Spitball Army

To the day I die, I feel I will be intent on shedding the “stuff” that I’ve spent the last half-century accumulating. What a waste of time. I really should just toss these things in the circular file but, instead, I’m documenting them. Go figure. The latest targets are the dozens of mixtapes I compiled during the few decades ending around 1999. They’ve been hibernating in shoe boxes and in car trunks since then.

I was totally into “We Gotta Get You a Woman” when I was eleven or twelve years old. A little later, one of my sisters introduced me to “Hello, It’s Me.” Todd Rundgren’s hook-laden and unpredictable pop songs weaved in and out of my awareness for about twenty years thereafter. From that point on, I just revisited what I’d already heard, though his 1997 lounge album With a Twist (a re-visitation of his old songs, itself) later became one of my favorites from all of his many records.

Most of the songs from this mixtape remain my most-listened of his.

Approximate playing time: 75 minutes.

1. “Long Flowing Robe”  (1971)
2. “The Waiting Game”  (1989)
3. “Hello, It’s Me”  (1972)
4. “We Gotta Get You a Woman”  (1971)
5. “Mated”  (1997)
6. “You Cried Wolf”  (1978)
7. “The Ballad (Denny & Jean)”  (1971)
8. “Can’t Stop Running”  (1989)
9. “Wailing Wall”  (1971)
10. “I Saw the Light”  (1972)
11. “Love Is the Answer”  (1997)
12. “All the Children Sing”  (1978)
13. “Compassion”  (1981)
14. “Believe in Me”  (1971)
15. “There Are No Words”  (1970)
16. “Couldn’t I Just Tell You”  (1972)
17. “Love of the Common Man”  (1976)
18. “Can We Still Be Friends?”  (1978)
19. “Fidelity”  (1989)
20. “Intro (Sounds of the Studio)”  (1972)
21. “The Want of a Nail”  (1989)

This playlist is available to listen to in its entirety (that is, all of the songs listed on the tape insert above) over on Spotify (some songs had to be left off of this blog version due to the overall length of the playlist). Here’s the link.