The Mix

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: California Dreamin' playlist.

California is perhaps the most sung about locale in the world. And it's no surprise, really, because it's a land full of contradictions -- a place swarming with dreamers and conservatives, adventure-seekers and traditionalists, revolutionaries and revivalists, Valley girls and OC housewives, surfer dudes and tech billionaires, hippies and yuppies. From the Redwood Forest to the Pacific waters, Yosemite to the Lost Coast, Death Valley to Tahoe, its geological wonders alone offer a vast playground of awe and inspiration, but also keep us constantly on our earthquake-ready toes. Its cities, meanwhile, are hotbeds of creativity and innovation, but certainly not without their crime and corruption.

This Mixtape is dedicated to the freaks and geeks that have helped make the great Golden State the modern-day Wild Wild West. And in true California spirit, it's a melting pot full of disparate ingredients, from classic rock to punk to rap to folk to indie rock, from seething statements to loving odes, from The Beach Boys to Best Coast to 2pac to The Mamas & The Papas to Tom Petty to Pavement.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Baby Mama Drama playlist.

Okay, let's be honest: This playlist started out as a joke. While working on my Three 6 Mafia post months ago, I revisited their corny 2001 hit "Baby Mama" and was inspired. Why not put together a list of all the "baby mama" rap songs? I quickly thought of OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" and, of course, B-Rock and the Bizz's novelty bass record "My Baby Daddy." These songs were all told from the "baby daddy's" perspective and were contemptuous of the women involved in the relationships. Nothing illustrates that better than Don Trip's "Letter to My Son," in which the Memphis rapper brutally excoriates the mother of their child for denying him visitation rights. After factoring in Eminem's violent rants like "Kim" ("Bleed, b*tch, bleed!"), I realized I was in danger of assembling a misogynist playlist that showed hip-hop culture at a disgusting low, which isn't very funny.

Hip-hop is a male-centered genre, for better or worse, that usually confines women to its margins. So it's nearly impossible to create a list of songs that truly convey a female point of view on birthing and raising kids outside of marriage. Nevertheless, I tried to add some balance. T.I.'s "I Still Luv U" and Little Brother's "All for You" express the sadness of couples who break up after conceiving a child without turning the mother into a target. And Ghostface Killah, of all people, illustrates two extremes, the angry father at the heart of "Never Be the Same Again," and the man anticipating a child with his girlfriend on "Baby."

With all these rappers whining about baby mamas, Ed OG & the Bulldogs' classic "Be a Father to Your Child" would be very appropriate. It's not available here, so I included an inspired homage from Zion-I & the Grouch instead.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Mojito Madness: Songs For a Kick-Ass BBQ playlist.

What is it about warm weather that makes us feel so content? To paraphrase John Denver, why does sunshine on our shoulders make us happy? The power of sunlight to rejuvenate the body and mind has been taken for granted for centuries; there's a reason we choose to go to sunny places to "recharge our batteries." A sixth sense? A natural instinct? Possibly. But did you know that science has revealed evidence of a correlation between sunshine and feeling good? That's an invitation to bask in the sun if we've ever heard one! So what are you waiting for? Slather on the SPF and fire up the grill! You bring the people and the BBQ, we'll provide the party music: refreshing songs with a tropical flair that go hand-in-hand with sunshine and happiness. And while Frisbees and icy mojitos are optional, both are highly recommended.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Music in Exile playlist.

We all know that struggle can often produce some of the world's most moving, memorable music. Pain of all kinds (personal, political), it seems, is often most poignantly expressed through song. Particularly, music can speak to the pain of exile -- from one's home, one's culture, even one's family. Or perhaps more accurately, musicians are often able to speak to the loss and pain that comes with exile -- a point that is not lost on dictatorial regimes, which have often specifically targeted musicians.

From Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars to Celia Cruz, K'Naan to Caetano Veloso, artists across genres and across the world have been made refugees and exiles by untenable or unstable political situations in their own country. In turn, they have served as a conduit through which refugee experiences are conveyed and expressed, a globally transmitted voice for those who are given no platform on which to speak, a beacon of hope for the dispossessed. And the result, along with sharp social critique and political awareness, is often some of the globe's most gorgeous, vibrant music.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: The Spawn of Kraftwerk playlist.

On the occasion of Kraftwerk's recent eight-night stretch of performances at New York's Museum of Modern Art, billed as a "retrospective" of the electronic music pioneers' work, The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones wrote, "Their old is still our new."

It's not so much that the German band was so far ahead of its time that the rest of us are still catching up -- although that's also true, a little bit. It's more that Kraftwerk's innovations turned out to be self-perpetuating. Ironically, for a group that modeled its very identity on consumer technology -- assuming the form of benign robots that sang about automobiles and pocket calculators -- there was no built-in obsolescence in their product.

There's no better proof of that than the way Kraftwerk's ideas, rhythms and melodies have seeded successive decades of pop, hip-hop and dance music. To employ another technological metaphor, their music has turned out to be something like a computer virus, permeating our systems and subtly scrambling our code.

In his article, Frere-Jones noted how widely this influence has traveled, citing not just Afrika Bambaataa's seminal "Planet Rock," which borrowed from Kraftwerk's "Numbers" and "Trans-Europe Express," but also songs from LCD Soundsystem, Missy Elliott and even Coldplay. (In fact, Missy Elliott's "Lose Control" sampled the Detroit proto-techno outfit Cybotron's "Clear," not Kraftwerk. But it's likely that Cybotron's gurgling arpeggio was itself inspired by Kraftwerk's liquid circuitry -- which only reinforces the idea of their legacy as a kind of virus moving from host to host in constant mutation.)

With some help from the crowd-sourced website Whosampled.com, I decided to trace the path of Kraftwerk's Trojan Horse across the pop landscape of the past couple decades. It's not an exhaustive list -- we'd need days, if not weeks, to get to every song that samples the band -- but it covers plenty of ground, taking in songs from Madlib, New Order, Ladytron, Stereolab, The Chemical Brothers, Beck, P.M. Dawn and more. Some songs sample Kraftwerk's music, while others simply quote melodies from their catalog; you may be surprised to discover traces of the band in otherwise familiar songs for the first time. That's how deeply their code has permeated our own. Jack into their matrix, and hear pop with new ears.

Listen along with our Friday Mixtape: Hits You Never Heard Of, Part 2 playlist.

So basically, this is the same concept as last time: I paged painstakingly through Billboard's second-half-of-the-20th-century Hot 100 pop-chart bible, aka Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-1999, and took note whenever a listed song stopped me in my tracks, usually either because it sounded potentially interesting but I had no recollection of having ever heard it, or because I'd heard it but had no memory of it being an actual hit. If I liked it, I added it to the playlist. I cheated by including a few (such as John Eddie's goofy No. 52 1986 Jerseybilly Antmusic "Jungle Boy" and Crush's sticky No. 72 1996 Brit-bubblebirds-namedrop-Prodigy jam "Jellyhead") because I figured you might not recall them even if I did. But I was previously oblivious to most of these -- and I'm guessing that even if you were aware of some of them once, the 1999 cutoff means they've probably vacated your memory banks by now.

