The Snarkfest Mix Club and the IMP Mix Club both issued party mix challenges this month. I took this as a sign to make my first real party mix. The mix is about four hours long and is intended to be played from about 11PM to 3AM. Since party music is all about celebrating what's familiar to most of us, I included quite a few radio friendly songs, hence the mix's title. Now, I could have been a little more genre specific or a little edgier in my choices, but I wanted to make a mix that all of my friends could mostly enjoy. Since most of my friends live in different states and different countries, we'll never really know how this party mix would have taken root in a live setting. It may have been the bomb or it may have been a K-Tel cold fart, but I did my damnedest to feature a variety of genres including twee, rock, garage, hip hop, club, and shoegaze. It's all pretty easy on the ears - so no free jazz in this mix. I kept the pace basically upbeat with slower songs for lovey-dovey dancing or conversation or drinking or all of the above.

This mix was tough because I'm used to making moody headphone music mostly and some of the mixes that I've made in the past could work as party mixes, but I don't think they would satisfy enough of the hypothetical people hypothetically present. When you play stuff for the minority of your friends, it's really cliquey - and that's not so good if you've got people in the house that really don't get off on trance music. And since I've never been that sort of High Fidelity type snob to shun people based on their lack of musical taste (a person's musical taste is a useful barometer of their worth as person, but it is most certainly not the deciding factor.), and because I set the parameters that I did, I had to make this mix just the way I did.

Anyway, no one ever comes to this site nowadays, but I'll post this monster party mix just the same.

Cheers.