i had been desperate to include BandAid 20's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", particularly since the track was so ingrained into the cultural consciousness while i was in britain last december that whilst shopping in carnaby street with my twenty-year-old-welsh-medical-student-part-time-lover, we were both humming it to ourselves. independently. but the reality of the situation is that first, it is distressingly abysmal, good for one or two laughs at most and second, it is nearly impossible to successfully mix in or out of such novelty drivel.

dropping it as the outro of cool side A and replacing it with an infinitely more appropriate fade out track, Blue's "Curtain Falls" now provided a much smoother transition into hot side D, necessitating a wholesale switchout from A to cool side C. confused?

one final tweak involved an oversight in transferring music files from my outdated windows machine to my supersleek powerbook in july. somehow Phantom Planet got left behind, abandoning "Big Brat" to exclusion. as remedied, this collection now stretches to 83 tracks over 5 discs.

it occured to me yesterday why this particular mix was so difficult to assemble. some may remember that i skipped a year-end set last year after producing a three disc opus in the summer time (Summer? Summer. Summer!) which integrated some pop and dance back into the rotation. successfully including the myriad musical genres that peak my interest gets more complicated than simply dropping a disc dripping with indie, emo and the fringes.

i suppose i've solved this conundrum by arranging the more tacky, less credible stuff near the end. but don't be shy. you might just find yourself nodding your head along to V's cover of the Jackson's "Can You Feel It?" in spite of yourself.