About a year ago, I finished doing what was, to me then, a unimaginably monumental undertaking: Commemorating 2002 with a series of mix-CDs. Inspired by the eight-CD set Sasha had made at the end of 2001, I modeled mine on his--and since I was convinced 2002 was an even better pop year than '01 had been, I decided to be even bolder and raise him. I'd make . . . make . . . I'd make ten CDs! Hah! Show you right! So I did; I even invited folks to show me what I'd missed, an idea that netted me a handful of pretty cool mixes from various friends and strangers. When it was all over, I felt triumphant, somehow--like I'd accomplished what I'd set out to do, however arduous a task it may have been.

Then Sasha (who, it must be noted, has been keeping busy kicking ass in the New York Times of late) unleashed an 18-disc 2002 set. Ulp. I'd had a hard enough time putting my ten together; even if you count the fact that three of Sasha's 2002 were old songs (labeled such: Pop, Vigorous, Mellow), I wasn't going to bother ante'ing up. Obviously it's silly to conceive of these things in competitive terms--if you need any reason to look down your nose at music geekdom as a dick-waving contest, here you are--but I can't deny there was some of that happening on my end. The "competition" becomes even sillier when you look at how one-sided it was: Sasha and I hadn't met when he made the '01 set, and were barely acquainted when I did my '02 or he his. But I did think of it that way, mostly because I'd been struggling to figure out how to do something similar--I remember attempting to make a 2CD set encompassing my '01 faves and getting really frustrated at how dimensionless the tracklists I came up with were. In a weird way, what Sasha's '01 set did was give me permission to gigantize a year-end set. It seems silly looking back--I was a grown adult, for fuck's sake; who was stopping me? The answer, of course, was myself: I got caught up in the kind of internal rulemaking that's endemic to geekdom, or at least the kind I've engaged in all my life. (Important note: Please do not email me with Nick Hornby comparisons. I've already heard them a million billion times. I've even made them myself, years ago. It's getting tired, especially since I don't apply those rules to myself anymore. Thank you.) So eight discs of 2001 sparked my "I wanna do that" bug, and that the number had a rather lovely symmetry didn't hurt, neither.

Then Nate came up with the C700 Go! idea (coming soon to another page near you--stay tuned!) and blew the lid off shit. Right after I finished my 10CD 2002 set, I had decided it would be fun to take on another year--maybe do an eight-disc set for, oh, 1979. I actually made a CD of all '79 stuff; the idea was that I'd do them at my leisure, over the course of a few weeks or months, maybe do a handful of years simultaneously. When Nate put together his 106-song 2002 set, I was impressed--he knows hip-hop much better than I do, for a start--but when he announced he was going to try the same thing with 1972, I had a similar reaction to my earlier Sasha-aided epiphany. It wasn't as intense, of course--I'd already been going in a similar direction. But it's obviously done a job on my leisure time.

I always figured I'd go back and remake, or add to, my original 2002 CDs--Sasha's monster plus eight or nine other single discs from various friends, acquaintances, etc., certainly gave me plenty to work with. But in putting together the following, I decided not to worry too much about all that. Instead, I'm honoring my original ten; only a couple of songs didn't appear on them. Even when I'm happy with a C700 Go! I never mistake it for definitive--like all sensibilities, mine has major gaps. (I mean, no folk music in 1961 apart from an obscure live Dylan cut?!) And the 2002 below is amazingly short on microhouse, which especially given how much assistance I've had in acquiring it from the two Andys (Battaglia and especially Kellman) there really is no excuse for. But I'm quibbling--and there is always the possibility that I'll go back and make a companion disc consisting entirely of stuff that didn't make it onto my original ten. Not a bad fucking year, y'know?

