Pre-post script: This ended up way longer than I expected. I just started typing and didn't stop. I don't mean to disrepect anyone's time so please feel free to skip any or all of this outside of any curiosities you might have regarding specific songs on these discs and how they relate to my, a complete internet stranger's, personal history. I kept a lot of details vague and didn't use anyone's name so my apologies for the clunkiness of some of the notes.

This is my first disc swap event and I had a better time with participating than I expected. I started by scrolling through artists in my iTunes library and adding candidate songs to a playlist. My thought process for this playlist was to select songs that have been meaningful to me in the past and remain so today. I set a couple rules for myself for this process. First, no more than one song per artist. Second, try to avoid using track 1 from any particular album as those tend to be chosen by the artist for impact and also tend to be more well-known. Finally, no meme songs. The last rule is relevant because I probably would have added Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap but the internet has done to that song what the internet tends to do to nice things.

Once I made my way through my library, I realized my playlist contained far too many songs to trim down to a single disc so I opted to make a two-disc set as it appears a lot of participants ended up doing. This is unsurprising to me as this is a community centered around a primarily music-based format and thus music is likely very important for “getting to know” any community member. I pared down the playlist to approximately 160 minutes and then began the long and difficult process of ordering the songs across the discs in a way that flowed in a satisfying manner when listening to the discs in order and having a clean break between discs. In my opinion, I have one bad transition on each disc but I'm not too worried about it. There are a lot of… incompatible? genres represented here so I don't think there was a way to get them to all flow perfectly but I'm totally fine with the finished product and its imperfections.

All of the songs I used are from lossless CD rips that have been validated by CUETools. I didn't do any editing of the songs themselves so there might be one or two abrupt beginnings or endings to some of the songs as they were intended to be played gapless on their respective albums. ElectronWMD was used to record the songs onto the discs via mini USB. My wife then took care of creating and printing labels for the discs:

1. Portrait of Tracy - Jaco Pastorius (1976)
   I was introduced to Jaco Pastorius by a friend while I was in high school. I find this song wildly impressive and beautiful and it stands on its own relative to the rest of the songs on the source album. Jaco was a very talented, yet also very troubled artist. I'm not exactly sure why I put this song in the mix, let alone as the opener, but it just felt right. Great song to sleep to.
2. Intensify - !!! (aka Chk Chk Chk) (2000)
   That same friend I mentioned in the notes for track 1 and I discovered !!! while acquiring music as one did in the iPod age: via SoulSeek. I learned a lot about music, and pop culture in general, from him. I can't think of another artist that I discovered while downloading music in the same manner one would download a floppy or a car that has stuck with me as long as !!! has. Fun fact: SoulSeek is still alive and well. Not that anyone should use it, of course. Definitely not. Even though it fully supports lossless files now.
3. The Cover of the Rolling Stone - Dr. Hook (1972)
   When I was very young, maybe around 7, my dad bought me my first boombox. It was a Sony CD/Casette/Radio deal. He also bought me my first CD of my choice which was, obviously, The Funky Headhunter by MC Hammer. My parents divorced a couple years prior and I lived with my mom. When I got home that night, she let me pick a CD from her collection to call my own. I picked one based on the album art, which ended up being Dr. Hook's Greatest Hits. This song on that album, as well as the lyric in the chorus, is The Cover of the Rolling Stone but in my research I found that the song was originally titled The Cover of “Rolling Stone” on the original album. I stuck with the title I knew my whole life. I learned recently that Shel Silverstein wrote all the songs on that original album.
4. Two-Headed Boy - Neutral Milk Hotel (1998)
   This is the first song of the bunch that I'll refer to as a “shut up” song, as in, “shut up, I need to hear this song”. It's something you say when you hear a song for the first time and have to stop doing whatever it is you're doing to devote 100% of your attention to it, usually more than once. I won't pretend to know what this song is about but I like the interpretation I've read that describes it as a bunch of metaphors for the process of listening to vinyl records. This is the song that I would love to sing along loudly to, but no matter how many times I hear it, I can't remember the lyrics or the odd cadence of the delivery when I need to.
