What happened to Wayne? His rhymes are so lacking these days, so reliant on pussy and money and telling me to fuck off. I miss the old Weezy, the enigmatic little boy who was able to play the mainstream rapper on a surface level, dropping catchy summer beats and phrases that were just as fulfilling as the actual intelligence and wit that laid below them. After he dropped Carter3 and Drake blew up everything changed. He's completely lost his swag, his mystery, the air that laid about him because he was straddling two worlds. Was it Drake? Was it that Drake snatched Wayne's style, cadence, bravado and got more famous than his mentor? Did Weezy feel like he had to push the shithead hitmaker aspect as hard as he could to wiggle back up that ladder and let Drake know on the way up that he's still his daddy? But somewhere around the third to top rung the air got too thin and his blood was too tired and he wanted a smoke and he lost all his air and just started dropping boring yangs and 'verse' on every fucking song that's near 'fit' to play on the radio? I mean, I'd still drop trou for him in moments and will always find some part of every song that at least breezes me away. But... it's just not the same anymore.
All that said, Motivation is delicious. It's bad, I know, just like Kelly's last single, Like This (which I loved, but I will admit was pretty fuzzy). Motivation is sexy though - laying on my bed a few nights ago, reading Anais Nin (okay, maybe that had something to do with my reaction...), I heard it first and immediately wished I was coupled under the sheets with someone slightly less dramatic but maybe similarly creepy as Ms. Nin. I've been halfass working on a new mixtape, and this song was exactly what I was looking for to go after that new Saigon/Faith joint. And anyways, I'll never get tired of smart shit he throws like 'rain on my head, call it brainstorming'.
My music intake is forever peppered with pop music from the 80's (as is my movie intake, my book intake, my wardrobe...). Last night on my way home I decided I wanted to make a tape, and while I set off to make a 'amazing but ignored hiphop/r&b radio tracks from the past 5 years' tracklist, I ended up pulling all my 80s pop records out, excited by the new vinyl copy of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack I found last weekend. As I was sorting, I put on Roxy Music's 'Avalon' and well, this is what happened. I started figuring out the tracklist in my head, based mainly on stuff I own on vinyl, getting stoked that I'd be making an almost vinyl-only tape.
Sadly, as I was making the tape the speed level on my turntable started getting feisty and I wasn't really able to use any of my records on the tape - so a lot of the songs on here that I own on vinyl (being about 90% of the songs) ended up being recorded from streaming mp3. Maybe it's time to give in a just buy a brand new turntable... and recommendations?
This is no sophistacted mixtape - this is just a bunch of my favorite pop songs (and probably yours too) that all happen to be from the 80's (nothing before or after). Have fun listening!
Side A
Roxy Music - Tara (vinyl) The Plimsouls - A Million Miles Away (imeem) The English Beat - Tears of A Clown (imeem) Prince and Sheila E - Erotic City (imeem) Ready for the World - Oh Sheila (imeem) Madonna - Borderline (imeem) Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now (tape) Stevie Nicks - Stand Back (imeem) Danny Hutton's Hitters - Wouldn't It Be Good (from Pretty in Pink sndtrk, mp3)
Side B
The Smiths - Stop Me... (mp3) The Pretenders - Middle of the Road (mp3) Hall and Oates - Out of Touch (mp3) UB40 - Rat in Mi Kitchen (imeem) Payola$ - Eyes of a Stranger (mp3) Roxy Music - More Than This (imeem) Journey - Seperate Ways (Worlds Apart) (imeem)
So, it's fall. The first day of Autumn was this past week, my birthday is a week from today, and while the earth tries to fight it, with its patchy ozone and ever-hotter sun, it is getting cooler. While I don't stop my constant jam consumption as the sky and ground begin to cool, I do start to listen to little more guitar. A little more banjo. A little more voice. A little more lo-fi.
I started this tape a few weeks ago and finished side A today. When I started the tape, it had a different tracklisting. I recorded about 3/4 of the tape and decided to start over, something I do often. Except, somehow, magically, little snippets of the previous tracklist appear between almost every song on the finished tape. At first, it bothered me a teeny bit, but after my first reaction I realized I really liked it - it almost sounds like I was listening to the radio, recording full songs I liked and then switching stations until I found something else I liked. So, sorry if you don't dig it, but I do.
t's a 90 minute tape and I don't have the patience to go all the way. I finished the first side and decided - that was that.
Here it is.
