Muxtape

Remember the days when you'd record a cassette of all your favorite songs from the radio, hoping that the DJ wouldn't say any crass comments once the song began because you wanted a perfectly duplicated song? When you and your friends exchanged tapes of some of your coolest music?

...

Hold on, what's a cassette again?

Nice try, but I'm not that far removed from the antediluvian yesteryears of tape media. In fact, I was the proud owner of a radio / cassette player at 3rd grade, where I began listening to oldies until a close friend of mine revealed the secret of life: top 40 radio. Oh, the days of the Spin Doctors, Mariah Carey, and other nameless, shallow, one-hit wonder bands that graced the mid 90s airwaves. It was at this time where any glimmer of hope of discovering the immutable greatness of my mother's worn Jackson 5 or Beatles LPs would be hermetically dashed until the aesthetic wanderings of my college years banged its way into my tympanic membrane. You think I'm exaggerating, but considering I never heard 'Yesterday' until I was a junior in college will tell you just how deep I was in the din of the popular airwaves. The Doobie Brothers? Jimi Hendrix even? Nah ... just give me Usher and ... yes, even N'SYNC and The Backstreet Boys.

Why do I share these harrowing tales of chagrin and self-degradation? Well, first off, it is pretty darn funny. If I had a nickel for every time I admitted that my sophomoric older self would chuckle at my equally sophomoric younger self, I'd probably have at least four bucks. And who doesn't love the mere act of chuckling, even if it is at one self? It's healthy to laugh at yourself. That's what I learned one time in a NFL commercial where John Madden talked about the best response to pain or surviving a devastating tackle on the field was, simply, to laugh at yourself. I suppose that works, assuming you weren't hit so hard that you swallowed your tongue or your brain stem stabbed through your forehead. But, life-threatening injuries aside, the principle is true.

This brings me to my point. With my spastic love affair with top 40 radio ending sometime in college, I mailed off my 'let's just be friends' sympathy card to Clear Channel (which, after years of arresting my attention span long enough to seethe catchy pop hooks and subconscious advertising upon my most human desires, I figure a few four-letter word combinations were necessary to communicate my feelings) and thus began exploration in the unknown. 'Like, there's music that is actually not on the radio? Blasphemy! I don't believe you, witch!' I stepped into a dark night, a really dark night, like one where an overworked power grid shuts down and all the lights on the street are out, leaving people to run around and go crazy with handing out their freezer items. It was this kind of dismal, confusing cacophony where my mom let me borrow the Abbey Road CD I bought for her when I was in middle school. 'Hey, I'm making a long drive back to college...and the Beatles are supposed to be pretty good, so I'll give them a shot.' After that, I never looked back. I sold my possessions, burned my radio, and then furiously tried to put the fire out on said radio because I suddenly realized it had a CD player on it. Shoot!

caption: the world rightfully extolling
the humanitarian value of Radiohead's third album

It started with the Beatles, then it moved on to The Bends by Radiohead, then OK Computer, and then suddenly, it was like a secret of the universe was given to me: music didn't have to suck. Period. There was beautiful stuff out there, and often times, it just took asking your most-hipster-looking friend, 'Hey, what kind of music are you listening to these days?' After rolling their eyes, putting down there double-shot extra-hot 2% sugar-free vanilla latte, and tightening their skinny jeans, they'd say something prophetic, like, 'The Smiths' or 'The Decemberists' or 'The Shins' or (insert the indefinite article 'The' followed by a plural noun, pronoun, or a witty combination of two irregularly used nouns). 'Oh,' I would submissively respond. 'What do they sound like? Can I borrow a CD?' And thus a parasite-to-host, surrogate relationship is formed between guru and guruee. Soon, you're rocking out to, honestly, some amazing (and occasionally depressing / borderline emo) stuff.

Unlike our world supply of oil, I haven't even begun to tap the first eighth of the abundant reserves of music out there, so I'm still listening and constantly discovering new forms. There's hip-hop, geek rock, space rock (like Astro Boy?), glam/psychadelic rock, Eastern European folk, Casio-Keyboard-plus-record-button rock, all kinds of crazy stuff. And a lot of it isn't revolutionarily 'indie' ... it's just that I'd never heard about any of these bands because I was too distracted singing 98 Degrees to my 9th grade girlfriend.

And behold, I share with you today some of my favorite artists, signed and unsigned, major and indie, with you through an application called MuxTape. I made a playlist similar to that old 3rd grade cassette tape, except this time it is completely digital, accessible, and free...not to mention free from boy bands. Enjoy!

http://steveryanpratt.muxtape.com/