And Hayden, remind me again if/when I actually make the trip. Next year, maybe....

Awwww right!

edit - (It's my wife's favorite of the mixes I've made.)

Southern Culture On the Skids?

But of course.

Aimee, I'd kind of lean toward doing a 1974 mix since a lot of good music came out that year in multiple genres. But it's not quite as good as say 1971 or 1972, so I can see why you'd do every year after. Those CDs do look very cool.

Anybody interested in the Stax story should check out Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music which gives incredible insight into the southern soul music scene (driven by an unusual interracial pool of musicians and a generation of southern hipsters who adored black music).

Guralnick's books Feel Like Going Home and Lost Highway are also essential for any fan of American roots music.

Robert Gordon's It Came From Memphis is pretty entertaining, too.

I sent my mix to msbelle on one of those! If you're going to do one song per year, Aimée, you have to decide if the song from a given year is actually a song from that year or your song from that year. Which is to say, maybe you got into an artist or genre in Year X, or you had a traumatic breakup or some other event that dominated the year for you so you listened to artist/album/song non-stop & when you think of 1989, for instance, your "1989 song" is from 1959 or 1983 or 1975. That would be a more personalized way of doing it, IMO. OTOH it would be fun to catch up on years that are more or less a musical blank slate for you. "THAT was from 1987? Excellent!"

Cute CDs, Aimee!

And I'd do the song for each year mix because it seems to me like it would be more interesting musically with less effort. But I might be biased -- I did a "24 songs for 24 years" mix tape a couple years ago, and it's still one of my favorites. Should burn it to CD at some point.

Robert Gordon's It Came From Memphis is pretty entertaining, too.

Yeah, especially for the Big Star and wrestling aspects. I'm always fascinated by the gonzo recording culture that flourished in Memphis during the seventies. Big Star's 3rd could have only been done in that kind of environment.

I may have missed a mention, but has anyone mentioned Kings of Leon for the southern rock thing? I hear they're a throwback of sorts to that style.

Whoever posted that link to the power pop faves of musicians last week, thank you! I had much fun last night checking out some of those songs. Ah, Cheap Trick. Badfinger! Todd Rundgren!

> Aimee, I'd kind of lean toward doing a 1974 mix since a lot of good music came out that year in multiple genres.

"Let's see... Too Much Too Soon. Okay, only twenty more to go."

ETA: "Oh, yeah: 'The Streak'. That leaves nineteen."

Mix will go on these.

I've been using them, too. My FrankenMix is on one.

See, it'd be really hard to pin down ONE song from each year. And then, like joe boucher pointed out, it might be a song that wasn't from that year. Like "Been Caught Stealing" was one of my songs from 1992, but the album, Ritual de lo Habitual was released in 1990.