SIDE A (only side, for now)
1 // Dramamine - Sun Kil Moon (modest mouse cover) (imeem) (snippet of i don't know what)
2 // Sometimes - My Bloody Valentine (mp3) (snippet of Jim White's Still Waters)
3 // Long May You Burn - Papa M (mp3) (snippet of Kirk Kelly singing Springsteen's Downbound Train)
4 // Winterlong - Neil Young (mp3) (snippet of Gillian Welch's Revelator)
5 // The Young Alchemists - The Van Pelt (LP) (the end of revelator)
6 // Bed for the Scraping - Fugazi (mp3)
7 // Adobe - Books Lie (LP)
8 // Pervert - Descendents (mp3) (guitar solo from Long May You Burn)
9 // Cough/Cool - Misfits (mp3)*
10 // Heart to Fool - Natureboy (mp3) (quick snippet of The Beach Boys' Lets Get Away for A While)
11 // Chemirocha - Unknown (??) (mp3)**
12 // Your Rocky Spine - Great Lake Swimmers (mp3)
13 // Jam / Beginning of Riding with the Ghost - Magnolia Electric Co. live @ The Middle East (mp3)***
NOTES *let it be noted that i'm not really happy with this transition - i'm a little confused as to why i decided to put these two songs back to back, but i get lost in the natureboy track when i listen to it so in the end it doesn't make that big of a difference... i guess. also, here's a little pondering i did about this song a while ago... **an old friend of mine, corey, sends me fileshare mixes every once in a while, and i'm really bad at listening to them. i let them sit for months and months before i listen but whenever i do, it's like he's managed to predict, months in advance, whatever i'm into at the point in time i end up listening to the mix he's sent me. this track was on there. it's ridiculous.
***I recorded this when Magnolia Electric Co. played @ the middle east a month or two ago. this was my first time recording a live band in a venue - this summer i've been recording a lot of festivals, but that's different. anyways, this was a great show and this jam was really dope. in some ways it reminds me of 'united or alone', an old songs:ohia track. i also like how someone, not j.molina and most likely not any of the other band members, starts singing neil youngs' 'down by the river'. i've never heard an extended jam of that song, but i bet it's similar...
I started this mix months ago for my friend Aubrey but had to stop working on it becuase my old tape deck started failing me. It was recording everything with serious warble, and even after tracking down a head-cleaner it wasn't getting any better. Yesterday, Anna and I took a trip to Savers in W.Rox and I found an optimus deck for $5. I bought it, hoping it would work, and it does. Great. No distortion. As soon as I plugged it in I started back up on the tape, and I finished it this morning.
The way this blog is going to work is I'm going to list the tracks with notations - mainly what format it was recorded from (tape, vinyl, mp3, streaming track). In some cases, like this one, i'll note if there was a break in recording, and when I resumed making the tape. Sometimes maybe i'll tell a story about a track or two.
I don't know how to mix things, and I don't have any sort of equalizer to be fuxing with the levels of what I record. What you're listening to is a mixtape I made in my room, on my OPTIMUS 2-head cassette deck, taken from vinyl played on my technics sl-b3 turntable, from the OPTIMUS deck, from my itunes library, or streamed from imeem or youtube. The levels are off, and it's not an even sound across the tape. Mp3s are better quality than the vinyl tracks and while streaming tracks can be HQ some of them definitely are not.
Whatever. I like it this way.
So pretend that you and I are hanging out in my room, you're reading a Cabinet or W or some Neruda or sum shit, and I'm just hangin out in the corner, playing some music, and we're passin a jib and making fun of people we know and in a little bit we're going out dancing and tomorrow morning when you wake up, you'll have Wine Up On Me stuck in your head, and then if you wanted, you could come to this blog, and download everything I played for you last night and LIVE IT ALL OVER AGAIN
These recordings are really quiet but i'm going to work on making the quality better for the next one. I suggest plugging yr computer into a stereo and blasting the shit out of it. Here we go...
