By popular request, I'll list the playlists-- in play order-- from as many of my Red River Jams CDs from the past 20 years, as I can find. Some are on an old iTunes account on my wife's old Macbook, most of the newer ones are on my iTunes account which I can access from anywhere, except of course my work computer which I'm on now. But the past couple of years I've also reproduced the playlist on my Prime Music account so that's where I'll pull from.
The purpose of this playlist is manyfold-- first and foremost, it is a road-tripping playlist, specifically to be enjoyed whilst driving up from Austin to Dallas for TX-OU weekend, and also played in and around the RV and/or hotel we're staying at (depending on the year), throughout the weekend. I try to keep it very current, most of the songs on it will have only been released within a couple of months before October, and fairly often I'll grab an unreleased album track that later gets released. So in that way, it's a time capsule for each year's popular music in the Fall.
But it also has to serve as the backdrop for a party weekend that occurs in and around the State Fair of Texas, so it tends to be upbeat and happy, even occasionally a little dancy. Still, the intent of the trip features at its core the annual rivalry football game between Texas and OU. So there are often some grittier themes of fighting, struggling, overcoming challenges, and persevering.
Finally there's the audience. And the composition of that audience has changed quite a bit over the years/decades. I originally just created the mixtapes/CDs for my brother and me, as we drove up to Dallas. So it was pretty heavy on our favorite bands, mostly rock and a little metal. I also tended to throw in something pretty old, because I hadn't yet decided I wanted the whole thing to be current. It was just fun music to jam to, whilst driving up to, and in and around, Dallas. After a couple of years of that, I was also playing the playlist at tailgate parties and house parties in the Fall, and my group of tailgating friends told me they liked it. Since we often caravanned up to Dallas together, I started burning 8-10 copies of the CD for all of them to play for the weekend, and I'd hand it to all of them before we left on our caravan up to Dallas. The songs got a little raunchier and a little more adult at that time. Then I started dating my i s c & a aggie wife, and began including some of her preferences in the mix. And then finally, we had kids, and not only did I have to clean up the lyrics some, but as they got older I also tried to include some of their preferences too.
That ended up way more long-winded than I intended, but I wanted to set the stage for why, how, and who, was involved in the creation, and not just the What?
On that note...