5. No Children - The Mountain Goats (2002)
   I first heard this song when it was used in an episode of the claymation show Moral Orel on Cartoon Network. It's not a pleasant song but there is a lot of passion in the writing and performance. To me it is a perfect, beautiful song with some of the most earnest and hurtful lyrics ever written. Another one that's fun to sing along loudly to. This is the first of several songs here that might shed a suspicious light on my mental state.
6. '39 - Queen (1975)
   Queen's A Night at the Opera is one of my all-time favorite albums and besides Bohemian Rhapsody (meme song status, sadly), this one is the stand-out hit for me. I never knew what it was actually about until I started this write-up. It was always fun to speculate about the meaning, what events it was referring to, not even knowing what century '39 happened in. Turns out, Brian May was writing about astronauts taking a short (in time, to them) relativistic trip through space and returning to a much more aged Earth due to time dilation and all their friends, families, and loved ones were long dead. That made for a really fun lyric read-through this week, given the new context.
7. Are You a Hypnotist?? - The Flaming Lips (2002)
   Another friend of mine from high school introduced me to The Flaming Lips when I was spending a ton of time at his house in my community college years. This album was one of our regulars that we would spin in his basement, hanging out regularly until 4am, multiple times a week. His family was one of several families I grew up with, offering me sanity-saving homes-away-from-home. One year my own mother prepared I think around 6 mothers day gifts for all of the surrogate mothers I had around that time. That was a fun tour around town that fine Sunday, delivering those gifts. My mom didn't join me, but I made sure to express her gratitude. She was struggling, single, and working nights. She's a real trooper.
8. I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman - k-os (2009)
   This was one of those “shut up” songs. Another friend of mine, another one of shared mother and home-away-from-home status, put this song on while we were hanging out in his new apartment. Or maybe it was in his car? We had both recently moved from the midwest to Los Angeles, fresh out of college. This song is a timeline marker in my life. I don't know what it's about, but something about it was important to me.
9. Did I Step on Your Trumpet - Danielson (2006)
   This one is from a 4th friend of mine, again with the mothers and houses. Let's just assume from this point on that if I refer to a friend that they or their families sheltered and provided for me in some way at some point. He always had the most unique taste in music and this is reflected in additional tracks on this disc set. We were hanging out, sharing music videos with each other, and he put this one on. It's an interesting video, involving a lot of sailor and ship themed practical effects. Dude's voice shouldn't sound good but he makes it work, for me at least.
10. Smart Went Crazy - Atmosphere (2005)
    I'm not sure if 3rd or 4th friend from above turned me on to Atmosphere. Sometime in the late 2000's I dug into their deep discography but this song is the one I would put on repeat. Not sure what it's about but the beat and ending hook are super satisfying for me.
11. Take It All Away - CAKE (2004)
    For a long time, starting probably sometime in the late 90's, I considered CAKE my “favorite band”. Ever since I heard The Distance, then bought the album it was on and then heard one of the coolest album openers of all time, “Frank Sinatra”, I was obsessed. The problem with “favorite bands”, especially in the era that preceded easy music streaming, is that one tends to overdo it. I don't listen to CAKE much anymore these days but I remain a huge appreciator of their work. When I got married, a bunch of my more musically inclined friends formed a temporary CAKE cover band and played a whole concert for us. I regret being a bit too drunk to fully appreciate that.
12. Question - The Moody Blues (1970)
    Even though they were divorced, my parents would regularly play music together with their old friends and would bring me along with to watch (and also play a ton of bootleg Amiga games). My mom was on bass and my dad on the drums. I was probably around 15 or 16 when their friends moved a bit too far away to sustain the regularity. Moody Blues covers would be standard at these gatherings. I was eventually gifted that Amiga. I regret getting rid of it. I actualy saw The Moody Blues at the Chicago Theater once in the early 2000's if I recall correctly. Excellent musicians and performance.
13. Wildcat - Ratatat (2006)
    I worked as an Apple Genius for over 4 years, at 4 different Apple stores, in 2 different states. This was what I would consider my first “real” job which led to an actual career. In every Apple store, there was a room in the back where the Geniuses performed hardware repairs. This was referred to as the Genius Room. Ratatat was a common musical thread in every Genius Room in which I worked.
