Tuesday, August 11, 2015

REMEMBER ME?


Hi. Do you even remember me? You might not. That's okay. It's been a while.

It's me—Trevor Hale. I'm the guy that runs this blog. Or ran this blog. Or rambled in mildly coherent sentences into the vast nothingness that is the Internet.

It's one of those things. That's not important now. What is important is that I'm back—for a minute at least. There's a whole other post that could be written about how "lifestyle" and "fashion" blogs kind of ruined my desire to write anything, but more than that, I just haven't felt like writing in a while.

That last line is the most depressing part for me. Sure, there were people that checked this site regularly, there were others that stumbled across it, and there were even more that had no idea it even existed. I never felt like I was doing anything worth sharing and I hadn't been that plugged in to the side of the Internet that used to make this site fun. There was nothing for me to tell you about, and even less for you to hear from me.

Maybe that will change. I don't know. We'll see.

What I do know is that Craft Lake City was this past weekend and that's the real reason I'm posting. Before you get too excited, I'll admit that I didn't make anything new this year. I still had a bunch of HP Tank Tops, Long Live Sloan t-shirts, and copies of Tulip, but I didn't have the time to put my energy into a new project this summer.

But I did find some time to throw together a couple of smaller things.

Hilarious jokes and personal stamp of approval
I made some mixtapes. Actual mixtapes. I bought blank cassettes, sat in front of a stereo, and curated two 90-minute playlists that maybe 8 people will enjoy—really staying true to the spirit of everything else that I do.

The first mix is called Alternative Nation. It's basically the same as the playlist I wrote about in The Secret History of Trevor Hale, with a few minor changes. The theme of that tape was to showcase all the songs that I would have recorded off the radio when I was in junior high/early high school around 1995. There are a few key omissions there, because 15-year-old me would have most definitely had Blues Traveler and Hootie & The Blowfish on there, but 34-year-old me is trying to stay cool and keep a little street cred. My only huge regret here is that I forgot to include Alice In Chains in favor of a few much less important bands. That's the thing about a cassette tape though—once you're out of space, you're out of space.

The second tape is Teenage Wasteland, and it's a collection of all the punk songs I got into a little bit later. I ran into the same problem here, too. I have several bands twice (like Millencolin!) a Dwarves song and Wizo, but completely forgot NOFX. It's been eating at me for days.

I made 5 copies of each tape, wrote out the tracklist on the insert and wrapped them in an appropriate cover. I didn't let anyone see what was on the tape before they bought it, and I think that made it more fun. I only sold a couple of each of them, because no one actually owns a cassette player anymore.

But I worked hard on these tapes and a few people mentioned that I should make them into Spotify playlists, so I did just that. I've embedded them below, or you can follow them on there if you want to.

That's really about it. Maybe I'll be back sooner than later with more stuff, but no promises. If you miss me, I'm all over the rest of the Internet, with a really boring username (that stays true and strengthens my personal brand, though) . Come find me, say hi, favorite some stuff, like some things, send me cool DM's, do what you want. It's the Internet. There aren't any rules, so act out.

Until next time...

Twitter - @trevorhale
Instagram - @trevorhale
Facebook
LinkedIn - Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. (I actually do have one, but it's for professional shorties only).

Teenage Wasteland


Alternative Nation