Back to the mixtape
Here is the issue. The album plays through slippery speakers and my heart twitches in the unusual way that it does when the song is a good one. The body usually connects before the brain does, a slow wave through the shoulders or maybe a tingle in the arms. This is a good song. Even better the brain starts to weave those little connections between sound and emotion bringing us into an internal landscape of comfort. This is a good song. It might bring you home. It might take you away. It might alter your mind or cement your memories.
In our information and influencer crowded society, how can we be truly unbiased in our pursuit of ‘good’ music? A new song pumped out like a new born baby at the rate of 4.5 each second. What sounds good to me, sounds like ruckus to my grandmother. What sounds good to her, sounds outdated and sexist to your teenage daughter. The politics of music is a whole other issue that I’m sure we will crack open in the near future. The oligarchs of music reviews have become boring and extremely biased within today’s vast expanse of musical frequencies. We’ve gone from Elvis dripping sexy and woman fainting at the site of the Beatles to the likes of YUNGBLUD and his whiny child persona and Olivia Rodrigo holding up the charts with songs that are much too old for her. These music reviewers leave a trail of shiny coins that have somehow come from our very own pockets via ads and ads and ahem…more ads. We want the truth and it’s hardly found anymore within the shimmery facade of music reviews today.
Let’s go back to a time where someone shared a song with you on a mixtape that they had lovingly crafted in their dad’s basement during a summer heatwave. Or maybe it was a CD burned with 20 songs of ska that somehow got you through a highschool year or boys crying when you told them you didn’t love them actually. Or maybe it was a playlist downloaded like black magic onto a cutting edge piece of technology that could hold up to give or take 240 songs.
Let’s go back there.
Welcome to the Almanac for the Dead.