14. _n C_rcl_s - Darren Korb (2014)
    This one is the first video game song on this list, but certainly not the last. This song is from the first video game soundtrack that I liked enough to start listening to it out of context. The game is called Transistor and it is a bit hard to follow due to intensely soft world building, but the soundtrack is fantastic and I think it stands on its own. Darren Korb is wildly talented.
15. A Better Place, a Better Time - Streetlight Manifesto (2003)
    I learned about Streetlight Manifesto from the same friend that introduced me to The Flaming Lips, but I obsessed over these guys for a lot longer. Streetlight is still a regular listen for me and I think they're the group I've seen perform the most in person. I chose this song in particular because the lyrics in the first 3rd of the song are really well-written.
16. Giants - Five Iron Frenzy (2000)
    Same story as the prior track except I don't listen to this group nearly as much. I did end up listening to this album on repeat as I was deep cleaning my first car for the first time in preparation for driving my high school prom date around. That didn't go well at all but I still look back on this album and that cleaning experience fondly. FIF is a little too Christian for my tastes in general, but this song is really weird and cool.
17. Hyperballad - Björk (1996)
    As I'm going through and writing these song notes I'm realizing that music I was listening to duing that mid- and post-community college era had a pretty big impact on me. That same friend that introduced me to The Flaming Lips, Streetlight Manifesto, and Five Iron Frenzy also introduced me to Björk, strangely. This song is another one involving themes of suicide and broken families but it is really beautiful.
18. Just a Thought - Gnarls Barkley (2006)
    Big suicide song here. Not why I picked it though. The beat hits so hard on this one and I really love the line, “It's even dark in the daytime. It's not just good, it's great depression”, and Cee-lo's delivery is on point. I saw Gnarls Barkley live once. Cee-Lo hit a pipe on stage while it was still illegal in my state. He also fell down while dancing, stood himself up, and referred to himself as “the incredible, edible egg”. I'm not, nor have I ever been, suicidal.
19. Smash The Magnavox - Blue Meanies (1997)
    I was and still am a big fan of ska. I learned about these guys in High School and I think they are wildly underrepresented in the history of ska. This song was my introduction to them and I find it quite unique and unforgettable.
20. 20¢ Goodbye - Goldfinger (1997)
    I would have had Superman by Goldfinger here, but I ran out of space on the disc and it's a bit of a meme song. Thanks, Tony Hawk. I think Superman was the first modern ska song I ever heard. I was on a high school band competition trip to Virginia Beach, VA when one of my classmates played it for me in our hotel room. 20¢ Goodbye was an appropriate alternative choice as it was one of the first songs I ever pirated on behalf of one of my less tech-savvy friends.

1. Find the Cost of Freedom - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (1970)
   This is another song I first heard as a live cover by that band my parents were in in the basement of our family friend's house. As I recall, they would always play Find the Cost of Freedom and then follow it with Ohio, also by CSN&Y. Oddly, in my research I learned that Ohio was the A-side and this song was the B-side so I think they were playing the songs out of the intended order. Regardless, I think this is a really heavy hitter song to start a disc with and I was particularly proud of the transition into the next song. Choosing the A-side of a single doesn't count as using track 1 of an album and breaking my rule, right?
2. Living Room - Tegan and Sara (2002)
   This one was another “shut up” song for me. I first encountered it in the basement of my friend I referred to in the notes for I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman from disc 1. Sadly, I don't like the rest of Tegan and Sara's work nearly as much as I like this song. I really hate when that happens.
3. Hey Sandy - Polaris (1999)
   This was the opening song for the Nickelodeon show, The Adventures of Pete & Pete. This song, the rest of the songs on the soundtrack, and the show itself puts me into a really strange headspace. It's like I'm nostalgic for a existence I never lived. It's an odd, otherworldly feeling that I can't quite explain.
4. Bloodoath - exes & Petey (2020)
   This is the most recent song for me on this list. It's from another game soundtrack, Pacific Drive, which came out in 2024. The game is a rather unique game about maintaining and building a relationship with a sentient car as you take road trips through an alternate-history 1980's Pacific Northwest. The soundtrack the developers put together for the radio in your car and garage in this game has quickly become one of my regular roadtrip soundtracks. I'm not sure exactly if this song should be credited to EXES, as indicated by their website, or the all-lowercase exes, as indicated by the track listing for the soundtrack. Also I'm not sure if exes & Petey is a discrete act or if it's exes featuring Petey. Who knows?
