MLK XL Muxtape

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed forty years ago today in Memphis, and I'm marking the occasion by making a muxtape for him. That might be more suitable gift for that cute girl in your 3rd period Geometry class who you're too shy to talk to than it is for a slain civil rights leader with his own holiday, but I think there's a mix tape for every occasion.

Muxtape is an online mixmaking service that launched a couple of weeks ago, and all the kool kids are talking about it. It lets you upload up to a dozen mp3s, sequence them, and share the results with your friends. I'm not sure how legal the whole thing is, but people can only play the tracks (not download them), which probably provides a save harbor. But if Rosa Parks wouldn't go to the back of the bus in 1953 and those college students in Greensboro wouldn't leave the Woolworths lunch counter in 1960, I'm sure not going to worry about if something is "legal" or not. Legal schmegal! Segregation used to be "legal" (yes, I realize that that's a silly analogy!)

If you don't have any problems with "unauthorized sharing" the results are here. And if you do, then you can still click there, but I won't give you a link. You're twelve tracks per muxtape, but I only uploaded ten tracks, and here they are.

MLK XL MUXTAPE
(that's "XL" as in "40 in Roman numerals", not "Extra Large")

1. MLK - U2

Knock knock.. Who's there? Orange.. Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn't start this mix with
"Pride (in the name of Love)"?

2. Sword Swallower - The Loud Family

Today is Scott Miller's birthday as well as Dr. King's deathday, and this song even mentions MLK, probably because Scott needed something to rhyme with "Paris in the Spring".

3. Shed a Little Light - James Taylor

JT wrote this tribute to MLK in the early 90s, with hopes that all men and women
living on the earth are bound together in their desire to see the world become a place in which our children can grow free and strong. Rockabye sweet baby James.

4. Abraham, Martin & John - Marvin Gaye

Most people know "AM&J" from Dion's hit version, but it was covered by lots of other artists in the post MLK/RFK era, and Marvin's version is one of the best. This song was recorded in early 1970 and paved the way for What's Going On.

5. They Killed Him - Bob Dylan

I thought this song was one of the few good things about Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded album, only to discover that Bob didn't actually write it. It was by Kris Kristofferson. "There was a man named Mahatma Gandhi. A man named Martin Luther King". Gandhi and King are tied together so much in song that I hope they're good buddies in their afterlives, despite their differing views of what that entails.

6. Eyes On The Prize - Bruce Springsteen

From the Seeger Sessions album that no one liked. This song was a cornerstone of the civil rights movement, and the title was later used for the PBS documentary. My favorite part of the documentary was when Jim Lawson (one of the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter activists) talked about one of his civil rights workshops when someone asked him what they would have ordered if they had been served at the Woolworths, and Lawson replied that he had his "eyes on the pies".

7. A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke

I've noticed that this track list is a little.. white for a Martin Luther King mix, so I've dipped into my small well of black artists. In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (through his narrator Rob Gordon) said that you shouldn't put "black music" and "white music" on the same mix. In this age when a multiracial man is on the verge of becoming president (and he will, as long as he's judged on the content of his character and not what his former pastor said five years ago) I scoff at arbitrary designations between "white music" and "black music". You're not being racially transcendent, Mr. Hornby.

8. He Was A Friend Of Mine - The Byrds

I know this song is about JFK not MLK "He died in Dallas town. From a sixth floor window a gunner shot him down", but it's actually a traditional folk song about no one specifically, which means that it can be about anyone. "He was in Memphis town. From across the street a gunner shot him down". There you go. Anyway I probably should have included "Chimes of Freedom"

9. I Have A Dream - ABBA

When MLK gave one of the greatest speeches of the Twentieth century in the March on Washington, I'm not sure he intended for the term "I Have a Dream" to be appropriated fifteen years later by a Swedish supergroup who needed something to put on the flipside of "Take a Chance On Me", but they did it anyway and here it is. Despite the title, this song has nothing to do with Dr. Martin Luther King.

10. I Had A Dream - The Long Ryders

This song may have something to do with MLK, but probably doesn't. It relates to the previous song by what mix-makers call a "segue" (not to be confused with a segway) where the present tense in song #9 transitions to the past tense in track #10. I had a dream last night (one song ago), but I don't have a dream anymore. That was last night. This song has a very cool video by the way.

I might mess around with this muxtape thing a bit more, until the fad fades away or it gets shut down by The Man. Their interface is a marvel of web simplicity. If they wanted to model the full cassette, they should just have the standard controls (play, rewind, fast forward, stop) without any random track access. So if you want to hear track #5, you need to fast forward until the counter (which has nothing to do with time, it's just a number) falls somewhere in the middle. And after a few plays it could add a screechy "old-tape" sound to the playback.

"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law"

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.