The Chewer Mix CD Swap 2007 - Page 2

Totally in. No emo (or any of its derivatives) or Christian metal... or anything Top 40 really. That leaves you with big band, blues, bluegrass, dance, electronica, electro, jazz, rock ('n roll, indie, alternative, and so on), hip-hop, punk, rap, metal, pop, country, reggae, ska, techno, etcetera. Try to be a bit obscure.

If you get me, you'll get 2 CDs: one half old shit (a bit like Tom Petty or Bob Dylan's XM Radio shows), though I won't torture you with a set list of songs purely from the 40s and 50s. The other half will be a bunch of good music from the past decade, mostly rock in all its various forms. I'll cater to your tastes if you’re picky (unless you're only into hip-hop/rap/metal... I'm hardly prolific in those areas).

So what's the difference between a disc full of mp3s and a data disc?

I'm in for sure. This sounds like lots of fun.

I'm in.

Fair warning to anyone that gets me - my mix CD WILL contain My Humps, whether you like it or not.

Oh, and lots of jazz.

...and AC/DC.

I'm in. Count me out for international, though. I hope my mix that I create is at least halfway decent.

Thanks. As far as I know, audio cd's are WAV files and mp3s are compressed WAVS. To make 12 mp3s readable in an old school CD player, you have to decompress them into WAVS and you end up with the same CD you buy in a store. Lots of players can deal with both these days. Sadly, my car's CD player is not among them.

I'm in. I got good stuff last time and I think I gave good stuff.

Beware though, I'm going through a blues phase right now so if you don't like Sonny Terry you may want to hope that you don't get me.

I'm kinda hoping for DaveB to pop in here. The man knows too much about music to deny one lucky chewer.

I'm in, third year in a row. I was going to make a joke about how I'd like a disc full of polka and salsa or a combination of the two, but I fear I might actually be sent Solska.

I'll throw my international keys into the bowl.

I'll gladly be in, as long as nobody minds sending international.

Yeah, where is DaveB? You'd think he'd be all over this. I'd expect a good mix from him.

Yeah, I'd like to do this.

Would love to do this. No country for me, thanks. Get ready for the realest hip-hop known to man. Hell, maybe I'll throw in some Pink Floyd, too.

I'm in.

BTW, whoever I get receives a disc full of stuff I think that person should hear - none of this wussy "I don't like entire genres" nonsense. If I happen to think you haven't heard enough Hall and Oats or Songs of the Humpbacked Whale relaxation discs, that might just be what you get.

Also, if the disc I get sucks, the responsible party just might receive a penalty disc of the most annoying shit I can scrounge up.

Ha...fair enough. And I fully reserve the right to drop "The Very Best of Anal Cunt" on whoever I damn well please.

I'm in. Consider me a bonus DaveB, penalty disc and all. Think "20-track acoustic tribute to the Indigo Girls."

I'm in.

Count me in.

I'll do it. And I fully agree with the sentiment that if you're not in this to hear new things, you shouldn't be bothering.

I would just like to request one thing: a printed list showing the song titles and artists. If I really like something, it would be nice if I could find more of it.

Yeah, I usually PM my partner that they should make a disc full of music they think is essential that everyone should hear. It's also a great way to get to know your partner's personality. As we're mostly just nameless, faceless message board posters, it's nice to get a little more insight into who we converse with on a daily basis.

Plus, I'm doing this specifically to hear things I haven't heard before. If I only want to hear genres I already like, I'll stick to my own music collection.

Actually, this is coming at the perfect time. I've been feeling a little musically insulated lately. I haven't tried anything new in a while. It would help if popular music weren't in another ditch right now. I'm just waiting for the next big revolution.

You know, there could be artists in genres I like that I'm unfamiliar with too.

You guys are seriously gonna regret the "I don't care what genres you send" statements the moment you get a disc full of German house music.

What cock would send that?

...and why did you have to say that just as I was putting the finishing touches on my "Das Ultimate Blümchen Mix"

The way I see it, any mix disc that focuses exclusively on a single genre is probably gonna be a pretty boring mix disc, whether I like the genre or not.

The most troublesome aspect of dismissing entire genres is that these are genres with which the dismisser is probably almost entirely ignorant. In other words, if you say you hate "emo," you probably mean that you've heard Dashboard Confessional and don't like them. But you may not have heard Sunny Day Real Estate, who sound absolutely nothing like Dashboard Confessional (or substitute "country," "Keith Urban," and "Steve Earle" in that statement - or "hip-hop," "Ludacris," and "Sage Francis"). It is for this reason that I will not acknowledge genre exclusions - in fact, if you tell me you don't like something, it's very likely that you'll get it in some form or another. Tell me what you like, not what you hate.

Naturally, I'll consciously exclude genres if I know the chewer knows a particular genre far better than I do. The diehard metal fan doesn't need me pushing Mastodon on him any more than I need someone pushing the Decemberists on me.

Should we each post a few, say five or ten, of the bands/artists we dig a bunch, so the mixer can get a feel for what the mixee likes/might not have heard?

We could do this via PM after the assignments go out, but actually, I'd think it'd be cool to read everyone else's picks. Or are we trying to avoid cluttering this thread?

