Mixtapes

I love mixtapes (or mix CDs). I love hearing them, I love making them, and I love movies about guys who obsess about making them (see John Cusack as Rob Gordon in High Fidelity). But no one carries around CDs anymore. We're iPod people now. In The Age of the iPod, mixtapes are something of a lost art.

So why do I care about a medium which limits me to 80 minutes of music when I can put my iTunes on shuffle for over a month before a song repeats?

Well, my rhetorical self, because sometimes the limitations of a medium are essential components of the artform. It's like having an editor, an editor that doesn't give a shit about the quality of your work; he/she just wants to make sure you don't string together two and a half hours of uninterrupted Peter Frampton when 80 minutes of talk box solos will do.

So my extensive mix history includes a collection of counting songs (The Bellybutton Cipher: Volumes I & II), a gypsy music mix, a mix of songs where a gypsy plays a prominent role, a love mix *mee-yow*, a collection of "All Along the Watchtower" covers, dance mixes, summer mixes, birthday mixes, mixes to drive to, you freaking name it.

I've got a couple new ideas I've been mulling over, and I think I'm about ready to move on the simpler one. The harder one is tentatively titled Life, and will chronicle, well, someone's life from womb to tomb. The most difficult thing about it is finding tracks with limited scopes to string together in a chronology that makes sense. Hell, I could make a one track mixtape for this from any number of Biggy Smalls cuts, but that's no fun.

No, the one I'm about ready for is Spanish Mix. It's loosely inspired by the fact that the only foreign countries I've visited are Spanish-speaking, and I don't speak the goddamn language. This mix, like me, is intended to make you think you're going to hear a bunch of Spanish, but, in fact, you will hear very little... if any at all.

Basically, I'm just trying to sequence a bunch of tracks in which the word "Spanish" is thrown about willy nilly. I have also decided songs about Spanish-speaking countries are acceptable. Additionally, I feel that these songs should be, well, good. This is important, as quality was not a prerequisite for some of my earlier mixes (e.g. both volumes of The Bellybutton Cipher).

Here's what I have so far (in no particular order):

The Clash - "Spanish Bombs"
Tom Waits - "Walking Spanish"
Bob Dylan - "Boots of Spanish Leather"
The New Pornographers - "Sing Me Spanish Techno"
The Doors - "Spanish Caravan"
The Decemberists - "Kingdom of Spain"
The Coasters - "Down in Mexico"
Mirah - "The Dogs of Buenos Aires"
Jimi Hendrix - "Spanish Castle Magic"

Some borderline applicable tracks include Leonard Cohen's "Stories of the Street" (The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh...), Counting Crows' "Mr. Jones" (...cut up, Maria, show me some of them Spanish dances...), and Neutral Milk Hotel's "Holland, 1945" (...now she's a little boy in Spain playing pianos filled with flames...). These are borderline, because they only reference Spanish/Spain, um, once each. It sort of feels like cheating, you know?

It is readily apparent that my current problem is a dearth of material. I'm not trying to make a mix EP here, but I'm also not looking to stuff this thing to the brim. I would be happy with twelve good tracks or so.

Here's where YOU come in. Any ideas?