5. Peach, Plum, Pear - Joanna Newsom (2004)
   I first heard this song and artist in a previously unmentioned friend's car. I would say it was a variant of my “shut up” song concept in that my first thought upon hearing her voice was something along the lines of, “Shut up. What the hell am I listening to? Is this a choir of church mice?”. But she got under my skin. Her voice is just a beautiful instrument to me now.
6. Into the Doldrums - Chris Christodoulou (2020)
   Here's another relatively recent song from a video game soundtrack. The game is Risk of Rain 2 and the Risk of Rain series might be known more for it's soundtracks than the games themselves. Chris Christodoulou is a virtuoso and he can make a guitar produce sounds that would make John Lennon weep out of jealousy. Even though it's a video game soundtrack, I invented another game that you can play while listening to it. It's called, “Try to Guess the Time Signature”. I'm not very good at it.
7. The Despair Factor - AFI (2000)
   As I mentioned before, I began the process by picking songs by navigating through my artist list in iTunes. AFI is the reason I navigated the list of artists in reverse alphabetical order. I was obsessed with them throughout high school and still enjoy them to this day. I knew by the time I got to the A's in my list that I would get stuck picking “the” song to represent AFI. I'm not really interested in their earliest works or anything after DECEMBERUNDERGROUND, but that's still a decent amount of bangers to rank. I ended up picking The Despair Factor because I decided that this song “has it all”. It's got a bit of electronic instrumentation, AFI's classic hard punk sound, and an emotional, chanty ending they're also known for.
8. Big Love - Fleetwood Mac (1997)
   I remember clearly when this live album released, even though I was pretty young. I remember my parents and everyone in their orbits were transfixed by this album. As far as I'm aware, everybody loves Fleetwood Mac. I chose this version of the song over the original version because I was alive when it released and watching Lindsey Buckingham belt it out, alone on stage, while also perfectly playing guitar parts that were seemly written for at least 2 guitarists makes me feel sympathetic stagefright. I considered Landslide here, but unfortunately these days that's at least verging on meme song.
9. Invalid Litter Dept. - At the Drive-In (2000)
   Some of the members of ATDI split off and formed The Mars Volta, which has produced some of the most intense and psychological music I've ever heard in my life. Their album De-Loused in the Comatorium is one of the best movies I've ever watched, even though it's just the scenes that play in my brain as I listen to that album. I couldn't possibly pick a single Mars Volta song for this disc, mostly due to length and the required gapless nature of their songs. ATDI's Invalid Litter Dept fits the same bill for me. Also I can't imagine Cedric would be able to sing, let alone talk, for quite some time after recording the final screams on this track.
10. Men of Station - 13 & God (2005)
    I learned about this group from the same friend that introduced me to Danielson from disc 1. I love this whole album. It makes me feel dark and smothered, as strange as that sounds. I'm not sure how better to explain it. The music isn't unpleasant, but it does something to chill me out. I thought it might be a good album to sleep to, but for some reason it never works out for me. I can't really find the right words for this song/group/album.
11. Brothers on a Hotel Bed - Deat Cab for Cutie (2005)
    I'm pretty new to Minidisc, as indicated by my references to iTunes and iPods (sorry). Before I obtained the truckload of cash required for my first iPod, I was a huge CD fan. So Death Cab for Cutie's album Transatlanticism is one of my all-time favorites and for some reason I also remember it as the album I burned onto CDs the most out of any other album (Was I losing them? Giving them away? Scratching them?). That album was in my car's CD player for probably months at a time. This song isn't from that album, rather it's from their album Plans. This song, and the song What Sarah Said which precedes it on the album, are two beautifully sad songs to me. I just think this song fit this disc better than anything from Transatlanticism.
12. Sierra - Cursive (2003)
    I don't really remember how I came to know and love this song, but it fits my apparent unplanned theme of songs involving broken families. Cursive was a band that just existed in the ether around my friend group post-high school, so it makes me feel good when I listen to them these days.
