Social Graffiti: The art of a great mix tape

By Charles Young
George Washington High School

Though it’s more accurate to say “ripped CD” or “iPod playlist” these days, the mix tape is a seminal part of music culture. It’s you taking the best elements from across the board and putting them together to express your emotions.

Remember you have everything ever recorded to work with here. You either have to keep your selections diverse or extremely tight to maintain the flow of your tape. You can create mix tapes for all occasions, seasons, moods and themes. You can give them as gifts of just make them for yourself.

Here is my tape, a mix of old and new favorites:

1. “Never Ending Math Equation (Live),” Modest Mouse

Lead singer Isaac Brock is notorious for giving half-drunk sloppy shows, where the audience knows more of the words then he does. On this cut from the bootleg album “Baron Von Bulls**t Rides Again,” Brock is caught in a rare, sober, coherent moment and makes it through the show without puking on the amp.

2. “Crack Music,” Kanye West

Kanye was right: George Bush doesn’t care about black people. This is his retort in the face of his opposition. Although some accusations might be a little far fetched, he makes good points about the decaying state of America.

3. “Political Science,” Randy Newman

I know that I am going to get made fun of for including Randy Newman, but I love him. He makes satirical music in the grand tradition of cabaret and is often misinterpreted when people take his acid-inked pen at face value and write him off as flippant.

4. “Fight Song,” Marilyn Manson

I am torn on whether to love or hate Manson, but I agree with a lot of what he has to say. He makes the kind of music that is supposed to scare your mother, and he does a great job.

5. “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” Joy Division

The band took its name from the “racially pure” women who served as Nazi sex-slaves during WWII. Mix that with a lead singer who experienced seizures and ended up killing himself while listening to an Iggy Pop record, and you have some of the most frighteningly interesting alt-goth-pop music of the late ‘70s Manchester rock scene.

6. “Blank Generation,” Richard Hell

This is one of the first true punk songs, an anthem that helps usher an entire generation into their winter of discontent.

7. “Ghost Rider,” Suicide

This song’s primitive organ sounds and screams of “America’s killing its youth” became stepping stones for every dissenting youth for the next 30 years.

8. “I Am the Resurrection,” The Stone Roses

Fueled by youth, brilliance, and twice their own body weight in ecstasy, the Roses made freak-out music, and they didn’t even know how good it was.

9. “Nefarious,” Spoon

If you love falsetto vocals and clever lyrics, then you’ll love Spoon. This track came before big labels and money — back when all that mattered was music and art.

10. “World Destruction,” Time Zone (feat. John Lydon and Afrika Bambaataa)

Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) and Bambaataa team up for a collaboration that predates Aerosmith and Run DMC’s “Walk This Way.” They take aim at everything in Western culture and politics, creating an eerily accurate caricature of our way of life.

11. “The Denial Twist,” The White Stripes

12. “19-2000,” Gorillaz

13. “Hyper-Ballad,” Bjork

14. “Hanging on the Telephone,” Blondie

15. “Lily-a-Passion,” Grant-Lee Philips