Music for my mixed-up mind.
By: Hank Kalet
My Nissan Murano has a six-CD changer a luxury that for me, an admitted music junkie, feels like a necessity.
Six CDs provide a lot of music nearly 480 minutes and it’s rare when I don’t have each slot filled with something.
More often than not, the discs playing in my car are the 21st-century variation of something I’ve been doing since college, what used to be a mix-tape musical collages, often built around themes, political songs, for instance, or songs chosen for their guitar solos.
A particular favorite of mine, made probably in 1982 or 1983, is a tape mixing garage bands and ’60s psychedelia with The Beatles, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and then-current punk rock. I still have the tape, which has a deep hiss now and can be difficult to play, though it occasionally does find its way into one of the tape decks I own. (There are those times when I just need to hear Python Lee Jackson, actually Rod Stewart before he was famous, singing "In a Broken Dream" in a set that also includes The Byrd’s "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Springsteen’s "Jackson Cage.")
Back when I first started doing these, each tape would take a significant amount of time to make. Each song had to be taped from a vinyl album in real time, with the gaps between songs being carefully managed by resetting the tape after each song. This part of the process could be tedious my goal was to limit the length of dead space between the songs and if I decided that a chosen song was wrong for the tape I was making I’d have to tape over it, meaning that the standard 90-minute tape could take almost two and one-half hours to make.
Technology has changed all this. Now, using a computer, I can rip a bunch of CDs from my collection and download the songs I don’t have from one of the major for-fee music download services.
I could use a free download program like Kazaa, but I’d much rather pay the 99 cents per song to iTunes and MusicMatch. Two reasons: Artists deserve to be paid for what they create and the services ensure the quality of the download. It’s both ethical and practical. When I first started making mix discs, I used the free services, but a gnawing sense that I was doing something wrong (I tried to justify to myself that downloading freebies was not a form of theft, but I couldn’t) combined with the erratic nature of free services to convince me to stop passing the buck.
In any case, the new technology offered me a chance to do the job quickly I can rip a disc (copy it to my hard drive) in a couple of minutes, while downloading can be done as I have time and as I find songs I like. When I’ve collected enough songs on the hard drive, I set my playlist and burn the disc. Then I find cover art and give the disc a name (yes, I am that geeky about it).
The whole process doesn’t take that long plus blank discs are a lot cheaper than blank tapes.
In my car right now are a couple of discs that I think are among the better mixes I’ve made: "The Rumson Running Roughwriters present: The Amazing Tales of Honey the Wonderdog!" and "A Hard-driving man sings songs of love and money: Somewhere between a cowboy and a punk."
Both offer a glimpse into the process (and their respective titles probably say more about me than I care to admit). Both discs are eclectic, though "Amazing Tales" revels in its weird mix of obscurity and chart-hits: new British art punk courtesy of The Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and some music from an NME awards compilation (NME is a British music magazine) the deliciously obscure bands, Editors and The Long Blondes. Butterfly Boucher, also of Great Britain, makes an appearance with "Life Is Short."
It’s also got some obscurities gleaned from "Grey’s Anatomy" (Get Set Go’s "I Hate Everyone") and WXPN radio ("Sunshine" by Billy Miles, who sounds like Macy Gray), plus a cover of the Desi Arnaz song, "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps," performed in this case by the California band Cake.
There is popular country Big & Rich and Dolly Parton and chart hits from Prince ("Black Sweat"), The Pussycat Dolls (a strangely affecting cover of "Tainted Love"), Pink ("Stupid Girls") and Natasha Bedingfield ("Unwritten").
Springsteen, of course, makes an appearance "Detroit Medley" from the recently released "Live at the Hammersmith Odeon," a 1975 show and "How’s It Going to Be" by Third Eye Blind (one of my wife’s favorite bands).
Then there are two songs from friends reggae artist Patrick Mystery’s "Lion" and Steve Bates’ "What’s Happening Here (Someone Else’s Skin)," to which I wrote the lyrics. And, finally, just to round out this weird musical stew, I included "Downtown" by Petula Clark and "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield.
If I had to offer a blueprint for my approach, I’d say it comes down to this: Follow your tastes and don’t be afraid to mix and match.
In any case, the mix disc is a whole lot better than anything on the radio these days and a lot more varied. And when you put six discs like this into the car, it makes it a lot easier to get through a long car ride.
(Readers who want to share their favorite mix-disc or mix-tape song lists should e-mail me at the e-mail address below and I’ll post them on my blog.)
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].

