20 from '06 | THE HI54 YEARBOOK MIXES
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, let’s jump back to the year when I was making another attempt at taking part in ‘North America’ life after another stint living abroad had come to an end. 2006. If my memory has the timeline right, I think I started off ‘06 living at my brothers apartment in Calgary (he would get married later that year, actually it’s their 15th anniversary today) while I regretfully took the first semester of a Business Admin course, while waiting for a great Dane to come join me from Nottingham. I quickly realized Biz-Admin was not something I wanted to spend the next couple years going into debt for, so I finished the semester I paid for and then we moved up to Edmonton to live near Whyte Ave. The first job I got was one of those super dodgy call centre jobs, the kind where they hire anyone who shows up because if anyone goes 3 days without making a sale they just fire them anyways, and I made a sale on the third day twice, but then my bad luck ran out and I was fired by week 3 (laying the groundwork for me to become a big fan of Sorry To Bother You in the next decade).
Eventually I ended up getting hired as an Associate Analyst at a market research firm, because my mom recently got back in touch with a friend from high school who was the secretary there + the oil boom in Alberta had made other industries need to lower their standards to non-college graduates. And that’s when the beginning of a less funny ‘The Office’ started a 5 year run for me, which probably makes 2006 the year that I actually started realizing you could use computers & the internet to do more than just send emails & book flights/hostels, and a Myspace profile probably wouldn’t be too far off in my future (not to mention me eventually discovering that you could take out CDs for free at Edmonton’s very good downtown library, which I could now visit on lunch breaks).
Not a lot of pictures from back then on the ol’ 2009 iMac, as cell phones were still mostly just used for phone stuff back in ‘06, but here’s a photo from Halloween 2006, which fittingly looks like it was taken from the 70s because that’s how long ago 2006 feels here in 2021…
…and this 2006 mix is a pretty accurate dip into what I was listening to at the time, while also being a pretty accurate dip into albums my ears still enjoy from that era (even if a some were probably discovered a bit later than 2006 because music discovery wasn’t always so instantaneous & albums were given a much healthier shelf life):
Now, I wouldn’t necessarily say these are “THE 19 BEST ALBUMS/TRACKS OF 2006”, 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 2006 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 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 20-track limit was hit and the mix was done.
SO, if you’d like to dive a bit deeper into 2006 than the 20-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 2006 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 2006 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 or check out the individual episodes below:
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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