Back in the day, it was tapes.

We would lis­ten to hours of radio, Bryce and I, wait­ing for an elu­sive “Love Roller­coaster” or “Let­ting the Cables Sleep”. We would tune to MTV, a chan­nel that my par­ents had taken care to hide from us, tape deck bal­anced against the TV speak­ers, vol­ume loud enough to dis­tort, and add a lit­tle hip-hop or hard rock for fla­vor. When we were older, we’d meet Nick Brotzel, and, from him, we’d learn about rap music. I’d take care to gen­er­ate “clean” ver­sions of “Gin and Juice” and “Car­toon Ghetto”, though the effort was hardly worth­while. My think­ing was that this could help exon­er­ate me, should any of my mix­tapes fall into the wrong hands. Thus, hours were spent; days were devoted. We col­lected songs like lep­i­dopterol­o­gists col­lect butterflies.

This is the art and pas­sion of the mix­tape.  Tapes gave way to CDs which have given way to mix playlists (mps). Lengths have increased, though I keep my playlists to CD length. One thing hasn’t changed: the pas­sion. This mp, (2008) Best of Last Year, which you can lis­ten to in the side­bar or on Groove­shark, is com­prised of the best songs that I’ve come across in the year of 2008.

Inní mér syn­gur vitleysingur

Sigur Rós has, as a band, man­aged to cap­ture and re-capture my imag­i­na­tion. They released a new album this year, and it had two tracks that I wanted to place on this mp. I knew I had a deci­sion to make. How should I deal with albums? Do I place any songs that I like into the playlist, regard­less of album? I felt, to increase vari­ety (chaos), I should limit it to one song per album. This guy won out, and it also makes a great open­ing track. Mal­lots burst like stars over dri­ving per­cus­sion, piano, and other orches­tral instru­ments. And, of course, I have no idea what’s being said, so it’s appro­pri­ate for any audi­ence, unlike some songs that will be com­ing up.

Wel­come Home

To be fair, I was first intro­duced to this song in 2007, but I didn’t embrace this Coheed & Cam­bria song until we got Rock Band. Some­times a song just needs a wall of gui­tar dis­tor­tion, and that’s what this is. The chords built in a slightly chro­matic fash­ion, build­ing ten­sion, laid over a string sec­tion, which gives it an epic feel­ing. Plus the solo is pretty fierce. There might be curs­ing in this song, but even when I read along with the lyrics, I can’t fig­ure out what they’re say­ing. Kids these days!

Cath…

Another album; another gut-check. Death Cab for Cutie really impressed me when their sec­ond track on this new album, Nar­row Stairs, had an album ver­sion that boasted over eight and half min­utes. It was a song that I’d loved instensly since I’d heard it. But, when I checked the album over for other con­tenders, I was shocked to see that this song had a greater play count. “Cath…” is a vivid short story fea­tur­ing some cre­ative word­play. The num­bers don’t lie — I love this song more.

Today

I don’t think it can be called “love-hate”, but I’ve cer­tainly had a “love-indifferent” rela­tion­ship with Smash­ing Pump­kins. This song, though a new-comer to my music library, has stuck out for me. Its intro­duc­tion is related to Rock Band, Gui­tar Hero: World Tour, and Weezer. The other two might be quasi-obvious if you’ve played either, but the Weezer con­nec­tion is a bit more obscure. One day, at work, I was crav­ing Weezer. I started up my trusty Pan­dora, and I let her take me away. To my sur­prise, this song came up in the rota­tion. It had the faint echos of being a song I’d heard some­where else, and the strong pangs of being a song I had to lis­ten to at will.

Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head) (Album Version)

Another album. This one, by Ben Folds, I got mere days before the end of 2008, and so it barely made my “best of last year” list. Truth­fully, there is another song on this album that I love more, but this song came to me sooner; Ben played this song at his con­cert that we attended in Mankato. Thus, this song pulled rank and ended up on the ‘list. It’s not his great­est lyric writ­ing, but it does have a funny story to accom­pany it. Also, it has strings and a nice dri­ving melody. And then there’s the quirky ending.

Maps

This is another Rock Band refuge by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (or The Triple Affir­ma­tives, as I call them). This song doesn’t really have the pas­sion that I’ve come to asso­ciate with songs I love. Yet, for many months, this song held the high­est play count in my entire music library. What cer­tainly helped it was that it was fun to play, both as gui­tarist and per­cus­sion­ist. I love how the gui­tar part seems to blend to/into a mal­let part. Like a bird, it soars up and down, back and forth, before the grunge-colored dis­tor­tion hides it from view. Don’t worry, though; it sticks with you through the end.

9 Crimes

It seems only fit­ting that my second-highest play count song is fol­lowed by my high­est play count song. This piano bal­lad by Damien Rice, fea­tur­ing the voice of Lisa Han­ni­gan, appeared on an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and it’s power and bril­liance made a mark on me. I bought it; and then I lis­tened to it 90 times.

Wind

I had never heard of Ake­boshi before I’d seen the show Naruto on Hulu. I’d been read­ing the manga, and once we saw that the anime was avail­able on Hulu, I made the deci­son to get my Naruto that way. This song is the clos­ing cred­its song. Once you can get past the Japan­ese accent, it makes for a pretty catchy lit­tle song. We’ve dis­cov­ered that a fair amount of Japan­ese artists will often do Eng­lish lan­guage songs. Like­wise, they will some­times mix Eng­lish and Japan­ese in the same song. Get used to it.

