This is the story of my average morning. Some of the tracks were picked because of their titles, but mostly it was the vibe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do every morning.

If you don't like the collective works of Mike Patton, move along. There's nothing to see here.

I made this mix for a friend. I didn't want this to just be my favorite songs, I wanted to cover the wide ranges of each band. As such, I'm sure I left off something that someone out there will say 'how can you make a Patton mix and not use...' Well there's only 80 minutes to a mix, so toughen up, Nancy.

This is a hard one for me to make since I'm such a fanboy. Every track I had to cut was like giving up a family member to satiate a pack of rabid wolves. But in a bad way.
I started by listing all of the tracks I might want to use. That gave me about 6 hours of music which, as you might know, is more than a cd can handle. So from there, I went over everything again, and got the list down to 3 hours 45 minutes. Then after picking my starting point, I pretty much just tried to find what flowed nicely. I didn't worry too much about spreading the bands out because I thought it would end up too A-B-C-A-B-C..., though I didn't use the same band twice in a row.

The first arrangement I came up with was 1:20:07, so I had to find some way to chop it down. In the process I ended up reworking it almost entirely. I had 2 Bungle tracks from California that pretty much had the same vibe, so I figured I could sacrifice one to make room for some more variation. Again, this changed the whole mix. I've been working on this one since right after my monster mix, if that gives you any idea of how much work this one has been.

Plus there was the issue of which albums should be included. Should I use any of Patton's work with Zorn? Or maybe his track from Handsome Boy Modeling School? Some stuff just couldn't fit, timewise and in the flow. Fantomas' Directors Cut is absent. As is FNM's The Real Thing. But I think most of the ground is pretty well covered.

I think I've rambled on long enough. On to the mix.

Robots make shitty music. They make techno that you'd have to be on large amounts of designer drugs to enjoy. And they kill people with lasers. That's so impersonal. I think it's because robots have no soul.

Monsters, however, are the subject of kick-ass music. And they kill you with their bare hands. That shows you they care. Monsters have soul.

Sad songs. For a lot of the songs on this mix, I went back to my younger years. I was a big sissy when it came to the ladies. If my gal was cheatin', I'd probably be weeping somewhere listening to one of these tracks. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Nor am I ashamed that I pulled out a Darwin's Waiting Room track. Recognize.

Don't listen to this mix while operating firearms or sharp objects.

Visit me on soulseek to download.

This mix was inspired by a letter I got in the mail the other day. PP&L said I had to give them a large sum of money in the next 10 days or they were turning the power off. You know how that goes, I'm sure. Thus, I've birthed this mix of songs that don't use electric instruments.

I don't listen to a whole lot of this type of stuff, so picking these tracks has been a bit of a challenge. I didn't just want to make an acoustic cd, and I didn't want to go reaching for stuff I don't actually listen to. Sure, I could have dug out that old Nirvana unplugged album, but I don't really play that shit anymore so it feels dishonest.

Normally when making a mix cd, I try to hit the post as close to 80 minutes as possible. With this mix, I really felt like some of the tracks were just on there as filler so I cut it down to a leaner, meaner 47. More of a "mix ep", really. It makes it's point and then you can move on with your life.

This is just a mix to get the ball rolling. The basic theme is just some of the music I'm listening to a lot these days. Some of it is older, some newer. All of it is pure dynamite.