Mixtape 4 - The Years of Our Lives

CASSETTE: Memorex dB series / 90 minute
MixMaster: Jorge
THEME: The Years of Our Lives
1. We will each be submitting 30 minutes of music, finalized. There will be no shared picking of the songs for this mixtape. Each of us will bring our 30 minute package to the table done and finalized.

2. The songs for your 30 minutes will be limited to ONE year of your choosing. This year should be a significant year in your lifetime. Examples: The year you were born, the year you first kissed a girl, the year you got married, the year you made a significant life change, the year you graduated from high school, etc. You pick the year and why it is important to you and you select thirty minutes of music from that year.

3. Final assembly of the mixtape: Our individual thirty minutes are run sequentially one after the other chronologically. With one of us having to split our thirty minutes over both sides.

Year Choices:
Jorge - 1976
The year my parents and I moved to the USA and I began to be exposed to rock and pop. Many memories and new experiences.

Robert - 1980
I was a sports kid growing up. Life in Miami revolved around the Dolphins and getting outside to play the sport of the season with my neighborhood friends. Music was completely peripheral. That isn't to say music wasn't played in my house - it was.  Both of my parents were theater people so we always had lots of musical cast recordings playing and my mom, a left-over beat/hippy had an impressive folk collection on vinyl. I distinctly remember listening to AM radio in my room at night - hits from the 70s but, without an older sibling or hip parents, no proper rock education.

That all changed in December of 1980. In the wake of John Lennon's assassination every news outlet had a feature on him and The Beatles and it was in watching one of those that I heard "A Day In The Life" for the first time. That Christmas, at my insistence, my mom bought me their greatest hits "blue album" and there was no turning back. I forgot sports and music became my obsession. Though my musical journey started in discovering The Beatles and other 60s music initially, I'll pay tribute to that year with selections from it.

Manuel - 1991
I'm going to go with 1991, which is the year I graduated from High School and the music of the day had a HUGE influence in my overall taste.  Of course, i was lucky enough to have Jorge as an uncle, so I was listening to all kinds of stuff dating as far back as the early 80s when I was 9-12 years old.  However, I resisted certain types of genres and stuff until 1991.  To top it off, that was quite the year in rock and alternative rock.

SIDE A
1976 - Jorge
Carry on Wayward Son (Kansas)
Don't Fear the Reaper (Blue Oyster Cult)
More Than A Feeling (Boston)
Magic Man (Heart)
Say Goodbye To Hollywood (Billy Joel)
Fernando (ABBA)

1980 Part 1 - Robert
Ace Of Spades (Motorhead)
Dragon Attack (Queen)
Ashes To Ashes (David Bowie)
Stolen Car (Bruce Springsteen)

SIDE B
1980 Part 2
News At Ten (The Vapors)
Freedom Of Choice (Devo)
Family Snapshot (Peter Gabriel)
Watching The Wheels (John Lennon)

1991 - Manuel
Live and Let Die (Guns & Roses)
Lithium (Nirvana)
Half a World Away (R.E.M.)
The Struggle Within (Metallica)
Breaking the Girl (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
Acrobat (U2)
Nightingale Song (Toad the Wet Sprocket)
Bring Tha Noize (Public Enemy w/Anthrax)

Mixtape 4 YouTube Link

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Mixtape 3 - TMA Soundtrack ONE

CASSETTE: FUJI FX-I / 60 minutes
MixMaster: Robert
THEME: Soundtrack Mix

I made plenty of "Best of..." mixes but, my favorite collections were way more involved.
These other mixes were divided into two basic categories - moods and soundtracks.
The mood mixes are easy enough to explain - a mix for rainy days, a mix for driving with the windows down, etc.
The soundtrack mixes are a little trickier to put a clear finger on. What I would do is imagine a movie with the perfect soundtrack - a collection of songs that somehow told a story and were loosely connected (sometimes by sound, sometimes by texture) even though they don't actually have a visual image to correspond to. The only rule I ever posed to myself was that I tried to avoid songs that were already specifically known for their connection to an existing film.

With that in mind, I pose the following two challenges:
1. The "theme" for this mix tape is the soundtrack for a moving modern drama surrounding the cross-country road trip of a dude in the midst of several life-effecting challenges. Like any good movie there will be humor, tense moments, evenings scenes of reflection, possibly a bar fight thrown in. Why is he driving cross country instead of flying? How old is he? Is he married, divorced, a widow - does he have kids? All questions you will answer as you select songs.
I suggest you each go over your allotted 20 minutes as I will have to work to craft our varied selections into a flow that makes some sort of sense - with you both chipping in as we go.

2. To make things even more complicated, I am going to request that, to the best of your abilities, you each try to submit as many 3 minute or less songs as possible (even shorter if you find the right choices). That is, I'm looking for a super tight mix of short, sharp musical punctuation's - fast or slow, doesn't matter - we'll work to make it come together.

SIDE A
Lucretia McEvil (Blood,Sweat&Tears)
John,I’m Only Dancing (David Bowie)
Work To Do (America)
Rendezvous (Bruce Springsteen)
Got A Lot On My Head (The Cars)
Back Of Car (Big Star)
It’s Still Rock&Roll To Me (Billy Joel)
I Hear The Rain (Violent Femmes)
In My Own Time (Three O’Clock)
In God’s Country (U2)
Butterfly (Weezer)

SIDE B
For All We Know (The Carpenters)
Out Of My Head (Fastball)
I Feel Sanctified (Commodores)
Stay Hungry (Twisted Sister)
Train of Love (Johnny Cash)
Have You Ever Seen The Rain (CCR)
A Well Respected Man (The Kinks)
Dear Madam Barnum (XTC)
Girl U Want (Devo)
Car Radio (Spoon)
Long,Long Way From Home (Foreigner)

Mixtape 3 YouTube Link

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Mixtape 2 - R.E.M. The IRS Years

CASSETTE: Maxell XLII / 60 minutes
MixMaster: Manuel
THEME: REM - The IRS Years

1.  Only studio albums.  No EP's, b-sides, deluxe releases with more songs, etc.  Choices are:  Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Life's Rich Pageant and Document.
2.  I don't want it to be a 'best of...'.  Pick your favorite songs, no matter how popular (like 'Fall on Me') or deep cut.
3.  Though I want us to nominate our favorite stuff, the final cut will be (as close as possible) about as equal a selection of the 5 albums.  In other words, I don't want 8 songs from 'Life's Rich Pageant' and 2 from 'Reckoning', for example.

SIDE A
Sitting Still
Shaking Through
Talk About the Passion
Perfect Circle
(Don't Go) Back to Rockville
So. Central Rain
Pretty Persuasion
Harborboat

SIDE B
Can't Get There From Here
Driver 8
Wendell Gee
Begin the Begin
Fall on Me
I Believe
Superman
The One I Love
It's the End of the World

Mixtape 2 YouTube Link

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Mixtape 1 - RUSH in 60 Minutes

CASSETTE: Compact Cassette C60 / 60 minutes
MixMaster: Jorge
THEME:  60 Minutes of Rush

No restrictions, anything from their catalog.

SIDE A
Fly By Night
Anthem
Closer to the Heart
Cinderella Man
The Trees
Freewill
The Spirit of Radio

SIDE B
Tom Sawyer
YYZ
Limelight
Subdivisions
The Analog Kid
Red Sector A

Mixtape 1 YouTube Link

COVER ARTWORK

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