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 how 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 (especially if I do a ‘yearbook mix’ every other week or so, which is the plan). Because I’m old and have been alive for more years than I sometimes remember.

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So, let’s jump from the year when Michael Jordan was filming Space Jam to the year when I was learning about how to be broke in another country and still have a fine time. 2002. I think this would also be the year that I would discover—after eventually making it back to Canada penniless from Australia and moving into a house with friends who went to college—that the internet could be used for more than just sending emails (for example, if you had a friend who had a computer & the internet + a program called Kazaa, you could search and download almost any track/artist you could think of).

It’d be many years later before I would combine being broke + using the internet in the ways that I do now, but, looking back, I can see how some seeds may have been planted back in 2002.

Speaking of which, here’s a picture of me and my buddy Fishtank and the kind of random guy you’d chat shit with in the pub of a small vegetable/fruit picking town in the year two thousand and two…

…and here’s the kind of mix tape that I bet the 2002 version of me would have dug just as much as the 2022 version of me was enjoying putting together 20 years later:

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 20 BEST” of 2002, 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 2002 and it’d be impossible to perfectly capture it all in 20 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 this morning. 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 20-track limit was hit and the mix was done.

But if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into the 20 albums that I’ve plucked a track from in order to make the above ‘yearbook mix’, I’ve put together a ‘20 from 02’ playlist that features the full albums (so you can either listen top to bottom or throw it on shuffle for a good random 2002 flavoured listening experience — think of it as a 19 disc CD player from 2002, which would have still been pretty baller back then ).

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UPDATE: I’m currently in the process of looking into moving my #HI54MIXCDS operation from Spotify over to Tidal (because Tidal pays artists more per stream). I shared some thoughts over on Insta / Twitter, and will probably share more thoughts the more time I spend figuring out Tidal and thinking about how/why I still music blahg over the next month or so — but, for now, I’ve got a 90-day trial going so I’ve gone ahead & setup a version of the 20 FROM 02 multi-disc CD player playlist over on Tidal (Hayden live album not available):

At the same time, I also know that not everybody can or wants to leave Spotify right now (some artists say they NEED/DEPEND on it), or some people can’t even get Tidal in their country (I also have a smart phone that is too old to be able to use the Tidal app, so that ain’t ideal for me either & I’m sure I’m not the only one rocking an iPhone 6 still, right? Right?!).

So, while I’m trial-ing out a 90-day Tidal trial, and also because I had a thorough music blogging organizing/sorting/discovery system setup on Spotify over the years and Tidal definitely does not seem better equipped for that stuff (but I also don’t think it’s logical to keep doing my ‘music blogging operation’ in the same way going forward anyways, as it obviously isn’t working in an ‘earn myself food/rent’ or ‘help creators earn their food/rent’ way), I still need to figure out what that transition/exit strategy will look like, so I’ve also created this 20-disc playlist on Spotify (Hayden live album also not available):

(at the same same time, I’m also looking into using Resonate as a listener/blogger, and if you make and/or listen to music and are interested in supporting people who are trying to offer better artist-minded streaming solutions (but need support), built from the ground up, on a solid ethical foundation, you should check them out too)

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ANYWAYS, if you’d ever 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/