Kelsey

Oh, boy. My face is red. This isn’t usu­ally the kind of song I’d be caught lis­ten­ing to, let alone putting in a blog post. One has only a cer­tain red­headed blog­ger’s younger sis­ter to blame for this. I don’t have many friends on YouTube, so when they post videos, I watch. Thus, this song came into my head and into my playlist.

Fore­play / Long Time

Oh, Boston. We only thought you were good for “More Than A Feel­ing”, but here you are pen­ning a two-part, seven-minute opera of rock. The instru­men­tal, fran­tic “Fore­play” even­tu­ally dies and gives way to the longer, more melodic “Long Time”. Also, you can sing along with “Long Time”. Boston’s vocal­ist is, in my opin­ion, one of their great­est assets, and it’s what makes me unashamed of declar­ing that I lis­ten to “More Than A Feel­ing”. This song, too, came from Rock Band. Are you see­ing a pat­tern here?

The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance

The jury’s still out on Vam­pire Week­end. Cer­tainly, I’ve enjoyed the songs of theirs that I’ve been intro­duced to this year, but I don’t know if they have stay­ing power. Their sound is inter­est­ing and eclec­tic. It’s off­beat enough to be “indie”, but it sounds pop enough to make them BFFs with MTV. So, we’ll see. This song was one from their album that I hadn’t put on other mps, and I wanted it to get a chance, as it’s the one I know I like by name.

Gojam Province 1968 (not pictured)

This track, which has been made avail­able by the band for a nom­i­nal price at a spe­cial web­site, is a per­fect exam­ple of the sto­ry­telling and musi­cian­ship of the Moun­tain Goats. It seems to tell a poignant story of grow­ing up in a dif­fi­cult era. The sparse piano part cou­pled with a strong vocal line give this song an indeli­ble stark­ness and frank­ness that you can only get in the most hon­est of doc­u­men­tary films. It stands out.

B****** A**** S***

(Ain’t isn’t a word, so it got stared, also). Ben Folds had two albums that I acquired this past year. This song, a cover, made a big splash when he dropped it. This song, a cover of a rap song, seems at home on the piano, with Ben’s voice singing its dan­ger­ous melody. This song, a bridge between two favorite musics of my child­hood, stands as a bril­liant, cal­ico exam­ple of my gen­er­a­tion has grown up in. Dog lovers will tell you that they love mutts as much as purebreds.

Tom Sawyer

I can’t ignore a good mixed time sig­na­ture. Rush has rep­re­sented, for me, odd melodies and strange syn­co­pa­tions. This song falls in line with that. It’s a song that I’ve come to love and hate. Espe­cially when I’m play­ing the gui­tar part in Rock Band. Yet, it all seems to fit per­fectly into my col­lec­tion. After all, a cer­tain trio of processed food prod­ucts had their own Rush adven­ture, and I can now feel more as a part of that fraternity.

1234

Feist didn’t put in a comma, and nei­ther did I. This song’s title should be read “one-two-three-four”, not “one thou­sand, two hun­dred and thirty-four” as one my be inclined. Apple used the song to show off their new iPods nano, of which Holli has one. The song was catchy, and fur­ther lis­tens point toward a deeper back story to the song. It sounded deeply per­sonal and intimi­ate. Of course, then she did a par­ody of it for Sesame Street, so I don’t know what to think anymore.

Sam­son

Regina Spek­tor has equal parts beau­ti­ful music as she does harsh and crude-sounding music. This song, how­ever, is all beau­ti­ful. It’s a love story, per­haps set (and fea­tur­ing) the Bib­li­cal hero of the same name, or maybe it’s just that grand of a love. It was hard to pick just one Regina song, but this one was a good pick for dura­tion and for con­tent. It brings the mood to a sen­ti­men­tal whisper.

“Cha!” Said The Kitty

For a long time, all I knew of Local H was that they made hood­ies. Or, at least one hoodie. How­ever, while edit­ing the wed­ding video of Holly (Smith) and Bob David­son, I wanted a fun “Receiv­ing Line” song. I’d already included songs for her dur­ing the “Recep­tion” video, and I wanted to include some­thing for Bob. So, I found this song. While it’s not exactly a “wed­ding video song”, it made for a per­fect back­ing track for what I’d done to the footage.

Ful­crum and Lever

I don’t know what it is, but this band loves their “womb” and “spinal injury” themes. This is one of the lat­ter. It’s about a young kid who tries to fly off his roof and ends up, well, on “another planet”. One can only assume that his fall resulted in an injury that per­ma­nently dis­fig­ured him. What I really love about this song is the sonic manip­u­la­tion of the vocals and instru­ments. Some day soon, The Faint will only need a lap­top for their con­certs. I think, some time ages ago, they used to use guitars…

~Aster­isk~

This is another anime theme song. This one comes from the show Bleach, which I talked about pre­vi­ously. This is some sort of Japan­ese rap song. Parts of it seems to start to sound like Eng­lish, but I can’t be cer­tain. As the first track on this playlist shows, I’m no stranger to enjoy­ing songs of which not a word is intel­li­gi­ble. This song was a great match for the anime. It had the a great pace, excite­ment, and energy, of which the show exudes in droves. Unfor­tu­nately, they don’t use this song anymore.

J*** In My Pants (not pictured)

What started as a hilar­i­ous dig­i­tal short soon found a spot in my heart. And as I can’t con­tinue writ­ing with­out think­ing of thou­sands of inap­pro­pri­ate innu­en­dos and metaphors, I’ll just say that this song is prob­a­bly not appro­pri­ate for the elderly or the youth­ful. A good rule of thumb is, if you can’t fig­ure out why the “j” has three “*” after it, you shouldn’t lis­ten to the song.