A Mixtape For Those Out There Havin' Fun In The Warm California Sun, Even If Only On A Spiritual Level

(I'm doing a thing where I custom-make Spotify playlists for everyone who wants one. If you want one too, read "the guidelines" here and email me here.)

This one's for Sarah! Sarah's requested theme is "Here Comes the Sun -- i.e., new beginnings, new love, new happiness." I'm really proud of the cool journey I've taken you on here, especially the beginning and ending and the Aerosmith-into-Wild Flag.

BTW, that wild sea-anemone pic is by Stephanie Sicore. Here's the tracklist:

A Mixtape for Rising Above the Bitches and Pettin' Good Dogs in the Sweet, Sweet Sunshine

BY LIZ

(I'm doing a thing where I custom-make Spotify playlists for everyone who wants one. If you want one too, read "the guidelines" here and email me here.)

This playlist's for Saaniya, who requests "a mixtape for when you're really sad because people are shitty and mean and talk only about other people but then you go out on a walk and listen to good stuff and pet some dogs and the weather is awesome and you're happy again." I made the songs start off all hotly self-righteous/indignant and then slowly transition to chill and reflective and transcendent and lovely. The turning point's "Obvious" by Jane's Addiction, which is a perfect song for when you're trying to rise above the trash-talkers -- I always sing the line "Fools don't fit in the boots that I tread in" out loud whenever I listen to it.

BTW, the middle pic above was taken by my friend Casey Revkin -- that's her dog Baxter, who often tries to dance with me and/or eat my feet. He's a good dog and a cool buddy.

Here's the tracklist:

A Mixtape for All You Teenage Dirtbags

So last week I promised to custom-make mixtapes (i.e., Spotify playlists) for everyone in the world and now it's happening; I'm doing it (and if you want one too, read "the guidelines" here and email me here). The first one's for Stephanie, whose requested theme was "teenage dirtbags/songs to listen to on the 6 hour car ride home, running on 0 hours of sleep and 4 ritalin that you snorted with a boy you used to be so innocently in love with before hugging him goodbye/bingeing and purging my youthful innocence."
This is the playlist and the track listing's below. It starts out rough and then gets dreamy, which I think is generally a good way to go. And btw, that picture's by Joseph Szabo, who's got so many beautiful photographs of teenagers who're rough and dreamy as well.

A Mixtape For Those Who Try Everything They Can To Escape The Pain Of Life That We Know

Let's do a thing: tell me a theme and I'll make you a Spotify playlist based on said theme and then post the playlist on Strawberry Fields Whatever and it'll be fun. I prefer themes rooted in some sort of emotional context and/or geared toward a specific situation (i.e., breakup recovery, songs for aimlessly strolling around on a scuzzy summer evening, etc.) rather than stuff like "Songs with Animals" and "Songs with the Word 'Pink' in the Lyrics" -- I'm into mixtapes as engines of psychic beautification. Howevs, I'm also totally into goofy food-related themes (e.g., "Songs That Sound Good With Strawberry Pancakes") and yesterday I had this idea that I wanted to make mixtapes for Dally Winston and for Joan Holloway, so fictional characters are a "go" too.
 
Here is a playlist I made based on something the sentence "Growin up=graciously accepting that many people enjoy the boringest bullshit & all u truly got is the punkrockness of yr own delightful head," which I wrote on the Internet last week and it seemed to resonate with some people. They are songs of pain and fun and the occasional moral superiority -- "morally superior" in a groovy, beautiful way, I mean. I so wanted to include "Vogue" by Madonna but I couldn't make it flow right, but lately I'm really feeling that song and its message of productive escape. And sorry that "The Valley of One Thousand Perfumes" by Mary Timony isn't Spotify-available, but you should really have that song/record anyway: it's an angel. 
You can email themes to me here. I'll probably post these every Friday.

xo Liz 

P.S./UPDATE: LJ tells me Spotify doesn't exist in Canada, which is sad, so here's the tracklist for all the gorgeous Canadians: