Friday Night Feels: A Funky Mixtape

“Swimming after dark.” Just writing it down sends my heart a-reelin’. With Labor Day signaling summer’s unofficial end, we have exactly two weeks left to frolic, to feel the heat and above all else, to swim outside all hours of the day.

I’ve had it in my head to throw a big pool party outside after sunset, the kind of pool party I used to lifeguard, the kind of pool party I used to deejay, the kind of pool party that might have gotten a little out of hand, but thanks to those taught-and-tanned, time-and-a-half, after-regular-business-hours overly responsible teenage lifeguards somehow always managed to stay just on this side of any real danger.

In preparation for a recent live reading of my high school diary at an event called Mortified, I came across a ton of old photos from the Guard Party at the city pool where I guarded when I was 18. I maintain that the summer of 1999 will remain forever the best summer of my life.

Hoping to wrangle some of that summer’s lingering charm, I put together a mix of music that I would want to listen to while racing on the slides, while judging a Nestea Plunge competition, while duking it out during the greased watermelon contest, and mainly while dousing myself with every last drop of a summer night humanly possible.

This is called Friday Night Feels. Whether or not you’ve ever been to the beach or to the pool after dark, I’m sure you’ll find something in the next two-and-a-half hours to help you hold onto the feeling of a funky, muggy, late-summer night.

Listen to All Plaidout’s latest mix, Friday Night Feels via Spotify.