WWJRD

This was intended to be the episode for last month, hence the nice bookmarking of starting Ep 10 with Superchunk’s Slack Motherfucker (the single that broke them in the early 90s) and then ending this episode with If You’re Not Dark, the last track on the band’s most recent album. Then I figured out how to make the actual episode together and that all went to hell, but you can still pretend.

This episode continues the narrative that we’ve been exploring over the past couple of mixtapes though, picking up where episode 10 left off and bringing us up to the current day. There’s more in this story though. This chapter has one more section to close it out and then there’s at least one more chapter. We’ll see after that.

I actually have the next several episodes already put together, so instead of trickling them out a month at a time, I’m going to speed things up a little for the summer. I’m going to shoot to have one mix tape come out at the beginning of the month like now, but I’m also going to add an additional mixtape to come out in the middle of the month. I already have enough episodes to do this through June, but I’m going to shoot to keep this schedule through at least August. If I can keep that pace up, we keep it going into the fall. If not, then we’ll drop back to once a month starting in September.

Track List

1. DC Will Do That To You – Smart Went Crazy – Con Art
2. Back and Forth – Dismemberment Plan – Emergency and I
3. Too Scared – Del Cielo – Us Vs. Them
4. Wheaton Calling – Burning Airlines – Mission Control
5. Words and Guitar – Sleater-Kinney – Dig Me Out
6. Frenzy – The Ex – Starters Alternators
7. The New Sensation – IDLES – Crawler
8. Ain’t Nice – Viagra Boys – Welfare Jazz
9. Dead Horse – Yard Act – The Overload
10. Watching – ESG – What More Can You Take
11. Sanity – Sneaks – Happy Birthday
12. You Need A Better Mind – Beauty Pill – Instant Night
13. Have a Cup of Tea – Coriky – Coriky
14. If You’re Not Dark – Superchunk – Wild Loneliness

Continue reading “WWJRD 12: Post Sludge Rock”

Remember how back in mixtape number 09 I said that the second installment of my planned trilogy of early 90s music didn’t pan out? Well, turns out I just needed to stop over thinking things.

I don’t really have many comments for this. You can look at what I wrote for mixtape 09 to get the full story here, but basically this is a collection of songs I remember listening to in the early 90s that are not the obvious stuff folks tend to focus on. There’s no attempt to be authoritative or anything like that here, its just what I remember listening to.

Next month we’ll jump forward to something resembling the present. After that we may be taking a left turn into new areas of discovery.

Track List

1. Sell Out – Levellers – Levilling The Land
2. Love Your Money – Daisy Chainsaw – Eleventeen
3. Television The Drug Of The Nation – The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury
4. Midlife Crisis – Faith No More – Angel Dust
5. Sex on Wheelz – My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult – Sexplosion
6. Touch Me I’m Sick – Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff- Deluxe Edition
7. Bruise Violet – Babes In Toyland – Fontanelle
8. Everglade – L7 – Bricks Are Heavy
9. Properties Of Propaganda (Fuk This Shit On Up) – Fishbone – Give A Monkey A Brain
10. Suck – Pigface – Gub
11. So What – Ministry – The Mind Is A Terrible Thing to Taste
12. Mother – Danzig – Danzig

Continue reading “WWJRD 11: Clever Word Play”

It was some where around 92, give or take a year, that the manager of my local comic book shop took me under his wing and started to introduce me to indie comics. This would later evolve into him introducing me to indie music as well. I grew up outside of DC and the legends and myths of the DC punk scene were woven into my education of punk and indie rock, but also the controversy that broke out when Jawbox and Shudder To Think signed to major labels. I mean, yeah, a lot of bands were signing back then, but DC bands? And Dischord bands no less? For some people that was the ultimate betrayal. It would take me 10 years or so, and conversations with friends who had roots in the similar Olympia indie scene, for me to organize my thoughts on all of this. Thoughts that are more nuanced and complex then the ones I had at 18, but also still very similar in intention. Art is best served when the artist is free to create as they see fit.

This mix tape is a collection of songs that I remember listening to at this formidable time in my life.

