"Phono" Albums: Musical Memories

[Phylum of Alexandria]

Some people compile photo albums to commemorate specific times in their lives. My wife loves doing that.

Me? I wanted to do something similar, but with music. 

Not a photo album, but a phono album!

Back when CDs were still a thing, I made 80 minute playlists to represent each year of my life. Not simply the music that was released around that time, but whatever I had been soaking up. No repeating artists per year. Aside from that, the sky was the limit.

For most of the years, I ended up doing an additional CD mix, since there was just so much music to choose from. 

I went back as far as 2nd grade, as that was the earliest I could get while having enough to fill a CD. No one's gonna be interested in those early mixes, though. From middle school onward, they're pretty solid listening experiences, I must say.

Of course, CDs eventually got phased out, so I had to think about how I would share these things. Spotify really doesn't work because of so many missing selections (and changing content in general). There's no perfect solution, but I found that YouTube playlists were the best I could do.

Here's one of my mixes from high school. Pretty punk heavy, but it's fun stuff!