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 1hr-ish 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…

…and then it occurred to me that it’d be a fun HI54 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, let’s jump from the year that’s a famous novel title that people like to reference incorrectly (1984) to the year when Bill Clinton was denying having ‘sexual relations with that woman’. 1998. It’s also the year that I was a 15-year old McLovin-lookin’-before-McLovin youth…

…a youth who was definitely into a bunch of these tracks back in ‘98, BUT, because I was a McLovin-lookin’-before-McLovin youth in pre-internet rural Alberta back in the 1998 day, where the radio stations played the same songs/artists over & over again and you couldn’t look up any of the stuff you read about in magazines… this digital mix tape is a nice sample of what old me and now me would probably agree on listening to if we were to hang out in some kind of musical time travel scenario:

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 19 BEST” of 1998, but based on my recent deep dive + past listening experiences, I would say that these are definitely some of the best ones. Also, just like every other year since forever, there was A LOT of nice music that came out in 1998 and it’d be impossible to perfectly capture it all in 19 tracks anyways. So the artists featured in this mix are a good combo of music I personally have nostalgic feelings for + tunes that I was feeling while putting things together last night. But, as always, the main focus is on creating a mix that flows nicely from one track to another, which means albums I had intentions of trying to fit in & albums which you might think “how could you not include?!” just never fit in before the 19-track limit was hit and the mix was done.

But if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into 1998 than the 19-track digital mix tape provided (for example, you may reach the end 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 both me and you if we extended the 1998 musical exploring into something more than just the 19 tracks/artists that made the mix tape cut. And since I have stopped taking on the work of dealing with music submissions and now have a bit more time/energy for doing more blog stuff, I figured this would be a good time to follow through on the idea of putting together a 54-track digital mix cd (aka: a playlist) for even further 1998 vibing (the first 19 tracks in the playlist are the tracks from this week YEARBOOK mix tape).

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PS/FYI - previously I was including a Spotify playlist for each Yearbook mix that was a bit like a multi-disc cd player that you could throw on shuffle, but I will be going back through all the past HI54 YEARBOOK episodes and changing those ‘multi-disc cd player’ playlists to be 54-track mix cds for each year.

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And if you’d like to extend the ‘soundtrack-by-HI54-mixtape’ vibes all day, go press the play button over on MTR - FRESH TAPES (which’ll play one HI54 mix tape after another, all day — with new HI54 Mixcloud mixes like the above added every Thursday). Or you can also find all the HI54 Yearbook Mixes in 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, including all the ‘exclusive’ mixes) — 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.

\M/