New Fall 2011
Download the New Fall 2011 mix here (now privately hosted, no more mediafire!)
Here are the songs.
1. X - I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
John Doe and Exene Cervenka’s voices go together like chocolate and peanut butter.
2. Rx - K Y Re:Amin
[I didn’t notice until after I’d finished the mix that it goes from X to Rx.]
A few months ago I got a song caught in my head that I remembered from a mix my super goth college friend Nancy made me for me in high school[1]. The song starts with, if I’m remembering correctly (and it’s certainly possible that I’m not), what sounds like a sample from an old horror movie, a man’s sing-songy voice going: “Joan? Joooaann, I’m going to find you…and then I’m going to KILL you!” but I can’t figure out what the song (or the movie is.
I really thought it was Skinny Puppy, so I sat down and listened to every single Skinny Puppy song EVER (my boyfriend Robert had actually downloaded the discography a while ago) but I was wrong. I still haven’t figured out what the song is, by the way.
Anyhow, listening to Skinny Puppy I was pretty surprised by how much I still like the albums. I thought I would find it silly, and I guess some of it is, but it’s still so good. Actually, they’re scarier to me now that I’m older, all those songs about heroin and the huge syringes, and have seen first-hand how horrible junkies are, and how ruled by addiction, etc. (RIP Dwayne Goettel). Watching some videos I found myself thinking, “Man, if I had kids, I would never let them watch this!”[2]
During this brief mini-obsession, I listened to a LOT of Skinny Puppy (mainly Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse and Too Dark Park) and re-watched Ain’t it Dead Yet?, and then moved on to OhGr (Nivek Ogre/Mark Walk) and Rx (Ogre/Martin Atkins), thanks to Robert sharing in my obsessive tendencies. The song that I ended up listening to the most was Rx “KY: Re Amin,” (followed closely by OhGr “Devil Inside,”— I like how those songs sound pretty upbeat and poppy until you listen to the lyrics, which are totally dark and wretched).
3. Quarks - I Walk
Such a super catchy song. How has it not been in a commercial yet? And how great is her hair?
4. Birthday Party - (Sometimes) Pleasure Heads Must Burn
This is maybe the most perfect song ever.
5. Future of the Left - With Apologies To Emily Pankhurst
6. Black Angels - Black Grease
We saw Black Angels at MHOW the night before Halloween, with Dead Meadow opening. The bands were so good, and as an added bonus, the singer from Dead Meadow apparently was in costume as our friend Colin.[3] Friends of Colin Tierney, check this out: [4]
COME. ON. This guy looks JUST LIKE Colin.
7. Disappears - Guider
Pre-Steve Shelley. I saw them for the first time on this tour. I wasn’t going to go out because even though I loved this record (this was the Lux tour, they played at Union Pool), my dog Rufus had just died 2 days earlier and I wasn’t feeling really social. But the show was really one of the best I’d seen, and since then, I’ve seen them I think 2 more times, both times at Union Pool (and I think by the next time, they had Steve Shelley on drums, and I never turn down a chance to watch Steve Shelley, one of the best and certainly one of the most fun drummers to watch).
8. Obits - Beggin’ Dogs
9. Lemonheads - Buried Alive
The beginning of this song on Hate Your Friends (one of my very favorite records) someone (who? Ben Deily? Evan Dando?) sings “The woods…eats the woman” which is the beginning of the Birthday Party song “Deep in the Woods”[5] but I didn’t know that until a lot of years later. I sure did like this record, and I sure don’t like anything else by the Lemonheads.
10. Tom Waits - Get Lost
11. Replacements - Never Mind
12. Total Control - One More Tonight
Total Control is totally My New Favorite Band. I love them so much. So, so, so, SO MUCH. Both of the songs on this mix are from Henge Beat, their first full-length LP.
I didn’t see them when they were here, they opened for Thee Oh Sees, and I didn’t make it to the show, but Rebecca did, and she told me about Total Control and sent me a link to a download of the album, as well as to an out of print 4-song S/T 7-inch from a few years ago (with a Swell Maps cover).
When I looked them up, I saw that Mikey Young from Eddy Current Suppression Ring is in the band. About a year and a half ago, Robert’s friend/bandmate got really into ECSR (I put them on a mix last winter, but forgot to post the mix) and that led to Robert listening to another Mikey Young band, Brain Children, also awesome. Then, thanks to Rebecca, I lost my mind and became completely obsessed with Total Control.
