Site Logo

Weekend reading: Making mixes; Megadeth Q&A; and the top cover songs

Published 1:35 pm Friday, July 31, 2009

When it comes to making a mix, it’s hard to avoid the elephant in the room, “High Fidelity,” Nick Hornby’s great book, which found its misguided protagonist explaining the practice so well.

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do,” Hornby wrote. “It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don’t want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.”

He speaks the truth.

Unsurprisingly, the music supervisor for the new indie romantic comedy “(500) Days of Summer” points to the soundtrack to “High Fidelity” as a source of inspiration in her work: compiling mixes.

Read about her job by following the links.

  • “(500) Days of Summer” music supervisor says you gotta start with the joy. (Time)
  • Arlo Guthrie is glad to live in a world with “American Idol.” (New York Times)
  • Far as Dave Mustaine knows, Metallica planned to fire drummer Lars Ulrich, although obviously that never ended up happening. (Rolling Stone)
  • Ed Droste isn’t as weird and ugly as he looks in the awe-inspring video for Grizzly Bear’s great single, “Two Weeks.” (Pitchfork)
  • Fifty great covers include Sonic Youth’s take on the Carpenters and Tom Jones tackling Prince. (Spin, but heads up, frustratingly, they only list and stream Nos. 41 to 50)
  • Twitter and Jimmy Fallon are the best things to ever happen to Roots drummer ?uestlove, he says. (Wall Street Journal)

    • You Might Like