The point is that the way I discover music is part of what makes that music important to me. When you’re sharing music with your friends, if you’re anything like me, it’s critically important how that music is presented. Weaving together the perfect mix that has meaning, mood and a great flow. There are thousands of ways of doing this however most of the mixtapes that old girlfriends’ ex-boyfriends made for them, that I’ve heard, totally miss the boat.

There are some pretty specific times to make a mixtape and each time calls for a different technique. Admittedly, most of them have to do with girls, but it isn’t the case all the time. These are examples of actual mixes I made for actual people over the past seven or so years. Each of these playlists were made for their own purposes, which I will explain.

The names have not been changed to punish the guilty.

Some of the mixes will be incomplete. Some songs listed will be left out because I might not have the proper rights to add them. That’s cool though because these mixes were made because of individuals, and they belong to them. If you want to hear all of these songs…happy hunting. Every one of these songs is my favorite song ever, in addition to all of my other favorite songs. If you don’t like it, talk shit. My music is way better then yours.

I put these playlists on Spotify, so you’re going to need to get that to play them.

Mix For The Girl You’re Into

This is for when there is a girl you’re kicking it with and you what to throw her a hint. This is the first, and most widely used mixtape scenario. You want to be frank without coming on too strong, so you start with something like Devo’s Girl U Want. Follow that with something heartwarming and energetic, with maybe a touch of sadness. At this point it’s easy to get wrapped up in the sappy stuff, and you definitely don’t want to freak her out, so put on some nonsense that could be construed as suggestive; like Hang Out by Thurston Moore. After that you want to really drive the message home. You have to be careful if you mellow out the mood at the end, because you’ll kill it if you tone it down too quickly.
Mix for the girl you’re into
Girl U Want – DEVO
Jinx Removing – Jawbreaker
Head On – Pixies
I Love Your Brain – Frank Black and the Catholics
Hang Out – Thurston Moore
I Only Want You – Eagles Of Death Metal
It Takes Time – Muck and the Mires
It’s Hard to Turn Me On – Quasi
If It Wasn’t For You – Handsome Boy Modeling School
Hot Wire My Heart – Sonic Youth
I Can’t Stand It – The Velvet Underground
I Want You Around – Ramones
I Am Pentagon – Make-Up
Valentine – Old 97′s
Ambulance – TV on the Radio
The Long Road – Tiger Army
Forget the Flowers – Wilco
Into Your Eyes – Lucero
Say Yes – Elliott Smith

Mix For The Girl Who Has Great Taste In Other Music

Have you ever met someone who knows as much, and is as passionate about rock and roll as you are but listens to like 90% classic rock bands? In this case you want to put together a mix of your oldest favorites, less old favorites and some out-in-left-field joints. The point of this one is to introduce her to bands she may or may not have heard of, but probably doesn’t listen to. This is a tricky one to pull off because of all of the different sounds you need to put together and still impress a rock chick. You have to cover your favorite parts of the spectrum, while keeping in mind the kind of music she likes. You have to mirror her taste but be unique enough so she says something like “Who sings that Boogie on the Beach song? I’ve seen that in a movie.”
Mix for the girl who has a great taste in other music
Teen Age Riot – Sonic Youth
Iehiro’s Dilemna – Goblin Cock
Arctic Snow – Burning Brides
Patti Smith Math Scratch – Thurston Moore
Guero Canelo – Calexico
Never Too Late – Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
Suspect Device – Stiff Little Fingers
Trying Too Hard – Crimpshrine
Boogie on the Beach – Red Elvises
Baby Blue Sedan – Modest Mouse
Above the Clouds – Gangstarr
Devil in Jersey City – Coheed and Cambria
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 – The Flaming Lips
Cold Blows The Wind – Ween
Overkill – Ministry
I’m Waiting for the Man – The Velvet Underground
Öngyilkos Vasárnap – Venetian Snares
Pitseleh – Elliott Smith
Desastre Natural – Tomahawk
Stormy Weather – Pixies