This playlist takes in artists whose names start with letters in the middle C's (namely, late-'60s pre-Raspberries Cleveland power-poppers The Choir) through the middle F's (i.e., late '80s Anglophile Boston-via-Detroit synth-poppers Figures on a Beach); the latter outfit's new romanticized remake of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" (No. 67 in 1989) is appropriately followed on the mix by another electro-danced '80s cover of a '70s classic rock staple. Namely, 1986's No. 89 "Stairway to Heaven" from The Far Corporation, comprised of three moonlighting Toto members and sundry other studio jockeys working under the watchful eye of Frank Farian, who was caught between his Boney M phase and his Milli Vanilli phase at the time.

The mix opens with a bunch of formulaic but delectable pop rock unknowns, and ends with a trio of forgotten (by me, anyway) mid-'90s G-funk-era hip-hop one-hit wonders. But the craziest and most mysterious stuff comes in the middle. "Alabam," a 1960 hit by Ohio honky-tonker Cowboy Copas (who would die on the same 1963 plane crash that killed Patsy Cline), and 1970's "Welfare Cadillac" by Guy Drake both sound like a rhythmically talked species of white-blues country hokum from decades earlier -- maybe since both artists had been gigging since the '40s, or before. Charlie Drake's 1963 "My Boomerang Won't Come Back" betrays an offensive racial subtext: Australian aborigine blackface shtick (complete with the minstrel-giveaway phrase "black in the face" and didgeridoos) from a music-hallish British comedian. "The Eggplant That Ate Chicago" is yet another kind of old-timey tent-show vaudeville throwback -- credited here to Norman Greenbaum, it actually charted (No. 52, 1966) under the moniker of Greenbaum's quintet at the time, Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band.

New Yawk-accented doo-wop revivalists in 1964 were funnier, though, if The Detergents' washing-machined Shangri-Las parody "Leader of the Laundromat" and The Devotions' snoring-in-the-bowling-alley "Rip Van Winkle" are anything to go on. But the strangest song in this set might be "Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sunshine In)." It climbed up to No. 8 way back in 1955 for the instructively named Cowboy Church Sunday School and featured, according to the Whitburn book, two of the producers' teenage daughters, "recorded at 33 1/3 rpm so that the record sounds like children's voices at 45." I had never knowingly heard it before, but it sounded familiar anyway; turns out Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm covered it on a Flintstones episode a decade later. I wonder if all its warnings about the devil creeped me out then as much as now. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Post-Millennial Tension playlist.

Much like opposable thumbs and belching, there's an evolutionary explanation to anxiety. It's linked to the fight-or-flight response, the one that says either, "Kill that deer! Eat it!" or "Run from that bear -- seriously!" The more fine-tuned your fight-or-flight response, the better your chances of not getting eaten and thus passing on your genes.

For the modern human, however, this presents a conundrum: We have this highly evolved threat-assessment system, and relatively few actual threats to contend with (believe it or not, experts agree we kill each other far less frequently than at any other time in our history). Anxiety and its variants -- OCD, PTSD, etc. -- is believed to arise when this elegant little system goes on the fritz; when, in other words, you feel the need to fight or flee from a threat that does not exist. Many aspects of modern life (looking at you, Facebook) exacerbate this dilemma. Faced with a daily barrage of emotional and physical stimuli -- and most especially with its seemingly unstoppable acceleration -- our handy fight-or-flight response is constantly being provoked, making us edgier, tetchier and just generally more eager to move to the country.

As with other afflictions, some comfort can be found in the fact that we're not alone, and indeed folks have been writing songs about fear and loathing for as long as they've been writing songs. Thus, this Friday Mixtape is all about anxiety -- end times, paranoia, future-phobia, you name it. Please enjoy, and try not to freak out about it.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Donut Beats playlist.

I admit that I have a bit of a sweet tooth. When I was a preteen, I used to buy a crate of 12 Dunkin' Donuts and devour the whole box in one night. I've cleaned up my diet since then (a little), but my taste for sugary things remains. Perhaps it's a California thing: As the stereotype goes, West Coast heads love funk and melody, while East Coast heads love rhythm and noise. So this mixtape collects sounds that are sweet and poppy and loopy and lovely. J Dilla's Donuts figures heavily, of course, though I spared you from Minnie Riperton's "Les Fleur," and I forgot to include any Tribe Called Quest. Other themes lurk in the shadows, but I'll leave you to suss those out.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: A Meticulous History of the Boy Band playlist.

In this edition of our Friday Mixtape, we take a close and scrutinizing look at that venerable musical institution, that stalwart figure in cultural history, that staple of a healthy pop diet: the boy band. From its humble beginnings among the a cappella prep clubs and neighborhood doo-wop groups through its sweet adolescence in the hallowed halls of Motown to its halcyon days at the top of the charts in the golden era of ye olde Backstreet and 'NSync, the boy band has enjoyed a rich and prolific role in American cultural life. And now, today, we are lucky enough once again to bask in its glow, as the boy band comes roaring back into fashion again with the likes of The Wanted, One Direction and Mindless Behavior. This playlist digs deep into the legacy behind these hot new bands, defining the sometimes vague term as an all-male singing group that either consists entirely of teenagers/very young adults or focuses on appealing to them. Dive in!

Listen along with our Friday Mixtape: Old-School Easter playlist.

Easter means different things to different people. Maybe it conjures up images of colored baskets full of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies and marshmallow Peeps. Or it might spark unpleasant memories of being forced to don itchy, ruffled dresses and sit through family dinners with relatives whose names you can't remember. Hunting for dyed eggs. Creepy guys in rabbit costumes. Gorgeous white lilies. A pastel overdose.

Easter is all of those things.

It's also a religious holiday for nearly 2 billion Christians worldwide. Church services are packed, and "The Hallelujah Chorus" rings out. For the faithful, it's a day to commemorate the sacrifice Jesus made. And for 2,000 years, we've been trying to set our sentiments about that sacrifice to music. Everyone from U2 to Michael W. Smith to Phil Keaggy has attempted to capture a little piece of the faith journey in song. I've gathered some of my favorites here, focusing specifically on the '80s, the decade when the lines between pop and religious music began to blur. Happy listening, and happy Easter!

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Songs I've Sung My Year-Old Son playlist.

My son Max turns a year old on April 3. He was born just two weeks after I joined Team Rhapsody -- I'd recommend moving an eight-and-a-half-months pregnant lady from NYC to the Bay Area to anyone. And thus one of my first playlists for Rhapsody was "Songs I've Sung My Newborn Son," a bewildered jumble of Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, YG, Andrea Bocelli (known in our house as "Papa JoJo") and the theme from Cheers.

