Mixtape Time!

I got this cassette tape image at http://says-it.com/cassette/. It’s pretty cool. You put what you want on the label.

I like songs with multiple parts or nice, abrupt but well executed shifts. It’s like getting two or more songs for the price of one. And while going through my music library to make a playlist of my favorite “medley” type songs, I decided I had more than enough to make a nice mixtape out of it. It’s been a while since I made my last mixtape (BDJ Volume 2 is nearly ready!), and I’m long overdue for another one.

So I am pleased to present to you all the first volume of the Melodious Medlies compilation mixtapes. This inaugural volume is culled from music mostly made in this millennium (there were a couple favorites I had to include). All of the tracks are filled with smooth and exciting transitions and bridges that connect their various parts. These multi-faceted songs will make you laugh, they’ll make you cry, and they’ll make you want to hug your loved ones — then dance with them.

As I usually do with mixtapes, I tried my best to arrange the songs so they flow together as smoothly as possible. This one proved difficult because I didn’t know it was going to be a mixtape while I was compiling the songs in a playlist. But I’ll make no excuses. This mixtape is still bloody brilliant. I’m a pretty stingy guy when it comes to my iTunes song-rating system…but ALL of these songs are no less than 4 out of 5 stars…yeah…these songs are gooood.

Update: I just realized that the program I used to calculate the run-time of this mixtape is a piece of crap. The whole thing doesn’t fit on a CD (by about a minute)…which was a big disappointment to me. So, of course, I had to re-work the songs and make it fit. I eliminated a track (to be sneaked into a later volume) to make it fit on one CD, then I decided to take this opportunity to adopt the true cassette tape limit of 12 songs by making the last 2 songs bonus tracks that fit on the “B-Side.”  Those of you who downloaded the first, now discontinued, edition of Melodious Medlies – Volume 1 have a real gem in your hands. I’m sure 20 years down the road, it will be worth thousands, maybe millions, of dollars.

So from now on, Melodious Medlies will be made up of 12 main “A-Side” tracks with a “B-Side” of a couple bonus tracks. Both A and B-sides combined will still fit on a regular burned CD.

Now, wouldn’t it be awesome to make a mixtape with both the A and B sides filled to the brim? I agree…so I’m going to make my bigger “Bomb Diggity Jams” mixtapes 24 tracks, split evenly into A and B sides. A more relevant question would be: Does anyone but me care about all this? In a word, no. But I’m excited about it.

Tracklist for Melodious Medlies – Vol. 1

A-side:
1. The Beatles – “You Never Give Me Your Money”
2. The New Pornographers – “The Bleeding Heart Show”
3. The Postal Service – “Brand New Colony”
4. The Rolling Stones – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
5. The Format – “Dog Problems”
6. Sufjan Stevens – “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!”
7. Belle and Sebastian – “Your Cover’s Blown”
8. The Decemberists – “The Crane Wife 1 & 2”
9. Radiohead – “My Iron Lung”
10. Anathallo – “Hanasakajijii (Four: A Great Wind, More Ash)”
11. The Polyphonic Spree – “Section 24: The Fragile Army”
12. The Beatles – “The End”

Bonus B-Side:
13. Franz Ferdinand – “I’m Your Villain”
14. Silverchair – “Those Thieving Birds”

Download them all in a .zip file by going to the Divshare download page.

If you can’t download at the moment, or are too lazy and/or want to hear a sample first, here are the first 12 tracks streamed at my Muxtape page.

Why not stream the whole thing at Muxtape? ‘Cos 12 is the maximum number of tracks allowed on Muxtape — that being, more or less, the limit for one side of an actual cassette tape. I made my compilation with the CD-limit in mind…but I kind of like the retro cassette literal mix-tape concept. I might consider that for my future volumes…to pay homage to the mighty cassette tape.

Bonus Songs:

And just so no one rolls over in their graves or anything, I guess I have to give some representation to the O.G. experts at this multi-part song business:

Ludwig Van Beethoven – “Symphony #5 In C Minor, Op. 67 – 1. Allegro Con Brio”
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky – “Piano Concerto #1 In B Flat Minor, Op. 23”

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Radiohead Repercussions

It has been said by many people already: “In Rainbows can be the end of the music industry as we know it.” But, as has also been pointed out all over the place, what Radiohead has done can only be done by already established acts with a devoted, loyal fan base. A dependable talent for the fans to base their loyalty on helps too. Here’s the lowdown on what happened with their new record if you’ve been living under a rock.

I still think this could totally flip the way the music industry works. Right now, bands may (roughly) follow this path to stardom: They form, develop their sound, and independently do everything. After creating some buzz by doing bigger and bigger gigs they may sign to an indie label. Then they do well here and they get picked up by a major, losing their too-hip-for-mainstream fans in the process. From there, they sign a big, glitzy contract with the majors and constantly fight to strike that balance between meeting the bottom line of the corporate minded label and finding ways to explore their artistic expressions. After being successful at that while increasing their fanbase and gaining credibility with critics, they are free to do whatever they please. In Radiohead’s case, they make two of the best albums in rock history then go off and blip and beep their way to hovering somewhere between mediocre and good…then leave their label to release an album in a revolutionary way (more on that album later).