Drinking Songs for the Boys

When people say they hate a certain type of music it usually means they’ve only heard the most shallow of the genre. They probably haven’t heard a lot of the bands that don’t have a wide circulation. Usually they say Rap and Country. This is a country mix so if you’re going to have a closed mind about all that then you can skip it. I made this one for my very good friend Whiskey Mike, so we have it in the truck when we go fishing. He’s Iowa farm raised and we would listen to a bunch of Willie Nelson,  David Allen Coe, Conway Twitty and all that. I brought along a Lucero CD one time and he started to bug me about all of the Americana I had. This is what I came up with.
Drinking Songs for the Boys
Pop Country Really Sucks – Hank Williams III
Hangover Daze – Shelby Cobra
No Depression – Uncle Tupelo
High Noon in Killville – Angry Johnny And The Killbillies
Tomorrow Morning – Drag The River
All Sewn Up – Lucero
The Girl With the Golden Hair – The Rio Grandiose
Barrel Of My Gun – Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
Piss Up A Rope – Ween
Drunker Than Satan – Horatio Lee Jenkins
Crawlspace – Calexico
Medicine – Drag The River
Forget the Flowers – Wilco
Whiskey – Angry Johnny And The Killbillies
Guns Bitches Brawls & Bottles – G.G. Allin
The Bottle Let Me Down – Merle Haggard
I Gotta Get Drunk (with Merle Haggard & George Jones) – Willie Nelson
Redwood – Calexico
Last Song About Satan – Slim Cessna’s Auto Club
My Best Girl – Lucero

Mix for Your Girlfriend (or wife)

One of the best mixes you can make is a mix for your girlfriend. You spend a ton of time with her, and you’re always monopolizing the stereo. She’s the best girl ever, so she doesn’t mind. You want to always bring your best jams because, face it…you’re going to be pissed if she wants to turn it of…or worse, put in that same shitty Morcheeba CD that she loves to listen to over and over. This is an easy one to put together because you’ve been listening to these albums with her for months. You know your favorites, her favorites and you know how to put them together. This one is up-beat, smart and just a little bit sentimental…because that’s how she makes you feel.
Mix for Your Girlfriend
Acceptable In The 80′s – Calvin Harris
Because You’re Young – Cock Sparrer
Hero – Sixer
Other Day – Free Fall
Tell Me A Story – Samiam
Jump In The Fire – The Night Marchers
Stukas Over Disneyland – Dickies
Race for the Prize – The Flaming Lips
Twist And Crawl – Death In Vegas
Visit Colnel – Thee Oh Sees
Love in a Trashcan – The Raveonettes
Tomorrow World – Squarepusher
Rewind – Cylob
Cahlottel Mittnacht – Devotchka
Loved Despite of Great Faults – Blonde Redhead
Lilac Wine – Jeff Buckley
Girl – Built to Spill
Dog With Sharper Teeth – Daisy Chainsaw
The Holiday Song – Frank Black Francis
Mind Contorted – Daniel Johnston
Poor Little Raccoon – Angry Johnny And The Killbillies
Coolest Little Monster – Electric Frankenstein

If you recognize one of these mixes as one I gave you one time – but you don’t recognize the story that goes with it – it’s because I gave you a copy of a mix I made for someone else…harsh.

Please let me know what you think of this little guide and I would be stoked if you added your best playlists to it too.

                          

I started this blog pretty much right when I was laid off in February of 2009. I intended it to be a place where I can talk about how awesome I am at the Internet so people would want to hire me. I’ve been employed now for nearly a year and this joint has been collecting dust for about seven months…see how that works out? The time and motivation slipped through the folds of my brain into chasm 13. Not all of my motivation, mind you; just the motivation to blog.

I work in digital marketing now so blogging should be part of my makeup, but sadly it isn’t. I published two successful photoblogs last year and managed to get them off the ground with nearly no time spent on putting actual words on the screen. I also mess with SEO and Social Media all day, every day, for the company I work for. So how have I gotten by for this long? I have been relying very heavily on the hep of others. Meanwhile my time is being taken up by a bunch of different tasks, plans and events, which happen to be what I sat down to talk about today.

