June Mixmania! Is Officially Open, With a Twist

Listening to: A wild and ULTRA COOL mix of Mexican Rock by Daria at So-Then-What

Hells bells, it seems like I just finished everything with the April Mixmania! and June has crept up and clipped me. I still have four mixes to write about (I swear, it will get done this week!), one from my matched mixer plus three from angels who sent me their mixes because of my hosting this bit of bloggy fun, and now it's back into the fray for June's mixes.

For those of you who don't know what mixmania! is, it's not that complicated: basically, everyone gets the name and postal address of a blogger where the mix goes. All track information is left out of the mailing but posted on your blog so that the recipient of your disk is forced to surf around and find out who sent them their mix - and the same works for you. That's it in a nutshell.

However, I'm going to make a couple of stipulations for June's mixmania! because... well, it's my party and I'll try if I want to, y'know. First of all, your mix should be what I call a "Summer/Beach Mix". Allow me to elaborate:

Summer/Beach Mix:
Music, when it's really good, gives us a sense of a place and time, it brings about specific memories. For me, summers on the sand hold extremely fond memories. When I say I'm asking for "Summer/Beach Mixes", I'm not asking for The Beach Boys or Jan & Dean (although there's nothing wrong with them) but a mix of songs that bring summer to mind for you, songs that you remember screaming, "Turn that UP!" whenever it came on the radio, songs that demanded full volume and the windows rolled down. Examples for me would be "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols or "California Love" by Tupac Shakur (which are now, automatically, not to be included on my disk, dammit).

These don't have to be radio cuts (they could be obscure shit from CDs that mean "summer/beach" to you) but only that they bring to mind a place in time that means seering heat and good times. You get the point.

Other than that elusive "theme", the other rules for participating are:

1. Deadline for joining in is June 22, the day after the Summer's Solstice.
   
2. You need to email me your postal address in order to participate. Last time I spent HOURS chasing people down for emails and postal addresses and frankly, it was a clusterfuck. By all means, leave a comment to show you want to participate (give everyone else a sense that you're going to play, show everyone who might be getting your mix) but YOU HAVE TO EMAIL ME YOUR INFO. You can email your info to:
   

   patriside *at* gmail dot com

   
   If you don't email me, you don't get to play. I'm far too busy to hunt your info down.
   
3. Your mix needs to be burned and mailed by July 1. Too many people had to wait too long for their mix and that had to do with the misunderstanding that people didn't have to burn their mix until after May 1. Clearing that up, if you agree to participate, your mix will be in the mail July 1, got it?
   
4. You'll get the postal address of the recipient of your mix by June 25 along with my postal address to use as a return address.
   
5. Don't include your songlist with the disk you mail, the idea is to get your recipient to surf around to figure out what the cuts are. If you're stymied on how to erase ID3 information from the music files, I recommend you go download Musicmatch Jukebox to convert your files and then go here for a tutorial on how to erase the ID3 info (Mac users are on your own!).
   
6. Burn a CD with wav files, not MP3s; if you can't fit all your lovelies on a single disk, burn 2 disks, burn 6 disks, I don't care. Just burn it with files that can be played on any old skool CD player.
   
7. For god's sake, if you agree to participate, burn the damn disk and mail it. At least one person got screwed out of a disk last time (and I had to oblige the poor participant who got shafted) and I'll drag your name through blogospheric muck if you renege.

Sorry to be a prick about all of this but you wouldn't believe how time-consuming it was to get everyone on the same page. However, the fun outweighed the ass ache (by far) and plenty of folks have been clamoring to get in on another mixmania!

So here it is... the fun begins. Keep checking back here for updates (as people raise issues, I'll edit this post) and get busy with your "summer/beach music" disks!