13. Roses and Bluejays - Buck 65 (2003)
    I learned about Buck 65 from the same friend that introduced me to 13 & God and Danielson. This song came out in an era of Buck 65 that was defined by an odd combination of hiphop and cowboy vibes that got under my skin in the best way. Unbelieveably, he also got to perform this song, along with several other songs of his, with Symphony Nova Scotia in a proper orchestral arrangement. I asked a longtime friend of mine to help me pick the Buck 65 song that would represent me or my tastes best for this compilation. It was either this song or another one called Devil's Eyes. It was a hard choice.
14. Mistadobalina - Del the Funky Homosapien (1991)
    When I first started working for Apple, I had to attend some sort of day 1 orientation. I carpooled with my Buck 65/Danielson/13 & God friend that day as he was already working at that location. He was also the person that referred me to my new role there. On the way, he put this song on. You guessed it, this was another “shut up” song for me. I ended up cutting the hook from this song and turning it into a ringtone for my iPhone, back when people used to have their ringer set to audible instead of silent 100% of the time if that's any indication of how long ago that was.
15. Plane Crash in C - Rilo Kiley (2001)
    I love Rilo Kiley and I'm in love with Jenny Lewis. I could end this note here but that feels like a cop out so I'll add a little MySpace vagueposting to complete the era-appropriate ensemble. Rilo Kiley represents the soundtrack for a time when I really enjoyed what I was doing and who was around when I was doing it. This artist is still a regular listen for me and has been for over 20 years.
16. Bulletproof - La Roux (2009)
    This one is a bit of a contextual combination of Ratatat and k-os for me. I heard it in the Genius Room of the Apple Store in Los Angeles after I transferred half a country away. It's a good timeline marker for me, representing the continuation of my new career and new life with new and old friends in a new place.
17. Cavalier Eternal - Against Me! (2003)
    Prior to completing my useless community college degree, an opportunity presented itself to me. I was able to go on a US tour with a local band and do videography work. I didn't know the band, the members, or where we were going so I was able to sort of shed myself and just be a new person for a while. We didn't have any money. The van had mechanical issues. I slept outside multiple times with no tent and in highly questionable conditions. I learned that Michigan's Upper Peninsula has the country's nicest people. I learned that I don't much care for New York City or any part of New Jersey. I learned a lot on that tour. My participation on tour ended shortly before the tour ended after about a month and then the band broke up. I had to take my first and only Greyhound bus from a hospital in Kentucky to Chicago to ultimately have to undergo a tonsilectomy. That's just correlation, no causation. I have a fond memory of listening to this whole album for the first with the band in the van, late night, probably on the road through Pennsylvania or something.
18. Will You Love Me Tomorrow? - Carole King (1971)
    This is a song from Carole King's Tapestry, one of my mom's two favorite house cleaning albums. The other being 16 of Their Greatest Hits by the Mamas & the Papas. She would sing along as they played. Both of these albums have grown on me over the years and I always have fond childhood memories when I hear them.
19. Here's to You - Ennio Morricone (1971)
    Ennio Morricone is credited for this one because he wrote all the music for the movie it was featured in but to me this is more of a Joan Baez song through and through. This is kind of a strange one for me. I first encountered it in a video game: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. When I heard it in the game, I could have sworn I was very familiar with it. When I dug into the lore of the game and the origination of the song I realized that was a false memory. The song originally came from the movie Sacco & Vanzetti, in which two Italian immigrants were unjustly sentenced to death in the US for their political views (in a nutshell). It was used for similar reasons in the Metal Gear game. Oh yeah, about me, clearly video games are a big part of my life. The Metal Gear series has existed for pretty much as long as I have so it basically grew up with me.
20. Kind Lady -2008 Extended Mix- - Sota Fujimori (2008)
    I couldn't end the disc on that sad note. I have been playing Dance Dance Revolution regularly as a form of entertainment and exercise for over 20 years now. Kind Lady was introduced to the game in 2002 and has always been my favorite DDR song, even though it was removed from versions of the game after 2015. Prior to this 2008 extended version, the artist was credited as OKUYATOS, which is SOTAYUKO in reverse. SOTA is the name of the artist and YUKO was the name of his first love. Sadly, the vocalist in the song, Erica Ash (also of MADtv fame), died from breast cancer on July 28, 2024 at age 46. That was a sad day, indeed. I guess I ended this disc on a sad note after all.