Indy In-Tune

Mix Tape Monday: Darrin's Guilty Pleasures

This one actually comes highly requested from the three or four people who follow these playlists. If you listen to the show, my absolute favorite "Lightning Round" question to ask -- and I will ask it even if it doesn't randomly get selected -- is "What CD is hidden under the front seat of your car that you adore, but don't want your friends to catch you listening to." Now, if you happen to be a guest, I will usually soften up your answer by listing a couple of mine. These do, however, get edited out of the podcast later.

Still, I'm not one to shirk my responsiblity to make a cool playlist, and no, I really don't feel guilty about liking any of these artists. Screw you, I'll play what I like.

Darrin's Much-Requested Guilty Pleasures Mixtape:

Manhattan Transfer -- Offbeat of Avenues All-time, number one, hands-down, guilty pleasure. Tight harmonies and running countermelodies are my thing. This stems from my years singing competitive barbershop quartet and being a general chorus/small ensemble geek in Jr. High.

Kate Bush -- The Sensual World It's bullshit that she still isn't in love with me, but whatever.

Farrell -- Happy There's some sorcery in this guy's music. To date, I haven't gotten tired of any of his songs ... and I get tired of music easily, even my favorite bands. I think I could put this on a loop, listen to it for a whole day, and end up in the best mood ever.

Andy Gibb -- I Just Wanna Be Your Everything Again, this is pretty much what my childhood sounded like. Not proud of it, but the song does make me nostalgic, still.

Oliva Newton John -- A Little More Love See previous three comments ...

Gary Wright -- Really Wanna Know You Wow. Okay, did you ever love a song, until you saw the video ... and then you kinda wanna take it back. I swear, if I had ever seen this video before now, I must have blacked it out. But hey, doesn't that Mini Moog/Arp String combo sound GREAT on this song?!

Rumer -- Slow Found her on, I think it was Song Journeys or some such show on NPR. She had an intersting story and, I thought, a fantastic voice that just jumps registers spot on and with what seems to be zero effort.

Journey -- Why Can't This Night Go On Forever Oh, whatever. They were all killer musicians. Perry has one of the best voices of his era. Dean Cain can write the CRAP out of love songs. Oh, and SOMEBODY bought a shitload of their albums, so I know I'm not the ONLY one who likes this song!

B-52's -- Private Idaho Okay, maybe I'm a bit over the Cosmic Thing era, but I can listen to the first three albums over and over and never get bored.

Little River Band -- Night Owl More harmonies. Tons of musicians layering parts. Oh, and LIVE, bitches! Not sure why they felt they needed to add Glenn Frey here, but whatever, he was sort of out of work in this period anyway, right?

Got suggestions for what pairs well with this list? Have a suggestion for a future mix tape? Want to submit your own "guest mixed tape" to be featured here? Comments are available below...

Darrin Snider is the OCD music nerd responsible for creating Indy In-Tune. By day he's a cloud engineer and business analyst, but he still hopes to someday be an overnight freeform disc jockey married to the local weathergirl who happens to be a former eastern-European supermodel.