Mix tapes

About a year ago I was talking to a friend of mine who had recently been given what he deemed a "mix," by a friend of his. A long-time lover of mixes, I was curious and asked how it was made.
"Well on the first CD," he started, "there are 22 songs ..."
Whoa, whoa, whoa –on the first CD? This so-called mix was a burned CD? And he dared call it a mix? I bet. It probably took 30 minutes -tops- to make. Just over a minute a song. A minute and 36 seconds a song, in fact.
"Blasphemy," I told him. "That's no mix."
I don't remember when I first noticed the popular ignorance among some music lovers as to what constitutes a mix, but it seems that lately the term is tossed around all fast and loose with a carelessness that's leading entire generations to accept shitty compilations as valid mixes.
True, a mix is a matter of personal choice but there are a few unspoken yet (I thought) universally intuited rules when it comes to mixing. At this point, if you find yourself wondering just what the hell I'm talking about, you need to take the I-Pod headphones off your ears and listen up ...
1) First off, downloading songs from Kazaa and burning them to CD (or some MP3 doo-hickey) does not a mix make; burning a CD, results in a burned CD (and don't get me started on the MP3's). There are spaces between songs. Fade-out's lead lamely to fade-in's. Songs just don't go because you're not putting the effort into figuring out how they fit together. Point-click, point-click, point-click on the computer, burn, ten minutes and new CD is a lazy, disgusting and sacreligious way of going about things. The first and most golden rule is that YOU MUST USE A STEREO AND A TAPE. That way, you can listen to your beginnings and endings to make sure they blend well before you commit them to an eternity of following one another. If you're doing this correctly, exercising the required amount of discretion and giving the proper ear time to each song, every minute of tape should take two to three minutes to mix. Let's do the math together now -a 120-minute mix should take four to six hours to record.
2) Have a list of songs you want to include. Make it up a week in advance and re-read it a couple times before your scheduled mix day so you can be sure you haven't forgotten anything. The number of songs that'll fit on the tape rely on many variables so have some extras and alternates of varying lengths on hand in case you have too much or too little tape. And while we're talking tracklisting, choose your opening songs wisely. Nothing too obvious and nothing too unknown. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is too much; Leeroy Stagger is not enough; maybe you want some non-single Strokes, or a little Modest Mouse.
3) Breaks are for pansies and people not committed to the tape. If you are making this mix, you had better be making this mix; set aside a whole morning and afternoon for it. If you must eat, answer the phone, pee, or interact with other people, at least wait until you've finished side A so you don't lose the feel of it. Then go ahead and take care of your business, but lock your door and leave the phone off the hook when you get back to side B.
4) Fades suck. A song that fades in sounds wussy and one that fades out fucks with the transition to the next song. If you really want to use a song with a fade-out, cut it off at a choice spot before the fade, so it sounds like there is no fade, or make it the last song on side A or B.
5) In the same vein, every song must follow directly on the heels of the song that comes before. Gaps are cheese and the antithesis of mixes. As crap as the Dance Mix series was (is? I don't know. Is it still around?), it had it right with the transitions. Lack of gap is 100% of what makes a mix a mix and 50% of what will make it a stellar mix. True mix lovers will appreciate your transitions as much, if not more, than your song choice. Conversely, they will heckle the crap out of you if you do it badly. I once broke up with a guy because he gave me a half-finished mix with three-second gaps between songs.
6) Never put two songs by the same band back-to-back. I know Led Zeppelin rocks but "When the Levee Breaks" piggybacking "Whole Lotta Love" sounds ass. They have albums for that shit, and that's the only place it sounds right. If you need (and I mean paralyzingly, sick-to-your-stomach-with-indecision-over-which-song-to-use-NEED) two Zeppelin songs on your tape, mix them in at the furthest points from one another - like the middles of side A and B. Just don't expect a pat on the back when you're done.
7) Balance the mood. If you follow "Fake Plastic Trees" with "Famous Blue Raincoat" you will want to kill yourself. Follow a depressing song with something like "Love Shack" or "Magic Carpet Ride," then stay away from the slow stuff for awhile. Make sure there's at least a six-song buffer zone before you get back into your Cure or any of that wickedly slow Lydia Lunch. Exceptions include songs that are so kick-ass they seem neither depressing, nor optimistic. For example; "Simple Man" can follow a relatively dismal song and remain nothing but splendid, where a lesser song might bring you down, simply because it is so fantastic. Similar rules apply to high-energy songs. If you line too many up, especially in the case of a driving mix, you could accidentally drive yourself into a ditch. A perfect example; never include "My Favorite Game" by the Cardigans on a mix you know is destined for your car stereo -waaaaay too tempting to hit ridiculous speeds with a devil-may-care attitude.
Of course this column just skims the surface. There are a whole whack of rules, mistakes, and techniques to be observed, made and learned. These are simply the most basic of guidelines (yet, infuriatingly, also the most oft-made errors), put out there for those shoddy mixologists who may or may not be reading. To those of you who've been nodding your heads along to these points, "right on!"-ing and pounding your fist on the desk -cheers to you. Keep mixing, print these tips off and hand them out to your friendly neighbourhood musical morons. You're doing us all a favour. To you potential prowlers, I don't know where to start. Mixing is an art form, not a way to kill a half-hour. Wise the hell up. Start here. Today. Learn it, love it, live it. Just don't overplay it.

