I recently got to hang out with someone who was a dear friend of mine during high school. She lived in New York then, and I didn’t, so this was the first we’d ever met in person. Even though we hadn’t kept in close touch over the past 10-or-so years, it was still fantastic.

She (and, to a degree, her brother who was working for a record label) got me into so much music I wouldn’t have really experienced otherwise. We started from a common interest in They Might Be Giants (who had just put out their fourth album – sheesh), but she insisted I hear the stuff they’d done with Frank Black. They brought Brian Dewan on tour, so she sent me a mixtape including that stuff. I wasn’t familiar with Pixies? She rectified that. This wasn’t particularly obscure underground stuff, or closely guarded rarities, but to me, only just starting to get into what we called “Alternative”, it was mind-expanding.

I made a muxtape of the stuff I still really like from those tapes. Obviously, everything is 15 years old. If it’s the kind of thing you might want to spend 45 minutes with, I invite you to fromscarsdale.muxtape.com.

She told me she doesn’t really keep up with what’s going in music now (unthinkable to me, but she has her reasons), so I started sorting out what I’d really loved from the past 14 years – how I’d explain what I’d gotten into since high school with only 12 songs. That muxtape is up at superlady.muxtape.com. It seems a little arbitrary, even silly, but I think it’s an okay snapshot. I am sure there’s stuff you’ve heard there (particularly if you’ve been following the albums of the week here), but maybe some stuff you haven’t, and you absolutely haven’t heard all 12 songs in this particular order.