The Long Lost Mixtape - Mini: The Hunt for Music

Yesterday I found myself feeling frustrated. I had listened to the same song on repeat for 5 days straight. The magic had worn off. I had treated it like a box of Kellog's Smorz cereal on a Monday morning: not thinking about the future and enjoyed it all too soon. Now the song will go back into some long forgotten playlist for a year or so until my cyclical life returns me to a similar state that I am currently in.
Running out of new music used to be a problem. But I wised up and fixed the problem. Trial and error led me to an almost fool proof solution to the common 21st Century ailment known as "Old Music Fatigue Syndrome" (OMFS to the American Medical Association (AMA)). The strategy is three fold:

Step 1. Create a Song Cache.
I don't mean a playlist I mean a song cache. A list on Spotify, Apple Music, Limewire (does that still exist?) or the particular service you use. Treat it like an old 1940's garbage bin long before recycling: everything, good or bad, goes in. Don't give it a theme, that's like naming a pig at a slaughter house, it makes things harder. I call mine 'Big Mess' (located here on Spotify). Every song, and I mean EVERY song that I might have remote interest in goes in without question. This will serve as a life giving well in the desert of long boring work days and painful workout classes your really regret scheduling. If you ever feel symptoms of OMFS, take a few shallow dive into the cache. If you are feeling brave, give a few songs a couple spins. As time goes on, songs will slowly migrate to other playlists, embedding themselves into your life for the better. But this step is useless without steps 2 and 3.

Step 2. Search and steal any song that falls into your path.
a great quote from Brad Wilk, Drummer of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, said in the documentary 'Sound City'

"I think it's really important, and it's a lesson I didn't learn until my late teens, is that whatever bands that you love, Go find out what bands they love, what bands turned them on. Then you really start getting into he human aspect of it...There is this incredible library that is still there." 

Finding good music that you love is a labor of love. Finding gold takes some digging. Use the 'Similar Artists' lists on Spotify and try a few when you have a free moment. Let the Rabbit Hole take you there.

Step 3. Keep Your Ears Open.
Whilst strolling down the frozen food aisle at your local Whole Foods some odd Neo-hipster bluegrass trash will come on the speakers. And when that ends something better may start playing. An upbeat number that is half Tears for Fears, half Kings of Leon. Not bad. Kinda catchy. You were smart and downloaded Shazam...or have an iPhone.  Ask Siri or Shazam what song is playing. People will stare. But never you mind. These are the same poor souls who thought Taylor Swift's new album was a smash hit. And we pity them.

Now apply this everywhere. Watch a commercial. Hear a song. Like it? Find it. Drop it into the pit for later listening. Need an example?  Let me paint a picture.

Spring of 2015. I was a Junior in college. The pain of a particularly difficult break-up convinced me that I needed to get a gym membership. But that same pain winded me, so I sat around my apartment for a week letting Youtube steal days from my life. In this slump I happened upon a movie trailer (below). 'Aloha', staring Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams. A romcom that looked fairly promising. I was actually excited about it. In all sad seriousness, I even planned to go see it by myself as a way to spark this single dude back into the dating pool. Pitiful right?, but shame was my name and I didn't care. Out of excitement I watched it again and again. Upon fourth viewing, at the 1:02 mark in the trailer (below), something changed. I noticed the song that started playing.

It was my feelings speaking back to me in a song I had never heard before. I googled a few lyrics. "First" by Cold War Kids. I started listening to it. I couldn't stop. In manic form I drove to the gym and hopped on the treadmill. Fortunately this gym had a "cardio cinema", basically a dark-room full of treadmills facing a projected movie screen. I say fortunately because I was smiling like an idiot. For two hours actually, all the while listening to the song on loop. The lyrics, the melody all matched how I was feeling. The little treasure of an song understood me and it provided much needed catharsis for that period in my life. And I found it because I was listening. I'm very grateful for it. Side note: what made the situation even more hilariously wonderful is the fact that the Goonies was the featured film that day. It's hard to hold onto bad feelings when "Hey You Guys!" is playing out right in front of you.

I'm going to do an episode on the song so heads up, just like you needed to keep you head up and ears open for new music. You'll find songs you need to hear, songs you've been waiting and praying for. Trust me.

And as a second side note: Aloha turned out to be unwatchable. I eventually started it on an airplane and only made it 2/5 of the way through. It was terrible and eventually switched to reading a book, yikes.

Thanks for reading, Good luck out there