Nearly a year later, he's not sleeping much better than he did as a newborn, alas, and so I often find myself in his room at 2:30 a.m., singing songs about tequila, prostitutes, death, unrequited love and whatever Beck's "Jack-Ass" is about. We're in the twilight of the not-repeating-everything-you-say period, so I guess I'm reveling in it. Meanwhile, he's dancing occasionally now, which explains "Dancing Machine," "Single Ladies," and most notably The Ting-Tings' "That's Not My Name." Climactically, we have "Racks," which stands in for my habit of singing, "Max on Max on Max!" whenever he crawls by. He's currently obsessed with Sesame Street and Elmo in particular, so if I do this again next year I imagine we'll be knee-deep in Barney and Dora and whoever. But for now, Morphine it is. Please go the f*ck to sleep.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Hits You Never Heard Of playlist.

Totally straightforward concept here: I opened up my copy of Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-1999 book and started at the beginning, with the A's. Then, every time I came across a record that made me wonder either "What the heck is that??" (for instance, when the artist or song had a really goofy name I'd never heard before) or "What the heck is that doing here?? (i.e., in just a few cases when I was aware of the song or artist, but was totally surprised either had ever hit the charts), I then checked to see if it was (1) available on Rhapsody and (2) pretty good. The 34 songs that made the cut -- alphabetically, featuring such mysterious acts as '90s Belgian techno-ravers AB Logic and '80s Australian rock band The Choirboys -- all hit the Top 100 in Billboard at some point.

Since they'd mostly never crossed my ears before, a good deal of that charting was done in the chart's lower reaches, the 90s or thereabouts. But not always: I was shocked to discover Bazuka's very funky JJ Walker-on-Good Times-inspired proto-disco hit "Dynomite-Part 1," which somehow climbed all the way to #10 in 1975 but took me 37 years to hear. Novelties often fall off the face of the earth, obviously, once they've served their intended purpose: St. Louis R&B combo Bull & the Matadors' "The Funky Judge" (no. 39 in 1968) and crunky Falcons fans the ATL All Stars' "The Dirty Bird Groove" (no. 56 in 1999) were also entirely new to me, as were a few zany late '50s/early '60s lounge-exotica instrumental one-offs, such as Billy Joe and the Checkmates' no. 10-in-1962 "Percolator (Twist)," which plinks and plonks like a distant electro ancestor and which the Whitburn book explains was "based on the 'perky' tune used in a Maxwell House coffee jingle." There are some nifty but long-forgotten cover tunes, as well.

Among other things, this mixtape has one reggae dancehall number, one Latin freestyle song (from 1996 -- a decade after the style's heyday), one jaunty bagpipe march by (Whitburn sez) a "Scottish military unit," a couple raps, three fairly topical old country laments (including one by Johnny Cash's younger brother Tommy), a bunch of wild-haired early rock 'n' roll, and more hooky if hacky '80s/'90s corporate rock than I would have predicted. Most of the artists wound up one-hit (or okay, one-almost-hit) wonders where the pop chart is concerned, though a few had two or three. And while I can't guarantee that every song here is the exact version that charted (artists have been known to re-record, after all), only in one case did I intentionally include a non-hit mix: namely, London soul band Central Line's "Walking Into Sunshine," which got to no. 84 in the U.S. in 1981, presumably as a seven-inch single, but the eight-minute 12-inch dance remix on Rhapsody was too wonderful to resist. So don't! Dig in and eat up.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Banjo Roots and Routes playlist.

Ah, the banjo. That lightning-fast picking. That warm, metallic strum. That distinctive twang. It's one of the most easily recognizable instruments -- and one of the most stereotyped. But the banjo has a fascinating musical history, one that includes the rich bluegrass and old-time traditions we often associate it with, but also encompasses a range of traditions from around the world. 

Listen along to this post with our Music for Imaginary Films playlist.

Music evokes cinema and vice-versa, and I'm certainly not the first one to notice: Brian Eno built a cottage industry around scoring non-existent movies, and the perfectly decent Dutch electro duo Arling & Cameron named their debut album after the concept, to name just two musical entities. So whatever, I'm not very original. This is still a rad playlist, one stacked with a mostly mellow, mostly instrumental array of electro-acoustic-ambient noise-type goodness. If I could explain the film I had in mind as I was making it, then I wouldn't have needed to make this playlist in the first place. See how that works?

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: The New Sound of Bristol playlist.

This Friday Mixtape is sort of about a scene, sort of about a sound and sort of about a place.

Dubstep was born in London -- South London, to be precise (Croydon, to be even more precise) -- but Bristol is something like the U.K.'s "second city" of bass music. Heirs to their hometown's low-end legacy, Bristolians spun off a more elliptical variant of the chiseled, monumental sound that took shape in London.

Bass has long played a significant role in Bristol's musical culture, from post-punks The Pop Group and the hip-hop/reggae sound system The Wild Bunch in the 1980s to the trip-hop triumvirate of Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead in the '90s, plus the drum 'n' bass community around Roni Size and the Full Cycle crew. By the late 2000s, a community of artists working at the fringes of dubstep had coalesced, teasing out its rhythms and its textures into contorted new shapes, like the neon glow of Joker's "purple wow sound" and the flickering pulses of Pinch's Tectonic label and Peverelist's Punch Drunk imprint.

But in the past couple years, a new sound has emerged. Dubstep's tempos and rhythmic signatures play a role, but so do the beats of house, the glassy synths of classic techno and, bringing things full circle, the moody torpor of trip-hop.

At the center are the artists Vessel and El Kid, and their colleagues in the Young Echo collective, including Kahn, Jabu and Zhou. In a few short years, they've done a couple of EPs apiece, plus a fantastic split-EP titled VeElSkSiEdL, and each record has tantalizingly fleshed out the sketch of a very different kind of music. It's hard to describe, but it's got a kind of dusky clang to it, as well as a grainy, earthy feel; it's tactile in a way that's hard to put your finger on, and also heady as a nitrous hit.

You can tell these guys have big things ahead of them, and the chops to back it up. El Kid also records experimental ambient music under his own name, Sam Kidel, while Vessel recently signed to the Tri Angle label, the hotly tipped electronic imprint that's home to Balam Acab and oOoOO.

It's not entirely a Bristol thing. Vessel and El Kid have recorded a lot of their music for London's Left Blank label, run by an artist named Throwing Snow, whose own productions share some of their proclivities, albeit in a more club-oriented context. (London's Visionist and Brighton's Lorca, two other artists on Left Blank, offer further perspectives on bass music's malleable sound.) But let's not get too hung up on specifics: The boundaries here are fluid, just as in the music. Check out our playlist to sample this sound without a name, from a scene that's not really a scene. It's as spongy as bass itself, which is just how it should be.

Listen along with our Friday Mixtape: Songs for Hangovers playlist.

We've barely stuck our big toe in the chilly waters of 2012, and already we've had to face the head-pounding peril of two major alcoholidays: New Year's Day and Super Bowl Monday. Most of us write off New Year's Day automatically, but there is nothing super about the morning after the Super Bowl. Chances are you've succumbed to one of these nasty reminders that what goes in sober comes out drunk, and hurts like hell the next day!

