Not the Same Old Song

The iPod giveth, and the iPod taketh away.

Back in the day, there was this technology called “audio tape,” which people used to record music. On a typical tape, you could record maybe ten or elevent pop songs, and then you had to flip it over, and record another ten or eleven songs on the other side. As a result, mix tapes of that era tended to come in distinct “sides.”

I always thought it would be amusing, in a just-about-as-dorky-as-the-guys-in-High Fidelity way, to make a mix tape where the two sides featured the same song titles in the same order, but with all the songs being different– not just cover versions, but different songs that shared the same name. The problem was, it was very difficult to come up with a good list of songs.

Now that I’ve got my whole music collection in electronic form on my computer, it’s realtively easy to sift through the iTunes library to find duplicate titles. But now, of course, the concept of a music mix with distinct “sides” is completely outdated, and soon only old fogeys like me will even remember the idea.

Anyway, I was reminded of this recently (two different songs called “Lullaby” came up back to back (by Cat Empire and Ed James)), so to get it out of my system, here’s a list of potential song pairs from my collection. This is not comprehensive, but has been filtered to those pairs where both songs are pretty good, or at least the bands provide an amusing contrast (I’m going to cost myself some hipster cred by admitting to owning some of these songs…):

  • Alison, Elvis Costello/ Pixies
  • All My Life, Foo Fighters/ Steve Earle
  • All Over the World, ELO/ Pixies/ Strange Fruit
  • American Music, Blasters/ Violent Femmes
  • Angel, Aerosmith/ Jimi Hendrix/ John Hiatt
  • Animal, Def Leppard/ Pearl Jam
  • Anthem, Blink-182/ Phantom Planet/ Rock ‘n’ Roll Soldiers
  • Better Days, Bruce Springsteen/ Goo Goo Dolls
  • Blue, Jayhawks/ Visqueen
  • Blue Sky, Allman Brothers/ Bottle Rockets
  • Broadway, Goo Goo Dolls/ Old 97’s
  • Bye Bye Baby, Committments/ OK Go
  • California, Phantom Planet/ Wax
  • Changes, David Bowie/ Sugar
  • City of Dreams, Marah/ Talking Heads
  • Closing Time, Semisonic/ Tom Waits
  • Dance the Night Away, Mavericks/ Van Halen
  • Desire, Ryan Adams/ U2
  • Drive, Cars/ REM
  • Gloria, Laura Baningan/ Van Morrison
  • Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley/ Ryan Adams
  • Heartbreaker, Led Zeppelin/ Pat Benetar
  • I Want You, Bob Dylan/ Marvin Gaye
  • It’s Too Late, Bob Mould/ Wilson Pickett
  • Lullaby, Cat Empire/ Shawn Mullins
  • Man on the Moon, REM/ Sugar
  • Real Love, Al Green/ Twilight Singers
  • Valentine, Bobby Bare Jr./Old 97’s

I’m half tempted to dust off the casette deck and record an actual tape out of these, just for old times’ sake. That would be silly, though, as I no longer have a tape deck in my car, so where would I listen to it?