Sunday, January 3, 2016

2015, Mix Tapes, and Saying Hello to 2016



Looking back on 2015’ is like turning on the TV and realizing no matter if you like it or not “Shawshank Redemption” is on and this only translates to the fact that you will sit down and see it to its end.  Much like this cinematic masterpiece, 2015 has been a year worth revisiting. There have been ups and unexpected downs, as well as the realization that 2015 was the last full year of my 30’s. I will not spend my time on this post waxing sentimental; rather I will rest with an eye to the sky looking forward to what 2016 has instore.  In about 5 five months I will cleanse my soul in the waters of 40 and take the last step that is required to truly learn what it’s all about to justify the F word!

I have been taxing my cranium on how to say thank you to the F word nation for ingesting my midlife rantings and personal justifications throughout 2015. Mix tape, yep mix tape! I have put together the tunes that helped define this past year for me in a virtual mix tape as a way to say thanks for tuning in.  F’ers may be the only people who have and will ever live on the earth to actually appreciate the art and effort that goes into the conception and creation of a mix tape. Records did not allow for recording back in the day and digital music has removed the time and effort required to truthfully care. This is our time, and I'm taking it back! I will plant the F word flag on this piece of nostalgia and claim it as our own.

 So settle down, put your feet up and I will spin a yarn about a simpler time when musical masterpieces were transposed into cassette tape cantatas laced with subliminal messages of love, friendship, and good times. Mix tapes and the art thereof hearken back to a move civilized time when a duel tape deck and a long afternoon were required to swoon a lady friend of choice or send a buddy off with required road trip music. The beauty and responsibility of the mix tape lays in taking someone else’s art and emotion and crafting it your own anthem. Everything from the order of the songs, to the subtlety of the lyrics, right down to the color of hair mentioned in a song’s lyrics were all things taken into account.

So the mix tape does not become a lost art like the blue glass of the ancient Egyptians or the practice of folks on Easter Island moving megalithic statues, I will chronicle the steps for my posterity and that of future generations.

 The process was a follows:

a)   Objective- What is your defined purpose? This 90% of the time was to act as a subtle undertone of expressing ones affection to a member of the opposite sex. 8% sharing tunes with a good friend. 2% educating someone who should know better on the type of music they should be enjoying in order to avoid social ridicule or being ostracized at a later date.   

b)   Prep Work- This process was comprised of making a list, creating the perfect order, compiling and cueing tapes and Cd’s necessary, and loading each song onto the mix tape and listing to the process to insure the proper outcome and or mood was created. Push play and record and let the magic happen!

c)   Art Work- Painstaking time was taken at the end to list the songs on the jacket of the tape as well as craft a title of the tape that would not be to over or under suggestive.

d)   Delivery- Risk has it rewards and this motto could not be more true in the delivery of the musical conception that just consumed about 4 hours of one’s life. The delivery (at least according to me) went as follows, “hey, I was killing time this weekend and came across some tunes I thought you might enjoy.” If the tape was accepted, it was absolutely critical to play it cool for a few days. Day 4 typically hailed as the right time to drop a, “ have you had a chance to check out the tape?” If this brave inquiry was met with, “not yet” you better hope you made a copy for later distribution because you just burned 4 hours of your life. If your musical proposition for future courting was met with, “I loved it, especially the song about……” you were in and all your hard work and expended emotion was not in vain. On a side note; if your buddy did not appreciate the tape then he was from that point on, dead to you.

So there you go….. Know, that I am extremely grateful to all of you have taken the time to enjoy “Justifying the F Word” this year, and to all of you F’ers who have justified the F word to its fullest. I have taken careful consideration to resurrect my mix tape skills and craft a musical odyssey for all of you to enjoy. Hit the link below and use it as a sound track to kick 2016 off in the finest way possible!

Quinn's Picks 2015

In closing let me share a quote of pure beauty from the movie “High Fidelity.”


“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter. There’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mid,” but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightway, so I buried it in the middle of side two, and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and…oh, there are loads of rules.”

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