Billy Talent can suck it

I hate this band. Talentless screeching fucks. I'm so bloody sick of bands that bang simple, lacklustre tunes out on their trashy instruments and substitute screaming for singing or ridiculous hair for some sort of hipster's definitive characteristic-type cred.
Effin' screamer bands. Billy Talent leads the pack. I hate them. Almost as much as Nickelback, but for different reasons.

Super 400

Despite a name widely held to be lame, these guys (and gal) are kick-fucking-ass.
Saw them for the first time at the 6th Annual Wheeliefest -held in the lovely, lovely Poconos.
If memory serves me correctly, I was hammered and climbing out of a pond in a denim skirt when they started their set...but it's highly likely that memory fails me as I was in hour 4 of what ended up being a 12-hour beer guzzling bender (though it was American beer, so I guess the translation to Canad-ese shaves a few hours off).
Either way -the point is that this band saw out, and sums up, one of the best summers I ever had -in terms of music as well as a whole whack of other things. A wicked three-piece from some unhip part of New York State, there's a heavy, nostalgic quality to their tunes that's awesome on a stereo and even better under a setting September sun with a beer buzz kicking.

Nickelback

Chad Kroeger is a whiny bitch.
His hair is disgusting, he's a crybaby poser with a ten-year old's vocabulary, I hate his band, all their songs are shit, they're giving Canadian music (which kicks all kinds of ass) a bad name, and I don't know who the fuck said they could cover Elton's John's Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting but that person (or persons -heck I'll point as many fingers as are necessary) should be prodded with a high-voltage electrical tool of some sort.
I won tickets to see Conan O'Brien when he did a week of shows in Toronto last year and I was aaaallllll psyched cause I love the Cone-dog, and there was a one in three chance that Stompin' Tom Connors was going to be the musical guest the day I had tickets, but nooooooooo.
Whiny Chaddy probably whined his whiny whine about some whiner's reason his band had to play the Wednesday of the Great Canadian Conerama, pushing Stompin' Tom over to (I think) the Friday show and subjecting me to that effing "pants around your feet" song when all I was in the mood for was some Good Old Hockey Game and some good old-fashioned board stompin'.
Fucking bitches. Suck it Nickelback. I hate you (*disclaimer -the term "you" does not include Nickelback's guitar tech Tim, who I have a mad crush on. I saw him skipping around in the shadows during Conan, and then again when he joined the Trews during a show in Barrie, and wailed some Zeppelin on the guitar. I like to think there's a wicked evil stepperson in his life who has cursed him with a decade of being a crap-band-bitch, as revenge against one of his parents or ancestors, like in Sleeping Beauty or something, because then his involvement with Kroeger & Co. would be completely against his will and better judgement).

