Track 4, Volume 3
2005

In advance of my solo road trip to Athens, Georgia I decided I was woefully lacking in fresh mix tapes. I would have a lot of pavement to cross with no companionship other than that I coaxed out of my car stereo speakers. For a few days, I went of something of a mix tape preparation frenzy, but I didn't have the time to do it the proper way with deep consideration of each track and the overall flow of the tape. I needed a different scheme. I decided to pull out a big stack of CDs and populate my cassettes with the fourth track from each one.

I don't remember if there was a particular fourth track that I wanted to be certain to include or if I did it out of some vague sense of symbolic significance to track number four instilled by satch_paige or slomack or maybe the back cover to R.E.M.'s Green. The derivation is unclear. There were three tapes total made with this methodology. This, as the title implies, is the third.

SIDE ONE
BOB DYLAN, "One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"
MASSIVE ATTACK, "Be Thankful For What You've Got"
One of the goals behind this tape was getting myself to listen a little more closely to some of the albums (if only one humble track) that had been making their respective ways into the household CD player. Blue Lines was one of those albums I snapped up used as soon as I saw it, listened to fairly often after I had gotten and then eventually started to let my finger drift right on by on the way to a Material Issue CD while perusing the collection for something to listen to. I like the music and always admire it's craft when I hear it, but I'll admit that it doesn't really stick with me.
RILO KILEY, "So Long"
LIZ PHAIR, "Dancer of the Seven Veils"
ROLLING STONES, "Casino Boogie"
The ever-do-clever moment on this mix tape was segueing from an Exile in Guyville track to an Exile on Main Street slab of aural toughness. There are probably thousands upon thousands of other mix tapes that use this same trick.
LOVE, "The Daily Planet"
MY MORNING JACKET, "Master Plan"
THE WEEDS, "Better Now"
A garage-y band out of Madison, Wisconsin that played one of the last 90FM Trivia Kickoff Concerts. We bullied them into playing a cover of "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" with The Replacements' "Skyway" interjected into the middle of it that we remembered from a show they had played at the university a few years earlier. We also did the "Simple Men dance" when they played their song "Nancy Sinatra," which was a minor hit at the radio station at the time. That was a good night. This song comes from the album King Crow, which doesn't generate a ripple on the ol' Interweb. A Google search of "The Weeds" and "King Crow" yields a grand total of 16 results, none of them related to the band or album in question.

SIDE TWO
R.E.M., "Cuyahoga"
I was going to Athens after all.
WIRE, "Ex Lion Tamer"
TORI AMOS, "Strange"
STARS, "Reunion"
I was a touch obsessed with this song at the time. I recall pulling it up repeatedly on my iTunes in the hotel room. There are many lines in this song that still inspire an immediate, involuntary smile. "In the year of my decline/Sucking freezies in the rain" will do it right off the top.
SONIC YOUTH, "Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream"
By the time the album was released, "Mariah Carey" had been changed to "Kim Gordon." The WPRK copy had the original title. It was probably stolen.
PATTI SMITH, "Cartwheels"
PJ HARVEY, "Pocket Knife"
CLINIC, "Walking With Thee"