Mixtapes

The mixtape pages here are not zip files in disguise. They are listening essays written around a track sequence the way a film critic writes around a screening. Each one points to a record, an artist cluster, or a piece of cultural memory and works through it song by song, with a reason for the order.

If you came to this section looking for ripped audio, the page will probably disappoint you. If you came looking for someone who has spent real time with a record and is prepared to argue for a particular reading of it, you will find that material across most of the entries below.

How the mixtape series got organised

Three threads run through the archive.

The longest is Goes Twang, which began in 2008 as a way of reading the country side of artists not usually shelved in country. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison, Willie Nelson, Gene Clark, Tim Hardin, the Allman Brothers Band, and a handful of less obvious figures each get treated as if they had a country record hiding in their catalogue. The premise is that they often did, and that the way they used pedal steel, fiddle, or plain story-song writing tells you something the rest of the catalogue can hide.

The second is Guest Mixtape, a slot for outside writers and friends of the site to argue for a sequence we would not have built ourselves. The Other Countries set, the Midnight Radio set, the Grand Ole Echo's Roots Roadhouse set, and the collaborative We All Go Twang piece all sit in this thread. The voice changes from one to the next on purpose.

The third is Mixin' with, a series that treats short artist conversations as the framing for a small handful of recommended cuts. Where the conversation can be reconstructed honestly, it is. Where it cannot, the page reads as reported context without invented quotes.

What you will find on a mixtape page

A typical mixtape page has the same shape:

• a one-paragraph statement of the argument the sequence is trying to make
• a track list, written cleanly, so a reader can build the playlist on a player they already use
• a track-by-track section that reads as criticism
• a closing paragraph that puts the sequence back in its frame

That is the editorial discipline. It keeps the writing honest about what it is doing. A page is not asking the reader to pull files; it is asking the reader to pull a record off a shelf, or to queue the cuts on whichever player they already pay for.

Suggested first reads

If you have not read the site before and you want a representative cut, these are the entries I would point a friend at.

• Bruce Springsteen Goes Twang for the way Springsteen's country instincts run earlier than the Nebraska shorthand suggests.
• Guest Mixtape: Other Countries for a writer outside the Americana frame thinking sideways into it.
• The Band Goes Twang as the early statement of what the series wanted to be.
• Tim Hardin Goes Twang preserved at its old static path for readers who arrive there from old citations.
• What Would Levon Helm Do as an example of the guest format at its strongest.
• Fuego d'Amor - a When You Awake mixtape for the looser, more atmospheric end of the format.
• We All Go Twang - a collaborative mixtape to see the format opened up to the wider readership.

A note on availability

Older mixtape pages on the site sometimes mentioned downloadable files. Those files are not hosted now. The decision is partly legal and partly editorial: the original audio belongs to the rights holders, and the writing was always meant to do the heavy lifting on its own. If a sequence on the page interests you, build it on whichever streaming or library tool you already use and read the essay alongside it. The two halves are designed to fit.

Browsing the rest of the shelf

If you want the full spread, the pages below are a good map.

• Neil Young Goes Twang
• Bob Dylan Goes Twang, Part Two
• Gene Clark Goes Twang
• Dylan Goes Twang, Part Three
• Willie Nelson Goes Twang
• George Harrison Goes Twang
• Dylan Goes Twang, Part Four
• Guest Mixtape: Midnight Radio
• The Allman Brothers Band Goes Twang
• Music for the Morning After: a Valentines mixtape
• Guest Mixtape: Grand Ole Echo's Roots Roadhouse
• MP3 Roundup: the Felice Brothers, Grant Maxwell, the Cave Singers

The thread keeps growing. New entries are written in the same key.