What about the "hair of the dog"? It apparently works: a friend of mine once boasted he never experienced a hangover. When asked what the secret was, he proudly replied, "Keep drinking." Go chase that bone if you like, but those left painfully wagging their tails might want to try something else.

With that in mind, here's a playlist to help ease the pain of the morning after. Some songs, such as Kris Kristofferson's epic "Sunday Morning Comin' Down," speak directly to the experience. Others, such as Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence," Minibar's "Lost in the Details" or Coldplay's "Trouble," are less explicit but lend themselves nicely to the theme. Rest assured, all these songs are mellow slices of repose -- and make for one hell of an aural analgesic. Next time you overindulge, keep this playlist in mind. Save it someplace handy, because St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner.

Get the full experience by tuning in to my Friday Mixtape: Young Jazz Piano Trios playlist now.

This playlist may compile compositions from the sophisticated edge of pop culture -- Radiohead, Nick Drake, Elliott Smith -- but the performances are by some of the most exciting young jazz piano trios. Jazz musicians have a long and celebrated tradition of stealing tunes from the pop charts, but pianists like Brad Mehldau, Taylor Eigsti and Robert Glasper mine the territory of indie and avant-garde rock for surprising selections that have the potential to capture audiences outside the genre's borders. They are joined by a handful of visionary young European trios, led by the likes of Esbjörn Svensson and Colin Vallon, who offer their own visionary retooling of the piano trio format. This Friday Mixtape brings some of our favorite young artists together for a set of stylish, urbane classics.

Get the full experience by tuning in to my Winter White Mix playlist now.

If seasons can be assigned personalities, winter would be a loner -- aloof, scowling and eternally clothed in shades of gray. It's a somber attitude that rubs off on everyone within reach of its icy fingers, making us all a little darker and a bit more introspective.

Fortunately, winter's moodiness also provides plenty of inspiration for headier creative types. While we no doubt have summer to thank for musical masterpieces like "The Thong Song" or "California Gurls" (and The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" just had to be penned poolside), all the tracks in this wintry mix are wonderfully, perfectly chill. Current artists like Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine and The Decemberists are joined by classic acts from Simon & Garfunkel to The Mamas & the Papas, all celebrating that least sunny of seasons. So whether the view out your window is snow-covered or it's simply winter in your heart, this icy collection of songs is sure to send a shiver down your spine -- in a good way.

Listen along to this post with my Weird, Awesome Songs from Pazz & Jop 2011 playlist.

Run by the Village Voice since 1974 (or 1971, it's confusing), Pazz & Jop is the world's preeminent year-end rock critics' poll, wherein 700-something scribes vote on their Top 10 albums and singles of the year. Everyone from The Who to the Sex Pistols to Bob Dylan to Outkast to Elvis Costello to Prince to Kanye West has triumphed in the past four decades or so; this year's victors are a mixture of the obvious (Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" won the singles ballot by a landslide) and the genuinely shocking (tUnE-yArDs' wonderful w h o k i l l topped the albums poll).

My fascination with P&J is partly personal -- both myself and Rhapsody metal guru Chuck Eddy have had a go at running it. But a quick scan of the results can easily help you pinpoint 50+ records and songs you've overlooked that at least a few people out there deeply love. So here's a quick sample of Top Singles entries that leapt out at me, a mixture of stuff I've never heard, stuff I've never heard of, stuff I heard once but otherwise ignored, stuff I forgot I loved, and so forth. Featuring everything from Soulja Boy to Robyn to Todd Terje to Dawes, consider this proof that however much critically acclaimed new music you're obsessing over at the moment, there's always room for more.

Listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Delivery Room Lullabies playlist.

My sister is having her first baby next month. It's quite the topic of interest and discussion and, well, obsessive anticipation among my family members, who will become aunties and grammies and grandpas for the first time, too. In other words, we can't shut up about it -- and that includes copious discussion about the perfect music for all stages of the affair. My dad already learned and performed on his guitar Loudon Wainwright's snarky-sweet "Careful, There's a Baby in the House" at Thanksgiving. Then there was the disco-themed "Love to Love You, Baby" shower my younger sister and I threw for the new parents.

And now, with only a few weeks to go, my sister has begun to really home in on the fact that this tiny new person will be here before we know it; more specifically, she's thinking a lot about precisely how the baby will be arriving. Naturally, I've taken her worries and hopes, excitement and concern as an implicit request for -- what else? -- the perfect soundtrack for the delivery room. My little sister is about to experience this somewhat terrifying, fairly excruciating, utterly amazing thing, and I can't really do much to make it easier or calmer or less scary for her. So I did the only thing I could think of (yes, this is much more helpful than, say, putting together the crib or something): I made her a playlist of songs that I hope will provide her with what she needs in the various stages of bringing new life into the world.

The songs here are designed to soothe her and provided necessary adrenalin rushes. I've added tracks I hope will give her courage at some moments and make her laugh through the pain at others. Songs that are meant to comfort her with her own musical happy places (grrrl punk and '90s hip-hop, specifically) and serve as musical reminders of the presence of her Arab-American husband. Songs that remind her of how she got here (oh, but oh-oh, those "Summer Nights") -- and what she "wins" when she completes her incredible feat. I wanted this playlist to rise and flow with the rhythm of new life, but most of all, I hope it will speak to how excited and proud of my sister this new auntie is.

Friday Mixtape: Delivery Room Lullabies

So this whole thing started off as a lark with Piano Jamz, which I threw together hastily, now that I think about it--there were SO many omissions! (Stay tuned, for better or worse, for Piano Jamz II.) With Horn Jamz, I sort of found my groove, casting a much wider net and ending up with a list that was just sort of sprawling without being unruly. I mean, 'cause let's be honest: It's neither possible nor desirable to create a comprehensive playlist of every song featuring horns. The goal is simply to show off a diverse range of styles, eras, approaches, sounds, etc., and hopefully give it a nice flow. I can attest, rather immodestly, to the comely flow of Horn Jamz as I recently had a chance to listen to it all the way through during a long drive through central California.

Based on all that, I know this: String Jamz has a lot to live up to, and thus I've tried to give it the attention it deserves. At its uppermost length the list of songs was well over three hours, and I've culled it to under two (apologies to Björk, Leonard Cohen, and most especially Coolio, among others). There are undoubtedly still some oversights, but I think the mix of '90s alt, '80s soft rock, disco, classical, film scores, trip-hop, experimental electronic and others covers more than enough bases. Tune up and enjoy.

Listen now: String Jamz

In an earlier Friday Mixtape, I wrote about some of the discoveries I'd made while packing up several thousand records stored in my mom's basement. Now, one freighter trip (and a heinous sum in import duties) later, they're back with me in Berlin. I've been making up for lost time by digging into certain fondly missed corners of my catalog--in particular, my stash of old U.K. garage records.

