Required Listening: Volume One

A "Mix Tape" is a beautiful thing. Each one serves a purpose, some merely entertain while others help to heal. No matter the reason each and every one of them is a personal gift from the mind to the heart of the listener.

I take great pride in making a mix, I guess because I am old enough to remember just how painstaking the process was of making an actual mix tape. It wasn't the quick process of being able to pull up your i-Tunes play list, drag & drop a handful of songs, then burn them onto a disc.

The time invested into making a mix tape meant pure love. A 90-minute tape took a minimum of two hours to make.

Each of the songs had to be played in full as they recorded. You had to ensure exactly what order you wanted them to be in and the timing had to be spot on!

I would have rather died than to have the last song on Side A cut off by seconds just because I didn't time it properly. It was a process that was often started over & over again in my perfection driven world of mix tapes.

But here we are in a different world, I burned four mix CDs today in less than 15 minutes. It is a beautiful thing.

The first three were for a couple of people that I work with, they know my mix CDs rule & asked me to make them some to which I happily obliged.

The fourth was just for me, required listening I suppose.


I Kinda Always Knew I'd End Up Your Ex-Girlfriend - Break-Up CD Vol. 1


Gives You Hell - All-American Rejects
You Better, You Bet - The Who
Ex-Girlfriend - No Doubt
You Got Lucky - Tom Petty
Anything But Down - Sheryl Crow
Don't Tell Me You Love Me - Night Ranger
I'm All Out Of Love - Air Supply
I Hate Myself For Loving You - Joan Jett
Since You're Gone - The Cars
Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad - Meatloaf
Tubthumping - Chumbawumba
Here I Go Again - Whitesnake
Separate Ways _ Journey
She's A Beauty - The Tubes
Take It On The Run - REO Speedwagon
Last Call Casualty - Bowling For Soup
Shadows Of The Night - Pat Benetar
Is She Really Going Out With Him? - Joe Jackson
The Break-up Song - The Greg Kihn Band

There will no doubt be more in this series.

While I relish the chance to listen to it over and over on my commute to and from work to help release the pain, what I really long for is finding that CD under my car seat in a year or two, popping it into the player and wax nostalgic, by then I won't even remember what today feels like.