Happy Valentine’s day to you all you sick puppies out there who thrive off of candy hearts, unnecessary flowers and the highly dysfunctional love songs of the Beatles.
It occurs to me I am addressing myself.
Sappy though I may be, I find it weird that we call our loved ones our “Valentines” today… St. Valentine was a historical figure, and I’m sure he was a great guy, but I didn’t call Kerry my “President” on Lincoln’s birthday (though I may have to on Jefferson Davis’).
Today is the most unbearably sappy day of the year (short of the Easter pageants I used to have to suffer through at church growing up), and NPR has fallen head over heels into the trap.
Today’s “Talk of the Nation”–or one half-hour of it, anyway, focused on Valentine’s day mixtapes.
What was strange to me was that the ‘expert’ they brought in, someone from “TinyMixTapes.com,” believed that a good mix consists of only 7 songs. I agree that a good mix needs to be short enough that the recipient can pay attention to it and appreciate it, but really, you need to be at album, rather than EP, length to really give the person the affection you apparently feel they deserve.
Keep in mind that this website is here because of a relationship predicated on the trading of awesome mixtapes. Kerry and I know the rules of making a mixtape, and you can fully expect that this weekend, after I’ve had time to think about it, I will have a long post on The Spacebase regarding the rules for making a perfect mixtape.
Point is, NPR called in the wrong “experts.”
And they were horribly misguided in choosing their own listener-voted mixtape. There’s no sense of flow; the songs were sequenced according to the number of votes they recieved, and it’s a shame. Etta James AND Al Green? It’s Valentine’s day, people, not a wedding reception.
All of the TOTN mixtapes can be found here. There’s a lot of them.
Neal Conan’s isn’t bad, and it includes some songs I’d put. But the Beatles? Everyone worth making a mixtape for already knows the Beatles. There’s no reason to EVER put the beatles on a mixtape unless you’re making a Beatles Mix. Or if the mix is just for yourself and you use alternate takes.
But for a similarly underwhelming mixtape, following the apparent TOTN rules, which are: “too short, too obvious, no sense of sequencing,” here’s the tracklist for the official R/S Valentine’s Day mixtape, as I pull it out of my butt:
1. “Higher Power” by Jens Lekman
2. “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys
3. “Ballad of John and Yoko” by the Beatles
4. “Just the Way You Are” by Billy Joel
5. “Your Song” by Elton John
6. “Centerfield” by John Fogerty
7. “Centerfold” by J. Geils Band
Yes. I know it sucks. I’m proving a point.
I’ll post a better tracklist with the promised mixtape rules on The Spacebase later this week or early next.
Kerry had nothing to do with this post, and so I apologize for the style inconsistencies that surely plague it.
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