I was only a few months into doing this five years ago, and so I occasionally grasped for some sort of "theme". I know better now--doing it around an explicit theme is both harder and less interesting--although I immensely enjoy the theme time radio hour with Bob Dylan.
But I'm not Bob Dylan!
Anyway, the theme opening the year in 04 seems to be "waiting". Took me a minute to deduce that as this mix has "I Am Waiting" by The Rolling Stones, "Waiting In Vain" by Bob Marley & The Wailers, "The Waiting" by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. "Waiting For A Girl Like You" by Foreigner and "Waiting On A Friend" by The Rolling Stones.
What was I waiting for as I looked forward to 04? A new president perhaps. Well, that took a little while longer than I hoped...
The Foreigner song--I'm reminded of a tv commercial for Sony Walkman that came out in the early 80s when I was a kid. A guy is roller-skating and trying to get a girl's attention. He stops near her and removes the orange Walkman headphones and puts them on the girl, to play "Waiting For A Girl Like You" for her. I'm sure that worked!
Much more romantic is a very obscure old soul song called "Bing Bong Goes My Heart" by a group called The Determinations. It's amazing--the singing, the groove, the horns. And I don't think anything about these guys has been documented. We live in a Wikipedia world, yet there seems to be no information at all about who they were or what became of them. Just adds to the mystery of this song. I found it on one of those old "northern soul" compilations in Greenwich Village, a cd that has old vinyl r&b tunes slapped together onto a cd by some shady operation that I will be eternally grateful to.
Elsewhere on here, the bang bang punch of the then-contemporary songs "Excuse Me Miss Again" by Jay-Z and "Pass That Dutch" by Missy Elliot. Speaking of contemporary, the pop metal novelty "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" by The Darkness must've seemed like a great idea at the time.
Yet I have no fear of cheesy pop songs if I dusted off Robbie Dupree's "Steal Away", which reminds me so much of my childhood. It's aged much better than The Darkness.
Same title/different song: Sly and the Family Stone and Mary J Blige, with production from Dr. Dre, do "Family Affair".
Sly's song is about as good as it gets. It sounds like something you should hear during a BBQ gone wrong. It's followed by Arrested Development's "People Everyday" which interpolated an old Sly song and brought it up to date in the era of fade haircuts.
Also on here, Killer Mike and Big Boi make a song out of the old schoolyard legend: that shoe brand ADIDAS stands for "all day I dream about sex". Additionally, M83's beautiful "Run Into Flowers", Van Halen's raucous "Dance The Night Away" and a bunch of Stevie Wonder songs.
I came across a bootleg that captured him doing simple piano demos of a few of his biggest hits. Here, in both demo and produced versions, are "It Ain't No Use" and "I Was Made To Love Her". I love the cheesy announcer at the beginning of the former song demo, who recognizes the song title as Stevie tries to see "if I can remember the words". Glad he found them before the other guy did.
I also include a very short piano demo of a song that I don't believe he ever properly recorded, called "My Mother's Eyes". That leads into my final song on this mix, a live version of Duke Ellington's "The Lord's Prayer/My Love".
