workoutwednesday

Call this a mix for a probable sweep. Which may be bad mojo, I dunno. But to paraphrase Bull Durham, sweeps are boring; not only that, they’re fascist.

Come and Get It - Badfinger

Are Sox fans just as arrogant and entitled as everyone thinks?

Left-Handed - Gene

Morrissey enthusiasts write inadvertent theme song for Jon Lester!

The Smash-Up - Concussion Ensemble

Honestly, I’ve begun to pity the Rockies. (Concussion Ensemble were, of course, from Boston.)

Hurry On Boys - The Skids

Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead - Warren Zevon

Forever Now - Psychedelic Furs

You know that feeling you get when a perfect moment comes along?

coda: Champagne Charlie - Blind Blake

Goggles on in the locker room, boys.

GO SOX

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So far, so good. This one, up where the air is thin and the knees are shot—it could be a notch in our belts, a bump in the road, or a nail in our coffin. In any case, we’ll be singing along.

King of the Mountain - Midnight Oil

Welcome to Denver, boys.

Battle Without Honor Or Humanity - Tomoyasu Hotei

Pretty self-explanatory, I think. You’ve heard this tune, whether you know the name or not.

Now, let’s finish our tour of the batting order…

The Gospel Plough - Jason And The Scorchers

They weren’t so scorching in Game 2, but the Captain will keep ‘em holding on. Oh—the horror movie montage leading in, here? The idea of our Jason as an unstoppable killing machine sort of amused me. (That voice coming into the song is a self-righteous Rockies fan, of course.)

Coco (excerpt) - Stewart Copeland

Self-explanatory. From the soundtrack to The Rhythmatist; and its jingle jangle nervous energy seemed suitable

Indian Red - Daniel Lanois

Hey, Everybody Loves Jacoby Ellsbury…

Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard - Paul Simon

What do you think? Too obvious?

Fight Song - Hallelujah The Hills

Tumblin’ Dice - The Rolling Stones

What do you think? Too obvious?

Now, bring out the closer…

Tank! (Theme from Cowboy Bebop) - Yoko Kanno & The Seatbelts

Yeah, I think it’s time we blow this scene.

GO SOX

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Gotta keep the mojo coming. Things get a little weird here, but hey, c’mon – you know you’re gonna want to hear something besides “Dirty Water” and “Rocky Mountain Way” by the end of this week.

Kick off with…

Courage - Mason Ruffner

There’s not a man alive who has anything to teach Curt Schilling about courage. ‘Nuf said. And for the offense…

Release The Bats! - The Birthday Party

Nick Cave was thinking of something else here, something more appropriate for Halloween, but I’m a sucker for a terrible pun. And I love the ungodly lunatic energy at play here.

Now we give props to the top of the batting order…

Dust Devils (excerpt) - Dr. Didg

Pedroia, of course. And the puns…

Rock That Uke - Little Bob

…well, they don’t get any better, do they?

Papi Chulo - Lorna

Of course.

What A Man - Salt n Pepa with En Vogue

What a Manny, what a Manny… (Told you the puns only got worse.)

Mike’s Theme - Crow T. Robot

From Mystery Science Theatre 3000, of course. We sing this one around the house whenever Lowell comes up.

Time Loves A Hero - Little Feat

This one’s for J.D. Drew, who in one night made the journey from goat to idol. And may end up a goat again. Only time will tell, yeah.

Bare Knuckles - Vic Caesar

In honor of the mighty Tim Wakefield, sidelined for this series by a shoulder injury. Gone but not forgotten, Wake.

And the closer…

Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick - Ian Dury & the Blockheads

For the blockheads in the bullpen, rockin’ in rhythm all night long.

GO SOX

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The Boys are back in the Series Race, and Jack is back in the mixtape business; it’s the usual blend of hoary old classic rock, new-wave one-hit wonders and leftfield weirdness. get yourself pumped for the game, and maybe - just maybe - the power of positive thinking will do the rest.