I suppose the first things to address are the two web sites I launched in 2010.  I can talk ad nauseam about the time I spent running around through the streets of this city or that. Whether it was Boston, Denver, Richmond or anywhere else, the  city street was always my first love. I feel most comfortable in the city…any city. When I moved back to Denver, in November of 2004, I was flooded with the most vivid memories of growing up here. I was exploring Capitol Hill, Uptown, Downtown, LoDo and all of the other neighborhoods with the newness of discovery that I felt each time I would explore a new city. The difference is that I recognized these streets. They looked a lot different then I remember them to be in the late 80s and early 90s. I left in 1994, just six years after LoDo got its designation as a historical district. There was no Beta and whatever the Sports Column was then, it certainly was not the best place in town to pick up last-call tricks. Oh how times have changed.

I wasted unknown hours loitering on 13th and wasted untold dollars on records and t-shirts at Wax Trax, back when they had four stores on the block. Buying sunglasses and shit at Fashion Nation or Imi Jimi, before Tom Hollar was murdered. I ended up living in Capitol Hill for nearly six years after I moved back. I scurried around in the same familiar alleys that I smoked pot and pissed in since I was 14 years old. The difference is that this time I had a smartphone and Twitter.

If you’re reading this then I’m assuming that you know that the rest is history. If you don’t know, then too bad. The story is still too fresh and I tell it too many times. To make a long story short; with help, motivation and inspiration from Amber, Meaghan, April, Jeremy and a few others I created Unseen Denver. I was on the fence about developing this website, mostly because I never imagined that anyone could possibly think these images were as awesome as I thought they were. I realized how cool people thought this idea was at SXSW later that March.

Allen and I had just gotten into Austin and we had dinner with some Denver friends. At the table P.J. told me that he was stoked for Unseen Denver and he felt like he was experiencing the beginning of a “I knew them back when they started” thing. I spent the following week in the filthy streets of Austin Texas, listening to live rock and roll for hours a day… Now I’m just rambling.

Since then Unseen Denver has had 74 different contributors and continues to get more images emailed to her every single day. We (her and I) have a Contributing Editor, mentions in the Denver Westword and even a shout out in the New York Times….Holy shit, right? I also started working with my very old friend Igor from Driven by Boredom on the New York version: Unseen NYC…more on that another time.

Unseen Denver is a year old now and it’s time to fucking party. Through this mini adventure of website management I have met some truly incredible people. Two of these people you will know as Tim Davids and Rachel Romero. This coming Saturday, March 5, they are joining forces to produce a party, the likes of I have never been involved with. Big Top Denver is going to be full of bands, emcees, artists, booze and the very best crowd that you will find this decade. Check out www.bigtopdenver.com to see all of the badass videos and fliers they put together for this joint. I asked them if I could celebrate Unseen Denver’s birthday at their party, and they gave me a media installation at the event and a spot on the flier.

This blog post was supposed to be about the different things I am involved in, so here they are:

1. Full time job
2. I’m back in school
3. Unseen Denver
4. Unseen NYC
5. Residual freelance
6. Podcast

Number 6 is a very slow moving project that may never, ever see the light of day. If it doesn’t come to fruition, I will always look back at it as a crime against my ambition.

                          

Another idea I had was to talk about music. The problem with that is I have no idea how to approach it. Music is such a big part of how I’ve chosen to live my life, that trying to think of the whole thing in terms of one topic is staggering. I could break it up into a series of multiple blog posts, but let’s be honest.. I’m not that motivated to write in this blog. However, Iron and Wine’s cover of the Flaming Lips Waitin’ For A Superman just came on the iTunes, so maybe that’s a good place to start.

Ironically enough this song has been popping up somewhat often lately. I made a comment on Twitter recently that this song is one of my favorite covers ever recorded. I really have no idea why. I’m not even a very big Iron and Wine fan. The Flaming Lips are one of my very favorites. There’s something about a really classy cover of one of your favorite songs that can really get under your skin.

