All I Got for Christmas was Coffee & Cigarettes

Coffee and cigarettes are not just about being horrible vices that we take solace in during times of need (and any other excuse we can find to use them)--they're about time itself. We share these guilty pleasures when we reflect on those times both good and bad with our friends and those we love, and sometimes even strangers. Although, they can hardly be considered strangers when you realize that, as Kermit so eloquently put it in A Muppet's Christmas Carol, "There's no such thing as strangers when a stranger says hello." My sentiment behind coffee and cigarettes is all about that particular time when we bear our souls over the table at the all-night diner or on top of the car underneath the stars. Those nights seem to last forever, more-so than any other, because we're suspended in thought and existentialism. We come the closest then, I feel, to who we really are and why we're actually here. Hell, to really wax philosophical, its as if that reason is merely the connections between us, and those devices are our time machine with which to explore them. But enough about that.

The inspiration for this mix all came about, as it most often does, while driving home, when I heard a song that reminded me of someone I care about. My best friend Josh will be moving out here to LA in just a few days now, and I wanted to have a mix that we could share--something to drive around to like back in the day. In high school, it seemed like our favorite thing to do was go to a show or a party, or just a friend's house, and then stay up all night at the nearest Denny's, IHOP or Steak 'n Shake. Nearly every great night I can recall ended in this fashion, with us driving around singing along to Brand New and Jimmy Eat World and then settling down to talk about love and life with Moons Over My Turkey (Josh hates ham).

The original mix for Josh has 20 tracks, and as you know, the mixes for the blog need to be only 12, so I had to narrow it down a bit. His version has some older tracks by Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Otis Redding, but they seemed really out of place with the more contemporary tracks, so I had to cut them out. Coffee & Cigarettes begins with the three tracks that inspired the mix itself, each from favorite albums of mine for 2010. I felt that a compilation of just our favorite songs would get tired too quickly, so the hope is that these tracks will eventually join the ranks of those staples and make this a timeless classic for us to share always. Wishful thinking I'm sure. Enjoy.

1. Favourite Food - Tokyo Police Club

2. Coffee & Cigarettes - Jimmy Eat World

3. Conversation 16 - The National

4. Coffee - Copeland

5. Keep Me Warm - Ida Maria

6. Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts - The Gaslight Anthem

7. Wolves At Night - Manchester Orchestra

8. The Night Life - The Starting Line

9. Goodnight Bad Morning - The Kills

10. You've Got So Far to Go - Alkaline Trio

11. Soco Amareto Lime - Brand New

12. Here Comes A Regular - The Replacements

:::Bonus Song::: (for the morning after)

13. Strange Condition - Pete Yorn

p.s. - Sorry if the songs don't work. Groove Shark sucks ass. And I don't believe in using YouTube to listen to music.