Guerilla Mixtapes
On the weekend Mrs. Toad and I used a City Car Club car to tool around the place trying to find a camera for the Toad Sessions. They’re really useful things to have available, those cars, because you sign up to the scheme, they’re all over the city and whenever you need one you just take it. Easy peasy.
Anyhow, when we turned on the stereo it turned out someone had left a compilation CD in the player when the car was last used, and the first song that came from the speakers the second we pressed the on button was the wonderful Can’t Hurry Love by Phil Collins the Concretes. This is hardly a well-known song, or at least so I would have said. Not obscure exactly, but it was a genuine surprise to hear it. Fascinated, I flicked back to the start of the CD – The Concretes was song six or seven or something like that – and what should come on but The Boy With the Arab Strap by Belle & Sebastian. It was like a gift from the gods of music nerdery!
Next came a couple of Arctic Monkeys songs – Fake Tales of San Francisco and Mardy Bum, two of their better ones – and then something else I can’t remember, and then this bizarre bit of music that sounded quite like Ian Dury & the Blockheads, but wasn’t. By this point I was singing the praises of our mysterious benefactor as if he or she were some sort of benevolent indie god. It didn’t last, unfortunately. There was some shitty hip hop after that and then it descended into the sort of shit you imagine an ageing indie kid might be forced to put on his compilation by his girlfriend. That sounds rather sexist, and it is, but Mrs. Toad said it before I did, so sod off.
So it may not have ended up as the euphoric celebration of indie serendipity which it teasingly suggested it might be in the beginning, but it was still a wonderful accident of circumstance, particularly starting with that Concretes track. And it got me to thinking how cool it would be to make a pile of Song, by Toad mix CDs and then rent City Car Club cars one at a time and every time leave a little musical present behind when we return the car. It would be amazing. I suppose a lot of people would just think it was shit and throw it out, but I wonder how many people would listen. And how populist do you think you’d have to make something for them to stick with it long enough to discover some hidden gems?
The Concretes – You Can’t Hurry Love
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Belle & Sebastian – The Boy With the Arab Strap
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Well I had to listen to that first track just to get Phil Collins outta my head, thanks! I’m pretty sure if you put some Meursault on your mix CD it’d be loved by many. Throw in a nice couple of indie covers and they’d call ya up begging for more.
Just avoid Mr. Waits :-p
xoxo
lead ‘em in with a quietly mastered pop song, leave the volume up high, then put something loud & ‘difficult’ on – that’ll get their interest spiked; tho maybe I’m mean?
Oh, and some Old Toad sweet cigs in the ashtray too’d be thoughtful, Thanks.
You should have posted the mystery Ian Dury soundalike on here – see if anyone recognised it..
Ah yes, Tart, some obscure covers would do the trick. Fascinating enough, irrespective of quality, for people to lap it up.
Dylan – I would have but I didn’t keep the CD. That felt mean, so I just left it for the next people.
when i was young i remember my parents hiring a car and finding a tape still in the player which had a simply red album on one side and bobby brown on the other.
this probably sounds horrendous to most of you, but i quite liked bobby brown when i was eight.
simply red, on the other hand, i’ve had a healthy resentment of since as long as i can remember.
T-shirt!
Front:
this probably sounds horrendous to most of you, but i quite liked bobby brown when i was eight.
Back:
simply red, on the other hand, i’ve had a healthy resentment of since as long as i can remember.
Genius. You’re a goldmine Bart – your comments should just about fund my retirement at this rate.
We hired a car over xmas and there was a mix cd left in the player…..it was entitled cheesy songs….and was complete and utter pish….whoever made it must have been braindead or autistic savant.
That’s not as nice and heartwarming as my story Tom, but thank you for sharing it anyway.
Didn’t realise that posts had to be nice and heartwarming….just wanted to show the other side of your romantic story!!
Anyway, City Car Club….value for money?
Not for long periods. It’s great for an hour or two here and there, but pretty poor value for money for longer rentals. I’d just go to a rental company if you’re getting towards a day or so’s use.
tho i do reckon the idea of Guerilla Mixtapes is a rocking one…..going to do it next time i hire a car….
