Getting to First Base With My Readers

There are plenty of wonderful “old guy” things technology is obliterating.  For instance, back in the day I had mastered the art of the mix tape.  You’d go get a blank tape, pull out all your CDs, and spend hours recording just the right mix that you just knew was going to make a specific girl instantly fall in love with you.  Or, at the very least, give you a little awkward over the shirt action.

The rules for mix tapes were varied.  Nothing too scary, nothing too wussy.  In his book “High Fidelity,” author Nick Hornby laid out some of the guidelines:

“You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention, and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs, and… oh, there are loads of rules.”

In any event, I probably made a hundred mix tapes in my day.  Each delicately suited to whatever girl would eventually never speak to me again once receiving the tape.  But these days, there are no tapes.  And CDs are just about extinct.  So how do horny boys try to lure the ladies?  How do you get a girl to listen to a song that you’re absolutely sure is going to make her understand the turmoil in your heart (and pants?)

I think I have the answer.

Dear reader, in order to thank you for coming to this blog and to show my appreciation, I have made you a mix tape and put it here on the blog.  This is someone therapeutic for me, as I love combing through my music collection and crafting just the right playlist.  Hopefully, after listening to this first one, you’ll hop on your bike and we’ll ride together down to Open Pantry and share an Icee.

If there were a general theme for this first one, it would be singer/songwriter type stuff, since that just happened to be what I started picking out at random.  And I even kept it to the usual 74 minute CD length, too.

(To download the full file, subscribe to the podcast on the left, of right click here and choose “Save As…”)

Listen here, then e-mail me to tell me when you’re available to make out.

1. You Should Know So Well – Sondre Lerche
2. Beard of Bees – Clem Snide
3. Kind/ Brutal – The Heligoats
4. Finch On Sunday – Horse Feathers
5. If You Go – The Explorers Club
6. Put A Penny In The Slot – Fionn Regan
7. Streetlights – Josh Rouse
8. In the Bathroom – Trouser
9. Furr – Blitzen Trapper
10. Remember – Figurines
11. Jesus The Mexican Boy – Iron & Wine
12. Cursed Sleep – Bonnie “Prince” Billy
13. In Brilliance – Hutch And Kathy
14. Let’s Get Out Of This Country – Camera Obscura
15. I Am John – Loney, Dear
16. 3 Rounds and a Sound – Blind Pilot
17. Happiness – Elliott Smith
18. Sweet Sunshine – David Mead
19. Bookworm – Margot & The Nuclear So & So\’s