Mix

Introduction

This is a five-year-old "Seven Days In" piece about making mixtapes and playlists and some favourites of mine, most of which I have shared in the many stories I have shared in the Beat community, You can peruse that here.

I have put together various YouTube ones including one for the songs that I have included at the end of this piece.

When I wrote this I had stopped burning CDs, but I have recently started again, although I can't print labels.

This is also my 2,200th Vocal story.

Mix

Today people often try and share Spotify playlists with me. I don't countenance Spotify, it's not my inner Ron Swanson but the fact that it's not a business model that rewards almost all the artists who are on its available catalogue. I suppose the other thing is that as a teenager if I wanted to share music with friends it required recording records in real-time, at first recording via microphone and later when I got a job, a music centre which recorded directly from the radio.

I didn't realise that the compact cassette first appeared around 1965 (comprehensive Wiki history here), I thought it was a Sony invention because of the Walkman which allowed music on the move.

To create a cassette you had to record in real-time, the playlist was just the initial plan, even when MiniDisk and CD superseded cassette it was still real-time although CD recording speeded up significantly but there is still the production and labelling of the CD to do.

In October 2016 when I was 59 I started the #ALifeInNumbers sequence which ran into November that year and I've referenced often since I did it.

I haven't burnt a CD for ages and am not sure if I can use iTunes to create playlists (I'm sure you can but it's such bloatware that it is more about trying to make me buy things that actually play music), I may try that soon and then I need to print the CD label (as I still have a printer that can do that!).

I have just remembered that I can use YouTube to create playlists such as this two-song ska one here :

I used to do mixes on Grooveshark but their model wasn't sustainable, but I am going to investigate Youtube further.

I was going to list some significant records for me to pad out this post but here are a few, and maybe I will create a playlist at some point:

• Abba - The Visitors & Happy - The Carpenters, two of my mum's favourites that I still love
• Lights Out - Jerry Byrne & Sea Cruise - Frankie Ford, two that remind me of my missed friend Chris who we lost to lung cancer
• Negativeland - Neu!, I was shocked when my dad asked me if I had this record as this was way out of his comfort zone
• All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix, if I only could have one record this would be it, Hendrix playing, Dylan's words
• Hound Dog - Elvis Presley - apparently the first record I ever liked (aged 3)
• Jig A Jig - East of Eden - The first single I ever bought
• Come On - Chuck Berry - one of the first songs I played and sang live and I would be confident of doing it now
• Egyptian Reggae - Jonathan Richman - The first instrumental cover I played live

I could go on and on but I'll stop and share "Happy" by The Carpenters (incidentally the title of my favourite Rolling Stones song, and they - the Stones - covered Chuck Berry's - Come On).

Enjoy this very rainy Thursday.

Conclusion

This is me attempting "Happy" by The Rolling Stones:

And the YouTube playlist from the songs I listed here:

Thank you for reading.