It's 2:11am on Friday morning and I'm sitting in my room in my boxers eating Frito Scoops and realizing that I am disastrously single. So I go to where everyone hooks up these days, Myspace, and start to peruse the various profiles of women in Minnesota ages 25-35. When I see a potential maiden of my manly charms, I almost always look at their music preferences first. I don't do this to be a music snob and think that no lady is worth my time unless they listen to the same music that I do. No, it's because I see if I can make them a mixtape so they can be the next Miss "Wow, this is sweet and everything but I think of you as more of a friend".
Any woman in her mid twenties to early thirties that has any inkling of indie rock or has seen High Fidelity knows what a mixtape is and I've become quite the master of them. Mixtaping has really lost its totem status of cute icebreaker due to the invention of iTunes, iPods, and mix CDs. It's hard to face the facts that many of the owners of my mixtapes might not even own a tape deck. Oh, Mother of Invention and Father of Time, how you spite me and my art of making a good mixtape. However, I figure if I find a lass in the before mentioned age range, she will most likely have a tape deck or at least a Walkman in the back of her closet to dust off and listen to my mixtape.
Myspace isn't really bringing up the honeys tonight but as I listen to The Loved Ones Keep Your Heart I keep thinking that this Philadelphia trio writes some great mixtape material. The Loved Ones write some great melodic hardcore/punk tunes with their hearts tacked visibly on their sleeves. It is perfect music for any ninety minute blank tape with all its memorable choruses and catchier than Ebola hooks. Keep Your Heart is full of head bobbing rhythms and alcohol penned lyrics of regrets, broken hearts, hopes, and fuck ups. It's almost like seeing a non-Goth version of Alkaline Trio getting drunk in a seedy bar next to the non-hardcore side of Lifetime.
I might as well come to terms with the fact that I will never find a girl that will ever understand Mental. I'm almost positive that she will never like what Ray Cappo is screeching about during his Youth of Today days. She will probably never even comprehend the greatness of Integrity either. Luckily I have bands like The Loved Ones and albums like Keep Your Heart to fill up mixtapes with shy unrequited feeling of "I like you" and hopefully one day I'll win the heart of a girl that finally gets melodic hardcore/punk. Until that day I can only thank The Loved Ones for writing thirteen songs to fill mixtape after mixtape for girls that probably won't care anyhow.
