Summer Mixtape 2013: Pre-1984 Springsteen

Here I am halfway through this summer and I still haven't put together a Mixtape to play in my truck for those morning drives to the beach, or along Ala Wai Blvd. at night while the hookers congregate three at a time on the sidestreets to stay off HPD's radar.

Then I find this post at The Trad, images of New Jersey in the early 80s.  As a kid I spent several summers with cousins in Cranford, NJ, and we would always go down to Wildwood or Seaside Heights for a day or weekend.  Those Jersey kids I hung out with, Mickey Marino, Dave Levy, and Frankie Williams (the strongest kid I ever ever met) and the inimitable Schlick and Styszy -- I can't say we became friends for life, but it sure felt like we would be. Sneaking into the community pools, raiding my uncle's bar, collecting newspaper money to spend on the weekend, lifting weights in somebody's basement, trying not to get into a fight with the bigger kids at the community center.  Crowding onto a field on July 4 with just about every other kid in Union County, waiting for the fireworks show to start.  During the day we'd sleep in, then hop on our ten speeds and ride uptown to the Pink Submarine for sandwiches and soda and to spin Bruce Springsteen's "Prove It All Night" for about the billionth time on the jukebox.

This was before Born in the USA.  A fine album, sure, but Springsteen before then will always be those summers to me, before he was the world's, he was Jersey's.

Summer 2010 Mixtape: The Ladies of U.K. Soul

This weekend I'm taking my son camping on the beach. Sure, in the heat of the summer sun, we'll be cranking standards like "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Love Shack", but after the kids are asleep in their tents, you can bet that we adults will be sipping cocktails around the fire with these ladies of British Soul filling the cool salty air.

Corinne Bailey Rae is the new face on the scene. Her debut album a few years ago offered a couple of minor hits which deserve repeat listens. I believe she can be described as a singer-songwriter, as well, and the intimacy she must feel with her works adds depth to the music, I think.

I hate to describe her as an historical artifact, because by all estimations, Sade is timeless and transcendent. These songs from the Eighties certainly are. To call her a siren, a chanteuse, or a torch singer would be to minimize her sublime appeal.

Summer 2010 Mixtape: Cheap Trick Two-Fer

What are summer nights for but whiling away the moments, hoping it never ends but knowing that inevitably it will. As endless as they may seem, no matter how much you fill them up with fun or adventure or romance or memories, there are only a finite number of them. One day, one night, it won't be summer any more and you'll have to wait for next year. Nevertheless, I'll bet they were each perfect summer moments strung together one after another.

That's how I feel about the next two songs on my Summer 2010 soundtrack. They're strung together back to back, perhaps the best one-two pairing on any record from my youth. Okay, maybe that's hyperbole. I'm sure I'm missing many others, but this one is about as perfect as they come: cuts 2 and 3 from side two of Cheap Trick's earth-shattering Live at Budokan. And when you hear Mr. Bun E. Carlos knock out that punchy double-time beat to "I Want You to Want Me", you know that in six minutes' time and with the last crashing power chords by Rick Nielsen and Tom Petersson on "Surrender", pure pop perfection will, alas, be over like summer moments.

Summer 2010 Mixtape

Let's find some great tunes to play outdoors, from a ghetto blaster, with friends milling about a bucket of cold ones. There will be just a slight hint of them bouncing about to the beat, some movement in the hips and shoulders, as they are absent-mindedly transported to other summers before this one.

Here's the Style Council, doing Walls Come Tumbling Down.



What's great about the mixtape, to me, is the juxtaposition of songs. Preferably, place two songs that have never been adjacent each other, before. Too "on the nose" a pairing, and you're predictable. Of course, too different (say Kurt Cobain and Tony Bennett), and they ... well ... they clash. I'm going to try this one, Rock the Casbah.



That's part of my recipe for a great Summer Mixtape. Tune in again for more.