Hot Rod UFO

Remember that one cartoon of The Far Side where a pair of aliens were buzzing over a panicked city in their flying saucer cheering "Yeeeeeeeeeeeha!"? I think they very possibly could have been listening to this mix during that interstellar romp....

This is a mix that was started, stopped, gutted, abandoned, revived, and nearly forgotten throughout the past year. I stumbled back upon the rough-draft playlist in early March and decided it was time to finish it. That playlist was right around 100 minutes, but paring it down to under 80 went pretty smoothly. There weren't any "painful omissions" that stick out, and I actually ended up adding a few songs, notably "Planet Of Sound" (one of my favorite Pixies songs and one I've wanted to use for a while) and "King Of The Monsters" (which seemed necessary after the joy of introducing my sons to their first Godzilla movie while I was working on this). A good portion of these songs, also, were discovered via free and legal means from various sources around this Internet thingy. So hop into your spaceship, turn the volume to eleven, and enjoy. NW005.

01. Voodoo Train/THE BELLRAYS
02. Super Ted/DEATH VALLEY SURFERS
03. Her Love Rubbed Off/THE TREMORS
04. Clara Bow/50 FOOT WAVE
05. Baby Boom/BABYLON DANCE BAND
06. Asphalt Mother/MIND GARAGE
07. Graverobbers/COMETS ON FIRE
08. Cruisin' For A Bruisin'/REV. HORTON HEAT
09. Astor Place Riot/CRYPT KICKER FIVE
10. Start/LOS INFERNOS
11. Eyeballin' Torpedoes Theme Song/EYEBALLIN' TORPEDOES
12. Flying Saucer Attack/THE REZILLOS
13. Planet From Outer Space/ATOMIC MOSQUITOES
14. Planet Of Sound/PIXIES
15. Mississippi/HALF JAPANESE
16. Zombie Love/THE KILLBILLIES
17. Modern Love's A Killer/THE GRAVES
18. The Ostrich/THE PRIMITIVES
19. Maneaters (get off the road)/JOSIE COTTON
20. Return Of Hotrod Nissan/LUXURIOUS PANTHERS
21. The Hearse/THE ASTRONAUTS
22. ChronoSurf/THE TOMORROWMEN
23. I Am The Walrus/THE THURSTON LAVA TUBE
24. Pabst Blue Ribbon/THE UNTAMED YOUTH
25. Chicken Scratch/ZEN GUERILLA
26. Jet Star 19/ZOLAR X
27. Human Fly/THE CRAMPS
28. King Of The Monsters/MAN OR ASTRO-MAN?

We Are Filled With Inner Light

Amazing that it's been fifteen months since I've completed and posted a mix-CD that I've made. Way back when, I'd crank out a new tape (that was the medium then) sometimes every fifteen days, and now I went the entire year of 2009 without sending one of my creations out the door to the mailbox (or into my own stereo). This one has been in the works for a while, hampered by A) not having the time to sit and work on it and B) my CD burner totally crapping out (meaning I had to organize and edit at home and then re-create it on my in-laws' computer). My, things weren't so difficult when you just had to deal with a stack of CD's and a Maxell XLII....

About The Title: My Aunt Stella was somewhat a renaissance woman. She was a painter, writer, and family historian. My grandfather's only sister, she lived alone in a one bedroom apartment in Old Louisville until her death in 1979. She wrote and had published a series of books about "Chalk Talks," a method of catechesis involving illustrating lessons on a blackboard. She documented how my Dad's family moved from the family farm in western Kentucky to Louisville in the early twentieth century and how her father took a job as an elevator operator. And she painted. Oils. Mostly still life and landscape scenes. I, fortunately have two of her works hanging in my home now. We only visited her, as much as I recall, a few times a year, and the better part of my memories from those visits are nothing more than sketchy images. I do recall, however, that we always got to draw and paint at her apartment. Paper, pencils, crayons, and paint were always in bountiful supply, and I'm sure she enjoyed her little way of encouraging each of us in our artistic pursuits. This is something she started doing, I'm sure, from the first time that my older brothers and sisters came to visit and could pick up a crayon. The cover of this CD is a detail from a watercolor my brother David made when he was five years old, the title is from the title Aunt Stella gave to his painting. Somehow, it ended up in a box of my things that I unpacked after we moved a few years ago. He's getting it back, along with this CD inspired by it, for his birthday.

