Then again: isn’t “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” (#33) the premise of every Smiths song?

Note: “Paperback Writer” is routinely available in stereo, but the canonical mix is none too good; this is a remix. And the Doors track is an attempt at duplicating the 45 mix, by cutting, pieceing, and retiming the stereo LP version. I didn’t do either of these myself, so don’t ask me how it was done.

Track listing for 111147-2:

1. The Dave Clark Five: Do You Love Me
2. Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders: Game of Love
3. The Skyliners: Since I Don’t Have You
4. Martha and the Vandellas: Jimmy Mack
5. The Beatles: Paperback Writer
6. Chubby Checker: Hooka Tooka
7. Preston Epps: Bongo Bongo Bongo
8. Sagittarius: My World Fell Down
9. The Yardbirds: I’m a Man
10. The Shocking Blue: Venus
11. The Beach Boys: Heroes and Villains
12. Them: Baby Please Don’t Go
13. Sonny and Cher: Baby Don’t Go
14. The 13th Floor Elevators: You’re Gonna Miss Me
15. Wilson Pickett: Funky Broadway
16. The Animals: We Gotta Get Out of This Place
17. The Crystals: Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home)
18. Sly and the Family Stone: Hot Fun in the Summertime
19. King Harvest: Dancing in the Moonlight
20. The Doors: Light My Fire
21. The Temptations: Papa Was a Rolling Stone
22. The Rivieras: California Sun
23. Edwin Starr: Agent Double-O-Soul
24. Eddie Cochran: Summertime Blues
25. The Murmaids: Popsicles and Icicles
26. Bobby Darin: Splish Splash
27. The Soul Survivors: Expressway to Your Heart

The material is derived from the Green Book of Songs^®, offered as a subscription service. They admit up front in their FAQ that they can’t possibly get everything:

Some songs are regarded as, frankly, too complex to full classify in this Database. For example, Emmylou Harris’s “The Pearl” covers profound themes of God and mankind that resist efforts to recognize it adequately. There are numerous other such cases, and we thank you for accepting the inevitable limitations within which this Database operates.

Which statement, modest as it is, was enough to insure their inclusion here.

Track listing for 111146-2:

1. Rebecca Black: Friday
2. Sam Cooke: Another Saturday Night
3. Spanky and Our Gang: Sunday Mornin’
4. The Mamas and the Papas: Monday, Monday
5. The Moody Blues: Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon)
6. Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories: Waiting for Wednesday
7. Giles, Giles and Fripp: Thursday Morning
8. The Cure: Friday I’m in Love
9. Elton John: Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
10. The Clique: Sugar on Sunday
11. The Boomtown Rats: I Don’t Like Mondays
12. The Rolling Stones: Ruby Tuesday
13. The Guess Who: A Wednesday in Your Garden
14. Nilsson: (Thursday) Here’s Why I Didn’t Go to Work Today
15. The Easybeats: Friday on My Mind
16. Bay City Rollers: Saturday Night
17. The Monkees: Pleasant Valley Sunday
18. Bangles: Manic Monday

To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mind”, but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and … oh, there are loads of rules.

I might actually follow these once in a while, but I don’t make a habit of it.

Track listing for 111145-2:

1. Abba: I Do (x 5)
2. Neil Diamond: Cherry (x 2)
3. Andrea True Connection: More (x 3)
4. Ohio Express: Yummy (x 3)
5. Cher: Bang (x 2)
6. Tommy James and the Shondells: Mony (x 2)
7. The Hollies: Stop (x 3)
8. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: Let’s Go (x 3)
9. The Byrds: Turn (x 3)
10. The Sandpipers: Louie (x 2)
11. The Castaways: Liar (x 2)
12. Miriam Makeba: Pata (x 2)
13. The Beau Brummels: Laugh (x 2)
14. The Beach Boys: Fun (x 3)
15. Don Covay and the Goodtimers: Mercy (x 2)
16. The Buckinghams: Mercy (x 3)
17. Gene McDaniels: Chip (x 2)
18. The Dixie Cups: Iko (x 2)
19. The Music Machine: Talk (x 2)
20. Alive & Kicking: Tighter (x 2)
21. The Magic Lanterns: Shame (x 2)
22. The Playmates: Beep (x 2)
23. The Rolling Stones: Doo (x 5) *
24. The Third Rail: Run (x 3)
25. The Supremes: Run (x 3)
26. Jo Jo Gunne: Run (x 3)
27. The Archies: Sugar (x 2)
28. The Jamies: Summertime (x 2)
29. Major Lance: Um (x 6)

* Also known as “Heartbreaker.”

