The Vinyl Diaries: A Vinyl Mixtape?

Recently, I was thinking back to a beloved Popdose feature, the Friday (or Weekly, or Popdose) Mixtape – when one of us contributors would put together a 15- or 20-song compilation of filched MP3 files, usually (though not always) built around a theme. We did it every week for several years; there was a schedule and everything. (My compadre Jack Feerick has kept the tradition alive in recent times, and bless him for that.)

Curating the Mixtape was fun. My contributions gave me license to share a bunch of soul and kinda-soul songs, celebrate my parents’ wedding anniversary, indulge in some cool alt-rock, remember John Lennon’s best songs (with a collection of covers), and give voice to my lowest moments.

The specific Mixtape features I’ve been thinking about recently were a pair of compilations I made lo, nearly 15 years ago. The first was called “Shag Carpet Listening Session, Nineteen Seventy-Something,” while I dubbed its sequel “Late Summer, Late Seventy-Something.” As the titles suggest, the two were 1970s-centric mixes, full of deep cuts from the likes of … well, you name it. Average White Band. Maggie Bell. Frankie Miller. REO Speedwagon. Grand Funk Railroad. Jackson Browne. Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Pre-Buckingham Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac. A bunch more.

Not long ago, I agreed to accompany my wife and drop off my mother-in-law at the Philadelphia International Airport, about a three-hour round trip from our home in central Pennsyltucky. In preparation, I loaded up a streaming playlist with no fewer than 33 albums – all soft rock or soft rock-adjacent, nearly 23 hours of music. Most of the records were vinyl-era selections from the 1970s and early 1980s – stuff I either have in my own collection, or have seen frequently in dollar bins and crates (the lone outlier was Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach’s 1998 LP Painted from Memory, which sounds like it was made in 1975). I hit “shuffle” at the beginning of the drive and let the gods of random play take charge.

It was a lovely soundtrack to the morning; so lovely, in fact, I intend to keep the enormous playlist on ye olde smartphone for a while; we have several long drives coming up in the near future. There’s something oddly soothing about the surprise each song brought, particularly the deep album cuts with which I was unfamiliar, or hadn’t heard in a long time. So, yes, while it was pleasant to hear Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man,” Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze,” and James Taylor’s take on Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” for the thousandth time each, I hadn’t cued up Linda Ronstadt’s version of JD Souther’s “Faithless Love” in years; same with Roberta Flack’s “Gone Away,” Hall & Oates’ “Lady Rain,” or Rickie Lee Jones’ “Skeletons.” Neil Diamond singing Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” is deeply odd, just as Paul Simon’s “Night Game” is still soothing. And I do enjoy singing along to Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die,” in the car or anywhere else.

I took 26 of the songs we listened to and made an abbreviated playlist below. I recommend playing it in the car, or maybe while just chilling out a bit with a friend or someone else you care about. I definitely recommend going out to your local record store, junk shop, or thrifting establishment and finding the albums from which these songs hail; they’re all pretty good, and some of them are really good, even great.

Selections from “Driving Ann to the Airport”

1. Phoebe Snow, “Poetry Man,” from Phoebe Snow (1974)
2. Gino Vannelli, “People I Belong To,” from Brother to Brother (1978)
3. Paul Simon, “Night Game,” from Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)
4. Eric Carmen, “Marathon Man,” from Boats Against the Current (1977)
5. Paul Williams, “Let Me Be the One,” from Just an Old Fashioned Love Song (1971)
6. Roberta Flack, “Gone Away,” from Chapter Two (1970)
7. Seals & Crofts, “Summer Breeze,” from Summer Breeze (1972)
8. Three Dog Night, “Let Me Serenade You,” from Cyan (1973)
9. Kenny Loggins, “Lady Luck,” from Celebrate Me Home (1977)
10. Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach, “Tears at the Birthday Party,” from Painted from Memory (1998)
11. America, “Who Loves You,” from Hideaway (1976)
12. Chicago, “Chains,” from Chicago 16 (1982)
13. Linda Ronstadt, “Faithless Love,” from Heart Like a Wheel (1974)
14. Santana, “Give Me Love,” from Festival (1977)
15. Daryl Hall & John Oates, “Lady Rain,” from Abandoned Luncheonette (1973)
16. Laura Nyro, “And When I Die,” fromThe First Songs (1973)
17. Carly Simon, “What Shall We Do with the Child,” from Torch (1981)
18. Dan Fogelberg & Tim Weisberg, “Intimidation,” from Twin Sons of Different Mothers (1978)
19. James Taylor, “Everyday,” from That’s Why I’m Here (1985)
20. Rickie Lee Jones, “Skeletons,” from Pirates (1981)
21. Barbra Streisand & Barry Gibb, “Guilty,” from Guilty (1980)
22. Neil Diamond, “Suzanne,” from Rainbow (1973)
23. Pablo Cruise, “El Verano,” from A Place in the Sun (1977)
24. Leo Sayer, “Let Me Know,” from Living in a Fantasy (1980)
25. Doobie Brothers, “Livin’ on the Fault Line,” from Livin’ on the Fault Line (1977)
26. Toto, “A Secret Love,” from Hydra (1979)