I was born into music. When I was a boy my dad was a DJ for a number of rock and country music radio stations throughout Colorado and the southwest. Some of my earliest memories are of listening to records with my dad and my big sister, in our run-down little duplex on 7th st in Grand Junction. My mom’s influence had me singing. Church choir, school choir, show choir, musicals, you name it. When I left Arvada, CO for Nashua, NH in 1994, I left behind three different choirs.

The mixture of choral sensibility and rock and roll idolatry sent me on a on a hell of a journey. I was discovering bands like Nine Inch Nails and Front 242 on my own. Through my friend’s older brother I discovered things like Oingo Boingo, Consolidated, Ministry etc. which led me to Teletunes on channel 12 in Denver. I slithered into the front range underground and incubated my tastes in all ages places like Ground Zero on the Hill in Boulder and Mercury Cafe Downtown.

Local punk rock was where I was at, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was a 16 year old punk rock terror. Running away from home to live in the city streets and going to local, all ages shows every weekend. It was like that until I moved east.

Brefore you ask, No…My name is not Bojangles, and I’m not going to sing and dance for you, so don’t even bother entertaining it.

Punk was the deal for the rest of high school. Remind me to tell you about the time I went with Merrimack’s finest psychobilly 3 piece, The Brain Bats to headline a show at CBGBs. It was an epic show with real, live, New York City punk rock blood, booze and leather.

I was going to shows at places like The Rathskeller in Boston, and the Elvis Room in Portsmith, NH and I was discovering a new type of asshole…Muscle-headed hardcore kids. I wasn’t used to the way these pricks enjoyed shows. I had been going to violent shows for years, but these guys weren’t even trying to be polite. Even my small size wasn’t stopping them. I lost interest in being at live shows with bullies, and after The Rat closed in 1997 I lost interest in rock music all together.

Enter Ross; one of the worst influences I have ever crossed paths with and, to this day my very best friend. I had gone to rave parties before, my big sister was a rave queen in Denver in the very early 90s, and I had gone with her to a few. But nothing could prepare me for what this dude was about to introduce me to. I began going to underground parties, and giant massives in around 1997-98. I moved to Boston shortly after that and – with some of the closest friends I have made in all of my life – threw some of Boston’s most memorable underground parties for about three years.

I keep threatening to write down some of the stories that came out of these handful of years. I came out of it with a vast knowledge and love for Techno, House Drum & Bass and Breakbeats. We partied all over Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC; sometimes Chicago, Detroit and up to Canada just to dance to our favorite DJs from all over the world. I read books, bought documentaries, listened, studied and talked about nothing but electronic music and rave culture. The music was fascinating, new and everywhere I went I met folks who had been to our parties.

Power Surge Production Loft, South Boston. Fall 1999

I left Boston for Virginia in the early 2000s. In Richmond, there was almost no electronic music. Besides that, my roommate and most of my new friends were tattoo artists…not a lot of Detroit Techno in Richmond tattoo shops, believe it or not. Before very long, I was back home to dirt and rock and roll. Living in the town that spawned the likes of Avail, Lamb of God and GWAR was like gutter-rat Disneyland. There was always an amazing show at a filthy bar, and PBR was cheaper than water. I developed a marked taste for drinking songs, murder ballads and good, hard-living country music. It’s also when I began to explore Hip-Hop. I left RVA to open a store in Virginia Beach, and that’s when working began to take more of my time than music.

I rolled back into Denver in the Fall of 2004. I had been on the most incredible ten year adventure, and it was time to go back upstream. Within a year of being here, I met Joe from Chicago and Eric from Atlanta who were both DJs in the late 90s. Around 2005 or 2006 a bunch of us grizzled old schoolers decided to put together a Denver Drum and Bass crew, and through this I’ve been able to stay close to music through my 30s.

I think that ended up being a pretty good post about music. There’s really no way that I can explain how I lived my life, or tell stories from my past without music. Likewise it appears that I can’t talk about music without talking about my life. It has been my compass and sextant throughout all of my land-locked voyages. If there’s a common complaint from every ex-girlfriend I’ve ever had, it’s that I talk about music too much.