2 posts tagged “mixes”

Sometimes, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. I found this out on a road trip to New York with my best friend this past weekend.

The deal was that Nikki would drive, but I would be in charge of the music. For me, it gets no better than that. I've said before, I'm a big believer in the art of the mix. If that were an actual job, it's the only one I'd ever want. I don't have occasion to make them much these days, but when I do I like to spend a lot of time deciding what to open with, striking a good balance between up tempo songs with slow songs and including songs from different periods. It's all very High Fidelity.

But on Thursday night, I found myself short on time and needed to hastily throw together a few mixes for the car. I made an 80s mix of shameless feel good tunes like Don't Stop Believin', Faith and Shelia E's Glamorous Life. That's right. You heard me. Fucking Shelia E.

We were also armed with Hot Rod's best of 2000, 2003 and 2005 mixes, which translated nicely through Baltimore and Philadelphia. And then there was this mix, which I unimaginatively titled "Road" on my iTunes library. There's not much of a theme to it, other than music I've had in heavy rotation that would bridge our musical tastes and would power us through the Garden State Parkway and beyond. It's not particularly cool. Robert Christgau, Sasha Frere-Jones or whatever would not approve. But somehow, the songs worked together on a long drive. They are:

"To me, making a tape is like writing a letter," Rob says in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. It might be using someone else's poetry to express yourself, but I've always been a big believer in the art of the mix. I'm not alone in this feeling. There are whole books written on the subject.

There's no better feeling than the moment just before you pop in a mix someone made you; when it's still ripe with possibility. God, I miss getting mixes. Almost as much as I liked getting, I liked giving. So it was with great pleasure and a lot of fuss and hours spent at the computer contemplating intros, outros, crowd dynamics and timing that I made several hours of iPod mixes for my wedding last June. And I must say, I was quite pleased with the results of my handiwork. I started with a few nods to 70s soul, moved into post-punk and 80s New Wave and timed the songs with questionable lyrics such as Prince's Erotic City for when I knew the prudes would have long since left the building.

So for the past week, I've been reeling over a to-do list on a scrap of paper I found sitting around that was, most assuredly, not written in my own hand. This is an approximation of what it said: Copy wedding mixes for [name redacted's] wedding. Naturally, I was upset.

And I think my level of irritation was probably out of kilter with how most sane people would have reacted. I know, because of how Yo Han stood, arms blocking the door, mouth agape, when I told him that those mixes couldn't be copied for someone else's wedding.

I don't pretend that someone else couldn't make a better mix. I'm sure they could. But that's my DNA in those mixes. I have my doubts that someone else is going to play the Pixies' Debaser, move into Guided By Voice's Glad Girls, play Don't Lets Start as a homage to their high school years, on into I Wanna Be Sedated and include In A Big Country because they know it'll make Hot Rod dance. I seriously, f'in doubt it. As an olive branch, I offered to release some of the songs. But come on. If I have to tell you to play Hey Ya! to get a crowd dancing, then you've got bigger problems. At press time, I still appear like the petty one. Stay tuned.

This song seems, well, appropriate.