It's time again to revisit the land of mix tapes--or "thematic playlists" as we have to more accurately call them now (thanks to the "awesome" new technologies that have taken away my beloved magnetic tape and made it impossible to purchase a tape deck in any legitimate electronics store--seriously, next time you're in a Best Buy ask one of the blue shirts if they have a stereo with a double tape deck, then watch as the look of bewilderment spreads across their youthful face, thus signifying that they have ceased to take you seriously as a customer and now see you as a possible escaped mental patient who could not possibly REALLY want something like that, I mean, "ma'am, haven't you heard of MP3's??")

Anyway: I do have to admit I like making the playlists on my computer, and my latest one is devoted to songs that I can listen to while running. Running (for exercise, but I'm also keeping it in mind for things like: bear attacks, the zombie apocalypse, lava, etc.) is a recent addition to activities here at Mercy Missiles as we have allowed ourselves to be talked into running a 5k race on October 3rd. That leaves just 3 more weeks to get it together, and I cannot hope to do that without a little musical accompaniment. So! There's a few elements that have to be involved in a list like this: songs have to be uptempo, loud, and include appropriate lyrics about such subjects as kickin' ass, tryin' real hard, bein' awesome, space travel, speeding, and other generally reckless behavior. Here's the list:

1. We Are All Made of Stars: Moby
2. Cannonball: The Breeders
3. The Final Countdown: Europe
4. Wheel in the Sky: Foreigner
5. Eye of the Tiger: Survivor
6. Jump: Van Halen
7. Rocky: Carol Connors/BillConti/Ayn Robbins
8. Ch-Check It Out: Beastie Boys
9. Hey Ya!: Outcast
10. Army of Me: Bjork
11. Extreme Ways: Moby
12. Speeding: The Go-Go's
13. Highway Runner: Donna Summer
14. Queen Bitch: David Bowie
15. Shining Star: Earth Wind & Fire

OCD Playlists in Progress

Dear readers, as you may remember from earlier in the week, I have dedicated yet more of my idle time to a new playlist project: pain-stakingly re-creating a long-lost road trip mix tape from my adolescence. I'm calling it "the Cincinnati Tape" (yes, it will be burned on a CD), and it will be (hopefully) exactly like a mix tape my brother and I played obsessively during trips to Cincinnati to see the Reds in our youth. Whew! It's hard! You may or may not agree that resurrecting the ghosts of your youth is a chore to get just right (or is even a good idea in the first place), but it has been a regular struggle over here at HQ.

I was planning on letting the project progress organically, setting my end goal as late summer (just in time to roll it out for an unveiling at the conclusion of the baseball season--that's around the middle of September, as there is no chance the Reds will be in the postseason). But as usual, events have conspired to step up my deadline. My brother and I will be making the 5 hour car trip up to Wrigley Field in Chicago for a Cubs game this Thursday, and it will be the perfect opportunity to roll out my grand opus of spineless 70's feel-good rock. I'm not proud of listening to that type of music, but I am proud of my progress towards The Perfect Mix that I am slowly working towards.

And in celebration of that near-achievement, I want to post a few other thematic playlist ideas that I will be embarking on soon:

• Your Town, Saturday Night
• Complete Coverage (original versions along with an interesting cover version)
• Katie's Adolescence (another likely embarrassment)
• Trail Songs and Campfire Ballads
• Meet the Overlords (what?)
• Talkin' Union
• Drug Songs! (self-explanatory; need to think of clever title)
• Giant Robot Love Opera (again, self-explanatory, I'd say)

I'll post complete playlists as I figure 'em out and refine. It will probably occupy me for quite some time.

OCD Playlist of the Week

Ever since I owned my very first Casio (or some such) stereo with a double tape deck (GOD how I miss those analog honies), I have been obsessing over what the oldsters call "mix tapes" and what the youngsters call "playlists." I love making them, but even more importantly: I love the PURPOSE behind one. You need a halfway decent reason to do pretty much anything, and sinking my teeth into a PURPOSEFUL list of songs is a very worthy activity. I am more than willing to dedicate significant time and effort into the mix--in fact, I insist on the process being more long term than most others would be comfortable with.

In my younger days I made mix tapes for boys that I liked (but, being totally chicken shit, I never actually gave one away to any of them). I made them for my friends and people I wanted to impress, but I reserved special mix tape-making zeal for the annual "Cincinnati Tape," a mix tape especially for summer road trips from my home in Louisville up to Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Once my older brother was driving age and had access to a car, he and I would make the hour and 20 minute drive to go sit in the nosebleeds and watch the Reds get their butts kicked around the National League (except in '94 when, shockingly, they won the Central Division pennant). We would do this between 6 and 12 times a summer, as ticket prices for a Reds game were as bargain basement as you could get in those days (thank you, Marge Schott), as cheap as a ticket to Louisville's AAA minor league team games, in fact. The music on these tapes was not generally good (although I was really into it at the time), and many of those songs that inevitably made the rotation are acutely embarrassing for me to admit now (although I will still stand by some of them).

My brother and I had rather strange taste in most things growing up: movies, T.V. shows, general aesthetics, and, especially, music. Our favorite genre was what I would now classify as "wussy 1970's easy listening." One of our most prized CDs, a virtual goldmine for our various mixed tapes, was a compilation that we found in the music store bargain bin titled, [grimace], "Baby Boomer Classics." Yeesh. I'm talking about The Doobie Brothers, America, Peter Frampton, and Al Stewert (and those are the less embarrassing ones).

All of this is on my mind this week because my new Playlist Purpose is to recreate our old (and by now, long lost) Cincinnati Tape, as closely as I can. We never really had one definitive master copy, we made a new tape every year (sometimes more than one a year), mixing in a few different songs here and there, fiddling with the order, but we generally used the same stable of songs. My Purpose with this playlist is to capture, as closely as I can, the SPIRIT of the old Cincinnati Tape; I want to get the order just right, with a nice progression and transition as close to the way I would've done it 17 years ago. So this, my friends, is my challenge to myself--truly a project that will be worthy of my mix tape/playlist pedigree and talent. I hope to have it finished by the end of the summer, maybe for a drive up to Cincinnati before the end of the season...