I’ve had a cvilleMUSE cover songs mix tape in mind for a while now, but for one reason or another I just haven’t gotten around to posting it up…until now. I was inspired in large part by my recent Ryan Adams video post which included his fantastic cover of Alice in Chains’ “Down in a Hole”. (Also the phrase “under the covers” pretty much sums up my mood these last couple of chilly mornings here in Charlottesville. Brrrr!)
So with “covers” in mind how ’bout we wrap them tightly around a song to create a mix tape of cover song favorites. We’re looking for artist re-makes of songs either written by or originally made popular by other artists. Share your cover song selections with our readers by dropping your song choice in the comments section below. And while you’re at it, go round up a video featuring your cover song, post the video URL in your comment, and then I’ll compile the songs in video form after the break.
[My first cover song selection is posted above. While Gloria Gaynor did not write “I Will Survive”, her 1978 recording of the song was the first and is easily the most widely known. Gaynor made “I Will Survive” a huge hit and it topped the Billboard charts in 1979. Since the late 70’s a number of artists have re-recorded the song but the version above is easily my favorite. In 1996 Cake released their slightly-altered take of “I Will Survive” on their album Fashion Nugget. Gloria Gaynor hated it, but I dig it mucho! (To be honest, I prefer Cake’s version over the original)] »Read More
I’ve been meaning to post another mix tape for a couple of weeks now, but everytime I’ve started to get around to it, something else would pop up. It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I guess all I really needed was a little nudge. Thanks mc.
So here it is. To date we’ve celebrated heat waves and the Fourth of July during the summer months, so it only seems right that we do the same for autumn. The tricky part is coming up with an underlying theme. Of all the seasons, fall seems to be the least celebrated in song. So I’m just going to leave it open for interpretation.
September to December. Baseball’s Fall Classic. The changing leaves. The first cold winds. The harvest. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Election Day. Pulling out your sweaters. The word “fall” itself. We’ll just leave it up to you to decide what comes to mind as autumn unfolds in a tuneful manner. Let’s hear what you’ve got.
If you’re not familiar with how this works, here’s what you need to know. Drop your song suggestions for this “Headed for a Fall” mix tape in the comments section below. But here’s the catch: We like to have our songs submitted in video form. So head to YouTube or some other video hosting site and find a video for your song. Copy the URL and paste it along with your song suggestion below. Then I’ll put the all the videos together, so that you can watch and listen along. Got it? Good. [Our mix tape begins after the break.]
For this particular mix tape theme we dipped into the archives and dug up a reader-submitted theme suggestion from one of our very first mix tapes back in late May. This mix tape theme comes to us from everyone’s favorite Villain belmont yo, who thought it would be a great idea to put together a mix tape for Songs About Drugs. I’m interested in seeing what we can come up with.
There are definitely a treasure trove of recorded songs to chose from going back as far as the jazz and blues songs from the likes of Cab Calloway (”Reefer Man”), Fats Waller (”A Viper’s Drag”), and Lead Belly (”Take a Whiff on Me”). We’ll call these the gateway songs if you will (there are many, many more). From there on until the present day, the rest is all up to you. (And kids, if you’re reading this. Drugs are bad.) Our Drinking the Kool-Aid (Songs About Drugs) mix tape begins after the break.
As always I give you my gentle reminder to include a video URL with your song submission so that we can post the video chain after the break as we move forward. »Read More
It’s always a roll of the dice to add a mix tape to MUSE pages on a Friday, because the weekend is upon us and folks are spending less time in front of their computers and more time outside, you know, doing stuff. But I just came across an old CD mix I put together a couple years ago with a simple one word title that has inspired me to throw caution to early August wind. The handmade CD spine reads TWANG in big bold letters and it contains some of my favorite country flavored tunes.
There’s Hank III’s “Low Down”, Waylon’s “Slow Rollin’ Low”, Billy Joe Shaver’s “Ragged Old Truck”, and Wayne Scott’s “It’s the Whiskey That Eases the Pain”. There’s also a handful of classics from some relatively unknown artists like Mike Ireland & Holler, Billy Don Burns, and a sweet cover of Mickey Newbury’s “Why You Been Gone So Long” by the Texas band 1100 Springs. Truth be told , I’ve got a honky tonk heart. Give me a shot of Jack, a roaring Telecaster, and a Music City or Austin, Texas hardwood floor and I can kick it up with the best of them. And I’m not talkin’ about this stuff that gets paraded around on Top 40 country radio stations. Toby Keith and She Daisy need not apply.
This may be an even bigger roll of the dice. Now maybe I’m the only one here who digs a little twang and bang but we haven’t done the country thing and I’m in the mood to see what happens. It’s time to hit the ol’ YouTube and find a little bit of Hank. Add your video URL with your comments and we’ll add them to the mix. I think I’ll make mine a double. »Read More
It’s one of the most frequently asked music questions around. And it’s quite possibly one of the hardest to answer. It’s the dreaded “you’re stranded on a deserted island, what music do you need to survive?” question. Maybe it’s been asked so many times already that you have your stock answers ready to roll. Maybe it’s a paralyzing question to ask in the first place. But let’s see what happens. Just keep in mind we need songs for our solar-powered cvilleMUSE iPod, not albums. And believe me I could submit one hell of a long list, but I’m just going to limit myself to two or three tunes. I’m probably not going to fire them off all at once, just in case something pops into my head out of the blue that I just couldn’t live without. In the end, our collection of submissions is going to be our musical survivor kit, so chose carefully.
