Power Hour Help!

September 18, 2008 2:14 PM

Can you help me find an 80s Power Hour mix?

I'm looking for an 80s Power Hour mix, ideally it'll just be one long mp3. I've searched the tubes to no avail.

I honestly thought that something like this would be easier to find.

For those unfamiliar with the power hour concept, you're essentially listening to 60 tracks that are cut to 1 minute in length over the course of an hour.

Obviously, if anyone knows of a continuous 80s Power Hour mix that's longer than an hour, I'll take it.

Thanks for the help!

posted by ASM to media & arts (10 comments total)

How about the Winamp Power Hour plugin?

not that i binge drink or anything
posted by nitsuj at 2:28 PM on September 18, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Instead of "Power Hour," you might look for a "megamix," which was the term coined by Tom Moulton when he made the first one waaaay back in 1975 with a Gloria Gaynor album in which one side was a continuous mix.

Searching for "80s megamix mp3" reveals many torrents and similar featuring what you're looking for.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 2:29 PM on September 18, 2008

Look into Ben Liebrand's Grandmixes, which were continuous one hour mixes done by Ben Liebrand for a Dutch radio station at the end of each year from 1983 until 1992. Since no official bootlegs were released, they're kind of hard to find. Here's 1983's.
posted by zsazsa at 2:34 PM on September 18, 2008

I'm not sure, but I think kevin and zsazsa are missing the point. "Power Hour" implies that ASM needs an hour long mix where the song changes every 60 seconds. The "1 minute in length" thing is pretty important, as it's used as a sort of timer.
posted by muddgirl at 2:39 PM on September 18, 2008

If you use a Mac, I've got an Applescript that will create a playlist of the center minute of 60 songs from a playlist. I'll post it if anyone wants it, but I don't want to post a 40-line script and muck up the thread if it wouldn't be helpful.
posted by uncleozzy at 2:58 PM on September 18, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

uncleozzy: I'd love the script, if you wouldn't mind.
posted by ASM at 8:32 PM on September 18, 2008

I've used Power Hour for mac and itunes with success. There seems to be a windows one called myPowerHour.

Anyway, the main feature you should look for is the ability to upgrade from a Power Hour to a Centurion, since Power Hours are, y'know, for wusses.
posted by theyexpectresults at 11:19 PM on September 18, 2008

Okay, here goes. (This looks awful in preview; sorry.) What it'll do is create a playlist ("Power Freakin Hour") and fill it with one-minute snippets from the center of 60 random songs (from a playlist you choose). It's probably a good idea to choose the WAV or AIFF encoder before you run this script (Preferences - Advanced - Importing), otherwise you'll be encoding 60 1-minute AACs or MP3s, and that's a bit of a drag. It'll also set the artist and album of each track to "PowerHour" so they're easy to find and delete later.

tell application "iTunes"
	set thePlaylists to (name of every user playlist)
	set playlistString to (choose from list thePlaylists with prompt "Select playlist...") as string
	set thePlaylist to user playlist playlistString
	set shuffle of thePlaylist to true
	set song repeat of thePlaylist to all
	set view of browser window 1 to thePlaylist
	
	if not (exists user playlist "Power Freakin Hour") then
		set newPlaylist to make new user playlist with properties {name:"Power Freakin Hour"}
	else
		set newPlaylist to user playlist "Power Freakin Hour"
	end if
	
	play
	with timeout of 300000 seconds
		repeat until (count tracks of newPlaylist) is 60
			set thisTrack to current track
			set theDuration to duration of thisTrack
			if theDuration > 61 then
				set start of thisTrack to (theDuration / 2) - 30
				set finish of thisTrack to (theDuration / 2) + 30
				
				set newTrack to item 1 of (convert thisTrack)
				duplicate newTrack to newPlaylist
				set artist of newTrack to "PowerHour"
				set album of newTrack to "PowerHour"
				
				set start of thisTrack to 0
				set finish of thisTrack to 0
			end if
			play (next track)
		end repeat
	end timeout
	stop
end tell

posted by uncleozzy at 4:17 AM on September 19, 2008

ThesArePowerfulHours has some awesome collections. I highly recommend the Prince one - if you're looking for an true 80s mix!
posted by interweber at 11:30 AM on September 20, 2008

Thanks to all the AskMefiers who have helped aide my binging tonight.
posted by ASM at 3:01 PM on September 20, 2008