In celebration of reaching the halfway point of my (50) Sundays of Music countdown, I wanted to do something to celebrate. I figured what better way than to turn the tables around and hear about other people's favorite music. So I asked some of my blogger friends (and a special guest) to give me a week full of guest posts talking about one of their favorite artists, albums or songs and to give the reason why. Today's guest post comes from...
When I first sat down to write my guest post on the most influential album in my life, I plugged in my headphones and got to shuffling around my current iTunes library. I quickly realized that my digital library doesn’t contain any full albums; In fact, of the 637 artists in my collection, only 8 have more than a CD’s worth of music: Beastie Boys, The Killers, Basement Jaxx, Girl Talk, TRVS/DJ AM, Kanye West, Jason Mraz, and Modest Mouse. Further clicks and scrolls reveal that I have about 400 artists represented by just a single song. How, was I supposed to pick a CD to write about when I apparently haven’t listened to a full CD in ages?
Disheartened and a little worried that I might have to bail on my guest posting commitment, I looked at all the stats that iTunes has to offer -Play Count, Skip Count, Last Played- and still couldn’t find any one artist’s release that captured any specific moment in my life. One last pass through my albums finally brought a pattern to light and caused the memories to start flowing. Suddenly I couldn’t just pick one album to write about.
So what digitally stored albums are the most important to me? The list is pretty long: Ali’s Mix CD. Gloria Thumb Drive. PA Presents. Julie & E Go to UConn. Mixes from Sarah. Modern Dance II. Old Pop Business. Represent Curacao. Julie Goes to France. And more.
Whether the songs were ripped from a physical disc made for a special roadtrip or an unmarked burned CD found on the floor in a dorm room, if they came to me as digital files during a hard drive raid, or if the album title was just a way to compile old favorites into one easy to find playlist, those are the titles that kick me way down Memory Lane. Songs on the mixes don’t come from the same era, they don’t always tell a story the way the musician and the studio mixer would like, and they don’t have to have significance to anyone but who they were made for.
That being said, if you’ve ever received a Mix CD, you know the sentimental value of music chosen for you by someone else is massive. Thanks to my freshman year roommates Ali and Charlotte, I can never hear OK GO “A Million Ways” without expecting Dr Dre “Still” to come on and merely hearing the opening plinks of Fiona Apple’s “Tymps (Sick in the Head Song)” brings to mind my 18 year old self participating in impromptu singalongs with my roommates, often with surprised guests in the room. If I had never asked my highschool friend Sarah to make me a CD with silly pop songs she downloaded from LimeWire, she would have never forced her twangy indie-ish country music into my head in a successful attempt to get me to listen to more interesting music.
The album title “Mix CD from Michelle” was changed to “Mix CD” when Michelle and I had a falling out; I felt so attached to the idea that she had made the CD for me I had to change the name to something neutral in order to enjoy the music again. When she and I resolved our differences years later, she got put back into the title. She had and has no idea that I did this, but to me it made all the difference.
There is nothing I love more than getting a mix CD as a gift, because you can tell a lot about how people perceive you based on what music they think you’d like. I have an open-to-a-fault mind when it comes to hearing new sounds [“except for new country music” like everyone says. Sorry, but it just all sounds the same to me!], so I’ve gotten some insane buffets of music over the years. I received one such mix as a pre-show gift from a girl I danced with that had 20 tracks with everything from Michael Jackson to Rilo Kiley to an instrumental gospel-sounding song I’ve been trying to identify for over 4 years now.
Sometimes it doesn’t work out so well, and I’ll whittle away at a CD’s presence on my iTunes until there are only a couple tracks left, but I find myself being deeply attached to certain bands despite only having one song from them due to the way that song came to me, like Magnet “Where Happiness Lives”. Other times I’ll get a listen of someone new and obsessively collect their tunes any way I can until I have an extensive collection, which is what happened when one of my favorite bloggers made an offhand reference to the Fu-Shnickens a while back.
Lately, one digital compilation list has been growing by leaps and bounds: Blog Finds. I suppose it’s true that “birds of a feather flock together” because almost every blog I read eventually wanders around to the subject of the writer’s diverse musical taste. Some analyze lyrics or post songs of the day, others put up youtube videos that cross their computer screens, and still others count down their top 50 favorite albums. [Just kidding with that last one: Mr O, you’re the only one I’ve seen so far who’s doing a top 50!] Listening to music, talking about favorite songs, and, above all else, asking “Hey, have you guys heard this?” is a big part of what the people I surround my digital self do.
I hope you guys found a way to connect with my Mix CD story time. Because I’m a believer in little presents, I’m going to leave you with JerseySjov’s Mini-Meta-Mix Playlist: 5 songs I now love that came to me on a Sharpie-covered Memorex CD, packed into a thumbdrive, or in my Blogger Reading List. As with any mix, I can only hope that you all listen and find something in here that you end up loving, and that you think of me when you spin it.
1.From Hex’s blog Sleep Dirt: Astronautalis “Trouble Hunters”
2.From Modern Dance II: Leona Lewis “Run”
3.From one of my best friends in highschool, Sarah: Old Crow Medicine Show “Wagon Wheel”
4.From Julie Goes to France: Make the Girl Dance “Baby Baby Baby”
5.From Mr O’s blog A Rush of Blog to the Head: Band of Horses “Our Swords”
And of course, any mix CD worth the plastic in its jewel case has a hidden track
Thanks for reading, yall! Catch me at A Bit Unaware [http://jerseysjov.blogspot.com] if you liked what you read. Many thanks to Mr O for giving me my first guest appearance on another blog; this was a lot of fun to write!
