Our friend Scott has a deep and religious love of music which has shaped the person he is.  Whenever he comes around he presides over our stereo and his eyes light up just talking about this band he’s seen, this song he loves, this music that touches his heart.  We jokingly call him DJ Scott – but during each trip we are frantically writing down band names and spending large on iTunes, enraptured by the music we have been listening to, the music Scott plays.

On a recent visit, Jason’s best buddy Scott and I hatched a plan and this is the fruit of our labours.  So much can be said about the mix tape and what it means to people.  Your friends would hand you a tape and say “you gotta listen to the second track on the first side – it will blow you away” and BAM you’ve suddenly found The Stone Roses, or Ride, or The Go Betweens – in your living room, or car.  Music that you love and cherish – all presented to you by someone who, by the mere act of giving you the tape is saying, we are the same, you and me, we are kindred spirits.

So this is DJ Scott’s mix tape – from him to you.  I named it A Bird in the Sky because Scott, not surprisingly with his love of exploration, is a pilot – a traveller.  In the real world and in the musical one.  So, how did he get here?

Who am I and what is this all about?  For starters let’s step back a few years.  Jason is a life-long friend and as long as I have living memory he has been in it – just like a sibling. Since childhood the tide of time has ebbed and flowed  moving us each in various directions, just like flotsam and jetsam.

Life has drawn us closer together of late and I have spent a number of nights as a house guest with Jason, Sally and Crinkle (possibly the coolest dog in the world?) Inevitably while staying with them I end up hijacking their stereo and subjecting them to my various musical preferences.  In turn they thought it may be interesting for you all to have a little listen to some of the stuff I like.  A modern day version of the `mix tape` – a playlist of ten new songs as selected by me and published on this blog on the first Friday of each month.  It’s easy and it’s free.

So where did my musical leanings take root?  Like most people it was a case of what I was exposed to and when.  My high school years starting in 1987 saw a time frame that spanned LP records, cassette tapes and CDs.  But what mattered most was not what carried the music, but the music itself.

The first album I ever paid for was “Never Mind the Bullocks Here’s The Sex Pistols”  and with that a genie was out of the bottle.  Listening to bands like The Clash, The Dead Kennedys, Radio Birdman, The Sunnyboys, Hunters and Collectors, The Ramones and The Church allowed me to lay a foundation stone around which my musical taste would develop.  To me these bands and many others, made music that contained an intangible element that eclipsed what I heard on mainstream radio.  This was meaningful music created, with feeling, by performers, not by record executives with sales figures in mind.  I was fortunate that my school bus proved to be a hot bed of musical piracy with original recordings and copies being swapped readily between various willing participants.  These performers, these bands, were critical thinkers often with meaningful things to communicate.  

Just press play and away you go.  If you want to join up just visit the 8tracks website and don’t forget to follow us!  If you want to take DJ Scott’s mix tape on-the-go, just download the free 8Tracks App on your phone and plug yourself in.  We hope you enjoy!