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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