One thing I wanted to comment on, you may notice that there is no Riot Grrl stuff here. While I would love to say I was cool enough to have been aware of what was happening just down to road from me in DC, the reality is I wasn’t. It would be a couple of years before I found groups like Bikini Kill and Brat Mobile and all the rest. This is one of the real regrets that I have.

Track List

1. Slack Motherfucker – Superchunk – Tossing Seeds (Singles 89-91)
2. Wrong – Archers of Loaf – Icky Mettle
3. Divorce Song – Liz Phair – Exile In Guyville
4. Set Up – Holy Rollers – Holy Rollers
5. Tour Song – Jawbreaker – Bivouac
6. Hot Metal Doberman’s – Brainiac – Bonsai Superstar
7. License To Confuse – Sebadoh – Bakesale
8. In A Name – Tsunami – Deep End
9. Heat Lightnin’ – Tuscadero – The Pink Album
10. Sorry Again – Velocity Girl – Simpatico
11. Shake Your Halo Down – Shudder To Think – Get Your Goat
12. Cassavetes – Fugazi – In On The Kill Taker
13. Ditch Digger – Rocket From The Crypt – Circa Now
14. Bullet Proof Cupid – Girls Against Boys – Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby
15. Savory – Jawbox – For Your Own Special Sweetheart
16. Cutie Pie – Blast Off Country Style – Rainbow Mayonnaise Deluxe

Continue reading “WWJRD 10: Sludge Rock”

Near the end of last year I came across various references to early 90s “alternative” rock. The thing was though, that they all seemed to focus exclusively on the grunge side of things. Now as someone who was in high school from ’89-’93, I listened to my fair share of grunge music, but there was so much more going on at the time that seems to be forgotten. While I typically don’t really do musical nostalgia, I thought it might be fun to put together a mixtape featuring stuff that I remember from back then. The idea was to avoid the obvious stuff (grunge, RATM, Janes, etc) and focus in on exclusively what was coming out in the first half of the 90s.

As I started putting this together it quickly started to get a little unwieldy. To put some structure around this I put some constraints in place. First, I jettisoned any idea of doing something that was definitive. Instead I’d focus on things that I remember listening to back then and that had an impact on me. I also decided to break up to project into multiple volumes. The original idea was one volume for the 120 Mins side of things, another for more heavier stuff, and then a third that focused on the tracks that introduced me to punk and indie rock around 94/95. In the end, the second volume just never really came together so I scrapped it. Below is the first volume and the second will come along in March.

Two other little notes for this mixtape.

1. As an added bit of fun, the podcast version of this contains clips of the movie Pump Up The Volume slipped in between songs. I’d love to hear what folks think of this and if they’d like to see more of something like that.
2. While the intention was to only use recordings from ’91ish to ’93, I couldn’t find a digital copy of Shonen Knife’s Let Knife and my CD version seems to have gone missing. So I’ve used a live recording here from a later album.

Track List

1. Pump Up The Volume clip
2. Mrs. Robinson – The Lemonheads – It’s A Shame About Ray
3. Buena – Morphine – Cure For Pain
4. Joey – Concrete Blonde – Bloodletting
5. Planet of Sound – Pixies – Trompe le Monde
6. Twist Barbie – Shonen Knife – ALIVE! in Osaka
7. Blood Makes Noise – Suzanne Vega – 99.9 F
8. Human Behaviour – Bjork – Debut
9. Pump Up The Volume clip
10. The Dead Part Of You – American Music Club – Everclear
11. He’s My Best Friend – Jellyfish – Spilt Milk
12. Girlfriend – Matthew Sweet – Girlfiend
13. Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead – XTC – Nonsuch
14. Friday I’m in Love – The Cure – Wish
15. Feed the Tree – Belly – Star
16. Birdhouse In Your Soul – They Might Be Giants – Flood
17. If I Can’t Change Your Mind – Sugar – Copper Blue
18. Cannonball – The Breeders – Last Splash
19. Pump Up The Volume clip
20. Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now) – Cracker – Cracker

Continue reading “WWJRD 09: Talk Hard”

In the notes for the previous mixtape I referenced an incident where I sat in a crowded food court admiring the musicality of how the hum of the HVAC system combined with the hum of the conversations in the room. Thinking about this moment a couple weeks later it occurred to me that this was probably one of the most formidable moments in my evolution as a music fan. Prior to that I was intrigued by John Cage‘s maxim that “all sound is music”, but that was the moment when I really grokked what Cage was getting at.

