A Very Flawed Christmas 2010: A Flaws Holiday Mix

01. Tom Waits - Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis
02. Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
03. The Pretenders - 2000 Miles
04. Bright Eyes - Blue Christmas
05. The Boy Least Likely To - The First Snowflake
06. Slow Club - Christmas TV
07. Stars - Fairytale of New York

08. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Cold White Christmas
09. Los Campesinos! - Kindle a Flame in Her Heart
10. Tsunami - Could Have Been Christmas
11. Okkervil River - Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas
12. Low - Taking Down the Tree
13. She & Him - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
14. The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers - Christmas Card to a Hooker in Minneapolis

download A Very Flawed Christmas 2010: A Flaws Holiday Mix

stream A Very Flawed Christmas 2010: A Flaws Holiday Mix at 8tracks.com


I had hoped to get this up earlier in the season, but circumstances conspired against me. I have been wanting to release a holiday mix for some years now, and I am happy to have finally done it. No slight or offense is intended toward those who do not celebrate Christmas; I interpret Christmas as more a social holiday than a religious one at this point. Maybe next year I will pull together a Hanukkah mix.

Enjoy, and leave any comments below. And, of course, happy and safe holidays to everybody.

-tjh

With Love and Trust and Friends and Hammers: A Flaws mix

So I have received some positive feedback on the Flaws Mix CD mixer, as well as even a few submissions - thank you to those who have participated so far, and I promise to start on your mixes and send you my source material as soon as I'm done with this move! For now, though, in a rare moment of weather-related inspiration while driving a week or to back, I started to devise a summer mix in my head. And so, without further ado, I would like to share with all of you the official Flaws Summer 2009 mix, courtesy of 8tracks.com!



Note that after listening to the mix twice, the license at the 8tracks site requires that subsequent playbacks are shuffled in random order. Now, this frankly irritates somebody like me, who puts a lot of time and thought and energy into timing and sequencing his mixes, even to the point of trying to make the two "sides" more or less of even duration. Therefore, to counteract this grievance, I would like to put an offer out on the table: if, after listening to this mix, you decide that you would like to have it in a more permanent and physical format, I will make and send you a copy of the mix, in exchange for a summer mix of your own.

But, in any case, I hope you listen to and enjoy this mix. And if you're up for it, consider joining up over at 8tracks.com; it will allow you to discover countless mixes, comment on mixes, follow those of whose mixes you are a fan, and of course upload and share your own mixes!

And I'm serious about the physical copy offer... just e-mail me from the link over to the left. And same thing goes with the Mix CD mixer; it's an ongoing project! Hooray for overextending oneself!

Introducing the Flaws Mix CD Mixer.

A post I recently read on another blog got me to thinking about mixtapes. Now, for those who don’t know me, one thing you need to understand: I love mixes. Yeah, I know, who doesn’t, right? But no. You don’t understand. I LOVE mixes.

In 2006 I undertook an ambitious project I dubbed the Mix CD Odyssey of 2006. It was kind of a social experiment in which I tried to use mixes to bring disparate groups of friends together. The idea was as follows: I would make a CD every week for a year. I had recruited a distribution list of 25 or so friends to whom I would give copies of this CD. I would then post the tracklisting of each disc via various social networking outlets as well as on my own (now-defunct) website, and encourage people to discuss, ask each other questions, interact. The social aspect of the experiment was pretty much a failure, as no real discussion between the subscribers ever seemed to spark and comments were limited to praise for my song selection or sequencing. Still, though, the comments were very appreciated and encouraging, and I had a hell of a lot of fun making the CDs until the bottom fell out – which it was always bound to do. (Another thing you may not know about me if you do not know me well: I have a long history of undertaking fantastically ambitious projects with the best of intentions, becoming overwhelmed, and completely abandoning them). 52 mixes in a year is a lot of work, not to mention the cost of making and mailing 25 copies. I made it about 46 weeks before I completely threw in the towel, although after week 30 or so they started to reach fewer and fewer of my subscriber. If any of those people are reading this now, I’m sorry. I intended to do a similar project this year, except doing the mixes monthly instead of weekly. Unfortunately, life got in the way and the project never got off the ground at all. Apologies again for anyone who expected to get in on that project.

This was originally supposed to be a post explaining the various reasons why I have such a love for mixes, but I think that rather than telling you, perhaps I should show you. Action is always more fun than intellectualization, yes? I agree. And so, I formally invite you to take part in the inaugural round of the Flaws Mixtape Mixer.  Simply put, let’s trade mixes.

Here’s how we’re going to do it. None of this making a single mix that I send out to everybody; each of you who take part in this will be receiving your own personalized mix, even if I don’t know you. If you’d like to take part, simply write me something. It can be as short as a sentence or as long as a short story. It can be anything. A sentence you just read in a book. An account of the happiest, or unhappiest, day of your life. A description of your first kiss. A recounting of your most vivid nightmare. Your biggest fear. A secret. A story you wrote. A story somebody else wrote. Or send me a photograph. Or anything else. I will use whatever you send me as a jumping-off point; it will be the inspiration for your mix. I will send you some inspiration to use for my mix. Maybe at some point we can branch this out more, and get complete strangers to make personalized mixes for each other. It’s always about the communication. Making that connection across time and distance and odds.

Also, I'm flexible. While I tend to work with CD-R just because of convenience, I can also do cassette if you want to do an old-school thing. Just let me know in your e-mail.

I know I’ve been flaky with these mix things lately, but seriously, let’s make this happen.

Kindly e-mail me at its.flaws at gmail.com to take part in this.

This post was composed to the tune of The National by The National.