Just in time, too--between recent tracks from Mosca, Seiji and SBTRKT, the slinky, swinging sound of late-'90s U.K. garage has never felt more ripe for rediscovery. A decade ago, garage, or 2-step, briefly ruled the London underground, fusing heavily swung house grooves with chipper R&B vocals and a hint of Jamaican soundsystem culture. As it went overground, its fizzy energies fizzled out, replaced by the darker sounds of dubstep. But lately, with erstwhile dubstep DJs looking for lighter, housier grooves, many of them are picking up where 2-step left off a decade ago, with silky riffs wrapped around whip-crack drums. When it comes to joyous dance-floor energy, there's nothing else like it.

For a long time, many 2-step classics were unavailable digitally, but at long last, they're beginning to resurface. I've assembled a two-hour playlist of my favorites, including Basement Jaxx's "Jus 1 Kiss (Sunship Remix)," Zed Bias' timeless "Neighbourhood (Steve Gurley Vocal Mix)" and MJ Cole's crossover mega-hit "Sincere."

Click here to listen to my playlist: Friday Mixtape: The Return of 2-Step

The appeal of country music, for a sissified city slicker such as myself, largely lies in glimpsing a universe in which everyone is tougher, stronger, surlier, drunker and more adept with power tools than I am, which is not a terribly high bar, no, but it's nonetheless simultaneously dismaying and thrilling how many women can clear it. Here then we have Miranda, Taylor, Neko, Ashton, Carrie, Those Darlins and many others boozing, seething and raging, to my delight/terror. Yes, even the one named "Sunny."

Listen now: Friday Mixtape: Country Chicks Who Could Beat Me Up

Click here to listen along to this post with our Friday Mixtape: Metal That Fell Through the Cracks playlist.

Metal has been around for more than 40 years (or at the very least, since Black Sabbath's original lineup got together the first time), and by now it's hauling around its own canon of what are generally assumed to be classic, world-shaking albums—some of which are every bit as great as people claim, others of which (as with any other genre) aren't.

But this mixtape isn't about those. Nope—these are bands you probably never even heard about, or (if you did) forgot about, or maybe you heard their names and wondered about them but most likely never got around to checking them out, or (in the case of the more familiar names) maybe they started out way more metal than you ever figured. Or at least more "heavy rock"—once upon a time, the two genres were synonyms. That would've been back in the '70s, which takes up a healthy chunk of this playlist. Thought there's plenty from the '80s, too--especially the first third or so of that decade, when thrash and hair metal hadn't quite fully gelled yet, and lots of bands were somehow unknowingly predating both at the same time, all while the New Wave of British (though also often Non-British) Metal was somewhere between a rumor, a mystery and a myth.

To keep things current, this playlist does eventually wind its way into the '90s and '00s, but that stuff's kept to a minimum, since it really hasn't been around long enough to get lost in the dustbin of history quite yet. Whatever. These 50 songs rock your socks off at the school of hard knocks, as Black N Blue used to say. A few are even about eating the rich—or about anarchy, the police, war heroes and stuff. (Occupying Metal, if you will!) Two are shrieked in sexy romance languages; another (by Krokus) concerns a long stick going boom. Plus, five artists —Vandenberg, Heavy Metal Kids, Wild Dogs, Axe and Pat Travers—chronicle what's happening out on the street, or at least claim to in their song titles. And what is happening out there? A knock-down, drag-out rock 'n' roll party, of course! So what are you waiting for?

Sometimes my hipper-than-thou friends make fun of me for liking country music. To them, it's all just ignorant cowboy jams sung by toothless ol' fellas in a hat. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, it's heartless, slick, countrified pop sung by über-tanned hotties with hair too perfect to even bother with a hat.

And while both of those impressions are somewhat grounded in real-life examples, there's a world of amazing music that falls somewhere in between -- if you're not too jaded to hear it. The problem is, you need to be super-enlightened to realize you are a jaded, close-minded mofo. I find trickery and deception are especially helpful in situations like these.

This playlist features songs whose overall reach extends beyond genres. Maybe the lyrics touch on experiences that are so well expressed, they become universal. Or maybe there's a familiar guitar riff or dirty Hammond organ sound that recalls a classic rock great. And others, with their stripped-down sound and sweet harmonies, may recall some great singer-songwriter from the '70s. And yes, all this sonic goodness comes from artists who happily call themselves country.

I tried to restrict the song choices to albums that have been released in the past couple years. Maybe I will do a sequel that features older songs. But in any case, it's all here, if you're willing to let your country freak flag fly.

Click here to enjoy the whole playlist: Friday Mixtape: Country for Country Haters

Continue Reading

When 2Pac rapped, "Every n*gg* in L.A. got a little bit of thug in him," he could have been talking about the hip-hop nation. Whether it's "conscious" fans who love Nas and Slum Village; indie kids who get off to Tyler, the Creator and Three 6 Mafia; or old-school heads who still bump Black Moon and Mobb Deep, every corner of hip-hop fandom harbors the thuggish, ruggish and just plain ignorant. I'm no different. One of my favorite things to do is drive around in my car and blast gangsta rap at high volume. Sometimes it's the beats that kill, but just as often it's the lyrics. I've never slanged keys or participated in a drive-by -- or shot anyone at all, for that matter -- but I can't deny that I get a rush from banging Wiz Khalifa's "Who I Am" (as in "When you see me in the club/ B*tch you know who I am) or YC's "Racks," featuring lyrics like "Strapped up/ No bodyguards." I'm not really, uh, strapped up, but I don't have a bodyguard, either. Shawty wanna ride with me?

Listen now: Friday Mixtape: Ego Trip

Devoted readers of The Mix (hi, mom!) might remember that my last Friday Mixtape was called Piano Jamz, and consisted of jams featuring pianos. That playlist was kind of a happy accident: by simply culling together a bunch of songs I dug that featured one or more of those 88 keys, I managed to crisscross a whole slew of genres, eras, sounds, etc. It was a neat exercise, and so I've tried again, this time with horns. The brass in these jams is all over the place -- it's featured front and center, during solos, and is occasionally so cleverly deployed you won't even recognize it as brass at all (dig experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson's mind-bending "Judges," which is one guy, one horn, and no effects or loops (seriously)). Stylistically, we range from classic brawny rock to excitable indie rock to orchestral trip-hop to hip-hop to, of course, jazz. No Horn Jamz playlist would be complete without Gerry Raferty and Chuck Mangione, and for those who didn't know Biggie sampled it, be sure to check out Herb Alpert's "Rise." Finally, having come of age in the '90s Orange County ska revival scene, I had to throw in some No Doubt and Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Here's to stuff that blows.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Horn Jamz

LateNightTales is a mixtape series that "invites the world's best artists to delve deep into their music collections to create the ultimate 'late night' selection." MGMT, Midlake, Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Jamiroquai, The Cinematic Orchestra and others have curated their own LateNightTales, featuring their favorite nocturnal aural pleasures. These compilations not only reveal the curators' influences, but also offer a wide range of candlelit gems with which to soothe and seduce.

