Other Mixes By Mike Eternity
CD
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Mixed Genre
Playlist
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Mixed Genre
CD
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Theme
CD
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Pop
Do What You Wanna Do
Artist | Song | |
Daphne Loves Derby | Cue the Sun! | |
Noah and the Whale | Rocks & Daggers | |
Tilly and the Wall | Beat Control | |
The Pink Spiders | Gimme Chemicals | |
ELO | So Serious | |
The Lightning Seeds | The Life of Riley | |
LCD Soundsystem | All My Friends | |
Pete and the Pirates | Mr. Understanding | |
Adam Green | Twee Twee Dee | |
Camera Obscura | Teenager | |
Vampire Weekend | Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa | |
The Icicles | Forever and a Day | |
Steve Poltz | Brief History of My Life | |
Saint Etienne | Former Lover | |
Sahara Hotnights | The Loneliest City of All | |
The Format | Inches and Falling (I Love Love) | |
Puffy AmiYumi | Love So Pure | |
The Explorers Club | Do You Love Me? | |
The Breakup Society | He Wants His World Back (Baby) | |
Hot Chip | In the Privacy of Our Love | |
The Octopus Project | I Saw the Bright Shinies | |
Peter and the Wolf | Check Out the River | |
Los Campesinos! | Death to Los Campesinos | |
The Boy Least Likely to | A Balloon on a Broken String | |
The Ramones | Questioningly | |
The Jesus & Mary Chain | God Help Me | |
Akron/Family | Ed is a Portal | |
Bob Marley | Three Little Birds | |
Comment:
Well, once again I'm on the road to transcendence. The songs here are a blur of the exuberant, the meditative, the wistful, the sublime, and the joyous. Reveling in these moods always makes me see everything in profound shades, so pardon my pretension. Although these are the heaviest songs in my current rotation, I was inspired to make this by - don't laugh - the book "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli. A younger friend of mine strongly insisted that I read it, being his favorite book, because he wants to try filming an adaptation and was hoping to enlist my help. It's a bit maddeningly simplistic throughout, but the ideas are potent. I feel like I've reviewed my entire life 50 different ways since I started reading it. It made me think about how we take the world for granted, how the structure of society carves our individuality down into homogenized packages (not a new insight, but one we do overlook), distracting us with our needs for acceptance and away from honest expression and free exploration of the infinite possibilities out there. Okay, I know that sounds like the middle school essay thesis of a total wanker, but I'm a weak writer; don't blame the theme. Point is, this mix is my ode to life. All my mixes can and should be described that way, actually. I shirked the usual effort to unify styles too much (not that my mixes are ever altogether cohesive); warts and all, this is the sound of Mike for the past couple months. "Three Little Birds" is a far older friend, of course, but I've been enjoying a Marley revival since buying "Legend", and I couldn't make a mix fueled by such existential musings without including the beautiful simplicity of his wisdom.Even though the majority of people, at least those I associate with as well as my fellow AOTM members, have a preference for more serious, artful, or otherwise definitively mature and bleak sounds, or at the very least share an unspoken derision towards unapologetic pop (cue everyone telling me how wrong that blanket statement is), I've always gravitated towards that happy music, the kind that even makes the walk from your house to your car in the afternoon somehow feel brighter, and why not? Does it make me shallow, or does it show a healthier connection with the commonly regarded finding-happiness meaning of life? I love sad songs and aggressive rock music and most genres in-between, but at the end of the day, give me something that makes me smile, laugh, or swoon in ecstasy. I realize it seems impossible with the world in grim turmoil and a trillion different internal woes pulling us apart at the seams, and certainly I'm no poster boy for positivity (however much I feel it inside, I'm never comfortable expressing it, so most people see me only as the quiet or sarcastic type), but that radiance and that gratitude, that ability to take joy in anything, that's what life should be about, that's how our hearts should sing.
Feedback:
this is incredible, made all the more resonant by your thoughtful liner notes - the LCD soundsystem, camera obscura, vampire weekend, hot chip, & the 24-26 stretch are all favorites, just to name a few - terrific job
Love the mix and the notes Mike. Keep doing what you do.
Some great stuff here, Explorers Club, Los Campesinos!, Camera Obscura and Tilly and the Wall.
Have you heard the Poems? I think you'd like their song I Am A Believer.
Have you heard the Poems? I think you'd like their song I Am A Believer.
I only know a little of this -- download link! download link! -- but it looks fine. I do, however, have to take up your invitation to challenge your blanket statement about the general preference among -- hey, let's just get the term out there -- the music elite for serious, artful, and bleak sounds. It's not a wholly baseless assertion, and my wife -- who views my devotion to Joy Division, Elliott Smith, Big Star's Third, and other comparably morose music to be wholly inconsistent with my otherwise sunny worldview (disdain for Republicans aside) -- has expressed similar sentiments. But I think most of us who pride ourselves on oh-so-serious musical tastes also have a love of mindless, joyous pop. It's all a matter of balance: yesterday I was listening to the Monkees, this morning I was listening to Neutral Milk Hotel. Yin & Yang.
I haven't heard that Marley song in a long time. It was one of doowadette's lullabies.