Now, with this crazy stunt that Radiohead pulled, it seems the Major Labels (and any other label, including the adorable and innocuous indie labels) seem to have possibly been relegated to the role of initially building and then maintaining that loyal fan-base for artists and bands. And in this future, hypothetically possible case, when the band gets “big enough,” instead of moving on to a huge record label, they get promoted to Independent status, like Radiohead is with the release of this album. The goal is to become Indie! (Hipsters everywhere will be like the happiest people ever.) Wow…that would be brilliant. I haven’t thought about this much but so far it seems pretty brilliant in my mind.

The record labels will still be fine. They won’t be as rich, which might be cause for desperate attempts at thwarting this movement (see: Who Killed the Electric Car). But however much the big, bad record labels might hate it, their roles will finally be exactly what they should be: discovering and promoting real talent and getting it to a point where the talent, and not marketing prowess, speaks for itself. And true, valid, legitimate art with real value becomes the ultimate goal, as it should be. If artists are truly talented, they will make it through to the final step and have that acclaim and freedom to try to make even greater art.

Some takes from around the, uh, Internets:

New York Times – “Radiohead Fans, Guided by Conscience (and Budget)”

The Mac Weekly – “Will Radiohead Change the Music Industry Next Week?

Time – “Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want”

liftwhileclimbing.wordpress.com – “The Music Wars: Radiohead’s Rainbow Coalition”

The last guy offers an interesting take, in that the artist/bands themselves learn how to monitor markets and set the right price points for themselves as they grow — or at least be closely involved with the people they pay to do it for them. I guess that’s the role of the record labels in my analysis above. But yeah, that’s another good thing. The artists would be free to be independent from start to finish now. Even if it’s a difficult way to do it, having that freedom would be great.

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As for the Album Itself?

I will post the title of each track and one thing I like about it, then follow that up with some wrap-up thoughts on the album.

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Radiohead Brilliance

Radiohead (pictured above in a rare candid moment with lead singer Thom Yorke doing a Bono impression) is releasing their first album in four years on the 10th.

If not musically brilliant anymore (I still miss the days of The Bends and OK Computer), they have earned back a bit of the respect they lost from me with the lesser level of music they have been putting out since OK Computer by employing this brilliant method of releasing their album. Before we go on, about that level of music they’ve been putting out of late…. It’s all my humble opinion of course. All the cool, holier-than-thou music genius kids would beg to differ I guess, but I think Radiohead’s basically been pissing away their talent. Not to say their albums have been shit, but compared to what they could be doing, they’re pretty much a disappointment at best.

But yeah, anyways, in a totally unprecedented, insanely brilliant (or dumb?), and bold move brimming with unbridled confidence/arrogance, they are offering their highly, highly, almost orgasmically (for some poor, unfortunate souls) anticipated album, In Rainbows, for any price you want. That’s right, you go to the album’s site, inrainbows.com, and you are offered two options. One is to buy the “disk box,” which contains all sorts of goodies, like the album, vinyls, and other stuff for a hefty $81 bucks. The other option is to pick the “downloads.” You click on “check out” and you are offered blank white spaces where the dollars and cents go…and it tells you “it’s up to you.”

Wow…it’s like paying what the art is worth to you. Man…it’s like they’ve proven idealism can be a reality. And they’re not exactly just offering it all for free like Wilco did a while back. (But you really CAN put in “0.00” and get the album.) It’s like they’re messing with your head by making you name the price! Not a paypal button in sight to ignore or brush off. Just a blank price tag staring at you, daring you to name a price.

The band is not currently under contract with any label and last I heard, they were deciding how exactly they would go about distributing their album. Well I guess they’ve made their decision. Wow…a band as huge as they are. I’m almost positive I won’t like the album nearly as much as The Bends/OK Computer. I’ve been suffering varying degrees of let-downs after listening to each of their subsequent albums after those two…I’m sure this album will be at least enjoyable…

But this move alone makes me want to give them the ridiculous 20 bucks that the major labels coldly charge oftentimes to music lovers everywhere. I haven’t bought the album. I got to checkout and it was like I froze, not knowing what to do. Then I cleared my basket and came here to write about it.

Wow, I want to think of what this could mean and what this could be the start of in the music industry. Can this lead to the evolution of the music industry that has been so sorely needed in order to finally learn how to accept and work with the advances brought along by the internet?? In other words, will it “solve” the “problems” of file sharing? (And no, iTunes is not an adequate “advancement.” People are freely downloading more than ever.) In this single move, Radiohead has defied the record industry AND has directly (yet wisely) addressed the self-justified “file-sharers”…uhh…like this blog…and myself included I guess…. But I’m too tired to go all into that right now… How much are YOU paying for the new Radiohead album? That is the question I am going to be asking for the next week.

I will let you ponder that while you listen to these Radiohead songs I’m offering to “share” with you. This is the Radiohead I want on the album…but I have sort of given up on seeing these guys again…

(follow links)
Radiohead – “Paranoid Android”
Radiohead – “The Bends”
Radiohead – “Fake Plastic Trees”

Radiohead – “Karma Police”

Oh and…The Bends is my favorite Radiohead album. Cuss me out if you want.

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