In any case, play it loud - and check back before the next game; I’ll keep making these as long as I need to… TRACK LISTING

intro: Home Town - Joe Jackson

Are You Ready? - Crispy Ambulance

Red Skies - The Fixx

Foreplay-Long Time - Boston

One Hit (To The Body) - The Rolling Stones

The Power Is On! - The Go! Team

GO RED SOX

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A brisk trot on the cross-trainer today, or a reasonably strenuous run. Euphoria comes in a lot of flavors; call this a sampler pack.

Inside-Out (live) – The Mighty Lemon Drops House Of The Ancestors – Afro Celt Sound System Monarch – Hex The Blissed One – Lotus Omega Shock The Monkey – Peter Gabriel Buenos Aires – The Golden Palominos What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy – Andy Summers & Robert Fripp (cooldown) Riviera ‘68 – Steve Stevens

Short notes (I’ve written about many of these groups or songs elsewhere, so the links is important):

Years ago there was a Volkswagen ad campaign based around the concept of “the pleasure of driving.” There was a chirpy little techno theme song, with floaty female vox singing “fa-a-h-hr-ver-r-r-rg-nü-ü-ü-ü-ü-ü-gen-n-n-n” (you’ll hear an instrumental version in that YouTube clip). My brother-in-law used to sing that jingle whenever he heard me playing “Monarch.”

Hex never really got a shot, partly because they had a weird format history: I’d say they were due for a rediscovery, because I think their organic/electronic experimental-pop thing with Donnette Thayer’s gorgeous vocals would go down a storm in today’s musicblog scene—but their two albums were cassette-only, part of the ill-advised “Ryko Analogue” line, and mp3s are still difficult to find.

I know nothing about Goa trance, one of the many dance-music subgenres that have blossomed in such baffling, fragmented profusion; I found “The Blissed One” literally by running a Soulseek search with the query “150 bpm.” And I thought it was funny.

My parents got me the second Summers/Fripp record for Christmas when I was 17 or 18. My mind was blown: with players like this, with crazy guitar synthesizers no less, this was TEH MOST AVANT-GARDE THING EVAH. and oh my god this song was like 12 minutes long—total crazily complex prog monstrosity I’m sure. Then, upon my third or fourth listen, I realize that, at heart, it’s just a sixteen-bar blues fa chrissakes. Robert Fripp, playing a blues like just another bar-band hack. Motherfucker.

Also: NICE HAIRCUT, JACKASS.

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This is one where the songs all just happened to be around the same tempo and the idea just sort of coalesced. The “wild west” theme fades in and out, and as a listening experience it becomes more about the Idea of West: a code of honor, a landscape, a set of hardships; freedom, opulence, danger; Western Civilization (which might’ve been a better title for this mix, honestly). Campfire melodies and big trotting beats.

132 bpm 2: Wild Wild West This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us – Sparks Prairie Rose – Big Country Theme from Deadwood – David Schwartz Horseback – Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas North, South, East, and West – The Church Ring of Fire – Wall Of Voodoo Virginia Plain – Roxy Music Don’t Run Wild – The Del Fuegos All The Way To China – James Figurine with Erlend Øye Flame – Sebadoh (cooldown) Showdown At Big Sky – Robbie Robertson

But of course the listening experience is only part of it; this being a workout mix, it’s also about motion, which is how the not-particularly sun-baked but snake-hipped danceable Del Fuegos snuck in here. (Dan Zanes is now a children’s entertainer; he knows how to get ‘em moving.) Not so much talk, now. More motion.

(But it must be said: …the hell? Did the dude that uploaded that clip to YouTube just point a camcorder at his TV?)

Sparks: man, the camera loves that Hitler ‘tache, doesn’t it?

I’ve written about this cover of “Prairie Rose” before (it’s in the middle somewhere), and I’d rather not repeat myself here.

I know I’m getting old, because Kings Of Convenience is one of the few bands to come down the pike in the last five years that I’ve wholeheartedly dug, and they sound just like Simon and Garfunkel. This is The One With The Glasses, singing with one of those indie electronica kids who record under ten-fifteen different names for the sole purpose of confusing and alienating old bastards like me who might like to support them and their music, if we could only keep it all straight in our heads. Thanks for nothing, “James Figurine”—if that is your real name.

A little technical hoo-hah with “Flame”: the album version has a false ending, then fades back in again, before collapsing into sheets of noise. I overlaid the out-in (which is why there’s a moment that loops and repeats), then faded the whole shebang before the real ending.