SIDE A
1 // I Wanna Be Down (the human rhythm hip hop rmx) -- Brandy ft. MC Lyte, Queen Latifah and Yo Yo (B side of Baby single) (12")
2 // 808 -- Blaque (LP Version) (12")
3 // I'm Goin Down -- MJB (12")
4 // Say My Name (Nitro Rmx) -- Destiny's Child ft. Nitro and Chief (12" Say My Name dbl disc rmxs)
5 // Yeah Yeah -- Bodyrox (mp3)
6 // Gwaan -- Natalie Storm and Enur (imeem) *1
7 // Wine Up on Me /Beauty Riddim/ -- Zoelah (imeem) *2
8 // Neva Believe U - Mavado (imeem) *3
SIDE B
1 // Get It Get It - Webbie ft. Lil' Tril (mp3) *4
2 // Helluvalife - Gucci ft Gorilla Zoe and Juiceman (mp3)
3 // Day N' Nite - Jim Jones verse (youtube) *5
4 // Toot Dat Booty Up -- Dirtbag (imeem, cause I can't find my 12")
5 // Good Life -- T. Pain ft. Kanye (at least that's how it should read) (imeem) *6
6 // Wadsyaname - Nelly (imeem) *7
7 // Don't Call Me No Mo' - Project Pat ft. ThreeSix (imeem) *8
8 // Bite Down - Gorilla Zoe & Boyz n da Hood (mp3 cause i was too lazy to record the 12")
9 // Lost My - Gucci Mane ft. J-Money and DG Yola (mp3)
10 // Yahhh - Soulja Boy ft. Arab (this track gets cut off) (imeem) *9
NOTES 1 / this track is the shit, it has been my jawn for forever now, thanks toRizzla let's get over calabria and fucking yang to this!!!! 2 / this is where I left off a month of so ago, when my deck was gettin wonkyyyy 3 / this track gets cut off 4 / ahhhh I fuckin love webbie. he slays me. he needs to drop something new soon. i want my brother to produce this kid sooooo fucking bad!!!! 5 / the cudi track was hot when it dropped but was definitely beat up by all the rmxs that followed - this Jones track fuckin makes me sweat everytime I listen to it and I still ain't tired of hearing it - but I am tired of hearing the rest of the cudi version. This is the YouTube video I recorded the song from, and despite my deapseated dislike for Jim Jones, this video makes me fukkin yip yip yip yip yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip 6 / not so sure I dig the placement of this track, but I wanted to take it to the radio a few years back. was thinkin of 'All the Above' but this is its predecessor (this track without doubt started the still-going trend of posi radio hop) and so I went with it. whatever 7 / why this was never a banger i'll never understand, ppl hate on nelly so hard they fuckin blind to the beauty!!! 8 / best line in this shit: "I ain't got time to hit her numba three times for one letta" - this resonated so hard for me before i entered the smartphone world; who the fuck is worth hittin a number three times for one letter?? not many not many. 9 / i fucking love this song. it's so annoying and it's meant to be. get up out my face you doodoo head dummy. i don't really like the dirty version, so this is the radio track.
So, I had really hoped to have my first mix up and streaming by last night but I ran into a thousand walls trying to record the mix. I'm reasonably saavy when it comes to technology in that I can eventually figure most things out, but i'm certainly not quick-witted when it comes to that sort of thing. That and sometimes I can be a mindless idiot and do things like press record instead of play seven different times when trying to record the mix to my computer, thus having to re-record the first track on the mixtape as many times (okay, maybe more like four).
At this point, I'm stuck @ work which is why I'm writing this, and at home I have one half of the mix recorded and ready to become an mp3. When I get home later I'll record the other side, and hopefully spend less than four hours trying to figure out how to export it as an mp3.
For now, I think I've decided to keep the mixes streaming. I may offer the download at some point, or by request, but I am not sure I want to have it available upfront for many reasons. I do, however, encourage you to use your tape deck to record the mixes onto a tape (I'll give you the tape length with each mix) - or, some mixes I may offer to send out dubbed copies of the tape. We'll see.
Either way I'm wicked stoked on this whole thing, and I hope that I'll start cranking out finished mixes since I have a place to share them (other than in my apartment and with Aubrey). I also am sort of stoked to finally start using any sort of recording software, even something as basic as Audacity, because there is a definite possibility that I may start using personally recorded and found sound in future mixes, and who knows, might start actually altering some of the tracks I use. We'll see.
For years i've been making mixtapes. This morning, as I was telling a new friend of mine how excited I am to have found a $5 deck that works great and can replace my warbly-ized old sony deck, and how I was going to spend the day making tapes, he asked - what do you do with all these tapes you make? No one's really asked me that question before, and not in a way that made me think - huh, not enough.
Jess Hopper linked to this blog, Year of Mixtapes a few days ago, and my mind was blown. I've thought about distributing my tapes before, and have made imeem playlists that are close to physical mixtapes i've made, but I never really thought about digitizing them and sharing them that way (which is, uh, ridiculous). So, this is my mixtape blog.
I downloaded Audacity today and have figured out how to jerry rig my stereo to record my mixes. For now, the way this will work is I will digitize the actual mixtapes I make and have made - all recorded from tape, mp3, and vinyl - and will share them. At some point, when I learn how to do it, I may skip the recording to cassette step and record straight to the computer (as I would when making a tape, but without the tape step). But for now, this is all I know how to do.