Last year, Martin Savage was my guy and said he didn't know much about metal and country - so I made him a mix heavy on metal and country.

As I recall, he liked it.

Steve Earle? Uncle Tupelo? Dwight Yoakam? Gillian Welch? Emmylou Harris?

Ummm, no.

Amen. I don't want to know what you don't want to hear. You shouldn't be doing this if you're that resistant to hearing anything different.

As for myself, if hearing some music I don't like is my greatest regret as I lay dying, I'll know that I've had a charmed life.

Or maybe a Semi-Charmed kind of Life. Wink wink*.

*HEY GREG. IF I GET YOU I AM GOING TO SEND YOU SONGS FROM THIRD EYE BLIND!

I loathe it- there was a point in 1998 where every single comedy trailer was using that song. You were required to hear 'DOOT DOOT DOO! DOOT DOO DOOT-DOOT!" at least once before every film.

Spot on Crow and I had planned on sending to my partner a mixture of music that I've enjoyed through the years.

I kind of want in, but I'm a little nervous...never done anything like this on-line, worried about my diverse tastes being rejected. So, I guess, count me in. What happens next?

We mock you.

It was the All-Star of it's time, for sure, but it's still a very good pop song.

I totally agree with Ripoll about that song. For some reason I've never gotten over being a Third Eye Blind fan in 7th grade, and that's ok with me.

Though your plan to include a 3EB song in your mix means that I can't, because I can't stand doing something someone else is doing.

No way. All-star played at the end of EVERY single movie that was released between Mystery Men and Shrek. Also, Semi-Charmed kind of life is about meth, which added a hilarious subtext to the trailer for The Tigger Movie.

Fuck it, I'll pop my Chud swap cherry.

And...um..that's it. Though anyone expecting to have their hip-hop prespective broadened best not cast their lot with me. Unless they consider Gin N Juiceto be edgy.

Tangent coming:

Saying that "Semi-Charmed Life" is the "All-Star" of its time made me realize how years sort of collapse as you get older. I think of them as from exactly the same time. Turns out they came out two years apart, but it sure felt like movie trailers were using them both for years to come, anyway.

I agree that the meth subtext is kind of funny considering the trailer usage, but the song is still pretty much unlistenable.

Of course, commercials have moved past inappropriate subtext to inappropriate text. There's a Cadillac commercial from this year that uses the Pogues' "Sunny Side of the Street," and they actually use this verse in the ad:

""So I saw that train
And I got on it
With a heartful of hate
And a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on the sunny side of the street."

I like to think that some young ad exec is laughing his ass off that Shane MacGowan's incoherent delivery let him get away with this.

When I heard Paul Westerberg's "Waiting for Somebody" in an Amazon.com commercial. I died a little inside.

Then I remembered the song was basically written as a complementary product to a Cameron Crowe movie, and that softened the blow a little bit. But not in a good way.

Regarding the ironic usage of drug songs in commercials for stuff like cruise ships or retirement funds: I'm sure it's a conscious decision by all involved, which makes it even funnier. It's hard for me to believe that at no point did project managers request lyrics to these songs before attaching them to their ads. It's kind of win-win, though- they've just built cred goodwill toward some of the people who know they're playing a drug song (wink wink, look how edgy!), and everyone else either doesn't care or doesn't notice.

And that semi-charmed song continues to be the bane of my existence.

I don't know about that. To winkingly establish cred may even be the intent, as you say, but I think the Carnival Cruise folks look more clueless than edgy when they use "Lust for Life." And "Semi-Charmed Life" was such a ubiquitous hit that it has no hipster cred no matter what the lyrics are about.

But, then, I also think it's virtually impossible for anyone who knows a thing about the Pogues to link a Cadillac with that band. I don't want Shane MacGowan anywhere near a steering wheel.

I seriously think it's young ad people just amusing themselves. They may be able to convince the old guard that these songs will draw a young audience, but they've gotta know deep down inside that anyone who knows enough to recognize the songs to begin with will see it as kind of laughable, right?

Tangent accepted and acted upon:

My favourite was still the use of 88 Line About 44 Women byt The Nails in an ad for VW (I think). I was hoping the would use the line "Tanya Turkish like to fuck while wearing leather biker boots..." but sadly it never happened.

Well, you and me, yeah. But unlike dumb hipster douchebags, we're smart!

I don't work in advertising, so I can't really speak to the old guard/new guard thing, but I'd still wager that most levels of management are conscious of the drugginess of a song they're using in an ad. I mean, my old high school administrators might have been dunces, but even they wouldn't let me play 'Sunny Side of the Street' at my annual talent show because of the lyrics. And that was the Louis Armstrong version!

"I saw a Shane McGowan sticker on a Cadillac..."

Part of me hopes that any time someone uses a Pogues song they are being subversive but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

Though I'm waiting for the day that somebody uses their version of Just One Of Those Things/Miss Otis Regrets in an ad for Vegas.

I know there's some stereotyping about "hipsters," but I don't think "dumb" is really one of the key associated qualities. While some of that coffeeshop-and-thick-rim-glasses demographic may come off as obnoxious, patronizing, and overly affected, the average "hipster" is usually pretty skeptical when it comes to this sort of advertising.