workoutwednesday

What’s that you say? It’s the New Year, and you want to fulfill your resolution to get more exercise? But you can’t get movin’ unless your ears are groovin’, and a playlist just won’t do? Because you need a steady pulse of beats-per-minute, in one long, more or less seamlessly-edited chunk—preferably tailored to one paunchy white guy’s idiosyncratic musical taste?

Well, today’s your lucky day, bunkie!

Three things happened to me in the spring of 2005 that have radically changed the way I experience music; I left behind the day job to write full-time, I got my first MP3 player, and I started going to the gym regularly.

But playlists, no matter how lovingly assembled, never gave me the steady flow I needed to keep my ticker pumping between 145 and 155. About the time I was realizing this, I discovered two invaluable tools—the free audio editor Audacity, and MixMeister’s free beat-counting tool. The latter, though not perfect, still allowed me to get a ballpark idea of what I needed, and the former gave me the ability to create it.

These mixes have been a blast to make, and I have a blast working out on ‘em. Even cycling through so that I only hear a given mix once every few weeks, I’ve kept on the prowl for suitable material, and that’s led me to a lot of great new music. Some of the old favorites show up, too, and it amuses me to see how the context differs from or cleaves to that of the old mixtapes. And it’s been satisfying to assemble songs, to beatmatch outros and intros by ear and eye, to have happy accidents or inspirations in building a mood or a theme. I’m not laying claim to mad DJ skillz, but I do dig the vibe and the segues in some of these.

The project has continued as the regime has evolved. New disciplines have demanded new beat counts. A six-week cycle has crystallized, five days a week, a different machine each day, and a shedload of custom MP3 mixes—thirty and counting. And over the next half-year or so, I’ll be sharing them with you, one a week. Or you could just buy the new LCD Soundsystem. It’s your call.

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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It’s hurrah for the life of a country boy, and me ramblin’ in the new-mown hay! This week’s a good one for the elliptical cross-trainer; the missus likes it for an easy run.

148 bpm 3: Town and Country

Hokkai-Bayashi (Hokkaido Rhythm) – Nihon Daiko Medicine Bow (version) – The Waterboys Nightjoy – Kubichek! Ohio – Devo Cattle & Cane – The Go-Betweens Lovers In A Dangerous Time – Bruce Cockburn Lost In The Supermarket – The Clash Pilots Of Beka – Cactus World News Where Were You Hiding When The Storm Broke? – The Alarm So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry) – R.E.M. Home – Iggy Pop (cooldown) Love’s Lost Guarantee – Rogue Wave

Notes:

Without getting too New Age-y about it, there’s something really intense about ritual drumming. It’s exciting—it gets your blood going—but it’s grounded, too; every musical gesture is enjoined by centuries of repetition and tradition. As explosive as it is, there’s nothing spontaneous happening here. This has all happened many times before, and it will happen many times again. And there’s a certain comfort in listening to the taiko while you’re at the gym; as hard as you’re working at exercise, you know the guys playing the big drums are working even harder.

I vacillate on the question of a favorite Waterboys record, with This Is The Sea and Fisherman’s Blues regularly flip-flopping the #1 spot. This is an alternate version of “Medicine Bow,” with a different verse and an extended break featuring the sound of a piano being dropped down a mineshaft.

I’m generally not keen on bands with punctuation marks in the name, but this Kubichek! track leaped out of the speakers when I heard it at Who Needs Radio? (I quite liked that Dega Breaks track, too, and like it still: Paul was in fine form that day. Damn, I miss Paul the Anglophile.)

I missed out on the Go-Betweens first time around—I knew Grant McLennan primarily from his work with Steve Kilbey in Jack Frost—and the last year of discovering their work has made me richer. There’s something about the tone in this—that melancholy, the way that childhood and nature and colonialism all get tied together, an invocation of the landscape, so dear to a child but not the land of his fathers; the sense of making something new, as recollected years later. It’s a quality of voice: it’s hard to pin down, but I hear it in many songs by Not Drowning, Waving (especially the lovely and heartbreaking “Willow Tree”), and in the writing of Nadine Gordimer and the young Doris Lessing, and it moves me.

