100 Mixtapes

Hey! So I’ve finally gotten around to uploading Mixes 002 and 003. Click here for 002 (“Winter ‘10”) and click here for 003 (“Under the ‘Covers’”). I did it really sloppily, so the tracks aren’t necessarily in order, nor are they all MP3s. Sorry! They should be all playable, though; lemme know via a comment or something if they aren’t. Also, this means that all mixes posted thus far are officially downloadable! Hooray!

So I tried to post this a few days ago (before Valentines Day), but my internet was being a bitch so I couldn’t post it until today. Sorry! This one goes out to everybody, which violates my own rule of not giving the same person more than one mix (I gave my first one to “everybody” too), but really, who would want to receive a Sad Valentines Day mix made specifically for them?

Track list:

01: The Smiths - “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”
02: Arcade Fire - “Crown of Love”
03: The Magnetic Fields - “I Don’t Want To Get Over You”
04: Weezer - “Undone - The Sweater Song”
05: A.A. Bondy - “Black Rain, Black Rain”
06: Beck - “Lost Cause”
07: Bob Dylan - “Visions of Johanna”
08: Stars - “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”
09: This Mortal Coil - “Song to the Siren”
10: The Beatles - “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”
11: Radiohead - “Fake Plastic Trees”

Tumblr’s being really annoying right now, so I can’t format this post the way I’d like to. :(

And for the record, I spent my Valentines Day dining on Korean food and Chinese takeout (to celebrate Lunar New Year…!) and watching Zack and Miri Make a Porno with friends and Ghostbusters alone. Hope everybody who wanted to did something a bit more romantic!

There was an event in Brooklyn that I heard about called “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” which is Valentines Day speed dating set to the music of The Smiths. Just thought that was hilarious and I should share it with everybody.

Download it here!

[007/100]

This one goes to Laura!, who just moved to my hometown of ever-sunny Los Angeles, California. This is sort of a housewarming gift, I guess? It’s so cold here, it’s ridiculous!

Here are a bunch of songs about or carrying the vibe of Los Angeles and/or California as a whole. I burned this deal onto a yellow CD and I drew (to the best of my ability!) the Hollywood sign on the left and the U.S. Bank Tower (the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi River!) on the right.

Track list:

01: Guns N’ Roses - “Welcome To The Jungle”
02: The Decemberists - “Los Angeles, I’m Yours”
03: The Beach Boys - “California Dreamin’”
04: Dntel - “Roll On”
05: Sundays Best - “The Salt Mines of Santa Monica”
06: Vampire Weekend - “California English”
07: Doris Day - “Hooray For Hollywood”
08: Wolf Parade - “California Dreamer”
09: Wavves - “Wavves”
10: Los Abandoned - “Van Nuys (Es Very Nice)”
11: Led Zeppelin - “Going to California”

The place Laura! moved to is right by Van Nuys Boulevard, which is why the second-to-last song is all the more relevant! Download it here.

[006/100]

Sorry for the astoundingly violent-sounding name; this was designed as a drone metal introduction mix for Shahrod, who had never heard of the drone metal genre. Weird, right?

Anyway, I soon realized that I didn’t have enough drone metal to make an entire mix, so this is sort of drone metal/shoegaze/dream pop/darkwave/ambient/shit to fall asleep to if you’re feeling really angsty. Also note that “drone metal” isn’t really metal-ey, and already sounds suspiciously like slightly heavier shoegaze.

Track list:

01: Have a Nice Life - “Bloodhail”
02: Boris - “Farewell”
03: My Bloody Valentine - “Loomer”
04: Sunn O))) - “It Took the NIght to Believe”
05: Grouper - “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping”
06: Have a Nice Life - “Telefony”
07: Dead Can Dance - “Saltarello”
08: Cocteau Twins - “Lorelei”
09: This Moral Coil - “Song to the Siren”
10: The Jesus and Mary Chain - “The Living End”

May all your depressed dreams come true. Download it here.

[005/100]

Mix 004: Sad Bastard Music is now live and ready to download! Get it here or see the original post here.

This mix goes to Jessica, who is one of my best friends ever. I can’t possibly give her any music that she doesn’t already have; I think that’s impossible because she already has everything worth listening to.

Anyway, she’s got her own radio show (the indie pop show Pop Molecule, which you should definitely listen to at KZSC.org from 2 to 4 p.m. Pacific Time every Monday…!), though she frequently appeared on her friend’s show, Sad Bastard Music, which I don’t believe currently airing. Anyway, here’s a mix inspired by the kind of music they’d play on the latter show, but with a bit of a “classic” twist (the show primarily played contemporary music).

Track list:

01: The Magnetic Fields - “The Book of Love”
02: Damien Rice - “Creep” (originally by Radiohead)
03: The Beatles - “I’m a Loser”
04: Radiohead - “Unravel” (originally by Björk)
05: Vic Chestnut - “Sad Peter Pan” (originally by Smashing Pumpkins) 
06: Nirvana - “All Apologies”
07: Johnny Cash - “Hurt”
08: Pink Floyd - “Pigs On The Wing (Part One)”
09: Depeche Mode - “Waiting For The Night”
10: Joy Division - “New Dawn Fades”
11: The Velvet Underground - “After Hours”
12: The Smiths - “Asleep”

So there you have it, another mixtape. I guess this one turned out to be sort of a semi-covers mix as well, and it even has my favorite cover song ever, which is Radiohead’s version of “Unravel.” It’s hauntingly beautiful. Also, I guess I should come upfront with the fact that Jessica actually gave me a some of these songs, including “The Book of Love” (and the whole 69 Love Songs album).