Maybe we should initiate a Toad campaign to quietly drop them off all over the place. Every time we go somewhere we might be able to quietly leave one we should just quietly drop one off. Rental cars, communal CD players… where else? Shops? Pubs? Not sure how that would work but it would be fun.
i’m game…..random tracks or edinburgh tracks?
I think the goal should be to mix in enough known stuff that we can slip in a good few songs by unsigned Scottish bands if possible. It was things like the Ian Dury-a-like song that made that mixtape. A bit of classic Clash setting up Rob’s A Red Heron, for example.
Not that I should be telling people how to put together a mixtape.
no no… you’re right…..oh what fun!!!
But how do we get feedback? It’s no fun unless we can find out what happened to the CDs after we’ve abandoned them to their fate..
Should we put the Song, By Toad URL on the CD? Or maybe set up a new website for the idea?..
That does sound like a good idea. It’s all about the first track. Make it a crowd pleaser and you’ve got ‘em. Perhaps Smokin’ Whiskey by The Kazoo Funk Orchestra. Heard it on The Waiting Room and I cannot. make. it. stop. playing. in. my. head.
not that i’m getting ahead of myself here….but i;ve just set up a email address
guerilla-mixtapes@hotmail.co.uk
Have you registered the URL?
yeah…..com and .co.uk
Don’t suppose you need someone to head up the Melbourne chapter of this little escapade, do you? Or else I might just have to pinch your rather excellent idea? I’m a bit excited by all this.
I also don’t think it needs any feedback does it? The whole point is to just leave something in the hope that maybe it’ll brighten someone’s day.
Ach I don’t know. An email address or something might be useful. What if we put on some carefully selected unsigned bands and no-one can find out what they’ve heard. I know that’s contrary to the high style of the best viral marketing campaigns, but if we’re trying to get good unsigned music out there a little bit then some sort of contact details or info would be helpful, I would have thought. Not that I’d know, obviously, just riffin’ with y’all. Or something.
Of course if it becomes a marketing campaign, however well intended, rather than just something cool to do, then it automatically becomes just a little less good.
Totally and that’s why i’ve registered the 2 url’s so no fucker can nick em……unless of course they want to give me £500000
Put some sort of unique identifier on each different compilation that gets put out. That could even be something as simple as colour coding them.
Print the web address on the CD.
When you visit the website you can look up which colour CD you’ve found, and see the tracklisting.
No other information whatsoever on the website other than obviously links to the bands’ own websites / MySpaces.
fucking exciting or what!!!!!
well i think it is.
Very, very nice plan.
Wordpress is perfect for this actually.
Create a new post for each new compilation that gets distributed. Then people say where they found the CD in the comments section.
Exactly, and the entire rest of the page is blank, with just the colour of the tape before the ‘break’, so the homepage ends up just being a list of colours, then when you click you go to the page for the compilation itself, with the tracklisting and the MySpaces.
im sure there used to be a similar thing for books – note sure if its still going.
People would find a book on public transport or in a cafe or wherever, and it would have instructions inside the cover to read the book, log on to a website to add your comments and details of where you found it, then leave the book somewhere else for the next person to find.
Cant remember what the website was called though.
I think doing a similar thing with music is a great idea.
i think the word is intuitive
Erm, why can’t you just print a label with band name and song titles and put it on the disc? Or just take a sharpie pen and write the band names and song titles on the disc.
That would do it, but I’m not sure I don’t prefer just an identifier and a web address. Keeps the CD cleaner and gives the opportunity to make a cool website, which is always fun.
Or isn’t that fancy pants enough for you budding entrepreneurs?
I’m sure EMI will find a way to have any car with such a CD in it repossessed for copyright infringement. Check the brakes before driving!
Sad, but even sadder is that it probably isn’t that far from the truth.
Another thought.
I’m not sure I’m 100% cool with the idea leaving a CD full of rippable songs lying about the place without the artist’s permission.
(Just to clarify: I’m not sure I’m 100% cool with that idea… However, I am absolutely unshakably positive without the merest shadow of a doubt that I’m 100% cool.)