When I realized that I was getting the urge to listen to more experimental stuff one of the first things I did was subscribe to The Wire, a great British magazine that covers more experimental styles of music. This mix is built off the articles and reviews that I read in the magazine. It’s not going to be for everyone, but if you do dig it, I recommend checking the magazine out.

Track List

1. Night Steps – Tara Clerkin Trio – In Spring
2. Miroirs – Thomas Enhco & Vassilena Serafimova – Bach Mirror
3. Phantom Ride – Chloé Thévenin & Pete Harden – Excerpt from Static Shot
4. Great Northern, 34428 – Olivia Block – Innocent Passage in the Territorial Sea
5. Something Sweet, Something Tender – Joris Roelofs & Han Bennink – Icarus
6. Niger’s Theme – Horace Tapscott Quintet – The Giant Is Awakened
7. Black Family – Angel Bat Dawid – The Oracle
8. Cruising – Bendik Giske – Cracks
9. Hee Hee – ADG7 – ADG7 2nd -Such is Life-

Continue reading “WWJRD 08: All Sound Is Music”

I’ve never paid much attention to astrology, but I will cop to the dual nature of being a Gemini. On one hand I’m a hippie pop kid with a fondness for roots music. When I started this project I was squarely in this head space. After the She Said mixtape though my other side began to peak out and want a little time in the sun. This is the punk looking for new sounds. This is the guy that once spent several minutes appreciating the musicality of the hum of a running HVAC unit in a small, but crowded, food court. Needless to say, the next several episodes are going to be a mix of noisey and/or weird.

I have to confess, it’s been awhile since I really indulged this side of me so I was a little lost when I first wanted to dive into this world. The below is a mix of a couple of older bands that I remembered from last time (The Ex, GYBE, The Mekons, Black Eye, Low) and groups that I found by sifting through the Post Punk 2K playlist. If you dig the below, I recommend checking the playlist out for other finds.

Track List

1. Lawrence of California – The Mekons – Deserted
2. Soon All Cities – The Ex – 27 passports
3. Deformative – Black Eyes – Black Eyes
4. Dark Days – Yard Act – Dark Days EP
5. Scratchcard Lanyard – Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
6. Follow Me – Shopping – All Or Nothing
7. Tower – Boy Harsher – The Runner (Original Soundtrack)
8. Sunglasses – Black Country, New Road – For the first time
9. A Thing You Call Joy – Sinéad O’Brien – A Thing You Call Joy
10. Lilac – Porridge Radio – Every Bad
11. Days Like These – Low – HEY WHAT
12. OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.) – Godspeed You! Black Emperor – G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!

Continue reading “WWJRD 07: Down The Rabbit Hole”

When I started putting this episode together it was a simple matter of creating a transition between the experimentation of the Oct mixtape and our normal fare. And it came together pretty quickly. Once I nailed down that I wanted a songwriter focused episode the song choices just kind of jumped out and fell into place.

By the time I was locking this mixtape in though, it was obvious that I wasn’t satisfied with my experimentations being limited to one episode. While I’m a pop kid at heart who was raised on my mom’s preference for 70s AM pop and early Motown and my dad’s fondness for things like Johnny Cash and the Kingston Trio, I also grew up in the DC suburbs and came of age in the early 90s. So the music of my teenage years tended to be loud and angular. As I grew up I was drawn more to the pop and roots music of my childhood, but every once and awhile the punk pops his head out of the ground and demands to be fed. This seems to be one of those times.

So this episode was our journey home, but as we rounded the corner and caught out first glimpse of home, we realized we weren’t quite ready to be done traveling just yet. At this point the December mix is largely in the can and it’s new territory for this site. I’m currently working on the Jan episode and have some ideas for Feb and may be March. When I began this project it was really nothing more then just something to do. Now this feels like the project is turning into something of an auditory journal. Let’s see where this goes.