Jeremy Fisher

Saw Jeremy Fisher for the third time last night.
He played at a place called the London Music Club, which I always thought was a music conservatory that gave lessons or something, but which turned out to be my new favorite live music venue in this city. Bonus to this -it's right by my place on Dufferin (post-show, on the 20-second walk home, my friend Andrew and I debated whether or not it's an actual stone's throw from my doorstep, and while he remains unconvinced of my fantastic strength, I'm pretty sure I could do it).
Anywhoooooo, ol' Jeremy. The first time I saw him was at a shoulder-to-shoulder showcase at Toronto's Rivoli during the NXNE Festival last year. If you've never been to the Rivoli, it's a highly pretentious hipster joint on Queen West (On Queen? No!) where drinks seem to be, as far as I can tell, priced differently according to where in the bar you purchase them, must be consumed within said designated area, left behind if you choose to move from that particular area, and replaced with new and foreign-ly priced drinks should you move into a new area. Now if that's not outstanding promotion of responsible drinking, you can poke me in the eye with a sharp stick.
But back to the music.
So.
The Rivoli.
Packed to the tits with elitist scenesters sipping their mojitos and scotches on the rocks, yammering endlessly to everyone within a ten-foot radius about whatever under the sun will take their minds off the all-consuming nic fits that have become a staple of their Saturday nights on the town since the no-smoking bylaw was introduced in Toronto.
Fisher hops onstage with a beat-up old guitar that makes me think of The Red Violin (only if the violin was a guitar I guess), a head full of Medusa-crazy curls and the first genuine smile I've seen in this city all weekend, and starts spilling these West Coast hippie, Dylan-esque anthems all over the getting-progressively-drunker crowd.
Some of his lyrics are a little cheese, I'll admit that, but he's an excellent guitarist, good on the harmonica, and he has the uncanny ability to make even the most hopped-up of bar-crawlers shut yap and take notice. The guy's just so textbook genial. I mean, I've heard a lot of people lay down a lot of shit about how "guy next door" certain singers are, and cliche as it is, Fisher must have been the inspiration for the term. It doesn't feel like a show, it feels like hanging out with some dude at summer camp (only in a bar...full of hundreds of people...who all think they're way cooler than everyone else). He shakes mistakes off with a toss of shaggy chestnut hair, owns up to nervousness with superconfident laughs that almost betray those nerves, and tells long rambling stories about the second time he biked across Canada, without being anything but a pure delight to listen to (I feel I must digress for a minute here to mention this fact: I dig the guy's music and he's a wicked entertainer, but I would be bleeding out my eyes with lies if I said he's not also wildly attractive, and that the fact that when he tours the country, he does it on a mountain bike with his guitar strapped to his back, makes him THAT. MUCH. SEXIER. To the point where I want to jump him in the hallway after the show and have my way with him on the pile of his own ice cream-coloured t-shirts that's fanned out over the merch table. Yeow).
So.
At the end of his 45-minute set he plays this song Fall For Anything, that breaks and smothers everyone in the bar. I shit you not. That place was full and feisty at the beginning of the night, and somewhere mid-show the roar moved down from dull to din to non-existent, so by the time he closes the set with the afore-mentioned tune it's pin-drop silent. Bizarre. Beautiful.
And there you have encounter number one, in far more detail than I planned to include when I started typing this out, but it laid the groundwork that lured me back to his audience last night, where I was, once again, blown away (which, I might add -his status in my books was in dire need of after he bailed, without warning, on a gig at The Ugly Mug back in December). He was all smiles and cinnamon hearts between songs and stories, with a considerate washroom/smoke (pick your poison) break in the middle and an accidental encore on a piano he happend to stumble over in the corner post-show. Far cheaper show the third time around, on a far better lit stage, in a place that was far more suited to the type of guy Fisher seems to be (they gave out happy face stamps at the door to keep track of re-entry and also, as owner Janice Denomme told me, "to keep you happy all night long").
I don't really have much of an ending left to pull this all together nicely because right now I really just want a cookie, but maybe once I've eaten one, and thought about it a little, I'll come back and tack something a bit more graceful on to the end of this bitch. In the meantime, grab yourself a cookie and sit tight.

