Mixtape

Michael left this morning for Florida. He and a friend were in a car accident earlier this evening, but apparently nobody was hurt. He couldn't talk very long so I didn't get many details. I hope he doesn't have any hidden back or neck injuries that would prevent him from running.

Speaking of Michael's absence, I have decided to use the tape to make a mixtape - mix CD, actually - to familiarize him with the scope of my musical tastes.

I have never found a tidy word or phrase to replace 'mixtape'. I haven't made a mixtape in years, but 'mix CD' seems unwieldy and fails to capture the connotations associated with the former. To me, it seems that one makes a 'mix CD' for a party and a 'mixtape' for a boyfriend or girlfriend. 'CD-R' just seems too clinical. Any suggestions?

The challenge to making a mix CD/tape is distilling my collection of almost 10,000 tracks to just a handful of representative tracks. I know that one CD just won't cut it. Four or five may be going a little overboard. Luckily, Michael already knows that I am incapable of moderation when it comes to music. Maybe I'll spread it out over the course of a few weeks so he has time to listen to it all.

To give an idea of the variety I will try to represent, here is a list of the albums I have listened to in full in the last 12 hours: Robyn by Robyn, Shake Off the Dust... Arise by Matisyahu, Ruby Blue by Róisín Murphy, Nous Non Plus by Nous Non Plus, Vocal City by Luomo, Faith by The Cure, The Red Shoes by Kate Bush, and Chunga's Revenge by Frank Zappa.

In other music-related news, I finally e-mailed a professor at the School of Music to get more information on the M.A. in ethnomusicology program. I am waiting to find out whether I would need to get a B.A. in music first, or if my B.A. in anthropology will be applicable. In the meantime, I have started looking for articles in music journals that might be interesting to me. Today I read an article about forms of Buddhist music in China and Taiwan. To tell the truth, the article wasn't very interesting to me. This is probably because my primary interests are forms arising directly out of punk and industrial. I am waiting for a book about modern Finnish folk music that I ordered through interlibrary loan. This will probably be more interesting to me, considering the recent explosion of freak-folk artists and collectives from Finland like Lau Nau, Islaja, Päivänsäde, etc. I'll post more about it when I read it.