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I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy – a mixtape

The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules...

- Rob in High Fidelity

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Yup Rob was right, making a mixtape (or cd nowadays) is hard and always takes a lot longer than you think. First of all just making a selection is terribly hard. Then you want it all to be in a perfect listening order, beginning and ending with a bang. Then you have to think of a title. And let’s not forget the custom made art work!

Not long after seeing High Fidelty  (again) I was talking to a friend of a friend, who told me she didn’t have a lot of female bands or vocalists in her record collection. Now I’ll grab every opportunity to make a mixtape with both hands, so to work I went and started on the impossible mission to select my all time favourite girl groups and female singers! I had to narrow it down somewhat, so I decided to start with a mixtape with just artists from the 60s and 70s (though I think 90% of what ended up there is from the 60s because that is – in my opinion – the superior decade).

Obviously there had to be some real footstompers on there. I needed to include some queens of girl groups, like The Supremes, The Marvellettes and The Ronettes. And some obscure foreign language tracks. As well as some really goofy songs and a few songs with titles that could only come from 60s girl groups. In the latter category fall Are You Trying to Get Rid of Me Baby by Candy & The Kisses, The CookiesI Want a Boy For My Birthday and the title track I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy by The What Four.

Listen to

Goofy songs included Marsh Gee‘s Peanut DuckHobbies by Jenny MossHe’s an Oddball by The Lewis Sisters and the hilarious Perfectly Proportioned by T&T. Now I’m the first to admit that T and T don’t have the most wonderful singing voices in the world, but the lyrics just crack me up: “Your figure may not be perfectly proportioned, but at least you’re not too thin and you sure look genuine…” As if that were a complement haha.

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There are two songs by Candi Staton on there, because her early (pre-disco) work is just the grooviest ever. Also Feeling (For Someone Else Has Grown) by Bette Williams and I Can’t Do My Thing by Barbara Acklin are funky as hell.

The mix could not be complete without Asia’s best and most bad ass girl group Dara Puspita. Then there’s Meire Pavão singing in Portugese about her brother who’s learning karate, a french song about Dracula by Christine Pilzer (this one doubles as a goofy song) and a fantastic reworking of Mas, Que Nada  (by Jorge Ben, made famous by Sergio Mendes) in German: Blauer Montag by Mary Roos.

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I feel really bad about leaving out so many fantastic artists, but I love The Shangri La’s so much I had to put them on there twice. Their songs are like mini high school drama’s. I chose a lesser known song in which they do their characteristic ‘parlando‘ so well.

Listen to

Let me know if you’d like a copy :)

 

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