Mix tapes have officially gone to way of the 8-track, and now with Itunes, Ipods, and all those other I-cessories of the computer age, the mix CD has all but faded away too. I remember being in the 2nd grade and desperately in love. I wanted to express these feelings, but giving the girl my Michaelangelo Ninja Turtle didn’t seem to do it for her. I wasn’t much of a poet then, so it seemed to only appropriate way of doing this was through music. Since I was a child and didn’t have any musical talent, I popped in a blank cassette, turned on a local radio station, and sat there waiting for the right songs – songs by the likes of Primitive Radio Gods or Oasis – to come on so I could hit “record.” That was the first mix-tape I ever made, but certainly not the last. As I got older and CD-burning became common place, I would create mixes for parties, for our basketball warm-ups, for certain lucky women. All of the mixes were well thought-out, each song taking a certain spot in the playlist for a certain reason, each song picked on its own merit.

I quote John Cusack from High Fidelity:

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch.”

It is indeed an art form.

Now, this here isn’t necessarily a mix-tape (in that I haven’t put a whole lot of time into this, and they are all songs I already had uploaded), but I figure More Pop has been pretty quiet lately (my apologies, life is very hectic lately), so it was time to get some music playing to liven things up a little bit.

1. The Walkmen – All Hands and the Cook
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2. Beirut – Nantes
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3. The Appleseed Cast – Here We Are (Family in the Hallways)
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4. Why? – The Vowels Pt. 2
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5. Sufjan Stevens – Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois
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6. Spoon – Chicago at Night
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7. Calexico – Sunken Waltz
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8. Band of Horses – Detlef Schrempf
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9. Grandaddy – Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)
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10. Chris Cornell – Thank You (Unplugged Led Zeppelin Cover)
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Remember, if you like what you hear, support these great bands and artists and purchase their albums!