For some reason, I will always associate “Lovers In A Dangerous Time” with autumn in New England, blazing skies and livid trees, every shadow sharp and clear, the air pleasantly crisp and winter more than a rumor.

I can’t really defend my lingering affection for the Alarm, I suppose (although I’ll note that my ten-year old likes ‘em, too, so it’s either genetic or universal); I will say, though, that of all their songs this one probably has the greatest profusion of quotable lines.

And Iggy… well, what with recent events, Iggy’s been a bit of an earworm round our place.

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This one’s good for the arc trainer, I find.

Of course, you realize this means war…

132 bpm 1: Taken To The Front of The Line

Had a Dream (Sleeping with the Enemy) (edit) – Roger Hodgson Life During Wartime – Talking Heads Hell’s Half-Acre – Robbie Robertson Street Fighting Man – The Rolling Stones Love Of Life – Swans House On Fire – Arkarna Cope – Gigolo Aunts Give The Po’ Man A Break – Fatboy Slim Children of the Revolution – T. Rex Dad’s Gonna Kill Me – Richard Thompson (cooldown) The True Wheel – Brian Eno

Notes:

I swear, I only have two Roger Hodgson mp3s—and this is the other one. That said, there’s a great joy that radiates off his music, solo and with Supertramp, even when the song is as grim as this one; the jaunty piano, the rubbery slides of the fretless, the high, pure vocals and the surprisingly scorching guitar work. If you can get past the ponderous intro and the frankly unhinged video, it’s a fantastic piece of power pop. (I edited about a minute 15 off the album track, shaving the intro down and excising the long bridge to approximate the radio/video mix.)

I first heard this Swans track on an ancient mixtape I got from my friend and sometime artistic collaborator Oscar Stern. I lost track of Oscar for a few years, and all trace of his excellent comic Wu Wei appears to have disappeared from the Web. However, I am amused to find him now fronting a band of his own. Rock on, Sweet William.

You know, say what you will about the Joel Schumacher Batman movies (go ahead; you wouldn’t be the first and it wouldn’t be the worst) but between them the two soundtrack albums had some pretty heavy hipster cred. Maybe not so much the U2 and the Seal, but honestly: PJ Harvey, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, REM, Soul Coughing, Underworld, the Pumpkins, Moloko, Massive Attack… and, uh, these guys.

Gigolo Aunts came out of Potsdam by way of Boston, and fell by the wayside when Nirvana broke. Neither particularly punk nor (Syd Barrett references notwithstanding), particularly psychedelic, this is just good old-fashioned Loud Guitar Pop; in the early 90s, The Kool Kidz thought it was “too pretty.”

Story of my life.

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Urban decay on the elliptical machine, and the bright lights of my hometown won’t be getting any dimmer… 144 bpm 3: Bright Lights Big City The Lighthouse – Amon Tobin City of Blinding Lights – U2 IT – Genesis Shattered – The Rolling Stones Futures – Zero 7 with José González In-Between Days – The Cure London’s Mine – White Rose Movement Hymn From A Village – James Moaner – Underworld One of Us Is Gonna Die Young – The Ark (cooldown) We’re In Yr CornerI – Cornershop

Yeah, okay: This mix didn’t come together entirely by accident. But I didn’t have to massage the tracks too much on the technical end.

I’m a little disappointed with the way that “It”—excuse me, IT—works in this context. The (second-) most tuneful and straightforward rock song on all The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, it—I beg your pardon, IT—suffers from a bad mix; the drums have no punch, and the bass just sort of meanders around when it should be driving the song.

Note the segue from the line “It is only rock and roll, but I like it” into a Rolling Stones song. Is very clever, yes? Is funny joke! Everyone please to laugh now!

There’s a neat symmetry to José González’s collaboration with Zero 7. González, of course, first made a name for himself (in the States, anyway) with his cover of The Knife’s “Heartbeats,” taking a heavily electronic song and turning it into a folky ballad: now one of his original folky ballads is transformed into piece of a glitchy electronica. Is very clever, yes?