Lastly: For a long time, I’ve thought that someone should remix and remaster Robbie Robertson’s first solo record. The songs cry out for a spacious, widescreen approach, but the record hasn’t aged well. All the guitar parts (and there are five or six going in the mix here) are crammed together, the backing vocals don’t blend—the whole thing generally sounds boxy and claustrophobic. I don’t think it’s Daniel Lanois’s fault—in his work with Bob Dylan and U2 he worked with similarly detailed multi-guitar arrangements (I’m thinking of “Cold Irons Bound” and “One,” respectively, as mixes of comparable complexity), but they were open; they breathed. This one, though, as good as it is, is still a letdown, because in my head it sounds so much better. The songs on Robbie Roberston are better, but I’d almost rather listen to Storyville, and avoid ear fatigue.

The remaster will never happen, though. Nobody’s marketing product to sad old fuckers like me anymore.

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Or, with apologies to Reb Hillel: “I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.”

146 bpm 1: Show Me The Ropes, Kid On the Dance Floor – Juliet Live With Me – Massive Attack with Terry Callier Daft Punk is Playing At My House – LCD Soundsystem Jump Into The Fire – Harry Nilsson Ooh La La – Goldfrapp Frustration – The Whip Love Vigilantes – New Order Rio – Duran Duran The Back Of Love – Echo & The Bunnymen Police On My Back – The Clash (cooldown) The Dynamite Lady - Big Country

The first, oh, half of this mix comes courtesy of Fluxblog, I think. The Juliet track definitely does. The tempo’s been cranked pretty seriously here, but it’s still the same great single that sank without a trace here. I love the six-over-five of the chorus hook, the cycling mantric phrases, and the whomp of the bass. Mike Watt calls his electric bass the thud staff. Yeah.

I’m inordinately pleased with the synth-into strings crossfade into “Live With Me,” but the manic grin really lights up my face as the LCD Soundsystem choon kicks in, and it never leaves as I run harder on the elliptical.

I don’t remember why I segued into Nilsson then, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t know that LCDS had actually been covering “Jump Into The Fire” in live shows. Doesn’t surprise me in the least, though. Great minds thinking alike, I spoze.

It takes a lot of stones for a new band from Manchester to sound as much like New Order as The Whip does here, but damn if they don’t work it to their advantage. (I tweaked up the tempo on this’n, too.) And of course I couldn’t resist following it up with the genuine article, which led to a full-on trip in the Wayback Machine for the rest of the mix.

Thought: You figure all the homopanicky comics fanboys currently wetting their own pants over the contents of Citizen Steel’s were traumatized in their childhoods by the vision of Simon LeBon’s grape-smugglers in the “Rio” video?

Finally: There are lots of reasons to love The Clash, and while compiling these mixes I’ve discovered another: explosive intros, just made for crossfade segues.

Keep running down that one-way track.

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126 bpm 2: Talk In the Shower

Big – New Fast Automatic Daffodils Sweet, Sweet Baby (I’m Falling) – Lone Justice In The Morning – Razorlight Arkham Asylum – Sasha A Girl Like You – Edwyn Collins Teenage FBI – Guided By Voices Tahitian Moon – Porno For Pyros Better Than Nothing – Jen Trynin The Planetarium Scene – The Ocean Blue (cooldown) My Secret Place – Joni Mitchell with Peter Gabriel

Joe over at the White Noise Revisited has some good words about the New Fast Automatic Daffodils’ Pigeonhole. The Daffs were on the fringes of the “Madchester” scene, although to my ears they had more in common with the early-80s dance-punk bands. In particular, I hear a lot of “Cavern” (a.k.a. “White Lines”) in “Big.” The interval in the bassline’s not quite the same—a whole step vs. Liquid Liquid’s minor third—but the infleunce is clear, especially when the congas kick in.

A related open appeal to musicbloggers: Can we please stop referring to “New FADs” when “NFA Daffodils” is obviously so much cooler? kthxbye.

I still dig this Razorlight song, even though they are widely reviled in their homeland as a pack of self-serious rockist wankstains, often by the same music press that once fawned over them. Of ocurse, I’ve written at my other podcast blog about the British pop scene’s tendency to eat its own young. Whatever: I still think this song sounds like Big Country, and in my book that’s a good thing.

