A year in Belgrade: The Mix Tape

Right now, very close to this moment exactly, it is exactly a year since I stepped off the train from Zurich, relocating to Belgrade. I was thinking about writing some sort of ‘what I have learned this year’ post, but that I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Too trite. Instead, I offer you my past year converted into musical form. This is still trite, but significantly less so.

Apologies for the preponderance of sad white boy music. It’s most of what I listen to right now.

1. ‘Let’s Get Out of this Country’ – Camera Obscura

An obvious thematic beginning to the mix. And I like that it uses the phrase ‘bee’s knees.’

2. ‘Komedija, Tragedija, Drama’ – Rambo Amadeus

So, this is way more interesting than putting a track from my Teach Yourself Serbian CD on the mix, but it captures the tremendous amount of time that I have spent trying to figure out the slowly-becoming-more-decipherable code that people speak here. Also, Rambo Amadeus is one of my favorite local musicians. I’ve seen him perform a number of times now.

3. ‘School Night’ – Ani DiFranco

Last, December, F, my best friend/platonic soulmate came to visit. Good times. Ani DiFranco is F’s musical obsession. This is one of the songs that I remember her singing while she was here. In recent weeks, I’ve been pondering the ‘price that we pay for the privilege of living in a world with so many things worth believing in’ as I wander about the city.

4. ‘Bridges, Squares’ – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

A few weeks later, R, F’s non-platonic soulmate and my good friend, joined us for some traveling in Bosnia-Herzegovina & Bulgaria. Unfortunately for the maker of a thematic mixtape, R does not have an obvious musical equivalent, so I picked this song, as it is the only song I know that mentions both urban planning (what R studies) and cooking. At least a third of R and my correspondence is cooking-related, mostly sharing which Bittman recipes we have recently tried, complete with page numbers.

5. ‘You Remind Me of Home’ – Ben Gibbard

Last January and February were my homesick times. This song captures my homesickness better than any other that I have heard. It’s a bittersweet homesickness; I recognize that things wouldn’t be perfect if I was there and that leaving really was the best decision for me.

6. ‘Tables and Chairs’ – Andrew Bird

This is one of the songs that I play for myself when I am sad to cure myself of that mood. If Andrew Bird can be so cheery about post-capitalism, I can certainly be cheerful about whatever it is that has put me out of sorts.

7. ‘Congratulations’ – Silvia Night

For most of this year, my brother was living in Thessaloniki, Greek Macedonia. It was great to have him also trying to make sense of the peninsula we both inhabited. One of his-and-subsequently-my discoveries was The Eurovision Song Contest. I’m a big fan & was quite disappointed when this, my favorite song by an Icelandic fake reality TV star, (please watch the video. It’s here.) didn’t make the finals.

8. ? – Atheist Rap

I don’t know the title of this song – or any of the titles of the songs on this album (which I don’t know the name of either) that K in Banja Luka gave me last winter. I think Atheist Rap is the local band that I am destined to never see in concert. I have been invited to their concerts twice and both times work has gotten in the way. The chorus of this song is why I know the declensions of adjectives in the locative case.

9. ‘Ballad of the Sin Eater’ – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

This is the only western pop song that I know that references Serbia in any way. It’s also the only song that I know that is about being an American abroad. Dear Ted Leo & the Pharmacists: thank you for writing songs about unconventional topics. It is good for those of us making thematic mixes.

10. ‘Love Love Love’ – The Mountain Goats

I started listening to The Mountain Goats in earnest this year, mostly due to mp3s that my brother gave to me. This song references some of my reading this year—The Bible (I’m nearly through the slog that is 2 Chronicles) and retrying Dostoyevsky (which really didn’t go so well).

11. ‘Blackbird’ – Elliott Smith

In April, my parents, brother, and grandmother came here for visiting and traveling. To commemorate that event, my brother’s favorite artist covering my mother’s favorite gets added to the mix. My father is not much of a music listener. I only associate my grandmother with Christmas music, as that is usually the time of year that I see her. I’m sure she listens to other music during the rest of the year.

12. ‘Hallelujah’ – Jeff Buckley

This is another of those songs that will put me into a good mood. So very pretty. I also used it in a meditation service that I led at the BVS retreat in Berlin in July. The theme of the service was ‘finding the sacred in the everyday’ & I think this song really captures that.

13. ‘Me Gustas Tu’ – Manu Chao
And then, six weeks ago, I started dating someone, which is lovely and fun. And I don’t think I have made a mix in the past six years or so that has not included this song. It’s one of my favorites. Also, Manu Chao came into my life at the recommendation of a man I met in Cuba. Also, we listen to Manu Chao a lot at work events. He's really hard to dance to; I've watched many people try and fail.

14. ‘Jesus Shaves’ – David Sedaris
We end with a story from This American Life, my audio obsession, by David Sedaris, one of my favorite writers, about learning another language and culture. I love this story. Although the thought that I sound like the language learners in this story is a bit horrifying.

Enjoy - and these links are live for 7 days or 100 downloads, whichever comes first, so get it while you can.