I think my favorite thing about them (besides that they’re Australian) is how different their various releases sound. I got a few other releases: a two-song 7-inch “Pyre Island/Mind Shaft” and one song “Paranoid Video” (that’s maybe a B-side to something else?), as well as their split with The Oh Sees.
Great review of Henge Beat on dusted.com by Doug Mosurock: “No other record in recent memory, in any genre, has so successfully glued such a divisive approach into a formal, consistent sound.”
To me they sound like Subhumans plus Joy Division + The Normal + Brainiac. I listen to them all the time, over and over, and seriously can’t get enough.
13. Dum Dum Girls - Just A Creep
So very Chrissy Hynde!
14. Psychic Ills - I’ll Follow You Through the Floor
I saw Psychic Ills play stuff from this new record a few months ago (along with Gary War) and I really like this album. Rebecca was going to a party afterward at someone’s house, and she was saying there was a huge record collection and a broken floor, and that there was slight concern the entire floor would give way (which would of course be horrible and not at all funny, but very VERY funny to think of, assuming it didn’t actually happen). The next morning we were texting and she made an awesome real estate “floor-thru” joke. Good one. The title of the song is excellent and the song itself, even better.
15. No Age - Shred and Transcend
16. Earth & Bill Frisell - Omens and Portents 1: The Driver
17. Skull Defekts - Children of the Skull Defekts
18. Gary War - Eye In the Sky
I couldn’t find any footage of this song, so that’s another clip. But the song on the mix is a cover of Alan Parsons Project “Eye In The Sky” which I already liked to begin with.
19. Cliff Richard - We Don’t Talk Anymore
Recently I watched the first hour of MTV as it originally aired[6] (it was on VH1 Classic), and one of the videos was Cliff Richard “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” Robert, who was watching with me, remarked that he didn’t really know anything about Cliff Richard, other than that the Young Ones made a lot of jokes about him (which I totally did NOT remember). Then, about a week ago, a friend and I were talking about Real Estate, and he said that he didn’t really like them (but I do), and that to him they sounded like Cliff Richard. Then he sent me the Young Ones video of “Living Doll.” I looked online and found out that the Young Ones theme song is actually a Cliff Richard song—I had no idea![7]
20. Divine Comedy - Something For the Weekend
AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE VERSION OF “SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND” ON THIS MIX: I apparently have some super weird skippy version, it cuts in and out and seems to loop back and start over, etc. When I first heard this song, I think that’s why I liked it. I made a playlist with songs by and about “weekends” and found The Divine Comedy on my itunes. I have no idea where I got it or why; the only thing I can come up with is that the singer, Neil Hannon, did the music for the awesome TV shows The IT Crowd & Father Ted. So maybe I was researching that? No idea. Anyhow, now that I’ve heard the full song as it was actually recorded, I really like it, and wish I’d used a better version for the mix (even though it was the weirdness of this screwy version that really made me notice it in the first place). But there you have it.
21. Shabazz Palaces - Are you…Can you…Were You? (Felt)
22. Total Control - Love Performance
Download the New Fall 2011 mix here.
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[1 I lost a bunch of mixtapes in a fire that happened at my parents’ house in New Jersey while I lived in Seattle, but they lost their entire house, so I can’t really complain.
[2] Had a nice bonding experience with Ginra’s boyfriend Downtown when he told me about how he and his friends got their Christian youth group leader to take them to a Skinny Puppy concert, the same year I saw them at Roseland (‘90? ‘91?) That poor guy! (the youth group guy, not Downtown.)
[3] Maybe not really. But the similarity is STRIKING.
[4] Dead Meadow photo is not mine, it’s from flickr user mike.brooklynrocks
[5] Birthday Party - Deep In the Woods
Random observation:
The Woods and The Woman are two (so-so) movies by Lucky McKee, who made the really great horror movie May, and the Masters of Horror episode “Sick Girl” both starring Angela Bettis.
[6]I remembered that the first video played was the Buggles, but what I didn’t know was that the FIFTH video was “Little Suzie’s On The Up,” by Ph.D. which I will for sure put on a mix if I can ever find it. Check out all that meat!*
And yes, Tesla covered this song as “Little Suzie” and yes, I saw Tesla in 1989 (?) opening for Def Leppard.
[7]Cliff Richard “Young Ones”:
*That’s what she said.
