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Wow, what a great Tumblr you have! I will answer your question right now!

I have three giant Case Logics that keep my music from 1996 - 2006. It’s a mixed bag in there, certainly, but there’s probably not a Van Morrison album (pre-Enlightenment) that I don’t have, and I was able to steal a lot of really great CD’s from my parents without them noticing, and have kept these albums long enough that they no longer care or want to press charges against me. Then there are emotional albums like Sparkle and Fade, Monster, Dinah Jams, Dozin at the Knick, Lawn Boy, and mixes from Molly Lambert. Some of those are scratched so I’ve had to replace the tracks I miss most with iTunes versions, but a lot of the songs I post come from the Case Logics of the past.

Speaking of mixes from Molly Lambert, I also get a lot of my music from mix-tape collectives and music blogs (I built a contraption made of tin cans, string, stainless steel pot lids and bells to let me know when a website has a good mix available for free download). Tumblr’s Mixtape Madness has supplemented my iTunes and turned me on to the Dealbreaker mixes, to which I always look forward unless I am looking over my shoulder because there’s someone behind me.

Unfortunately, the glory days of free music loopholes died with Dirpy*, which ripped basically anything off Youtube and stuffed it into your music folder. I’m not saying I cried when Dirpy was yanked off the internet, but I totally fucking cried. With frustration, not just sadness. It’s really easy to make me cry, obviously — I spend all my time listening to emotional mixtapes from the 1990’s! There are Dirpy alternatives, but the quality blows and I only use them if iTunes and Amazon have never heard of the song I want because I’m too *uNd3rGr0uND.* But for things like Youtube mashups of Fireflies x Teach Me How to Dougie, I will use these sub-Dirpy devices.

For the record, I got stoned a few nights ago and without Limewire or Dirpy or any other pirate ship, I spent $24 on iTunes music. $24 is not anything too terrible, I guess, because I used to spend almost $24 on CD’s twice a weekend at Tower in Hollywood. But while breaking the federal law of smoking a controlled weedy substance (okay, it’s legal in my state, but you know), I felt too guilty to bother to find a complicated back road to getting the music I felt I needed in order to survive. This feeling has no name, but I think of it as the 90’s dad feeling.

I digress, do you? Let’s digress: think of Uncle Jesse, think of Angela Chase’s dad, think of a Pavement concert, think of a red hatch-back with environmental bumper stickers, think of lactose intolerance, think of getting angry at Philip Roth, think of Al Gore, think of sideburns, think of the moment of realization that a gut is growing on your person. Now: that picture you have in your mind is a fictional character called the 90’s dad. 

I am a 90’s dad. My concerns are very 90’s-dad: skin cancer, drinking too much at a party and then crying at how short and beautiful life is and how quickly people grow from child to old, not being able to find the time to discover new music and becoming the kind of person who only listens to James Taylor and forces him/herself to turn the volume up even when it’s unpleasant just to try to FEEL, whether I can do things that grown-ups do like get married and have children without letting anyone know that I am not a grown-up and should not be held responsible or accountable for anything related to math or logic or etiquette, being a safe but aggressive driver, maintaining a level of sexual potency while talking in a boring way about the over-sexualization of network television and refusing to wear shorts, worrying about the roof, and losing receipts on purpose because it nauseates me to throw them away in case that ends up being the one receipt I’ve ever needed in my life and if it’s by accident, nobody can really blame me.

Hunting, catching, killing and eating new music is the thing that keeps a 90’s dad alive. Without the dead-ends of trying to enjoy Sebadoh or listening to “Moment 4 Life” from start to finish even though it kills a tiny part of your earheart with its boring monotony, I would be a different fictional type of person, perhaps 60’s mom. My brain is very 60’s-mom (I love to drink wine and read cookbooks in the bathtub, it stimulates my brain paths; I organize my shoes and maybe take a tranquilizer in a fit of hypochondria because my 90’s-dad heart told my 60’s-mom brain that that mole is suspicious), and I would maybe even venture a guess that many of my friends are 60’s-moms (some are 80’s-moms; much worse), but my heart gets bruised every day by its own cascading waterfalls of nostalgic, bittersweet 90’s-dadness.

And so I buy the music, and I download the mixes, and one day you’ll see me in my hatchback smoking a crushed doobie in a parking lot crying and listening to Ramble Tamble and you’ll look at me and think, “Why does she have a Clinton/Gore bumper sticker on her car?” And the answer, friends, is that it’s been weeks since my last meal of almost-current music tracks I’d never heard before, and I am starving.

*Jocelyn sent a tip about a Dirpy replacement that keeps track quality, Clip Converter. Jake also suggests the ol’ “[artist] [album] mediafire” Google trick, but that’s a little unreliable (like you may download a few Usher songs that will be interrupted at 1:45 by a satanic voice going “J-J-J-J-J RRRRRRRR” or “BIG BOX BEAT VIBES” or “KAY KAY EL OH ARRRRRRRR HOUSTON” and have to delete them. Or not delete them. That’s a choice that each individual must make for him or herself). Mix Well recommends Offliberty, which looks promising as well. 

I’m sure you’re upset because you submitted a photo and it didn’t get posted, but guess what…I have a queue of submissions from December (and I haven’t deleted a submission since)…and there isn’t anything from you. You’re welcome to unfollow me over that if you want. No big deal.

Out of the now hundreds of photos that are submitted to SHS, 99% are posted. The ones that aren’t are those that I’ve described before (ie bad lighting, over contrasted, weird photoshop, pictures from magazines, etc). It’s pretty obvious that a broad selection of photos are liked by me and posted.

And, for those of you upset about the way SHS is run or how pictures are posted, you do realize that Sweet Home Style is my tumblr, right? So I get to do what I see fit with it. I do not comment on your tumblrs asking you to change things, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do the same. Constructive criticism is one thing, but this other stuff…really?