Or you might not:

limiting any collection to 12 or 14 or even 18 songs when you can easily fit 3-400 on a CD-R just as easily can often be viewed as a waste of time. and that’s the problem. the limitations are what lift the act of throwing some tracks together to creating a perfect and timeless mix that can resonate for decades. skeptical that a mixtape can have such a profound impact? i shit you not: books have been written on the subject. the fact is that i’ve received several mix tapes and a few mix cds and i value all of them as highly, if not higher than my favorite albums of all time.

a well-executed mix is like a book: it has an introduction, a middle, an end. it tells a story (even if that story is: here’s a cool band i like), has a rise and fall and usually has some twists and turns you don’t expect.

And how much of a story can you tell if you throw in three hundred tracks? This is Proustian overkill when you need Hemingway’s conciseness.

The art — and make no mistake about it, it is an art — of making a mix tape is one lost on a generation that only has to drag and drop to complete a mix. There’s no love or passion involved in moving digital songs from one folder to another. Those “mixes” are just playlists held prison inside an iPod. There’s no blood, sweat and tears involved in making them.

There would be albums strewn about the room. There would be painful minutes spent starting and stopping and restarting a song in an attempt to hit the record button at just the right time so as to eliminate the clunks and hisses. But even if you didn’t time it so perfectly as to not have even a millisecond of space between “Don’t Cry” and “Jamie’s Crying” it was ok. That hiss became part of the mix. Upon the third listen, that sound would no longer be a piece of imperfection, but part of the flow of the tape; the two seconds of dead air was a metaphor for the silence in your relationship.

This latter is important: we cherish the imperfections.

The Troggs’ immortal “Wild Thing,” issued by two labels in the States (Atco and Fontana) because no one was quite sure who actually owned the US rights to it at the time, contains a very noticeable board click right before the beginning of the last section. Reg Presley croons “You moooove me,” and the sound fades away: you can count your way into the next guitar blast, but before you get there, somebody hits a switch, and it’s easily audible. Admittedly, “Wild Thing” is pretty noisy on its own, but if that board click is missing, you’ll know it.

Clip from “Wild Thing” [mp3]

At least one reissue producer took pains to “clean up” that record, and he excised the board click entirely. The results were Not Good.

Still, good transitions are worth trying for. The greatest segue ever, I have believed for some time, would be from Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” into Badfinger’s “Day After Day,” and it has to be timed just right. Modern-day DJs can hit this beat without even breathing hard, but it takes a little longer for us old Luddites, even with spiffy software at our disposal.

Track listing for 111144-2:

1. The Fixx: Saved by Zero
2. Len Barry: 1-2-3
3. Prince: I Would Die 4 U
4. The Byrds: 5 D (Fifth Dimension)
5. Dave Dudley: Six Days on the Road
6. Rosanne Cash: Seven Year Ache
7. Herman’s Hermits: I’m Henry VIII, I Am
8. The Temptations: Cloud Nine
9. The Yardbirds: Happenings Ten Years Time Ago
10. Neil Sedaka: Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen
11. Alice Cooper: I’m Eighteen
12. Paul Hardcastle: 19
13. King Crimson: 21st Century Schizoid Man
14. The Brothers Johnson: Strawberry Letter 23
15. Edwin Starr: Twenty-Five Miles
16. Toni Basil: I’m 28
17. The Showmen: 39-21-40 Shape*
18. Little Carl Carlton: 46 Drums 1 Guitar
19. Paul Simon: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
20. Sammy Hagar: I Can’t Drive 55
21. Candy and the Kisses: The 81
22. Nena: 99 Luftballons
23. Wilson Pickett: Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)

* Occasionally shown as “39-21-46.”