Track List

1. My Mother and the Devil – Austin Lucas – Immortal Americans
2. Elephant – Jason Isbell – Southeastern
3. I’m Learning How to Tell Myself the Truth – John Moreland – LP5
4. The Body Electric – Hurray For The Riff Raff – Small Town Heroes
5. All Of The Women – Allison Russell – Outside Child
6. Wild Turkey – Amythyst Kiah – Wary + Strange
7. Six Years Come September – American Aquarium – Lamentations
8. Johnny Mathis’ Feet – American Music Club – Mercury
9. Dylan Thomas – Better Oblivion Community Center – Better Oblivion Community Center
10. Sorry – Hey King! – Hey King!
11. Birthday Party – Lizzie No – Holidays
12. As I Am – Paper Bird – Rooms
13. Game To Lose – I’m With Her – See You Around
14. So Long, Marianne/You’d Sing Too – First Aid Kit – Who By Fire

Continue reading “WWJRD 06: Not Yet”

This did not go the way I expected it to go. The idea for this mix was simple enough. I’ve got a list of songs that I’ve been trying to use, but never seem to fit the vibe I’m going for. So, for this mix tape I figured I’d start with those songs and then build something around them. As I did that though I found myself moving into areas of my music collection that I’ve been neglecting for awhile and artists that I’ve been meaning to check out, but haven’t gotten around to.

The result is a collection that is pretty divergent from its predecessors and, as a result, was a hell of a lot of fun to put together. I hope you enjoy it!

Track List/Show Notes

1. Native Tongue – Mo’ju [feat. Pasefika Vitoria Choir] – Native Tongue
2. River – Ibeyi – Ibeyi
3. He Loves Me – Brittany Howard – Jaime
4. Mexican Chef – Xenia Rubinos – Black Terry Cat
5. Cinnamon – Hayley Williams – Petals For Armor
6. Good Luck, Kid – Joseph – Good Luck, Kid
7. Hey Heartbreaker – Dream Wife – Dream Wife
8. California Friends – The Regrettes – How Do You Love
9. The Steps – HAIM – Women In Music Pt III
10. Dino’s – Gordi, Alex Lahey – Dino’s
11. Thumbs – Lucy Dacus – Home Video
12. A Story If You Want It – Kylie V – Big Blue
13. Light On – Maggie Rogers – Heard It In A Past Life
14. Too Much – Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedicated

Continue reading “WWJRD 05: She Said”

As soon as I finished the Lazy Sunday set, I immediately started playing around with a Saturday night set. I mean, what’s the point of Sunday morning if there isn’t a Saturday night to repent for? The set went through a couple of iterations before I ended up with this one. The final result is a little more subdued then earlier iterations, but I’m kind of digging this.

This is also the first episode of the show that’s available as a podcast. You can currently access the show through the Amazon/Audible, Google, and Podbean networks. I’m working on Apple and not really optimistic about Spotify based on issues similar shows have had. You can subscribe directly to the podcast using this link.

Track List/Show Notes

1. Sir Duke- Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life
2. Chocolate Samurai – Fantastic Negrito – Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?
3. Bayonette – Elizabeth Cook – Aftermath
4. The Only Way Out Is Through- Hannah Williams – The Only Way Out Is Through
5. Half Asleep – The Broadcast – Lost My Sight
6. Fortunate Son – Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy And The Poor Boys
7. Keep The Change – Mattiel – Satis Factory
8. Be There – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – Tearing At The Seams
9. Signs, High Times – Tedeschi Trucks Band – Signs
10. Morning in America – Durand Jones & The Indications – American Love Call
11. The Good Life – Devon Gilfillian – Black Hole Rainbow
12. Hypotheticals – Lake Street Dive – Obviously
13. Bad Bad News – Leon Bridges – Good Thing
14. Matter of Time – Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings – Soul of a Woman

Once again, thank you for listening. If you’re enjoying this little project I’d love it if you can leave a comment. Is there a track that you really dug? Something that you think I should check out? I’d love to hear it, thanks.

Continue reading “WWJRD 04: Saturday Night”