The SBC Community Mixtape #15

[HawkbitAlpha]

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, I DECLARE WE MIX SOME MORE! TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT, WHAT DO WE ALL CREATE? THE COMMUNITY MIXTAPE! Now, uh, let me just get out of this here, uh... cheerleader outfit... hang on, y'all-- OKAY! Yes, it's that time again, to throw vinyl records at the wall and see which ones stick, for the 15th edition of the SBC Community Mixtape! Since we've already done a Christmas mixtape before, we're going to take things in a slightly different direction this year. Our theme this time shall be...

NOSTALGIC HIGHLIGHTS

Every year, when we start entering into the Christmas season, I have these little flashbacks to prior Christmases, and some of my favorite moments of them in years past. It isn't limited just to the holiday season either; sometimes, if I listen to certain songs, I might get mentally tossed back in time to the period in which I first heard it, like how I first heard albums by Dream Theater and Ok Goodnight while living in a big city for the first time. That's what I want y'all to bring to the table this time: songs that you have some kind of association with nostalgic, or otherwise very memorable moments in your life, holiday-related or not. Whether or not you want to also tell the story behind each of your choices is up to you!

As always, the rules:

• Length limits per person: you have a total of 30 minutes worth of music to play with. (This site is great for calculating the times.)
• Try to post your submissions using a Spotify playlist. If this is not possible for you, at least make sure that all of your submissions are available on Spotify.
• Joke/troll entries can and most likely will be excluded.
• No repeat entries (can't submit the same thing as somebody else).

Tentative deadline for submissions is this Saturday, December 30th. Until then, I'll be looking somewhere for a broadband tree.

[Jjs Goodman]

 

[Steel Sponge]

The theme I've done for this one is 'Songs that helped me through 2017-2020:'

 

[Joe Biden]

POV: You're an 11-year-old and you just discovered a very cool radio station that plays old '80s and '90s stuff.

 

[ExKizuna]

2009-2017, you will be missed. Roughly a song for each year in that period with nothing for 2012

 

[SBManiac]

So, this one was a bit hard for me to compile since there were plenty of songs I have nostalgic memories of that didn't make the cut. I will say that this playlist is roughly in chronological order from my childhood in the early aughts, to around the time I was wrapping up community college in the first half of 2020. More details in the spoilers!

Spoiler

1. "Amigos por Siempre" ("Friends Forever") - Martin Ricca and Belinda: So this one's gonna require a bit of context. When I was a wee lass in the early 2000s, my mom, who's from Mexico, got me to watch a bunch of children's telenovelas ("soap operas" or "TV dramas" is the closest phrase I can think of for it in English) to get me to learn Spanish. One of those telenovelas was called Amigos X Siempre (something like Friends 4Ever in English, since "por" is how the multiplication sign is pronounced as a word in Spanish--math puns lol) about a group of kids who form a rock band named "Amigos X Siempre" in the "rigid, repressive" Instituto Vidal elementary school--according to Wikipedia, at least, since it's been years since I've seen the show myself. The song itself is sung by the two stars of the show, then-child actors and singers Martin Ricca and Belinda, with a message of believing in your friends when times get tough, set to a catchy pop-rock tune. Here are the lyrics translated in English in case anyone's interested:

If you're feeling sad and everything's going wrong/You should always start to think/That you have a friend who you can trust/You and me, always together--they can't stop us!

You're the person who can help me/It's our fate that will support us/So that, me and you, Amigos X Siempre/Find our happy ending

Chorus: You're someone who can be trusted/Let's go together, let's go now/Looking for happiness/Come a little closer/Amigos X Siempre until the end/Fighting for our freedom

You and me always together, never looking back/That's how we can get our freedom/Take my hand, you have to believe/You should always start to think

That you and me, us two, Amigos X Siempre/Will fight for our own place

Backing vocals in bridge: You must fight against the world

You and me until the end/You and me, friends forever

2. "I Don't Wanna Be in Love (Dance Floor Anthem)" - Good Charlotte: I first heard this song in middle school through the freaking iCarly soundtrack of all things, and I remember it vividly for being my first memory of, well, angst expressed in the music I listened to. I have a strong memory of writing the lyrics to this song in a small spiral notebook, and trying to separate the lines by song structure (verse, chorus, that sort of thing) because I was ever so mildly obsessed with it lol

