The Three Mix Tapes

The first one is a classic. Gunn chose 12 songs, each of which was an excellent, familiar song, yet somehow also an underplayed song. All 12 of the songs were among my personal all-time favorite songs long before the film came out, and I'd hazard that nearly all the songs were familiar to most adults who watched the film.

The second one was a weak follow-up mostly made up of obscure and unknown songs. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but after the precedent set by the first film it seemed off. Mr. Blue Sky, My Sweet Lord, Come a Little Bit Closer, and Flash Light feel like songs that belong on a follow-up to the first tape, but the other 9 songs don't pack the same punch as the rest.

It's not easy to do what Gunn did with the first mixtape. Songs that everyone knows and loves that are at the same time under the radar are rare, and finding 12 of them that work together as a cohesive mix is no small feat, as evidenced by the failure of mixtape 2 to catch fire as did the first tape.

I was looking today at the tracks on mix tape 3, and it's a big departure from the first two, which were all songs from the '60s and '70s, as it has music from the modern day, no doubt because Quill now has a Zune, and it looks like a mixed bag. I see two favorites-- Do You Realizee??? and No Sleep Till Brooklyn-- along with a few familiar tracks, and then a bunch of unknowns. I hope a few stand out as tracks that will become favorites.