How about, instead of individual tracks, the CD features some sort of link between each track? Whether it’s a sample of movie dialogue, or a silly voice recording saying “You are listening to a guerilla-mixtape…” or whatever; then stitch it all together as one long track so that people will find it difficult to rip individual tracks and stick them on their iPods.
That will give them further encouragement to visit the website and to find out more about the bands they like.
That is probably just how Sony would do it.
Ooh. Spiteful.
Well leaving a little ident here and there is one thing, but I don’t like the idea of making it unrippable. Any and every CD is rippable, it’s no big deal. Also, just letting the songs play is nicest, because it might begin to feel intrusive and too much like a marketing exercise. Just make a really nice mixtape and give them the minimal amount of information required to find out more if they want to is what I reckon. If you made a friend a mix you wouldn’t mash it all into one song, and you certainly wouldn’t stick a ‘Hey there Matthew, this is a Dylan Mixtape, made for you by Dylan just the other day.’ thingy in it every three or four songs. Writing a web address on the CD is enough if you ask me.
Fuck, how many download and keep mp3s do I just give away on this bloody site every day.
Everyone’s telling me off today!
I’m not telling you off. But those kind of restrictions and intrusions remind me rather eerily of the things we spend all day complaining about on this site. If we do this, then I think we just have to give people something nice, and hope they bother to try and find us. If not, at least there’s an hour’s worth of pleasurable listening knocking around waiting to surprise someone.
ask bands, don’t ask bands….i don’t care….free promotion….no money is being made….and it will be come a bit of a conversation starter thing
So who is up for doing this…. will we get a committee/board/interested parties or whatever on the go?
i mean drinking party really
I reckon we could start this up quite easily around a pub table some time this weekend. Say, before either Rob or Trapoline (whatever your poison) this Saturday.
Then we can invite the likes of Alex and C&B and the rest of our international representatives once we’ve got something a little sorted out.
‘i love it when a plan comes together’
feels right like the A-Team!!!
of course Matthew would be Hannibal, I’d be Murdock….
Who would be Face? Euan could be BA because he’s always so fucking grumpy.
thats what i thought also
‘Who you looking at fool!’
does that leave Dylan to be Face?
cos he woo’s the ladies so!!!
Bart? Because he must have one somewhere under that beard.
oh, he will have to be the token girl on the team….what was her name again?
Tom
funny!!!!
er, need I say this again… Twitter
if you tweet, from the car, what you’ve found you’ll instantly get replies such as “oh the blue one? I’ve had that, it’s brilliant!” “ah, track 2, red one? it’s portishead, gorgeous!” etc…
couple that with a website for when they get home in front of their computer and you’ve got GOLD
and do let me know how Euan’s wooing goes
xoxo
i like this idea a lot, i think it’d really appeal to the right people..i think the book equivalant is bookcrossing.com
city cars are good- we found a cd-r of portishead’s third in one of them in the spring – weeks before it’s release! i thought a forgetful reviewer might be getting it in the neck for losing, so left it where it was.
In the autumn, when building the EP, Damon and I were stranded in a real dodgy backsteet in Restalrig when the City Car electronics cut out. This (handily) left the car unlockable, leaving the thousands of pounds of hired and borrowed equipment which packed the car open to the (imagined or not) circling stranger danger. AGH.
I like the colour coding idea – i think it’ll really appeal to the right person. I’ve had similar ideas in the past, but as it falls under the remit of “self-promotion” have quickly banished them to the scrap-heap
I think this is an ace idea and should definately get off the ground. DO IT!
Oh that’s fantastic. I love the idea of deliberately leaving them behind as well. Just think of the influence you could have. You could get some kind of subliminal advertising happening on there too as they drive around the place.
(hushed voice ’song, by toad…song, by toad’)
(meursault…meursault..)
Right, this one should be quite do-able. It’s not the kind of thing that is likely to take forever. We should do extensive plotting this weekend.
The book thing which is a bit like this is Bookcrossing, there may be some adminny / organisational stuff on there which is useful. This is an excellent idea.
It was my idea. Actually it wasn’t but I’m claiming it because its a bloody good one.
I can leave them all over GodBlessMerka when I go there, flights everywhere will have a sneaky mix in the magazine pocket on the seats…