It's a great series (definitely check out the latest one by MGMT), so I thought I'd create my own Late Night Tales mixtape. I'm often drawn to music primed for late nights anyway -- tunes slick with midnight-oil mystique and back-alley grime; tracks fueled by booze, narcotics and self-pity; and songs that are darkly detached, desolate and sometimes downright depressing. For me, this means the sexy devilishness of trip-hop (Massive Attack, Tricky), the grandiose moping of post-punk (The Cure, Joy Division), the machinest grit of industrial (Suicide, Nine Inch Nails), the cinematic melancholy of post-rock (Sigur Ros, Mogwai), and some of the darkest singer-songwriter mire known to man (Cat Power, Johnny Cash). This is the kind of stuff the sun could never handle.

Click here to listen to my Friday Mixtape: Late Night Tales.

To the uninitiated, Nashville means one thing: country music. They imagine a town filled with honkytonks and cowboy boot-wearing, pickup-drivin' good old boys. You can certainly find those things, mostly down on Lower Broadway where the tourists tend to hang. Venture a few blocks in any direction, though, and you'll discover that country makes up just a small part of the thriving Nashville music scene.

Maybe it's the collaborative, creative vibe that permeates our quaint neighborhoods or the relatively low cost of living or the small-town feel in a big city that draws them. Whatever the reason, Nashville has attracted some high-profile transplants that include Jack White, whose post-White Stripes life finds him settled in the suburbs while his Third Man Records has taken up residence in a gritty part of downtown reminiscent of his native Detroit. He continues to collaborate here, recording in a home studio on the outskirts of town.

Ben Folds also calls Nashville home, and the Sing-off judge is a fixture at local coffeeshops in the Belmont and 12 South neighborhoods. Michelle Branch, the Black Keys and Keb' Mo' are among the other artists who've left behind their hometowns to resettle in Nashville, while Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow and other big names have set up second homes here.

Continue Reading

Singing and a deep, analytic appreciation for it has always been a part of my life. The child of two music teachers, I grew up singing in choirs, taking voice lessons and participating in super-nerdy, incredibly embarrassing, overly harmonized family sing-alongs (Seriously. When my extended family is around, even "Happy Birthday" is usually done in about 12-part harmony). When I went to college, I tried to avoid my destiny for a while but I ended up getting a degree in voice performance anyway. Which is a ridiculously useless degree if you don't want to be an opera singer or, you know, a performer at all, which I quickly discovered I didn't. Nowadays, my own personal vocal performances are pretty much limited to the shower and the occasional drunken karaoke turn. But as a music critic, what I've done with all that singing is channel it into a deep, analytical appreciation for singers.

Now, I don't need a singer to be able to actually sing well to enjoy their music. Some of the best songs in pop history have been made by artists with thin, small and even pitchy voices (with help from a LOT of Auto-Tune). But there is undoubtedly something to be said for an attention to tone, a carefully crafted vocal line, an impressive range, a distinctive timbre -- in other words, a knock-your-socks-off, make-your-teeth-sweat, change-your-life set of pipes. And that's what my Friday Mixtape is dedicated to: an assortment of vocalists from a wide range of genres who have almost nothing in common other than the fact that their voices have knocked me off my feet for one reason or another. Some of the artists on this playlist are here because of the sheer power of their pipes. But even the stone-cold belters, like Aretha and Adele, on this list kill it with such delicate, thoughtful nuance. For the most part, this playlist is really a collection of singers with distinctive voices who think about the way their vocals interact with the narrative and texture of the song: the mournful, powerful wail of ranchera legend Chavela Vargas; Otis Redding's sensual, scratched-up buzz; Nina Simone's weary, gut-punching, inimitable croon; Brandi Carlile's full-out vocal assault. In other words, this is a playlist with singers with a deep, analytical appreciation for the art of singing.

Friday Mixtape: Shiver-Inducing Singers

Continue Reading

I've made a personalized mixtape every month for the last five years, combining au courant new hits, old favorites, random stuff overheard in convenience stores, Songs of Personal Emotional Relevance (the one from August 2008 mostly involves my wedding, which explains, for example, "Billie Jean"), ambient stuff that relaxes me in airports (very popular genre), etc. etc. As an example, I thought I'd share the January 2008 volume, which I think hangs together pretty well, considering.

Very brief notes: So we've got hot new indie-rock stuff (Vampire Weekend, the Juno-ascendant Kimya Dawson), recent events I was woefully late on (Franz Ferdinand's LCD Soundsystem cover, plus J. Holiday's luxurious "Bed," a/k/a the greatest song of all time), a track from the There Will Be Blood soundtrack done by a dude from Radiohead, actual Radiohead (was still absorbing In Rainbows, you see), reliable favorites ("Love Is the Drug," Electric Six), a highlight from the crazy Mars Volta concert I went to (they played for, like, eight hours), Marvin Gaye complaining about attorney fees, Youssou N'Dour singing sweetly, Lez (well, Led, but this'll do) Zeppelin wailing uncouthly, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk wailing even more uncouthly. Plus Alicia Keys' "Like You'll Never See Me Again," because she played it on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve or whatever right after the ball dropped, and I dug it a lot. If you only have time for one song here, though, by god make it Swamp Dogg's version of John Prine's "Sam Stone," which is incredible, and plus his name is Swamp Dogg. Nothing here was airport-affiliated, oddly enough. But don't hold that against them.

Friday Mixtape: My Own Personal January 2008

I'm off to Poland in a couple of weeks for Unsound, an annual festival of electronic and experimental music. This year, my itinerary involves not just a flight from Berlin to Krakow but also, apparently, some kind of time machine: the festival's 2011 edition is being billed as Unsound 1970. (That's the year before I was born; hopefully it won't cause me any problems at the bar.) Behind the temporal slippage lies this year's theme: "Future Shock," a phrase borrowed from Alvin Toffler's 41-year-old treatise on technology, social change and information overload.

The topic is timely for at least two reasons. Toffler's description of future shock as "the sickness that comes from too much change in too short a period of time" remains applicable to much of our contemporary malaise, from the Tea Party to the Euro zone. The concept also applies to broad swathes of contemporary music, as artists and listeners alike grapple with unprecedented access to the history of recorded music.

As Simon Reynolds explores in his recent book Retromania, popular music is addicted to the past as never before. This is particularly true in electronic music, from the '90s stylings of so much contemporary house and techno to the muddled memory-beat of chillwave, which spins scraps of new wave, shoegaze, ambient and more into an ersatz vintage swirl.

Continue Reading

People can say what they want about global warming and climate change. Like, for example, "The ice is melting!" Or, "No, it's not. You're a hippie!" Whatever the reason, though, more than half the country sweltered under record temperatures for extended periods this summer. Scratch that: they sweltered under record temperatures for the entire summer. And let's face it: you don't really care about the whys and hows behind the blindly oppressive heat when you're melting in the middle of it. The only real question you want answered is, "Where can we go where there's air conditioning?"

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we're still waiting for summer to arrive. Here's a fact: people were still skiing up at Lake Tahoe over the 4th of July holiday weekend! The 4th of July is supposed to be about barbecues and sunny skies, swimming and sinking your toes in warm sand — the exact opposite of skiing. Traditionally, our summer comes in May, teases for a couple of weeks, and then disappears into "June gloom" until sometime in September. The best time to visit San Francisco is the first week of October, but I have a sinking feeling that our beloved Indian summer is going to give us a miss this year.

