The mix-up
My dad is a king of mix-tapes. His great works have included “original versions of songs which are better known for a cover”, the Ian-Dury heavy “list songs” and the great, unending project to get every track in Dave Marsh’s Heart Of Rock And Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made onto cassette. And he made one for me this weekend, so I’ve been piecing together a reciprocal playlist. Jiggling stuff about on iPlayer isn’t quite as fun as working with a C90 – when you’ve finessed the track listing to the exact distance the tape has to unspool, everything has a feeling of rightness that can’t be found by any amount of matching up outros and intros. After the jump: the first seven tracks of my dadmix, seven songs I love because they come from the music my dad has always played me (and as Fleshisgrass asked me ages ago to name my seven songs of the spring – here they are).
Neko Case, People Got A Lotta Nerve
The Delays, Nearer Than Heaven
Spoon, Don’t You Evah
The Mae Shi, Run To Your Grave
Battles, Atlas
The Go Go’s, Lust To Love
Arctic Monkeys, Do Me A Favour
26 May, 2009 at 4:13 pm
What a lovely thing that your dad makes you mix tapes, that is just gorgeous! :)
26 May, 2009 at 6:47 pm
When you mention your family in your blog I get a comfortable feeling that places me back with good friends. I can’t comment on the music though. I don’t know how much cause to allocate to hearing loss, and how much to old age. Hah.
27 May, 2009 at 7:09 am
You know I love me a mixtape.
Good to read this; I’ve been putting together TAPE and The Domestic Soundscape, which has a lot of love for mixtapes in it and plenty of found, family tapes.
I think all music-sharing activities are sort of derived from the joy of The Mixtape…