In Which I Reveal My Huge Mix-Tape Geekness...

By Cornelia

[p.s. This just in: my paperback is up on Amazon--YAY! due out July 11th, 2007....]



This morning's post is going to be pretty much babbling, and I don't even have a cool cocktail recipe like Paul did yesterday. It will contain a confession, but it is a really oddball confession marking me as a huge geek.

Here goes:

I suspect that there's this specific kind of software invention out there already which I totally yearn for, but which I have avoided trying to find because I figure owning it would be my total downfall. Before I actually describe it, I would like to state for the record that if you know what it's called and/or where I can get it AFTER I describe it, please do NOT tell me, because having it in my possession would be the evil time-suck vortex of doom, and I already have enough of those in my life what with reading blogs and playing online mah-jong solitaire and Bounce-Out and stuff like that.

Okay? NO TELLING.

Because I have less willpower than an addication-study lab rat with, like, a circuit board sticking out of its head.

I'm serious. Do not tell me. Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye. And that means you, Sandra Ruttan, because I bet you think it would be funny, but it would SO not be, okay? Seriously...

Ahem.

Here it is:

Software that lets you slice up songs and then stick the pieces back together in random ways.

I know what you're saying. You're saying, "but Cornelia, that's really stupid. How could you possibly live in fear of software that lets you slice up songs and then stick the pieces back together in random ways (STLYSUSATSTPBTIRW)? Besides which, it's not at all interesting or funny, so what a dopy thing to pick as a blog post subject. Go have more coffee."

Cha. Easy for you to say, because YOU are not a slave to the process of creating the perfect mix tape (unless you actually are, in which case you know what I'm talking about and are probably nodding in commiseration right about now).

And I know that nobody actually makes mix tapes any more, except for probably a handful of die-hard vegan celibate Luddites in Uttar Pradesh or wherever.

We make CDs for each other, these days. We don't actually need the speed-dub button on the old dual cassette boombox, anymore. Even me, since the onset of Napster and iTunes and Limewire and Kazaa and the MP3, generally--not to mention the advent of DJs with ginormous soundboards making professional-caliber mashups of Donovan and Imari Coppola, or Elvis with meth-powered club percussion, or The Beatles and that Hip-Hop guy... plus Moby, etc.

But oh, back in the old days! I like to think I had a certain infamy in my tiny circle for le mix juste... juxtaposing Jello Biafra and Joni Mitchell and the Trogs and Jerry Lee Lewis and the Ink Spots and Narvel Felts' cover of "Maybelline"--with tight segues and no little resulting wry sub-text, if I do say so myself--although my personal best was the time I intercut the respective Roches and London Philharmonic versions of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," one February in Williamstown.

And that last mix of the Dualing Handels led me to attempt my heretofore unfinished masterpiece.... that being a mashup of

+

AKA "Ride of the Valkyries" meets the Godfather of Soul, to wit:

duh da duh duh-da, duh da duh DUH-da, duh da-duh DUUUUUH/WAAAA! I feel GOOD (doo-da doo-da doo-da DOO)....

Only my tapedeck broke before I could find a sound clip of Robert Duvall saying "You wanna fight, or you wanna surf?" from Apocalypse Now to lace in there somewhere, and, lo these many years and cross-country moves later, the original cassette is long gone.

BUT, now I have MP3s of everything I'd need to make a whole psych0 uber-mix freaking Ring Cycle out of that idea, and (cue Oscar Goldman's voiceover from the opening credits of The Six Million Dollar Man: "We have the technology... we can rebuild him.......") could see myself totally disappearing down the rabbit-hole of it as a perennial project, which I'm sure no one would want to listen to but me ANYWAY.

So... I will try to restrain myself from Googling for the freeware that might make that a possibility, because I have way too much to do already and could not survive a further timesuck distraction, I don't think.

But in the meantime, here is the playlist of my favorite CD mix made in the last year, and I'd love to hear what you guys cue up for yourselves in the meantime:

1. Robert Duvall's "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" speech
   
2. "Susie Q" by CCR
3. A thrashing punk cover version of "Surfin' USA"
4. Same of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
5. "Bohemian Like You" by the Dandy Warhols
6. "I Wanna Be Sedated" by Shonen Knife
7. "Shotgun" by Jr. Walker and the All-Stars
8. "Money" by the Flying Lizards
9. "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton
10. "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in German
11. "Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups
12. "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Brother Bones (which I still love from the Harlem Globetrotters' cartoon show when I was little)
13. "Bye-Bye Blues" by Les Paul and Mary Ford
14. "Linus and Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi
15. "Twin Guitar Boogie" by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys
16. "Brazil" by Django Rinehart
    
17. "You're Wondering Now" by the Specials
18. "Israelites" by Desmond Dekker
19. "Light my Fire" by Groove Armada
20. "One Way Out" by the Allman Brothers
21. The little soundbite from Fast Times at Ridgemont High
where Sean Penn is saying goodbye to the guy from My Favorite Martian ("Aloha, Spicoli..." "Aloha, Mr. Hand......")

And aloha to all of you, too...... thank you for dropping by, and happy Wednesday!