Remember mix tapes?? I know everyone does mix CDs or iTunes playlists now, but I still think mix tapes were the best… since CDs can hold SO much information, it’s not really a mix but more of a list of all the songs (who really listens to 4 or 5 hour mixes??)… But when I was a teen, those 60-minute mix tapes meant that for a certain specified time, you could control the songlist. In college, making a mix tape for a friend was the HEIGHT of sealing a friendship…and to make one for a crush, or to receive one from a cute boy, the HEIGHT of love.
My friends always laughed at me because I made the WORST mix tapes. I would put two or three songs from the same artist (usually Madonna) in a row, which was AGAINST THE RULES of mixes…we always aimed for a high/low aesthetic–Color Me Badd and then Elvis Costello, Lou Reed segueing into Pump Up the Jam.
One of the most important lessons I ever learned from my friends at Columbia was to cultivate a sincere appreciation for highbrow and lowbrow culture. To say you only listened to opera and classical music made you a stuck-up nerd, but to only listen to Top 40 meant you were kind of brainless. We all aspired to a fun-loving sophistication. Mahler one day, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch the next.
Our mix tapes reflected this ideal– we would put in Mozart’s Concerto No 19 and then play The Connells right after it. I even have a mix tape with the Hallelujah chorus that fades into Like A Virgin.
Anyway, because I am kind of mix-tape handicapped, when I put together the iMix for Blue Bloods, I asked my husband Mike to help me. Mike was a college radio station DJ in his youth, (one of the inspirations for ANGELS, which is partly set at a college radio station) so he has to take the credit (or the blame) for the iMix.
You can also search for it– it’s called Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz Book Soundtrack!
And if you don’t have iTunes, here are the list of songs on the mix that you can get from any other online store I believe. Or maybe you even own these songs already…And don’t worry, there is no classical music on this, but there is a nice instrumental piece.
All these songs inspired/inspire Blue Bloods…
1. Muse: Time is Running Out – Jack and Schuyler’s Theme
2. Love and Rockets: Haunted When the Minutes Drag – Michael and Gabrielle’s Theme
3. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness: I Want to Die in the Hot Summer – The band’s name sounds like something Mimi would say
4. Jelly Roll Morton: Blue Blood Blues – Is there any other kind?
5. Death Cab for Cutie: I Will Follow You Into the Dark – Bliss and Dylan’s Theme
6. Stellastarr*: Love and Longing – The Blue Blood Anthem
7. The Crimea: Lottery Winners on Acid – Oliver’s Song for Schuyler
8. My Bloody Valentine: Sometimes – A Gothic Love Song
9. Run Run Run: Fade Into You – Schuyler’s Wish
10. M83 : Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun – A Conspiracy Tune
Enjoy! As we used to say, “chair-dance” away….
xoxo
Mel
PS-I will also be putting up an Au Pairs iMix very soon!