Doll Skin, or?
the song was such a mood, it prolonged the moment, made everything feel so much more cinematic.
In the movie High Fidelity, John Cusack's character spends time making mixtapes for girls he likes. It's not the focus of the film, but the process of making a mixtape is integral to the plot and the mixtape scenes serve as turning points in the film. I'm not going to intellectualize High Fidelity because the movie is dumb, but I liked it in high school and John Cusack's character's formula for making a really good mixtape is something that I think about regularly and especially when I am making a mixtape for someone. I was known in high school for my mixtapes. they probably weren't all that good, to be honest, because a lot of the mixtapes I made in high school had a lot of the same songs on them. maybe there's a metaphor here for carelessly throwing my love around in this ambiguous and formulaic way, but in reality I used a lot of the same songs in my mixes because they are songs that I love. My best friend in high school mildly roasted me for using the same Rainer Maria song on all of my mixtapes. I don't care, "Breakfast of Champions" was definitely one of my bangers.
My mixes start off with something attention-grabbing but not too intense but also very dramatic, like "Lonely Star" by The Weeknd, then I follow it up with something that picks up the pace a little bit but on a similar vibe, like "Rhyme or Reason" by Eminem, then follow that up with something a little slower and more driving, like "Realize" by 2 Chainz featuring Nicki Minaj, then continue that vibe with something like "Drive" by Warpaint, then by the fifth track I’m ready to set the stage for something a little different, change the mood up a little bit with something like "Artpop" by Lady Gaga and follow that up with something like "Splash Waterfalls" by Ludacris and then I kind of just mess around with the rest of the playlist, adding songs that I love or feel appropriate for whoever I’m making it for or whatever occasion I’m making it for, and of course the last song has to be something really fun or really lingering, depending on what type of message I am trying to send.
I modeled my formula for mixtape-making after John Cusack's character in High Fidelity, but I am pretty loose with it. I recently made a playlist on Youtube for a friend and started it with a video clip of Gucci Mane explaining what it means to be "lost in the sauce" and ended the playlist with a video of Nicki Minaj behind the scenes laying down her vocal tracks for "Shopaholic" and debating with the engineer on whether or not she should sing on it.
I used to make cassette mixtapes exclusively up until very recently, but now I just make playlists on Youtube. I have a great CD collection but I don't have a stereo anymore so these days I just listen to music on my computer. All through high school, college, and after I made cassette mixtapes for my friends and crushes. I want to get into cassette mixtapes for a moment because it's an entire experience making one. Unlike CD mixtapes where you can just select a bunch of songs into a playlist and burn a CD, cassette mixtapes are a slow and painstaking process where the maker listens to every song going into the mix and arranges and times it accordingly so that it can fit on two separate sides of the cassette. Each side is its own piece and should also make sense as a whole, when side B is played directly after side A.
Sitting alone on the floor in front of my stereo in my bedroom on Fitzwater street, paging through my CD books to find the right song to put on the mix next, doing it on the fly but creating a mood, writing out the track list on cute notepad paper adorned with Sanrio style characters and decorating the packaging I created: this was my idea of meditation. Making mixtapes was a process, and using my energy to think about making something nice for another person brought a sense of peace within me. I made mixtapes as holiday gifts because I think a handcrafted present made with the person it's being given to in mind is much nicer than some crap I can afford to buy from a store, nicer than some nice-smelling soap (maybe not depending on the person because some people really love soap), but definitely more personal.
My most recent favorite mixtape is a playlist I made collaboratively with friends on Facebook. Crowdsourcing is such a useful tool when trying to get more information on something that you can only remember a part of, as I was one day when trying to find the name of a song without knowing the name of the band or any of the lyrics. It was a song I heard while sitting in the backseat of an Uber with two of my friends one morning going from the house we rented in Los Angeles to the convention center downtown where the AWP book fair was taking place. The sun was still relatively low in the sky and shone through the car windows in a warm and hopeful brilliance. No one spoke, we were all quiet and in our own heads, the way it usually is in the morning before that first cup of coffee assuming the role of the observer. The freeway unfolded around us as we approached our destination, and the song was such a mood, it prolonged the moment, made everything feel so much more cinematic.
Months later, I wanted to listen to it again. Without knowing the band or remembering any of the lyrics to google and try to find it for myself, I posted the best description I could muster on Facebook.
What’s that 90s or early 2000s alt rock song has a strong bassline and sentimental lyrics and kind of sounds like “Doll Skin” by Toadies, but isn’t “Doll Skin” by Toadies?
My friend Cyn actually guessed correctly, and she was the second person to leave a comment. The song was "Got You Where I Want You" by The Flys.
Even though the song had been correctly guessed, friends kept commenting their own song suggestions, all 90s alt rock deep cuts with sentimental lyrics and strong basslines. In honor of the comment thread, I put together a playlist of the crowdsourced submissions in the thread with “Doll Skin" by Toadies starting it off and followed by "Got You Where I Want You" by The Flys and the other suggestions. I called the playlist "90s sentimental alt rock deep cuts."
You can listen to 90s Sentimental Alt Rock Deep Cuts on Youtube or Spotify.