I'm not super-big into the whole, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" adage. To me, that's a defeatist attitude. I'm more of a glass-half-full (make mine a sauvignon blanc) kind of person, with a dash of "not going down without a fight" thrown in for good (feisty) measure. So while I must admit that yes, summer is over and fall is upon us, I don't have to make the transition gracefully. But I will. Which brings us to this mixtape.

Here are a handful of gloriously classy songs that celebrate the fall season. Some sing of rainy days. Others of loneliness. All are perfect when enjoyed by a cozy fire. (OK, sure, a heater will do.) And all sound positively fabulous when heard from your MP3 player while bundled up in a winter coat with the sharp sting of the wind on your face. Hello Kitty rain boots are optional, of course.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Autumn Hymnal

As a general rule here at Rhapsody HQ, our editors encourage us to transform our creative juices into raging rapids when concocting these Friday Mixtapes. They would've been thrilled to pickles had I pitched, say, any one of the following:

(1) Ten songs to crank when baking a loaf of cheddar-flavored San Francisco sourdough

(2) The ultimate soundtrack for changing my newborn's diapers in an airport restroom packed with Shriners from Dayton, Ohio

(3) Gloomy tunes that remind me of the 100 days I spent quarantined with pertussis in the eighth grade

I mention this only because I feel as if I need to apologize for the mundane theme behind this week's Friday Mixtape, Old School Aerosmith Effin Rocks! There are two good reasons for my decision, however. First off, and this point cannot be overstated, Aerosmith has finally made their entire discography available to Rhapsody for streaming. We now offer nearly everything, from Rocks to Nine Lives, Toys in the Attic to Big Ones, Rock in a Hard Place to Get Your Wings. For classic-rock nerds like me, this is huge. Who knows, maybe I'll finally purchase that 1978 Firebird I've always wanted and retrofit its stereo to play Rhapsody? As Wooderson once declared, "We're talking some f*ckin' muscle."

Continue Reading

So anyway: the extremely sore arm came first. Was initially scared it might be carpal tunnel. Googling suggested otherwise. Was relieved to learn that it being on my right side was good news. (Left can be a sign of heart failure!) Doctor prescribed exercises and ointments and ice packs. Very weird, since I don't play tennis, but so be it.

Then, just as that was starting to heal, my stomach started hurting. A lot. After a couple days — longer than heartburn's ever lasted before — it got unbearable, so I got concerned. CAT Scan said acute appendicitis (which, hey, beats kidney stones or an ulcer), so I went to the emergency room and they took it out and I slept at the hospital for a night. And the thing about your appendix is, once it's gone, it's gone — didn't need the thing in the first place! Tummy's fine now; arm's still sore, just not as much.

All of that happened in the past couple months, so naturally I constructed a playlist of music that helped me through. Most of the songs don't relate directly to said medical conditions, though at least two prominently feature pills (and one a hospital bed), and several concern trying to pay bills when there are more than enough of them to go around. But usually they're not too depressing about it. (Well, maybe once or twice.) There are two consecutive, highly boisterous songs about the economic difficulties of being an all-woman band on the road, which may well have nothing to do with the topic at hand, but you never know. There is also a song about assembly lines followed by a song about grocery lines followed by a song about unemployment lines — which happened entirely by accident, I swear! Genres include vocal jazz, country, arena prog, funk, New Wave, didgeridoo soul-rock, gospel, Italo disco, and plenty of hard rock and metal, not necessarily in that order. Hey, whatever works, right? Can't vouch for you, but these worked for me.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Songs to Recover from Acute Appendicitis and Tennis Elbow With

In case you were wondering, yes, I was one of those people who would spend months perfecting a mixtape, design a collage of artwork for it, and then shyly hand over the cassette tape to some crush I mooned over in hopes that she would get my special "message." Don't front like you didn't do that, too.

Sometimes, though, I would simply create a mix that described my thoughts and feelings on life in general. It was akin to writing in a journal, though easier than confronting my thoughts nakedly transcribed on a piece of paper — the music allowed me to hide behind the sounds of others who could voice things that I could not or would not say. I worked on these 90-minute mixes — 45 to 50 minutes for each cassette side — by recording songs from a turntable, erasing and retaping them, and hoping the tape wouldn't break. (Yep, I used to make tape loops, too.) When I finished them, I not only gave the tapes to would-be lovers, but friends, too, just to let them know what was going on in my head.

The era of the cassette tape is long gone (though it's making a tentative comeback in indie circles; earlier this month, I copped new tapes by both MF Doom & Ghostface Killah, and Death Grips). So now I program songs in iTunes and Rhapsody, trying out different combinations, and hearing which fit together sonically and thematically. It's a less physical act than cuing up and manipulating a cassette tape, but the goals are the same.

As I said before, I often spend months on a tape. Due to time constraints, I knocked this one out in a few hours, so it's not my ideal mix. But its range of artists, from The Emotions to The Throne to Zomby to The Cure to Little Dragon, will give you a brief peek into where I am right at this moment.

Click here to listen to my playlist: Friday Mixtape: Mixtape Diary

For a five-second snapshot of what this mix is all about, listen to the opening seconds of Richard "Groove" Holmes' "Hittin' the Jug" at L.A.'s Black Orchid club in October of '61. It's only two bars into the tune when some guy in the audience, caught up in the heady combination of Holmes' strutting intro and a generous highball or three, shouts, "All right!" There couldn't be a better way to kick off this cocktail hour set of organ driven soul jazz and mid-century Blue Note party jams - this is music that accompanies a heavy pour, and a perfect warm-up for a Friday night.

Joining top-flight bandleaders from the '50s and '60s -- Jimmy Smith, Grant Green and Wayne Shorter among them -- are hand-picked cuts from deeper corners of Rhapsody's endless soul jazz vault (dig the harp- and flute-led "Afro Harping" delivered by Dorothy Ashby) and a few vocal favorites from Nancy Wilson, Ray Charles and Tami Lynn. Salud!

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: In the Pocket, Half In the Bag - Mid Century Soul Jazz Cocktail Hour

Ah, to partake in the miracle of flight. We all love to bitch about it, don't we? Louis C.K.'s bit on the absurdity of our whining really sums it up best: "'Ugh. But I had to pay for a sandwich….' You're flying! You're sitting in a chair in the sky! You're like a Greek myth right now! . . . New York to California in six hours! It used to take 30 years to do that, and a bunch of you would die on the way there!" This is all so true, but when you start thinking about your life being in the hands of unidentified pilots as you float up some tens of thousands of feet, you're bound to get a little edgy.

This is when Rhapsody becomes crucial. Once I hear those soothing words -- "you are now clear to use approved electronic devices" -- the headphones quite literally fly on. What helps me relax are songs and sounds with a rich, narcotic flow -- Radiohead, Four Tet, Portishead, the xx and M83, to name a few go-to artists. Anything to help lull me into a peaceful stupor (if only that kid would just stop kicking my seat already). This mixtape is lengthy enough for a cross-country flight, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

Click here for the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Music for Airplanes.

