I’ve had the idea of making Mixcloud mixes based on a ‘19 from Year / 20 from Year’ format for awhile (as there’s a good ring to that + it makes for a perfect mix cd length), but it wasn’t until participating in one of those “post 4 albums that came out when you were 14” social media things…

…when it occurred to me that it’d be a fun project to go back through EVERY YEAR that I’ve been alive and make a mix out of the music that came out during that calendar timeframe. And not only would it be a nice mix of nostalgia & discovery/rediscovery for my ears, but it would also give me a new recurring blog post / Mixcloud topic that I could run with for a good stretch of blahg time. Because I’m an old.

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So, to kick things off, let’s go all the way back to the year of my birth, which, because I am one of those old Millennials that exists in that grey area that is sometimes also considered Gen X, that means we have to go all the way back to the year of 1983. Apparently, ‘83 not only saw the debut of me, but it was also the year that both Fraggle Rock and the original Mario Bros video game came out (so… pretty good year for debuts). The world’s population was a paltry 4.72 billion + one more little dude added to the tally on March 17th…

…and if I could go back and slip a mix tape into that little dudes hands, it would sound like this:

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “the best” albums/songs of 1983, but based on my recent deep dive + past listening experiences, I would definitely say that these are definitely some of the best ones. I mean, that Violent Femmes debut is such a timeless piece of teenage angst that it could come out today and still sound fresh + how perfect of a song is New Order’s ‘Age of Consent’? And I can’t believe I’ve never properly listened to Murmur before. And Johnny Cash looking like Frank Sinatra on the cover of Johnny 99? Yes please, I would very much like to check that out in full (although ‘God Bless Robert E Lee’ has not aged well as a song title/topic). In general, a lot of legendary artists released some great albums in 1983 that often get overlooked due to some of the more legendary releases in their catalogues.

SO, if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into 1983 than the 19-track digital mix tape provided (for example, you may reach the end of the above mixtape and think “I’d like more of that vibe, sir”), well, I’ve also had the realization that it’d be a good time for the both of us if we extended the 1983 musical exploring into something more than just the tracks/artists that made the mixtape cut. And since I have stopped taking on the work of dealing with music submissions and now have a bit more time/energy for taking on more #blahgstuff, I figured this would be a good time to go back & follow through on the idea of putting together a 54-track digital mix cd playlist for even further 1983 vibing.

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And if you’d ever like to extend the ‘soundtrack-by-HI54-mixtape’ vibes all day, go press the play button over on MOUN.TOWN/RADIO (which’ll play one HI54 mix tape after another, all day — with new/old HI54 Mixcloud mixes like the mix tape above added to the top of ‘MTR - SIDE A’ and ‘MTR - SIDE B’ every Wednesday). Or you can also listen to all the HI54 Yearbook Mixes one-after-the-other with this Mixcloud playlist.

ALSO also: HI54LOFI is in the Mixcloud Select program, which means you can now support the making of these mix tapes & the artists included on them with a monthly subscription (while also unlocking offline listening of hundreds of HI54 mix tapes for yourself) — y’know, if you’d be interested in something like that (or nobody would be mad at you if you wanted to make a one-time “thanks for the stuff” donation of your choice to HI54LOFI over here, or even if you just told someone else that they might like what they’d find over on the ol’ HI54.BLOG… that stuff helps too!).

And, final finally… if you hear something you like in this latest episode (or just in general out on the internets today), make sure to check out the people making the stuff you like and show them a little bit of love / support / appreciation (in whatever ways you can) — because everybody wins if we all start sharing some more metaphorical coffees/beers/cheers with the people making the things that make things a little bit better (and maybe we can also start giving way less to the people out there always trying to keep things shitty?).

Put good things in, good things come out.

Put good things out, good things come in.

Put good things on loop.

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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI

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