3. "Viva La Vida" - Coldplay: Me and this song go way back, from me hearing it on the radio every other day on my way to middle school, to really getting into Coldplay's music because of this song specifically (I still think Viva and the accompanying Prospekt's March EP were their creative peak as a band, fight me), to performing this song live on a couple of occasions: once at a high school talent show to rapturous applause (even if some fellow students made fun of my song choice for being too out of date or whatever when it was only three years after the song came out, but I digress lol), and once at a My Little Pony convention with a cadre of brony musicians at an open mic stage there in 2013. I might have that recording floating around in the cloud still, tbh.

4. "Young Folks" - Peter Bjorn and John: Finding this song through a YouTube comment claiming Foster The People's "Pumped Up Kicks" ripped it off, this song was another part of my soundtrack for my brony fan convention experience in Baltimore in 2013 (I distinctly remember listening to it while on the escalators in the Baltimore Convention Center, in awe of being around so many like-minded individuals), and I also made a cover version for me and my first crush to sing along to around 2015/2016 since she also sang as a hobby (the less said about my crush, the better; suffice it to say it didn't well). Check out the original video for the song, too, since its washed-out comic book aesthetic is also pretty nostalgic, imo.

5. "Erase" - They Might Be Giants: TMBG are just a nostalgic band for me in general, having listened to them for more than half of my lifetime now (16 years and counting!), but this one's special to me since it was the lead single for their album, Glean, which came out in 2015, the year I graduated high school. I remember being elated that the band had decided to bring back their Dial-A-Song service for the year (TL;DR: Dial-A-Song was a phone number the band put up where you could listen to demo versions of their songs through a phone call, years before everyone had music on their phones), as well as me trying to learn the main guitar riff of the song on piano during theater rehearsals at my high school that year, lol

6. "Hey Boy" - The Blow: This song I found through a Steven Universe fan animation (link here: https://youtu.be/uQjmKVUQEwA?si=O0aXkhD45W1NekGc), and it just reminds me of the one time I got into a TV show and watched it and its fandom grow and develop at the same time everyone else did, lel. (For those in the know, Steven Universe and its sequel miniseries, Future, will get its own (Re)Watch eventually.) It's also nostalgic because I remember being drawn to sing this song, obviously written from a female perspective, years before I knew I was trans.

7. "Deceptacon" - Le Tigre: Speaking of possible gender awakening songs, I fell in love this song during my last year or so of community college (around 2018-2020) because of its gritty dance-punk sound with Kathleen Hanna's menacing, or menacingly snotty, riot grrrl vocals, and desperately wanted to emulate it in my own music at the time. (To some degree, I still do, but that's besides the point, lmao)

8. "Fuwa Fuwa Time" from K-ON!: And now we have come full circle from a song from a TV show about schoolchildren forming a rock band to a song from another TV show about schoolchildren, this time teenagers, forming a rock band, this one being the 2009 anime K-ON! As weird as it is to say, this show, while cute and entertaining on its own merits, also gave me massive gender envy as it was one of the first anime I watched after coming out to myself, and I'll admit I was mourning a lost girlhood at the time and using K-ON! to cope. The fun, pop rock sound of this track, isn't too divorced from the Amigos X Siempre song that kicked this whole thing off, which adds to the nostalgia factor for me. Finally, thanks to K-ON!, I was able to dress in affirming clothing for the first time by cosplaying as Afterschool Tea Time's very own bassist, Mio Akiyama, at an anime convention in early 2020, right before COVID hit. (I also entered a lip-syncing competition during the convention, trying to lipsync to the song "Don't Say Lazy" from the same anime, and sucking pretty hard at it, lmao)

 

 

 

So yeah, I'ma indulge in some nostalgia now! Mixtape themes are great as always, Hawk!

 

[4EverGreen]

Concept: Songs That I'm PRETTY sure I've never contributed to a mix-tape before, but still really enjoy all the same! /

1. The Beatles "Something"

2. James Taylor "Fire And Rain"

3. Cat Stevens "Wild World"

4. The Jackson Five "Never Can Say Goodbye"

5. Heart "Straight On"

6. Lynryd Skynyrd "Free Bird"