Welcome to the MMM!
Hey there! I’m Tommy, and this is the Monday Morning Mixtape. Born back in 2018 as a way for me to share my musical findings and thoughts with a few scattered friends, I’ve decided to share the MMM with the “wider world” starting in 2020. Though odds are, if you’re reading this, you know me in some form or another (i.e. I’ve willfully leveraged our friendship to bring you here) as it is.
What I’ll Say
We all know that Mondays, and particularly Monday mornings, are ass. The original aim of the MMM was to bring a little brightness to the most dreaded portion of everyone’s week, and that still rings true. Every Monday (well, almost every Monday) beginning in the late summer and ending at the close of the year, you’ll receive a curated mixtape that will span anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes — enough time to cover a morning routine, jog, walk, commute, or extended workplace bathroom visit.
The contents of the mixtape will be based on the sounds and interactions of my past week, eclectic and far-ranging or narrow as they might be. This means on any given mixtape you could hear anything from Grateful Dead live deep cuts to 70s African funk to steel-and-strings honky tonk to hip-hop’s latest number ones. While the greatest devotion will always be placed on new or newly-discovered music (which is to say that this process unfolds completely in real-time and isn’t premeditated — I have about as much an idea as any listener what will be on the next mixtape), the mixtape will also include other sounds that stuck out in the previous days: clips from movies, concert and field recordings, whatever it may be.
Admittedly, there may be some moments that could be a bit esoteric for nearly everyone outside myself. Fear not! This is where the newsletter itself comes in. The week following the release of a mixtape, I’ll give an annotated rundown of its contents and their significance to contextualize what you heard the week prior. I’ll also be covering music, issues surrounding music writing itself, and other areas of popular culture as they come across my radar, while sharing other tidbits to consume if they seem worthwhile.
Speaking of tidbits…
A few additional notes:
Every Monday Morning Mixtape will now live on SoundCloud! (You can find every episode from the past two years archived here.) There will be a SoundCloud streaming widget included in each newsletter so mixtape listening can be done without having to navigate between apps. This is an update from the previous two years in which I only shared .mp3 files, much to the chagrin of some. Always happy to send an .mp3 if you request it!
The Monday Morning Mixtape is now on Spotify! Every (Spotify-available) MMM song will be put into a masterlist, while playlists featuring each week’s music will be shared with the annotations the following week.
Calling anyone who makes visual art! I am looking to include cover art of sorts for each mixtape. Please reach out if you have original pieces you’d like to display!
I definitely embrace the amateur and personalized freedom of these processes! Just something to keep in mind :)
Last Kind Words
I’m very excited to kick off the the 2020 installment of the Monday Morning Mixtape! As it is, it’s been a great year in music thus far, which only amplifies my excitement for what’s to come. In addition to all the fun this project entails, there are a few extracurricular surprises in the works, so stay tuned!
Lastly, if you enjoy the MMM and know someone else who may like it, don’t hesitate to share with them! New ears always welcome.
See ya in the inbox,
TG