About The Music: My brother's musical tastes, when we were growing up, leaned heavily toward the geographically named bands. He wasn't the brother that had Velvet Underground And Nico or Rocket To Russia, but his LP collection included a healthy dose of some music that, perhaps, have a more lasting impression on me than Never Mind The Bollocks. He played records for me and wanted me to hear what he heard, to encourage me to feel the music. And even though he didn't share my infatuation with The Police, The English Beat, and countless new wave and punk bands I discovered through high school, he understood how important music is to the teenage, now adult, soul. The music I chose for this disc tries to reflect both the music he taught me about and the music I learned on my own. Some of these songs, that he's heard of, I've tried to put a spin around: instead of George Harrison and Eric Clapton on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," we get ex-members of Galaxie 500; "Across The Universe" is the stripped down version from Let It Be: Naked (very possibly the only reason to buy that version of the album); Simon & Garfunkel's "Sound Of Silence" is the original version from Wednesday Morning, 3AM and seems, to me at least, to be a more honest take than the more familiar version from their second album. Of the "newer" songs, some were ones I've wanted to use for a while (eg. "Ring The Bells" and "Shiny"). Others, like "Naked As We Came," I've discovered along the way of putting this together and they just seemed to fit. "How We Operate" from Gomez, is just a fantastic song that really seems to tie the whole mix together. The closing pairing of "Stare And Stare" and "Voodoo Child (slight return)" has been used before by me on a mix (way back in 1995), but I figure, if you can't plagiarize yourself, who can you plagiarize?

01. Amazing Grace/DANIEL LANOIS with AARON NEVILLE
02. Bad/U2
03. First Girl I Loved/JACKSON BROWNE
04. Ring The Bells/JAMES
05. Naked As We Came/IRON AND WINE
06. Across The Universe/THE BEATLES
07. While My Guitar Gently Weeps/DAMON & NAOMI
08. How We Operate/GOMEZ
09. You Are The Everything/R.E.M.
10. Shiny/THE DECEMBERISTS
11. Pigs On The Wing (part one)/PINK FLOYD
12. Trouble/ISOBEL CAMPBELL and MARK LANEGAN
13. Walk On The Wild Side/LOU REED
14. Poor Places/WILCO
15. The Sound Of Silence/SIMON & GARFUNKEL
16. This Is The Night/THE THE
17. Stare And Stare/MC 900 FT JESUS
18. Voodoo Child (slight return)/JIMI HENDRIX

New Gomez Freebie!

A little teaser from a new "live series" that the band is beginning to release. Sounds exciting, especially since they aren't coming anywhere near me on their new tour....

R.I.P. Gem City Records

Right on the heels of my previous post, some news that hits closer to my (current) home....

Gem City Records Officially Closes Doors

ear X-tacy

ear X-tacy is the store. I spent many days and nights and dollars searching through the racks from the time I first discovered it, shortly after it opened, in the mid-eighties until I moved away from Louisville (for good) in '96, still popping in when time and finances permitted. I envied the people who were lucky enough to work there (although I admit now I never had the guts to ask for, yet alone fill out, a job application). I remember special ordering cassettes back at the original, shoebox sized store (Klark Kent comes to mind) as well as buying The Joshua Tree on the day of it's release in 1987 (St. Patrick's Day). It was the store to go to in order to find anything remotely off the wall, and before the mid-90's melting pot that consumed "alternative music" into the top 40, there was a lot of it about.

I even remember how when owner John Timmons began his own record label, X-static, I went and bought release #1 in no small part to a genuine sense of obligation to John and the store for helping turn me on to music. I can't name how many hours I spent in that store or how many tapes and CD's (and occasionally vinyl) I bought from there. Though the location of the store moved a few times and other independent record stores have been about, there's just something about ear X-tacy. Plus, they've got one of the coolest bumper stickers around. It's one of the things I truly miss most about Louisville, and one of the things, I hope, will be able to endure.