Download it here.

[004/100]

Naomi got the CD! You guys have no idea how happy I am right now, I thought for sure that it’d come undone on its way to the post office or that they wouldn’t mail something so bizarrely shaped or that I didn’t put enough postage on it or something, but I guess it came though.

Get it? It’s a covers mix! I’m sure nobody’s ever used that joke before, ever.

Anyway, this one is for Natalie, who along with Naomi and I made up the three drivers in our little carpool, which we called “Team 20” because that was the number of the parking space that was designated ours for most of the year. After a rousing iChat session with her last night about covers, I decided to make this mix.

Also, I think I can confirm that Naomi’s mix never got to her, which means that I guess I’m just going to have to make these all available for free download online for anybody who wants them. Ho hum. I’ll tag ones that I’ve gotten around to posting online with “downloadable” so that you can find them all easily.

Track list:

01: Lily Allen - “Straight to Hell” (originally by The Clash)
02: CSS - “Knife” (originally by Grizzly Bear)
03: Of Montreal - “Purple Rain” (originally by Prince)
04: Grizzly Bear - “Owner of a Lonely Heart” (originally by Yes)
05: Hot Chip & Peter Gabriel - “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” (originally by Vampire Weekend)
06: Rufus Wainwright - “Smile” (originally by Brian Wilson)
07: John Cale - “All My Friends” (originally by LCD Soundsystem)
08: Johnny Cash - “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (originally by Simon and Garfunkel)

This mix contains a few inside references, I guess. The original “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was sort of a theme song for the carpool (after we spent several rides trying to perfect that one scene from The Break-Up), and Natalie actually gave me the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” cover.

Download it here!

[003/100]

So my friend Naomi and I were in a carpool together in high school, and I used to make seasonal mixtapes to leave in her car, so I made a Winter ‘10 mixtape for her as a sort of throwback to that. This past summer we both moved to the state of New York from Los Angeles, I to New York City and she to Schenectady, so this is sort of the first really cold winter for both of us.

I burned it onto a red CD and drew snowflakes and a snowman on the face with blue sharpie. I then wrapped it up in several sheets of printer paper (professional, I know) and just addressed the whole deal like a normal letter. It’s bizarrely shaped and I only used one stamp, so I don’t know if the post office will even deliver it, if it doesn’t fall apart en-route to them because it’s held together mostly with scotch tape.

Track list:

01: The xx - “VCR”
02: Grizzly Bear - “Southern Point”
03: Emmy the Great - “MIA”
04: The Cure - “Plainsong”
05: Damien Rice - “Delicate”
06: Boris - “Farewell”
07: Nico - “These Days”
08: Pixies - “Where Is My Mind?”

Download it here!

[002/100]

So the first mix I made I posted on my main Tumblr last month. It was for everybody, really, which I guess is breaking my own rules, but whatever.

Here’s the track list:

01: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - “Zero”
02: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - “Young Adult Friction”
03: Crocodiles - “I Wanna Kill”
04: Wavves - “Gun In The Sun”
05: Peter Bjorn and John - “It Don’t Move Me”
06: Phoenix - “Rome”
07: Passion Pit - “The Reeling”
08: The xx - “Basic Space”
09: Air - “Do The Joy”
10: Depeche Mode - “Hole To Feed”
11: Animal Collective - “Summertime Clothes”
12: M. Ward - “One Hundred Million Years”
13: Emmy the Great - “The Easter Parade”
14: St. Vincent - “Actor Out Of Work”
15: Camera Obscura - “Swans”
16: Here We Go Magic - “Tunnelvision”
17: The Decemberists - “Isn’t It a Lovely Night?”
18: Grizzly Bear - “Two Weeks”
19: Atlas Sound - “Walkabout”
20: Lotus Plaza - “Red Oak Way”
21: A Grave With No Name - “Stone Setting”
22: Yo La Tengo - “Periodically Double or Triple”
23:  The Flaming Lips - “I Can Be a Frog”
24: Fanfarlo - “I’m A Pilot”
25: The Mountain Goats” - Genesis 30:3”
26: A.A. Bondy - “The Mightiest of Guns”
27: Animal Collective - “What Would I Want? Sky”
28: Dan Deacon - “Snookered”
29: Jónsi & Alex - “Boy 1904”
30: Fuck Buttons - “Surf Solar”
31: Animal Collective - “In The Flowers”

So, there you have it! You can look at the original post here (which you might want to do because it’s got a link to download the whole thing!

[001/100]

On June 1st, I created my list of “101 Goals for 1,001 Days,” a list of 101 things that I wanted to do before 1,001 had elapsed. One of those was to create 100 mixtapes.

The rules of the game are that each has to be made for a different person and each has to be physically burned onto a CD (or recorded onto a tape!) for said person to enjoy. I also must decorate each CD personally for the receiver. I will likely bend these rules very often.

I will use this blog to keep track of those 100, and then some.