C700 Go! 2002
1. Pet Shop Boys: “Home and Dry”
2. Crooked Fingers: “When U Were Mine”
3. Braces Tower: “Special Child”
4. Boards of Canada: “1969”
5. Elvis Costello: “When I Was Cruel no. 2”
6. Atmosphere: “Modern Man’s Hustle”
7. TLC: “Dirty Dirty”
8. DJ /rupture: “Rumbo Babylon”
9. Orchestra Baobab: “Gnawe”
10. Roberto Juan Rodriguez: “Jerusalem Market”
11. Burnt Sugar: “Lunching with Mr. Akhan”
12. Kid America and the Action Figures: “Dancin’”
13. The Streets: “Weak Become Heroes”
14. VHS or Beta: “Heaven”
15. Moony: “Dove (I’ll Be Loving You)”
16. X-Press 2 featuring David Byrne: “Lazy”
17. Soul Center: “A Good One”
18. 2000 Elephants: “Uzo (Cosmic Rocker Remix)”
19. Fischerspooner: “Emerge”
20. Luomo: “The Present Lover”
21. M. Mayer: “Falling Hands”
22. Smith ’N Hack: “To Our Disco Friends”
23. No Doubt: “Hella Good”
24. N*E*R*D: “Things Are Getting Better”
25. The Roots: “The Seed (2.0)”
26. Justin Timberlake: “Rock Your Body”
27. N.O.R.E.: “Nothin’”
28. Snoop Dogg: “From the Chuuuch to the Palace”
29. Frenchbloke: “Intro (Whoop de France)”
30. Nelly: “Hot in Herre”
31. Sugababes: “Freak Like Me”
32. Missy Elliott: “Work It”
33. Scarface: “On My Block”
34. Freelance Hairdresser: “Marshall’s Been Snookered”
35. DJ Shadow: “Six Days”
36. Out Hud: “This Bum’s Paid”
37. Sleater-Kinney: “One Beat”
38. Queens of the Stone Age: “No One Knows”
39. Andrew Broder: “The Takeover”
40. Nas: “Made You Look”
41. Clipse: “Young Boy”
42. Aesop Rock: “Night Light”
43. Jel: “17. Channel Assign”
44. Rjd2: “Smoke & Mirrors”
45. Moby: “In My Heart”
46. Pulseprogramming: “Blooms Eventually”
47. Alfie: “Cloudy Lemonade”
48. Ballboy: “I Hate Scotland”
49. Luna: “Black Postcards”
50. Pink: “Don’t Let Me Get Me”
51. Neko Case: “Deep Red Bells”
52. Spoon: “Small Stakes”
53. The Kills: “Cat Claw”
54. Sonic Youth: “Rain on Tin”
55. The Rapture: “House of Jealous Lovers”
56. Lo Fidelity Allstars: “Feel What I Feel”
57. Tweet feat. Missy Elliott: “Oops (Oh My)”
58. Future Bible Heroes: “I’m a Vampire”
59. Clinic: “The Equaliser”
60. Closer Musik: “Maria”
61. Cornershop: “Heavy Soup”
62. Kurtis Rush: “Get Ur Faith On”
63. Royksopp vs. Indeep: “Last Night an Eple Saved My Life”
64. Northern State: “Rewind”
65. Numbers: “We Like Having These Things”
66. Casino Versus Japan: “Single Variation of Two”
67. LCD Soundsystem: “Losing My Edge”
68. Princess Superstar feat. High & Mighty: “Bad Babysitter”
69. Murs and Slug: “The Two”
70. Cee-Lo: “El Dorado Sunrise (Super Chicken)”
71. Arto Lindsay: “You Decide”
72. Matthew Shipp: “Space Shipp”
73. The Cinematic Orchestra: “Burnout”
74. Imperial Teen: “Baby”
75. Daniel Bedingfield: “James Dean (I Wanna Know)”
76. Toby Keith: “Who’s Your Daddy?”
77. Drive-By Truckers: “The Three Great Alabama Icons”
78. Eminem: “Without Me”
79. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings: “What Have You Done for Me Lately”
80. Shakedown: “At Night”
81. Playgroup: “Number One”
82. Dsico: “Love Will Freak Us”
83. ESG: “Six Pack”
84. Tata Pound: “Badala”
85. Yondo Sister: “Reviens Johny”
86. Dim Dim: “Riri”
87. Meshell Ndegeocello: “Hot Night”
88. Mixmaster Mike + Lateef and the Gift of Gab: “Kalakuta Show”
89. The Hives: “Hate to Say I Told You So”
90. Freelance Hellraiser: “Smells Like Booty”
91. Joey Ramone: “What a Wonderful World”
92. Rancid: “Don’t Call Me White”
93. Ivy: “Streets of Your Town”
94. Marianne Faithfull: “Sliding Through Life on Charm”
95. Ann Lee: “2 Times”
96. Kylie Minogue: “Burning Up”
97. Data 80: “Love Was Made for Two”
98. The Chemical Brothers: “Star Guitar”
99. Golden Boy with Miss Kittin: “1234”
100. Akufen: “Deck the House (Herbert Stops Like This Mix)”
101. Decomposed Subsonic: “Discopatterntester”
102. Pantytec: “Doubledip Uuh…”
103. Nettle: “Duende (DJ Scud Mix)”
104. Truth Hurts feat. Rakim: “Addictive”
105. Beenie Man & Robyn: “Red Red”
106. Future Troubles: “Drunken Master”
107. Wayne Marshall: “Party Time”
108. Styles: “Good Times”
109. Cam’ron: “Oh Boy”
110. Raphael Saadiq: “Uptown”
111. Kool G Rap feat. C-N-N: “My Life”
112. Tonex: “Bout’ a Thang”
113. Coldplay: “In My Place”
114. Dntel: “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (Superpitcher Kompakt Mix)”