Dig the ridiculous clip for “Tahitian Moon”—it’s Perry’s vacation videos! The sarong and the china-doll haircut are doing him no favors, but it doesn’t matter—Watt fucking PWNS. The weedy vocals and scrawled-on-an-envelope lyrics are only there to serve the bass, my friends, oh yes.

So here’s what I love about Jen Trynin: she writes like a guy.

See, rock has a gender problem. every cover band knows this: if they’ve got a girl singer—especially one of the tough rock-chick variety—she’s gonna end up doing some songs originally performed by guys, partly because the pool of tough rock-chick songwriters is pretty limited and unless you actually want to start billing yourselves as a Pretenders tribute band you’ve got to draw from a number of sources, and mostly because guy songwriters pretty much have the luxury of disregarding gender when they write, and guy’s songs are more adaptable to woman singers than the other way ‘round.

Which leaves guy cover-singers—even feminist guy cover-singers like me—in a bind. Chrissie Hynde can sing Ray Davies or Jimi Hendrix, but I can’t sing Chrissie Hynde—at least not straight-up; the performance of gender would overwhelm and be detrimental to the performance of the song itself. And so there are hundreds of terrific songs that are off-limits to me, even if I swap the gender pronouns in the lyrics. I mean, I can sing “Shotgun Down The Avalance,” just about, and one or two Aimee Mann songs, and not much else.

But I can sing “Better Than Nothing,” and tear the roof off it. Indeed, some of the imagery—whiskey, a westward drive—seem so stereotypically masculine as to make it inevitable. Watch the video: see Jen with her low-slung Les Paul and her rack full of effects pedals, the accoutrements of masculine rockin’ out.

Now look at the comments on that YouTube page: some of the posters question her gender. She’s obviously a woman—her voice is a woman’s voice, her body a woman’s body—but her embrace of a couple of superficial othergender signifiers manages to confound a few (admitted dunderheaded) YouTubers. I think that’s neat.

Lastly: How cute are Peter and Joni in their matching hats and serapes?

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Good for a run on the treadmill…

152 bpm 3: Moving Forward, Using All My Breath

The Chain – Fleetwood Mac I Melt With You – Modern English Roadkill – Concussion Ensemble Who Are You – The Who Rags – The Waterboys June – Unrest Waka – Camper Van Beethoven The Saints Are Coming – The Skids Helter Skelter (live) – U2 Bang Bang Rock and Roll – Art Brut Grandelinquent – Klark Kent (cooldown) I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain – Tim Buckley

This one keeps up the energy pretty nicely, I think.

It took me a long time to feel comfortable about loving Fleetwood Mac, and “The Chain” was one of the songs that helped me get over the hump. Rumours, though one of the greatest pure-pop records ever, really brings the creep on some tracks. I love the tension in the build-up to the coda; I almost wish it went on longer—the release seems a little rushed.

“Melt With You” never gets old, does it? Ever since its release, it’s had a little radio revival every couple of years. Curious little song.

You know, I’ve loved The Waterboys for years, and viewing them through the filters of their shifting influences has brought me to a lot of great bands. And until just this moment, I hadn’t considered that for a while there, they were trying to be The Teardrop Explodes.

I got “June” from Fluxblog. I somehow managed to get through the 80s and 90s without ever listening to many of the seminal American indie bands (see also: Superchunk). I like this one, though I start getting tired at about this point in the mix and this throws me off because it slows down as it goes on. I’m sympathetic: I used to play with a drummer like that. he’s always start too fast and then run out of steam. It was a bitch when we were playing “Wipeout,’ I’ll tell you that: the first drum solo would be dynamite, but the third would be pretty sad.

(The Skids track has a bit of the same problem, to be honest.)

Klark Kent was a side project, an outlet for Stewart Copeland’s songwriting during his Police years. What’s funny is that the same riffs keep showing up, even today, in his soundtrack work. He’s spun quite a career out of what is really a very limited palette of musical ideas. He makes up for it in sheer energy, I think: and energy goes a long way, especially to a purpose like this.

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