone for years, the idea of the mixtape has never died. Cassettes were the first medium that allowed a normal person to be able to take songs of their choosing and put them together on one tape. In the old days this was done with records, other tapes, and even recording radio broadcasts. I got my first CD burner in 2001; it was an external USB burner that burned at 4X. The CD burner in combination with the evolution of programs like iTunes made making your own CD's brainless. With the age of iPods and other mp3 players, it's now all about playlists. Sharing playlists is the new mixtape.
The Mad Fishicist emailed me recently inquiring about some CD's he stole from Noveau Riche. To make a long story short, he thought they were blank CD's and seeing as Riche wouldn't need blank CD's he decided to take them off of his hands. They weren't marked and because they were burned as standard CD's iTunes can't figure out what songs are on them. It got me thinking about the rules for mixtapes/playlists. I'm working on a playlist right now, so when I complete it, I will post the track listings and the reasons for each song and in doing so will define what makes a great mixtape/playlist.