Blind Melon

Don't know where this thought popped into my head from. Probably cause I was listening to Soup last night and the memory of that hour is far more appealing than what I'm actually doing, which is sitting in front of a computer in the basement of a pretentious university -where I sell train tickets to the stuck-up offpsring of old money hotshots (though not this week cause they're all in Cancun on their parents' cizzash)- wishing to GOD that's what I was still doing instead of sweet fuck-all at this ass job (less than 2 more months, less than 2 more months...) but that's neither here nor there.
What is, is that it recently occurred to me that Shannon Hoon was a far greater loss to music than Kurt Cobain was.
Cobain is remebered and revered the way he is because he allegedly blazed the trail towards the grunge movement that welcomed a million disaffected youth into its angry and understanding arms, but guess fucking what? There were hundreds of greasy-haired dudes just like him kicking the same damn jams out of a hundred dirty bars -he was just the first one to get noticed. I mean, I like Nirvana (I really like Nirvana), and that trio was a hell of a lot better at what they did than a whack of others doing the same exact thing, but there were a whack of others doing the same exact thing, you know what I'm saying? Cheers to them for doing it well, but cheers to aaaaalllllllll the other late 80's/early 90's grunge bands that did it well too.
Blind Melon, on the other hand, was a new and crazy trip packed with broad and complex psychedelic tuneage, intelligent, intelligible lyrics, orchestras of instrumental experimentation, an overall sound and feel no one else was coming close to, and a nutty touring schedule that would have broken most bands (and I guess ultimately had a hand in doing just that to them).
Cobain may have been the first competent figure spotted in the sea of a widespread movement, but Hoon gave something to music that hadn't been heard before, and hasn't been rivalled since.
While kids all over my high school wrote suicide notes to themselves and walked around wearing Cobain's down-and-out, heavily-mascared face on their t-shirts, I had a shot of Shannon taped inside my locker door -wearing a blissful smile and electric blue t-shirt as he danced onstage, his long, wavy hair crowned by a wreath of flowers. He was one of the few fresh things that came out of the 90's, and in the mess of embarassing musical influences we all trip over in our youths, he was a dude I'm proud and happy to say shaped my preferences and still spins on my stereo weekly.
To rip a quote from Blind Melon bassist Brad Smith, "he was a special cat...He could just nail it".

Smashing Pumpkins

I was a rabid Smashing Pumpkins fan back in the day. RABID. Rabid.
I bawled for weeks the year they played the Phoenix in Toronto and I missed out on tickets.
I cried staring at Billy Corgan's eyes at the end of the "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" video.
I wore cords.
I shopped at Value Village.
I was full of angst (however unwarranted...but come now -that was par for the course, no?).
I liked the word "jaded" and hated people who didn't know that the Pumpkins' first major release was not Siamese Dream, but 1991's Gish (subtext -I hated a lot of people).
Hardly anyone knew Gish then, and hardly anyone knows it now, which is why it always surprises me when a mad commercial rock radio station like London's FM96, plays Siva -something they've been doing a lot in the last year or so.
1/3 of me is always mildly pissy that it took them so dang long, 1/3 of me is pumped cause the song kicks fucking ass, and the final third of me sort of wants to cry because it reminds me of Billy the way he was before he found God and went off the deep end.
I'm serious man. The guy has completely lost it. Post-Pumpkins he dredged up Zwan and while I truly did like Mary Star of the Sea (it was so dang happy and sparkly and I wasn't a black-nailpolish-wearing sixteen-year old anymore so I was SOLD on the sunshine), ol' Billy sounded more than a little out if it in most of the interviews I read during that time -on and on about the many different Zwans that existed within the band, religious references galore (none of which included the word "fuck"), bizarre opening bands made up of starry-eyed folk duos who blissfully played mandolins to crowds of akward hangers-on in Zero t-shirts.
As I said, I did like the album, I skipped a Politics class to watch them give a radio interview at the Edge, and I even shelled out $40 to see them play the concrete box of Guvernment that passes as a concert venue in Toronto, but I wasn't surprised when they broke up barely a year later.
What did surprise me however, was visiting billycorgan.com a couple months after that and finding -all non-threatening and deceiving on a sky-blue background- a collection of rants and diary entries from the man himself that made him sound a) illiterate b) like a six-year old child and c) crazy. Apparently he had found God and all was sweetness and light with his life, but not in a good way as far as I was (and still am) concerned -in an off his rocker's rocker kinda way, in a self-indulgent (and many would argue he's always been that way, but...) stream-of-consciousness-drivel-with-an-almost-scary-religious-thread-running-through-it-in-parts kind of way.
I mean I haven't been on the same wavelength as guy in years. I didn't run to the bookstore and buy his book of poetry whenever it was that the thing came out, and I haven't included a Pumpkins song on a mix in the last...at least three I've made but still -this shit's a little hard to take coming from him. I mean -whatever happened to God being empty? Just like you? Cause you seem to be pretty full of shit these days my boy.
I realize we're not all teenyboppers, and mad at the world forever, but it's such a Twilight Zone/Invasion of the BodySnatchers-type situation I just can't get my head around it.
And Siva makes me think of this. It makes me a little bit sad, like someone I used to know just died, and a helluva lot grateful that he waited until the post-Pumpkins phase of his life to go off and get saved because though it retroactively hurts me now, if he'd done it back when I was 15 and the Pumpkins were all I believed in, I don't know how I would have carried on.
So here's a cheers to Siva, and another round of good old-fashioned contempt for those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about.