This is the first of hopefully many mix tapes I hope to bring to you on Pretension. I have a couple of turntables and a mixer, and yes a microphone, although I rarely use that as I find white people speaking in DJ sets, no matter how cool, always sound like wedding DJ's. I am no master driver of the wheels of steel, but I can hold my own with music selection and general kick assedness. Now I really love spinning old Jazz, Funk, and Psyche/Prog stuff, but I love all music. So I hope to share with you a sampling of all of it.
So rather than make an iTunes mix which is impersonal, easy, and expected I hooked up my mixer to a Mac and started spinning. This was true linear editing. Like a mix tape, if you wanted to change anything at the beginning, tough noogies, you're out of luck. So I had been planning on making some mix that would wow you with my knowledge of Deep Funk, or rare psyche albums that would drop some serious grooves into your soul... but then my friend sent me this article. It is Rolling Stone's list of 25 Greatest Guilty Pleasure Bands. It includes ELO, Rush, Bon Jovi, America, Hall & Oates, and a ton of other great albeit "un-hip" bands. I am assuming lists like this are part of Rolling Stone's and Jan Wenner's attempt at "Hipifying" their dinosaur of a publication. The first part of that was clearly by displaying that they can be cynical, uninformed, youthful shitheads to just like those kids bloggin on the internet. They did that with that abhorrent reality show. The 2nd part is clearly to marginalize the historical bands that built Rolling Stone.
This is what's wrong with indie kids today, and kids in general. No understanding of musical history. Or history period. You don't get Arcade Fire's big sound without the sweeping grandure of ELO. You don't get Gym Class Hero's (the Fall Out Boy of hip-hop) without Supertramp. And you don't get anywhere in music by shutting out or shitting on any band without experiencing it for yourself. I did that for a while, it got me nowhere. Is there bad music out there? Oh yeah. Are there bad bands on that list? My god yes. Would I mock someone and think less of them for listening to it? Possibly, but thats only because I can be a jackass. But in reality if it works for you, love it, dig it, play it, dance to it, whatever.
That's why this past Saturday afternoon when I was gearing up to attempt to record a hipster set of tunes I was messing around with some of my less cool records and I was playing a 10cc song I hadn't heard in forever. I thought of this list from the day before, started the song over again, hit record, and threw on tunes for the next 54 minutes that I would be proud to burst out of my car at high volume. There are some skips, a couple shitty fades, and the sound blows out on some songs, but hey... when were mix tapes, real mix tapes, ever perfect.
So put this on and remember... You Have Nothing To Feel Guilty For
oh yeah, and I did a little cover art for it too.
-P
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