It's been a cruel, cruel summer — the temps have been so high for so long that I can't even bear to have sunshine in my music. Bring on the rain, the melancholy, the somber tones of Morrissey, Emmylou Harris, Mazzy Star and Patty Griffin.

It may not make for your usual upbeat T.G.I.F. mix, but if you let them, these songs will wash over you and soothe your parched soul. From Lori McKenna's frustrated housewife on "Stealing Kisses" to the morose mining songs and shipwreck tunes of The Decemberists to the dead man walking in The Civil Wars' "Barton Hollow," this collection is wonderfully gloomy and gray. Soon enough it will be cooler outside, and I'll be ready for bright music and pounding, happy beats. In the meantime, this is how I plan to welcome the weekend.

Listen now to my Moody & Morose Mix.

My sister is obsessed with chickens. Like, seriously. She has a kitchen full of kitschy chicken stuff. Any time there's a call for a nickname to put on the back of a t-shirt, she goes for something poultry-related. She does a mean chicken impression (hen-pression? OK, maybe not): it's just not Christmas in my family without her clucked rendition of "Carol of the Bells." She even has a seriously awesome chicken tattoo on her forearm. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we grew up in a small, rural Midwestern farming town where many friends' families kept chickens. Maybe it's part of the new hipster trend of urban coops. We don't know how to explain it, other than that she's an, um, odd duck.

So what, exactly, does her fowl fixation have to do with music? Well, a few years ago, I started compiling a master list of chicken-related music: songs that reference chickens, songs that include chicken noises, songs that just, well, rock out with their cluck out. And guess what? It turns out that there are not only a LOT of chicken songs in rock and pop history (perhaps my sister isn't alone in her OCD -- Obsessive Chicken Disorder), but that, amassed, they make for one hell of a decent mix.

Listen up, chickens!

When I tell people I work in the music biz, the first question they ask is the obvious one: "What types of music do you like?" I find this akin to asking a chef their favorite food, or a pedophile their favorite Haley Joel Osment movie. I didn't gravitate toward this field because I wanted to lobby for the cultural merits of early-'80s straight-edge or West Coast cool jazz (though I would, happily, for both). I landed here because I find it endlessly fascinating that so many different types of folks choose to express themselves so differently using music, and that they do it over and over again, and have been for literally millennia. I love the mess of it all, not to mention the fact that it thrives in spite of -- at least in the last 100 or so years -- a massive capitalist machine whose inner workings are as calculating and mechanical as an auto mill's (and this is coming from someone who's part of that machine). It's pretty amazing when you think about it. I mean, like -- take that, painting.

Anyway, I'm rambling. The point I'm trying to make is that I listen to a lot of different sh*t. For my Friday Mixtape, I chose to slice that mélange according to a single criteria: piano. The tracks featured here all feature piano. They span decades and genres, styles and themes. And someone else, using the exact same criteria, would choose a completely different set of them. Mine is special to me for no coherent reason I can discern. Perhaps it'll be special to you too, and if not, well, there's plenty of other good sh*t out there.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Piano Jamz

There's nothing like a major move to make you appreciate cloud-based music. As I wrote last week, my mom is selling her house, so I've been tasked with going through the approximately 3,000 records I have stored in her basement, and figuring out which to sell and which to ship back to Berlin, where they'll join another couple thousand pieces of vinyl already eating up all the available floor space. (My girlfriend has told me, in no uncertain terms, that we have space for exactly 1,600 more—that's the number of records that fits in Ikea's 4x4 "Expedit" model, the shelving of choice for DJs and hoarders the world over. So the culling is rather grueling.)

Despite a sore back, rug-burned knees and a frazzled brain, it's not all bad -- frankly, there's very little I'd rather do than just hang out with my records. There have been some happy surprises along the way, records I had no idea I owned: a pristine double of Theo Parrish's "Smile" to replace the played-to-hell copy in my DJ bag in Berlin, for instance, as well as 10 early singles from Parrish's Sound Signature label, all long out of print, and some of them fetching insane prices on Discogs.com. Speaking of insane prices, the process has reminded me that I really need a renter's insurance policy: the triple-vinyl edition of Boards of Canada's Geogaddi is going for upwards of $120; a white-label Global Communication remix of Lamb's "Gorecki" is selling for $160!

Continue Reading

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: My Mom The Hipster.

Mom is, and always has been, super-cool. Back in the '80s, when most of my friends' parents were listening to the smooth sounds of Jerry Vale and Al Martino (I grew up in an Italian American neighborhood), she was pulling one killer LP after another from her collection and giving me an education in rock 'n' roll history: The Velvet Underground's Loaded, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, The Basement Tapes, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow. This last record was particularly special to me. I remember spending more than a few Saturday afternoons lying on her chenille bedspread, losing myself in the phantom harmonies of "How Do You Feel."

She provided commentary and insight as well, some of it gleaned from the pages of Creem and Rolling Stone. During my junior high Stones obsession, Mom regularly reminded me that they were a bunch of sexists ("Under My Thumb" still pisses her off), and Mick in particular was a twit, especially when he, in the wake of Altamont, blamed America for the deadly tragedy.

Continue Reading

When you've written about music for as many decades as I have, and you're as addicted as I am to constantly hearing more of it, let's just say that things pile up: all formats, from all manner of dollar bins and thrift stores and garage sales, along with whatever comes in the mail. But that's my problem; as a Rhapsody subscriber, you don't even need to dig through crates, because I've already done it for you! Hence, this all-encompassing playlist of stuff I've been listening to in all physical and digital walks of life lately, its title inspired by the Fall's 2010 album Your Future, Our Clutter, whose leadoff (and sort-of title) cut is included, along with four '80s r&b songs at the beginning, four '70s hard rock songs at the end, and 32 other selections of multifarious genres and vintages in between (a veritable top 40!), including a scattered handful from 2011, early Huey Lewis and Ice-T cuts that sound more like Thin Lizzy and Run-D.M.C., and two funky numbers about wearing wigs on the dance floor. Enjoy it, employ it, shake it but don't break it.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: My Clutter, Your Future

So I'm standing there in a hospital gown holding my newborn son, who has been out of the womb now for maybe five minutes, and it occurs to me that I should sing something, except I hadn't planned out what it should be, and so I open my mouth, and what comes out is Tom Petty's "Alright for Now," which is not a bad choice actually, in that it seems to be an actual young-child lullaby-type song. This situation has reoccurred frequently over the course of the last three months, and no pattern to my ostensibly soothing songs has emerged: it's a bizarre mélange of old TV-show themes, wildly inappropriate minor rap hits, and Johnny Cash. My son's reaction ranges from bemused to indifferent, even in the case of " Maxwell's Silver Hammer," which I suppose I had planned, his name being Max and all.

See if you can make any sense of this: Songs I've Sung My Newborn Son