Artist	Song
Dan Bern	Crosses
Beck	The Golden Age
Jon Brion	Strings That Tie to You
Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!	Echo Park
Ani Difranco	Sick of Me
The New Amsterdams	Lonely Hearts
The Weakerthans	Left and Leaving
Son Volt	Ten Second News
Jets to Brazil	Further North
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy	Even if Love
Joe Firstman	Shannon Marie
Neko Case	I Wish I was the Moon
Frank Black and the Catholics	When Will Happiness Find Me Again?
Cake	Walk On By
Yo La Tengo	I'm Set Free
Now It's Overhead	A Skeleton On Display
Azure Ray	Nothing Like a Song
Beulah	You're Only King Once
Bright Eyes	Loose Leaves
The Impossibles	Decompression/Debilitation
Paul Simon	Graceland

Comment:

Over the years, I've recieved many requests by friends to make a break-up mix, but I never quite got around to it until April/May, 2004. I'm not sure why it took me so long or even why I suddenly became inspired to tackle such a project at that moment. What follows is the full story behind one of my most popular mixes.Way back in August of 2000, I experienced an emotionally exhausting break-up that literally took years to get over. With the exception of a couple angry mixes I made for myself and my ex, I never really dealt with that break-up through mix-making. When I did suddenly decide to create a break-up mix almost four years later, I dipped back into my past (and a long ago sealed box of memories) and tore open some old wounds. The resulting mix has turned out to be one of my personal favorites and I often listen to it when I'm in the mood for something sad and beautiful.The title is very personal to me for a reason that isn't immediatately obvious to anyone but a handful of people, but it does also reference the opening track by Dan Bern so it works on two levels. The cover art is an inverted photograph that my ex-girlfriend took of the view from her bedroom window the winter after she broke up with me. The inside sleeve contains part of a message that she wrote me on the back of a postcard from Devil's Tower. It simply reads "wish you were here. I guess people still climb the tower despite it being sacred. I wish my pictures of it were this good. ah well." Those words seemed to me the most succinct and potent analogy of our relationship and break-up while also coming across as very sad if read without any accompanying explanation.The mix itself is meant to tell a story and the careful listener will hopefully follow it clearly. Basically, it's the story of a character dealing with the painful loss of someone he/she is still in love with. I intended the mix to touch on various stages of grieving, including denial and anger, finally culminating with acceptance and moving on.The mix opens and closes with driving songs to suggest that our character's story is not static but rather still evolving as he/she figures it all out, with the opening song perhaps suggesting running away and the final track suggesting a new and positive direction. There is a definite point in the mix where our character begins to accept that the relationship is over and begins to let go of the hurt and move on. I would say the last five songs are actually fairly triumphant and even happy.Finally, this mix was my entry in a large online mix trade that I organized for aproximately 20 people called "The Mystery Mix Trade". It is perhaps poetic and fitting that my mix about unrequited love was traded to a randomly drawn partner who never actually followed through with a mix of his own!

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