That @%#$ 90's alternative mix, or: Generation X=X+1, ad infinitum

Yeahhhh, so remember that 90's alternative nostalgia mix I was obsessing over several years back? The one that snowballed from one disc to four to seven to eight to nine, which I swore was the last revision until I coughed up Disc Ten one day? And then ten was it, the last straw, no way was I doing any more because frankly there was no more to do?

Show of hands, all you who didn't see this coming. Anyone? You over there in the back? Hello?

I would like to take a moment to blame someone who isn't me for this: rain_herself and I were at the local Verizon store for her complimentary phone upgrade last month, and she struck up a conversation with the guy behind the counter, who as it turns out is in a 90's cover band. She naturally flagged me over, mentioned the Alt 90's Mega Mix o' Hades-Spawned Decade-Long Speed-Freak-Flavored Obsessive Tinkering, and he in turn said that he wouldn't mind a copy when I offered. That, of course, made me think of the one or two liiiiittle details I always thought needed fixing in the playlists and what better time to do so and let me just take a peek in here and long story short I found myself with a neck cramp and two more discs.

Twelve discs now. TWELVE. What the Jesus monkey-fuck, people? I've joked about it before, but I think I've truly crossed over into the realm of the pathological on this one. It's gotten to where I can't even see the steeple on my original intent behind the mix (nostalgia triggers), having drifted through a nebulous "being representative of the blah blah blah" period and into an educational one, should I ever strike up a conversation with a Millenial who's recently gotten into the music of the time and would like to know more. (I shouldn't have been surprised that there's a large subset of the current generation who's into 90's alternative the way my crowd embraced 60's psychedelica at that age.) I'm at the point where I'm thinking of starting a new sub-mix of the stuff that fits the scope I started with. So, like the first mix I made ten or twelve years ago, only better. Something has gone desperately wrong.

Now to be fair, I do think I actually made the mix better this time around, not just bigger. Among other improvements:

• Added some missing artists who really should have been there all along; No Doubt, Morrissey and Phish are probably the biggest corrected oversights (how did I not have Phish, for frick's sake?), but I also tossed in Big Head Todd and the Monsters, the Meat Puppets, Lush, Eve's Plum, Fastball, Bad Religion, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, and a mess of others, emphasis on "mess." (Still couldn't choke down Del Amitri, the Rembrandts, or the Mighty Mighty Bosstones; given that even the Cranberries made the cut, that's saying something.)


• Pared down the last two repeated artists, so the artist listing for each of the 235 tracks is now unique.


• Swapped out some tracks for hopefully better choices by the same artists (e.g. taking out "Found Out About You" in favor of "Hey Jealousy," "Anna Begins" in favor of "Round Here," "Caught a Lite Sneeze" in favor of "Crucify," stuff like that).


• Made sure cover art and and other info is correct


• Resequenced the whole damn thing; if nothing else, I wanted "Closing Time" back at the very end, where it belongs.

​I have to say, though, that while I can justify the expansion enough to let myself sleep at night, I'm not so sure the jump to 12 discs is merited here. there's a handful of tracks, like the Wallflowers, where I'm stretching the concept of "alternative" a little too far into the mainstream. I could probably find a disc's worth of cuts and bring the whole shebang back down to 11, but I think I'm going to burst an important blood vessel if I think about this any longer, so feel free to chime in if you're at all inclined. And yes, I'm including the full playlist, so that you may gaze upon my madness and, I dunno, point and throw peanuts. Seems fitting at this point.

( The entire 12-disc, 235-song travesty )