To accompany “Moaner,” I almost linked to a YouTube clip of a segment from The Vagina Monolgues with the same title. Is very clever, yes?

I’ve worked out to this mix for months, and the unexpected entrance of “One Of Us Is Gonna Die Young” skunks me every. Single. Time.

Lastly: I cannot vouch for the reliability of those Cornershop lyrics; yeah, they’re from the official artist site, but I wouldn’t put it past Tjinder to fuck with us, would you? Sing along if you dare.

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I’m writing this on a Monday, and yesterday read an interesting article about LCD Soundsystem/DFA mainman James Murphy. I like Murphy’s style. I like his forthright anger and confusion. I like his aesthetic, his refusal to recognize the boundaries between rock and dance music. I like that a self-described “fat guy in a T-shirt” is determined to work his way back to fighting weight. I may not be a musical genius, but we’ve got that much in common, at least.

126 BPM: Looking For A Sound That’s Gonna Drown Out The World Mofo (Popmart remix) – U2 Come Out (Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone) – 120 Days Twins – Linda Lamb Talk – Coldplay There’s A Drink in My Bedroom And I Need A Hot Lady – Lindstrøm Hustler – Simian Mobile Disco Electric Avenue – Eddy Grant Orange Alert (DFA remix) – Metro Area

What’s best about compiling music for sessions on the StairMaster is that the tempos—the high 120s—are a breeding ground for funk. Where most of my faster mixes veer towards the dance-y side of rock, the StairMaster stuff tends to the rockin’ side of dance. Not that there’s a bright dividing line; but it’s a way for me to hear a lot of great music that I’d somehow missed before.

The U2 track is something I cobbled together myself; the band used a recording of their cover of “Pop Muzik” as entrance music for their 1997 Popmart tour, the segued into “Mofo” as their opening number. Eventually they released “Pop Muzik” as a B-side: that version had a long fade of an ending, dissolving into a wash of crowd noise, electronic swoops and rumbles, and occasional dubby fragments of melody. The edit wasn’t difficult: it took a couple of careful listens to find the entrance point, and a minor tweak to put the two tracks in the same tempo.

Pop isn’t my favorite U2 record by any stretch, but it’s for my money it’s their last album to succeed more than it fails; lyrically, it’s the last time Bono really put himself on the line (“Mofo” is as nakedly personal a lyric as he’s ever written), and musically it’s the last time the group were looking forward to find new ways to be a rock band, instead of running through a catalog of the tried and true. The record makes more sense now, ten years on, than it did at the time: it’s really not a million miles away from what James Murphy et al. are doing now. And if nothing else, it finally does something worthwhile with Bono’s fucking hamronica.

I got 120 Days from an mp3blog (the name of which escapes me now), knowing nothing about them. I still don’t, really, except that they’re associated with Lindstrøm; the kind of electronica that I dig is, I’m discovering, not so much a small scene as a highly cross-pollinated one, with favorite artists forever collaborating, influencing, responding to one another. I like that.

The last time I heard Linda Lamb, she was collaborating with Vitalic under the name Silures; that jaunt yielded the squawky, juddering “21 Ghosts.” This one, even sans Vitalic, is similarly mighty. The riff takes the quintessential boogie riff—that slinky, John Lee Hooker-derived sequence that powers songs as diverse as ZZ Top’s “La Grange,” Goldfrapp’s “Ooh La La,” and (yeah) LCD Soundsystem’s “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”—and turns it inside-out, making it fearsome instead of insinuating.

This is the Coldplay track primarily notable for its wholesale rip-off of a Kraftwerk song, by the way. (U2 must have finally sent a case-and-desist.) Neither Kraftwerk nor U2, though, would have allowed the rhythm section to be buried by such a murky mix. For that we have to thank Radiohead—or, more properly, Coldplay’s incomplete understanding of Radiohead, and their mistaken application of murk to what should be a crisp, forthright rock song, in the mistaken belief that it will lend the song some gravitas.

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