I know the answers to this question are as endless as π (pi) but let’s just have fun with it and see where it goes. The real catch of course is that you may not be able to find videos for some of your all-time favorites. We’ll just have to make due with what we’ve got. So add your song suggestions in the comments box and send along a video URL with each song so we can put altogether for you in visual and musical form. Good luck. Our Songs for the Shores of Gilligan’s Island begins with your first selection. [and on the chance that you end up submitting ten or twenty songs, I’m probably only going to use the first two or three, so make sure and put the goodies near the top of the list]
Time for another mix tape. This will be the sixth edition in our continuing series of reader submitted song selections. I tossed around the idea of pulling out a previously submitted theme, but with the 4th of July coming up at the end of the week, I thought we’d use this particular mix tape to celebrate Independence Day.
There’s a lot of different ways we could go about this, but here’s where I think I’m going to take it. We’re going to do a Side A and a Side B, with each side having a different theme. I’m going to give you the Side A theme first. Once we fill up Side A (10 songs), then I’ll give you the theme for Side B (10 songs). Got it? Hopefully by now everyone knows how this works. As always, we add our gentle reminder: Please add a video URL link with your song submission. First come, first serve and in order to allow more folks to play: 1 submission per person per side.
SIDE A THEME: Red, White, and Blue (songs with one or more of those words in the title) SIDE B THEME: Aint’ That America
This is sort of an offshoot from our cvilleMUSE Mix Tape series (which if you haven’t been following along, has been a real blast! Check em out!). Byard, one of our faithful MUSE readers, suggested this little idea in the midst of our last Mix Tape. So we’re going to give it a shot.
Instead of creating a mix of songs, let’s see if we can create a mix of poems. The rules are still the same. I’ll start with a YouTube posting to kick things off and then you guys chime in with your own poems. We’ll post on a first come, first serve basis. Again please try and include a video URL with your suggested poem. We’ll take the first 10 poems submitted. I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but here goes… »Read More
Following up on the success of our first cvilleMUSE mix tape I thought that maybe it was finally time to kick off Mix Tape #2. So here we go.
For those who may not have followed along the first time around, here’s how it works. I’ll begin by choosing a song, which I’ll post in video form after the break. Then you get to choose Song 2. First one in, gets the next song. And again, your song choice needs to be accompanied with a URL link for the song’s video so that the casual reader can follow along. Then we move on to Song 3 and then Song 4, etc. And as with our first mix tape, we’ll limit this one to only ten songs since this whole process is still in its infancy.
As a few of our readers suggested during our first mix tape, we have incorporated a theme for this collection of songs. In honor of the un-official start of summer and the road trips which accompany the summertime months, our theme this time around is The Road. Songs about travelling, the highway, road trips, and automobiles or with those themes in the title. In the end though, it’s about however you wish to interpret The Road. »Read More
Today’s technology has not only changed the way we acquire and share our music, but it has also changed the way we listen to it. With access to so much music just a simple click of the mouse away thanks to the advent of iTunes, eMusic, and countless other online music sites, we can now just sit in front of our computers and build libraries of music on our home PC or Mac. From there we can load those songs onto our iPod or various other MP3 players (some of which are only slightly larger than a Zippo lighter) and literally take them with us anywhere.
I’m not going to lie, I’m one of those people. There’s an iPod in my home and my computer is loaded with purchased music tracks. But despite all the advances in technology, in my heart of hearts, I still have a prehistoric soft spot for the much romantized mix tape. (Although I have had to upgrade in recent years from the cassette tape to the blank CD. That’s just what happens when romance meets reality.)
For this particular mix tape theme we dipped into the archives and dug up a reader-submitted theme suggestion from one of our very first mix tapes back in late May. This mix tape theme comes to us from everyone’s favorite Villain belmont yo, who thought it would be a great idea to put together a mix tape for Songs About Drugs. I’m interested in seeing what we can come up with. 
Time for another mix tape. This will be the sixth edition in our continuing series of reader submitted song selections. I tossed around the idea of pulling out a previously submitted theme, but with the 4th of July coming up at the end of the week, I thought we’d use this particular mix tape to celebrate Independence Day.
Following up on the success of our 
Today’s technology has not only changed the way we acquire and share our music, but it has also changed the way we listen to it. With access to so much music just a simple click of the mouse away thanks to the advent of iTunes, eMusic, and countless other online music sites, we can now just sit in front of our computers and build libraries of music on our home PC or Mac. From there we can load those songs onto our iPod or various other MP3 players (some of which are only slightly larger than a Zippo lighter) and literally take them with us anywhere. 