So a few weeks back, your faithful blogger was reading on another blog about Muxtape and how it was causing a stir and creating new phrases of jargon in to the lexicon of pop culture ("I gave you my heart, but all she gave me was a Muxtape," or something like that.) So, of course that Saturday morning while nursing a hangover I decided to make an account and starting making a mux. Now, for those who don't know me personally (I bet that might be a fair number of you, or maybe all of you are my closest friends,) this whole diatribe should be prefaced with one simple notion: I like to make mixes. Said statement is rather an understatement: I make mixes like it is my job. True story: if you look back at most of my relationships, aged 18-23, within the first month of said relationship I was giving these girls mix CD's. Were they all lovey dovey, you're the one I want to spend the rest of my life with CD's? God, no (ok, slight exaggeration.) Maybe some of the songs were more forward than others, but most mixes I make aren't for the purpose of expressing my feelings to someone, but better yet to try and introduce people to the music they are missing out on.
These CD's weren't just made for the ladies, but also for the best friends of my life, Gianni in particular (I feel like I can just put his name out there on this blog because I mention him enough in other posts from time to time that he deserves to be an example.) Upon first meeting each other in 2000 or 2001 at our former place of employment, we bonded over music. He didn't know that Nada Surf was still around. Outside of "Popular," he never knew that they had crafted the pop masterpiece known as The Proximity Effect. He ended up with a 20+ song collection of their songs, and today he is now a fan. He might not have really jumped on board until the release of Lucky, but I feel satisfied knowing I've turned him on to something.
And now with these muxes that I make, I turn him, and countless others I am sure, on to whatever I'm listening to. After years of just making mixes for myself in the form of playlists on iTunes, now I'm just uploading them for the world to hear. It has become a weekly, rather sick obsession of mine - it keeps me up late at night, not just the tediousness of uploading the songs one by one, but then arranging them in the correct order. As a master curator of a mix/mux, a correct order is everything. If there's no flow, there's no purpose in its existence if you ask me. I've made four different ones so far, and am overjoyed that I can display the titles for all of them up top (except for the first one, for that feature was yet to be implemented, yet it had the best title ever: "I'll Show Your Punk Rock Ass," a lyric taken from "My Face Your Ass," a Lambchop song that was included on said mux.) I write all these out, arrange them like a set list ("I'll Show Your Punk Rock Ass,") or two sides of an LP (Mux Number Dos,) or have a theme of three (last week's numb3r, and edited b3rv2, which was divided in to three parts, and for each part it would have one heavy song, surround by three quiet pieces. Seriously - I spend too much time and thought on these things.)
Even sequencing in a half ass fashion can make it interesting. Take my current mux, entitled "AWK." Short for awkward, the idea was to sequence them in a way that would jerk the listener around. From the six-minute opener of A Place To Bury Strangers' "Ocean," to the pop ambience of Cut Copy's "Feel The Love," we then go in to the seven-minute "Instrument Beetle" by that Bob Pollard guy we all know I love. It goes back in forth, from short and concise pop, to trip hop, to John Zorn. I'm just relieved that people can come along now, possibly stumble upon my mux, and find a song or three that might like, or claim me as a favorite. And I'm even spreading the love, as our own Dany Sloan has created an SiS mux with some songs on it.
People used to have to ask me what I've been listening to lately, or would refer to my Facebook or MySpace to see what bands are listed as my favorites. In place of those lists now is just a link to my mux, and people can just see what my pet hobby is all about. In all reality, I'm sure about two people are listening to these things, but a boy can hope he changes someone's life someday.
If you haven't clicked up above, here's my mux.
1 comment:
This can't really have effect, I think like this.
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