I know that the economy is a mess and the music industry is a trainwreck on its own, but there is one, and only one, hope that ear X-tacy can survive: people must spend money there. I'll admit that I didn't know anything about the troubles the store is facing were it not for a Facebook page, and the fact that there are over 20,000 fans to it is testament to how many people are concerned, but really, how many of these 20,000 have been supporting the store lately? I don't live in Louisville anymore, so I can't go there multiple times a week (that ,and my discretionary spending is now spent on clothes and food for my family). But could I pop in sometime when I do get to Louisville? Probably. Could I buy one of the few CD's I buy per year now (gee, that's depressing) at earX-tacy.com? Sure. At the same time, though, it's got to be the people of Louisville that save ear X-tacy. Not with benefits, not with Facebook pages, not with blog posts, but with cold hard cash....

(In my old man voice) When I was young, it was the kids who shopped there. Punks and preppies alike. It was those kids with their first jobs and first paychecks and money burning holes in their pockets. It was the kids who were looking for (and finding) the music that inspired them, spoke to them, empathized with them, and pissed off their parents.

Yo, people of Louisville, get off yer iPod asses and buy some music....

That's What's Happening!

Don't think I'm ready to turn in the asics yet, but I've got to give credit for an ace musical selection, a song whose inspirational powers I've known about for a while....

Yo!

A little more substantial than, say, um, "Walking The Dog"....

The Hindsight File

We've all been there: I should have made that phone call. I should have bought that lottery ticket. I shouldn't have eaten the worm from that bottle of tequila.... And of course, I should have bought that CD when I had the chance because now it's out of print and the only place I can find it is maybe on ebay or amazon where it will cost at least three times the price of what I could have paid when I saw it in the record store where instead I spent my money on a CD or tape that I don't even care about anymore and now every time I look at my collection there is a void that I know can never be filled because I blew it when I had the opportunity and now I wonder "what the hell was I thinking by passing that over." And now I present a few such examples of such shortcomings in my collection....

Various Artists/No Wave—Now, a rare, hard-to-find sampler featuring The Police, Squeeze, Joe Jackson, et al. Then, a rare, hard-to-find sampler featuring The Police, Squeeze, Joe Jackson, et al. I saw this at ear X-tacy in Louisville (the original store next to Great Escape) around '85 or '86. At the time, I was still a HUGE Police fan and was pretty keen on Squeeze as well. I think I was intimidated by both the fact that I didn't have a turntable at the time and the fact that it was pricey (something like $14.99). I rue the day I didn't make the buy....

Eraserhead Soundtrack—Had several opportunities to buy this at Cut Corner (R.I.P.) in Lexington. I hadn't seen Eraserhead, there were no tracks listed on the sleeve, but it was on I.R.S. (still one of my favorite labels). I had and have bought soundtracks without having seen the movie and without tracklists, so why I dropped the ball on this one is beyond me. I was probably too busy spending my financial aid money on some crap to alter my music collection to impress some girl (I made some really stupid purchases). This is a lot easier to find, but at this point it's hard to justify spending the money on it.

Negativland/U2—Another ear X-tacy find. I must have stumbled across it while looking for New Order. Now, I already owned (and still own) Escape From Noise. I already knew the controversy about this album. I remember there being a handwritten tag on the packaging saying that it was rare and out of print! I failed.

Pylon/Hits—This is perhaps the most embarrassing of all because, gulp, I owned this at one time. I bought it (I think) at Cut Corner and really liked it. Prior to buying, I knew little of Pylon: R.E.M. covered "Crazy" and I had actually seen them open for R.E.M. in Lexington. I really liked that CD, but there came a time in '93 when I was selling off CD's (and plasma) to buy food and pay bills. I swore that this one be one that I'd re-add at some point. I'm still waiting....

A Little Gomez

Just because it's Monday....

Popscene

This song just sounded particularly good today....