Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Victor's Ultimate Birthday "Meh"-ga Mix '17

You probably thought I forgot about posting the follow up "worst of" mix tracks. Well, the jokes on you, I was merely procrastinating on posting the follow up!

I've obviously gotten real lazy when it comes to this blog but perhaps a part of the reason for my procrastination on this post was that these tracks weren't all that lousy and subconsciously I was feeling bad for calling them out.

I have to admit there aren't any true stinkers on here. My friends have been getting me these mixes for a while now and they usually know a dud when they see it. However, mix ranking is ultimately a zero sum game and for a top list there has to be a bottom list.

Perhaps down the line I will mellow with age and just eliminate this list entirely. Until then here are this year's bottom 7 songs plus a bonus track of a hit song I genuinely hate to fill out the minimum track count (hint: it's not another Ray Stevens track but it is a country crossover hit).

Unleash hell!


Sunday, June 18, 2017

Victor's Ultimate Mega Mix '17

Well, it looks like we've finally gotten to the point in the life of this blog were I only post 2 or 3 traditional entries a year. It seems to be going along the same life cycle as my other older blogs. I predict that eventually even those minimal entries will peter out (or the sun will run out of fuel and collapse into a black hole taking our entire solar system with it, whichever comes first) and this blog will finally go silent.

However, until that day we still have the yearly Mega Mix posts!

What can I say about this year's slate of mixes? It's another round of quality curated personal musical experiences. Having had birthday mixes made by essentially the same crew of friends for almost a decade now; it's obvious they have gotten pretty good at knowing what I like. Though I guess if there was any kind of complaint it would be that perhaps they know me too well and there are less experimental song choices. Consistency between mixes has been at an all time high lately which makes it hard to make the hard cuts for this list (and especially the bad list which I will still release later). Sure it's a more enjoyable listen overall but the appearance of true memorable,monumental stinkers are a rare sight. But really this is a minor, minor, pseudo-complaint. 

On a side note, it looks like 8tracks has made a bunch of bad changes to the service, most prominent being the addition of a 1 hour cap on free listening per week for users not signed to their monthly subscription service. LAME. I understand that running a streaming music service is expensive and they're trying to turn a profit, but man this is not going to keep a lot of the current users from leaving. I thought about it, but I still haven't found one that keeps the same mixtape set up. 

Oh, I also wanted to mention that this year's compilation was posted way quicker (a little over a month from receipt of the mixes) compared to last year where I didn't get these post out until late August/early September. So there's at least one part of my life that's not in decline with age!

Hit the music!