"To me, making a tape is like writing a letter. There's a lot of
erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape,
like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker,
to hold the attention .. 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."
High Fidelity, Nick Hornby, 1996.
Dear Nicole,
I thought this was going to be easy. Join Tracey's kids' cd swap, slap a few songs together and lo and behold a mix-tape for small-fry. That was before I saw your fab blog and got accquainted with your sassy writing style. A definite Wiggles-free household this one (hurrah!).
Personally, I'm with Hornby on the whole 'kick off with a corker' concept, with bonus points for topical relevancy. Segue to the White Stripes 'We are Going to be Friends' about pals and going back to school, but toned down a little in the Jack Johnson intepretation. Jimmy Cliff delivers in 'You Can Get it if You Really Want' & I can't tell you how much we love Frances England's 'Sometimes'.
I've gone for upping it a notch after this with 'I Want Candy' (who doesn't) by Bow Wow Wow. I don't want to go off on a tangent here, but have you seen the shoe scene in Marie Antoinette where this song features? If you watch closely, Coppola has a pair of high tops in the foreground surrounded by the lush footware of the period. A film-maker with attitude that Sophia.
Track 8 was included for your very own listening pleasure, Dan Zanes & Sandra Bernhard's 'Thriftshop' deals with issues near and dear to both our hearts (can I just mention here that I am so disappointed about the Japanese tableware)! I debated the inclusion of Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat for some time, scanning the lyrics for overt drug references, plenty of innuendo swooshing over kiddies heads and nothing explicit so I popped that one in too.
By track 20 I figure it is time to do the whole 'cool it a notch' thing. Ben Harper and Jack Johnson do a good job with 'My Own Two Hands'. Track 22, the Innocence Mission's interpretation of 'Moon River' is a fave' here, if you don't love it yet, you will. And finally with a nod to the French heritage the final track is the eternal lullaby, 'Fais Do Do'. At least that is the version as we go to print. My five year old has made sweeping editorial changes on FIVE different versions of this compilation. What do you do with comments like "..it just needs to sound a bit pinker." I'm considering stealing out in the dead of night to post this to you without further amendments before I collapse with a nerve rash.
Hope you like it, it's been fun doing business with you!
x
PS The completely unrelated photo is of myself and the smallest person with our swanky new sling from Rosa. Being short & skinny I can never get them to fit properly until now. Thanks again Rosa!