Life is a Playlist

I picked up Love is a Mix Tape many months ago to read, based purely on its title.  The title spoke volumes to me, I didn't need to know the book was about.  I finally read it and the book was louder than I ever imagined!  Rob Sheffield and I live parallel lives when it comes to the role music plays in our lives.  Without giving much about the book away, each chapter is a mix tape playlist and what events inspired this tape.  I have been making mix tapes since I got my first tape deck in 8th grade.  I had mix tapes for everything... I made my own "greatest hits" of favorite artists, favorite radio hits, I even made a mix tape of music about Los Angeles by Los Angeles bands as a term paper companion on regionalism!

My mix tapes don't stop when the cassette player died.  No, I moved on to mix CD's.  The first mix CD I created the first week I had my brand spanking new HP computer was of all the 45 singles we had growing up.  I made the CD for my Dad as a birthday present.  The CD ended up being the soundtrack in a photography studio when my brothers and I had portraits shot for our parents for Christmas.

My mix CD's became legend.  I had friends requesting copies of my mix CD's of 80's music, dance music and one of my favorites, I called Stupid Night.  Stupid Night was the music played at Live Bait on KNAC night in Long Beach.  Nicole and I went every Tuesday night, but we didn't want to tell people where we were actually going, so we just called it Stupid Night...  I think my all-time crowd favorite mix CD is my 2004 Christmas CD that I sent out as my Christmas card.  Every holiday season people who were lucky enough to receive it tell me it is their favorite Christmas CD or that it isn't Christmas till they play my CD!  That is what it is all about!

But now it is all about the Playlist on my iPod!  Oh I still burn CD's for people, but now they are a copy of one of the many playlists on my iPod.  There are playlists of 80's music, 90's music, Disco Boogie, Let's Dance, Groovy Bossanova, Summertime, This is Halloween, Vive le France, Swingtime and of course Stupid Night.  I have a playlist for every mood, every occasion.  I made a playlist of all the music used for all 6 seasons of Sex and the City.  I made a playlist of the music used on Freaks and Geeks.  I made a playlist to play at my Dad's birthday party.  Come to think of it... I think my Dad is to blame here for my music mixing obsession!  When I was a little girl, my Dad would have record albums spread all over the living room floor making a mix reel-to-reel tape!  

So my life really has been a playlist from the beginning!